Welcome to the USS New York City SSN-696 Guestbook Forum

On New York City SSN696 commissioning crew, also Dace SSN607, Decommissioning crew Simon Bolivar SSBN 641.
Retired 94

Best boat ever! T-bone, G-lo, Snow, E-dog, Naka, The Big Nasty, Ugly, C-Holt, Malik, Gangsta Bitch, Freeman, JD, Antonio “Boom Boom” Padilla and the list goes on. Hope y’all doing ok!

Gonzalez I cook for the crew of the NYC 696 from 1989-1992 it was good times in the galley and good food at the Big Apple. I’m in San Antonio alive and kiking

Quick Notes on NYC 696 crew of late 1979 thru 81… Tim Belty died at 56 years of age, found on SSIndex, but feel free to prove me wrong. Wild Mild Will Chapoton was involved Motion Pictures (More or Less) Dwane “Tex” Odom is hiding out in Dallas TX after adventures in the swimming pool industry in The Woodlands TX where I live at the moment… Dwane, I was kidding about the money you never paid back to my parents, God Kid, I was “the bank of the boat” but never GD Wells Fargo bank! Call sometime.

I was assigned to the USS Samuel N. Moore (DD-747) from June 1959 to May 1962, a destroyer home-ported in Long Beach, CA and assigned to Destroyer Squadron 23 (DesRon-23). This was my first shipboard duty in my career. The first time underway was my first time of “absolute sea-sickness”. I spent the first day underway “manning the rails”. Once I got that out of my system, never was sea-sick again (well, maybe a little “woozy” when riding out a typhoon or two).

I first started out in the Deck Division for several months. This was the low-life duties of chipping paint, painting “Red Lead” primer, and painting lots of “Haze Grey” and “Deck Grey” throughout the ship. I also got the great duty assignments of “Scullery duty” and “KP duty”, not to mention the cleaning of “Heads” (Navy Restrooms).

I was later offered an option to get into the medical division as a corpsman striker, working under HMC “Doc” Ben Mayotte until his retirement in 1960. Since I was so fed up with the Deck Division duties, I absolutely said “YES” to the inter-division switch, knowing it had to be a much better “racket”.

During my duties in the Medical Division, I learned quite a lot in First Aid, Minor Surgery, Pharmaceuticals, and Microscopic Biological Research. I learned to make some of the best “Terpin Hydrate” Cough Syrup on the west coast, 190-proof. Seems there was a lot of demand for my “special cough syrup” when at sea. Any time we deployed overseas, I assisted in giving all the necessary shots to the crew, like Typhoid, Tetanus, DTP, Chickenpox, etc. I never did like needles. The first time giving shots, I thought I was going to pass out, but later I got over it. I really got good at giving penicillin shots in some of the shipmates rear-ends while we were overseas.

Towards the expiration of my first enlistment, I was offered Hospital Corpsman School in San Diego if I re-enlisted for another 4-year term. I thought it over and determined that this was not for me; that I wanted to get into electronics.

Since there were no open billets in the “ET” (Electronic Technician) gang, the next best thing was to get into the “Radioman” gang.

The last few months that I was attached to the USS Moore, I joined the communications division as a radioman striker. Since my main interest was electronics, this was as close as I was going to get into the electronics field. I eventually “shipped-over” (re-enlisted) under the STAR program that guaranteed an “A” School for me, and if I graduated in the top 10%, I would be advanced to pay grade E-4. I re-enlisted and it got me the orders to Radioman “A” School in San Diego upon completion of my tour of duty on the Moore.

During my duty on this ship, we made two WestPac deployments of about 6 to 7 months each, visiting Hawaii and the countries of Japan, Okinawa, Hong Kong, and the Philippines. Hong Kong was a great liberty port. I had a couple of custom-made suits and a “white sport-coat” made on my first visit there, that were very inexpensive. Visited the “Tiger Balm Gardens” that was a very impressive Chinese “fantasy land”.

We also made trips up to Seattle and Everett, WA; and operations at sea off the coast of Mexico. We also conducted cold weather operations off the Aleutian Islands of Alaska.

While attached to the Moore, we participated in a couple of 1962 nuclear tests, designated “Operation Dominic I” in the Pacific. One of the tests was conducted near Christmas Island & the second was off the coast of southern California.