I knew an IC man from your neck of the woods. Yep, you scored well on your ASVAB as did I, but I became a knuckle dragger instead...Got my GED when I was on my second boat and then received 64 sem hours of college credit with the CLEP program during shore duty. Finally got my electronics though when i got out of the service and my electronics professor was a retired sub officer off of diesel boats. what a small world it is...

Indeed. I always felt it improved my school performance returning from the fleet. I knew what I needed to learn and I knew how it would help me. I don't think I would have been able to maintain 90 averages had I went before I had spent the couple years in the fleet I did.

It also helped me get by being a somewhat sloppy sailor. The instructors generally cut me a lot of slack because I had my dolphins. I think they did the same for any surface warfare guys. But I don't recall seeing hardly any non-rated surface warfare guys. Since it wasn't a requirement most skimmers didn't get qualified for MANY years.

I think it probably got me layed a few times in Orlando as well. Salty sub sailor with a car and a hotel room with a bathtub full of beer. Instant boot camp graduation party!

Tragic that there is no more RTC Orlando:down:

That was the only thing I bargained for besides subs. It was January and he said "When can you leave for Boot?" My answer was simple. Depends on where? Great lakes, call me this summer. Orlando, I will go home and pack!:rock:

RIP:har: I can relate to it... My electronics professor actually rode me harder because i was a submariner. He expected more of me I guess. I cannot knock him now because I actually still remember how to "thevenize" a circuit. Not that it does me any good now that 99% of the time when I repair a medical device I just swap out a PCB. As far as Orlando goes, I guess the same hold true for San Diego. I have to admit our PT was a joke in boot camp. I remember sitting on the bleachers sipping a coke after 20 minutes of PT watching the recruits over the fence at MCRD dressed in full combat gear running a 5 miler. No wonder they hated us at times. When I graduated Boot camp I was waiting for my orders to get cut for New London and their was a hold up, so I spent a couple of days in TJ. Oh Lordy...I cannot post here what transpired there, but at that time it was a single man's paradise, this was before there were STD's that can kill you. Anyway when a few of us got back to NTC the chief at the holding barracks asked who just came in from TJ. I was stupid and spoke up. The next thing i know I was getting yet another penicillin shot in the ass. The corpman just grinned and said, "If you wanna play you gotta pay".

My orders came in and i was supposed to report to the USS Tarawa. I was in shock! I called up the detailer and told him I was in the Subfarer program and that I was going to groton conn. Thank God they got it right finally. I reallly hated the chow hall at NTC. The grub was horrible. When I got to Groton and saw the sign at the chow hall that said, "through these lines pass the best fed sailors in the world" I knew i was in the right place. That coupled with 50 cent draft beers at the NCO club, hell, I was in heaven...

Woke up on Rosarita Beach myself a few times.

As far as Groton I remember the most about the Grotto(sp?) where the boomer widows hung out. Or Bank St. for those of us hardcore enough.

San Diego I usually could be found on Ocean Beach.

Dang, I forgot about the boomer widows.

We fast boat guys never had that problem for the most part. Let me tell you, when we spent time up there in the floating drydock, it was an eye opening experience.

I have to admit that we stayed away from the Boomer Widows. We had some respect for our fellow brethren. There was a good Rock-n-Roll bar called the back door farther down bank street on the outskirts of the down town area. We would just walk the railroad tracks and cross the old train bridge to get into New London. I have no idea why none of us had a car at the time, but it was fun anyway. When I was mess cookin, a fellow nub at the time who hailed from Sacramento and could and should not drink, got real mouthy in an all black bar on bank street one night. Well, they busted his jaw and somewhow I managed to talk my way out of letting them haul his mothy but out of there. The COB loved this because he had his jaw wired. What a way to learn a lesson in life...I heard a lot of stories about bank street, but never had a problem as long as we behaved. The chiefs used to like to hang out at Rosies just outside the base, we called this place the "Hogger" bar because it seemed like that was all that was in there. Ouch! I am getting a hang over just remembering all this stuff:salute:

I remember the first time I met a boomer widow. She walked up to me and told me I could come back to her place. No intro, no hello's. I was shocked. She said I looked lonely and a decent enough looking fellow. She filled me in about the boomer wives. Like you, I have more respect than to do that. Even though I was not even stationed at Groton and I could have gotten away with it. I did get a home cooked meal out of being a gentleman.

