Height & Weight Limitations On US Submarines

[jtm55]

Hi All,

Forgive me if this is already has been asked & answered. I would like to know if there was a height & weight limitation on US Submarines during WWII. I visited the USS Becuna as well as the Cruiser Olympia at the Independence Seaport Museum in Philidelphia. I was struck by how small everything on board was as far as Human amenities went. As I'm 6' 4" tall & 210 lbs I wanted to know would I been able to serve on board a Submarine During WWII.

[Sailor Steve]

I don't have the answer, but the question puts me in mind of two things:

1) Don't forget that the US boats were big compared with the u-boats.

2) Actor David James Elliott is also 6'4", and on JAG they had him in a modern sub more than once, complaining that he was too tall for that sort of thing. Of course they ignored the fact that he is also far too tall to have been a fighter pilot, and scenes with him sitting in an F-14 show that he had to really scrunch when they wanted to close the canopy.

Me, I'm only 5'8", so I can fit pretty much anywhere.

[jtm55]

Hi All

Sailor Steve you are of course right about Uboats being smaller than US Submarines. I can only imagine what it must have been like to serve on board one of those boats.

Quick question, aren't modern day Submarines considerably larger than WWII Subs?

[Sailor Steve]

Yes they are. A ballistic missile sub displaces about the same as the 1906 battleship HMS Dreadnought (18,000 tons). I still don't know what the requirements are, though.

[Blood_splat]

Is it me or were people just smaller back then? When I look at pics from WWII of 18 and 19 year old kids, I would have dwarfed over a lot of them at that age.

[jhelix70]

Is it me or were people just smaller back then?

You are correct. Over the last hundred years or so people have been getting taller. Mainly due to better nutrition during childhood, so growth is allowed to continue to the max rather than being stunted. In fact I think the average height has been increasing since the middle ages.

[mookiemookie]

I was just talking to a guy at work earlier today about this, strangely enough, and he was saying that when he was in the service (late 50's or early 60's) there was a height/weight limit for those on submarines, as well as for pilots. I can't find the exact details on this though.

[Snowman999]

Originally Posted by Blood_splat

Is it me or were people just smaller back then? When I look at pics from WWII of 18 and 19 year old kids, I would have dwarfed over a lot of them at that age.

It's not discussed much now, but there were severe problems in WWII with draftees who were malnourished, short, with horrible teeth, etc. due to the Great Depression. The medical reject rate was about 1/3 I've read. In the 1930s it was not uncommon to find beri-beri, rickets and similar diseases throughout Appalachia and the South, and those kids became WWII's draftees and volunteers. While not a WWII sailor, my father joined in 1949 at 17 and had full dentures by the time he was 19. He'd never seen a dentist before boot camp.