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Flying Fish

Basil

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This Flying Fish Clipper is an exquisitely detailed model of a Clipper built by Donald McKay in 1851, Boston, MA. This model was built by the former head of our company's Albuquerque Group. He had it displayed in his office for as long as I can remember and I always admired it. When Chuck retired, rather than taking it home, he decided to have a group-wide auction for the ship with proceeds to go to American Cancer charity. I bought several tickets and low and behold, I won! (I never win anything) I've had this stored carefully in a specially designed box for over a year now, but finally got around to setting it out for display. As you can see, there is a large case enclosing the ship, which came with it. As you can also see there is no glass in the case. This is because a few years prior a janitor accidentally shoved a broom handle through the glass. I do plan to take the case to a glass shop and have some tempered glass panels made for the case to keep dust off this lovely ship.

Flying Fish reduced.jpg
 
Pls share more detailed pics.

looks pretty big, if that's a 36" window, back there
 
Beautiful ship.
My point of reference....when I saw the title of the thread...this is what I thought of immediately.
Mine was 669..this one is 673.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Flying_Fish_(SSN-673)

Seahorse?

just looked her up.

"On 24 January 1972, Seahorse ran aground and was stranded for two hours while attempting to put to sea from Charleston. After breaking free, she returned to port for repairs."

were you you on board? Probably mortified her CPT.
 
ET(SS) on board. 71-74, qualified SEP71 (looking at the photo right now when I got my "fish").
Nose coner, SINS, radar, fixed all sorts of stuff...even stuff not our "responsibility".
I should write that up someday.
I DID write up our "pooping" incident....rigged for surface, preparing to dive, hit by a rogue wave.



Sea Horse 669 coming out of Naples in the early 70's, from LL OPS, and
Torpedo Room. Following is a recounting from UL OPS Control Room, and an eyewitness from aft:

I recall the Naples incident distinctly. I still have nightmares about it.
We had just been discussing, with Lt. Fredrickson, I think, the "reasons" we had lost the Scorpion. At that time, it seems the general understanding was they shot the GDU (we called it the TDU) at too great a depth while transiting, it blew the unit when they opened the hull globe valve, shock wave put all crew unconscious, and the salt water went into the battery compartment and blew the bottom out. The claim was they found pieces of the phenolic grating above the cells with the color of the torpedo room floor compressed into it. Seems all SSNs had different colored, and carefully logged, colors on each floor of each deck in each compartment, at least that's what they told us then, and Officers never lied to us, right?
Anyway, we were coming out of Naples in State 4 seas, trying to escape a Typhoon, preparing to dive. The IC of the watch (cannot recall- not Calkins) was in the Bridge Access Trunk to pull the suitcase, OOD and 2 watches still in the sail. OOD looked aft, saw a HUGE wave about to poop us, said "OhMyGod", grabbed both watches around the neck, pulled them in the sail and they held on. We were shoved down to 125 feet with bridge access hatches open, IC man in the trunk, and the fairwater planes still secured for surface.
The maneuvering watch had been secured, I had gone to bed in my upper bunk in the lower level ops forward of the torpedo room, and I heard a horrible roaring noise.
I remember thinking either someone had cracked a flap while blowing sanitaries or we were flooding.
I got down from my bunk, in my skivvies, my feet hit water. I went around the corner and looked up the ladder towards the crew's head. All I could see was water cascading down from the bridge trunk drain in the overhead outside the crew's head doorway. An unknown crewmember was observed trying to push the water away from the power distribution panels also outside the head doorway. I yelled at him to get away from the live panel. About this point, the 1MC cracked to life, the COW was sputtering "flooding......control
room.....now......". I immediately recalled the discussion of the Scorpion, recalled the sprung battery compartment hatch in the deck of the Torpedo Room, and yelled, out loud, "OhMyGod, the batteries!"
I immediately, still in my skivvies, entered the torpedo room, and saw a wall of green water piled against the starboard side of the Torpedo Room, as we were heeled well over to starboard.
I immediately ordered a seaman, also in skivvies, to grab my ankles, and I grabbed his, and we formed a ring around the hatch laying upon the deck. I then ordered the remaining crew in the Torpedo Room to grab the bedding from the hot-bunks strapped to the torpedo racks, and to duct tape us in to the
floor. This they did.
The Horse, by an act of God and the skill of Electric Boat, surfaced itself.
About 15 minutes into this ordeal, the water level had gone down, drain pumps were running to suck the bilges out, and they un-taped us.
I tried to return to my bunk for clothes, but as I stepped into the berthing area, got low current 110v into my feet. I jumped back into the Torpedo Room, looked around the corner, and saw seawater running out of the lights at the battery test station.
Later inspection showed there was one drop of seawater running down the side of the battery hatch, stopped at the seal lip.
The IC man was found unconscious, his fingers were unlocked from the Bridge Access Ladder, and he was removed from the trunk. He was unconscious and beaten to a pulp by all the seawater passing him. He was placed on a table in the crews mess where Doc Bacon worked on him for 20-30 minutes. He was green and looked dead.
I went to the control room to report, still in my skivvies.
If I recall, the DivCom, I thought an Admiral, was aboard, and saw me.
We got dressed and began cleanup after we dived to get away from the storm.
I recall Scalia, maybe, QM with a whole armful of brand new sponges, still compressed, walking into the control room, and throwing them out like frisbees onto the water on the deck of the control room. The Admiral said to him, "That won't do any good", but Scalia said "Oh, yeah? Just watch!" and wherever they hit, they sucked up all the water and came to normal size!
Then he went around with a bucket, picked them up, and wrung them out,and threw them to the next spot. He had the whole control room deck dry in no time.
Dave

I thought we had just finished our change of command and had departed Naples, Italy when we had the flooding in the control room. The sea state was rather rough, and we had not reached the dive point.

