Friday, April 21, 2006

Antarctica, Chilly Willy and a One Man Submarine

Fellow submariner, blogger and warm climate creature Gus Van Horn has a recent post “Cool Antarctica Stuff” about the movie The March of the Penguins and other cool Antarctica stuff. Reading his post brought back memories of Operation Deep Freeze and a neighbor of mine named William.

Operation Deep Freeze was part of the U.S government's scientific research and exploration effort in Antarctica. The Navy use to support Operation Deep Freeze out of NAS Quonset Point, RI with Seabees, C-130 aircraft and Huey helicopters up until Quonset was closed in 1972. There was even a little museum on base complete with stuffed Penguins, Odd crystal rock formations that looked like eggs and artifacts from early Antarctic expeditions.

William, Willy or Bill was a huey helo mechanic and had the good fortune to make two tours to Operation Deep Freeze and not the other effort at the time in SE Asia. Bill hated the cartoon Chilly Willy, I don’t know if it was the name or if he just had enough of the Antarctic and penguins. Being a smart-ass 13 year old I would on occasion call him Chilly Willy, which would result in my mini-bike not getting fixed when it broke down, Bill being my go to mechanic.

Anyway, if you remember that OLD cartoon Chilly Willy here’s a link to a 1965 episode titled “UNDER SEA DOGS” (10mb .wmv) complete with a one man nuclear submarine.

Submarine Commander Shortsnot kinda looks like one of my old COs….. once downloaded it’s about a 5 ½ min run time, enjoy.

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