We Have the Biggest Targets

The US is talking about sending a carrier through the Taiwan Straight; a move that, as far as I can tell, would serve no purpose other than pissing off the Chinese and endangering the aircraft carrier. That seems counterproductive to me. Pondering that thought took me back to my days in “the silent service.”

Submarines are the original stealth machines. Stealth is our thing. It’s what we do best. It’s the one thing we do better than sinking enemy ships. It’s comforting to know that they can’t blow you up if they can’t find you.

Aircraft carriers are sort of at the opposite end of the spectrum, and we always thought that you had to be nuts to want to be on one of those damned things.

We were coming back to Submarine Base New London and for some reason had set the “special sea detail” earlier than usual. (I never figured out what was “special” about it, as it was really the only “sea detail” we had, and was set both entering and leaving port.) As we entered Long Island Sound we passed an aircraft carrier going the other way.

Carriers were not as large then as they are now, but from our viewpoint three feet above the waterline, that sucker looked pretty big to us. We looked at each other, two minds with but a single thought as Tom said to me, “How do you miss a target that fucking big?”