Don't miss this review of a new book on the submarine service. It's a history of submariners worldwide, and it sounds like an interesting take on the business.
Leonardo da Vinci... refused to actualize his design for a submersible for the benefit "of men who practice assassination at the bottom of the sea."To some degree that characterization is even more apt in the age of the "boomer." In theory, the boomers lay under water precisely in order to engage in nuclear assassination--in order that, even if America's cities and silos were wiped out by the Soviets, we could still return the fire. The threat they represented was one of the major reasons not to engage in "nuclear war-fighting," as the Soviet doctrines called it. America never believed in nuclear war-fighting: our military preferred the Mexican standoff. The Chinese, who were even more sanguine about the possibility of winning a nuclear exchange, are the current foes who have to be kept at bay.A coroner's court in Kinsale, Ireland, agreed with Leonardo that assassination was indeed the business of submarines, when on May 10, 1915, it declared "the Emperor and the Government of Germany" guilty of murder in the sinking of the Lusitania. Any doubts that the chivalry of maritime combat had become one of the first casualties of submarine warfare had been laid to rest barely three weeks into World War I, when the U-9 singlehandedly sank the British 7th Cruiser Squadron off the Hook of Holland. And there was another, especially sinister feature to this encounter -- after having torpedoed the British cruiser Aboukir, the captain of the U-9 then lingered to pot the two British cruisers that rushed to rescue the Aboukir's drowning crew. The message was clear: Any captain who slowed to rescue shipwrecked sailors or loitered off an invasion beach offered his ship and crew to ambush by these heartless killers of the deep.
It's an interesting argument. I've had two close friends in the submarine service, and I have to say that they make good friends. People who learn to keep their cool in those close quarters for months at a time, and under the kinds of stresses that go with the nuclear service, are people you can rely on utterly. However morally complicated the role of the submariner, the man himself is likely to be one of the best the Navy has to offer.
It's also amusing that there are a series of hand gestures I've never seen anyone use except submariners. They replace the more common sweeping hand gestures that most Americans use with gestures close to the body, elbows in, short and sharp. I don't know if they're even aware of it, but I'm sure it comes from a life of having to gesture in places with very little room, and many buttons that you shouldn't strike by accident.
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