OK. We made it through new construction and entered our seatrials. Adm. Hyman Rickover rode every new boat on it's first sea trial. We were no different. I'm sure it was the only times he ever got anything like peace and quite. Here we are in Long Island Sound.

Our first test depth dive was aborted because the packing gland seal around the number two 'scope began leaking. We tied rags around the barrel to try and keep the water from spraying all over control. We surfaced and went back to EB for repairs. When we finally got to do our test depth dive the old girl moaned and groaned.

Pop rivets flew everywhere. The plates in the overhead in the crewsmess were bowing. The sound of pop rivets was like machine gun fire as we approached test depth. The little partition bulkhead back by the storeroom and freezer was bent about 4" to port. I had several pop rivets that lived in the overhead over my bunk in the bow compartment. Every time we would be at periscope depth and begin to roll these would travel from one location to another, back and forth, back and forth.

When we surfaced and returned to EB we all just stood there and looked at what use to be our nice smooth hull, now all rippled. You could see where each frame was inside the boat where the skin wasn't over a free flood area.