I came up out of N3 sleep to Wide The Heck Awake without passing through any intervening stages, like this:
 |
| "Captain to the bridge. Ship's cat's about to blow chunks." |
This did nothing for the overall quality of my night's sleep.
Speaking of subs, it was on this day in 1944 that the U.S. Navy captured the U-505; the first time since the War of 1812 that the USN had captured an enemy vessel at sea. The sub is currently in the Museum of Science and Industry in Mordor-on-Lake-Michigan if you'd like to tour it.
Yep. cat borking can definitely take one from snooze to moving in micro seconds.
ReplyDeleteThe naval officer who came up with the idea of capturing the U-505, Daniel V. Gallery, was one of the Navy's great characters, and his books are well thought of by Navy people. They're well worth reading, all of them.
ReplyDeleteThat WILL wake you up in a hurry, as will the claws in the middle of the back at 2am when kitty decides to administer an early morning "massage."
ReplyDeleteI need to creep into Mordor to see the U-505. The -505 is a Type IX: one of the larger U-boat types. The more numerous Type VII was even smaller, IIRC. Do you recommend going over the stair through Shelob's old tunnel, or through the Black Gate?
I can strongly recommend the USS KIDD (DD-661) ship museum in Baton Rouge. KIDD is one of the Fletcher class of destroyers from WWII: the same class my father served on in the Pacific part of the war (USS BELL - DD-587. Seeing what would have been my father's workspace was quite an experience.
The exhibit is awesome. Highly recommended and worth the trip for anyone interested in the Battle for the Atlantic.
ReplyDeleteIf only it wasn't in Chi-Town...
+1 on the RADM Dan books. I read them as a kid which partially explains the primrose path I went down.
ReplyDeleteThe young officer who actually led the Boarding Party was LTjg Albert David. Among the honors accorded him was the naming of a combatant ship.
Bringing U-505 into Bermuda posed a real security risk; but Adm Dan passed the word that it was important that nobody talk or write about it - and nobody did. Dunno if today's folk could resist the presssure given the instant access available today
Next to the pillow would be horrible. It was bad enough in the haze of near-sleep to hear the cat yakking in some remote corner of the house, knowing that you'd forget by morning and invariably step barefooted into a slimy cold hairball.
ReplyDeleteI know of the "breaching awake" deal, because my ex used to wake me by grabbing the nether regions and yanking like the starter handle on a Stihl Chainsaw.
Turns out I make a similar noise, in those circumstances.
WV: userpaci for. What do you userpaci for?
DAMN, OG!!! Do you mean you sounded like the chain-saw, or the sub?( wooOOP! wooOOP! ) I know I'D be blowin' ballast...jest sayin'....
ReplyDeleteDIVE! DIVE! DIVE!
ReplyDeleteOne of the downsides of co-habitation with cats.
ReplyDeleteAdd not getting your year old cat spayed before she goes into heat the first time.
I just thought she was goofy before.
Og, was that her way of showing affection or was she just being mean about waking you up?
ReplyDelete"Ex wife"
ReplyDeleteToured the U505 many years ago. Even got (had) a little plastic "do it yourself" model of it made.
ReplyDeleteNeat. A bit...tight, so to speak. They had little tape players with headphones for "tour guides" they gave you.
Once Chi-Town gets a little bit free-er, maybe I'll take my son to see it.
I'll start holding my breath right about....Meow.
Secret Code: ion kepaeli
Wasn't he the villain in one of the Bond movies?
I love the 505. I first toured it as a kid and then saw it a couple years ago in it's new location. They essentially moved it and then built a new museum wing around it. Great exhibit.
ReplyDeleteI have Admiral Gallery's books on his service and especially the one on the 505. Great reads.
Rob (Trebor)
It's a neat display... I've been twice. Once before they built the big addition to keep it inside and once afterwards.
ReplyDeleteThat thing is CRAMPED inside. Hard to imagine living in one of those. The USS Clamagore (SS-343) at Patriot's Point in Charleston, SC is spacious by comparison.
Took the U505 tour last year. Best part of the visit.
ReplyDeleteI always thought it was more of a "hk-hk-hk-hk-hkaglaglaglagl", followed by the patented Slink Of Shame And Anger Because Somehow This Is Your Fault(tm).
ReplyDeleteI saw the U505 as a kid, it would be interesting tos ee it again if I happen to find myself in that area again. Thanks for the reminder of it.
