'Fired up' crew of USS Honolulu returns home after eight months
By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer
The fast-attack submarine USS Honolulu returned to her namesake home port yesterday afternoon, after scouting Persian Gulf sites so several of her sister ships could fire the Tomahawk missiles that helped defeat Saddam Hussein.
US Navy
The sailors streamed ashore at Pier Sierra 1 Bravo in Pearl Harbor after a nine-day sail from Guam into the waiting arms of screaming wives and children, including a few babies their fathers were seeing for the first time.
Cmdr. Charles K. Harris and his daughter Charlotte were reunited yesterday at the USS Honolulu homecoming.
Tears poured down Margaret Bemis' face as she presented husband Lt. j.g. Michael Bemis with 5-month-old Augustine. "It's wonderful to be back with her," Bemis said of his wife. "She's so strong."
Some of the more than 130 sailors aboard were disappointed they couldn't stay in the Gulf for the big fight, Cmdr. Charles K. Harris said.
The Honolulu extended its deployment an extra two months to help patrol the Pacific in place of Seventh Fleet subs sent to the war.
During a war that the sailors couldn't watch on CNN while submerged, "there wasn't a lot of anxiety, but there was concern and I would say interest. The crew had a real sense that what they were doing made a difference," Cmdr. Harris said.
"The crew was fired up," said Chief Michael Keck, the Honolulu's chief of boat, the highest enlisted adviser to the captain and sort of a den mother to the men.
"There was some disappointment because they wanted to be in the action, because that's what we train for," Keck said.
Staying deployed eight months instead of six made life aboard the Honolulu even more challenging.
"Imagine 135 men living in a four-bedroom house, and you get an idea of what it is like," public affairs officer Phil Eggman said.
"And you are not only with the same 135 people, you are with them underwater," Eggman said. At one time on this cruise, with extra men being carried, the population of the Honolulu reached 165.
With most submarines getting replenished at sea with food and supplies from surface ships, port calls are fewer and farther between, according to Third Squadron Command Master Chief Richard Rose.
"Training and work are there to occupy their time," Rose said, and men have access to exercise equipment, weights, videos, a library and e-mail from home.
There was plenty of work, Harris said. In one 19-day period in the Persian Gulf, the Honolulu had more than 3,000 sonar "contacts," from small boats, dhows, and even other submarines, he said.
It was also a challenge to navigate in the Gulf's shallow waters — only 250 to 300 feet deep much of the time. At periscope depth, the Honolulu's keel was at 60 feet. Submerged, it drew 180 feet much of the time.
If you were to have stood the 362-foot Honolulu on its end during part of the Gulf deployment, one-third of the sub would be sticking up above the surface, Harris said.
Keck said morale remained high, partly because "the guys who have been around for a while talk to the younger guys," helping the new men with everything. "Before you know it, you fall into the under way groove of day-to-day operations," he said.
Reach Walter Wright at wwright@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8054.
