Mike Vining

Mike Vining

Saw a video by a very annoying guy about Mike Vining, who was one of the first members of Delta Force. He was involved in a bunch of very sketchy stuff, like bomb disposal. He's still alive and just a year older than I am. Reading the Wikipedia story about him I come across this line:

"He has also written articles on naval postal history,"

Naval Postal History? What are you talking about? The Navy has a postal system? Well, I guess they would have to, wouldn't they? Letters to and from for sailors sailing around the world. This leads me to the Univeral Ship Cancellation Society which has a PDF about Naval Covers Fakes, Forgeries and Frauds. 

On page 59 of this PDF we find a story by Mike Vining:

1931 Wilkins-Ellsworth Trans-Arctic Expedition

Sir George Hubert Wilkins, MC, and Lincoln Ellsworth secured use from the U.S. Navy of the soon to be scrapped submarine USS S-30 for an expedition to sail under the ice cap to the North Pole. They got close to the North Pole, but no cigar. They managed to return to Norway and submarine was scuttled off of Bergen.

I tried to extract the story from the PDF, but it was going to take a bunch of mucking around to make it presentable, so you're just going to have to go read the original.