We actually had one nuke who not only cranked but later volunteered to crank a second time when we hit the point that all non-quals had cranked already. He was a little strange and seemed to be an outcast in the backend. He earned a lot of respect from the junior personnel up front though. I recall many of us lending him a hand cleaning up the mess decks and shooting trash out the TDU and such.

I never realized how fondly I would look back on some of those very difficult times.

I remember on TM chief that loved to ask, ok so everything is made of atoms and they are spaced relatively far away from each other. So why can't I put my hand through this table? He would also make you go into detail explaining the difference between Alpha/Beta/Gamma/Neutron radiation and identify appropriate shielding/containment of each. It is suprising how much I learned about such things without really having to use much of it in doing my rated work. Of course when you get down to damage control and weapons security guard stuff it really is good they make sure you know so much. I always felt a comfort level with such things that I don't think skimmer squids get.

Yep RIP, I agree that being a submariner was a different animal. I had a short tour of neutral duty on the Simon Lake and had to work in the R-9 (repair shop). It was downright scary working with those guys. They did not know much of anything and were doing major repairs on mostly boomers. Some of them did not know the difference between a pipe wrench and crescent wrench. When I reported back to my boat I think i kissed the HY-80 and vowed i would never set foot on a tin can again after the experience I had with the AS-33. I am eternally grateful for having been a bubblehead. I would not be where i am today had i not taken that route in my life. In fact many years later I am going to look up the recruiter providing he is still amongst the living and buy him the best steak dinner. He told me if i went into sub duty that I would make rate quicker, that I would get the best schools and pay the Navy could offer. He did not lie...oh and the chow was incredible...

:oops: No disrespect intended.

Now I am sure you would have made a good bubblehead.

One of my favorite qualification endeavors was "the walk around". There were a number of types of qualifications that included a walk around, and they could be some of the most challenging things to get past. Essentially you would stroll around the boat with whoever was supposed to "sign off" on you and they (as well as anyone in the are when they passed) would drill you. What is this? Where can I find this? How do I secure the power/water/etc to this? If the insert alarm went off right now, what would you do? Where are you supposed to go? What would be happening right here where we are standing? You get the idea. Can be close to torture and some of them went on for legendary lengths. I had one that almost went for a whole watch. Of course the guy was on watch so he wasn't in any hurry.:doh:

By the way. Much appreciation for all the responses. The way it "really was/is" is so fascinating to all us civillian sub enthusist.

Here's a random question:

Have any of you RL submariner (Rip, BH, Frame, Rex, Henson, SubGuru, and all others) ever considered writing a fiction novel? Something drawing on your naval experience to produce a naval warfare or sub novel. The book market is sore in need of good modern sub fiction. Its hard to find good reads. *hint, hint*:know:

I for one would love to write such a thing. I'm just not that good of a writer. I have the imagination just not the literary skills. It would be cool to work on a joint project with a bunch of like minded individuals. The hard part would be finding the person with ability to put the story into an enjoyable book format I imagine.

Just keep posting, and soon somebody will get inspired enough.

Except it's going to be comedy, 'Down periscope' style :rotfl:

New here, but I have a few questions for you RL submariners.

1. While out to sea but surfaced, is the "main deck" (the upper surface of the hull) off limits, or can you climb down and walk about in reasonably calm weather (assuming you're wearing some kind of safety harness)?

2. I take it that various marine life forms collide with, and live on, the outer hull. Does the hull smell because of this? Knowing how the "wet" part of my parents' boat smelled when we hauled it back onto land at the end of the season, I can only imagine how bad a huge submarine hull would smell, but does it really?

3. Ummm, I had a third one, but it got lost somewhere in my brain...

When you leave the dock and bring the linehandlers down, you rig the escape trunks for dive. From that point on you can not break the 'rig for dive' without the OOD's expressed permission. If you DO break rig for dive, it had BETTER be for a dang good reason as it takes two people to sign off on it..