Now 'hogging', that was a regional sport in Groton. I watched a senior chief we had onboard win the $1500 pool we had built up on that topic. Not only that, he brought back souveniers to show after he won the pool (they were not needed to win btw), and went back out the next night with her.

Tell me, am I letting out too much here about the secret lives of bubbleheads?

Hey enlighten us dry fellows a bit more .. boomer widows ? :o

A boomer widow is this:

Husband (or boyfriend) is stationed on a boomer. You know when they are leaving and when they are coming back. Spouses know ships movements schedules regardless of what the navy thinks.

Anyway, the man leaves, pictures get turned around or put away. The wedding ring comes off if she is married. The lady then looks for company for the time she knows that the he will be gone. She looks for someone single and ensures that there will be no attatchments. He leaves a day or two before the boat comes back.

Want to hear something REALLY twisted. I KNEW two guys that had the same girlfriend. They were on different crews on the same boat. Thus they never interferred with each others activities except for that oh so brief turnover between deployments. Want to talk about hot racking!!

Before you ask about hogging: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hogging

Hot racking indeed :rotfl:

That is just... wrong :o

Hopefully the Blue Crew guy isn't a dirtbag.

:timeout:

One salty old Chief once told us his secret to getting "Hoggers" was to stand outside of Rosies and tie an ear of corn to a fishing line and cast it into the bar...:haha:

Not to break topic guys, but here's another couple of questions.

1) How often does a submarine go to dry dock?
2) How often do submariners have to go into the ballast tanks for maintenance on the bow planes, hydraulics, TA, etc in the ballast tanks? Every port? Is it dry in there when the sub is surfaced?
3) Aside from the propulsion system (meaning the reactor, turbines, gears, shaft, etc), what part of the ship is most maintenance intensive?

1) As required and only when ABSOLUTELY neccesary. There is a HUGE amount of prep work required to haul a boat out of the water. You tend to backlog as much as possible before you need to go in there. Once you are in there you do EVERYTHING you can think of, you look ahead and see if there are things that you can do early and get done ahead of schedule.

Another thing to consider is the stess on the hull while in dry dock. It is not insubstantial and can cause unforseen problems.

2) You can not go into the ballast tanks unless you are in dry dock. The ballast tanks are open to the sea on the bottom. They can not be entered due to closed space restrictions. Once in a dry dock it takes some serious prep to ensure safe entry into them.

3) The Crew.

That's interesting. I find this somewhat surprising considering that there's the bow planes, torpedo tube doors, hydraulics and such all in the ballast tanks. I would have thought that they would need at least eye-balling quite often just for the sake of "looking under the hood and checking the oil". How easy do you think it would be to have ventral doors on the ballast tanks so that they are water free when the sub is surfaced and docked? Is it possible?

Nah, there are operational checks to be done sure, but most of the testing can be done remotely. Hydraulic? Hydrostatic testing, Limit switches? There are multiple redundancies. There are no real operational issues. The inspections are saved for when you have to drydock. If something SERIOUS happened and BROKE one of these neccessary devices then you go into the dock, and then you take care of as much as you can while you are in there.

MBT on most modern NUKE boats are open to the sea. This allows for faster filling and simplier operation. You go out and open the MBT vents and you sink. You KNOW they are going to flood when you open the vents.

A diesel boat may have MBT bottom seacocks, but this is because the MBT may do double duty as a fuel tank. I'll bet you that any non-fuel capbble MBT is open to sea at the bottom with no seacock to seal the tank at the bottom.

Why no hatches on top you ask? They may be damaged and leak. They could be opened by the shock of a depth charge. They may make flow noise around the hinge or around the peremeter of the hatch. There are all kinds of problems that I see if you put an access panel in the top of the MBT's. I see no positives in it at all. Would YOU want your MBT's to not hold air due to an undersea collision like the San Fransisco? If there are no openings, then there is nothing to leak air in the event of a problem.

