About this time fifty years ago (July 1973) i earned my "submarine dolphins" and qualified to stand the Officer of the Deck watch on the USS Nathanael Greene SSBN 636, a fleet ballistic missile submarine.

The U.S. Nathanael Greene was the second of the original Polaris group of submarines that was converted to the new Poseidan group of submarines.  The U.S. Thomas Jeffferson beat the Greene out of the shipyard conversion by about two months.  Despite being second, but because the Thomas Jefferson crew really messed up during their "missile test period" down in Cape Kennedy, the Greene ended up becoming the pride of the Poseidan group.  I won't get into the details, but that might help give you some sense of my life in the Navy.

Well, let me tell you a little something about the USS Nathanael Greene that you might not know.  The Greene as well as the Jefferson each carried sixteen missiles with "ten nuclear warheads in each missile".  And the nuclear warheads each carried a punch about three times that of the bombs dropped at the end of World War II.

We did not talk much about "targets" when i was on a submarine.  Most of the sailors were like me.  We knew we had targets, but we didn't know who our targets were.  And to tell you the truth, none of us seemed to care that much.  I didn't anyway.  I just assumed that most of what we had was aimed at Russia.  Besides, during a fleet ballistic missile submarine patrol, you do move around (albeit slowly) in some form of coordinated matter where you change your targeting package from one to another.   It was only until i left the Navy that i learned that most of the missiles carried by the submarines as part of our "triad" (i.e., submarines, SAC bombers, and land based) were aimed at "civilian populations".  The out-in-the-boony communication targets were handled by other means.

Our submarine essentially sat around (putting around at about 4 miles per hour) in the North Atlantic when we were on patrol (meaning we were in alert status).  Our submarine was so quiet that you would have had to get within a half-mile of us to know that we were around.  And we could detect you long, long before we would let you get within one-half mile of us.

It was top secret at the time, but the Navy had an underwater sound array system called SOSUS that knew where all the various ships in the Navy were, including non-U.S. submarines.  Back fifty-years ago we were doing "bottom contouring of the ocean bottom", which would serve as another way to get a "absolutely correct position fix" without having to go up to periscope depth to get our "fix" from a satellite passing from one horion to the other.  We used to go to periscope depth twice a day.  U.S. Fleet Ballistic Missile Submarines today (the Trident Group) does not ever have to come to periscope depth.

We used what was called a "trailing wire" so that we were always with communication.  This wire stretched out from the sail of the submarine just so enough its tail would reach the surface where it could pick up the communication.  From my understanding, the Trident Group doesn't have to use a trailing wire to be in communication--which by the way--is in one direction only--incoming.  No outgoing communication is allowed on a U.S. fleet ballistic missile submarine.

Fifty-years ago, the USS Nathanael Greene could have destroyed (if so directed) every city in the United States East of the Mississippi River with a population greater than 50,000.  It could do this while at the same time dropping multi-nuclear bombs on cities like New York (say 8), Washington DC (say 6), Chicago (say 6), etc.

Today, the United States has fourteen U.S. Trident fleet ballistic missile submarines, each with much, much greater capabilities than our poor deprived Nathanael Greene, which was the state of the art at the time.

Of course, as you know, the U.S. is not the only country that has "fleet ballistic missile submarines, including Russia, China, France, United Kingdom, and India (with North Korea talking as though they want to get into the game).

And that is the world we live in.

Not much has changed over the past fifty-years.

ps.  Oh, and btw, i had the privilege one-time after i got qualified on the USS Nathanael Greene and standing the Officer of the Deck watch to receive a message to go to "battlestations missile".  You might want to give some thought as to what that does to you when you are only 99.999% sure that it is a test message.

ps2.  The "sail" of the USS Nathanael Greene SSBN 636 was chosen to be the shrine at Port Canaveral for all the fleet ballistic missile submarines that tested their missile firing capabilities there.