RL Submariners
 

I've allways been interested in hearing navy stories and hearing about what it was like living aboard ship, and now that I'm into SH3 and DW, I'd like to hear about life aboard a submarine. If any RL submariners would like to share, I would love to hear about it, specifically things like living conditions, the food, the various gadgets you got to mess around with on(or off) duty, what anemenities you missed most when the novelty of being on a sub wore off, and what kind of adjusments you had to make when your tour of duty was over(like trying to sleep in a room all by yourself, with no alarms going off, etc..:) )

Oh! I especially like hearing about jokes you played on others to overcome the boredom :P

I've got an article in the upcoming Subsim Almanac that describes much of what you're interested in...

http://www.subsim.com/almanac/

TG

OH MY GOD IT CANT BE !

timmy goo is back wow

Ok sorry for the hijack here

Never really left... been very busy. I need to clear my schedule so i can start re-exploring DW... it's been too long.

TG

Great news Timmyg00 - 'Leadership position still open !'

Joflo :''Tim I hope that you will continue both to be standard bearer and the standard setter for our game. Your contribution has been and is immense.''

http://www.subclub.info/phpBB_subclu...5535688102516b

The MP game badly needs you as a key stone.

With Patch 1.04, new LuwAmi mods and this news, DWs future is assured. :|\\

SUre, I'll share. I'll tell you the story about the second scariest event I ever had while poking holes in the ocean.

Twas the middle of the year in 82, and I was aboard the USS Jacksonville. Having been on the commisioning crew and just being commisioned the previous year. We were undergoing some type of readiness training which is what a newly commisioned boat or one coming from overhaul will do for almost a year after returning to actual sea duty. Anyway I am a little green behing the ears, although nearly qualified. Still a non-qual puke though and one without much experience in the realism level of at sea drills. Particularly the inspection ones.

Subs never announce that a situation is a drill. They want you to experience the real stresses of an emergency. I was aware of this but usually when you are drilling amonst the crew, there is still often some awareness that a certain type of drill may be going off in the next XX hours.

When the inspectors are on board it is constant monitoring and little about what might happen next is known among the crew. By the time you are in day 3 or 4 of the trip you are beat, because there is always something going on that requires you to be awake and on station. Often twiddling your thumbs wondering how much longer it may last.

Well several days in, I am offwatch and we have been without a shipwide drill long enough I am in a deep slumber. Dreaming about what I might do in various drills of course. My berthing area was on the middle level just forward of the galley, and coincidently the 3 inch signal launcher.

Suddenly I awake from my slumber to hear the most godawful loud flow noise I had ever heard in my life, and people yelling over the top of the deafoning noise. I couldn't make out words though. I lept from my top rack head a spining wondering what the hell was amiss. I felt my feet hit cold water as they hit the floor. Still dark I heard at almost that same moment the collision alarm. FLOODING in the LAUNCHER!!! OMFG I am going to friggin DIE! My knees almost buckled, but I kept my composure. Realized immedietly that my normal path to my station would be blocked by the on scene damage control party. I took the alternate path to reach my station and for the almost 2 hours that followed still believed that we had experienced a true flooding incident.

Only later would I find that clever use of a high pressure air line and a few buckets of cold water had accomplished the desired goal of determining how we might react when we truly did believe the emergency was real.

Never again did I have to wonder in the back of my mind if I could stay focused when faced with a deadly situation. If I hadn't lost my cool in that moment I was going to be just fine.

Here is a coll video I haven't noticed anyone else posting as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MUBgG6rzO8

:D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIjZt...elated&search=

I'll say one more thing and then we can let this thread get back on topic... I really wish i had the time. I'm currently taking programming classes, preparing to get married in the spring, and house-hunting. It doesn't leave much time for administrative duties, though i could probably get a game in here and there in MP, and fiddle around with SP.

Things must get more slack with each succeeding generation... back in the 90s, when i was in, we always knew when there were drills (which makes me worry for the future!)... but maybe during ORSE and TRE, the time and place of drills were less well-known to the crew.

