I was stationed aboard the Tam from 91-93. I helped pull the 4 Air National Guardsmen out of the water. One of the most vivid memories of my life! Sad to see her go down like that. May she rest in peace and provide a home to aquatic wildlife and be a sight for divers to see and visit!
I imagine you have strong emotions for the Tam. It's quite an understatement to say nothing in your life will compare to being on the seas during that storm and the rescues you all did. I've read The Perfect Storm 9 times. I have family members who served in the Navy. I hold immense respect and honor to you and all who serve to rescue and protect lives in such dangerous conditions. Thank you.
The Tamaroa: She served her men and her country well. 🇺🇸 May she indeed “rest easy. ❤️” Incredible work done on that fateful night. I can’t even begin to imagine what the sea must have been like that cold October night! Thank you for your service sir! I am the proud daughter of a Coastguardsmen, and the Granddaughter of career Naval Commander and Pearl Harbor Survivor. God bless you and the men and women who bravely serve their country. 🇺🇸
Hi Troy: one quick question: There is a poster on this thread going by the name Bic Stylus: he is stating that the Captain didn’t want to take the call for the rescue that night, and there was much dissension between he and the Ex O? Also stated the Coastguard is trying to cover this up? Claims log books were doctored etc... sounds pretty far fetched to me, so I thought I’d go to a Man who was there! Does any of his rant ring true to you? I’d love to hear back from you! Check out his post on this video. Again thanks for your service, it’s appreciated more than I can say! The daughter of a Coastguardsmen 🇺🇸 K 😉
The ship in "The Perfect Storm" was actually a 210' "RELIANCE" class. I think they used USCGC ALERT, out of Astoria, OR to simulate the scenes. I served on VALIANT myself for 3 years; got to know that 210' pretty well. Sadly, during the summer that the movie came out (2000), I was in NYC for Opsail 2000; saw TAMAROA sitting forlornly at the docks on the Hudson River. They still had hopes of turning her into a museum. Guess it didn't work out. TAMAROA survived the storm because her salvage tug construction made her bottom-heavy; where the ALERT would have been torn up by the storm, TAMAROA made it. I've heard that the ride was anything but fun; an old QMC at "A" School in Yorktown told me about walking on the bulkheads during that whole mess, she was getting rolled so badly. Very long coupla days for those guys.
yes.. when i readed the book and then saw the movie i knew the ship class was wrongly portrayed.. the boat in the movie was quite more modern than the actual one.. i dont know why they felt to do such change
Yeah well , On the Dauntless Michael Caine clogged all the damn flight deck scuppers with cabbage blasting when he went full Rambo with the 50 cal. That stupid movie makes the crew look like idiots to boot. Damn you Michael Caine and damn The Island
I had to watch when I saw this. I served with a man who became a close friend, a DC at Brooklyn Supply around 1980. He had served on her and often chuckled at her record of sinking. Sadly, I have lost contact with everyone I served with. Jax, 1978-1983.
She was built as the USN Zuni (in 1943) ATF-95 during WWll and became the USCGC Tamaroa WMEC-166 after the war. I served aboard her from 6/66-6/70 (my entire Coast Guard enlistment). Her service was until 1992 upon her decommissioning.
Not to diminish by ANY means the Tamaroa extraordinary efforts that night.. but only to clarify that the crew of the Satori was picked by a H-3 helicopter who also picked the crew of the Tamaroa Avon boat wich became disabled trying to reach the Satori.. then it became a hell race to reach the crew of the H-60 that was about to ditch out of fuel in the middle of the worst of the storm
When I was in Aviation. Electronics school in 1980, the instructor used to threaten to send us to the Tamaroa if we failed, going so far as to draw it on the blackboard with little stick men.
Any of y’all remember a MK3 Angelo Bozone? Tell him Ukie said Hello. I believe he went to the Tammy & I wound up on Thomas Point Shoals Light Station after MK school in Yorktown back in ‘75....”
