photo courtesy:  USS WASP (LHD 1)

Irish Pennants are loose threads that need to be tied up or cut off.  For the purpose of  this web site, they represent miscellaneous threads of discussion and points of view by classmates and colleagues.  To submit [or respond] to Irish Pennants, just send an e-mail to webmaster@usna63.org;  without objection from the Class Secretary, they will be published on this site, invite rebuttal or response, and eventually get tied off.

• "Never Bilge A Classmate"  (discussions regarding honor re: assaulting a classmate)
• 1/C Weapons Exam
• Academic Overload Courses
• Classmates on The Wall
• Henri Berckenbosch and moves 1st Class Year
• Recurring nightmares inspired by USNA
• Rasputniks and Come-Arounds
• Drag houses
• Assault on the Liberty
• Loss of the Scorpion
• Classmates as Expert References on the Web Site
• '63 Speakers Bureau
• Movie Reviews
• Foreign entanglements
• The military is overpaid
• Reflections of a Non Grad--Jim Kenney

In the first semester of our first class year (1962-1963), our entire class endured a course entitled Anti-Submarine Warfare and Detection Systems.  It was the first time the Weapons Department had offered the course.  The syllabus included a heavy dose of material on underwater acoustics.  As the course progressed through the semester, it apparently became a worry to the Weapons Department faculty that their students were just "not getting it." and if they didn't do something, the failure rate for the course would be quite high.  The "something" was to make the final examination "open book."

The day of the examination, those of us in the Thirteenth Company arrived at our examination rooms with one book in our stack of references that our other classmates did not have - Thermodynamic Properties of Steam. At a prearranged time during examination, we all took out our copies of Thermodynamic Properties of Steam, removed and unfolded our Mollier diagrams and pretended to obtain a bit of information from the diagrams.  The Mollier diagram, of course, had little or nothing to do with underwater acoustics nor anything else in the course or the examination.  I took the examination in the large classroom on the top deck of Luce Hall.  There were about six other of my company mates scattered about the room.  As we consulted our diagrams, the look of pure panic on the faces of our other classmates was unforgettable!

Do you recall that infamous exam?

By the way, in preparation for the final, my company classmates also got together and made up exemplar answers to all the questions in all the tests that had been during the course as well as to all the study questions in the textbook and homework problems.  These exemplars were distributed to all firsties in the company.  I recall that I made a 3.9 on the exam and that many of my companymates earned similar marks.

Added by Watt Miles 3/2/09

I just discovered the Irish Pennants feature of the Web site, and am very thankful to Chuck Adams for documenting the 1/c Weapons Exam. It is a sea story I've told more than a couple of times because (a) I was one of those with the momentary stab of panic when those fellows shook out (more vigorously than needed, in retrospect ) their Mollier diagrams; and, (b) it represented to me a truly creative prank that captured the spirit among classmates; I don't think it possible that such an experience could be had at a civilian school. I do need to correct Chuck's account, however; some of the effect was caused by the fact that the text and Mollier diagram was in fact on the list of references prescribed for the open book exam. Since we hadn't used it during the course, we all wondered why we needed to bring it to the exam. The Thirteenth Co. perpetrators had great timing - they sprang the deal when almost everyone was near the end of the test and had concluded that the Mollier diagram was just a dirty trick played on us by the Weapons Dept. As I recall, the panic was pretty quickly defused when the tricksters couldn't resist laughing at our wide eyes.

I had wondered how many 63ers poured on the courseload to come up with a "major". (I had over 25 hours one semester.)   I wrote to the USNA Archivist, Gary LaValley and he provided me with the following info:

 The class of '63 was the first to have the advantage of the full four years of the majors program. From our class, 106 fulfilled those requirements. There were eight majors to choose from.  By 66-67 school year, there were 21 majors and 23 minors to choose from. The classes of '64, '65, '66 fulfilled  requirements for majors with 152, 209, and 412 respectively.
    The number of us folks who went Air Force was 60; 30 from the top half class, and 30 from the second half class. The top half's 30 were promised grad school.

