Sea Stories.. Lets hear some.

[Bubblehead Nuke]

I'll start with this one, I should have sent it to the Almanac.

Timex: It takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

A Certain A-ganger was in the sail on a 688 performing maintenance and his wrist watch fell off. They looked for a while and could not find it. The presumed that it had slid out one of the limber holes (they let water into the bottom of the sail during a dive) and gone over the side. They closed up the sail and thought nothing more of it for a few weeks.

Then we get underway and dive.

It took a few hours but someone in sonar noticed that on the was a quick beep being made from time to time. It was not too loud and they were not sure what it was.

At 5:30 the next morning, the beeping went on for quite a while and they realized that they were listening to the alarm function on a digital watch. They also finally figure out that the other beeps are the 'hourly chime' function.

The questions start being asked:

Where is the noise coming from?

Can we be counter detected by the noise?

The truth comes out. The A-Ganger comes forward and explains to the CO what has happened and the presumtion that were made. He has lost his Timex G-Force watch in the sail and it has not gone over the side as they have hoped.

There is a call made on the 1MC. If anyone has a G-Force on them they need to bring it to control IMMEDIATELY. This watch was new on the market and there was ONE other of the same make on the boat at the time.

The question is asked: What is the rated depth on the watch? They read the other persons watch and a decision is made. They are going to crush the watch.

We rig for deep submergance and down we go. We are deeper than the watch is rated for and we wait.

BEEP goes the watch.....

.....an hour later it BEEPS again

.....another hour, and the chime is still working.

The captain decides that we are going to stay deep till the next broadcast.

Hours go by, and the watch refuses to stop working. By this time the CO is PISSED. The A-ganger is being glared at by his chief. We go, clear broadcast, and go down again. Maybe the quick cycling of pressure will brake the dang thing.

5:30 and the alarm goes off. Yep, it takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

The CO waits another few hours and then decides that we HAVE to go in and find the &^%$ watch.

We go back to Norfolk and the a-ganger (who is NOT a small guy btw) it told to get his butt in the sail and not come out till that watch is found. It took him HOURS to find it but he does. It is in perfect condition and he retrieves it.

He gets the watchband fixed and was going to write a letter to Timex. Remember when they used to have those commercials about the abuses that their watches took and kept on going? I think he would have had the best.

The problem was, back then they navy would only say that they go deeper then 400 feet and faster than 20 knots.

The timex was rated for 650 feet and if you know a 688, we exceed that by a good amount. He was not allowed to send it. I think it would have been a great commercial.

As for the watch, I think he still had it when he got out a few years later. I know he was proud of it.

---------------------------------------------

There you go, something funny. Anyone else have one to share?

[Frame57]

That was good! I am going to have to put my memory banks to work for some of these. This one was not funny but was an event that I will always remember.

We were on patrol in the Med. back in the early 80's, snooping and pooping as our crusty goats used to call it. Minding our own business at 400 feet or so. I climb into my rack for some shut eye and decided to read a book about the Thrersher disaster. After a couple of chapters I shut of my light and all of a sudden a noise like none other i ever heard before awoke me. It sounded like someone was using a can opener on the side of the boat. Simultaneously the boat started to list to starboard severely throwing me out of my comfy rack. No collision alarm sounded, just dead quiet. My heart was pumping because I knew something was up and ran to the bow compartment to my damage control/battle station in the emergency diesel compartment. Finally the collision alarm sounds and all compartments reported no flooding.

After we stabilized the CO surfaced the boat and directly on our starboard beam was an uncharted oil rig. We ran smack dab into it scraping our hull and actually bending our stabilizer fin. We lucked out in that nothing more serious happened, but when we started to steam toward LaMaddalina for repair the whole boat would shake becaus of that bent stabilizer fin. I decided never to read a book about Submarine disasters ever again while we were underway. So as not to hog the thread, later i will share one about the time I bought a goat in Italy and what i did with that goat.

[Dr.Sid]

Great idea this thread.

I hope Neal won't think this can run his Almanac business, because now I want it even more ! :hmm:

Uncharted oil rig you say ? Good idea for mission design

[Bill Nichols]

Frame57's story reminde me of an experience I had as OOD one night in the Atlantic...