Served on the Tam for a year and a half. Lot of good experiences. Once 5 Coasties tried to hijack the Tam at gun point when it was tied up at Gov. Is. What were they thinking? At the age of 19, I was issued a .45 caliber pistol and was told to drive one of them to the Brooklyn Navy Yard where he was transferred to Philadelphia prison. I was told if he escaped, I’d serve his 3 year sentence. I was going to see Perfect Storm in the theatre until I learned Hollywood gave her a massive “face lift” for the film. The Tam; sunk once by the Japanese, 4 times by us. R. I.P. Well deserved.
Just how exactly did this ship go from "It was retired in 1994 and donated to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York City" to "So after years of preparation...."? Why is it not still there? What kind of operation are they running there in New York City? Why should anything else be donated to that museum? Is that some kind of racket they have going on there?
William Gottlieb i can understand your feelings. Hate to see a lady go down intentionally. But to answer... Many times museum ships will acquire a certain amoit of leaks due to corrosion that a museum simply cannot financially support. So the museums will relinquish the vessel back to the donating party. A government vessel is never truly donated as far as permanent ownership. It is leased out for free. Think of it like a foster child. Nobody can change who the parents are, but the legal guardianship liea with another party.
I was a coverup by the Coast Guard. Mutiny, altered ships logs and the story that went down with the ship. Brudnicki didn't want to divert the ship to the downed AirGuard helicopter crew. Executive officer just about forced the ship to take the call for assistance (near mutiny). Brudnicki spent the entire time of the rescue of the 4 AirGuard crew in his cabin but has been taking all the praise for the rescue ever since. It took 16 years for the actual Coast Guardsmen who saved that crew to receive their awards. Whole thing has been a coverup of how the captain of a CG Ship defied a request for assistance. The ships log books were altered to cover up the ruse. The Coast Guard went so far to cover this up that they attempted to Scuttle the Tamaroa (fired 50cal round in hull below the water line while docked at ship repair facility) to keep this story from being told to a National Geographic documentary crew wanting to do a feature on the Tamaroa and the organization (Zuni foundation) trying to save it. Coast Guard eventually got the upper hand and now the ship is an oyster reef off NJ. SAD!
I always have and always will believe sinking a perfectly good boat, is a perfectly stupid ideal. Too many vessels I have seen on these videos resemble swiss cheese when they finish cutting holes in them and, yet they still fight their fate like a man who is drownings.
It wasn’t perfectly good. It lived it’s life. It won’t be forgotten. Time to move on. It can now serve to foster sea life and divers can get a first hand look. If you get too stuck in the past you can’t properly face the future.
Are we talking about the ship, or , are we referring to the 1960's Woodstock philosophy of free love, flower power, can't see through my LSD purple hazed, and syphilis infected brain, spread STD' s not war philosophy masquerading it's self these days as the environmentalist movement, then yes, I think we should sink that one to the bottom, forget about it and move on. It's time for the hippy generation to retire. Time to grow up people.
Oh wow, the original boat was so much smaller. But i guess that in reality the waves were smaller so eventually this ship would have withheld the weather.
At least she is serving as a reef for living creatures of the ocean, so she is still living. Just other creatures call her home now other than Coasties. My ship was scrapped.
There are literally thousands of beloved boats and ships that had to be cut up or sunk because no one could be found to dave them. It's quite expensive and time consuming.
Most of the things they make reefs out of I get it this one it just feels wrong. Anything that size built that well lasted that long in the worst weather should be upgraed and. repurposed as a possible research vessel .
They could've sold her to be butchered for Bangladeshi or Chinese scrap for 50 grand. Instead they chose to keep her in one piece and make a reef. I can see both sides.
moral of this story is don't donate a valuable piece of History to a museum that has no way to preserve it or they'll just blow it off!! what kind of preservation is that? boy that rust stain on the ocean floor will sure be neat for our children to see. thanks museums. we'll never forget that.
And we littler our oceans with more shit. Think about this. What does aquatic wildlife eat? Options from the sea. Correct? What do we eat from the sea? Aquatic wildlife! The more metal and steal we introduce. The more iron we consume. This is why I don't eat much 🐟. Let's just discard our ships instead of recycling it. Great ideas.
