The brtitish tactical training is far and away the best in the world today. American officers are (unfortunatately and to our detriment) nucs first, ship-drivers second. People in authority are just now starting to realize this and try to change it, but it has been ingrained in our culture for a long time now.

As for the flooding thing, any hole in the boat that can cause flooding (flooding is defined as an inrush of water that our pumps cannot keep up with at test depth) can be shut by 3000 lb hydraulics within a second or two, including all four torpedo tubes. Trust me, a simple leak is NOT going to sink us. I know, I've seen one.

Absolutely.

The RAN and the USN hold joint PCO's in Hawaii. For the yanks its the be all and end all, the qualification needed for command.

For the Aussies it's just one warm-up whilst preparing for Perisher.

We had the shaft seals let go at about 60% of test depth. It went from seepage to weepage to scary in about 30 minutes. I was ERLL watch and watched the whole thing unfold while the Eng said it was going to be fine. It is amazing how much water can get into the people tank in a few seconds.

I am glad I went though the flood trainers at one point early in my seaduty days or I would have been scared stiff. Lord it was loud, and water spraying everywhere.

As you said, they did not classify it as flooding since we were able to keep up with the intake. Granted, took BOTH pumps going BTTW to do it until we got shallow. It made for an interesting transit back home. Everyone had to come aft and look at the octopus we rigged to get the water draining into evey available funnel to so we could pump it over the side.

Uhuh sir...yeah, suuuure. yup, yup. :yep: :yep: :huh: :o

:hmm:

Great story. It's a tribute to you guys that no one called it away as flooding and caused a quick trip to the surface a'la Greenville.

I guess we were just lucky.
 

I have been following this post and I have come to one conclusion all those years (1962-1982) I rode nuke boats and our officers were competent, we must have been very lucky. Several of my former Skippers and Engineers became Admirals, well go figure.
I am wondering why they changed the design of the Shaft, we had the regular shaft seal, and the old style packing gland for emergency. Strange they removed that, it worked very well, I had to use it four times. But in the old days we took any leakage seriously, and my Engineer or MPA would have recommended a depth change right now, and the Conn would have done it.
I read this post and guess we were just lucky, the officers and crews all seem to know their jobs and we really got along well. Boy I really thought Ivy Bells, Sea of Okhotsk, Petropovlsok, Vladivostok, Barents Sea and trailing those Russian Subs for weeks took pretty sharp skippers, just didn't know any better.
Well like I said we were just lucky back then, I probably would not be happy in this new Navy.

Dumbfounded in retirement,


Ronald E. Banks MMCM(SS), USN(Ret)
Old but proud Nuke and Submariner.

The shaft sealing system has mulitple redundencies built in. The last being an inflatable boot. Can't turn the shaft but you WILL stop the leakage.

There is manually pumped hydraulic packing on the shaft as well. When your primary and secondary mechanical seals are blown you DANG sure do not want to tighten the emengency packing too tight and smoke it. So we let it leak a bit. Sure, at times it might have been a little excessive but it was better too have much lubrication than not enough. The bad part was you were always adjusting the dang thing when you changed depth. Once we had it under manual control we had to pump out the after drain tanks every turn of the watch.

As for not calling away flooding. If I had been there, alone, I would have dang sure called it, BUT, the Eng was the senior man on scene and he said not to. He DID recommend changing depth but we were... operationally constrained.. at the time. We gambled on the pumps keeping up and it all worked out in the end.

Like any boat, we had good officers and bad. My first Eng?? GREAT guy. He knew when to listen. Second Eng?? Well, if you did not eat in the wardroom he did not listen to you. We had a LOT of friction till he figured out that we MIGHT know what we were talking about. This incident was the turning point I think.

Thanks
 

Thanks Bubblehead Nuke;
That is how I remember the shaft seal installation, I don't ever recall using the inflatable boot, I "seem" to recall testing it coming out of the ship yard. Pumping out the tank once a watch seems about right. For anyone not familiar with the packing gland seal, Bubblehead is quite correct, you tighten that rascal to much and it smoked it, as I recall one flat at a time was the rule.
It sounds like there was a major shift in the attitude of officers since I left the Navy, that is really to bad. Sub Crews were always really tight, some would say to tight, but I never had a problem with it. Well that is not true, when I was Chief Recruiter for NRD Francisco I encountered some "difficulty" with shore duty Officers. Guilty of to much familiarity with Superior officer is ho I believed it read, my CO said yeah he is always like that and round filed it.

Ron Banks MMCM(SS), USN(REt)

I am sort of biased about this but I think the Virginia class will head the way for submarine designs and performance to come. One thing to bear in mind though is that the boat is designed to be upgraded as needed. New sonar systems, fire control systems and other tactical systems can be installed with ease due to the modular nature of the boat. I speak well on this topic since I just commissioned the USS Texas and have been there for roughly 4 yrs and 90% of the construction process...


Pingjockey

You should see the type of 'modularity' NUWC is considering for the next class...

dont worry about technical differences the fact is that the Royal navy submariners are better than any other nations submariners ergo astute will be handled better than anyother boat its like what schwartkoff said about the first gulf war even if the iraqis and the coalition had swapped equipment the coalition would have stil won its not bragging or arrogance its a fact

Do tell :)

im currently staffing the perisher course now we are in the third week of tactical simulator phase

im the opso for the course basically the tactical picture supervisor

You talked about RN submariners. When my boat pulled in over in that part of the world I got a tour of one of the british nuke boats. I do not recall the class but the differences in ship design were striking. While you recognize the general layout the RN boat was obviously more combat oriented. One thing I noticed hast was that they had a LOT less creature comforts. The ones they DID have seems better than ours but overall, it was more spartan and much more well, businesslike. But then again, they typically would have much less distance to go to get into the thick of things. Do brit boats do 90+ day deployments? I presume so but I never asked.

One thing that I have ALWAYS remembered was when I was in the torpedo room and one of my shipmates (a torpedoman) was talking shop with one of his RN counterparts. They were talking about putting a topedo in the water and my guy asked about the torpedo door interlocks (USN boats have a device that prevent you from opening the OUTER door unless the INNER door is closed). His comment was that if you were STUPID enough to open both the bloody doors at the same time you deserved what you got. That they did not uses the things. Bravado on the brits part? I dunno, but he shook our guy up a lot.

That and a few discussions with other crewmen did tell me a lot of their training. They do not let ANYONE stand a watchstation unless they KNOW what they are doing. They do not tolerate adequate performance. You were a top performer or you were on a surface ship.

Although I will say that the brits do seem to know what there doing. I feel that as a US sonar tech and qualfied sonar supervisor I we are still better tactically. And from a tech standpoint the virgina is still a better boat.

And of course if anyone would ever like to try there "tactics" in a game of DW with me sometime I would not have any issue in showing them a thing or to.. :)

V/R
STS1

Pingjockey

:arrgh!:

I'm up for it. You'd have to host, though. My router won't let me. I'm sure I'd learn a lot. I'll create the scenario if you'll play it with me. Deal?