• Tambor Class Submarine
• Keel laid: August 28, 1939, at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Kittery, ME
• Launched: May 21, 1940
• Commissioned: November 15, 1940
• Displacement: 1,475 tons surfaced; 2,370 tons submerged
• Length:307′ 2″
• Beam: 27′ 3″
• Depth limit: 250′
• Complement: 5 officers, 54 enlisted
• Armament: ten 21″ torpedo tubes, six forward, four aft, 24 torpedoes, one 3″/50 deck gun, two .50 caliber machine guns, two .30 caliber machine guns

On February 8th, the submarine began her 11th and final war patrol. TROUT topped off with fuel at Midway and, on the 16th, headed via a great circle route toward the East China Sea. She was never heard from again.

Japanese records indicate that one of their convoys was attacked by a submarine on February 29, 1944 in the patrol area assigned to TROUT. The submarine badly damaged one large passenger-cargo ship and sank the 7,126-ton transport SAKITO MARU. Possibly one of the convoy’s escorts sank the submarine. On April 17, 1944, TROUT was declared presumed lost.

Japanese records examined after the war showed that destroyer ASASHIMO, presumably an escort in the convoy of SAKITO MARU, detected a submarine and dropped 19 depth charges. Oil and debris came to the surface and the destroyer dropped a final depth charge on that spot. TROUT went down with all 81 hands.

Naval Historical Center

Commander Submarine Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet

Patch(es) were obtained from:
NavSource Online (Submarine Photo Archive).
Patch on left contributed by Mike Smolinski, patch on right contributed by Don McGrogan, BMCS, USN (ret.)

• Gar Class Submarine
• Keel laid: April 3, 1940, at the Electric Boat Co., Groton, CT
• Launched: January 31, 1941
• Commissioned: June 30, 1941
• Displacement: 1,475 tons surfaced; 2,370 tons submerged
• Length: 307′ 2″
• Beam: 27′ 3″
• Depth limit: 250′
• Complement: 5 officers, 54 enlisted
• Armament: ten 21″ torpedo tubes, 24 torpedoes, one 3″/50 dual purpose deck gun, two .50 cal. machine guns, two .30 cal. machine guns

Grayback’s tenth patrol, her most successful in terms of tonnage sunk, was also to be her last. She sailed from Pearl Harbor on January 28, 1944, for the East China Sea. On February 24th Grayback radioed that she had sunk two cargo ships on February 19th and had damaged two others. On February 25th she transmitted her second and final report. That morning she had sunk tanker Toshin Maru and severely damaged another. With only two torpedoes remaining, she was ordered home from patrol. Due to reach Midway on March 7th, Grayback did not arrive. On March 30th ComSubPac listed her as missing and presumed lost with all hands.

From captured Japanese records the submarine’s last few days can be pieced together. Heading home through the East China Sea, on February 27th Grayback used her last two torpedoes to sink the freighter Ceylon Maru. That same day, a Japanese carrier-based plane spotted a submarine on the surface in the East China Sea and attacked. According to Japanese reports the submarine “exploded and sank immediately,” but antisubmarine craft were called in to depth-charge the area, clearly marked by a trail of air bubbles, until at last a heavy oil slick swelled to the surface. Grayback had ended her last patrol, one which cost the enemy some 21,594 tons of shipping.

Grayback ranked 20th among all submarines in total tonnage sunk with 63,835 tons and 24th in number of ships sunk with 14. The submarine and crew had received two Navy Unit Commendations for their seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth war patrols.

Grayback received eight battle stars for World War II service.

Commander Submarine Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet

Patch(es) were obtained from:
NavSource Online (Submarine Photo Archive).

Just thought I’d drop in and express how a little TLC can go such a long way toward building close relationships. I have recently been the benefactor of such TLC and can personally vouch for this.

My suggestion to all of you in relationships…

Find out (a.k.a. ask) what it is that your partner perceives as a gesture that affirms their importance to you. For some it may be affirming words, for others a little gift received, for others a little flirting or just an affirming touch. Be a student and apply what you discover. It’s all in the small things. We all need something and it’s always “intuitive” to give what we want in return. WRONG!

Give what they perceive, not what you perceive as affirmation and don’t be stingy!

Earlier this week we decided that at least for now we would not move to Alaska. This question was on the table in late July of 2006. It is nice finally make a definitive decision. In the end there was no one single deciding factor. It all comes down to what we sum up as timing. It’s kind of vague but then so is that feeling inside. The move is not permanently off the table but it is definitely shelved for now. For both of us there is a kind of sadness, but time to move on and plan for the now.

Part of this process revealed to me that I have limited myself too much over the years. What I’m doing and where my family is headed is like a maze where we are wondering with no distinct plan on how to get out. I am toying with using vacation time to create a few months of 3 days weekends starting this summer. I can use that extra time and a slew of creative financing to launch myself into a prospective career change on a part time basis. The ideas are simmering, more on it when the kettle starts to whistle.

Now here’s a story with a happy ending. Laptop gets stolen; laptop reports to it’s location to owner; owner contacts police; police contact ISP; ISP details laptops’ location; laptop is retrieved by police; laptop is returned to its rightful owner.

