SLMM Team playing cards
in Silver Springs, MD
SLMM Team playing cards
in Silver Springs, MD
Part of my time in the mine force was spent on the SLMM team. What that acronym stood for was Submarine Launched Mobile Mine. It was a brand new specie of mine. Not a new type in general, but a spanking new design of that type.
What was it for? Say the enemy has a harbor which the Navy wants to mine. But that harbor is too well defended. There might be a nearby military airfield or perhaps an artillery battery able to pick off any US mine-laying ships or planes. You must realize that when laying mines the pilot, ship's crew, or whoever holds no prospect of being around to see the boom! when the mine goes off. That is if ever the mine should go off, which most of them don't since everyone steers clear of where mines are known to be. The result is that there is rather less thrill, less obvious sign of accomplishment in laying a mine field. You fly in with the enemy shooting at you and all that you've to offer in return is a thing that goes plook! when it falls in the water. What is the point? you might wonder if you were a pilot. Somehow it fails to rally a deep sense of volunteerism. Go figure...
So instead what you do, if you are the Navy, is design a mine which will deliver itself. So the Submarine Launched Mobile Mine was a kind of a hybrid. Like a centaur or mermaid it was half and half. The front half of the SLMM (say like slim) was a mine, the back half an electric torpedo.
It had a fair range. The idea was that a submarine could head towards said, protected harbor shooting mobile mines out the font. Then before it got too close the boat could hang a sharp U-turn and then run away while shooting still more mines out the back. The mines would then deliver themselves. Like a school of fish they'd swim into the harbor, river, or whatever. Then when they got there the SLMM's would burry themselves in the mud. Being electric, they made hardly any noise and also left no turbine exhaust trail the likes of which you may have seen in WW2 movies. Kind of elegant, for a weapon. As navy toys went, these were pretty fun to play with.
But that particular design was then still in the experimental stage. Civilian engineers were at work fine tuning all the particulars. The SLMM team of which I was a member formed the military component thereof. There were something like six of us, aside from Senior Chief Balderrama and also Lieutenant Gentry. We all went quite a few places together, following those engineers around.
Often it was almost like not being in the navy at all. Mostly we wore special jump suits, with our civies underneath. We stayed in hotels and ate out every night. For a couple months once we even stayed at the Marina Surf Hotel just three blocks from Waikiki Beach in Honolulu.
More often than not we semi-segregated our team into two sub-cultures. Mostly this fell along the division between the upper ranks and the lower. There was also another, according to personal choice of recreational chemical poison: those who's preference was ethanol, and those who's preference was, err...something else. There did not exist a clear line of demarcation except, perhaps, in the minds of the purists among the group which I think of as aspiring alcoholics. (No disparagement whatever is here intended, since by any definition, I too, although not a purist, fit well into that category.) In between both these camps there also existed kind of cultural gray area where some claimed equal allegiance to both. And here was where I counted myself during that era. And had I to give up one for the other, I would surely have chosen the second. I do not belong to either now, I'd like you to know. But neither do I reflect upon those prior indulgences with regret. I'll not become a hypocrite to that degree. My present life style stems simply from having better and more entertaining things to do with my time and money. But I digress...
This tale has to do with the first camp, the AA's, of which Gentry and Balderrama were very accomplished practitioners. In this kind of crowd, as you may well already know, there is a game called Who shall pay for the next round of drinks? For quite some number of prior matches Gentry had proven himself to be a top contender. He was in fact the all-around champ, in that his funds were still fully intact. He had yet to buy any drinks, on any round, on any night or in any tavern where the SLMM team had yet to congregate.
His technique was simple and elegant. He made certain to arrive with nothing less than a fifty dollar bill in is wallet. The waitress or barman would always hesitate to cash it because in 1977 this was no small chunk of change.
Gentry's ploy, though ingenious, had begun to lose its glamour. And Senior Chief Joe Balderrama was starting to tire for want of its fading novelty. Come next payday Senior Chief got the team together, sans Gentry, and staged a coup. In handing out the checks he instructed that come evening none may join the festivities unless they arrive with nothing less than hundred-dollar bills in their wallet. Come the moment, Senior Chief was the very first to produce is Franklin. Then one at at time so did we all. That night Gentry bought the drinks, all of them if memory serves.