Our atmosphere control equipment wasn't the best, so to freshen the air we usually came to periscope depth, raised the snorkel mast and ventilated the ship using the low pressure blower.

That night we were ventilating and I was on the 'scope to ensure we didn't run into anyone. The Captain wanted to stay at PD until tne next submarine broadcast, so we were going to be up for a while.

I had a ship off the starboard bow that sonar ID'd as a merchant. I had another visual contact off the port bow, lit up like a christmas tree, that I couldn't identify, and wasn't held on sonar.

While I was scratching my head trying to figure out what the mystery ship was, it occurred to me there was something strange about the merchant to starboard. Taking a closer look, I noticed she was showing three white lights on her masthead. Having just recently qualified for OOD, I realized that I was looking at an ocean-going tug, and putting two-and-two together, realized that the mystery contact to port was her tow.

I immediately ordered a 90-degree course change to port! If I hadn't, we would have most likely run into the tow cable between the tug and what, later, I discovered was the oil platform she was towing.

[Frame57]

Wow! If something is in the water and it ain't making noise.... Now I finally have it figured out why we needed lookouts on a nuclear powered sub.

[Frame57]

Originally Posted by Dr.Sid

Great idea this thread.

I hope Neal won't think this can run his Almanac business, because now I want it even more ! :hmm:

Uncharted oil rig you say ? Good idea for mission design

That Almanac is great. I am still chuckling over the story of the fellow who got into a lot of trouble and the COB placed him on lookout watch pierside in port while there a lot of fog. he falls asleep on the fwd capstain while it rotated slowly and thought the sail of his boat was another ship in the fog, so he calls out a collision imminent. I have always heard that submariners had to be in the top one or two percent in the intelligance category to go to Sub School. It sure does not explain me, that is for sure. But it makes for good stories I guess. I am definitely looking forward to the next Almanac. Bill's story reminds me of a Junior officer we had on the A-Fish. This guy was OOD, when we were surfaced and on two seperste occaisions he reprted a visual contact in the GIUK. Sonar could not confirm it, neither did the lookouts. So the CO ordered the radar mast to be raised and....nothing! Then on another occaision this poor fellow almost surfaced us with a fishing boat right above us. I never heard our CO use foul language before until that day. The fellow was no longer a submariner after we returned home. We called him "Casper" because of the "Ghost ships", he saw. I fought long and hard to remain a helmsman/planesman because it was tooo fun! But then I had to qualify as O2 genny operator which was dull as watching the paint dry. But those days, I would not trade for a million bucks. I guess that is why i am here, kinda of reliving some of it and enjoying the comraderie once more

[Kpt. Lehmann]

Awesome thread. Keep 'em coming.

[Janus]

Very interesting thread.
Yet I'd appreciate if you would explain abbreviations and expressions not everyone might know, for example:
a-ganger
OOD
COB

Thanks in advance.

[OneShot]

OOD = Officer of the Deck
COB = Chief of the boat (Senior NCO onboard)

[Bill Nichols]

a-ganger - enlisted sailor who belongs to the Auxilliary division (responsible for auxilliary, non-propulsion mechanical equipment such as the air conditioning system, etc.)

[Janus]

Thank you
Now keep the stories coming

[Frame57]

Originally Posted by Bill Nichols

a-ganger - enlisted sailor who belongs to the Auxilliary division (responsible for auxilliary, non-propulsion mechanical equipment such as the air conditioning system, etc.)

Yes! AKA "Knuckle draggers"

[Frame57]

There are many ways to get into trouble on a Submarine some of them are worth it and this is one of them. I have to use a fictitious name for what was to be bestowed upon this poor fellow, but the story goes as follows...

I remember working on our ever troublesome high pressure air compressor. (HPAC, we had three of them on the Archerfish. Two up front and one aft of frame 57 in "Nooky land". The below decks watch ran into auxilary machinery one all excited to fetch me because I had to see what was going on up topside. The topside watch was checking in a Newby. The newby was not in uniform and was dressed in bright green checkered bellbottoms and had a spiked hairdo. He must have weighed 120 pounds soaking wet. His name was close to "Weasley" I looked at the below decks watch and said "Were gonna have fun with this one!"

