Living The MIRACLES:: A Sailor's Life in the Nuclear Power Age

By Albert Lee Kelln

Al Kelln's twenty-seven miracles will inspire the reader. The son of German speaking immigrants left the aftermath of the Depression in Oklahoma to become a Naval officer and nuclear propulsion engineer.

His years at U.S. Naval Academy (class of 1952) prepared him for destroyer and diesel submarine deployments to the Korean War. Surviving several close calls, the author trained in Admiral Rickover's Nuclear Power School.

Early exploratory voyages under the ice to the Arctic Ocean on nuclear submarine USS Skate allowed him to be the first person to have flown over, stood at, and gone under the ice at the North Pole.

Kelln served in the construction and subsequent operation of four nuclear submarines. Admiral Rickover made him the Chief Engineer of Aircraft Carrier Enterprise CVAN for its operations in the Mediterranean, its circumnavigation of the world, and shipyard overhaul.

With humor, the author shares poignant meetings with John Eisenhower, the Queen of Greece, and ruffians at Holy Loch, Scotland.

After retirement, Admiral Kelln founded the Naval Submarine League and several Christian endeavors, including a Pregnancy Center. He and his wife, Cecily, live in Llano, Texas and continue their teaching ministries.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Proisle Publishing Services
• Release date: Sep 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781959449126

Book preview

LIVING THE

MIRACLES

A SAILOR’S LIFE IN THE NUCLEAR POWER AGE

Albert Lee Kelln

Living the MIRACLES

Copyright © 2021 by Albert Lee Kelln

ISBN: Paperback: 978-17378712-6-2

Hardback: 978-1-7378712-7-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, such images are being used for illustrative purposes only. Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

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Table of Contents

Note: Look for over twenty-three miracles! Miracle Key is denoted as (M-#)

Dedication ………………………………………………………………….i

Tracing Family Tree Back To Russia ...…………………….…………….1

Recounting My Childhood ………………………………....…………….3

Highlights of Naval Academy Days ……………………………………...6

Tough Shoes To Fill ……………………………………………………..10

What a way to Fight a War ……………………………………………...13

From Korea to Connecticut ……………………………………………..16

Before Korea―Submarine School and Wedding Bells ………………...20

Experiencing Several Close Calls at Sea ……………………….......…...23

Espionage, Spies, and Sneaking Inside North Korea ……...…………...27

Checking Up on the Russian Fleet ………………………………………29

Earning My Dolphins ...………………………………………………....33

Outwitting the Naval Aviators …………………………………………..36

Making the Grade in Rickover’s Schools and Assignment to the Skate 41

The Navy―Not Just a Sub, but an Adventure ……………….…………44

Making History at the North Pole ………………………………………52

Mapping of the Arctic Ocean’s Lomonosov Mountains ……………….59

Visit of President Eisenhower’s Son …………………………………….63

Skate’s Initial Patrol― and Then? ………………………………………66

First Submarine into the Arctic Winter …………………………………69

Antenna Repair in-23F Degree Winter …………………………………72

Kelln Sets World Record at North Pole ………………………………...75

Shark―First Nuclear Submarine to the Mediterranean Sea …………..80

Visit By Royals of Greece ………………………………………………..84

Overnight Assignment to USS ENTERPRISE (CVAN-65) ……….…..89

Enterprise—The Most Complex Navy Ship ……….………...…..…….91

Operation Sea Orbit ………………………………………………….….96

My Command—USS Ray (SSN—653) ……………….…….………...102

To Holy Loch—My Major Command ……………….……………….113

Submarine Group Six ………………………………….……………….121

Back to the Pentagon ………………………………………….………..125

Retired—The First Twenty Years ……………………………….…….131

My Search for Purpose ………………………………………….……...138

Our Christian Walk …………………………………………….………143

Let’s Consolidate and Relax? ………………………………….……….149

Acknowledgments .……………………………………………………..154

Sea Adventures and Knowledge Grabbers With Admiral Al ..……….155

Sea Adventures and Knowledge Grabbers With Admiral Al ………...160

Sea Adventures and Knowledge Grabbers With Admiral Al ……….168

Sea Adventures and Knowledge Grabbers With Admiral Al ……….182

Sea Adventures and Knowledge Grabbers With Admiral Al ……….194

Dedication

This Book is in admiration of and thanks to:

My wife and precious partner, Cecily Watson Kelln

My shipmates. May the wind be always at their backs

My inspiration and guides, Adm. Hyman G. Rickover, Adm. James L. Holloway III, and Adm. Robert L. J. Long

My country. Stand Fast

With honor, I dedicate this book to my fellow submariners and other shipmates. They all served with valor. Bravo Zulu!

To God be the glory!

The Kelln Family Crest from 1259 A.D.

