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Comment by NavyDads CoAdmin Jim Gramza on September 29, 2022 at 11:34am

Navy Boot Camp

As a former Recruit Division Commander (Navy Drill Instructor), I have trained recruits at Recruit Training Command, Great Lakes, for nearly 4 years out of my 20-year Navy career. So not only have I gone through Navy Boot Camp; I have also instructed it. Having been on both sides of the Recruit Training “fence,” I have all the insight and perspective needed to give you an “inside look” at Navy Boot Camp.

Author, D.E. Sawleht

You can also find me on the Navy Dads FaceBook page!

Comment by NavyDads Admin (Paul) on July 30, 2018 at 10:01pm

got really sidetracked away from the military books but just finished listening to 

From the publisher:
This instant New York Times bestseller—“a jaw-dropping, fast-paced account” (New York Post) recounts SEAL Team Operator Robert O’Neill’s incredible four-hundred-mission career, including the attempts to rescue “Lone Survivor” Marcus Luttrell and abducted-by-Somali-pirates Captain Richard Phillips, and which culminated in the death of the world’s most wanted terrorist—Osama bin Laden.

In The Operator, Robert O’Neill describes his idyllic childhood in Butte, Montana; his impulsive decision to join the SEALs; the arduous evaluation and training process; and the even tougher gauntlet he had to run to join the SEALs’ most elite unit. After officially becoming a SEAL, O’Neill would spend more than a decade in the most intense counterterror effort in US history. For extended periods, not a night passed without him and his small team recording multiple enemy kills—and though he was lucky enough to survive, several of the SEALs he’d trained with and fought beside never made it home.

“Impossible to put down…The Operator is unique, surprising, a kind of counternarrative, and certainly the other half of the story of one of the world’s most famous military operations…In the larger sense, this book is about…how to be human while in the very same moment dealing with death, destruction, combat” (Doug Stanton, New York Times bestselling author). O’Neill describes the nonstop action of his deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, evokes the black humor of years-long combat, brings to vivid life the lethal efficiency of the military’s most selective units, and reveals details of the most celebrated terrorist takedown in history. This is “a riveting, unvarnished, and wholly unforgettable portrait of America’s most storied commandos at war” (Joby Warrick).

Good read though there a lot about BUDS of which I've read much....

Comment by NavyDads Admin (Paul) on December 11, 2017 at 2:19pm

just started:

so far - Excellent !!!

a review:

About the Book

THE FIRST MEMOIR BY A USS ARIZONA SURVIVOR: Donald Stratton, one of the battleship's five living heroes, delivers an "epic,"* "powerful,"** and "intimate"** eyewitness account of Pearl Harbor and his unforgettable return to the fight. A TOP-TEN NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!
At 8:06 a.m. on December 7, 1941, Seaman First Class Donald Stratton was consumed by an inferno. A million pounds of explosives had detonated beneath his battle station aboard the USS Arizona, barely fifteen minutes into Japan’s surprise attack on American forces at Pearl Harbor. Near death and burned across two thirds of his body, Don, a nineteen-year-old Nebraskan who had been steeled by the Great Depression and Dust Bowl, summoned the will to haul himself hand over hand across a rope tethered to a neighboring vessel. Forty-five feet below, the harbor’s flaming, oil-slick water boiled with enemy bullets; all around him the world tore itself apart.
In this extraordinary never-before-told eyewitness account of the Pearl Harbor attack—the only memoir ever written by a survivor of the USS Arizona—ninety-four-year-old veteran Donald Stratton finally shares his unforgettable personal tale of bravery and survival on December 7, 1941, his harrowing recovery, and his inspiring determination to return to the fight.
Don and four other sailors made it safely across the same line that morning, a small miracle on a day that claimed the lives of 1,177 of their Arizona shipmates—approximately half the American fatalaties at Pearl Harbor. Sent to military hospitals for a year, Don refused doctors’ advice to amputate his limbs and battled to relearn how to walk. The U.S. Navy gave him a medical discharge, believing he would never again be fit for service, but Don had unfinished business. In June 1944, he sailed back into the teeth of the Pacific War on a destroyer, destined for combat in the crucial battles of Leyte Gulf, Luzon, and Okinawa, thus earning the distinction of having been present for the opening shots and the final major battle of America’s Second World War.
As the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack approaches, Don, a great-grandfather of five and one of five living survivors of the Arizona, offers an unprecedentedly intimate reflection on the tragedy that drew America into the greatest armed conflict in history. All the Gallant Men is a book for the ages, one of the most remarkable—and remarkably inspiring—memoirs of any kind to appear in recent years.
*New York Post
**Library Journal

Comment by NavyDads Admin (Paul) on October 19, 2017 at 10:26pm

Just finished....pretty good....not great-
a review I saw-

We know the iPhone as the device that transformed our world, changing everything from how we talk to each other and do business, to how we exercise, travel, shop, and watch TV. But packed within its slim profile is the fascinating, untold story of scientific, technological, and business breakthroughs--global in scope, sometimes centuries in the making, and coming from vastly different disciplines--that enabled Apple to create the most profitable product in history.

