ANST - previous threads ... keltoi / religion / holy-days

[Lord Larkin O'Kane]

On Fri, 23 Jan 1998 12:03:25 -0800, "Timothy A. McDaniel" <tmcd at crl.com>
wrote:

>As for a broom on the mast of a submarine, I was told
>elsewhere that (any) subs do that after returning from a
>voyage in which it sank an enemy -- the custom supposedly
>deriving from a fleet doing that to show that they'd swept
>the sea clean of enemies.  (I'm thinking an English fleet
>that had defeated a Dutch fleet in the 1600s, but that
>memory is most unreliable.)

Well, first off  submarines don't have masts <gr>.  During WWII
submarines tied a broom to the periscope, then extended it to signify a
clean sweep (one ship for each torpedo, I believe).   The peace-time navy
uses the same symbo, though they run a broom up a signal halyard, to
indicate any "clean sweep", like winning each catagory of a war games
exercise,  hitting each/every target presented, etc...

Larkin- who knows from beans about the modern Navy, but believes Charlie
should know because he spent 30yrs in it.
===

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