My First Subvets Meeting as a Retiree
Today, I opened my E-mail and found that I had been given an Editor's Choice award from The Sub Report, which is really appreciated. (I figured out how to put the icon up over on the right.) Next, I went to my first meeting of the Boise Base of United States Submarine Veterans, Inc. Those are a great bunch of guys -- some are WWII submarine veterans, who always have great stories to tell. I'm looking forward to doing more stuff with them; one of the things we decided on was having a couple meetings a year where we watch a submarine movie and sit around critiquing it. This got me thinking about my favorite submarine movies; here's what I came up with as I was driving home (I normally go for realism over other considerations):
1) Das Boot: The gold standard against which all other submarine movies are measured.
2) The Enemy Below: Probably the most realistic portrayal of WWII ASW
3) Operation Pacific: Collects most of the great submarine hero stories of WWII and makes it seem like they happened on one boat; John Wayne is the Captain.
4) Down Periscope: OK, so it's not realistic, but there are enough funny moments in there that only a submariner would understand that make it worthwhile (e.g. when the salty old Chief yells "DBF!" [Diesel Boats Forever!"] when the old diesel boat makes a move against a new nuclear boat).
5) Run Silent, Run Deep: The story really doesn't follow the plot of the book by Ned Beach, but it has Gable and Lancaster in top form...
posted by Bubblehead at 4:49 PM
6 Comments:
Your picks are of course nearly excellent, but would someone who knows please clue in this old salt on why "the Hunt for Red October" never makes the cut with recent retirees. Afterall, the Navy spared no ends to make it a recruiting blockbuster. From the results it looks to have succeeded in that regard, made Clancey rich and who knows what it did for the admirals....
3/28/2005 7:14 PM
Congrats! on the Editor's Choice award, I agree I come here to get some good scuttlebutt.
The movie I vote for is Crimson Tide with Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman. I believe the first gold crew CO Captain Mal Wright '84-'86 was a technical advisor on the film featuring the USS Alabama. Of course this 731 plankowner could be a little bias.
3/28/2005 8:34 PM
As far as Crimson Tide goes, I thought it was OK, and it would probably be on my top ten list. It was interesting as far as the nuclear failsafe story went (the CO was right to want to launch) but I thought it made the crew seem way more stereotypically "military" than most sub movies (and than reality). It was funny seeing them give gun to junior officers, though; in real life, that normally results in someone getting hurt. Also, the CO's dog was a little over the top. As far as Hunt for Red October, I think most recent submariners mostly don't like the way that it varied so much from Clancy's original story. Although the book was 90% wrong as far as technical details went, that still made it 9% more right than anything else out there; plus, the technical inaccuracies made submariners out to be way cooler than otherwise. Plus, Alec Baldwin as Jack Ryan?
3/28/2005 10:22 PM
Yes, The CO's dog was over the top. I'm thinking "Field Day" who cleans the poop deck. Did the dog get a TLD? I could see the crew giving the dog TLD as a nickname, Tiny Little D***. He did lift his leg when he let go #1 in the missle compartment.
3/28/2005 10:46 PM
Crimson Tide always gets a downcheck from me - not only for the Rambo-esque JOs, but, frankly, how likely is it that two armed groups on a boat are going to manage to avoid each other constantly except when they go to Control? Do they think they are in an office building, or a 42 foot diameter steel tube? Please.
3/29/2005 12:10 PM
I think many submariners got tired of Clancy being trotted out every time someone needed a submarine expert. That, and a general disgust with Baldwin, has caused Red October to fall out of favor with a lot of bubbleheads.
3/29/2005 9:12 PM
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