Remarks by CAPT Edward Bartlett

Founder, Chairman and CEO of Bartlett Maritime Corporation

Invited Guest Speaker

To Bay Village (OH) Men’s Club

(Approximately 80 in attendance)

As Delivered, September 1, 2022

Thank you, Randy, for the gracious introduction. I am pleased to be here this evening to help the Bay Village Men’s Club celebrate the start of the new season.

Before I start with my prepared remarks, though, I just want to take a moment and note that Clubs like this are at the absolute heart of what makes America so great. From Jason, over here, who resurfaced the hardwood floors in my house 15 years ago, to Alex, who I just met and discovered to be a partner at our Cleveland/Washington outside law firm, you are the essence of America. I am so very glad that Randy chased me down and invited me to join you for this great evening of fellowship!

To set the stage a bit for my remarks, I’d like to share some of the opening paragraphs of a book that I will be publishing later this year. The book, 69 Day Run, presents a fictionalized sea story version of a deployment that I had the privilege of participating in onboard the mighty mighty warship USS Gato (SSN 615), the final US Navy Thresher Class submarine.

For those who don’t recognize Thresher, she was our first fully developed attack submarine. She was only 615 days old when she was lost on sea trials, with 129 onboard, in 1963. So, all submariners live with that tragedy, and it has led to broad recognition – even today – of Thresher Class veterans as being “594 Tough.”

So, Gato’s deployment in the book occurred in the fall of 1985, at the first Cold War’s zenith. There is some explanatory front matter, and a preface, but we are going to jump right into the opening paragraphs of Chapter 1.

This opening section of the book is titled “Preparation,” with the subtitle “The greatest danger to a submarine is the sea itself.” The first chapter is “POM Workup,” with POM being the acronym for Pre-Overseas Movement. So, here we go. . .

“Thursday, September 26, 1985, 5 AM; Narragansett Bay Operating Areas.

“Emerg,” came the loud shriek from the ship’s loudspeakers. At the same time the Emergency Blow Valve 6 inches above Chief Barnes’ head opened and the rush of 4,500-pound air started screaming into the forward group Main Ballast Tanks. Upkeep had come and gone; GATO was underway for Pre-Overseas Movement (POM) workup, and the ship was flooding? WTF. Meanwhile, as the ship started to bang around like a child’s toy – it was now a mere 4,200 tons of men and steel being overwhelmed by the 130+ mph winds and up to 45-foot waves of a Category 4 hurricane – the ship’s Collision Alarm started sounding.

The Collision Alarm had obviously cut off the Chief of the Watch from his frantic announcement that he was initiating an Emergency Main Ballast Tank Blow. No matter how many drills you do, thought Barnes, when the real thing happens, inevitably people get flustered by the real situation-related adrenalin, and things tend to happen a bit differently from the way that they are drilled. The Chief of the Watch hadn’t been supposed to announce, “Emergency Blow” – he had been supposed to “just do it” and to sound the Collision Alarm. They key thing is that he had actually executed the Emergency Blow and had rung the Collision Alarm.

This is not good, thought Barnes, as he jumped out of his bunk and into his pants and boots. The ship is flooding, and we are right in the middle of the worst hurricane of the year.

Moments later, as the ship banged around on to the surface in what was easily the worst part of the storm, he was out of the Chief Petty Officer’s berthing area and in the GATO Bow Compartment. He noticed that the Bow Compartment to Operations Compartment watertight door was already closed and dogged shut. So much for getting back to his Engineroom, he thought. As he looked around, he also quickly noticed that he was the senior man in the Bow Compartment.

“This is Chief Barnes, and I am in charge in the Bow Compartment. Chief Perrot man the phones. Watson, get the compartment checklist and make sure that we are rigged for Flooding and General Emergency. Jones, make sure that everyone is out of the rack and let me know if there is any flooding down in the Diesel Compartment. And everybody, hold on, we are bobbing like a cork in this shit.”

