Ask A Vet Podcast

From civil engineer to Cold War nuclear weapons officer to Vietnam advisor — Bob Echols' journey through the Army is anything but a straight line. In this episode of Ask A Vet, Bob shares what it was like growing up as the son of a WWII transport pilot who rarely spoke about the war, getting turned away from West Point over his eyesight, standing guard over atomic demolition munitions in Cold War Germany, mapping every bridge on the Rhine for a demolition plan that (thankfully) was never used, advising the Vietnamese Chief of Engineers during the final years of the war, and the hardest decision of his career — resigning his Regular Army commission to go back to the woods with the U.S. Forest Service. Bob also opens up about the leadership philosophy that carried him through both careers: respect and trust, no matter someone's rank, and a family legacy that carried into the Navy, the National Guard, and the Navy SEALs.

Thank you, Bob, for your service — and for so generously sharing your story with us.

⏱️ Episode Chapters: 

2:16 – Growing up an Army brat with a WWII pilot for a father 

3:58 – Turned away from West Point 

7:38 – Commissioned into the Army — and into his other dream, the Forest Service 

9:38 – Boot camp and Ranger School at Fort Benning 

12:54 – The leadership lesson that shaped his whole career: respect and trust 

14:41 – Assigned to a Cold War atomic demolition unit in Germany 

29:05 – Training alongside the German Army at the height of the Cold War 

34:50 – Mapping every bridge on the Rhine for a nuclear demolition plan 

39:30 – Orders for Vietnam and language school at Fort Bragg 

42:18 – Landing in-country and settling into MACV headquarters 

44:02 – Advising the Vietnamese Chief of Engineers 

52:09 – The hardest decision: resigning his Army commission 

55:04 – Back to the Forest Service, then back into the National Guard 

1:00:04 – A father's pride: sons in the Navy, the Guard, and the SEALs 

1:03:02 – Building training grounds and giving back through the Guard 

1:08:44 – Final reflections on leadership, respect, and a life well served

🎙️ Ask A Vet is a podcast dedicated to preserving and honoring the stories of America's veterans. New episodes weekly.

👍 If you enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe, and leave a comment — it helps us bring more veterans' stories to a wider audience.

#AskAVet #VeteranStories #ColdWar #VietnamWar #USArmy #MilitaryHistory #VeteranPodcast

For three years, Michael Reeder treated the wounded of the Vietnam War without ever setting foot in Vietnam.

Drafted in 1966 and trained as a combat medic, Michael expected to deploy in-country. Instead, because his younger brother was already serving in Vietnam, the Army sent him to the 106th General Hospital at Kishine Barracks in Japan — one of the primary evacuation hospitals for the most severely wounded American troops. Over the next three years, he estimates more than 45,000 patients passed through that hospital alone.

In this episode, Michael takes us inside the burn ward and the orthopedic ward: the amputees, the burn victims, the booby-trap electrocutions, the quiet humor patients used to survive, and the letters he read aloud to men who couldn't hold a pen. He talks about what it meant to be "Doc" to thousands of young men whose names he never learned — and what it cost him to carry that for over five decades before finally being diagnosed with PTSD, despite never having been in combat himself.

This is a story about a part of the Vietnam War rarely discussed: the evacuation hospitals of Japan, and the corpsmen who held the line between the battlefield and the world these soldiers were trying to get back to.

Michael Reeder served as a U.S. Army combat medic at the 106th General Hospital, Kishine Barracks, Japan, from 1967–1970.

01:43 — Drafted, and enlisting to try to control his fate 

03:10 — Basic training at Fort Bliss 

08:31 — Combat medic training in San Antonio 

13:35 — His first exposure to racism 

18:12 — Orders to Japan instead of Vietnam — and why 

19:44 — Arriving at Kishine Barracks, the 106th General Hospital 

21:18 — Inside the wards: burns, orthopedics, and the septic ward 

24:27 — The dust-off helicopters and the six-hour flight from Vietnam 

27:04 — The scale: over 45,000 patients in three years 

28:27 — How triage decided who stayed in Vietnam and who came to Japan 

32:05 — First days on the Burn Ward 

34:32 — Accidental burns and Viet Cong booby-trap electrocutions 

37:40 — Transferred to Orthopedics — "I've waited 56 years for this" 

