Some of the last discussion reminded me of the Iran-Contra investigation. Senator Daniel Inouye was the chairman of the committee investigating the scandal, and when Oliver North came to testify in his uniform, there was concern about North appearing to be a hero in front of all the politicians.
Inouye wore a small pin on his suit to show that he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross (which was later upgraded to the Medal of Honor) during World War II, for his role in an assault that lost him his right arm.
Rob got the Bluenose and Magellan for circumnavigating the world under the Arctic ice pack =)
While I do know a few decent officers, the average officer I ran into on base tended to be less than optimal. I got into a serious disagreement one charming dependa-cruise [load the families on, go out for 5 or 6 hours and let them see what hubby does during the day. After the first one, I simply started ignoring the planned activities and heading down to hang out in the machinery spaces with mrAru and our buddies.] Seriously, as a dependapotamus I am overqualified, as other than lacking the steamplant operation and military specific equipment, I could have done mrAru’s job. I also had the habit of reading the various Jane’s that wandered home and sitting around with various military talking so I knew a fair amount of details about ships and weapons. If some dumb weapons officer is going to flirt and chat up the wives he shouldn’t be so snotty to get called on blatant misinformation when the cleaned up data is available. [civillian nuke, hazmat tech, ex-rad whore and inside/outside mechanic. I can also handle handguns and long arms.] And WTF, why do officers hit on enlisted wives? I got hit on more times by officers than I care to think about - and I am not saying they were light flirting for amusement, I am saying 'the <boat> is deployed, what say I come over and we have some fun …:eek::mad:
Shame there are no more Sturgeon class subs, I found I that I could cut off the CO’s hotwater recirc pump … the pranks I could have played sigh
We did not get the Order of Magellan because our CO thought that circumnavigating the world at the North Pole didn’t count. We did get Golden Dragon certificates for crossing the International Date Line in the Arctic.
After transiting the pole, we made it down fairly close to the northern coast of Alaska. Which is funny, because my wife wants to do an Alaska cruise in the near future. If and when we go, I’ll be able to say that I’ve never been to Alaska before, but I’ve been well north of it – in fact, I’ve been as far north of Alaska as you can get, and I’ve stood on sea ice north of Alaska!
Yup. Which IMO didn’t look too bad in the general ranks with the big braid at the bottom of the sleeves. Looks about like an admiral but silver instead of gold.
But for ordinary O-1 to O-5 it made everybody into an airline co-pilot.
It’s kind of funny that the US airline industry was real big on gold braid back in the 50s through 90s. But nowadays gold is by far the minority. Various flavors of silver, gray, or white are the majority now.
What a bummer, around is around, so you got ripped off =)
mrAru enjoyed revisiting a number of places the sub hit as a civilian - playing tourist is much funner on a cruise ship than on a sub =) He has said one of his favorite ports was always Tromso so we are planning on cruising up that way at some point [I actually want to take a few months and cruise NY - Hamburg Germany on Cunard, rent a car and drive to Tromso so we can meet up with various gaming buddies [many of my EVE corpies are Danish, Swedish and Norwegian and I have had invites to visit them for almost 10 years.]
I still like the pic of the sub with the polar bear investigating it =)
:eek::mad:
