Rememerances-By-Lyon3

REMEMBRANCES OF THE PAST With
BY LYON

WHY GO INTO SUBMARINES?
(continued)

Pearl Harbor happened during my senior year at Oberlin and after graduation I enrolled in Northwestern U. engineering school not knowing whether or not I'd be drafted. It didn't take the draft board on Ashland Ave. long to find out I was living at 9800 and they began to court me for the Army. They were unimpressed that I was taking a mechanical engineering program with hydraulics, thermodynamics, strength of materials, etc. They moved slowly so in the fall I started my Co-op session with IH in the tool room. I was at my first assignment, lathe operations, when they called me to the office and asked me to work with Mike Kobzan catalogging all the tools in the plant that were on the Navy war producation contract making the drive train for aerial torpedoes. So I became a shop-office worker and scouted the whole plant finding the Navy tools and gages. Mike did tool design work and knew about everything and taught me all he could. I met bosses, ate lunch in the Bungalow with them, dug into all the hiding places, went to McCormick works where our torpedo assemblies were being sent, collared the Navy inspectors to witness our marking each of the thousands of tools, even when they were hung over. I also riled at the degree of perfection and extra work being put into these parts. We could easily see why they cost over $10,000 each. My draft board kept breathing harder closer and closer to my neck.

I didn't want Army life, I preferred Navy clean sheets, sit-down meals, waves to ride rather than marching or in a tank. So I hit the Navy reserve officer recruiting, which promptly rejected me for having a pilonidal cyst on my bottom. Guv objected to my having elective surgery to fix this but I went ahead anyway and got it repaired to Navy satisfaction. Feb. 43 I boarded a rusty, musty and dusty B $ O train with recruits for New York. Most went to Columbus campus for deck training and a few of us to a massive ark in the North River. The Prairie State, converted from the W.W.I. battleship, Illinois. All my shop, auto fiddling, time on boats at the Lake, math from Oberlin, thermo from Northwestern came in handy as a midshipman here.

Our 3 month program had hardly got afloat before my classmates started discussing various duties for the future. I did well enough in classes to talk with a couple of our young training officers about requesting duty as an instructor. I recall writing home that they felt trapped while the band was playing elsewhere. The deck guys at Columbia were hot for PT boats. My crowd considered how it would be in a destroyer HP steam boiler engine room when a torpedo hit. PTs seemed much better. Submarines were rumored to be very selective and somebody would come to interivew us later.

The sub officer's test turned out to be simple enough...hold your breath for a minute and then answer a few questions. Only the top of the class would get in at graduation. He told about sub schools at New London etc., small crews and informality, higher class all-volunteer crews, pay and a half for sea duty, the Pacific bases in Pearl and Austrailia, two-weeks R & R between patrols...sounded better than being scalded with superheated steam. I flashed back to visiting Hines Veteran's Hospital seeing maimed, wheel chair bound W>W>I vets who might never leave...thats not for me. Most of my classmates who were interviewed thought they had done OK most very anxious to be a part of this proud section of the Navy if they could get in. (Perhaps this was all part of the recruiting strategy..) Somewhere along the line we must have filled out future duty preferences and I put New London Sub School, perhaps I thought I wouldn't rank high enough to get it. Anyway on hearing of this Mama wrote, "I suppose a mother has to accept her son's choices." I don't recall anything from Guv or Wynne.

When the ranks were posted, I was in the top ten to go to New London where nobody asked. "Why would anybody...?

Epilogue: New London was the only place I ever stopped hearing the "Why" question. Mama became a proud 3-star mother. Guv showed pride for his submariner son. Wynne became an enthusieast at least outwardly and assembled a detailed scrapbook. My brothers had their own things, Bill sunk on a mine sweeper. Ebbie as a Navy bombardier. Helen's Franklin in the ski-troops. I never felt as trapped in a submarine as I had, and have since, under the bow of a sailboat pulled up, on shore, when I would have to struggle through the struts...now, there's a good anomaly. Why? Listening to my RATON shipmates I concluded that 1/3 of them were in subs to avoid being shot at, another third for the pay and having this duty on their record, and a final third for being in a small crew and having R & R. When we were counting the seconds for a shot torpedo to hit, the only thing we thought about was "will it run! well enough" and I recall having worried about the cost. At this point the cost and extra machining were irrelevant. I've always tried to be non-boastful about my sub duty, in as few words as possible to such questions as "Were you in combat?" "Were you ever depth charged?", "Did you sink any ships?" Who knows what to ask a naked woman? My disappointments: Not getting a Silver Star Medal, not seeing enough clear hits at night on the surface, missing some good photo ops. Turning points made in my life: Increased confidence, nicked shins, infect-prone ringing ears, sore butt, familiarity with Austrailia. I appreciate the good luck I had. But for a defective LAPON torpedo, I could easily have been on the 53rd U.S.N. sub lost.