We had the Admiral from Naples on board. We were taking waves over the sail and the CO had decided that it would be safer if we brought down the OOD, and lookout. We were making preps to clear the bridges. The AEF had just started up the trunk and we took another major wave. I was in the control room when it all occurred. The wave had pinned the AEF against the floating wire mechanism, and It had knocked the lookout down the ladder, and the OOD was pinned as he was trying to clear the bridge. We took on so much water
that it caused the BCP, IC SWBD, and FC switchboards to short out. All of the ship alarms were sounding at the same time. The COW just got out the word that we had flooding in the control room. We lost all lighting in
the control room, I think it took a long time to clear it all up. I ran behind the FC system and secured the IC & FC switchboard as sparks were flying around the top of the switchboards. I am not sure what the depth gauge indicated before we got back the surface. I think the COW blew the forward group. The water went all the way to the Torpedo room. We were lucky that we got back to the surface, and not lost the OOD and lookout. After that there was more specific direction from SUBLANT on what to do during rough
weather on the surface.

The admiral was on the deck with all of the rest of us cleaning up the residual water in the control room.

As I remember it.
Joe


As a note, I was the on-watch aft electrician during the Naples event. Almost everybody in the boat was sea-sick from the high seas. After the word went out over the 1MC (I remember "water in Control Water in Control" but not the word flooding), I ran to the tunnel to see what was happening, saw water about 6 inches deep coming down the UL-OPS passageway and making it's way down the ladder into the Crews Mess. I **** near crapped my pants; slammed the forward Tunnel Hatch shut and dogged it, shut and dogged the
after tunnel hatch, and Ran to maneuvering to tell them what I saw. Only time I ever entered Manuevering without asking for permission.

Jude
 
That was written for crew members who were there. Terminology is....submarine. ULOps is Upper Level Operations Compartment (second back), three levels, upper is control room (periscopes, fire control [FC] , radar, ESM, Radio, that kind of stuff. To have six inches of salt water on the deck is a serious issue.

This occurred when a pooping wave hit us from the stern, with people on the bridge, exposed in the top of the sail, and one in the trunk.
The trunk is the Bridge Access Trunk, vertical shaft from ULOps. A 30" Water Tight Door is at the bottom, folds upward and is latched in place when fully open.
Another WTD is at the top of the trunk, folds upward, latched in place when fully open.
We were shoved down to 125' (surface is about 20) with both hatches open and latched. There was no way with a 30" column of saltwater to access the lever to close the bottom hatch. The top hatch was fouled with the cabling for the suitcase, the large portable box for the bridge with communication, speed, rudder angle.

The fairwater planes (horizontal surfaces extending out both sides of the vertical sail) are hydraulically operated. When "rigged for surface" the globe valves are shut and red-tagged (nobody touched them until red-tags properly terminated), and to get to them, you must go under the bridge access trunk and forward of the dive station (where the helmsman/planesman sit to control angle, rudder).
We could not get through that column of saltwater to open those valves and drive the boat back up.
 
Seems my thread has been hijacked by the US Navy :congratulatory:
 
Maybe your Flying Fish was hijacked by the US Navy for coastal patrol at some point!
 
Seems my thread has been hijacked by the US Navy :congratulatory:

Here's a link to the Clipper Flying Fish log.

https://www.bruzelius.info/Nautica/Ships/Clippers/Flying_Fish(1851).html

she had a relatively short career, before she wrecked ( but not lost) in 1858, To be resurrected as the El Bueno Suceso.

also here is a link to more than any layman would care to know of the Flying Fish:

https://www.bruzelius.info/Nautica/News/BDA/BDA(1851-11-04).html

image.jpeg

"Flying-Fish": artist, Charlie Ipcar
 
Here's a link to the Clipper Flying Fish log.

https://www.bruzelius.info/Nautica/Ships/Clippers/Flying_Fish(1851).html

she had a relatively short career, before she wrecked ( but not lost) in 1858, To be resurrected as the El Bueno Suceso.

also here is a link to more than any layman would care to know of the Flying Fish:

https://www.bruzelius.info/Nautica/News/BDA/BDA(1851-11-04).html

View attachment 46717

"Flying-Fish": artist, Charlie Ipcar

Cool, thanks for the links.
 
Here's another picture but at night so the sun isn't shining through the window. Also taken at different angle so you can see the detail in the deck.

Flying Fish Night-4.jpg
 
Ship builder, Donald McKay must have been in the esteemed ranks of folks like Edison, Ford, Jobs & Musk, in his day.

always pushing the envelope.

image.jpg
 
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I used to build a mean model boat in my younger days.

Thats me, top left, aged about eighteen. Kit was an all wood plank-on-frame coaster 'Mercantic' made by Billings (who still exist but most of their kits these days are plastic hulled - takes all the skill out of it). I'd just won my class in the UK championships.

Image0003_zpsoiu3mhrf.jpg
 

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I used to build a mean model boat in my younger days.

Thats me, top left, aged about eighteen. Kit was an all wood plank-on-frame coaster 'Mercantic' made by Billings (who still exist but most of their kits these days are plastic hulled - takes all the skill out of it). I'd just won my class in the UK championships.

That's VERY cool, Steve!!
 
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