Career Autobiography - Part 4: It's Not Easy Being a Submariner

Part 3 is Here

After almost exactly two years of technical training, I reported aboard the USS Barb for what would be the remainder of my active military duty - a four year-long sea tour.

 Below:  USS Barb departing from Pearl Harbor.

 

This post is less about the career knowledge that I gained, and more about what it was like to serve on a nuclear submarine during the cold war.  I'll follow up with a second post about the career aspects of this particular point in my life, but since this was an unusual thing, this post is to discuss the non-technical part.  The video below does a decent job of explaining the lived experience.

One thing you notice immediately when you go down the hatch of a sea-going submarine:  They smell quite a bit.  Some of this odor has to do with propulsion machinery lubricants.  Even more of the odor is due to the chemical used in the Carbon Dioxide scrubbers.  As you would guess, when a lot of people are enclosed in a tight space, the Carbon Dioxide they exhale tends to build up, while the Oxygen in the ship's atmosphere tends to deplete. The atmosphere is therefore monitored and controlled.

Carbon Dioxide is removed from the air by CO2 scrubbers.  These scrubbers would typically be placed into service shortly after the ship submerged.  The CO2 scrubbers take a slip stream of air and blow it through wire mesh, over which hot liquid Monoethlyamine (MEA) is continuously pumped.  The MEA absorbs the CO2.  Then the MEA is taken to a different point and cooled, which releases the CO2.  The CO2 is then pressurized and pumped overboard.  Unfortunately, no filtration process is perfect.  A tiny fraction of MEA vapor escapes with the treated air, and it doesn't smell very nice.  It also yellows anything that it comes in contact with.

Below, a Carbon Dioxide scrubber for submarine use.

Whenever we would go on a trip to visit another port, we would take along civilian clothes to wear on liberty.  However you have to protect your good clothes from "the smell" - You would not want to go ashore smelling like submarine.  Civilian clothes would be placed inside two layers of heavy duty trash bags, along with a sheet of clothes dryer fabric softener, just in case of an air leak in the trash bags.  You really couldn't be too careful with your clothes regarding the smell.

Most of the time when we got underway, it wasn't to go anywhere interesting.  It was for "weekly ops".  The ship would get underway on Monday, stay at sea submerged for a week, and then surface and return to port again on Friday.  On weekly ops we might pretend to be a Soviet sub for a group of surface ships to locate, we might try to locate another friendly submarine that was trying to evade us, or just go out and run casualty drills all week. 

In principle, this weekends-off arrangement sounds fine.  In reality, it was a soul-sucking experience.   For the ship to be ready to get underway by 8:00 on Monday, the engineering department (nuclear propulsion guys), had to be there at 4:00 AM to start up the reactor and steam systems, switch over to the ship's generators, disconnect shore power, and warm the main engines.  The rest of the crew could arrive at the normal time - 7:00 AM.

The reverse was also true when returning to port Friday afternoon.  As soon as the walkway was across to the pier, most of the crew (with the exception of the duty section) could leave.  Nukes on the other hand, got to stick around to connect shore power, after which they could shut down the ship's generators, steam plant, and reactor.

Duty section:  You were normally in 3-4 section duty.  What that means is that every 3 days (every 4 days if your division was fully staffed and qualified - a rarity), you got to spend 24 hours on the ship, from 7:00 AM to 7:00 AM, at which time another duty section would take over.  Odds were extremely high that you would get the duty on the Friday, Saturday or Sunday that the ship was in port.  Then you got to repeat the process all over again the following week!  This pattern would repeat for months on end.

When submarines were not on an overseas deployment, the crew was assigned to barracks on the Submarine Base.  That's because submarines don't have enough bunks for the entire crew to sleep all at once, and when the ship is in port, everyone keeps daylight working hours, instead of rotating watches.  When the ship is at sea, most of the crew hot bunks.

Hot bunking is a situation 3 crew-members share two bunks.  Watch lasts for 6 hours, after which you would do some time training or perform maintenance, then go to sleep.  You would use whichever of the two bunks was unoccupied.  When you got up for your next watch, the offgoing watchstander would get your bunk.  After you got senior enough, you could have your own personal bunk.

When you initially reported on board, you would be assigned bunking in the torpedo room.  Mattress pads were placed on racks adjacent to where torpedoes were stored, so you would sleep right alongside hundreds of pounds of high explosive and semi-toxic Otto II torpedo fuel.

