Biography
Bill Hartman was a Philadelphia peace worker associated with the Atlantic Life Community. On July 5, 1982, he joined the Trident Nein Plowshares action at the General Dynamics Electric Boat shipyard in Groton, Connecticut. Hartman, James Cunningham, Vincent Kay, and Tim Quinn reached the USS Florida by canoe, hammered on missile hatches, poured blood, and renamed the submarine “USS Auschwitz.” Police arrested the group at the shipyard. A jury convicted all nine participants of criminal mischief, conspiracy, and criminal trespass, and Hartman received a jail sentence on November 9, 1982.
The Paschal 2023 Catholic Peace Fellowship Philadelphia newsletter identifies Hartman as an organizer of the January 28, 2023 Chestnut Hill College discussion and a fellowship member for five decades. It says Anne, his wife and a Philadelphia teacher, was also among the nine Trident Nein defendants sentenced to prison after the 1982 action. The source gives only her first name; she is not identified as Sister Anne Montgomery. No new admission or discharge date is supplied. Source: https://www.cpfphila.com/ARTICLES/2023_May/2023-05-Paschal-CPF-Newsletter.pdf#page=9
Trident Nein dates and separate proceedings
Participant Art Laffin dates the action and arrests to July 5, 1982. The contemporary sentencing report dates the original disposition to November 9, 1982. A sentence is not treated as a verified prison-admission date.
Sources: Art Laffin, July 2022 eyewitness retrospective; Revolutionary Worker, November 12, 1982, pages 1–2.
The March 10, 1983 six-month restitution sentence is recorded as a separate later proceeding, with admission and release unresolved. Source: UPI report in Manchester Herald, March 11, 1983, printed page 4. The report also describes a separate twenty-person vigil arrest; those unnamed custody details have not been assigned to this defendant.
Original archival custody and release evidence
The Nuclear Resister issue 12 names all nine participants and reports seven weeks in jail followed by August 26, 1982 recognizance release. Initial custody is July 5–August 26, not an uninterrupted stay through 1983.
A separate record preserves the November 9 disposition and actual release on 1982-12-17. Issue 13 confirms later confinement, but does not explicitly establish its admission day; sentence day has not been substituted for admission. This later duration remains unknown.
Issue 17 reports release several days after May 27 and before its June 6 publication. The later release therefore uses year precision with a May 28–June 6 research window; January 1 is only a storage placeholder. No exact day or sentence-length-derived release is asserted.
Sources: issue 12, October 18, 1982, printed page 4 (PDF page 6); issue 13, November 30, 1982, page 4; issue 14, January 14, 1983, page 3; issue 15, March 9, 1983, printed page 6 (PDF page 8); issue 16, April 17, 1983, printed page 10 (PDF page 11); issue 17, June 6, 1983, page 5.
