As someone who swam around moored warships as a “target” for the Navy’s dolphins, I can tell you that they are amazingly fast. Enemy swimmers often will not know they’ve been marked until grenades start exploding around them underwater and the dolphins are long gone.

Can you take dolphins on ships?

Absolutely. That summer we loaded the dolphins onto a padded stretcher-like apparatus with cutouts for their pectoral fins. We lowered them into small water-filled tubs, and drove to Naval Air Station North Island nearby. There, we rolled the wheeled tubs onto a C-5 Galaxy cargo plane and flew them to Hickam Air Force Base in Oahu. Sailors and veterinarians tended to the dolphins during the entire flight — continually spraying the exposed tops of their bodies with water so that their skin would not dry out. From there, it was a short drive to the amphibious ship Juneau, where the pools were already inflated and filled with seawater.

By the time we finished work, every place to eat on base had long since closed and we were exhausted. No one had eaten anything since leaving San Diego because the rule was that the dolphins were always fed first. That night I learned a leadership lesson I have never forgotten, though. The commander of the explosive ordnance disposal training unit at Barbers Point was a prior enlisted officer, and he knew that when we were done for the night that we would most likely be tired and starving. He rolled up around midnight in an old fastback Mustang with bags of chips and a case of beer. He could have directed one of his subordinates to take care of us, but he showed up and did it himself.

Are the dolphins friendly?

For the most part, yes. One time, though, a male dolphin named Jake got a little aggressive with me and punched me underwater with his snout hard enough to tear an oblique muscle in my abdomen. After he hit me, Jake “bowed” out of the water (jumping clear of the water and splashing down) all the way back to his pickup boat. I was told it’s a sign of a very happy dolphin. A couple of weeks later, when I went to sick call on the Juneau to get some Motrin for the pain, the Navy doctor did not believe me when I said I was injured by a dolphin and he threatened to write me up. I told him if he didn’t believe me, he should go down to the ship’s well-deck and see the large inflatable pools there — each one had a dolphin in it.