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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
 Posted - 08/10/2007 : 22:44:00
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According to Times Online: It may not have any ships, sailors or seafaring equipment, but those logistical details have not prevented Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules the Gaza Strip, from launching a naval defence force.
The requirements to join are that you have to be a good soldier, be fit, and know how to swim, said the coastal patrol's only confirmed member and commander, Jamil al-Dahashan, a veteran of the armed wing of Hamas. |
[My emphasis.]
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 08/10/2007 : 23:37:11 [Permalink]
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| A guy I used to work with served in the U.S. Navy aboard an aircraft carrier. He estimated that about 40% of the guys in his initial training (what would be "boot camp" in the Army, I don't know what the Navy calls it) didn't know how to swim. He said they weren't expected to, they just had to know how to float with a life-vest on. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 08/11/2007 : 00:05:00 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
A guy I used to work with served in the U.S. Navy aboard an aircraft carrier. He estimated that about 40% of the guys in his initial training (what would be "boot camp" in the Army, I don't know what the Navy calls it) didn't know how to swim. He said they weren't expected to, they just had to know how to float with a life-vest on.
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The Navy calls it boot camp, too, at least informally. The recruits themselves are called "boots." I'd guess that your aquaintance was right. As a submarine reservist, however, we were required to do a bit of pool swimming, but nothing spectacular. (Good thing, as I was never a very strong swimmer.)
Or, rather, there was one spectacular part, when we were required to jump off a fifty-foot platform into a pool. I was just 17 then. I recall stepping off into space. Then, somehow thinking nothing was happening, I looked down to find out what was "wrong" -- just in time to get hit in the face by the water.
Regular Navy submariners had to do an ascent for a great distance in a water-filled tower, from an airlock to the surface. They had no such facility for use in the San Francisco area where I took Submarine Preparatory School, a two-week combined boot camp (with Navy-hating Marines as DI's) and submarine cram school at Hunter's Point.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 08/11/2007 03:39:40 |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 08/11/2007 : 01:40:00 [Permalink]
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Back in the day, knowing how to swim was not necessary. I've known a couple of Navy divers who didn't. I have also witnessed the "X" signature for illiterate sailors. When I was at the sub base at Groton CT, once in a while I'd be 'volunteered' to act as safety personnel during tower training, and did the ride myself a couple of times as a demonstration. There's really not much to it.
As 'mooner said, you go into an airlock which is pressurized to equal the pressure of the water. From there, you go out into the tank and kick off from the bottom, headed up. The important thing is to exhale strongly as you ascend, lest you wind up with embolisms and/or other evils due to the rapidly expanding air in your lungs. It all sounds pretty hairy, and I suspect that it is to a recruit, but I've yet to hear of a serious injury in the tower and, once they'd done it and knew for sure how, a lot of the kids wanted to go again.
Reading the article, I can see where Hamas is coming from, but damn!, those people are a mess! It's what happens when idiots do diplomacy for half a century or so.
'Mooner, I seem to recall that you said something about being aboard the USS Rock. That name rings a bell, but I'm not sure if she was in ever Groton. There were a lot of the old conventional boats in and out of there. I worked on a lot of them, but never went to sea in one.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 08/11/2007 : 03:01:05 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by filthy
'Mooner, I seem to recall that you said something about being aboard the USS Rock. That name rings a bell, but I'm not sure if she was in ever Groton. There were a lot of the old conventional boats in and out of there. I worked on a lot of them, but never went to sea in one.
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I actually wanted to try the tower ascent, but never had the chance. I think COMSUBPAC had another such tower at Pearl. After a year or so in the sub reserves, I went into the surface reserves, mainly because I was doing badly in college by then, and didn't want the extra study required for sub stuff to interfere.
I only spent two weeks of one summer (in 1964, I think) aboard the Rock, and several days of that were spent in a delirium with the flu. My later active duty was two years on the reefer, Aludra, (AF-55). I recall the Rock was involved in some war games off the Channel Islands. I can still vividly recall the sound of the screw of a dummy torpedo which was fired at us, as it passed overhead from port to starboard, and the sharp bangs (and paint flakes falling) from dummy depth charges, essentially percusssion grenades, hitting our outer hull.