ReplyDeleteIn a past life, waking instantly in the night, looking around to see what the dog was low growling at, then being able to drop almost instalty back to sleep wasnt an issue. I miss the ability to go back to sleep so easliy. The waking part wasn't that hard, sleeping out under the stars out in the hills, especially in the rockies where the bears live.
Mal
WV, not sure I can repeat it on a family friendly blog.
The Twentieth Edition of the Bluejacket's Manual says that it's "the only time the order "Boarder's Away!" has been passed in this century."
ReplyDeleteOh yeah. Been there, done that.
ReplyDeleteAnother +1 on the Admiral's books. In one of his books (Stand By-y-y to Start Engines?) is a story about the Blue Angles flight team. Seems a flight instructor at their base busted one of their mechanics for being out of uniform (or some such). When this instructor next took his class up, the Blue angels took their place. They suited up in the students gear and walked out on the ramp with helmets on and sun visors down and saddled up (I don't remember what they were flying).
ReplyDeleteYears ago, I had a friend who was retired from Office of Naval Intelligence. He had heard the tower tapes of this event. He said that by the end of the tape, the instructor's voice is up about 2 octaves, yelling "just get the F@#@ away from me!"
U505 capture on youtube here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIgyF1R1D88
Here's something to ponder:
ReplyDeleteWhen a house cat starts making the "I'm about to barf" sound, a quick solution is to grab that cat and place them on a tile floor. All of a sudden, said cat doesn't have to puke anymore. It's almost as if they won't bother if it won't make enough of a mess.
Domestic cats seem to throw up almost at the drop of a hat - one primary cause being a sudden change in diet. That's why the general practice is to feed them the same stuff every day.
Consider a cat that lives most of its life outside. You never ever ever see one of them barfing up a hairball in spite of the fact that they eat all sorts of things in the wild. My theory is that there's no carpet outside on which to appreciate having thrown up a prize hairball.
Cats won't practice their art without a proper canvas, after all.
I'd love to see U-505.
ReplyDeleteBut it's in Mordor-on-Lake Michigan.
So I guess not.
Philadelphia has an American contemporary of U505, berthed beside USS Olympia and across the river from USS New Jersey. Worth a day.
ReplyDeleteFerret, they have the same approach about claw sharpening.
ReplyDeleteIgnore the sisal rope scratching post in favor of the furniture.
The Raving Prophet said: The USS Clamagore (SS-343) at Patriot's Point in Charleston, SC is spacious by comparison.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was at Patriot's point they had the interior behind plexiglass. My wife had a hard time going through because of her claustrophobia. The plexiglass made for a very tiny tunnel effect.
The USS Pampanito, in San Francisco, is completely open to exploration. And, when we were there, had a retired submariner on board talking about his service. Seeing the Pampanito along with the Liberty ship Jeremiah O'Brien made for an awesome day.
As a non-cat owner/servant I guess that I'm glad never to have had the pleasure of that.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of coughing up a hairball, Colorado voters did just that.
ReplyDeleteHere's the skinny
http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/red-pill-blue-bill/2013/jun/3/sen-john-morse-recalled/
Come to Cleveland, tour the USS Cod. You'll be glad you did.
ReplyDeleteHaving a cat, I DO feel your pain.
But when they turn on their Cuteness Rays and aim them at you, what's a little used food?
You call that a hairball?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YSJ0exw54k
Now that's a hairball.
Hey, when you gotta puke, you gotta puke! I have learned to forgive Ms. Gizmo and the Great Fuzzy Asshole when they do(more often than I need)! Saw the 505 in the mid 50s as a kid and went on to have a small role in the design and building of the SSN 688 boats.
ReplyDeleteThe Royal Navy captured a U-boat in the eastern Med in '41 or '42(?). Captured a Kriegsmarine Enigma machine. The Official Secrets Act and common sense kept the RN crew from speaking of it until well after the war. When Adm. Gallery published his book, which in early editions claimed it was the only submarine ever captured at sea, the British Naval Attache in Washington was only too happy to enlighten him ... once Gallery signed the appropriate paperwork. Gallery reacted with good grace and humor as you'd expect a good seaman and story tell would.
ReplyDeleteThat's a story I hadn't heard, Stretch. Are you sure you're not thinking of U-110, captured in the North Atlantic in spring '41? The RN destroyer involved got the Enigma machine and codebooks for the next 3 months. Priceless for the cryptoguys at Bletchley Park.
