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1. From my understanding, submarines go out for 6 months and then come back for 6 months. Is this true?
2. Does the submarine stay in dock for these 6 months, or do they just rotate the crew?
3. What is Navy life like back at base? Particularly when it comes to E4's and up? Is it like any other job with shifts and day's off? Or is it like your time on the submarine?
4. Do you and your family have to live on base and Navy housing complexes, or is it your choice? IE. can you buy an actual house and live there if you want to?
5. I've heard that there is online college courses you can take while on ships, is this true?
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1. SSN Fast attack submarines go out for six months and only have one crew
2. SSBN and for the moment SSGN submarines have two crews blue and gold these crews alternate on 90 day cycles keeping the submarine at sea for most of that time except for a five/six day turn around.
3. The first 30 days were free to do whatever you wanted to do after morning quarters around 8:15am or so. You can go to the commisary or the exchange or visit people on base or even go home. Just don't go to a bar in the day time getting drunk and being forced to return to base and blow the whole time off thingy for everyone else ... lol
4. Yes you can buy a house, but who can afford the payments? Navy housing charges the same extra pay you get for being married for Navy housing, which is not very much to pay ( couple of hundred dollars) compared to off base housing, especially in Hawaii.
However you do need to be married (man/woman thingy right now) and the best houses go to the families with the most children.
5. Yes, lots of online courses available that resemble your rating for one, but submarines have a little conection problem with the outside world. They code everything in Washington and send it late at night and then it has to be decoded to be a drill or surprise surprise they even send family grams telling you a baby has been born in the same coded message we just recieved to go to war.
Question six and seven can be answered by surface craft types of people of which I was not one ... well there was that one time early in my young seaman life that I was a radarman on a heavy crusier.
Added advice:
If your wise you will study and ask for extra schools even get another job
in the same field you want to be in when you retire in six or twenty years.
Save your money in the 10% overseas savings plan and don't touch it
till you need a down payment on a house (not a corvette)