COMSUBBBS
Posts: 3202
Location: Alexandria, Virginia | Subject: Chief Clear and Canada Geese
After veiwing BLIND MAN's BLUFF, it became evident that what was called, The Silent Service was no longer silent. Someone negated the oath of silence and had authorized the release of long held secrets. Then, I came across Chief Clear's reference to "submarines and geese" and I feel compelled to reveal and declassify heretofore closely held Cold War secrets. Our tender...SubRon Six's tender was the USS ORION (AS-18). We got our dry stores from Mother Onion (ORION). Mother had a world class cockroach population...the kind of insects you see on Ripley's Believe-it-or-Not or Popular Science Digest covers. An Orion roach could swallow a Canada Goose, whole....One came out of a carton of canned corn and ate two guys loading stores on the REDFIN (SS-272) and later burped up a halyard clip full of keys. The guys off the CUTLASS (SS-478) made a little harness and had two roaches pull Fairbanks pistons down the pier. In the early sixties an ORION roach came in third in the Kentucky Derby...a lot of folks didn't know that....Warshot knew because he bet on the sonuvabitch to place and won $1400. On REQUIN, we had a stud roach called Charlie....We used to go over to ORION down in the forward dry stores storage area and rope little girl roaches (roachettes?) and bring them back for Charlie to impregnate. A good stud roach can really enhance a smokeboat's reputation. In the late 50's you couldn't get the Batlle Efficiency "E" if you didn't have a top notch roach breeding program. Pedigreed roaches, such as Big Billy out of Charlie made REQUIN a legend in the roach breeding world...The boat was recognized by SubLant as the fleet leader in such activity. (Clear knows all this, but is too tight lipped to release these secrets). As for these roaches consuming Canada Geese....the web "goose footz" get wedged in a roaches colon causing great pain. In the interest of humane treatment a roach having a case of "goose footz" intestinal blockage has to be "put down". The popular way of dispatching thoroughbred roaches was clubbing hell out of them with a chipping hammer or paint scraper. A good cook coud get at least a half dozen flank steaks off one and officers had boots made out of the hides. Rickover refused to use a wallet we made and sent to him...We later found out that he was a poor loser because of money he lost when he failed to bet on our roach in the Derby. Someday, I will tell you about a Pier 22 rat that ate Babe the Blue OX, that used to hang out with Paul Bunyan, a giant yankee lumberjack. DEX |
Chief Clear and Canada Geese
