Thanks for the warm welcome! Shooter13, somehow I picked up the nickname "gunboat" back in my Navy ROTC days. When it came time to sign up for real I found out I was too tall for naval aviation, couldn't see good enough to fly helicopters with the Marines, and couldn't fit in a submarine. Patrol gunboats interested me but right then the Vietnam fracas ended. So instead of joining the surface fleet I quit the program and stayed in school for another few years and got a master's degree. Still love the Navy and dream about what might've been. My picture is the USS Panay which was sunk by the Japanese in 1937 while anchored in the Yangtze river. I like that picture because it just sums up everything "gunboat": small ship, big gun, churning brown water, bone in her teeth.
