Arthur (Art) Ashmore: January 1 of 1962 we left Key West for Portsmouth, England. The best that I can remember is that it took us about thirteen days to get there. We spent seven days there and us single fellows pretty much stood the watches for the brown baggers. The thing that really stands out in my mind about this part of the trip is that this was the first time I got drunk.

After we left England for the rest of the cruise we would stay in the op area during the day and pull out at night to snorkel and recharge the batteries for the next day.

At one point early on in the cruise we were down to one engine and thought we would get to go home early. We pulled out of the area for a while and rebuilt one engine and went back on patrol. We got back to Key West either in late March or early April, 1962.

Daniel (Danny) Hensley: One of the 'spooks' on the north Atlantic trip was "Crash". He was a guy that monitored the surveillance equipment that we had onboard and looked like the cartoon character "Crash Cargil." He only did things when they were important to that type of thing and always secret. He never could even tell his wife where he went so when I saw him I knew we going somewhere.

When we got to Portsmouth, Ah the girls in England made us feel real welcome, Funny thing was, the name of our boat was also english slang for, well, a big swinging one. We had to be in uniform and they would not let us rent a hotel room as they knew we weren't married. Thank god for merciful taxi cab driver, parked his cab in a alley and went somewhere.

Ahh, pity the poor engineman on the northern trip. All they did is work. I remember standing a few of their watches so they could work. In fact, I stood so many engineroom watches that I was getting no sleep. So, the diving officers would have me stand the pump watch and let me sleep. They would just wake me up if they needed water moved.

Do you remember how the snorkel control valve used to freeze up so we got the mess cooks and seaman to stand by it and if it didn't move hit it with a hammer. Otherwise when the snorkel head dipped under the water and it was frozen open it would flood the engine rooms.

I remember when we would have a couple of false starts and the boat would fill up with smoke so bad you could not see your hand in front of your face. I think it was Sweetpea and I that would go back and bypass the safety circuits and start them. I can't remember what I had to do but it was toward the front of the engine and it was scary with the damn air box covers lifting and not being able to see. It was a welcome sound to hear the mast blow.

Whenever I would have to stand a watch in the engine room it was always the aft one and I can't remember which Electrician it was but one of them liked to scare me with those damn fire balls coming out in the passageway between the cubicles.

I remember the phosphorus glow of the ice coating Chopper, but I am amazed that I do as I had other things on my mind (the fallen Snorkel mast) at the time. When I talked to Captain Miko in January 1999 he mentioned the wedges for the snorkel mast problem on the northern run also but for what ever reason my mind is still foggy on what we really did. Must of been all that booze he fed me afterward.

I am still trying to remember who went up there with me whoever it was did not have to go all the way just far enough to hear me and get what ever I needed to do whatever I was doing. I was afraid to wear very many clothes because we would have had to submerge if radar sweeped us and I did not want anything in my way that would keep me from getting back to the hatch in a hurry.

The Captain told us that if they had to submerge they were going to and we did not have to go into the sail. I told him it was OK as long as he was the one that was going to shut the hatch. Can you imagine me trusting "Down Angle" to do that??

If we did drive wedges we would have had to leave the mast in that position for the rest of the trip and it seems like something like that happened. I don't remember fixing it when we got back. Maybe the yard birds did it and I just don't remember.

I do remember that the steering in the conning tower broke and according to the book we were not allowed to fix it but Captain Miko asked if I thought I could and said yes and did don't think I ever told anybody when we got back and had our inspection for the yards. I had oil all over the conning tower pissed off the QM's big time. Of course this did not make me to happy either since the conning tower drains went to the pump room.

Re Torpedo Problem we had in the foreward room; I slept in a top rack in the forward torpedo room and was asleep when they told us to get out I did not know anything was wrong until on the way out somebody passed out and I picked him up to carry him out and he did not weigh anything, That was a weird feeling.

Ron Medlock says it was Joe Demnicki that went into the foreward room wearing an OBA to get people out.

And the fishing nets. Everybody speculated as to where the fishing nets came from.

Seems that whoever the officer was that was in charge of officers mess found out the Captain liked Pear pie so he went on a search for some pears. Of course, the most logical person was me as I had food stuffed all over that boat.

Anyhow I found some and this officer had either the cook or stewards bake a pear pie and made the mistake of telling Captain Miko. Late that night someone stole the pie.

I still think it was a electrician, but no one would fess up. The officer went nuts trying to find the pie to no avail, threatened everyone, but I figure the threats were a waste of time as it was probably already eaten.

