View from Fort Trumbull	View of New London	View of Harbor

                                                                    Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz

Navy Quotations:  The battleships are held back for the killing blow and such a blow happens only once in a war.  The cruisers go in second, but the destroyers work all the time.  They are probably the busiest ships of a fleet.  In a major engagement, they do the scouting and make the first contact.  They convoy, they run to every fight.  Wherever there is a mess, the destroyers run first.  They are not lordly like the battle-ship, nor episcopal like the cruisers.  Most of all, they are ships and the men who work them are seamen.  The rough weather they are rough, honestly and violently rough                                      

                                                                      John Steinbeck

LITTLE KNOWN NAVAL HISTORY

The U.S.S. Constitution (Old Ironsides), as a combat vessel, carried 48,600 gallons of fresh water

for her crew of 475 officers and men.  This was sufficient to last six months of sustained operation

at sea.  She carried no evaporators for fresh water distilling.  However, let it be noted that according

to her ship's log,  "On July 27, 1798,  the U.S.S. Constitution sailed from Boston with a full crew with

48,600 gallons of fresh water, 7,400 cannon shot, 11,600 pounds of black powder and 79,400 gallons of

rum."  Her mission: "To destroy and harass English shipping."  Making Jamaica on 6 October, she took

on 826 pounds of flour and 68,300 gallons of rum.   She headed for the Azores, arriving there 12 Nov.

She provisioned with 550 pounds of beef and 64,300 gallons of Portuguese wine.  On 18 Nov., she set sail

for England.  In the ensuing days she defeated five British men-of-war and captured and scuttled 12

English merchant ships salvaging only the rum aboard each.  By 26 Jan., her powder and shot were

exhausted and although unarmed she made a night raid up the Firth of Clyde in Scotland.  Her landing

party captured a whiskey distillery and transferred 40,000 gallons of single malt Scotch aboard by dawn

and she headed home. The U.S.S. Constitution arrived in Boston on 20 Feb. 1799 with no cannon shot, no

food, no rum, no wine, no whiskey, and 38,600 gallons of water.

That's the same Navy the U.S.S. C.K. Bronson crew remember!!!!!!

WWII MONUMENT SALUTES D-DAY SAILORS

During the opening four days of the Normandy invasion, which began June 6, 1944, one of every five GIs killed at Omaha Beach was a Navy sailor.  On Sept. 27, the first Normandy monument to honor the U.S. Navy's service and the more than 1,000 sailors who died there will be dedicated in France.  "Casualties were so high because Omaha was the most heavily defended of the Normandy beaches," says Dan felger, 68, a retired Navy commander and member of the Naval Order of the United States.  For information about the dedication, go to www.navalorder.org.

For the shipmates who have asked about the United States Navy Memorial, information is available and membership.  You can contact the organization by:

www.navymemorial.org

Minorities

We need to show more sympathy for these people!

*They travel miles in the heat.

*They risk their lives crossing a border.

*They don't get paid enough wages.

*They do jobs that others won't do or are afraid to do.

*They live in crowded conditions among a people who speak a different language.

*They rarely see their families, and they face adversity all day every day.

I'm not talking about illegal Aliens.................................I'm talking about our troops!

SHIPMATES------VERY INTERESTING WEBSITE:   NAVY TV  "Telling the Story of the Men & Women of the World.

A website created by the United States Navy Memorial.  Check it out:       navytv.org

An interesting read from VAdm Harold Koenig, U.S. Navy, Retired:

THE NAVY

******I liked standing on the bridge wing at sunrise with salt spray in my face and clean ocean winds whipping in from the four quarters of the globe - the destroyer beneath me feeling like a living thing as her engines drove her swiftly through the sea.

******I like the sounds of the Navy - the piercing trill of the boatswains pipe, the syncopated clangor of the ship's bell on the quarterdeck, the harsh squawk of the 1MC, and the strong language and laughter of sailors at work.

******I like Navy vessels - nervous darting destroyers, plodding fleet auxiliaries and amphibs, sleek submarines and steady solid aircraft carriers.

