This was twenty years after WWII, but I have personally seen the torpedomen take cleaning alcohol, the same fluid that we used to clean the decks and the torpedo's with, slow filter it through a loaf of bread to take out the dangerous impurties and then ferment it in a can of grape juice.
They set it in the corner of the fwd torpedo room, we only had one on the USS Salmon SS-573, but we always called it that from old habits. They stored it right next to the sonar stacks that got very hot.
I never tasted it (I was only 19 and didn't want to get into trouble), but it was a real special treat for these men.
Several years later I was transfered to a FBM (boomer) submarine and I saw things you wouldn't believe. Grown men having to sober up for a 90 day patrol, well we only spent maybe 80 days at sea, the rest was in port up-keep.
It was really something to see them change from bar type of people with red skin faces to I guess you would call them normal type of people with healthy faces, but no one who goes to sea for that long is normal.
Every patrol we knew how long we would be out and like clock work we would come back and rotate with the other crew. So we could pre-figure when half day was. Half-day parties were some of the best times we had. I was the MC for one party and the chief of the boat brought a single bottle of Miller High Life to auction off for the half way party. I started the bidding at $2.00 ... I was standing right in front of the captain, who would graciously attend our parties in the crews mess.
Three guys got together to out bid the other bids and by the time it was over the crews recreation fund had $23 donated for one bottle of beer. They then opened it right in front of everyone and shared it giggling all the way. The captain couldn't stop laughing. You see the crew had also spiked the punch and the captain kept reaching over to refill his cup from one of those big spray juice machines (you've seen them) like the ones at AM/PM etc. We called them bug spray machines, because if a bug got caught in one it just kept getting recycled. lol
Just one small problem, someone kept pouring Vodka in the darn thing and melted the little plastic ball that cycled the stuff ...
Oh yeah we had fun ... and those are just two stories ...
