| I was just looking at the pictures from the North Atlantic in 1966 and thought I would share a tale or two. I had just reported aboard the NAN from the USS NITRO (AE-23) prior to our sailing to the Norwegian Sea. In those days our presence up there was supposed to be SECRET because of our mission. We were tasked with keeping the USS AEOLUS full of fuel and some supplies. The AEOLUS was in the Norwegian Sea laying SOSUS arrays for the US Naval Facility in Keflavik, Iceland. For those of you who don't read Tom Clancy, those are the listening devices that we used to track Soviet (and other) submarines. Since this was a SECRET mission of sorts we had to run interference for the AEOLUS and try and draw the Soviet surveillance vessels from their area so they could lay the arrays. I seem to recall that we were fairly successful at it. We were also dodging and sometimes hiding behind Icebergs. I will see if I can find any photos of them. I know I had some at one time. Also during this deployment, both the NAN and the AEOLUS pulled into Argentia, Newfoundland for a port call. They had just done some major renovating in the club and needless to say our crews sort of got into a scuffle and rearranged their renovations some. The CO of the base sent us both to sea and said don't bother coming back.
The other unique coincidence was that we were up there supporting the laying of those arrays at a site that I would later serve at twice. The first time I was OPS LCPO and Command Senior Chief. My second tour would be as Command Master Chief (the final one as they closed soon there after). After 10 years as an SK, I changed rates to OT. After 23 years as an OT, I retired, somewhat forcibly, after a heart problem.
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