Hm... that's interesting as well. Did the San Francisco's tanks still hold air after it's crash? That ballast tank looked like a floating disaster. http://www.maritimequest.com/in_the_...sco_damage.jpg

What intriguing is that all the design reviews and research recommendations are urging to push more and more stuff into the bow and aft. The Defense Science Task Force recommended "bomb-bay" approaches, and the USN Darpa is asking for "shaftless propulsion" and "external weapons", even the Virginia Block III is proposing ditching the 12 verticle tubes for 2 large SSGN type tubes in the bow, so it seems that it will be unavoidable for more bow/ballast tank access as a must, unless all the research will just end up whistling dixie...

I heard Russians use seacocks on MBTs too. With open MTB, the air inside is at pressure of bottom hole depth, which is about 3 atmospheres for nuke.
Russians blow, then close the seacocks, then open vents. That reduces pressure inside MBTs to 1 atmosphere. So actual weight of the air insied is lowered 3 times, which makes flooding faster.

As for the picture of crashed LA .. LA uses sonar dome in front of the pressure hull, which is covered by fiberglass to smooth the shape. Pressure hull starts at the green wall (IMHo). While it's bended, I'd say it holded.
First wents are actually about 2 meters in front of the active sonar warning reciever, which is the small black thingy right next to the first guy above.

I have better pictures, but I am unable to post them.

Anyway, there are 3 forward MBT's on a 688. They are divided into further divided into two tanks. One port, One starboard.

Think of them like this:

<bow>
1a/1b
2a/2b
3a/3b

You have a fibreglass done that covers the sonar sphere. (Quick qual question: How many watertight compartments are there on a 688? Anyone? Anyone? FOUR. They are the sonar sphere, the forward compartment, the reactor compartment, and the aft compartment)

Anway, the 1a was voided to sea and useless. 1b & 2a were leaking badly. You had to keep pumping air into them and it was leaking out about as fast as you could pump it in there.

That left 2b, 3a &b to support the mass of the submarine at the bow. The sonar sphere (that forward most watertight compartment) was flooded due to the damage.

That they survived is a testimate to the training they had and how well we build boats. There was also some luck involved of course

Here is something I think you might like, it is the account from the DOOW on the San Fran:
February 12, 2005 - DOOW Account


To say the world went to shyte in a hand basket would be an understatement. I would put it closer to a nightmare that becomes reality.

The seamount that is a large part of the discussion the last 2 weeks is un-named. The charts we carried onboard were up to date as far as we cantell. No modern geographic data for this area was available to us onboard as it is a remote area not often traveled by the Navy. We have one of the BEST ANav's in the fleet onboard, a true quartergasket that takes pride in his job. We have RLGN's onboard, when they are running, they are accurate as hell for our position, they also drive Tomahawks.

We knew where we were. All of my depth gauges and digital read the same depths as we changed depth to our SOE depth for flank. I can't discuss alot, because I'm still a participent of at least 2 investigations....LOL.

As for the actual grounding, I can tell you that it was fortunate that myself and the Chief of the Watch were blessed by somebody. I was standing up, changing the expected soundings for a new depth on the chart (yes, we had just moved into deeper water) leaning against the ship's control panel with a hand grip, and the COW was leaning down to call the COB on the MJ.

The next thing to cross my mind was why am I pushing myself off of the SCP and where the hell the air rupture in the control room come from? I didn't know it, but I did a greater than 3g spiderman against the panel, punched a palm through the only plexiglass gauge on the SCP and had my leg crushed by the DOOW chair that I had just unbuckled from. The DOOW chair was broken loose by the QMOW flying more than 15 feet into it and smashing my leg against a hydraulic valve and the SCP. I don't remember freeing myself from it. If I had been buckled in, I don't think I would be writing this.






I would say that about 80% of the crew was injured in some way, but do not know the number. We grounded in the middle of a meal hour, just after field day, so most of the crew was up. Once we got the boat on the surface and semi-stable with the blower running the rest of the ship conditions started sinking in to our minds.