I had so much canned fruit stashed during that trip that the Captain would get up when I had the mid watch to see what we were eating that night so that he might be able to sample.

John J. (JJ) Lynch Cook Well, if you guys can remember, the choice of ingredient for much of a variety for pies was down to almost nothing. The Supply officer, being the low man on the totem pole in the wired room, always was getting shit, and had to do different things at din din. Well Pear pie was on the menu and to make 10/12 pies you would have to have seven #10 cans of pears.

Remember we where on the way back and all that garbage we were stowing on board till we got in the middle of the Atlantic. Well there were lots of pear cans in that garbage. I just could not find enough pears and so I used fruit cocktail. Remember also I made extra bread and pies so you guys could have hot stuff at 0300 or so. Well I made extra pies and told the troops to take 2/3 to eat and YOU KNOW which pies they got, RIGHT, the pear pies, at least some.

The next day at the noon meal in the 'weird room' the Supply officer shot his mouth off and said to the C.O. "..for all you southern boys we have pear pie." That is when the shit hit the fan, because it was fruit cocktail. He came running back to the after battery looking for pear pie and they were serving some on the mess decks. Well, you could not take it from under a guy's nose, so they woke me up to ask where the pear pie was.

OH WELL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.

And that is the rest of the story. I guess I got six bushel baskets of shit over that. I remember Bill Sargent, the Electrician first class who came to me and said that the Apple pie I made was better than his Grandmother's.

I used dehydrated apples as that is all we had then. In the supply system they have pie filling just as your wife buys in the grocery store. All my boats after that never carried the apple pie filling. My cooks would bitch but we got all kinds of compliments on our pies. If you can remember we had the dehydrated apples in a can on the mess table most of the time they where like potato chips and if you ate to many they would blow in you gut and give you a passel of gut achs.

That Northern Trip was something. Fires, flooding, Snorkel head freezing up, engines blew up, you name it, it happened. We even had to dump two of our electric torpedos because of the gasses they were throwing off. The forward room watch actually passed out.

When we got back to Key West and were shipshape again, we had an Operational Readiness Inspection. Captain Miko left all the new guys at the base when we went to sea that day, because the guys who were on the Northern Run were so practiced at handling the real thing that the drills were a piece of cake, and the new guys would have just got in the way.

John (Sweetpea) Pearce: I remember the northern run, when we headed North out of Portsmouth England, seized up #2 engine, blew the air box covers off #1 and couldn't get #4 started? What a way to start a patrol!

Do you know the difference between a sea story and a fairy tale? A fairy tale starts out "Once upon a time" and a sea story starts with "Now this is no shit"

I remember the Northern run that left us with only 3 engines and we weren't even to our patrol area! Everyone was interested in helping. There was a sonarman (Jonesey, I think - Gus Jones) that always came back when we were snorkeling and sat under the main induction. He even came back then and helped us clean pistons and repair the diesels. That was the time Greg Rowell got a load of carbon particles in his face when #1 blew the air box covers off. What a patrol! Dickie Spier and I built a spider using rags & rubber gaskets. We hung him on a string by the after engine room hatch and could sit back by the throttles and drop him on the "unsuspecting"

It seems like the snorkel mast would fall once it was raised beyond the half up position, so you had them raise it just past mid way and put wooden wedges to hold it there. Isn't that correct? Danny Hensley would know!

We Stored ALL trash and garbage in the Fwd Room pit and when we were Key West bound and surfaced, it seemed like it took us days to dump it over the side. Greg Rowell, "Teddy Bear" Luscomb, and I went on deck to change one of the fuel ballast tanks to the regular ballast tank.

That's the same trip one of the cooks baked green bread for St. Pat's Day. Phil Odom had a bad reaction to the food coloring and was really ill. Doc Smith had him racked out in the After Torpedo Room, so he could watch him. Then Dan Hensley and I used to go back aft and tell the TM on watch to keep a close eye on Phil cause the Doc expected him to croak any minute. Of course, we made sure Phil could hear us "whisper". Doc really gave us hell when he found that out!

Gary Riddles: On our northern run, I remember the snorkel mast falling, and Chopper glowing in the dark from phosphorous in the water that had frozen on it when we surfaced.

Remember the crankcase explosion? And the gas attack? I'll not forget the extremely rough seas up north...... 40 to 50 foot waves sometimes. When we got back we looked like we had been depth charged. And, remember finding fishing nets tangled on the back of the boat...