Things They Don't Tell You at New London  by Bob 'Dex' Armstrong
In high school, I watched a TV program called Silent Service. An
old retired codger named Rear Admiral Thomas M. Dykers opened
the show with, "Tonight, we bring you another thrilling episode
of Silent Service stories, of warfare under the sea." I did not
know that for the first time, I was being radiated by minute
television transmitted bull manure particles, that I would come
to know as 'sea stories'. Silent Service sold BS by the yard,
beginning with the words, "Thrilling adventure…"  There were
things they didn't tell you. Things like being the guy who threw
trash over the side in heavy seas… Rigging doubler plates in a
rolling boat… Reversing the blank flanges in the air lines to
the fuel ballast tanks when they were empty, and you lined them
up as main ballast tanks… And several other thrilling adventures
that the devil and the USN combined talents to bring you.  Lets
begin with rigging blank flanges for main ballast tank use. (For
you boa