SSN 680 Plan of the Day
Work continues relentlessly on the ssn-680.org website, one of 393 Cold War submarine websites and part of coldwarboats.org family of websites. Much neglected during the growth activity of the last six months, the situation is improving.
The Logroom Archives have been brought up to current standards, with AI improved large images and documents converted to easy to download pdfs. Every archive has been upgraded, including:
- Commendations
- Correspondence related to Congressman Bates and the boat.
- Crew publications including the Redfish Rag and Deep Doodles.
- Miscellaneous artwork, things, junk and stuff.
- Memorabilia - the Ry Lord collection
- News articles over 30 years.
- A SSN 680 Piping Tab
- A variety of Ship's Qual cards including yours truly
- A variety of Ship's brochures: launching, commissioning, welcome aboard, change of command, and inactivation
- Ship's Post Office: covers and stamps over the years
- Sounds of Boat: ship's alarms, HP blow, torpedo shoot, and the ever dreaded rack curtain opening
- Watchbills: ORSE schedule and forward in-port duty watchbills
It is an incredible collection of artifacts that frame our life on a Cold War submarine, and will literally take you back to your days on the boat, with more memories than you dared imagine.
You must be registered and logged in, but head over to the Logroom Archives on www.ssn-680.org, and you can experience your own personal memories.
If you have any of the above-mentioned items that you'd like to share, please PM or email me so we can preserve these for all our shipmates to enjoy.
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The USS WILLIAM H. BATES (SSN 680) West reunion for 2025, LAS VEGAS 25, is coming together and we need your action and feedback.
First, the critical information.
WHEN: 5 - 8 MAY 2025 - only 167 days away as of today!
WHERE: Tuscany Suites & Casino, Las Vegas, NV
WHO: You, of course, and as many SSN 680 shipmates as we can convince to join us!
Early May should allow us to miss the searing southern Nevada heat. The hotel is located off the strip, so we won’t be bombarded by the bulk of the tourist traffic, but within a relatively short walking distance (15 minutes) for those who wish to take the unique sites, sounds, and smells of Las Vegas in all its glory, and ground transportation is available for those longer trips.
We are not planning activities for this reunion expecting that, given the wide range of entertainment available, group activities will emerge spontaneously. That doesn’t rule out a reunion dinner and the traditional tolling of the bell ceremony, but we will await your feedback before we get carried away.
So, what to you need to do?
Back in June we first announced REGROUPEX 25 as the next USS WILLIAM H. BATES (SSN 680) reunion.
What I expected was not what turned out. Things got complicated.
It had been over seven years since our last REGROUPEX reunion. The bell has tolled for some of those who were with us in Orlando in 2017. All of us are seven years closer to ‘shipping our own oars’. Yet there are still things to do, sights to see, places to go, and sea stories to be told.
Time and tide wait for no man, it is said, and we cannot afford to miss an opportunity for shipmates to gather. Deliberation over the where, when, and what regarding a reunion led us to an unexpected conclusion - that one is not enough!
As a result, 2025 will bring us not one, but two reunions.
The first, to be held in early May, will be organized simply, much in the fashion of REGROUPEX 09 and will take place in Las Vegas, NV, just off the strip and the excitement that is Las Vegas!
Designate contact LAS VEGAS 25!
“The Dink List has grown to unacceptable proportions!”, the COB bellowed at the assembled mass of non-quals in the Crew’s Mess. “There will be no liberty until that, that, that damn list”, his finger pointing at the wrinkled paper taped to the bulkhead, spittle flying from his lips, “is EMPTY!”
At least that’s how I remember it! Your experience may have been either more or less fun.
Our dink list is a bit different, but just as unacceptably long. It represents all the Bates shipmates registered at coldwarboats.org whose email addresses are no longer valid, as indicated by our ‘bounce’ tracker.
If you recognize a name here, and have a way of tracking them down, please do so, post haste, and get them to update their email, street address, and phone number on the website.
And don’t forget to let them know that, until they do, they are missing out on much, including planning for REGROUPEX 25!
- Photos you uploaded to ssn-680.org becoming available on coldwarboats.org.
- All photos to date available at HOMEPORT >> SHIPMATE GALLERIES.
- Your photos are also visible on your user profile.
- Uploading photos can be done by any registered and logged in user.
Having never heard a discouraging word from my shipmates, I suspect many of you haven’t noticed. But surely some of you eagle-eyed observer types have been wondering where the photos you uploaded back in 2009-2011 went.
The good news is, they were never lost, just hiding away in the bowels of our server. During our conversion to Cold War Boats, starting back in 2018, and our last big software upgrade back in 2022, the software that supported displaying those images got left behind. The vendors that supplied those tools were having a hard time making them work under the new content management system upgrades, and still, to this date, haven’t been able to provide a reliable working model.
So, as experienced during our extended training missions with limited supply support, we had to find a work-around, and I’m pleased to announce that all those images you uploaded, and we are talking thousands here, are now (or soon will be!) accessible in our Shipmate Galleries.
