I Guess People Do Impersonate Submariners
Last month, I complained that you never hear about people impersonating submariners. Some of the commenters thought that this might be because submariners exude quiet competence, because there are no individual heroes on submarines, or because no one wants to pretend to be someone who wears a "poopy suit". It turns out that we might have all been wrong -- a fellow blogger directed me to a transcript of a caller to the Rush Limbaugh radio show yesterday that has "poser" written all over it.
It's hard to tell sometimes what the caller ("David" from El Paso) is trying to pretend to be, but he says at least twice that he's a "20 year submariner". (The first time he says this, the transcript says he is a "20 years Marines", but listening to the audio, he really said "submarines".) He says he was in submarine "Black Ops", which is a term that real submariners don't use to describe what we do. Here's another tidbit that didn't sound right:
"I am not going to put my men at risk to drag somebody back if I don't have room back in my boat, submarine. I'm not bringing them back. He's staying on the battlefield."
No submarine since the USS Barb has sent their crew ashore to do anything tactical -- we (sometimes) carry SEALs for that. Later on, he talks about "soldier Marines", which to me indicates that he probably wasn't even ever in the military -- sure, he was probably nervous, being on the radio and all, but who makes that mistake?
Most interestingly, the blogger who pointed this story out to me thought the caller sounded like the guy who called in on June 2nd claiming to be in an Air Force officer in Iraq -- it turned out there wasn't anyone by his name in the country, nor did the unit he claimed to be part of even exist. I don't have access to the audio archives; if anyone does, and listens to both calls, let me know if you think they're the same guy...
posted by Bubblehead at 12:23 AM
5 Comments:
Of course you don't know anything about it; that's why its a "black op." He's probably also inserting intentional errors to cover his identity. For that matter, if you did know anything about this sort of black op, wouldn't you also support the denial by poking holes in his story?
Personally, all I know is that I don't know anything about black ops. Take from that what you will.
And for my friends out their, "the penguin is in the nest."
RM1/SS
6/30/2006 8:55 AM
I love fakers. It usually about two seconds for real deals to see right through them. I didn't here Rush that day but I bet he saw through him too. He's usually pretty good about seeing through people like that.
6/30/2006 3:06 PM
It could be worse, Bubblehead, even wannabes won't go SWO.
6/30/2006 4:45 PM
Don't worry. Rush doesn't have the audience he once had.
6/30/2006 8:39 PM
I've known surface nukes who claimed they were subs.
I think it is because the carriers glorify the flyboys while anyone in engineering is looked on like the Morlocks. Or maybe because we spent 2 years of nuke school listening to submariners talk about how they are the elite, while the skimmers only talked about port visits. I don't know.
7/02/2006 2:24 PM
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