******I like the proud names of Navy ships: Midway, Lexington, Saratoga, Coral Sea, Antietam, Valley Forge- -memorials of great battles won and tribulations overcome.

******I liked the lean angular names of Navy "tin-cans" and escorts- -Barney, Dahigren, Mullinix, McCloy, Damato, Leftwich, Mills, Bronson, Sullivans- -mementos of heroes who went before us.  And the others - -San Jose, San Diego, Los Angeles, St. Paul, Chicago- -names for our cities.

******I liked liberty call and the spicy scent of a foreign port.

******I even liked the never ending paperwork and all hands working parties as my ship filled herself with the multitude of supplies, both mundance and to cut ties to the land and carry out her mission anywhere on the globe where was water to float her.

******I liked sailors, officers, and enlisted men from all parts of the land, farms of the Midwest, small towns of New England, from the cities, the mountains and the prairies, from all walks of life.  I trusted and depended on them as they trusted and depended on my - for professional competence, for comradeship, for strength and courage.  In a word, the were "shipmates" then and forever.

******I liked the surge of adventure in my heart, when the word was passed: "Now set the special sea and anchor detail - all hands to quarters for leaving port," and I liked the infectious thrill of sighting home again, with the waving hands of welcome from family and friends waiting pier side.

******The work was hard and dangerous; the going rough at times; the parting from loved ones painful, but the companionship of robust Navy laughter, the "all for one and one for all" philosophy of the sea was ever present.

******I like the serenity of the sea after a day of hard ship's work, as flying fish flitted across the wave tops and sunset gave way to night.

******I liked the feel of the Navy in darkness - the masthead and range lights, the red and green navigation lights and stern light, the pulsating phosphorescence of radar repeaters - they cut through the dusk and joined with the mirror of stars overhead.  And I liked drifting off to sleep lulled by the myriad noised large and small that told me that my ship was alive and well, and that my shipmates on watch would keep me safe.

******I liked quiet mid-watches with the aroma of strong coffee - the lifeblood of the Navy permeating everywhere.

******I liked hectic watches when the exacting minuet of haze-gray shapes racing at flank speed kept all hands on a razor edge of alertness.

******I liked the sudden electricity of "General quarters, general quarters, all hands man your battle stations," followed by the hurried clamor of running feet on ladders and the resounding thump of watertight doors as the ship transformed herself in a few brief seconds from a peaceful workplace to a weapon of war - read for anything.

******And I liked the sight of space-age equipment manned by youngsters clad in dungarees and sound-powered phones that their grandfathers would still recognize.

******I liked the traditions of the Navy and the men and women who made them.  I liked the proud names of Navy heroes: Halsey,  Nimitz, Perry, Farragut, John Paul  Jones and Burke.  A sailor could find much in the Navy: comrades-in-arms, pride in self and country, mastery of the seaman's trade.  An adolescent could find adulthood.

******In years to come, when sailors are home from the sea, they will still remember with fondness and respect the ocean in all its moods - the impossible shimmering mirror calm and the storm-tossed green water surging over the bow.  And then there will come again a faint whiff of stack gas, a faint echo of engine and rudder orders, a vision of the bright bunting of signal flags snapping at the yardarm, a refrain of hearty laughter in the wardroom and chief's quarters and mess decks.

******Gone ashore for good they will grow wistful about their Navy days, when the seas belonged to them and a new port of call was even over the horizon.

******Remembering this, they will stand taller and say....

"I WAS A SAILOR ONCE."

             GOD BLESS AMERICA    

I would like to add Admiral Arleigh A. Burke's quote that appeared in the Tin Can Sailor publication to our website.

"....Destroyermen have always been a proud people.  They have been the elite.  They have to be a proud people and they have to be specially selected, for destroyer life is a rugged one.  It takes physical stamina to stand up under the rigors of a tossing DD.  It takes even more spiritual stamina to keep going with enthusiasm when you are tired and you feel that you, and your ship, are being used as a workhorse.  It is true that many people take destroyers for granted and that is all the more reason why destroyer Captains can be proud of their accomplishments."

Admiral Arleigh A. Burke

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