41:51 — Who ran the ward: doctors, nurses, corpsmen 

43:22 — Draftees vs. enlisted men, and who got the hardest cases 

50:17 — The letter: "I can't stay married to a man without arms" 

55:02 — Dark humor on the ward — the auctioneer and the urinal 

56:04 — The patient he couldn't save: his hardest memory 

1:00:31 — Why rank meant nothing once you were a patient 

1:04:04 — The Purple Heart policy that showed "no empathy" 

1:09:22 — Isolation, marriage, and fatherhood in the middle of it all 

1:12:37 — Extending his tour: three deployments back to back 

1:14:26 — Coming home to protestors — and silence from his own family 

1:20:16 — Small mercies: wheeling patients outside, carrying men to the shower 

1:25:37 — Four visits to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall 

1:32:52 — Losing a friend, and the moment the war became personal 

1:44:00 — The years after: anger, a marriage that couldn't survive it 

1:51:11 — Diagnosed with PTSD — as a man who was never in combat 

1:57:09 — Healing through art: 25 years of mosaic work, turning 80 and returning to Japan 

2:05:38 — Michael’s message to younger veterans

⚠️ Content note: This episode includes candid discussion of war trauma, injury, and suicidal ideation as part of Michael's healing journey. If you or someone you know is struggling, the Veterans Crisis Line is available 24/7 — dial 988, then press 1, or text 838255.

💬 Know a veteran with a story to tell? Reach out to [email protected]

From a small farm town in Georgia to the cockpit of a C-7 Caribou over Vietnam, to eleven years flying B-52 Stratofortresses at the height of the Cold War — Buddy Herrington's story is one of the most remarkable we've covered on Ask A Vet. In this episode, Buddy walks us through four years at the Air Force Academy, two tours in Vietnam, a career that touched Guam, the Pentagon, and Space Command, and the unexpected call that led him from the cockpit to the pulpit as a Methodist minister in St. George, Utah.

CHAPTERS:

01:30 Growing up in Alabama & rural Georgia

11:24 The roommate who introduced him to the Air Force Academy

14:47 Arriving at the Academy and basic training

30:20 Graduation — Nixon, and backpacking across Europe

42:18 Pilot training begins

45:29 Learning to fly the C-7 Caribou

50:35 First tour: flying into Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam

1:02:26 Dodging ground fire in a plane with no defenses

1:09:03 The jump from Caribou to B-52

1:12:09 Inside the B-52 "Stratofortress"

1:14:06 Water-injection takeoffs and life on Guam

1:24:16 Aerial refueling — "a planned collision"

1:42:18 The scariest moment: SAM missiles over Hanoi

1:48:23 Alert duty and the Middle East crisis

2:01:01 Looking back on Vietnam and the Wall

2:04:44 Space Command, GPS, and the Cold War

2:10:11 Retiring — and the call to ministry

2:10:47 Flood relief and building community in St. George

2:18:07 Closing thoughts

🎖️ Thank you to Buddy Herrington for his 28 years of service and for sharing his story with us.

Joe Priester never planned on the Army. He joined the Air Force at 18, spent six years flying on AWACS radar planes, and watched 9/11 unfold from a locked-down base — and walked out of that day determined to become a pilot. Twenty-four days after leaving the Air Force, he was back in basic training, this time headed for Army flight school.

In this episode, Joe walks us through flying the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior — the Army's smallest, fastest, most maneuverable scout attack helicopter — through tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq was quiet for him (his call sign was literally "the White Dove"). Afghanistan wasn't. He takes us inside the two-day stretch in August 2008 that changed everything: a vehicle-borne IED at the gate, a danger-close CASEVAC mission that pulled five wounded soldiers out under fire, and an engagement the next day that lasted over 20 hours.

We also talk about what came after — retiring in 2017, flying helicopter EMS today, and what he tells his own son, now an airborne infantryman, about carrying all of this.