    [response by Mike Blackledge, Thanksgiving Day 1999]
            I think that's a great idea, Ed - one goal of the site is to gather and capture bios on all classmates, living and deceased.  One thing I would like to add to The Wall's website is a link to our own Last Call for our 13 Wall inscriptions -

One of several things I will always remember about Henri is our discussions about his first class term paper. Henri wrote about the injustice of apartheid in South Africa.  Now, this is the fall/winter of 1962, long before the U.S. public consciousness is raised on this issue, and either just before or only soon after Nelson Mandela is arrested and imprisoned. Until those discussions with Henri I wasn't even aware of the term "apartheid."

Henri also had strong opinions about canned fruits and vegetables and processed bread in the United States. Having lived in Europe in the intervening years, I can now understand where Henri was coming from.

Recurring nightmares inspired by USNA
       [initial thought by Will Settle, 11 May 1999:]
            Are you going to have a chat room on our web site?  I think it would be a super idea. Instead of those weird sites where people talk about coming out of the closet and discovering that they really do enjoy the idea of having sex with smallfurry rodents, we could talk to each other about the anxieties we experiencedgoing into the true/false skinny final second class year.  Also (could I be theonly one of our classmates to have this experience), for a good 15 years or so after graduation I had a recurring dream about going into a steam or skinny finalbeing completely unprepared and not knowing my ass from a hole-in-the-ground,while everyone around me was confidently punching his steam table and working hisslide rule at a high rate of knots.

  [response by J.J. Calande, 7 July 1999]
I think the idea of a chat capability is great. It would be even better if we started a cyber chapter of the alumni with Internet relay chat using MIRC or a like chat client.  MIRC is available at http://www.mirc.com
J.J.

       [response by Mike Blackledge, 12 May 1999]
            I resonate with your anxiety attacks ...  it would be interesting to see what psychoses the ol' Trade School created in all of us -  I have your 15 years beat, I had nightmares for at least 20 years about missingformation -  the bell would go off, and I was still in my room, and runninglike heck, knowing I was late ... and usually in the wrong uniform. Something you love to wake up from and realize you're not really there any more ...


---


  [response by J.C. Thorton, 9 July 1999]
I love reading so many memories.  You guys haven't lost a step.  On the other hand, my psychosis is trying to remember if I went there.  My office wallsays 'yes'  but then someone mentions 'irish pennants' and I getuncomfortable.   I wonder where I have heard that term before, then it hits me.  I must be one of you!  Then my psychosis starts all over again.Pls keep up the chat. I am sure it will aid in my recovery, especially aftermy first visit to our website and discovered that I was deceased!

---


 [response by Mike Blackledge, 9 July 1999]
Sorry about that, J.C. -  the toughest part was convincing us that you weren't dead, since our honored Alumni Assoc. had already marked you as a goner -  you had Ted Healy vouching for you, but that just made us more suspicious, since the AA didn't list Ted at all, dead or alive ... anyway, doesn't it feel good to come back from 'the dark side'?  -  not too many of us will get that chance ...

[response by Steve Coester, 30 December 1999]
Come Around?  What's a come around?  Remember that I went through plebe year with only 15 demerits and ended up a three striper.  Anal was my middle name.  At the 35th, I was introduced to Vern Browne's wife (a Hallmark heir) and she said, "Oh I've heard your name.  You were the pure one."  Well I was just 17, if you know what that means....and I guess I was an innocent, or at least kept my foibles to myself.

Just kidding about come arounds.  I guess in the Color Company (plebe year 13th)  we weren't able to buy our way out of come arounds with wampum. I was looking through my plebe calender looking for a cartoon of drunk midns (lots of luck!) and on every page was "Come Around, 0530 Rm 3354" or some such.

