The annual 2019 USS Angler (SS 240) reunion was held in St. Marys, Georgia, on the weekend of September 20th through 23rd. St. Marys is a small coastal Georgia town, just north of Jacksonville, Florida, with a population of about 18,000. Its territory is immediately bordered by the 17,000-acre Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base.
The base is home port to several Ohio-class nuclear submarines, and is also the site of the Trident Training Facility.
The Angler group, some eighty strong submarine veterans and their spouses, were treated to visits not just to the subase, but also to tours of the nuclear fleet ballistic missile submarine USS West Virginia (SSBN 736), the St. Marys Submarine Museum, and the Trident Training Facility.
The highlight of Saturday September 20th, was the tour of the boomer West Virginia (SSBNs are affectionately called “boomers”). The boat, two football-fields long and four decks high, would have dwarfed the WWII-vintage Angler. Equipped with twenty-four Trident II ballistic missiles, the West Virginia is representative of the Navy’s leg of the three-legged stool that makes up the nation’s nuclear deterrent force. (The other legs being land-based ballistic missiles, and strategic bombers.)
Of course, the Angler crew was not allowed to see a good deal of what was aboard the West Virginia, but what was seen was, nonetheless, very impressive. The boat’s control room was crammed with video displays, switches, and indicator lights. It looked more like the cockpit of a super-sized airliner than the boat depth-control and navigation center we were used to aboard Angler. Also included in the tour were the crew and officer living spaces, and visits to the missile compartment, the missile control center, and the onboard atmospheric control center. One thing has not changed in the forty-seven years that separate the commissioning of Angler and West Virginia, every bit of space aboard is still crammed with machinery, pipes, cables, valves, switches, and indicator and control panels!
While the mechanical and electrical features of the West Virginia were most impressive, even more impressive still was the caliber of her crew. These young men and women were, besides being polite and respectful, articulate and knowledgeable. It speaks well for the level of training they receive, and the quality of today’s submarine force.
Sunday was a day set aside for worship and sightseeing. Some of the group chose to visit the St. Marys Submarine Museum, located downtown, right on the waterfront, facing the St. Marys River. The museum is devoted to preserving the history of the submarine force. On display are photos, plaques, models, submarine paraphernalia, WWII battle flags, and much more. There is even a working periscope.
On Monday, the Angler crew visited the Trident Training Center. We were given a hands-on tour of the damage control training center and observed the “wet room” in action. In the damage control center, submariners learn to repair leaks aboard ship, first learning the techniques in quiet of the workshop, then applying the skills learned under actual conditions encountered aboard ship: with the water shooting out of the broken pipe or fitting under pressure, just as it would at depth. The group then visited the diesel workshop (yes, the boomers do have a diesel aboard, and will even snorkel under diesel power on occasion). Once again, the petty officers that acted as tour guides were articulate and knowledgeable. After the tour, a memorial service was held in the training center auditorium, commemorating our Angler shipmates on eternal patrol.
A short walk from the training center was the base mess hall, where the CO of the base treated the Angler group to an excellent lunch, complete with a special cake baked just for the occasion, supplied by retired Senior Chief Keith Post, the Executive Director of the St. Marys Submarine Museum.
That evening, the reunion officially came to a close with a banquet held in the hospitality room at the Cumberland Inn and Suites in St. Marys. The guest speaker was Capt. Louis Springer, CO of the USS Georgia (SSGN 729), which is also home-ported in Kings Bay. He explained the mission of his boat, and how it differs from that of the West Virginia. The Georgia is also an Ohio-class boat, but berthing spaces have been added to accommodate a SEAL team, two of its missile tubes have been converted to lockout trunks for egress and ingress of SEALs and their equipment, and the remaining tubes have been converted to fire a battery of Tomahawk missiles (author’s note: an SSGN is used for infiltrating a SEAL team into Iran in my book Operation Exodus).
The evening ended with a special tribute to 95-year-old WWII veteran Bob German, an Angler plankowner, and veteran of four war patrols. Bob was unanimously elected “Honorary Chief of the Boat,” by all present.
-Gene