TIMESTAMPS: 

01:50 – Wanting to be military since childhood (GI Joe, grandfather)

03:18 – Joining the Air Force out of high school (1997)

04:18 – Air Force basic training, Lackland AFB

06:39 – Operation Northern/Southern Watch deployments

08:14 – What a typical AWACS mission looked like

09:08 – 9/11 and Operation Noble Eagle

12:43 – Airborne school & Air Traffic Control course

14:17 – Where he was on 9/11 (Keesler AFB lockdown)

18:21 – Leaving the Air Force, walking away from a $35K bonus

19:xx – Army basic training at Fort Jackson

28:24 – Candidate school at Fort Rucker

33:17 – Flight school begins

45:57 – Selecting the Kiowa Warrior

59:40 – Choosing the 101st Airborne, Fort Campbell

1:03:11 – Deploying to Iraq, stuck in a supply job first

1:07:44 – First flight in Iraq — straight into a firefight

1:16:17 – The "White Dove" nickname

1:22:27 – Coming home, learning Afghanistan is next

1:26:30 – Arriving in Afghanistan (Jalalabad / FOB Fenty)

1:29:34 – First Afghanistan mission — RPGs on day one

1:39:08 – Life on rotation, moving to FOB Salerno

1:39:08 – Aug 17, 2008: VBIED attack at the gate

1:46:49 – Aug 18: FOB attacked overnight → CASEVAC mission begins

2:07:41 – Aug 19: engaging the two vehicles

2:18:43 – Rest of deployment, becoming instructor pilot / Fort Riley

2:22:02 – Retiring in 2017, flying helicopter EMS today

2:24:33 – Hardest part of coming home 

2:30:59 – Legacy of Vietnam-era Army aviators

2:34:18 – The Kiowa Warrior's retirement from service

👉 If you’re a Veteran struggling with VA benefits, click this link to schedule a free consultation: https://ameconsultation.com/ref/AVPP1211J20A26YXO

Disclosure: This is a referral partnership with American Medical Experts. We may receive compensation if you book through our link.

If you or a Veteran you know has a story that should be heard, we'd love to hear from you at [email protected]. 

🎖️ Curious Humanography is proud to partner with Utah Honor Flight, helping veterans visit memorials built in their honor. To learn more or support their mission, visit UtahHonorFlight.org and honorflight.org.

If this story moved you, please consider liking, commenting, and subscribing — it helps us continue sharing stories that deserve to be heard.

If you're a veteran with a story to tell, or know someone who is, reach out to [email protected]— we'd love to have you on.

#Veterans #ArmyAviation #KiowaWarrior #MilitaryPodcast #CombatVeteran

He gave up two businesses and a comfortable life at 32 years old to become a Green Beret — then spent six months in the Congo hunting one of the world's most wanted warlords, Joseph Kony.

In this episode, Josh Nacey takes us from a small painting company in Rock Springs, Wyoming, through Special Forces selection, the Q Course, and multiple deployments — including a split-team operation in the Congo where his unit fought alongside Congolese forces, dealt with poachers and elephant killings, and lived alongside a warlord's brutal reach. He also opens up about what almost nobody in Special Operations wants to talk about: transitioning home, operator syndrome, divorce, and the suicide statistics that are 30% higher for special operations veterans than the rest of the military.

Josh now runs the CharlieMike Foundation and is launching Mend the Drift, a new initiative using fly fishing to help special operations veterans heal.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

1:27 – Military roots: two grandfathers, two wars

3:14 – Enlisting at 32

10:00 – The recruiter's 8-month test

12:15 – Arriving at basic training

22:26 – The hardest part: Q Course & Small Unit Tactics

41:40 – What is a Green Beret, really?

