First Hand Report from the San Francisco

An E-mail that was purported to be from a Chief Petty Officer on the USS San Francisco has been circulating around the submarine community the last couple of days, but I wasn't sure about its' authenticity, so I didn't link to it. However, it's now up at military.com, so I figure they've vetted it enough to give it a link. (Hey, I don't have too much in the way of standards, but when someone's name is on the thing, I'll try to err on the side of caution.) Here's an excerpt:

As it was, it happened while chow was going on and most people were either sitting and eating or on watch. I don't remember much of the collision. People describe it as like in the movie, "The Matrix," where everything slowed down and levitated and then went flying forward faster that the brain can process. My mind has blanked it out exactly what happened. Adrenaline kicked in and I have no real memory of how I got down to middle level or what I did immediately following. I helped carry several shipmates to the crew mess deck (adrenaline is a wonderful thing - my shoulder was wrecked and I had no idea until about 4 hours later). I sat with several of my junior guys that had bad head wounds and talked with them to keep them conscious until doc could see them. It seemed like an eternity but I'm sure [it] wasn't that long.

The teamwork and immediate response to a casualty that are the hallmarks of the submarine force were definitely in evidence aboard the good ship San Francisco.

Staying at PD...

Update: I just realized that this post has pushed all my non-San Francisco postings off the front page. There's more in the archives, including a couple of my "critiques" of the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner's science coverage here and here.