FEARLESS FRIDAY
I am honored to have Charles Cranston Jett as my guest blogger today. Cold War, attack submarines, and the amazing top-secret part he played makes for exciting reading. Enjoy!
Young Naval officers are often exposed
to some of the most sensitive secrets in our government. In particular, the US
Naval Nuclear Submarine force carried out active engagements with the former
Soviet Union throughout the Cold War. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell
put it like this: “The most effective weapons system the United States had
to bring an end to the former Soviet Union was the US Naval Nuclear Submarine
force. The Polaris nuclear submarines (missile carriers) had a gun to their
heads; and the nuclear attack submarines had ‘em by the balls.”
One of the most effective of these
attack submarines was the 637 or “Sturgeon” class which made their appearance
in the late 1960’s. I had the good fortune to be the Electric and Reactor
Control Officer to build the USS Ray (SSN 653) and then served as the
Operations Officer on the first three super-secret missions. Our boat was the
first operational nuclear submarine of this class. The USS Ray is the “Super
Nuke.”
What we did was classified at the top-secret
code-word level, and I sat on these secrets for almost fifty years. With the
permission and clearance of the US Navy, I published a memoir about the
contributions of this magnificent ship to the rest of the nuclear submarine
force both as a tribute to a brilliant crew, to motivate young people to enter
the Naval nuclear power service, and to show the US taxpayer that their money
was well spent.
When “Super Nuke” was published, it rose
to #1 on the Amazon best seller list for Cold War biographies and remained in
that position for over two months.
The story told is how I, as a young
Naval office, created a new concept of training for deploying nuclear
submarines in both the Atlantic and Pacific, created a still-classified
plotting technique called the “Geo Plot” to successfully perform close-in
surveillance of the Soviet submarines, and created the tactical doctrine for
the deployment of the secret electronic and communications intelligence system
from the nuclear submarine platform.
I wasn’t given the task to do this – but
rather did it on my own and took the immense risk of bypassing some of my
superior officers with the concept – mainly because they did not have the
clearance to know what I was doing.
In the end, the program I created was
immensely successful and became submarine force wide – and, as some say, “A
little part of the ‘Super Nuke’ went along with every nuclear submarine
deployment during the cold war.” What I created is now a major flag command.
Charles Cranston Jett has authored six
books – four are non-fiction and two are historical fiction. Non-fiction includes: WANTED: Eight Critical
Skills You Need to Succeed;” “The Doom Loop;” “Field Studies.” And the
historical fiction books include: “Bess;” and “Bess II.” The “Bess series” is
about a young, 21 year old single and gay woman who, in 1908, ventures to far
southwestern North Dakota, homesteads, and builds a large ranch. She fights the
dangers of the early west, copes with her feelings and sexuality, and endures
the prejudices about religion and being gay during a time when that was taboo.
You can find out more about Charles at https://charlescranstonjett.com/
The link to Amazon is: https://www.amazon.com/Charles-Cranston-Jett/e/B00S03T7LC/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1
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