44:35 – Inside a 12-man ODA

46:13 – Becoming an 18 Charlie (demolitions)

57:16 – Graduation day: earning the Green Beret

1:01:10 – First deployment: the Philippines

1:15:20 – The mission: hunting Joseph Kony

1:16:07 – Deploying to the Congo

1:18:37 – First impressions of the Congo

1:21:31 – Hunting the LRA

1:23:46 – The village and the two men

1:29:25 – Patrolling the jungle with Congolese forces

1:33:52 – Poachers, elephants, and a warzone for wildlife

1:37:36 – The hippo story

1:43:07 – A tragic firefight

1:49:52 – Coming home: "operator syndrome"

1:55:21 – Hitting bottom and asking for help

1:58:50 – Ketamine, SGB, and resetting fight-or-flight

2:04:58 – Founding the CharlieMike Foundation

2:06:52 – Fly fishing and Operation Pay It Forward

2:11:15 – Mend the Drift: his new mission

2:12:48 – The suicide numbers no one talks about

2:16:30 – The real cost of service

🤝 SUPPORT THE MISSION

CharlieMike Foundation & Mend The Drift: https://mendthedrift.org/

Operation Pay It Forward: https://opif4ourvets.org/

IF YOU'RE STRUGGLING

This episode includes candid discussion of combat, military transition, and veteran suicide statistics. If you or someone you know is a veteran in crisis, the Veterans Crisis Line is available 24/7: call 988 then press 1, text 838255, or chat at VeteransCrisisLine.net.

#GreenBeret #SpecialForces #Veteran #JosephKony #Congo #MentalHealth #Podcast

Robert Williams grew up in Colville, Utah, and followed three generations of his family into the military: commissioning through Army ROTC at the University of Utah before serving as an artillery officer in Vietnam. In this episode of Ask A Vet, Robert takes us from basic training at Fort Lewis through his time as a battery commander on a remote firebase in the Vietnamese highlands — the boredom, the terror, the firefights, a helicopter crash, and the split-second decision that came closest to costing a life. He also opens up about the reception he received coming home, the PTSD he didn't recognize until decades later, and what finally started to heal on an Honor Flight to Washington, D.C. with his son.

This is Episode 50 of Ask A Vet — thank you for fifty episodes of listening to these stories.

CHAPTERS:

00:28 – Meet Robert: growing up in Colville, Utah, and a family history of service 

02:53 – ROTC, a failed physical, and fighting to stay in 

04:59 – Basic training at Fort Lewis 

07:28 – Fort Sill: learning the guns and the M101 howitzer 

09:33 – Night training and a scare on aggressor detail 

11:55 – Firepower demonstrations and "time on target" 

14:20 – Orders to Vietnam: leaving a pregnant wife behind 

16:49 – Landing in-country on New Year's Day 

19:13 – Camp Red Horse and life in the rear 

21:38 – Taking command on LZ Linda / Hill 270 

26:30 – Under fire: flechette rounds and a 20-minute firefight 

28:47 – The drug problem on the hill 

31:09 – Urinalysis, discipline, and hard calls as a young officer 

33:35 – Inside the Fire Direction Center 

36:00 – Contaminated water takes down the whole battery 

38:26 – Getting sick, and leading men barely out of high school 

40:23 – Keeping men sane: cockroach races and homemade games 

44:49 – Going down in a helicopter 

47:10 – The rocket attack they weren't allowed to stop 

49:33 – B-52 strikes and danger-close air support 

51:58 – Witnessing a midair collision 53:58 – Reassigned to Quinyon as base defense officer 

56:02 – The closest he came to killing someone — and becoming the "whore control officer" 

58:30 – Discipline duty during off-base entertainment nights 

1:00:41 – A Montagnard farewell dinner: a crossbow, poison, and pigeon heads 

1:02:38 – A body on the shore and the final weeks in-country 

1:05:05 – Riding with a Korean convoy 

1:07:19 – Two of the hardest things he saw in Vietnam 

1:09:45 – A close call with incoming mortars 

1:11:55 – Notes for the colonel and the province chief 

1:13:44 – Learning his daughter was born — and had emergency surgery 

1:15:18 – R&R in Hawaii, and the hardest part: going back 

1:17:29 – Wheels up for home 

1:19:51 – Coming home to a hostile crowd in San Francisco 

1:21:49 – Assignments in Germany and Minnesota, finishing a master's degree 

1:24:14 – Leaving the Army and his takeaway from Vietnam 

1:25:38 – Recognizing PTSD — decades later 

1:28:44 – What lingers: sights, sounds, and smells that don't go away 

1:30:26 – Agent Orange, burn pits, and the health costs that show up later 

1:32:00 – The Honor Flight with his son 

1:33:24 – A welcome home, decades overdue 

1:34:06 – Final thoughts & Reflections

If you or a Veteran you know has a story that should be heard, we'd love to hear from you at [email protected]. 

