Trip to Magic Kingdom lands man in sub service TODD R. HANSEN
M
THANSEN@DAILYREPUBLIC.NET
ike Brigandi and four other sailors wanted to go to Disneyland. So they took up a Navy offer, and landed in the submarine service – well four of them did. “I volunteered to go see a submarine when I was in San Diego in 1966, and two weeks later, I was transferred to sub school,” said Brigandi, 79, of Vallejo. “There were about five of us who went up there and took the bait.” The bait was a weekend pass, a chance to see a submarine, and then off to Disneyland. The one sailor who washed out, Brigandi said, ended up on a surface ship assigned to the submarine service that, ironically, would be struck by the submarine to which Brigandi was assigned – the USS Simon Bolivar, a Benjamin Franklin class ballistic missile submarine, and named for Simón Bolívar, the Venezuelan hero of the independence movements of the former Spanish colonies in South America. It was submerged and running drills in August 1967 when it collided with the USS Betelgeuse. “But I wasn’t on it at the time,” Brigandi said. “So the Gold Crew stayed on for the 30 days it was in dry dock, and then we (the Blue Crew) took it out
Stories of
HONOR
See Brigandi, Page 17
Thank you, veterans
I always wanted to be in the Navy.
S U P P L E M E N T T O T H E D A I LY R E P U B L I C S U N D AY, N O V E M B E R 9 , 2 0 2 5
MIKE BRIGANDI AARON ROSENBLATT/DAILY REPUBLIC
Mike Brigandi stands inside Redman Hall in Vallejo. He served as a radioman on the USS Simon Bolivar.