The torpedo room was a difficult place to sleep for a number of reasons.  The torpedomen frequently trained to jockey the weapons into the torpedo tubes,.  This required everyone to vacate the room.  You grabbed your mattress pad, shoes, toiletry kit, and got the hell out of their way.  Even when the torpedomen weren't moving weapons, it was still very difficult to sleep among the torpedoes.  At all times, there was a weapons guard in the torpedo room.  He was frequently engaged in a conversation, and kept several lights near the weapons console on.

Below:  Torpedo room on a newer submarine.  It doesn't look roomy, but this is actually one of the larger spaces on a sub. 

By comparison, the barracks were pretty nice.  They were equipped with three-man rooms with large lockers and a 3/4 bathroom.  Nearby was a gym, swimming pool, tennis courts, and raquetball courts - and a chow hall with marginal food.  There was some other stuff like the enlisted men's club, which I never went in, and a very tiny base exchange, which seemed like a poorly stocked 7-11.

The ship usually went to sea for weekly operations.  However, shortly before deployment overseas, the ship would venture up North and practice shooting dummy torpedoes.

The practice torpedoes were modified - they held no explosives, contained a reduced load of fuel, and had flotation devices to bring them to the surface after a run.  Then they would be refurbished, refueled, and loaded back onto the ship for another day of target practice.  This would go on for several days of "daily operations", after which the ship would return to San Diego.

It should be noted that the facility up North didn't have shore power, so the nukes had to stay on board and keep the reactor running to provide the ship with power.  Meanwhile most of the rest of the crew was able to leave the ship, have fun, and explore the area.  Shore leave in in several places was pretty scarce among the nukes, due to the lack of shore power.

One of the dreaded events among nuclear-trained sailors is the annual ORSE, or Operational Reactor Safeguards Exam.  For a couple of months prior to ORSE, training and casualty drill frequency and intensity would increase even more than normal.  It's not like a week ever went by without a round of drills anyway.

Casualty drills could be anything.  The drill team might simulate flooding, a major steam leak, or a fire.  They would frequently trip a generator, a major pump, or shut off a main steam line, or trip the reactor itself.  They might make you isolate the steam supply to one main engine for a simulated steam leak, and then order "ahead flank".  You better not get flustered by the first casualty, and you better know exactly what the power limitation is with the remaining main engine, and hit that number fast, mister.

You do these drills over and over, with the drill team constantly throwing new curve-balls at you.  They do this  because at some point, the ship's very survival might hang in the balance, and when the shit hits the fan, you need to remain calm, and take the all of the appropriate actions, in the correct sequence.  Even though you are not at war, this is still a warship, and you might very well find yourself taking damage in battle, and confronting a dire situation.

Ironic then, that the only time I ever thought that the ship was in danger was one time when a drill went sideways on us.  For various reasons, the ship ended up in a jam dive when it was supposed to be coming to periscope depth.  Failed communications system was part of the drill, so it took a while to realize that things weren't exactly going according to plan.   The drill was immediately halted and the ship brought under control again.  When the drill was curtailed, we were at about half of test depth, instead of near the surface at periscope depth.

Back to ORSE.  The ORSE team consists of several non-crew members who would get underway with us for a week.  Most of these riders were engineering officers, and the leader would have been the captain of a different ship at some point in his career.  The ORSE team would pore through the records for a couple of days, ensuring we were keeping the manuals up to date with the latest revisions, check training records, check maintenance records, check inventory for critical parts.

Then came the dreaded drills.  When we drilled without the ORSE team aboard, we held internal critiques about how we could do better.  Sometimes a drill would get repeated if things went poorly.  If things go poorly in front of the ORSE team, you can fail the ORSE, and the captain loses the keys to the reactor - literally.  He is not authorized to get underway in his own ship.  Very embarrassing.  Nobody wants to fail an ORSE, but the first one I experienced, we failed.  It was not fun afterwards.

For about 3 months, until the powers that be decided we could be trusted to attempt to pass a second ORSE, those of us who weren't fully qualified were pretty much confined to the ship.  I had been aboard 4-5 months when the ORSE failure occurred, so I was quite a long ways away from being fully qualified.  

