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No...I wasn't on her then. I got an early release from the Navy to go to college (got out in October instead of December) So I was in college with some very disturbed Iranian students. Most were pretty upset about it, but there were a couple of dickheads who needed to get their noses punched in. I liked nearly all the Iranians I met, except for those two.

When I was in "A" school in Millington, TN back in 1975, there were a whole boatload of Iranian guys studying how to fix jet engines. The Shah's boys. And they were a really funny bunch of guys. I have often wondered what happened to those men.

I was an airdale, but had a lot of respect for you guys. I was never cut out for working below decks. Never felt safe. Had a nightmare one time, ship had been attacked and was sinking, I was in the water several hundred feet astern of her, when her bow begins to rise out of the water. I'm treading water, looking up that this thing...going up...up...vertically hundreds of feet above me, then...begins to fall right my way on top of me, then I woke up before it hit me. Whew. I could have never been a snipe or a submariner. I always thought that took a certain mindset.

The closest I came to getting killed wasn't in "The Hole". I was A-Gang and when we went to the MED first time I was T.A.D. to the Boat Shop as a boat snipe. I about got my ticket punched laying up against the windshield one morning of a PB {officers boat} waiting to make a run. I heard someone yell my name {first name} to jump and I dove into the deck as I looked back a swell had caught the boat and smashed the windshield against the Deck House ladder. I didn't think anymore about it till I got home on leave a few months later. My dad picked me up at the airport and asked if I had been in danger. I said yea once and told him. He said that my mom woke up yelling for me to jump. Add to that most guys I worked with didn't use my first name they called me by a nick name I had. Weird one.

Bad dreams? LOL, when I got out I got married and one night woke my wife up yelling get out get out now FLOODING!! LOL I was getting dressed and thought the compartment was flooding. I hadn't been in any floods. I was on Fire Department for 9 months a lot of it as 1 on 1 but never a flood. Oh well.

Apparently you and I did a lot of steaming together. I was active Jan '75 to Jan '81. Was delivered to the South Carolina(CGN-37) Oct of '76, via the Nimitz. Did a lot of Med cruises, spent the year 1980 of the coast of Iran. I was an FTM.