The TRIDENT symbol in the family Coat of Arms is the same as for the TRIDENT Missile symbol currently used in the U.S. Navy. Of interest, RAdm Kelln was one of the original Pentagon TRIDENT Program Coordinators.

CHAPTER 1

Tracing Family

Tree Back To Russia

Hello to my Grandchildren,

Your parents have suggested that I pen some of my life experiences so that you can remember them and me better. I will do my best to recall significant events or just happenings, but I may forget some that later I will want to add to certain chapters. So maybe you might just want to keep your own folder and refer to it when you get older.

Before I relate any of my Navy personal experiences, I think it useful for you to know something about the Kelln history, which is actually part of your history too.

The Kelln early history starts with the mention of a royal Knight Collinge, who lived in the northwest portion of Germany. We have his coat of arms dated way back to the early year of 1259. That is a long time ago. These people lived by the North Sea and were farmers, hunters, and fishermen. They were very hardy people as they lived in a cold part of Germany.

In the late 1700s, there was a Queen of Russia, Katherine, who was of German royal birth. In Russia there was much land that needed development near the Volga River. Look it up on a map. She invited her German countrymen to move many hundreds of miles to the Volga, to settle there and raise food and build cities and roads in exchange for the settlers having autonomy in their villages. They would not have to pay taxes nor be drafted into the army for 100 years.

My great grandparents were from the Holstein region of Germany and they agreed to move to develop the rich river land. Their new colony in Russia was also named Holstein. We have a map that my parents drew of this village and we know exactly where Great Grandpa Kelln lived. Not much of the village is left, but some of our relatives have visited this region in Russia and have found some homes and the graveyard.

But, around 1880, there was a change of leadership in Russia and the rebels attacked the German villages. Consequently, many families left and moved to the United States, Canada, Argentina and Australia. My father’s parents moved to the raw grasslands of Kansas and again became wheat farmers. My father became a cowboy and worked as far south as Mexico. Around 1900, there were several land openings in the Indian Territory of Oklahoma. Most of the Kelln immigrants moved to Oklahoma and claimed their homesteads. They sometimes lived in dirt houses dug into the side of a hill, which is how my mother lived as a child. Times were hard. But they never gave up, and they were able to break up the grasslands to create farms and raise families.

My next story will be about the time of my birth and why I went into the Navy. I am a first generation citizen and your mothers therefore are second generation Americans. We are very proud to be a part of the United States and we are very grateful for that.

CHAPTER 2

Recounting My

Childhood

I was born in the small town of Shattuck, Oklahoma, on 17 December 1929. Wow, that was many years ago. That area of the U.S. was buffalo grass country and the area where the real Indians lived. I was the youngest of my father’s children. His first wife, Amelia, died during the worldwide flu epidemic after she had had two girls, Hannah and Hulda. My father then married Eva Meier, who was seventeen years younger than he was. They had Cecilia, Wilma, Dave, Olivia, then me. A few months before I was born, the United States economy was devastated and suddenly most jobs disappeared. My father David, who was a very successful rancher raising cattle, was unable to pay the land mortgage payments and was only allowed to keep his house in Shattuck. We and most other families were utterly broke and poor.

Concurrently, with the demise of the U.S. economy, a terrible severe years-long drought occurred in the Midwestern U.S. No crops could be grown. The wind kicked up dust storms which lasted for several days at a time. We couldn’t go outside of our homes, as the air was filled with unhealthy dust and the visibility was zero. The people provided some food by raising chickens in their backyards and growing vegetables in small gardens, if they had water.

When I was five, my mother Eva, my brother Dave, my sister Olivia, and I went to Fordland, Missouri for several years to live. My father became a truck driver for a source of income. We raised cattle and grew tomatoes for the local cannery. At that early age, Olivia and I had to work in the fields to carry away rocks that became exposed by the winter freezes. It was hard work for such a small boy and girl. My brother, Dave, made four rabbit traps for me, and each week I would take my pelts to town to exchange them for molasses candies and food. It was hard work, but I developed character trying to help us to survive.

One other memory about our Fordland farm was my job every evening to go into the large, dimly-lighted chicken house to gather the eggs. I was not tall enough to see into the chicken boxes and sometimes I would pull a big black snake out of the nest. What a scare for a little guy. I had a mid-sized dog named Fanny. My brother Dave would harness her to my red wagon and she would pull me around the yard.

In those days, many poor men became hobos riding empty railroad cars from one place to another looking for jobs. We lived next to the railroad tracks and Mother would allow only this one young hobo into the farm yard. In exchange for a meal and overnight bed, he would split wood for the cooking stove, which also provided the only warmth we had in the winter. This hobo believed that he could only sleep with his head pointed up north, otherwise he felt that the blood would rush to his head and hurt him. We always waited to hear him move the bed when he went upstairs, and we would think that was funny.

