How They Became Legends (Part 7 of 8)

September 19, 2018

Continued from Part 6…

Analysis

The United States Naval Academy and Submarine School produced a breed of naval officers unlike their contemporary surface counterparts in both mission and attitude. Financially, submarines constituted a sound financial investment in direct comparison with other warships of the United States Navy; the per unit cost of each boat ranged between $2.7 to $4.5 million and it took as little as 23 months between the start of construction and the first action against the enemy.^[1] In contrast, battleship construction immediately prior to the Second World War required between 49 to 55 months for construction and an investment of up to $90 million per ship.^[2]^[3]

USS Razorback, the USS Ronquil and the USS Scabbardfish on the ways at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Kittery, Maine – 1944. (Source: https://salutetofreedom.org/nh.html)

Operationally, the men who were the products of these institutions were an investment of the…

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FLASHBACK – Icebergs Are No Danger – The Dave Bowman Show

Afternoons Live with Dave & John — December 27, 2011 (Hour 2) Holiday Hangover, Tonka Trucks, and a Titanic-Sized Dose of Skepticism There’s a peculiar magic in the week between Christmas and New Year’s, a stretch of time where clocks tick, but nobody quite believes them. That spirit hangs thick over this December 27, 2011 episode of Afternoons Live, where Dave Bowman and John Considine return from the holiday break not with urgency, but with something rarer in radio, looseness. This hour doesn’t rush. It wanders. It jokes. It pokes at the absurdities of modern life and occasionally at each other. ________________________________________ A Show Finding Its Feet (and Its Audio Feed) The hour opens in a fashion familiar to anyone who’s ever worked live radio, mild chaos. Traffic updates, chat room glitches, audio issues. John may or may not be audible, and nobody seems entirely sure why. Dave shrugs through it with the weary confidence of a man who has seen worse. There’s something charmingly analog about it all. No polished veneer, no illusion of perfection, just two voices trying to get the machine humming again. And that’s the point. This is radio as it was meant to be, alive, imperfect, and immediate. ________________________________________ Christmas, As It Actually Happens Holiday recaps dominate the early stretch, and they land somewhere between heartfelt and hilariously anticlimactic. John’s Christmas sounds like the kind you’d bottle if you could, family games, laughter, warmth. Dave’s is a bit more experimental. There are menorahs running out of candles, a toddler unimpressed by carefully staged Tonka trucks, and the quiet realization that the perfect Christmas morning exists mostly in theory. Dave’s son, instead of marveling at his gifts, takes one look and retreats, an act both baffling and deeply human. It’s the kind of moment that cuts through the Hallmark gloss. Kids don’t follow scripts. Neither do holidays. And Dave, equal parts amused and perplexed, tells it like it is. ________________________________________ The Modern Christmas, Everyone’s a Cameraman One of the more reflective threads comes when Dave contrasts Christmas past with present. Gone are the days of Super 8 film and waiting weeks to see blurry footage. Now, every moment is captured instantly, five phones pointed at every gift opening. It’s not nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. It’s a quiet question. Does documenting everything mean we’re experiencing less? No answer is given. Just the observation, hanging there like tinsel after the party’s over. ________________________________________ Sports, Skepticism, and the Death of the Team Game Dave takes a swing at the NBA, arguing without apology that the sport lost its soul somewhere along the way. In his view, the rise of superstar culture turned a team game into a one man spectacle. He lays a good portion of that at the feet of Michael Jordan. It’s a bold claim, and not entirely fair, but that’s talk radio. It thrives on conviction, not consensus. John pushes back just enough to keep it lively, but the segment isn’t really about basketball. It’s about something older, the tension between individual brilliance and collective effort. A debate as old as sport itself. ________________________________________ The Titanic, Revisited, Because What Could Go Wrong? And then comes the centerpiece, a story so strange it feels like satire. A company plans to recreate the Titanic voyage for its 100th anniversary, complete with matching menus, the same route, and a solemn memorial at the exact moment of the original sinking. Dave’s reaction is immediate and merciless. This, he declares, belongs in the file labeled “What could possibly go wrong?” The real kicker is that organizers claim modern ships are no longer threatened by icebergs. That’s the kind of sentence that makes history sit up straight. Dave leans into the irony with gusto, imagining the headlines that might follow. It’s dark humor, yes, but it’s rooted in something deeper, a suspicion of hubris. The same hubris that once called the Titanic unsinkable. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does enjoy a good echo. ________________________________________ Concerts, Crowds, and the Trouble with Other People The hour closes with a wandering conversation about live music, where Dave reveals a surprising truth. He prefers concert albums to actual concerts. Why? The crowd. In his telling, live shows are less about music and more about enduring everyone else in the room. It’s a curmudgeonly take, but not without merit. Anyone who has stood shoulder to shoulder in a packed venue might nod along. John, more forgiving, offers balance, but Dave’s stance is clear. The music is best when stripped of excess. No noise, no distractions. Just the song. A traditionalist’s view, if ever there was one. ________________________________________ Final Thoughts, A Broadcast Between Moments This hour of Afternoons Live isn’t driven by breaking news or grand revelations. It is something quieter, and in its way, more enduring. It captures a moment in time, the lull after Christmas, the drift before the new year. Two hosts, half in vacation mode, half back at work, circling through stories both trivial and telling. There’s humor, yes. But beneath it runs a steady current of skepticism, about technology, about spectacle, about the idea that newer always means better. And maybe that’s the real theme of the hour. Not the holidays. Not the Titanic. But the uneasy feeling that we’ve seen all this before, and we ought to know better by now.

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How They Became Legends (Part 7 of 8)

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