Today’s my 50th Submarine Qualification anniversary. En route for Pearl from WesPac I told the qual officer, Lt Durbin, on the 7th that I was ready. He had me meet him on the bridge that night on the 2000 X 2400. He kept me up there answering questions for nearly 4 hours. The The waves were just bad enough to come up through the bridge deck. I was soaking wet from the waist down. He then told me to meet him in the FTR at 0800 the next morning. By 1130 I was a live an’ kickin’ ginuwine qualified submariner. Damn it felt good.

What felt better was getting to give a non-qual Ltjg that reported aboard the week I did a bad time. But that’s another story. The photo below was taken at an inspection shortly after we returned and just before entering PHNSY. The skipper is just kinda pretending to pin ‘em on. I know Jim Duke qualified on that trip back to Pearl also. And I’ve seen a photo of him taken on the same day as this one.