When the dust storms were over, we moved back to Shattuck, Oklahoma. My father purchased cream from farmers and trucked it to Kansas, while Mom and I tended to our feed store. I learned to test cream for its butterfat content. This went on for years. In the summers, I helped with the wheat harvest. I worked for my older sister Wilma, driving an open tractor for hours at a time, sometimes all through the night, using headlights. When I worked alone, without any entertainment, I would sing Home on the Range and make up verses to it.

One of my earliest jobs was helping Wilma around the house before I could drive the combine or tractor. I fed chickens, pets, and calves, and did other chores, one of which was to dig up garden potatoes for her to use in cooking. The first day she asked me to dig up ten potatoes. I took my spade shovel and tried. The ground was dry and hard as cement. My spade could not even make a dent in it. So with some humility, I informed her that the ground was too hard to dig potatoes. She looked at me sternly and said, Albert, figure it out, and left me sitting in the hot sun. I found a bit of shade near the windmill which was used to supply all of our water needs. I sat there and pondered and pondered. A gust of wind came by, and the windmill started to pump a bit and water appeared at the spout. And, in a bit of inspiration, I remembered that water and earth combined made mud. That was it! I needed mud around the potato plants to reach the tuber and victory. I made a small dam of loose dirt around the plant and filled it with a pail of water. I surveyed my work and in a few minutes removed three tubers with my shovel. I congratulated my brain and henceforth decided I could think problems through and not ever be defeated again. What a breakthrough for my future. (M-1A)

Photo by Daniel Adams

CHAPTER 3

Highlights of Naval

Academy Days

One hot summer day, when I was about fourteen, I decided that there had to be something more to life than western Oklahoma and I started reading books about the United States Military Academy. I had never heard about the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. I was so thankful, even at that early age, that the United States had allowed my elders to immigrate and become U.S. citizens. I sensed a need to repay this country for their hospitality, and I further felt a need to serve in the military. As I proceeded into high school, I kept that dream and goal alive.

I would like to interject an event which occurred about a month before I graduated from high school. While I was in the movie theater with a girl from my school, a killer tornado hit our area and about 149 people were killed, including my friend’s mother. It was a devastating time for all of us. Instead of finishing school and taking exams, everyone in high school was assigned to walk the farmers’ wheat fields to search for and remove debris from the ruined homes and buildings, so that the farmers could harvest their wheat crop without damage to the farm equipment’s tires and blades.

After graduation, I attended the University of Oklahoma as a petroleum engineer major. During that year, I applied for admission to both the United States Naval Academy and the Naval Reserve Officers Program (NROTC). I qualified for both and chose the Naval Academy, even though I had never seen a body of water bigger than a small lake. One of my competitors for the Naval Academy was Tom Stafford, the astronaut. Later, Tom and I were both selected for flag rank about six years before our peers. He later got another appointment. Also, Jim Lovell, another astronaut, was a classmate and friend. We attended classes together. While at the Naval Academy, I was the varsity football manager for three years and that allowed me to see things that I otherwise would not have experienced.

In spite of the inferior World War II high school education I received—all of our good teachers were in the war effort and only aged retired teachers were left for us—I excelled at the Naval Academy, except in foreign language. I had no high school language training, but I was placed in a German class where I learned to read and write German from a dictionary. I only knew the spoken language up to the age of five, when my parents stopped speaking German at home. While my classmates were enjoying weekend social life, I had to study on Saturdays to keep up and make good grades. Since my pay as a Midshipman started at three dollars and grew to nine dollars a month as a senior, I had no money for a social life anyway, and probably attended only six to ten social events in four years. I never regretted a minute of the effort I had to expend. All was repaid to me later on in my career.

Sometimes I forget about certain events while I write these memories. So I will relate some of the highlights I now remember from my four years at the Naval Academy. First, I will always remember one of my roommates named Dave. He was a withdrawn fellow, but had one of those mischievous minds that often surprised us. In particular, I remember as First Class Seniors, Dave had an alcove in our top floor room in Bancroft Hall where we lived and studied. Since the building was quite old, it had many places for mice to live and hide. So Dave, in reality, had a private space to engineer a diversion.

As the senior year progressed, Dave became bored and was just anxious to graduate. But wait. He decided to liven up things for his roommates in the big room. And this is how he did it. Dave was in a group that made scenery for drama events. He designed and made a super mouse trap, but it did not have an automatic trap door. So he designed a light that would come on when the mouse would enter the trap, and this light was suspended over his bunk bed above his eyes. Then when the mouse would enter the trap, the light would come on, Dave would wake up and cut the string that held the door open. And WOW! It worked.