GATO was on POM workup in the Narragansett Bay Operating areas – a patch of the Atlantic south of Long Island that stretched almost to Delaware on the south side and out past Cape Cod on the east. She (GATO) was scheduled to depart on her 72-day WESTLANT deployment in a couple of weeks, and she was at sea this week with the Submarine Squadron 10 staff onboard to receive the Squadron’s final approval for deployment. This meant that the ship was ready for war in all respects. In a week or so the Type Commander staff from COMSUBLANT would be on board for POM certification. For that trip not only would the ship Commanding Officer’s reputation be on the line, but the Squadron Commodore’s would be, as well.

During the POM Workup trip, originally scheduled for Monday through Friday, GATO and her crew once again did their thing with typical Black Cat style. In other words, going to sea on GATO was more like actually making sausage than watching a Hollywood movie about making sausage. Simply stated, it was sometimes messy and a bit ugly – but the results were always good. You see, as an old boat she had all of the old boat blues. Yes, she ran pretty well, but the aches and pains of age are unavoidable. The last ship of the 13 ship THRESHER Class to have been commissioned, GATO had also been ridden hard and put up wet more than a few times by her previous crews. She now needed lots of TLC on an everyday basis from an extremely sharp crew. Given the love, though, she was every bit the thoroughbred and would run with a bone in her teeth against any of them! GATO was, and always had been, a HOT Boat.

GATO had two main woes today. Neither one was enough to take her out of service, and each of these problems had already received a great deal of maintenance effort in unsuccessful attempts to correct the underlying issues. Unfortunately, like any two seemingly unrelated issues on a submarine, they could combine to create havoc. In fact, they just had. That, you see, is the fallacy of thinking that anything on a submarine is “unrelated.” Nothing on a submarine is “unrelated” – everything “matters” to everything else. A more “completely integrated and interdependent” machine had never (before or since) been conceived.”

So, the book goes on from there to document an award-winning combat deployment, despite the fact that for every minute of every day underway, not only did we have to fight the adversary we had to fight the maintenance demons on our own ship. I liken it to dancing on a razor-sharp knife edge, staring down into a black, inky abyss on either side. You fail one way, you are instantly dead; you fail the other way and it could light the fuse on the literal end-of-the-world. And you do this for months on end, with no break. There is no end to what our nation owes to the intrepid young men and women who go down to the sea in these ships.

I wrote the book because, unless you were there – deployed, underway, submerged – few people really understand what it took to win the first Cold War. Also, as a technical geek it has always irked me a bit when considering other technological leaps like the space program, and all of their great press, as compared to what we did – and what our successors continue to do – in that most dangerous deployed, underway, submerged environment. Few were, or are, even aware that we exist.

So, the book is a bit of that, but the main reason that I am going to publish it is as a giveaway for our employees. It is vitally important that each and every one of them understands that, whether working on building parts and assemblies for new submarines, as we plan to do in Lorain, or repairing equipment from in-service submarines, as we plan to do in Lordstown, each and every one of our employees holds in their hands the lives of our intrepid young men and women who sail these ships in harms way. Not only that, but as these intrepid officers and crew members execute their mission it cannot be lost on our employees that it is our nation’s very security which is on the line.

Think about it for a moment. Which nation has the world’s largest Navy? It is not us. It is China. Which brings us to the Davidson Window.

Admiral Philip Davidson was Combatant Commander of INDOPACOM when he testified to Congress last year that China was likely to take control of Taiwan within the next 6 years. Thus, the Davidson Threat Window was born.

Admiral Charles Richard, head of the US Strategic Command, responsible for all US nuclear weapons, reaffirmed the Davidson Window in Senate Testimony in March of this year. Richard said China has doubled its nuclear stockpile within two years, despite expectations it would take Beijing until the end of the decade to do so. They did in two years what everyone thought would take a decade!

So, now we have the Davidson/Richard window. But it gets even more concerning. . .

