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Uel W. Smith Interviewer: Matt Costantino Date of Interview

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Uel W. Smith Interviewer: Matt Costantino Date of Interview Narrator: Uel W. Smith Interviewer: Matt Costantino Date of Interview: 09.14.16 Location: Growler Reunion at the Charleston Airport Hotel in North Charleston, SC Transcriber: Audio Transcription.Org Date Transcript Approved: 04.05.17 Project ID: OHP 113 Note: Text enclosed in brackets [ ] indicates information and edits that were added by the narrator after reviewing the transcript. Therefore, this information is not present in the interview’s video format. (0:00:11 – 0:00:27) Matt Costantino: It’s September 14th. We're down here in Charleston, South Carolina. This is Matt Costantino from the Intrepid Museum, and I'm sitting here with Uel Smith who's a Growler former crew member. So, Uel, thank you for joining us. Could you introduce yourself? (0:00:28 – 0:06:44) Uel Smith: My name is Uel Smith. I boarded the Growler . about November the 1st, 1958. And, Growler was passing through Norfolk, Virginia, where I was stationed on a fast attack submarine. I was a cook striker, and I was getting ready for my third-class exam, but when the Growler pulled into Norfolk, it was tied up across from my ship. And should I tell you the story about . ? But anyway, so one of my buddies came in down to the boat and said, "You got to see this, come look at this. This is -- you'll never believe it, come look at . ." So I went up topside, went up through the hatch and looked over and there was the Growler, and it was the ugliest thing I ever seen, I thought, wow, what is that, and we was all laughing about it, you know, because we were used to speed and getting going, that one wasn’t going to go anyplace. So, a little later, we were talking about what was going on and the word got out that, well, they were going to the Caribbean. I’d been there before, but they were going to the Caribbean and France and Belgium. That was the rumor. That was a rumor (laughs) I found out. They came in Thursday, and it was going to leave on Saturday. Well on Friday night, I was sitting in the local bar, the Navy bar, submarine bar, where we used to, hung out, and was talking to a couple of my buddies, and one of them said, “Up there, sitting up at the bar is the squadron yeoman.” He said, "Go up there and talk to him." Because I said -- I told him that I'd like to – sure would like to go on the Growler, where they're going. So I went up and bought him a beer, and talked to him. He said, "Well, the Growler's leaving tomorrow at noon and they're looking for a seaman.” Somebody to stand lookout and work the helms and the bow and the stern planes, and 1 I’d done that for years, so I knew all about it, so, he said, "Well, come in at eight o'clock in the morning, to the Orion,” which is the sub tender for Squadron 6, “and Mr. Burkart, the executive officer, would talk to you and interview you." So I said, "Okay, I’ll be in at eight o'clock.” Come on in at eight o'clock, they said, "Well, he won't be in till nine, but they're leaving at noon.” And I (laughed) I hadn’t packed or anything, you know, I wasn’t sure what was going on, so I . nine o'clock I talked to him and he said, "Yeah, I think we can get you; you qualify, we need a seaman." So, he said, "Go back and pack because I'm sure we’re going to get you on." (0:03:38) So eleven o'clock, I got my orders, and I had already started packing, and we didn’t have any barracks on the boat, we got all of our clothes on the boat or at the YMCA. All the single guys had to get a locker at the YMCA to put their civilian clothes. You couldn’t have civilian clothes on board. So the YMCA was just our hangout, you know, that’s where our barracks, you know, more or less, but you had to take a bus every time you wanted to go in. I went aboard, I get everything set up and went aboard and it was like two different navies, to me. I mean, because I was on a fast attack; we was ASW warfare out of Norfolk in the Chesapeake Bay. We were looking for Russian submarines out, they were always out there you know, so we had ASW group, Task Force Alpha, which had a carrier, two submarines, and seven destroyers. We were always doing maneuvers, always up and down, you know, diving, and they were looking for us, so they'd practice looking for us . we found some Russian submarines and just kind of hassled them a little bit, and as far as I’m . I didn’t know exactly what happened, but I know one time one of them went [under us.] I was sitting in the forward torpedo room and the sonar shack was right there, and the sonarman was hollering, "He's going under us, he’s going under us, he’s going under us!" He said that three times, and that’s when I was going, "Ooo, I hope he makes it." (laughs) And, so that’s just another story there, but then when I got aboard the Growler, their MO was different, where we didn’t have to do all the diving and surfacing. Our main object was shoot, fire missiles. And so that’s what we did when we got down to the Caribbean off of Roosevelt Roads. We'd fire the red birds. Had the red birds, blue birds, blue birds are the atomic, the live shots, and we didn’t mess around with them at that time. We had the red birds aboard and we'd shoot them, practice firing them off, and then, I'm sure you’ve heard this before but the jets come along, and fly them in and land them. About half of them made it . if that many. (laughs) But it was interesting, and you could hear them shoot off, you know, our area’s all locked up down below but whenever they fire them off you could hear it, it would shake the boat, you know, with the boosters on it, and when they took off and then the boosters fall in the water and we’d pick them up. 2 (0:06:45 – 0:06:52) Matt Costantino: For someone who's not familiar with the Cold War and what was going on at that time, can you describe what Growler's mission was? (0:06:55 – 0:08:38) Uel Smith: Well, at that time, I just knew it was important, very important. I was . excited. And I was going to be part of something that, knew, that I was . I love America, I love the Navy, I love what I was doing, and I just felt so lucky. At that time I was 19. Yeah, I was 19 at that time, when I came in, when I went in the Navy I was 17, and . everything was an adventure, everything. Everything I did just seemed like it was an adventure because I kind of looked forward to everything that’s going to happen next. And when we got to the . Puerto Rico, Roosevelt Roads, beautiful, beautiful down there, it was beautiful. And I connected with the crew very well, and we had some great officers, and the tension wasn’t there that we had when we were out ASW, looking for Russian submarines . that was pretty hairy there a few times, you know, it was adventurous, but this was different. This was a boat that was going to go someplace that . they'd be looking for us, but . you got another question or . ? (0:08:38 – 0:08:45) Matt Costantino: Did that make you scared knowing that you were out hunting submarines before and now you are being hunted? (0:08:45 – 0:09:21) Uel Smith: Yeah, well, you know, it didn’t, I still considered it an adventure. I didn’t think about the . I just didn’t think about, to be afraid. There wasn’t any point that I felt that I was afraid. I don’t know of anybody, nobody ever said to me that they were afraid of anything, you know, when we had some close calls and whatever. And they were all, all the submariners, most of them all were pretty brave men. They were the best. (0:09:22 – 0:09:30) Matt Costantino: I want to go back and talk about how you got into submarines in the first place. (Uel Smith: Oh.) When did you join the Navy? (Uel Smith: Yeah.) What inspired you to join the Navy? (0:09:30 – 0:16:13) Uel Smith: Well, I had quit school, and I was 17 years old, and I had some buddies that I ran around with, you know, some of them went to school and some didn’t. And, some of them got together and somebody was going to join the Navy, then all of a sudden another one go with him, another one, and they had came to me and they said, "Hey, come and join the Navy with us. We're all going to go to boot camp together, Bainbridge, Maryland." I said, "That sounds like fun.
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