Since we lived on the fourth deck, or floor, he would stash his mice outside his window where the inspectors never looked while he was in class. After class, he would rent the mouse to other classmates in its special cage with an exercise wheel. The mouse and cage would be returned each morning. The only problem with this arrangement was that the mouse would be overfed each night with cheese and other tasty stuff. After about a week, the mouse would get fat, stop exercising, and die. So Dave was kept busy replacing mice for his five cages, as the demand for entertainment and diversion was high. We had no TVs and were only allowed to play our radios for a few hours each day. And Dave was making a dollar a night per mouse. He did quite well.

Another event that was interesting was a result of being one of the varsity football team managers. One year we upset Army fourteen to two in football. Winning this game was a big, big event, and even the freshmen Plebes got to relax and just forget about the special routine they had to carry out each day. Here is what I did at the end of that Army-Navy game. When I saw that we were about to score the winning touchdown just as the game was finished, I ran down to the end zone and waited to get the football on the last play. And YES, as the final whistle blew, I ran into the group, got the football, hid it under my heavy jacket—it was always cold when we played Army late in the season—and I have kept it for many years. I look at the football and remember how this little guy from Shattuck, Oklahoma got a prized memory by just being in the right place at the right time. (M-1B)

And finally, I remember getting five demerits in Plebe summer, during our indoctrination period. So I decided that I had enough of that, and worked hard so that I received no demerits for the next four years. Consequently, I graduated first in my class in CONDUCT, which made me feel real good, as I was competing against many prep school and fleet-input midshipmen. This attitude of discipline was to be a hallmark of my career, as you will see in later chapters.

As I neared graduation, I became an avid student of Admiral Nimitz. He also was of German speaking origin and we shared many common experiences early in life which culminated in attending the Naval Academy. What is even more of a coincidence was that many years later, my retirement home was Llano, Texas, a small town forty miles north of Fredericksburg, Texas, the Admiral’s birth and retirement home.

I graduated from the Naval Academy on 6 June 1952. The Korean War had begun before I graduated. I was selected to enter the Naval Aviation branch of the Navy. But before starting flight training, we all had to first acquire the Officer of the Deck qualification on a surface ship. I chose to serve on a Destroyer involved in the Korean War. With my high class standing, 105 out of 750, I was assigned to a fast Navy Destroyer, the USS BLUE (DD-744). I was elated and ready to serve my country in combat. After four years of school, I was eager to apply my skills.

That decision to engage in the combat zone set the stage for an interesting career in the U.S. Navy. I imagined I was on track to become a TOP GUN pilot. Little did I know what would really happen. Stand by world, here comes that farm boy from Oklahoma.

CHAPTER 4

Tough Shoes to Fill

One of the most memorable events of my four years at the Naval Academy occurred at our last dress parade before my graduation. Our Naval Academy Superintendent was Rear Admiral Harry Hill. He was a dry, dour person noted for having the entire brigade at meetings to instill pep into our attitudes, all the while denying the First Classmen seniors time off on weekends to do whatever college seniors do. Anyway, it was a whimsical sight to see the Admiral with a microphone singing Navy songs and ballads while the First Classmen stewed at being denied weekend liberty. So, as midshipmen are apt to do, a plot was concocted to get retribution.

So now the plot unfolded. At the last marching parade during graduation week, it was normal to hold the Color Company Parade. This parade recognized the winner of the Company competitions held during the year, involving sports, marching, and the like. At the Color Parade, the sweetheart of the winning Company Commander was allowed to present an award to the Company and was escorted during this event by the Superintendent. This presentation occurred without a hitch. The ceremony was over and all the Admirals and ladies had been recognized and all speeches were completed. Cameras and reporters were watching every move of this memorable event.

At the order to March Off, the band started to play and, with precision, the Companies marched off the parade field. But alas, something was left behind. Look! cried the attendees. There are hundreds of black shoes left where some of the midshipmen had been standing. Admirals snickered. Staff officers milled about in circles not knowing what to do, and the press recorded everything, as children ran onto the field to grab a souvenir shoe. What a melee.

Admiral Hill was livid. He immediately restricted all the seniors to the Yard, just three days from graduation, until further notice. Parents and sweethearts were distressed. Many Midshipmen had planned to get married in production-line ceremonies immediately after they had graduated and had received their officer commissions. Meanwhile, the Admiral stewed as how to punish this group of unruly students. Mothers started to cancel wedding receptions and flower orders. The roar from the affected crowd grew louder each passing hour.

Even so, a smile of accomplished retribution was evident on the Midshipmen’s faces for all the liberty time that the Admiral had denied them. We knew that saner voices would be heard. And they were. The evening before graduation, the Admiral announced that even though the Class of ‘52 had disappointed and embarrassed the Navy, he would forgive and let us graduate. Sweethearts shouted with glee and mothers hurried to renew wedding plans. I understand each Naval Academy graduating class is warned, even more than fifty years later, not to repeat the Class of ’52’s stunt. Incidentally, our class motto still to this day is "TOUGH SHOES TO