For all the time we spend swiping, tapping, and staring at iPhones, you think there would be few things we didn't know about these gadgets. But think again.

is a Magic School Bus trip inside the iPhone--traveling into its guts, peeling back its layers, and launching explorations that take us to the driest place on earth and a Mongolian lake of toxic sludge, down the Silk Road, into 19th century photography, and all the way back to Cupertino, California, where members of the original design team reflect on the earth-shattering work they did.

As multifaceted as the invention it follows, The One Device is a roving, wide-lens approach to tech history that engages the imagination as it explores the marvel of engineering that millions of us use each day. 

Comment by Val on September 23, 2017 at 8:25am

Thank you. It was quite sudden, which makes it a bit harder.

Those all sound interesting; I think I read the Mahaffey book when it first came out. (I love to browse the new nonfiction section of our library.)

Comment by NavyDads Admin (Paul) on September 22, 2017 at 12:56pm

So very sorry for your loss Val.  Prayers out for strength during this difficult time. 

Currently listening to: The Vaccine Race: How Scientists Used Human Cells to Combat Killer Viruses by Meredith Wadman.

Part way thru Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges. That is tough going as Hodges is a British author and he's kinda hard to read.

Recently finished: 

Code Warriors: NSA's Codebreakers and the Secret Intelligence War Against the Soviet Union by Stephen Budiansky and Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters: From the Ozark Mountains to Fukushima by James Mahaffey

 

Comment by Val on September 22, 2017 at 11:52am

Hi Paul,

What sort of tech/biomed/medical stuff? I have been off my reading, as I just lost my mother unexpectedly. I had been reading a young adult series I had never read, and some old sci-fi (Asimov).

Comment by NavyDads Admin (Paul) on September 22, 2017 at 10:35am

I've moved away from military stuff for awhile....kinda back to my roots so to speak and have been reading/listening to tech/biomed/medical stuff recently......how about everyone else?  What have you all been reading? 

Comment by NavyDads Admin (Paul) on August 3, 2017 at 9:51pm

there is a discussion in the book very close to that....talking about "Crazy Ivan's"---not exactly like the movie but pretty crazy! Just finishing the section about Tautaug: This is from Wiki- On 20 June 1970, Tautog was patrolling the North Pacific Ocean near the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, on the Soviet Union's Kamchatka Peninsula, which was a major base for missile-armed submarines of the Soviet Navy. Tautog was attempting to trail the K-108, a Soviet Navy Echo II-class guided missile submarine nicknamed "Black Lila". The Soviet submarine was "close aboard" with Tautog, unaware that Tautog was in the vicinity, and the two submarines were within feet of one another for a lengthy period. Unable to determine the depth of the K-108, as new depth-finding hydrophones had not yet been installed, the American submarine was at a disadvantage in such close quarters. At some points the hydrographic equipment aboard Tautog registered zero distance between the submarines. At another point "Tautog's" hydrophone operators assumed the K-108 had risen to near the surface, placing the Soviet submarine directly above Tautog. Then the operators determined the Soviet vessel was descending. The trace on the oscilloscope, that gave the American submariners at visual reference as to the distance of the K-108, disappeared. Just as the captain began to say the Soviet sub was coming close aboard again, K-108 slammed belly first into the top of the Tautog's sail, proof the Soviet vessel had been descending from directly above. The K-108's massive screws came into contact with the steel of the Tautog's sail and lost one screw. This was confirmed by hydrographic sound of a turbine running away aboard the Soviet sub, being no longer coupled to a propeller.[5]Tautog suffered damage to her sail. As Tautog proceeded away from the site of the accident, her crew heard what they believed was K-108 breaking up and sinking.[6] When Tautog arrived in Pearl Harbor, a large portion of one of K-108's screws was found embedded in her sail. Over thirty years later, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was revealed that K-108 had actually been able to return to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. The former captain of the K-108, Boris Bogdasaryan, was able to provide a concise narrative of the collision. The collision resulted in no casualties aboard either submarine.

Comment by NavyDads CoAdmin Jim Gramza on August 3, 2017 at 9:21pm

"You gotta know when to flinch."

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