I certainly remember the starched collars, but that segment of LONG term memory recording rasputniks is dead..  And now that you've made me recall it, I've had to stuff that bit of useless knowledge into a slot that held the next great scientific breakthrough (which now I can't remember).

Speaking of Color Company, did you know that some Second Class ex gyrene made all of us plebes completely strip the finish off the whole company's M-1s and revarnish them.  It took a whole weekend of really hard work.  You should have seen the 13th at the next p-rade.  The rifles gleamed in comparison to the other 23 companies.  Also was probably a real team building exercise.

 [response by Bill Kennedy, 28 May & 20 June 1999]
            I remember our classmate - who was it? - who actually made a zero on that true/false skinny exam.   Another subject, re this web site:  I do see us as greater than the sum of our parts and I do feel that we offer more than a locker room for ~800 hairy legged men.  I've invited visitors who I thought could enjoy the experience, we've heard from some.  One:  My high school best friend who was delighted to find some of Pete Deutermann's titles he didn't have.  There's one more you may not recognize.  Do you remember marching to the Chapelon Sunday and being waved at by people from a balcony just outside the wall?That was 205 Hanover St, a drag house used by me, Dick Wyttenbach, Pat Wright,Gene Dehnert, and Willie Hillgaertner (others later, we were the nucleus).  The lady who ran the place (still alive) had a young daughter that I dragged tothe inaugural ball.  She since married Army and lost her husband to Viet Nam wounds.  She found me somehow and I asked her to visit our site.  She wastouched by it.  If you remember those people waving from the balcony, the little boy is her younger brother.  He visited too after his sister pointed himat the site.  Tyree was only twelve when we graduated, but he was one of the people whose lives was touched by us.  We are, indeed, greater than the sum of our parts.  Donna Kaup and the Doughtie family fall into the same category even if I wouldn't know any of them if we collided.

[response by Mike Shelley]
        Mais oui, since I do believe you're talking about Auntie Mame's establishment.  I was one of the latecomers, if 2/c year qualifies.

[response by Bill Kennedy]
That's the second serious jolt you've given me.  Certainly I remember now, but I had forgotten your assistance/conspiracy with Mr B too.  I don't remember how it started but I do remember it was plebe year Saturday liberties.  Dick, Willie, Pat and I were all roommates at one or more points plebe year and all four for youngster year.  Auntie Mame has since lost most of her sight to macular degeneration, and she and Stephen moved into a condo after he retired.  I was delighted that Ellan located me, we correspond sporadically.

I knew Ellan would enjoy visiting the web site because she would enjoy relating it to her mother.  I knew Auntie Mame would enjoy that because she had a soft spot for '63.  She wouldn't be able to see it for herself but Ellan's rendition was, I'm sure, adequate.  I didn't say it quite that way, but that was what I was getting at when I referred to people who touched our lives and vice versa.

Still there were names and places to remember from the web pages.  Dave Smith is another one we'd have excluded.  He and I were reasonably close, but he encountered more of us than I did; he was on active duty longer than I was.  Donna Kaup is another we might have missed had we been more restrictive about site access.

It's not necessarily a sentimental matter, but it is for some and I think we have served the purposes well.  At some point Wyttenbach is going to have to tell me how he ended up on Guam, but he will.  The seabees I knew all said it was an acronym for Give Up And Masturbate :-)

[response by Jim Koehn, 6 August 1999]
Judy and I were musing over the comments about Auntie Mame's home and the history we all experienced there. And perhaps I am the most recent visitor to 205 Hanover as I stopped by during a business trip to Annapolis in May 1999.No one was home, the place looks neat and tidy, but some how soooo small compared to my memories.

