Movie documents US Navy submariners

American Submariner magazine, November 2011 issue

October 25, 2011

Navy submarine veterans screen new movie documentary

By Nancy Yockey Bonar

We’ve been awaiting a non-fiction, un-glamorized movie about what it’s really like for the iron men who live and work aboard sharks of steel.

Just released is the feature documentary movie, “Submariners: The Men of the Silent Service,” featuring on-camera interviews with 15 submariners who served on board diesel-electric and nuclear boats. Before the movie’s final production, Tony Rollo*, producer/director, invited USSVI’s Volunteer Base (Tennessee) to a private screening.

Among base members’ comments – “Rollo tells the submarine story better than I’ve ever seen. It’s more than about subs as weaponry. It’s about the lives of submariners. This documentary should be shown in every school in the country.” – Capt. Fred Reker, (USNR Ret), USS Razorback (SS 394).

“The movie’s impressive. It has something for everyone, from history buffs to children to the patriotic. Submariners, sometimes with emotions, tell their stories of what it was like to serve our country and of duty first.” – Jim Sandman (USN Ret), FTS(SS)/underway Lay Leader, four subs, including qual boat, USS Bergall (SSN 667).

Rollo says the documentary’s main focus is on what the men of The Silent Service have to say, that the unscripted submariners give the film its story lines. “Sure there’s history, technology and hardware, but it’s the submariners who provide the action, surprises, excitement, salty language, and hilarious personalities and situations.

”I was privileged to have been accepted by submariners during the interviewing, filming and screening processes. They and fellow submariners are, indeed, unsung heroes.” 

“Submariners: The Men of the Silent Service” feature documentary is on two DVD disks. Among the many stories on the disk of the main feature movie is one told by a USS Tirante (SS-420) sailor. (Sic) “There was a preplanned switch of three of our crew with three aircraft carrier personnel to give them insight about the two types of vessels and duties. Aboard the carrier, Marines, who didn’t know about the switch, arrested and threw into the brig the submariners for being out of uniform and smelly. The carrier’s CO rescued them.” (Sic) Another story is voiced by a USS Scorpion (SSN-589) crew member who’d transferred to USS Nautilus (SSN 571) before Scopion was lost with all hands in 1968.                                                  

The second DVD is a featurette movie, including lots of hilarities from the 15 submariners. Remember your first day aboard? How ‘bout the many ways you relieved stress? Did you torment “Cookie”?

To see the movie trailers, and for ordering info, “www.submarinemovie.com


  *Tony Rollo is a Nashville based film producer/director and writer. He’s a member of the American Historical Association and the Tennessee Historical Society. Rollo’s second cousin was among crew of USS Nautilus (SSN 571), the first watercraft and sub to reach the geographic North Pole. Additionally, in the late 1950s, his Navy Reserves dad was a radar man on a destroyer escort, a great uncle served in the Navy in WW II’s Pacific Theater, and a grandfather was in the first group of Army soldiers to set foot in Nagasaki, Japan, after the 1945 drop of an atomic bomb, code name, “Fat Man.” Website http://www.tonyrollo.com/
                                       
         

- Nancy Yockey Bonar, USSVI life/associate/LIB member