Kowalski’s Non Alphabetical Dictionary for Dummies*

 

One-Eyed Lady: The Periscope aka ‘The Fat Lady’, or a very unfortunate woman.

Screw: A propeller, or what we’d like to do when we get shore leave.

Bug Juice: A ‘Kool-Aid’ type beverage we used to use to clean the heads, but had to stop ‘cause it was corroding the steel. We’re not called ‘iron guts’ for nothing.

Puss Rockets: Hot dogs, or a leaking missile.

Baboon Butt: Corned beef or that stupid white gorilla that ran amuck.

Hurt Locker: Sick Bay or the Captain’s cabin after a Captain’s Mast. Also the Skipper’s alternate cabin.

Captain’s Mast: When the skipper administers punishment (or praise), or a vital piece of equipment from his sailboat.

Oscar: Whatever object we toss over the side to test Man Overboard drills, or when Mr. Morton looked like that movie award.

Ping Jockey: Sonar operator

Sliders: Hamburgers and Cheeseburgers  especially after Angles and Dangles.

Angles and Dangles: Maneuvering the sub up and down. Especially handy for skiing practice.

Jenny: The Oxygen generator or that cute little dish in Accounting.

Baby: The original Flying Sub as in the Skipper’s little dividend.

Banana: Slippery yellow fruit or the Dive Team Leader’s wetsuit.

Apple One: The Diving Bell, or what we have left after one week at sea.

Poopy Suit: Blue coveralls Navy submariners wear. No wonder subs used to be called pigboats.

Gedunk: Treats not supplied by procurement. (Candy Bars, Potato Chips, etc. that we have to pay for)

Pecker Checker: The Corpsman or Doc.

Whiskey: NATO designation  for any old diesel Soviet Submarine, or what the Admiral keeps locked in his cabin or Observation Nose, usually  Glen Livet or Jack Daniels.

Uncertainty Zone: Area an enemy has traveled by calculating time and speed, or what we get into all the time. (mad scientists, aliens, monsters, missing bombs, ghostly possessions, hairy transformations, etc.)

Traffic: Spark’s reference to incoming or outgoing messages, or what we get stuck in on the freeway.

Sneak & Peek: Moving super slow and quiet to find any trace of enemy presence or activity. Also what the fan fiction writers want to do when we’re in the locker room.

Port: Left side of the boat, or an especially fine spirit (not ghostly) locked in the Admiral’s cabin.

Polishing the Cannonball: Taking perfect aim before firing.

Page 13: Disciplinary page in personnel records

Movement: Scheduled departure for a patrol or something Doc makes sure you had while in Sick Bay.

Emergency Blow: Pumping compressed air into Ballast Tanks to force to force water out so we can get to the surface in an emergency, also what some of the guys gotta’ have as soon as we hit port.

Corfam: Officer’s black shoes.

Burst Transmission: Coded message sent in less than one second. Also what Sparks says when the radio is out.

 

 *Disclaimer by Seaview Stories: First definition is actually used in the Navy, second, well, it could only happen aboard Seaview.

 

While just about everyone knows about the USS Nautilus and her trip under the North Pole ice cap, not to many civilians know that it was the USS Skate, under the command of James F. Calvert, that was the first sub to actually surface at the Pole.

 

In addition, the men of the Skate conducted some research experiments, and scattered the ashes of noted Sir Hubert Wilkins there*.

 

*Sir Hubert Wilkins was an Austrailian polar explorer,  pilot, soldier, geographer,orthinologist,and photographer. His life reads like a Harrison Ford movie, including the little known fact that he actually rented a surplus WW 1 submarine (for one dollar), renamed it Nautilus (yes, this is a true story), to sail to the North Pole. The trip was a disaster, plauged with breakdowns and what he was convinced of as sabotage.(the diving planes were found to be missing only 500 miles from the Pole) In the end the trip was aborted and the sub, unsalvageable, was sunk by permission, near a Norweigian fiord.

 

To read more about this remarkable trailblazer, these are justg  few of the  websites containing information about this remarkable voyage:

 

http://www.south-pole.com/p0000106.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hubert_Wilkins

 

 

At her 're-Christening', Lady Suzanne Bennet Wilkins (Sir Hubert' Wilkin's wife) did the honors using a bottle of ice water (Brrr.-well it was Prohibition). One of the guests was none other than Jean Jules Verne, the noted author and visionary's gandson.

 

Lieutenant Commander Sloan Danenhower, USNR, a Naval Academy graduate from the Class of 1907, and recipient of the Navy Cross during WW1, was the captain of NAUTILUS’s 18-man crew. He later retired as a Lieutenant Commander.

See 'Sabotage in the Arctic' by Dr. Stewart B. Nelson, (yes, that's his name) oceanographer, who's expedition discovered the skuttled 'Nautilus' at 1,138 feet under.

 

Under the North pole,Tthe Wilkins-Ellsworth Submarine Expedition, by Sir Hubert Wilkins

 

 

The Real Truth About the Wilkins Polar Sub by Alfred Albelli (Popular Mechanix-Jan 1932)