Actually, i does not smell that bad at all. The deep ocean does not have a 'smell'. When you are at sea, that 'sea smell' is refered to as the smell of LAND. Thats right, while at sea, you do not have much of an ocean smell at all. That is limited to the more littoral waters

I've no idea what "linehandlers" or "escape trunks" mean...

So, short answer seems to be: No, unless there are extraordinary circumstances. Right?

Ah! Cool!

Actually, only the Captain can authorize a break from "rigged for dive". Once while underway, I was in Control when the OPEN/SHUT indicator for the forward access hatch on the Ballast Control Panel went from SHUT to OPEN. (A green 0. A green horizontal dash indicates shut, hench "straight board".) I don't think I've have ever seen over a dozen sets of eyes come out of their sockets at the same time, including my own.

I went forward to the forward access trunk and after testing the 7MC to Control, asked for permission to open the lower drain valve to check for flooding. Permission granted and I cracked the valve, no water, but it could be clogged.:shifty:

Mind you, we were not on the surface, but not too deep!

Then came the big one, permission to open the lower hatch! A few minutes later, Capt says OPEN it. I crack the hatch about as slow as I could until the seal cracked. No Water.:lol:

Undogged full and open and reported the lower hatch open and latched.

Now I had to climb up into the trunk, but I could see the problem. During an inport upkeep, someone had dismantled the upper hatch dogging mechanism, did not mark the gears for relative position and reassembled the mechanism with the operating gears not matched up as before. The operating gear could not operate in its full range and the bayonet ring was only half engaged with the matching lugs on the hatch ring, and as a result, the magnet for the hatch switch was not in fully closed position. (On a submarine, there is no such thing as half shut or half locked. If it's not fully shut or locked, then it's open or unlocked!):rock:

The only thing preventing the ocean from coming in was the sea pressure itself seating the hatch. (The hatches are designed that way.)

The XO came in and asked if I could do anything. Not with the bayonet rings, but I could adjust the magnet to get a SHUT indicator. CO gave his okay and that's what I did.

Someone (and their Chief) did get his BH reamed over undocumented and sloppy work, but you can rest assurded that that hatch was the first priority when we hit port.

Thank god it didn't happen during spec op.

During the 5 or 10 minutes this happened, I sweated more water than there was in that trunk.

Let me add an experience along a similar theme:

After a hatch ring repair job, we had to go into the escape trunk to verify NO leakage on the upper hatch seal. Well, a bright (read DUMB!) person saw that the dogs were not fully engaged and gave the operating ring a twist to fully engage the dogs. Once we surfaced and came into port, we could NOT undog the hatch.

You have to remember that he hull (and hatch) COMPRESSES when you dive. When we went shallow, the hatch uncompressed and now the hatch was dogged TOO tight and could not be opened. As this is how you get people topside (well, ONE of the ways) we could not go into port (we were at the point of putting people topside when we found this out). We had to go BACK out, dive to a deeper depth (thank gawd for logs to tell us how deep we were for the test) and undog the hatch. I mean FULLY undog the hatch and then resurface, redog the hatch, then go back down again.

Q1: What do you are RL submariners think of DARPAs Tango Bravo Project? Do you think that it will be successful? Or that it will make any real change in the way submarines are designed/operated?

http://www.darpa.mil/STO/solicitatio.../proposers.htm

Q2: Do you think that the heavy media speculation of the impact of UUVs is correct? Everything I hear states that it will "revolutionarize"(sp?) the way subs operate in littoral waters. What impact do you think they will make? Will subs now stay far off and let a UUV do the ISR, anti-mine for them?

:rotfl: Neptunus...problem with your hatch was probably because those no-loads from the Simon Lake worked on it.

As technology advances so does the submarine fleet. I think I read where the Virginia class boats no longer have conventional periscopes, nor the standard steering and diving control system that has been used for decades, but rather one "joystick" to control the boat. Personally I think we will see much more automation and fewer crew billets in the future. I think it is a fair prediction that UUV technology will improve and play an even greater role in surveillance and other capabilities. Various hydrodynamic drive systems have been toyed with but have been failures, so I think that the concept of shaftless drive systems will venture into peripheral electic drives systems that will be built on the current retractable technology used today.