SSN 680 Plan of the Day
“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 It represents all the Bates shipmates registered at coldwarboats.org whose email addresses are no longer valid, as indicated by our ‘bounce’ tracker.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!
| Tim Abney | Robert Jones |
| William Adams | Steven Jonn |
| Terry Allen | John Jors |
| Kent Allen | John David Juda |
| Jeremy Arnold | Kevin Keegan |
| Kevin Bailey | John Kettelle |
| Stanley Baker | Nathan Klein |
| Arnie Ballew | David Kleis |
| Philip Banks | Christopher D Knaggs |
| Richard Barnes | Paul Lachance |
| James Beall | Brian Lally |
| Robert Bell | John Lawrence |
| Micah Bodine | Patrick Lawson |
| Bob Bourgeois | Thomas Litwin |
| Mike Brill | Roger Loesch |
| Dean Brock | Felix Lopez |
| Shawn Brunson | Michael Mahaffey |
| Steve Buchanan | Tom Marcucci |
| Al Camp | Ron McClain |
| James Casper | David McConnell |
| Andrew Chisholm | David McGrath |
| Jarrod Christiansen | Daniel Mitzel |
| Ray Clarke | Chris Moreland |
| William Coleman | Mark Motley |
| Peter Coles | Ray Nelson |
| Paul Cook | Jeffrey Newland |
| Robert Davis | Betsy Oliver |
| Kenneth Deakyne | Robert Paddock |
| Jamison Doty | James Paige |
| Ray Dugger | Matt Pappas |
| Bill Dwyer | Howard Perry |
| Paula Easley | Billie Reed |
| Larry Edens | Robin Rickman |
| Michael Ellis | Anthony (Tony) R. Rollins |
| Chester Faulkner | Steven Rossman |
| Cory Gahley | Carolina Rotenberry |
| Mike Gallagher | Robert Russell |
| Kenneth Gengler | Mark Schneider |
| Nickolas Gray | Rogers Selander |
| Alain Guelbart | James Shackles |
| Donald Gulledge | David Shoemaker |
| Robert Hamilton | Robert Smith |
| Darren Hastings | Ron Squiers |
| Robert Heck | Robert J. Taylor |
| Chade Henry | James Tisdale |
| Joe Hickey | Richard 'Vic' Vale |
| William Houley | Marc Vellat |
| Robert (Bob) Howe | Kevin Wilkinson |
| Eric Jabs | Donald Wilson |
| Bob Jenkins | Andrew Wolff |
| Garth Jensen | Ron Workman |
| William Johnes | Clinton Wright |
| Thomas Jones | William Wright |
If you find your name on this list, and you received the most recent SSN 680 Familygram dated 27 JUN 2024, then no action is required on your part, other than have your chief or div officer drop me a line and let me know you don't belong on the dink list!
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- 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.
It’s been seven years since our last reunion. In 2017, the last time we met in Orlando, the consensus was that we ought to be getting together every three years or so.
2020 came and went, with the lockdown and isolation squashing our reunion hopes fast than you can say “liberty ports confirmed through Hobart!”
2023 looked like a possibility, but the Navy was still restricting access to bases and boat tours, and before we knew it, 2024 was on us like a Sturgeon-class stretch hull on a Victor III - undetected, unexpected, and soon to vanish.
So here we are.
Miles Bradley poked us awake, as surely as a messenger yanking back the rack curtains. Ron Squiers and Scott Elder joined in the conversation, all starting with Miles’ question, “Any more reunions?”
The answer was a resounding yes, and now more than ever, which is how it must begin.
REGROUPEX 25 will be the next USS WILLIAM H. BATES (SSN 680) reunion. At the moment, we don’t know where, and we don’t know when, but we do know how.
That how depends on you…telling us what you think, volunteering to help, making your voice and support heard. After all, it’s you we do this for!
Deck Logs were the UNCLASSIFIED records of ship's position, arrival and departure ports, and significant UNCLASSIFIED events that occurred during an average day in the life of the USS WILLIAM H. BATES (SSN 680).
One could determine the location, how that position was determined, which port the boat departed from, where it was heading, and who had the OOD at any given moment during the day.
Significant events recorded included casting off, mooring, emergencies like fires and injuries, reactor startups and shutdowns, drills that affected the ship as a whole, and even adminsitrative actions like Captain's Mast.
Deck Logs for January, May, and October 1978 have been recently uploaded to the SSN 680 site.
These three months show the full range of ship's activity recorded in the logs, from the sheer boredom of daily routine tied to the pier, through fast cruise, underway surfaced, submerging and surfacing, and drills and routine tedium that help fill our days on the 680. By October, we were somewhere in the Sea of None of Your Business doing what we were trained to do, so the October log is essentially empty, it being classified and all.
This post is for all of you that have been putting off uploading your photos and documents to the SSN 680 website, and even those of you that haven’t!
The SSN 680 website (www.ssn-680.org) continues to develop since it morphed into Cold War Boats. Among the latest improvements is the ability for any registered user (this means you) to upload your precious treasures from back in the day.
Simply point your browser to www.ssn-680.org, or navigate to the site thru www.coldwarboats.org, log in, and you will find, at the bottom of each SSN 680 menu, a new menu item that allows you to upload essentially any digital file to the site. (See the post image above).
