The Day We Destroyed Norfolk, Oceana, and Damneck by Dante Stephensen
 

While on the teams there were hundreds of unique experiences. Here’s one: Not long after completing UDTRA22, Dave Watts and I were assigned a unique mission by Admiral McCain via our skipper Bill Hamilton. The Admiral wanted to test the security of the four main cryto centers in the Norfolk area. We were to fly into Norfolk, using fake drivers IDs, posing as civilians to plan their destruction from scratch. I believe the year was 1960 or ’61.

We bought officer uniforms at a surplus store. Then snuck on a base and removed a base sticker from an unlocked car at the commissary. After we had stickers from all four bases. We applied for Military ID cards claming to have lost ours. We were almost compromised here. Then we began several weeks of surveillance of NAS Norfolk, NAS Oceana, Damneck and CINCLANTFLT (the most difficult). At CINCLANT posing as plumbers, we photographed the special badges worn by the senior officers from a second floor window across the street, having secured the women’s john as "out of order." After dismantling a toilet we patiently watched with a hidden camera. This event took several days, so the women were irritated and almost compromised us. These special badges were to have been removed before any officer left the CINCLANT headquarters building but some were lax. Back at the teams and from the film, Fat Rat Sutherland, Lenny Waugh, Chief Witherow and Pancho Cressini forged special badges for us and with explosives in hand, we dressed our older senior Chiefs in Capt’s uniforms and our four teams casually but precisely entered al four spaces. The Marine guards at CINCLANT had live ammo and we were required to have a badge at each. The Chief who I escorted into CINCLANT headquarters was very nervous, sweating profusely and walking too fast causing his badge to flip up exposing its flaws. The Marine guard spotted this and entered a live clip into his automatic weapon.

Hoot & Dante at Muster

click to enlarge