With morale on board his nuclear-powered submarine way down, the skipper of the Finback came up with a novel-but risque-solution. The ten minutes of gyrating that followed has gone down in modern U.S. Navy infamy.
At 0610 on 10 July 1975 a slender, hazel-eyed young woman going by the name Cat Futch arrived at the main gate of the naval facility at Port Canaveral, Florida. Clad in a white robe, she made her way to the dock where the USS Finback (SSN-670), a Sturgeon-class nuclear-powered attack submarine, lay moored. She was welcomed aboard by some of the boat's 121-man crew then making preparations for getting under way. What happened next would be one of the most notorious incidents in the history of the Navy's nuclear-powered submarine force.