TG

We had one captain who would run his own drills in the middle of the backwatch, sundays, whenever he thought that we needed to get sharp. He would get someone and they would grab one or two others and that was the total of the brief. Sometimes he would brief you 3 or 4 hours ahead of time. Something like go to RCC-1 and SCRAM the reactor or go and trip out a SSTG. The memorable one was when he had the AMR call away a sudden depressuization of the O2 generator (AKA the 'bomb'). Those who know that piece of gear KNOW that can be a BAD thing. He was asleep in his rack when that one happened. People were about to crap themselves when they announced (the COTW was in on it and purposely mis-reported to the OOD the values) the hydrogen partial presure in the boat. It was these total suprise drills that told you the difference betweeen what you know and what you THINK you know.

He was a tricky SOB but you know what? When they ran the TRE or ORSE drills, you could sleepwalk thru them. I still respect that man to this day and would go back in if he asked me to.

Here's a real life submarine question I've always wondered about...

How many toilets are there on an LA? :p
I'm thinking for 115 guys... one bad night for the cook and no matter how many there are its not going to be enough!:o :lol: :doh:

Up forward there are 8-10 if you count urinals (it's been awhile.)

Back aft? The official answer is none. :up:

Official answer huh? What's the unofficial answer... when you gotta go,... pee into the nearest equipment hole! :o [j/k]

:arrgh!: If it leads to the Waste Oil or some similar tank...

I never did this of course (I don't work back there.)

So there are the real nuke/conner divide is an issue of smell huh?

'' Unlocking the key to the flatulence-free bean has been something of a holy grail for some time.''
Let us not forget the latest cutting edge research into this problem:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbtoday/F27...thread=1434169
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...7/ai_n14158626
http://www.nutraingredients.com/news...ans-flatulence

Further learned contributions can be sourced at 'Bilge' :

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...ghlight=Bilges

1 full service in the CO/XO head, 1 standup and 1 full service in the officer head, 1 full service in the goat locker, 1 standup and 3 full service in between forward and aft crews berthing, 1 full service in lower level across from 21 man berthing.

6 showers among the whole thing as well.

BUT, as someone stated, any old drain funnel will do in a pinch. ANY bubblehead who says they have not whipped it out and relieved themselves in a funnel is full of it.

Oh, and someone asked what if the cook screws up?? Well... In Lisbon, Portugal, a certain FT Toptorp and I know put 100 times too much chlorine in the potable water we received just before we left. It gave the WHOLE crew the screaming meanies if you know what I mean. It was the ONLY time I ever heard them say TAKE A HOLLYWOOD! to the whole crew. Leave it running. They had to flush both the potable water tanks. We ran the rain maker pretty much 24 hours for a few days lined up to the potable water tanks. A-gang was blowing the sans 2-3 times a watch. The whole crew did not become regular for 3 or 4 days. Offgoing watch was running from the head, releaving the on-watch so they could dash to the head, and then run back themselves. Normally, you could take care of biz and read a book or relax in the ONLY place you could truly be alone. Well, they had to put a watch in the heads (all were open to the crew except the CO/XO head which was reserved for control/upper level folks at the time) to ensure you got in, and got out... and to pass the paper when they ran out.

The FT in question was hiding pretty much the whole trip back to the states. The CO never did anything to him, he figured that it would pale compared to what the CREW was going to do to him.

heh heh. Good stuff. To be honest with you that's a lot more heads than I was expecting... I was thinking 1 toilet and 1 shower per deck... guess the lines would impinge on productivity.

Here's another question for ya... (its always the little things that amaze me btw)... how much food does it take to feed 120 guys at one setting?

I mean, whenever I think of catering for 100 people the amount of food is huge... and to think that the cook has to do that for 4 meals per day and store enough food to last 3 months. It just amazes me to think that that much food gets squeezed into such a small space. I'm thinking 130 cheese burgers would fill my entire frig... multiply that by 3 meals per day times 90 days = 32400 cheeseburgers!! It would take a semi-truck sized frig to store that it seems.

Is there just one huge store room where all the food it piled in?

Big storeroom, yeah. Well, kinda big. Small, actually.

The rest gets shoved into nooks and crannys of the engine room on the (flawed) theory that putting eggs outboard of a heat exchanger allows them to keep longer.

Not everyone eats at every sitting... a lot of the off-watch guys are sleeping. Probably 2/3 to 3/4 of the crew is eating at any given meal... but if any all-hands evolutions are taking place (field day, drills), more people are interested in eating... so then you get closer to the whole crew being in line for chow :huh:

TG