Word: skippering
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...Skipper. Born in San Francisco, Pierre Salinger* was a child prodigy at the piano, at the age of six impressed an audience at Toronto's International Exposition by rippling off a Haydn sonata...
After two years at San Francisco State College he joined the Navy and, just before his 18th birthday, became one of the youngest men ever to skipper a U.S. Navy ship, taking over a submarine chaser. Returning to San Francisco in 1946, Salinger became within five years, at 26, night city editor of the Chronicle. By the time he quit to go to Collier's in 1955, he had made a name for himself by stories exposing prison conditions and breaking up a municipal bond racket, and by helping to solve a murder. On the side, he worked...
Hidden from enemy eyes, safe from enemy attack, her nuclear-tipped priority cargo of 16 Polaris missiles constantly at the ready, George Washington was bound on history's first underwater missile patrol. Skipper Osborn's orders were secret, but best guesses were that he would take station beneath the subarctic waters of the Norwegian and Barents seas. Cruising within 1,200-mile range of Soviet targets from Moscow to Omsk (see map), George Washington will be joined by her sister ship, Patrick Henry, within two months. With their total of 32 missiles, the two ships will of themselves...
...Navy has an elaborate, secret "Fail-Safe'' countdown system that would prevent any captain, or any other officer who has cracked under the tension of his job, from declaring war on his own. One key provision: no missile can be fired without the joint order of the skipper and his executive officer...
...Noting the inherent risks, the Manchester Guardian Weekly observed last week that the skipper-executive officer team at sea thus becomes "as effectively a nuclear power as, say, Britain or France. The choice of these men, and their discipline and training, must be far more exacting than anything which has gone before...