ReplyDeleteRe U-505 and its insides: the Jerries weren't much on creature comforts for their crews. They built 'em small, so they could build a lot of 'em. American fleet-class submarines were a whole lot bigger inside. There are maybe a dozen or so of those scattered around the country. Worth special attention is USS Batfish in Muskogee, OK -- best known for sinking three Japanese subs in three days.
Uh, shouldn't that be:"Wide The Huck Awake"??!
ReplyDeleteToured the *mumblemumble* in Boston Harbor, and another diesel boat in Portland. First boat, I was with a friend, and about the second compartment in on the self-guided tour, she turned and asked "is this anything like the submarines you were on?" Yeah. Talk about having the complete and undivided attention of EVERYONE around! In Portland, the tour guide was walking the group through the berthing compartment, explaining how submariners only had x amount of space to store x-number of months' worth of clothes and entertainment (not to mention the vitally essential snacks and sodas). I asked if he was going to explain "hot-racking" to the rest of the group. He gave me a look and asked if I'd ever punched holes in the ocean. Yup. We had a good tour after that!
ReplyDeleteInteresting fact: the berthing compartments are as far forward in subs as possible (at least all the ones I was on). When an emergency blow is scheduled, if you happen to be standing next to your rack, which happens to be one of the forward racks, once the nose of the boat stops rising and begins its inevitable course back to the ocean from whence it came....you actually get a few seconds of free-fall. Did it once. It was pretty darn awesome!
Yeah, there's nothing like the feeling you get when the boat reaches the apex and starts back down. Seems like I was almost always in Radio or on the mess decks, but even there you'd get a brief feeling of weightlessness when the boat started going downward while you were still trying to go up....
ReplyDeleteToured the U-505 in 1969. At that time the museum gift shop was selling 2" x 2" squares cut from the hull to make the doorway we entered thru. I still have mine. Smooth on one side, pocked and cratered on the other.
ReplyDelete+1 on Bob's comment, and ANOTHER reason I don't have cats... :-)
ReplyDelete@RM1(SS): That was the only time I got to experience that...it was just about watch-change time, I was coming on-watch and had just eaten, when I needed to head back to my rack to grab something. For some reason, the skipper decided to do the emergency blow just then, instead of waiting until relief was over. Back in the engineering spaces, you really couldn't feel a thing. I do recall being up and about during crash-dives, and watching safety chains standing at a 30-degree angle out from their stanchions. Heh. As well as roving electricians (myself) dangling from the ladder between upper and lower-level engineering spaces. Then letting go and scrambling after that darn errant coffee mug....
ReplyDeleteMy father (a US Navy officer) had all of those Dan Gallery books. I tried reading them a couple of times, but didn't really "get" them until about 7th or 8th grade, at which point they hit me like the proverbial load of bricks and I learned not to read them in the library because my laughter was disturbing the other patrons.
ReplyDeleteOne story, in particular, (I believe it might have been the one where "Curly" Cue and the boys were flying inverted towards the PBY...) and for some reason, it was just the funniest thing I'd ever read, but I was in the library, so I couldn't laugh out loud, so I'd stifle it, and read another three words, and then have to stifle down the laughter again, and then it became this sort of compounding thing where the fact that I couldn't laugh out loud made it even funnier and... yeah. Good times, good times.
They probably won't ever be published again, and after 40 years of military moves and various terrible environments, the acid-paper copies I've got have basically disintegrated, but that would make lovely Kindle fodder.
Staghound, I was on the USS Hake when it was in the Philly Navy Yard. My dad's cousin took us tour when the were mothballing his DDS. It seem mighty small to a 12 year old.
ReplyDeleteI believe they sent a boarding party from the USS Holt to the SS Mayaquez when they retook her from the Khmer Rouge.
Gerry
Better than rolling over, gradually awakening to the feeling of something damp and vile stuck to your cheek...
ReplyDeleteMy dear dead kitty occasionally horked up vomit and hairballs, but always gave fair warning, so I was usually able to grab him and toss him outside before anything came up.
ReplyDeleteBeing Mainely Coonish, he did not like sitting in my lap or sleeping with me, except when grievously wounded. I recall waking up one morning when wounded Uzi had slept with me and seeing a huge stain of cat pus and cat blood on the pillow next to my face. He had popped an abscess during the night.