The internet can be so darn cool. An image search elicited the following photos of Charles' submarine:
I don't think the whatzit on the back is usually there, BTW.
Okay, odds are one sub looks pretty much like another, but as his mother, I think it's interesting. 
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Actually, it's my understanding that they don't look much like one another*. When we lived in Hampton, we could walk down to Hampton Roads, and see the Norfolk navy base across the water. My husband and son could identify most of the vessels there by silhouette, and I think that includes subs that were visible. They were always most excited to see the Enterprise since that's the one my FIL served on.
*Not to men anyway - notice that *I* could never tell them apart!
That's interesting! Really? They could tell which sub was which? Amazing.
Actually the "whatzit" on the back is our dry deck and it's there all the time. We put a mini submarine in there and when we're submerged and we need to send SEALs out to do what they do, we load them in there and open up the back of the dry deck and they drive the minisub to drop the off, it all happens in reverse when they come back. But the dry deck is always there.
And also, they probably knew what the names of the ships and subs are because of they say what they are on them. There's a big huge number on every ship in the navy called the hull number, each one is unique to that ship. For example, my boats hull number is SSN 700, and there is a big 700 on it. That tells everyone who knows the numbers that it's the USS Dallas. Besides that, every ship is exactly like the others in its class. My boat is a Los Angeles class submarine and is exactly like every other LA class boat in the fleet, besides of course the big dry deck on the back. The USS Enterprise is a Nimitz class carrier, I think, and it's just like every other Nimitz carrier besides the hull number.
Hey, Charles! Cool picture!
So the doohickey's always there, eh? Well, I've been wrong before.
Glad to see you're blogging! (That's a hint, folks...click on his Xanga ID.)
Love you, dearest!
shoot i don't know, i didn't ask them about that. i imagine they almost never get asked about it, and they probably do know that it was in the movie.
Hey Charles, it's good to see you commenting here! The first time Mike and Stephen started talking about which ships we were seeing, I assumed they were reading the names off the sides, too, and I just couldn't see that far. It's a couple of miles across the water there and nearly always hazy, and I couldn't make out anything. But when I asked, "How can you tell from this far away?" they said, "Oh, look at the con tower [con? conning?] on that ship - that's the so-and-so."
Here is where we were standing, to be exact. According to that map, it looks like it's about 3 1/2 miles across the water.
Great conversation. I love to see ships. These are te ships we saw as kids. This was Camden Maine. Your blog made me go back and read the history of Camden. Thank you.
Oh What a handsome you man.
Oh the picture did not come through oh well.
Retraction. I just asked Stephen and he said that they already knew which ships were stationed at Norfolk and even when it was too hazy to read the numbers, they can tell the difference between a battleship and a frigate. Oh, well... don't mind me, I'm always ascribing magic powers to my husband. :-p
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