Dirty Tom Muir

[Madelon Umlauf]

Some of you know Dirty Tom Muir.

I met a colleague of Dirty Tom last night at a cheese
& wine thing. He is a civilian ex-submariner who
like Tom is in USNavy submarine research. We
mostly chatted about interesting subjects; he also
said that Dirty Tom's recently wed wife (Sharon?)
"had literally saved his life." On inquiry this meant that she
had gotten Dirty Tom to cut down on his booze jones.

Dirty Tom like yours truly has a pee aitch dee. 
I couldnt help envy the Dirty Tom's various 
postings around the world whereas I had to stay
at home and NOT live in Italy, Monterrey, CA 
and currently in inland Mississippi at some Navy. 
facility there.

Michael Pastorius with whom I was chatting had
with his wife returned recently from a long posting 
in London. He is a tall man with a splendid red 
mustache, somewhere over 60 who currently runs 
Navy submarine research at UT at the Pickle research 
center. 

As I had just met a Canadian submariner at a
pre-Christmas party who told me about Canada's 
recentl purchase of 4 poorly maintained mothballed 
English submarines, Pastorius filled me in on other 
aspects of this weird submarine deal.

As for why Canada would need to replace 4
submarines in its fleet, that neither the Canadian 
nor Pastorius had any explanation for since 
Canada has no known enemies. 

As for why the US needs to do cutting edge
submarine development, Pastorius reminded
me that if we stop doing it, we lose the ability
to do it. Use it or lose. 

He said that there are 2 four star admirals in
Hawaii who are autonomous of Washington. 
They assume a possible Chinese submarine 
threat in the future. This may be ridiculously
unlikely from a historical point of view. But
from the viewpoint of keep doing it or you'll 
lose it (cutting edge submarine research that 
is) it is a slam dunk.