🎖️ Curious Humanography is proud to partner with Utah Honor Flight, helping veterans visit memorials built in their honor. To learn more or support their mission, visit UtahHonorFlight.org and honorflight.org.

If this story moved you, please consider liking, commenting, and subscribing — it helps us continue sharing stories that deserve to be heard.

Larry Winters served as a Marine helicopter mechanic and door gunner in Vietnam, stationed at Phu Bai and Marble Mountain outside Da Nang in 1969. He grew up in a house with no electricity or running water in upstate New York, ran away from an abusive father at 16, and joined the Marines at 19 trying to "become a man."

What he found in boot camp and Vietnam set him on a 56-year journey to understand what war actually does to the people who fight it.

In this conversation, Larry talks about the brutal turning points of boot camp at Parris Island, his attempted AWOL into Mexico, the day he refused an order to fire on Vietnamese fishermen, and the concept that's defined his life's work as a therapist: moral injury. His take on why veterans are dying by suicide will challenge everything you've been told about PTSD.

Larry is the author of "The Making and Unmaking of a Marine" and is currently finishing his second book.

⚠️ Content warning: This episode contains discussion of war, combat, violence against civilians, suicide, and moral injury.

If you or a veteran you know is in crisis, call the Veterans Crisis Line at 988 and press 1, or text 838255.

CHAPTERS

00:30 Growing up in Newpaltz, NY

02:30 Signing up for the Marines at 19

05:00 Parris Island — the yellow footprints

09:30 Boot camp turning points: the hot sauce and the rifle bolt

13:30 Coming home, ITR training, and shoe polish in the barracks

22:30 Metalsmith school and shipping out to Vietnam

29:30 Landing at Phu Bai — 126 degrees and Marston matting

32:30 Tet, the move to Marble Mountain, and a sergeant's chilling words

35:30 Locals on the base, peace symbols under shirts

37:00 Becoming a door gunner — and getting in trouble first

39:30 Three months on perimeter guard, the starlight scope

42:30 The sandpan incident: "I'm not firing this"

47:30 Flying missions, napalm, and the bulldozer that wouldn't lift

52:00 The Freedom Bird home and protesters in San Diego

58:30 College, poetry, and the long road to becoming a therapist

1:10:00 Moral injury vs. PTSD — what's really killing veterans

1:16:00 Presence as the best treatment

1:20:00 Creativity, spontaneity, and finding his voice

1:24:00 Final Reflections

📕 Larry's first book "The Making and Unmaking of a Marine" — https://www.amazon.com/Making-Making-Marine-Larry-Winters/dp/0979229340

📕 Larry's upcoming book: https://www.koehlerbooks.com/book/the-tug-of-war-a-reckoning-with-moral-injury-and-telling-the-truth/

Larry's Substack: https://larrywinters.substack.com/

Stephen Davy was drafted out of a Toys R Us toy gun department in 1967, joined the Air Force to avoid the Army, and ended up loading napalm, two-thousand-pound bombs, and 2.75 rockets at the Pleiku Air Base bomb dump in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. But the part of his story you've never heard is what happened on the weekends: Stephen and his buddy Tom Glenn formed a rock band that played Camp Holloway, Engineer Hill, Fifth Special Forces, and just about every Army camp within reach of Pleiku, often going AWOL to do it, and sometimes catching helicopter rides back to base from pilots who wanted to do loops with the band gear in the cargo hold.