[response by Pete Carrothers, 7 July 1999]
Speaking of drag houses, how many remember Mrs. Mac's at 235 Prince George Avenue.  I met Mrs. Mac when she was the hostess at the Officers Club and she had an infectious laugh...smoking cigarettes on a long stem ("her doctor told her to get away from cigarettees")...she said she had 3-4 extra bedrooms and wanted to know how she could get into the drag house business.  We packed her house with at least 25 girls from youngster year on....she had this delightful boyfriend...Cliff Deringer who was older than dirt.  Mrs. Mac and Cliff hosted the dances out in town on the second floor of the Knights of Columbus hall, so the Spiffies could play (remember they banned the twist in the yard)...all the local girls colleges were invited free, mids were a dollar.  Mrs. Mac must've had 20 couches/over stuffed chairs down in the basement...no lights allowed.  I think some of the furniture came from Lcdr Middleton's office (our 1st company officer)..but that's another story and I don't think the statue of limitations has expired.  Cliff usually stocked a refrigerator down in the basement with some Colorado Kool aid as I recall. It's funny I remember Mrs. Mac and Cliff and I can't remember any of my instructors.  Happy 40th...July 7th, 1999.  Pete Carrothers.
 

[response by Bill Kennedy]
I was there when she limped into Hampton Roads.  She was pretty badly bunged up, she had to stop at Gibraltar (maybe Malta?) for enough repair to get her across the Atlantic.  I bought a couple of rounds for her wardroom and heard what happened from those who were there.  The truly remarkable part is that the Israelis dished out the ordnance but she wasn't sunk.  That was clearly the objective.

[response by Mike Blackledge]
  I suggest we look around the Web and see if we can find a site for the USS Scorpion tragedy, and for the USS Liberty incident.  Perhaps we can find someone doing that, like they do for ship sites today.  I would like to link to any such site, especially if it mentionsby name our lost classmates.

[response by Mike Moore, 26 Aug 1999]
 http://www.halcyon.com/jim/ussliberty/ is the USS Liberty web site.  It's an excellent site and doesn't varnish the truth; I think Jim Ennes, the Command Duty Officer at the time of the attack, and author of "Assault on the Liberty"  co- created it.  I must also tell you that Jim Ennes had the ideas about how to go about getting Steve Toth's name in Memorial Hall.  I will never forget his first suggestion:  "Write a letter to the Superintendant, and ask why his name isn't there."   So obvious.

[response by Bill Kennedy, 30 Aug 1999]
I was especially moved by the stance taken by Adm Moorer.  I wasn't aware that it was his influence that got the deceased entered into the Mem Hall list, nor was I aware that SecNav was delegated to present the CO's Medal of Honor.  I simply ASSumed that LBJ presented it since he took some pride in personally presenting each one (all but one).

[response by Gary Hosey, 18 March 2000]

[response by Bill Kennedy]
 My concern over the Scorpion material was partially being nervous about not knowing what's still classified and what isn't, but I also wanted to save someone thinking about the cover story.  It's covered in some detail in Blind Man's Bluff, a largely authentic book about post-WW II use of submarines to gather intelligence.  I'll illustrate the cock & bull story by relying on your knowledge of submarine weapons.  Nothing classified here, it's loosely paraphrased from Discovery Channel and Blind Man's Bluff accounts.

Examination of the wreckage suggests that Scorpion broke in half doing a violent turning maneuver.  There was a known problem with the battery in the MK-37 torpedo (there was, they were prone to catch fire).  Making a prompt 180 degree turn would engage the anit-circular run sensor and disarm the weapon (also true if the gyros were spun up and the weapon had been armed). The torpedo warhead exploded in the room, the tubes were empty (the tubes were, indeed, empty, SOP for transit home).

Now apply all of your post-USNA torpedo training and explain to me how the gyros spun up and the weapon swam far enough to arm while it was strapped in its storage rack?  I'll augment your training just a bit by explaining that the test set umbilical could be attached to spin up the gyros in the room, but the arming sequence is initiated by exiting the firing tube.

I will not dispute two elements of the official story.  I agree, based on the lie of the parts of the hull, that she was enaged in a violent turning maneuver when she died.  I also agree that an exploding torpedo warhead was what ruptured her pressure hull.

