Stealth Boat by McHale Gannon;

Author:McHale, Gannon; [McHale, Gannon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Naval Institute Press

The COB

In the summer of 1968, the commissioning crew COB was transferred despite his stated willingness to remain on board. The COB is usually the most senior enlisted man on board a submarine, and as the direct liaison between the commanding officer, XO, and the crew, he is critically important to the operation of the boat. The COB was also one of the first men you met when you reported on board a submarine, and all of the younger guys who reported on board Sturgeon had the scars to prove that they had met and worked for Bill Welsh.

From Lawrence, Massachusetts, TMCS(SS) William Welsh, Jr. joined the Navy in March 1945. After boot camp in Sampson, New York, he was assigned to landing ship medium transports in the Pacific, where he rode out the remainder of World War II. After the war, he spent a year at a Naval Air Station in Argentia, Newfoundland. He finally went to submarine school and afterward struck for the rate of torpedoman on board the USS Diodon (SS 349), on which he made patrols to Korea and the China Sea during the Korea conflict. In 1953, he transferred to the USS Corsair (SS 435) in New London. After ten years of sea duty, he was assigned to submarine school staff. From there, he went to the USS Skipjack (SSN 585) and then to Sturgeon, where he was one of the first men to report on board as part of the new construction crew. He met his wife, the former Ruth Park of Methuen, Massachusetts, while on emergency leave in 1952. She worked for the Red Cross. They married in 1953 and bought their house in Mystic in July 1960, while Bill was on submarine school staff. They reside there to this day.

Welsh was a great COB. He stood only five feet six inches, but he was tough, and if he told you to do something and you didn’t move fast enough to suit him, he’d kick you in the shins to get you going. He did everything a great COB is supposed to do. He stood up for his men, pushed them to make rate, supervised their qualification process, bailed them out of jail, and got reduced punishments instead of captain’s masts whenever possible. He worked twelve-hour days, seven days a week throughout the two-year construction process, and he effectively supervised Sturgeon’s transition from a new construction boat to an operational boat, including everything we did on the shakedown cruise, the nuclear weapons certification, and the first patrol. He wanted to stay on board because he liked Bohannan, but BUPERS wouldn’t allow it. His replacement as COB was a well-liked E-7 nuclear-trained engineman named Homer H. Ross Jr.

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