In this episode, Stephen shares the close calls (rocket attacks, a tunneled-in VC sapper team, a leopard outside the rehearsal door), the absurdity (a pet macaque named Colonel Spiker who got drunk in the Airmen's Club), and the quieter moments that stayed with him most — visiting the orphanage outside Pleiku with clothes his parents shipped from the States. He also talks honestly about coming home to Andrews Air Force Base, the PTSD no one was naming yet, getting robbed at gunpoint multiple times working nights at a 7-Eleven, and how a Washington Post want ad eventually led him to a 50-year career as a master violin maker in Laguna Beach.

CHAPTERS

00:30 Growing up — Navy dad, Boonville to Florida to DC 

07:00 The draft notice

08:30 Basic training at Lackland — getting punched, losing a spleen 

12:00 Munitions school in Denver and meeting Tom Glenn 

14:00 Learning to load bombs, fuse rockets, and mix napalm 

20:00 Arriving in Pleiku — Central Highlands, Fifth Special Forces, MIKE Force 

26:00 First rocket attack and the bunker in the tall grass 

38:00 Forming the New Generations Band 

50:00 Pleiku City, the Montagnards, and the orphanage 

58:00 Going AWOL to play Camp Holloway and Engineer Hill 

1:08:00 Flat tire on the way back from a gig 

1:11:00 The colonel who saved the band from being broken up 

1:20:00 Two GIs straight out of the field singing "Hold On, I'm Comin'" 

1:25:00 Helicopter loops with the band gear 

1:28:00 Leaving Pleiku under ground fire 

1:32:00 Coming home — Andrews AFB, security details, and a bank robbery 

1:47:00 Apprenticing under violin masters Tom Nerado and Albert Mollier 

1:51:00 Vietnam, Agent Orange, and looking back 

1:55:00 Colonel Spiker the monkey

Subscribe for more interviews with the men and women who served.

If you or a Veteran you know has a story that should be heard, we'd love to hear from you at [email protected]. 

🎖️ Curious Humanography is proud to partner with Utah Honor Flight, helping veterans visit memorials built in their honor. To learn more or support their mission, visit UtahHonorFlight.org and honorflight.org.

If this story moved you, please consider liking, commenting, and subscribing — it helps us continue sharing stories that deserve to be heard.

#AskAVet #VietnamVeteran #VietnamWar #USAirForce #Pleiku #OralHistory

Gary Howard grew up in Atlanta and joined the Navy in 1968 to stay one step ahead of the draft. A few months later he landed at Tan Son Nhut on the night of Tet '69 – the whole countryside on fire, Intel telling everyone this year would be worse than last. It wasn't. What followed was a year as a Naval advisor with the Vietnamese Marines in the Mekong Delta: helicopter landings, MEDCAPs in remote villages, climbing telephone poles to lay phone lines, sleeping topside under a mosquito net with his M16 next to his head, and yes, waterskiing on the Mekong behind a mail-order Johnson 75 outboard.

In this episode Gary walks us through OCS at Newport, gunnery school, the bus ride into Saigon, the rocket that missed because his hat fell off, the mortar attack that interrupted a winning poker hand on his birthday, the overturned boat that gave him lifelong claustrophobia, and the moment a young woman spit on him at SFO when he finally made it home. After Vietnam he ran a nuclear weapons rework plant in Yorktown, went to law school in Texas, and tried jury cases in Arizona for forty years.

CHAPTERS 

00:48 — Drafted, so I joined the Navy 

02:06 — OCS at Newport (and getting caught asleep) 

03:30 — Gunnery school in Virginia Beach 

07:09 — Amphibious and small arms training 

08:25 — Landing in Vietnam on Tet '69 

13:16 — Bus ride into Saigon 16:25 — Aboard the USS Mercer 

19:36 — A 40-foot boat and 13 crew 

22:51 — MEDCAPs, DENTCAPs, and winning hearts and minds 

23:57 — Waterskiing on the Mekong 

26:36 — The rocket that missed 

27:58 — The telephone pole story 

30:24 — Mortars on my birthday 

35:42 — Food, heat, and the mosquitoes 

36:12 — R&R in Hawaii 

36:46 — Emergency leave home 

40:11 — The girl at SFO who spit on me 

43:22 — Two and a half years at a nuclear weapons plant 

45:43 — Law school and forty years of trials 

49:46 — What Vietnam taught me 

51:05 — The overturned boat and lifelong claustrophobia 

57:23 — Adjusting to "thank you for your service"

Subscribe for more interviews with the men and women who served.