Now that you have sufficient submarine weapons knowledge, I'll put forth a theory that makes just as much sense as the official account.  Let's accept the US and USSR claims that no Soviet vessels were within 700NM of Scorpion, she's headed home to Norfolk.  The CO decides to load a warshot into a tube and fires it.  The weapon arms but the anti-circular run sensor malfunctions.  The rudder control gyro malfunctions causing it to reverse course and attack Scorpion.  Sonar didn't hear it until the range was too short for the evasive turn to succeed.

My scenario, you'll agree, is clearly poppycock, but no moreso than what the Navy claims and it relies on assumptions no less likely than theirs.  Mine, at least, accounts for how the weapon got powered up and armed...

I bored you with that so you would understand my strong feelings in the matter.  The USN account insults my intelligence even if I had no other knowledge, you may now feel that it insults your intelligence too.  Surely someone could have thought up something more imaginative than this!

Blind Man's Bluff  has some spellbinding accounts of Cold War submarining including how they tapped the Soviets' underwater telephone cables.  Two elements of their Scorpion account are accurate and presumably unclassified.  The wreck was located using SOSUS (used to be classified secret to utter the word) data, i.e. they _heard_ her crush.  Although we knew where she was, the water was so deep that they had to dispatch Trieste (deep diving research vessel) to conduct the investigation.

To the Navy's credit, they didn't fail to extract value from the Thresher and Scorpion tragedies.  Thresher taught them to abandon the 1944 damage control mentality and to build safe submarines starting with the keel.  Scorpion made check reports (scheduled periodic "I'm OK" messages) mandatory and taken very seriously by all afloat and ashore.  Had anyone attached any weight to the missed Scorpion check reports they could have prevented the heart breaking assembly of the families on the pier to greet her.

[response by Jim Ring, Feb 2000]

I noticed Bill Kennedy discussed the information about SCORPION from Blind Man's Bluff.  One of our classmates observed the wreckage. Dave Brynes was on TRIESTE when it found the wreckage.  A number of years age,he told me that he was not free to discuss what he found, but maybe he can now.  I certainly would be interested, since my plebe summer roommate and a great guy, Jack Burke was on it when it sunk.

[suggestion by Pete Deutermann,  June 1999]
I'm still very damn impressed.  On the password bit -- probably the best thing to do is to design the
site so that it can be protected if the need arises. (I'm also pretty ignorant about the tech side of working websites.)
    A further suggestion, and hopefully I didn't miss it in my tour of the site:  there must be a vast pool of expertise in our class, ranging from A to Z.  Would it be possible to query (over time, of course) the members to ask them to list three things that they're pretty knowledgeable about, and then to create an 'expert reference' page, where, for example, if I wanted to know antique car restoration, I could hit the page and see if any of our guys were experts? Based on what I heard at the 35th reunion, some of our classmates went pretty far afield. Just a thought.

[response by Alex Daunis, December 1999]
    Re the comment from Pete Deutermann about creating an "expert reference" page on the USNA63 web site. I think that Pete has a great idea.  I am sure that he would find our input useful in his writing. From time to time, I have needed to find an "expert" who can give me a quick overview, or point me in the right direction, on one of my projects.  What better or reliable source than one of my classmates?  And they were helpful.
    More specifically to Pete's comment, I am also interested in an "expert reference" page, as I approach the "big 60."  With my youngest in college, I am looking at the transition to the second half of my life. Over the past couple of years, numerous civic volunteer board assignments, maintenance work on our summer cottages on Nantucket and a increasing interest in film and stage acting have accounted for most of my after work activities.