Missing laptop found in ET hunt

USA Today February 21, 2007, 2:54PM ET

A Herbie movie all over again. Regardless of whether there’s extra-terrestrial life, it is nice to know that the search is yielding something to benefit mankind.

When you are with some people long enough you can begin to see the emergence of signs that there are issues that lie deeper but that the person is either unwilling to reveal or unknowledgeable about there existence.

These are things you’d never notice or even suspect existed. It can be years later that these become evident or it can be within days. The key to noticing these things has to do with peeling away the layers of artificiality that we all create to protect ourselves from our greatest fears. I have noticed that it is not that top layer which I’ll call “social courtesies”; it’s a layer deeper than than somewhere beyond sharing of simple facts or even opinions. When a relationship penetrates to the layer in which we start divulging our emotions is when these signs start to appear.

An aside, I want to be careful to note that for some people there are multiple levels of emotions. The emotions we have which have no real depth and insight into who we really are, and the true honest emotions. Examples of this might be sitting with an acquaintance and sharing that you are really annoyed with cashiers that do not have adequate training, or when you tell a friend that they’ve offended you but you soften it so much (in order not to offend them) that it’s watered down. True emotions are the ones that reveal who we really are. They are the things that are the pathways to deeper fears, insecurities, inadequacies and doubts. These emotions can be both positive and negative. Either extreme leads to our core.

Back to the topic, the true emotions begin to reveal something about us. Things we are holding back. They might be resentments, love, guilt or joy. As more and more of these are exhibited an observer can begin to form an opinion on what lies beneath. This is where wisdom and insight are needed in abundance.

I suppose it would be like analyzing the sun’s surface. The more we see of the true nature of the bubbling surface the more we begin to formulate theories about what must be going on deep down in its crushing inferno.

I have been pondering relationships a lot lately, all for a variety of reasons. I have no so much pondered casual, friendly, social interactions as I have been keenly focused on the deep meaningful “true friend” relationships.

What does it take to create a relationship in which I can pour out my soul if I need to?
Can these relationships be “created” or must they happen naturally?
What if I think is have a safe place to share the “deep me” and I find out it was not safe?
What will others think of me if they know the real me?
How can a relationship be created if the deep need does not currently exist (i.e. things are going pretty good)?
How do I know if a person is someone that I want to pour my soul out to?

If any of my lurking audience has any ideas and thoughts about these topics, your feedback would be greatly appreciated since I want to discuss these topics and more with a group of men.

• Gato Class Submarine
• Keel laid: May 15, 1941, at the Electric Boat Co., Groton, CT
• Launched: March 6, 1942
• Commissioned: June 19, 1942
• Displacement: 1,526 tons surfaced; 2,424 tons submerged
• Length: 311′ 9″
• Beam: 27′ 3″
• Operating depth: 300′
• Complement: 6 officers, 54 enlisted
• Armament: ten 21″ torpedo tubes, six forward, four aft, 24 torpedoes, one 3″/50 deck gun, two .50 cal. machine guns, two .30 cal. machine guns

On February 1, 1943, the submarine was ordered to move north and patrol the western approaches to Buka Passage. She complied with these directions and made her first radio report on February 3rd. Amberjack had made contact on February 1st with a Japanese submarine 14 miles southeast of the Treasury Islands. She also claimed to have sunk a two-masted schooner by gunfire at a position 20 miles from Buka on the afternoon of the 3rd. At the time of this report, the submarine was ordered to move south along the Buka-to-Shortland shipping lane and to also patrol east of Vella Lavella.

In a second radio transmission on February 4th, Amberjack reported having sunk a 5,000-ton freighter laden with explosives in a two-hour night surface attack on the 4th. During this engagement, one crew member was killed by machinegun fire and one officer was wounded in the hand. On the 8th, the submarine was directed to move to the west side of Ganongga Island. Two days later, she moved south to cover the traffic routes from Rabaul and Buka to Shortland Island.

The last transmission was received from Amberjack on February 14th. She reported having been forced down on the 13th by two destroyers, and that she had recovered an enemy aviator from the water and taken him prisoner. All further messages to the vessel remained unanswered. The submarine was reported as presumed lost on 22 March 1943.

Naval Historical Center

Commander Submarine Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet

Patch(es) were obtained from:
NavSource Online (Submarine Photo Archive).
Originally contributed by Mike Smolinski.

In the arena of network television it seems a bit unusual to predict a characters demise. I mean, it is assumed if you’re a new character on Star Trek and you go down to the planet that you’re history. But to predict the demise of a main character with the only open question being “how?” is unusual and intriguing.

A little more is revealed in our ongoing series about survivors of a plane crash Lost on an island in the Pacific.

Postulations on the direction of a television show. No need to read on unless you are a fan of the Lost television show.

Has anyone considered that both Claire and Sawyer were under a needle?

In Claire’s case it had something to do with her unborn child.

In Sawyer’s case he was “told” it had to do with his heart - but we later found that to be a fabrication. What did they actually do to Sawyer? Was the story he was given just a distraction so that everyone would forget that “something” was done to Sawyer?

I’m not one to propose crazy Lost theories, but these are the facts as well as the fact that we KNOW a fertility doctor impregnated a MALE mouse.

Was Sawyer impregnated? Would Claire’s child have anything to do with this? A clone perhaps, but regardless there is a case for something happening to Sawyer.