Don't know anything about the Rock from tales told to me, because the crew didn't talk to me. As a just a doofus, pimply teenager, and a submarine-unqualified Reservist, I was considered triple trouble, a despised non-entity aboard her. Not pleasant for me, but I could do the time standing on my head, as it was only two weeks.
But Wiki will talk to me: Radar picket submarine (SSR-274), 19531959
In early 1951 Rock was towed from New London to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, where she was converted to a radar picket submarine by bisecting her at the forward bulkhead of the control room and inserting a 30-foot section between the control room and the forward battery to house the new CIC and the majority of her new electronic equipment. Reclassified SSR-274 on 18 July 1952, Rock recommissioned at Philadelphia 12 October 1953.
After a short period of training with SubRon 6 off the Virginia Capes, she proceeded to San Diego to join SubRon 5. On 23 July 1954, she departed San Diego for the western Pacific area and a 6-month tour on the Taiwan Strait Patrol. She subsequently alternated deployments to WestPac with operations off the Pacific coast. She made 6-month deployments to WestPac in 1956 and during the winter of 195859.
[edit] Auxiliary general submarine (AGSS-274), 19591969
On 31 December 1959 there no longer existed an operational requirement for a radar picket submarine in the Fleet, and on that date the Air Control Center was decommissioned and Rock was redesignated "auxiliary general submarine" AGSS-274. Following operations off the Pacific coast and another overhaul, Rock again deployed to WestPac in November 1961. She made subsequent 6-month deployments to WestPac in 1963, 1965, 196667, and 1968.
Operating in the eastern Pacific during the first half of 1969, Rock departed San Diego 11 July and conducted operations in support of fleet training in the Hawaiian operating areas until steaming 16 August for the Pacific coast. Less than a month later, on 13 September 1969, Rock decommissioned at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. Struck from the Navy List on the same day, she was designated for use as a target to destruction.
Rock earned four battle stars for World War II service. |
Looks like she was mainly in the Pacific, during and after WWII.
[Yes, folks, we old farts do like our memories, as we have more past than future. Just you wait: You'll get this way, too.]
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 08/11/2007 03:24:46 |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 08/11/2007 : 04:17:17 [Permalink]
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| [Yes, folks, we old farts do like our memories, as we have more past than future. Just you wait: You'll get this way, too.] |
Indeed: "As you are, we once were; as we are, you shall soon enough be."
Entirely a West Coast boat, then. I might have run across her sometime around '62-'63, maybe '64 -- I was getting bounced around so much in those years, I was afraid to unpack my seabag. I was briefly in Dago prior to the first of a couple of TAD assignments to the Harbor Clearance Unit in Subic. She might have hauled in there as well.
The best duty I ever had was '66-'67, aboard the USS Holland, a Submarine Tender in Rota Spain. We worked almost entirely on Nukes, and I'll be damned if I didn't manage to catch some TAD orders then!
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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Boron10
Religion Moderator
USA
1266 Posts |
Posted - 08/13/2007 : 11:35:40 [Permalink]
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US Navy Basic Training, informally known as Boot Camp, requires all Sailors to learn to swim. If you get to Boot Camp without that ability, you will stay there a little bit longer while US Navy Divers, EOD, and/or SEALs teach you. I hear that particular bit of education is not pleasant.
Looking at the wiki article linked above, it appears that some things have changed a bit in the last ten years, but I am sure the swim qualification requirement hasn't changed significantly.
There are different levels of swim qualifications. At a minimum, everybody must qualify at least Third Class Swimmer to show a rudimentary ability to leave a sinking ship without dying immediately. (I qualified up to Second Class Swimmer: the only reason I couldn't get my First Class Swim Qual was some random imperfection in my "breathe without getting burning oil on your face" technique. I was a little irritated, but hey: what can you do about it?)
The Submarine Dive Tower in Pearl Harbor, HI has been out of commission since 1983. Now, Navy Submariners learn how to escape from a chamber in the side of a large swimming pool in Groton, CT; however, there has been a project in the works these past few years to build a new tower out in Groton, and to renovate the tower in Pearl Harbor.
Some pretty good overviews of Submarine Escape Systems can be found here and here. |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 08/13/2007 : 14:54:13 [Permalink]
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Thanks for the neat links and modern era stuff, Boron. I guess I must have just qualified as a Third Class swimmer, just able to become a minor hazard to navigation, and to swim a short distance while spewing burning oil from my lungs.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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Hamas founds a shipless, boatless Navy
