The Good Kind Of VIP Tour
From Navy News:
Retired U.S. Army colonel, Vietnam War veteran and Medal of Honor recipient, Jack Howard Jacobs, and a group of distinguished guests who are in Hawaii for the National Medal of Honor Convention, visited the Virginia-class submarine USS North Carolina (SSN 777) for a tour Oct. 5 at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.Who is the coolest person you've ever toured around the boat?
"It's was an absolute honor to be able to show a true American hero around the boat, and talk to him about what the submarine force does and how we contribute to our country's missions." said Cmdr. Richard G. Rinehart, USS North Carolina commanding officer. "The crew came together. They understood the importance of this opportunity to show this group around, and they enjoyed the chance to show them a little about the submarine force and what we do."
During the tour, the crew of North Carolina explained the difference between Virginia-class submarines and other submarines, submerging and surfacing systems, and basic day-to-day operations on board.
"Coming aboard a ship with the capability of the North Carolina is awe inspiring to me," said Jacobs. "It's hard to believe that only 150 Sailors can control this kind of firepower, and the projection of power around the globe. We are all very lucky to have the North Carolina on our side."
posted by Bubblehead at 1:07 PM
47 Comments:
My favorite LBFM.
10/07/2012 1:17 PM
Dr. Robert Ballard - USS Minneapolis Saint Paul (SSN 708) for an underway ride just after he located the Titanic wreck site. He showed us all pictures of the wreck site before they were released to the general public.
10/07/2012 1:30 PM
Did a lot of VIP tours - the most memorable was the 3 hours I spent with Bob Woodward on the 733 while he was writing 'The Commanders.' Very courteous, personable and engaging.
10/07/2012 1:41 PM
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10/07/2012 1:44 PM
Got to tour around a former Soviet Navy boomer sailor (Delta class) around an Ohio class boat. He pointed out the many differences in his thick Russian accent. "In Soviet Navy..."
10/07/2012 1:45 PM
A group of West Point cadets. They never ran out of questions during the tour and politely answered my inquiries about West Point.
10/07/2012 3:42 PM
CDR George Street, submariner and Medal of Honor winner visited our crew and talked to them just before the commissioning ceremony of the USS Seawolf (SSN 21). He was a very impressive, humble, and approachable guy!
His MOH citation is here:
http://www.ussnautilus.org/medalofhonor/street.shtml
10/07/2012 3:58 PM
Joe Lieberman...
10/07/2012 4:47 PM
Hiram Rickover... I was in mess decks when he came by and we took a nasty roll, I was able to keep him from falling....
As Ship's Corpsman, I didn't want him injured on my ship ... all he did was look a me with a "why did you touch me" look.
Never will forget that.
10/07/2012 5:38 PM
While it's great to show off the boat, Though...
Typically, the PAO clueless types always schedule the "VIP" in port tours, or worst, UW ops, at the most inconvenient times.... watch turn over, lunch, dinner, 2000, weekends....etc
Glad to see that NCA showed a MOH awardee a great tour!.... for such a shitty boat :)
10/07/2012 6:01 PM
Numerous LBFM's, two hookers from Townsville Australia, various strippers from other ports of call.
On a much lesser level, various senators, congressmen, governors, senior officers, politicians, girl scouts, boy scouts, everyday citizens and Tom Clancy among others.
Jim C.
Retired ANAV
10/07/2012 6:05 PM
Mom, Dad, siblings, and an aunt and uncle.
10/07/2012 7:28 PM
Tommy Lee, USS OLYMPIA 2003. Don't judge---the question was who is the coolest, not the best citizen or role model. Cool is a matter of opinion. He was gracious and posed for pictures and signed guitars, pictures, hats and a boob (don't ask) in Crew's Mess until there was no more line. He even ate some autodog and answered questions about his time with Pamela Anderson. I'd rather tour him and his entourage anytime rather than some obscure Congressman, the actress of the moment, or DoD high ranking bureaucrat.
10/07/2012 7:41 PM
Inport Duty Officer on DALLAS in NLON one weekend in the dead of winter when I got a call from the topside watch saying that an army general was there to see the boat. With a "WTF now" shaking of the head I went on up and sure enough: there was a retired Major General in civvies with his grown, acdu Air Force son to see the boat. Completely unscheduled by squadron or anybody else, but the man had a valid ID card and with barely a second thought that was good enough for me. Was Weps at the time and fine with giving him an unclas tour up forward.