👉 If you’re a Veteran struggling with VA benefits, click this link to schedule a free consultation: https://ameconsultation.com/ref/AVPP1211J20A26YXO

Disclosure: This is a referral partnership with American Medical Experts. We may receive compensation if you book through our link.

If you or a Veteran you know has a story that should be heard, we'd love to hear from you at [email protected]. 

🎖️ Curious Humanography is proud to partner with Utah Honor Flight, helping veterans visit memorials built in their honor. To learn more or support their mission, visit UtahHonorFlight.org and honorflight.org.

If this story moved you, please consider liking, commenting, and subscribing — it helps us continue sharing stories that deserve to be heard.

#VietnamWar #VietnamVeteran #USNavy #AskAVet #BrownWaterNavy #MekongDelta #Tet69 #OralHistory

In 1963, a kid from Las Vegas with no money and a father enlisted in the Air Force earned appointments to all three service academies. A retired Army colonel teaching high school math gave him one piece of advice: "if you want choices, go to Annapolis" and it set Tim Martin on a path into the most secretive community in the U.S. military: the Silent Service.

In Episode 46 of Ask A Vet, Tim takes us deep inside the Cold War nuclear Navy. Hand-picked for Admiral Rickover's legendary nuclear power program, Tim served aboard the USS John Adams (SSBN-620), a Polaris missile boat carrying 160 nuclear warheads — more destructive power than every bomb dropped in World War II — and later aboard the fast attack USS Permit (SSN-594), the "Steely-Eyed Killer of the Deep."

He tells the stories submariners rarely tell: trailing a brand-new Soviet missile submarine for 38 straight days without being detected. Surviving the exact same casualty that sank the USS Thresher, a seawater flange blowout at 1,300 feet. Snagging a fishing net with his periscope at 2:30 in the morning. Watching Apollo 13 launch through the periscope. A swim call in the middle of the Panama Canal. And the day his captain made him the boat's official Shark Control Officer.

Tim went on to a career in nuclear power and today serves on the USS Utah (SSN-801) Commissioning Committee — and he's the first submariner ever featured on this show.

If you enjoy these stories, subscribing is free and it genuinely helps us preserve more of them.

CHAPTERS

00:30 — A Las Vegas Kid Gets Appointments to All Three Academies

07:15 — Plebe Year, the Chronometer Answer & Falling for Submarines

12:45 — Rickover's Nuclear Program: Sawed-Off Chairs, Nuke School & the Idaho Prototype

19:00 — USS John Adams (SSBN-620): 16 Polaris Missiles, 160 Atom Bombs

22:30 — Earning His Dolphins: Thrown Over the Side in Guam

28:43 — THE DRAGNET STORY: 2:30 AM, Periscope Up Under Two Spotlights

35:45 — Life at 300 Feet: Six On, Twelve Off, Movie Night & Fixing Everything

40:30 — USS Permit, "Steely-Eyed Killer of the Deep": Trailing a Soviet Sub for 38 Days

49:00 — Nuclear Torpedoes & the 1974 Anti-Nuclear Protest in Japan

59:00 — The Thresher, the Scorpion & Surviving a Flange Blowout at 1,300 Feet

1:06:49 — Creaking Hulls, Angles & Dangles, and How You Evade a Torpedo

1:19:40 — Ice Cream Over Sonar, the Army-Navy Game Heist & Apollo 13 Through the Periscope

1:30:30 — THE SHARK STORY: "You're the Shark Control Officer"

1:35:30 — Rickover's Legacy, the USS Utah & Life After the Silent Service

👉 If you’re a Veteran struggling with VA benefits, click this link to schedule a free consultation: https://ameconsultation.com/ref/AVPP1211J20A26YXO

Disclosure: This is a referral partnership with American Medical Experts. We may receive compensation if you book through our link.

If you or a Veteran you know has a story that should be heard, we'd love to hear from you at [email protected].