I think we were once again headed on one of our "Northern runs". Which usually meant it was time once again to play with our Soviet counterparts. Seaman Weasley had to sleep in the Torpedo room on a spare rack. This is not the best way to get shut eye because the lights stay on all the time and usually this was the other place where off duty crew would shoot the breeze. Well one night the TM of the watch was cracking up and drew our attention to Seaman Weasley who was dreaming of something that was causing him to "Stand and salute". (The best term i could fing to keep the thread clean guys-sorry). I had a brilliant Idea and that was to go to AMR-1 and get something called "Prussian Blue". This was a gel formed dye we used to check sealing surfaces on various types of equipment. The fun part of this dye is that if you get it on you, it will not wash off. It will wear of over time. Great stuff! With the team work of the TMOW I decided to give Seaman Weasley's flag pole a paint job with this dye. He was deep sleeper and when he awoke i do not think he knew anything was out of sorts until he went to the head to do his business. We waited for him to return to the Torpedo room just to see his reaction, but who showed up was the "Doc". The Doc was wearing a mile wide smile and told us that he did not know if he could keep this from the XO. But he wanted to know who did it, and I had to confess.

Weasley went right to the XO with his new "blue flag pole". The XO actually chewed him out for "ratting on his crew mates". Our XO did not like Weasley because of when he reported to the boat in civilain attire. Weasley eventually never worked out he was always on the "Dink" list and was off the boat before our next long run. Maybe it was the devil or just premonition about this fellow, but one thing is for sure, never trust a bubblehead who has access to Prussian Blue.

[TopTorp '92]

Maybe I too can make a contribution . . .
I was speaking with the off-going COW so I could be ready for my watch. Ship at PD, sun up, sea state 1 (really light), some stuff goin on back aft (for all I remember it could’ve been steam generator blow-downs) and we were in the process of completing sanitaries (Sans.) Since I was also in Fire Control division, I checked message traffic on OTH (over-the-horizon) contacts, since engineering evolutions were going to keep the ship at PD for several hours; I just wanted an idea of who was in the area. I noticed there was a fishing fleet in the area.
Moments before I assume the watch, AOW reports secure from pumping Sans. This report normally means that the hull valve PL-49 (688 sailors will know this valve) has been shut along with its back up-valve. Sweet, I thought. Just the stuff going on in the engine room to be concerned about.
I also looked to the ship’s control panel to observe the trim angle and it was pointing up. I looked to see who the DOOW was and it was a chief I knew and worked well with. He had been a DOOW for a few months while I had been a COW for considerably longer. However, ever since I knew him as DOOW, I noticed that he liked to fidget with the ship’s trim as if he were never satisfied with its condition.
Then about 20 minutes pass. Dive asks to move some water aft. Now it begins, I thought. He’s already fidgeting with the trim. I move some water to aft trim. I check the trim angle and it is just as it was when I assumed the watch.
Another 15 min or so and Dive asks if I’m moving water. “No,” I say. “Has the sea state picked up?”
He says no but confesses that it may have been the problem. “Move more water aft”.
So I move more water. And wait another 10 min or so. Still getting heavier up forward. What’s going on? Now we’ve moved probably 8-15 Klbs of water from FWD trim to AFT trim.
I call for the AOW. This isn’t the same AOW from before the watch, it’s a different guy. I tell him to go check the valve line-up. Make sure the hull and back-up valves are shut. Also, check the level in all the sanitary tanks. Make sure they’re not rising.
10 minutes or so later, AOW returns and confesses that the off-going AOW failed to secure the line-up. San 1 filled up again and we need to pump.
How inconvenient.
Sonar reports closing contacts. Probably fishermen.
Later, periscope operator reports contacts held visually. Yup, fishermen.
Begin pumping san 1.
Sonar reports noisy ops from fisherman, probably dropping nets.
Years as FTOW led me to ask the periscope operator whether there were sea birds over the ship. There were. Lots of them.
I then told the OOD that pumping sans probably attracted fish, which attract birds, which attract fishermen. Thankfully, he got the idea and decided to clear datum. I guess engineering could wait.
Not 1 but about 3 fishermen dragged their nets nearby and all because the AOW forgot to secure the valve line-up after pumping sans.
DOOW never knew what hit him.

[Frame57]

I like it Torp! You see, we even invent new ways to go fishing!