No calls, etc. from squadron. Only got an "oh by the way" call from the duty officer at squadron later in the day, saying that he knew I had the duty (?) and had been surprised by the MG's request himself, and so had sent him on down.
The MG was a solid guy, and later sent a nice note on his stationery. A weird moment at the time, but just goes to show you just never know what's going to show up in your day.
10/07/2012 8:10 PM
Eric Dickerson and Ken Hill. A YN on Hawkbill went to high school with Dickerson. That ranked as cool to have a couple of guys playing at the Pro Bowl on the boat...
10/07/2012 8:13 PM
In Halifax, Nova Scotia, Spider Robinson, a science fiction author for all you who don't know him. As a bonus, he mentioned the tour in the forward in two of his books. That I know of.
And several fine young outstanding citizens of Auckland, New Zealand, of the female variety.
10/07/2012 9:02 PM
The coolest person to ever tour around my boat was myself, every watch.
10/07/2012 11:27 PM
We had the typical tiger cruises - got my dad, my father-in-law, my mom, and my brother on board over the years. History Channel came on board in the summer of 2002 to film an episode of Silent Service: 'Deterrence From The Deep'. But the most memorable was a dental officer in the Med. He fixed our skipper's teeth on deployment, so we took him out for a few days after upkeep. I was OOD for a gagger drill set aft. The nukes shut the stops and we had to go to PD on the EPM. Sea state was rough, and we got sucked up. DOOW U/I and COW U/I ingested a lot, and we sank out.
We kept sinking out. Secured snorkeling.
We sunk out some more. I asked permission to energize depth control. Skipper said no. Dental officer is in Control watching this happen. Passing 300 feet.
Helmsman reports the obvious: "We're going down fast, sir!" I ask permission to energize depth control again. Skipper grants permission at 400 feet, and tells the ENG to secure the drill. Dental officer is watching his life flash before his eyes. He was holding tight to the FTOW's chair, and shaking hard. FTOW (former Army Ranger) is grinning.
COW U/I blows Depth Control with everything he has. TLI stuck, tank goes emoty, and air is roaring into AMR. The boat pulls out near 700 feet, then slowly heads up.
We still didn't have the mains, so we couldn't catch it. Ended up severely broached and rolling on the surface again.
Dental officer didn't ever want to ride a submarine again.
10/08/2012 4:55 AM
Admiral Frank Kelso when he was CNO. Other than that, don't remember. Too much time underway to get tours.
10/08/2012 7:13 AM
Hiram Rickover? Was that Hyman's younger or older brother?
10/08/2012 8:09 AM
SCICEX 99 on Hawkbill we had some serious brass on board: SECDEF, SECNAV, CNO, a couple of senators and other bigwigs that flew from Point Barrow to meet us up on the ice pack for a frozen pony show. They were all great to meet but Adm Konetzni, Big Al the Sailors Pal, ran a lot of interference for us and handled much of the tours and then stayed up with those of us on mids and kept us rolling the whole watch. Definitely one of the few that a whole crew appreciates having on board.
10/08/2012 3:54 PM
Ann Curry from Today Show. Filming a story on women in subs. Film crew kept wanting to take double shots on everything topside during BSP. COBs radio turned up, "COB, CAPTAIN, What the hell are we waiting on?" They didn't two shots after that.
10/08/2012 8:27 PM
Coolest / Most Beautiful: had just finished the tour and thought I'd given a very, very lovely young lady (wearing a dress) sufficient time to get up the fwd escape trunk before I headed up behind her. Honestly no evil intent on my part, but I did indeed miscalculate.
God Bless "Surface Ventilate" and God Bless America.
10/08/2012 8:28 PM
A Boomer widow from Delmars down in Diesel on a 594....Beats a VIP tour any time ...Not a bad memory..
10/09/2012 3:45 AM
Andy Rooney from 60 minutes, Lynda Robb Johnson, Tom Clancy, VP Cheney, but the best was my kids on pizza night!
10/09/2012 8:13 AM
He pointed out the many differences in his thick Russian accent. "In Soviet Navy..."
VIPs ride you?
10/09/2012 8:54 AM
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10/09/2012 3:27 PM
Hosted both Admiral Fluckey and Captain Street when we dedicated buildings with their names at Submarine School NLON.
10/09/2012 9:30 PM
We hosted Brig. General Paul Tibbets for a dabob trials run on the Floriduh in the late 90's. What an outstanding American to meet and talk to. All others paled to that.
hagar
10/10/2012 1:47 AM
The 1993 Mrs. America contestants and the clowns that did the fact finding for the making of "Crimson Tide" toured USS Portsmouth. I tell this story and my friends blame me for the inaccuracies of the movie.
