Torpedoman's Mate

[280plus]

Hooked up with an old navy bud I hadn't seen in 30 years. Now a retired Senior Chief Torpedoman's Mate. 26 years in the MK 46 surface ship fired torpedo. Never did subs. So he's a pretty good wiseass these days and since he was giving me crap left and right I figured I'd give him some back. So I said, "MK 46 torpedos, ain't them the little ones? Were they good for anything?"

He says, "Yes they were good for something."

Me, "Really? What was that?"

He says, "Blowing *expletive deleted* up!"  

Spoken like a true Chief.

26 years in, joined a year after I did and retired in 2003. He's still married to the same girl I met on the mess decks 30 years ago. Four kids. Amazing story but talk about two foul mouthed peeps that give each other a ration constantly, two peas from the same pod, hoo boy...  

 

[Hutch]

Thankfully, unless there's something I don't know about, I don't think a Mk 46 or Mk 48 (sub-launched, much boomier than the li'l 46) have ever been "fired in anger", as it were.

[280plus]

Neither do I. We were on a destroyer, we had 6 loaded, 3 each in triple tubes port and starboard and I guess each side had one extra torpedo stored somewhere. So we had 8 total torpedos and two torpedomen. There wasn't a whole lot for them to do I'd say. Sounds like pretty skate duty to me. 

He retired as the Chief Master at Arms of the sub base in Groton. Swears better than anybody I've ever known.  So does his wife, they're quite the team.

(I am soooo glad I left mrs 280 the church lady out of this one.  )

[RoadKingLarry]

Chief Master at Arms of the sub base in Groton. Swears better than anybody I've ever known

Just being stationed in Rotten Groton was enough to make me want to swear.

Wasn't in anger but we did fire 3 war shot 48s during an exercise on an instrumented range one day long ago. The one that actually went off was pretty impressive.

[Hutch]

RKLarry, do we have a problem with Mark 48's not 'sploden when they need to?  Sounds like the ol'  WWII problem.

[RoadKingLarry]

That particular exercise was in the Spring of '92. The fish we shot were old and at the end of their service life/storage life and would have been taken off the boat some months prior to the trip if they hadn't been picked to be shot. IIRC there was a detailed investigation of the maintenance history of the defective fish and some changes were made to the applicable NWPs as a result. That, and a Chief Torpedoman got his pee-pee whacked just because it had to happen to someone.