While USS North Carolina (SSN 777) got their turn in the barrel and drew the ever popular "
leave on deployment during the week before Christmas" straw, two other boats arrived home in time for the holidays. USS Missouri (SSN 780) returned to Groton from
her first deployment - what appears to be a northern run with standard concomitant port calls - on Friday while USS Hampton (SSN 767) earlier
returned to San Diego, where their Chop
won the internet for the day:
While I never did a Christmas return from deployment, I did return right before the 4th of July
once, and I had a 12/23 return from a "that's why you always bring all your gear on board even for weekly ops"
adventure on
Topeka in 1991 after
Chicago turned her diesel into a seawater pump and we had to pick up her Nanoose Mk 50 OpEval.
What kind of world are these Submariners returning to? Well, it's one where an XO and CMC of a skimmer
can be fired for "collective discipline" or "hazing", depending on your point of view, for publicly shaming an entire group of female Sailors when some of them didn't understand that you shouldn't crap in a non-working shitter. It's also a world where an Aussie boat with female Submariners assigned had a
groping and unwanted sexual advances issue (full link requires subscription) that either didn't happen in the way you expected, or exactly the way that you expected. (
Here's an article with better news about the RAN Submarine Force; found it while looking for a non-firewalled mention of the story above, a task at which I was unsuccessful.)
What's your favorite holiday return from deployment story?
Read the complete post at http://bubbleheads.blogspot.com/2013/12/home-for-christmas.html
Posted
Dec 21 2013, 09:52 AM
by
The Stupid Shall Be Punished