10/10/2012 12:17 PM
We were giving a rather high intelligence officer a ride. We was in the Med. He wasn't in the Navy.
This guy gave us a all hands lecture about world events. I will never forget his big message he gave to us all.
He said, "never believe anything you see in the newspapers or in the news on TV".
10/10/2012 3:05 PM
"He said, "never believe anything you see in the newspapers or in the news on TV"."
Or what you read in internet blogs!
10/11/2012 6:03 AM
Things are getting a little ugly down south!
http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-856201
10/11/2012 11:29 AM
Blogs were 25 years in the future and cell phones were in the infancy in 1979.
I was laughing harder than Biden last night, when the Navy said it was a vacuum cleaner ghost.
10/12/2012 7:27 AM
Proverbs 29:9
"If a wise man has an argument with a fool, the fool only rages and laughs, and there is no quiet."
10/12/2012 12:44 PM
Being a nuke never met any of the VIP's President of Cyprus, but I was in town getting drunk. Senator from somewhere. Had an admiral on board once and the NAV was being a dick and the admiral yelled at him, so that was cool.
Best was when I had my dad on board. He worked as an electrical engineer in the defense electronics industry and knew about a lot of the sparky stuff up forward. Kept saying 'oh this is the AN/PDR whatever, it was made by so and so company, you remember Joe Shmoe he worked there and you met hime when you were 12. All I could think was give this man a set of dolphins
10/12/2012 7:58 PM
[i][b]Things are getting a little ugly down south!
http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-856201[/i][/b]
My heart goes out to the families who lost their loved ones. However, the article is poorly written, scattered, and makes no connection between his allegations of poor leadership and the suicides of these Servicemembers.
The Navy offers free mental health services for members who are having tough times mentally or emotionally, and there's not a thing any CO can do about someone who wants to use them. I'm not sure what the author expects from the Navy when the two servicemembers decided to kill themselves instead of use the services the Navy offers.
Then the author goes on a tangent about how a CO lacked integrity with regards to handling weapons security. While this is certainly an instance of poor leadership, I fail to see how it has any connection to causing an MMC and his 23 year old friend to commit suicide.
10/13/2012 11:22 AM
Gave tour to Captain Charlie Rush, who was awarded a Navy Cross nearly 60 years after saving USS BILLFISH during an attack in Makassar Strait. He was a very humble man and it was an honor to have him and his wife onboard. His story makes one wonder how many other untold stories there are out there.
10/13/2012 1:25 PM
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/13/14421340-navy-cruiser-submarine-collide-off-east-coast-no-injuries-reported?lite
10/13/2012 6:29 PM
Monty pd trip collision with a skimmer, ever heard of baffle clears and active sonar?
10/13/2012 8:25 PM
Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw toured USS MIAMI when he was filming pieces of the movie "Amistad" in Mystic, CT. That was cool.
10/14/2012 10:35 AM
Captain Ed Beach. Woodrow Wilson was preparing for deactivation during the summer of 1993. We took a bunch of WWII vets on tiger cruises. USS Tirante was having their reunion in Charleston and we took them out for a two day jaunt off the coast. Captain Street did not take the cruise but he did come topside when we returned. I was standing 4 section ERS and did not sleep the entire two days because the stories were just too good to miss. Someone,somwhere, has a picture of CAPT Beech sitting in the EOOW chair.
10/16/2012 11:03 AM
Way back in December of 1963 we (Sirago SS485)were tied up in Monaco for an extended stay and were fortunate enough to have Princess Grace and her two children tour our boat one afternoon. She was still as beautiful as ever.
Big discussion that night was did she speak English with a French accent or not???
10/17/2012 2:03 PM
"Way back in December of 1963 we (Sirago SS485)were tied up in Monaco for an extended stay and were fortunate enough to have Princess Grace and her two children tour our boat one afternoon. She was still as beautiful as ever.
Big discussion that night was did she speak English with a French accent or not???
Yes, indeed!
10/18/2012 2:32 PM
Golfer Michelle Wie and her parents, 2004, USS HONOLULU.
10/23/2012 6:52 PM
Golfer Michelle Wie and her parents in 2004 on the HONOLULU
10/23/2012 6:54 PM
After a sicex we pulled into Bergen Norway and the CNO of Norway Rode In on the way to port and I had my Dolphins pined on.
Not really a tour but definitely a vip.
5/04/2013 9:14 PM
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