Mary Kissel, who some of you may recognize as a former member of the Wall St Journal Editorial Board, served as a senior advisor to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Lately she has been commenting that the 5 years left in the Davidson/Richard window, in light of Ukraine, is more like 2 years until a Taiwan invasion by China.

The enduring demographic challenge in China, resulting from their ill-advised period with a one-child policy, is driving them.

Kissel’s conclusion seems to have been reinforced by events over the summer. Four Chinese H-6 bombers and two Russian Tu-95 bombers conducted joint flights together around Japan and the Republic of Korea, prompting both countries to scramble fighter aircraft to monitor the flights. The joint flights took place the same day President Biden was meeting his Australian, Indian and Japanese Quad grouping counterparts in Tokyo, though both the Russian and Chinese defense ministries stated that the flights were part of their annual military cooperation plan and not directed towards anyone. Sure.

Just today, in fact, Russia and China began their largest-ever joint wargames in the Pacific region.

This is no time to be sitting on our hands.

China is building a global Navy at a furious rate, and it has already been larger than ours for several tears. Pretty soon it will be twice the size of our Navy. Think about that for a minute.

To add to the personal urgency which drives me, then, please consider the Chinese DF 21 missile. Highly accurate, with pinpoint precision. But here is the knockout punch – the range of the DF21 is longer than the combat radius of the aircraft on our marvelous aircraft carriers. The fact that the DF21 can take out our aircraft carriers before they are in range to attack/counterattack has something to do with why the DF21 is known far and wide as China’s “carrier killer.”

So that leaves the US Navy with our submarines. Quiet, fast, deadly. Our submarines are what most deter China’s shenanigans.

Now comes the worst news that I am going to share with you tonight – fully half of our submarine fleet is not available for operations today because of maintenance delays. To make matters even worse, we are 5 – 6 new submarines behind in deliveries. This is, to put it in a word, a big mess.

During the 1960’s we built and delivered a new submarine into service every 44 days. During the 1980’s we built 5 new submarines a year and successfully maintained a fleet of more than 100 submarines. Today, not so much. Half of our fleet is parked waiting on maintenance and despite trying very hard, for the last decade plus, we are still not able to build 2 new submarines per year.

At the end of the first Cold War, we de-industrialized, and cashed in that big “peace dividend.” I don’t have to grind on this point too hard here – think steel mills, shipyards, auto plants and other factories. Today sometimes it feels like we have more baristas in America than good old productive factory and industrial workers. The once and future backbone of our nation’s industrial strength.

The good news is that we are starting to turn the corner. Before long, we have been told by the Navy, we will be under contract to begin the development of our planned new multi-billion-dollar facilities in Lorain and Lordstown.

The Great Lakes region has done this before. Did you know that during World War 2, 28 of our nation’s 226 new submarines were built in Manitowoc, WI? Many of the rest, like USS Cod (SS 224), parked over at the end of E.9th St. in downtown Cleveland, were powered by diesel engines built right here in Cleveland. I’ll also bet that most of you are unaware that every submarine and aircraft carrier in the US Navy today has parts built right here in Euclid. Ohio is going to lead in this area in the future in an even bigger way than it has in the past.

If you have paid any attention to our company website – www.bartlettmaritime.com – you will see that we have not been sitting on our hands waiting for our imminent contract award. During August we hired a new Chief Financial Officer, advanced someone who joined us just in March of this year to be President of the Company, advanced two of our stars to the position of Executive Vice President – one for Operations and one for Programs – and we have doubled the size of our Board of Directors. We are not done yet – and won’t be until the Submarine Industrial Base can routinely and readily meet the demand signal.

Our team is excited and as personally committed as I am. I would encourage you all to sign up on our website, available at the bottom of every page, for our subscription list. That way you will receive all of our press releases and blog posts.

So, that’s our deal. Enhancing National Security from the heart of America. I’d be pleased to answer any questions.