        My interest in history, biography, writing, leadership development, education, communication and performance have all come together in an interesting framework.  A member of the Screen Actors Guild since 1994, I have worked on close to forty feature films as a Background Actor or Stand-In.  For the past two years, preparation for my acting class has become an important part of my weekly schedule.
        Once I redefined myself as "an actor with a day job," after my auto accident, the rest of my life seemed to fall into place.  I am currently working with a group of actors to perform a staged reading of a group of plays written by a friend who was a destroyer officer during the Viet Nam era.  I am also researching Rhode Island historical sources, looking for local military and governmental figures that had national and/or international impact. I plan to create a one man show that traces important themes of leadership, perseverance and courage.  With period costumes, I think that this project could be an effective way to teach schools and youth groups about our nation's heritage.
        If any classmates have stories that they want to tell, and are looking for ways to start to develop them, give me a jingle and maybe we can come up with some ideas on how you can get started on a project in your own area.
        Best wishes to you for the next millennium.     Alex Daunis.         Quality '63!

[response by Bill Kennedy]
     As an incurable Hornblower devotee I eagerly embarked on Aubrey/Maturin.  I sort of fizzled after the first couple because there was so much more talk than action.  The action was spellbinding but there was too little to suit me.  Did they ever fight the duel?  That's how early I vacated the series.  I was reading Books on Tape rather than paper (I did C.S. Forester and W.E.B. Griffin on both) so I may not have given it a fair audience.  The reading experience is quite different and the levels of concentration and absorption are totally different.  Tape is m>

Transfer interrupted!

It is a wonderfully well done documentary on the POW experience in Viet Nam.  While it is poignant and moving, it is also a testament to the spirit and resilience of man and shows how a belief in something larger than self, including ones fellow man, can support the individual against unfathomable hardship. It shows that even when stripped to the bare necessities of life and in the face of the cruelest torture, man can devise ways to not only survive, but laugh and grow.

It should be required watching in schools.

[other reviews on this movie:  A Movie Parable - Return with Honor; Vietnam Film captures Ugliness of POW Reality]; also, see the review by Rob Black '63 that appeared in the September 1999 issue of Shipmate magazine.]
For other Movie Reviews, see Bibilography Room #2.

"Now let's see if I understand this correctly.

President Clinton has ordered our forces to engage an entrenched, politically motivated enemy, backed by the Russians, on their home ground, in a foreign civil war, in difficult terrain, with limited military objectives, with bombing restrictions, boundary and operational restrictions, queasy allies, far across an ocean, with uncertain goals, without prior consultation with Congress, having the potential for escalation, while limiting the forces at his disposal, and while the majority of Americans are opposed to, or are at best uncertain about, the value of the action being worth American lives.

So, what was it that Clinton was opposed to during Vietnam?"

US ship in Korean waters (23 June 1999):   The guided-missile cruiser USS Vincennes sailed into South Korean waters today,  two days after a naval clash in the Yellow Sea in which South Korea sank a North Korean gunboat. Officials believe about 30 North Korean sailors died in the clash. The Vincennes is to be joined tomorrow by the guided-missile cruiser USS Mobile Bay. The two ships were dispatched to "contribute to peace in the region" and will stay in the area until tensions are reduced. The nuclear-powered submarines USS Kamehameha and USS Buffalo also arrived at South Korea's main naval base of Chinhae late yesterday, but a 7th Fleet spokesman said that was a routine port call not related to the clash.
 
 

    [submit your thought here -  e-mail to webmaster@usna63.org]

    [subject of your choice:  submit to webmaster@usna63.org]

Just got a copy of my DD214 and I was reminded of my dates of entry into our Navy, swearing in as a Midshiman 4th. Class and Honorable discharge as an AE3 in September, 1960. Key events at the Academy in that one year are as sharp in my mind as any other dates in my life. I have drifted in and out of the USNAAA at National and local levels and tried to give back by starting the monthly luncheon here in Orange County, California, telling the Navy and Academy story to likely youngsters( even female prospects!) and getting semi-hysterical around Army-Navy game time.

Once upon a time I was refused membership in a local Alumni group because I was a non-grad which made Steve Coesters "Welcome back to '63" even more meaningful.

Jim Kenney, 16th Company (Original 7th),

" Any man in this century who may be asked what he did to make his life worthwhile can respond--I served in the United States Navy."

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