ORSE failure leads to other unpleasant side effects.  Submarine Squadron Command would send down someone to observe and report - and to screw with the crew.  You might find yourself running a pretend drill (pier-side, because we could no longer get underway).  You would sometimes have a guy behind you, furiously scribbling notes in a little book - about your uniform, your attitude, your verbal communication, your actions, your haircut.  Very unpleasant.  It was during this period that I swore an oath to leave the Navy the moment that my enlistment ended.

The first ORSE we definitely deserved to fail.  During one of the drills, actions were taken that could have led to core damage in the reactor, had things been allowed to continue.  Lessons were learned and anonymized, then shared with the rest of the fleet.  It's brutal, and there is some shame involved, but sharing human errors and explaining what the correct action is has kept the US Navy free of major reactor accidents for 65 years so far.  Eventually we were notified that a second ORSE was scheduled, and we managed to pass that one.

Then there's deployment.

Deployment is when the ship leaves port and doesn't return for 6 months.  On the west coast, a deployment is called "WestPac", short for Western Pacific Cruise.  To prepare for deployment, you have to take along a lot of food.  The entire crew gets to spend a day doing a "stores load", where pallets and pallets of food are brought to the pier.  A daisy chain of the crew, under direction of the head cook, passes #10 cans and boxes of food across the brow to the ship, down the hatch, and spread around inside the ship wherever the head cook wants it placed.

At the beginning of a long submerged period, you walk on cans of food, and toward the end, you might be on reduced rations.  Each time you make port while on deployment, you replenish food supplies.  Stores loads and equipment repairs cut into the time available to explore a new port.  It doesn't help if there is no shore power and you have to keep the reactor running. 

Pre-deployment at a personal level:  If you have a car, you need to place it in storage.  The submarine base doesn't allow you to keep a non-operating vehicle on site.  The shore patrol stays on top of such things, and they will have your car impounded by civilian scumbags who are totally into usury - so you put your car into storage.

Next, you share rent on a small storage unit with a few buddies, because the rest of your earthly belongings will only take a corner of a 10ft x10ft storage unit.  Helpfully, the Navy gives you 6 months advance pay so that you can afford to pay the fees these jackals charge.

The ship would transit to Pearl Harbor for a shake-down, and then do a couple of weekly operations out of Pearl before heading overseas.  For some reason, we always had major equipment issues on the way to Pearl.  Once we had a major hydraulic leak on the stern planes ram, an event that sprayed the entire shaft alley area with hydraulic oil.  Another time we bent a periscope mast.  Then the trash disposal unit outer door failed.  Fortunately, Pearl Harbor has some excellent facilities, and we were always able to deploy and get on station.

Deployment was when the ship finally get to do what it was built for.  Submarines are commonly used to tail other submarines and to conduct surveillance.  I can't discuss the specifics of the deployments, but there is a decent video that shows a small fraction of what goes on beneath the waves.  The book is quite a good read and a bit more interesting than the video below.

The really good thing about going on deployment was that - at long last - there were no drills.  The compartment doors would be left open on the latch, and we were required to wear rubber soled sneakers.  Sometimes during particularly sensitive operations, everyone who was not on watch was required to be in a bunk.  These were the easy times!  We were in cold water, which the equipment loves, and we took along plenty of movies.  Unfortunately, all anyone wanted to watch on the first deployment was Summer Lovers, over and over and over and over.  On the second deployment, it was 9-1/2 weeks. 

I've been asked this a lot of times: "What's the longest you were ever underwater?".  The answer is 63 days from dive to surface.  Only a few crew go topside when the ship is surfaced, so it really didn't even matter when we surfaced.  It's only when you are moored to the pier that you are allowed to open the hull hatches and see daylight.

Probably one of the most disorienting things about deployment was when we returned to port.  You really hadn't had any contact with anyone except the crew for 6 months.  The world changed while you were submerged.  Hit songs had come and gone, TV shows had made their mark, and everything in the world had subtly changed.  Meanwhile you had gotten pale under the glow of fluorescent lights, been breathing MEA fumes for months, and had gotten into a monotonous routine.

When it came time to berth the ship after a deployment, most of us didn't want to cross over to the pier, where the brightly-clothed and perfumed wives awaited.  Socially, most of us weren't prepared to interact with a group of civilians after being underwater for so long.  It was awkward and a bit spooky, even when we knew the families. 

I was able to see a few places that I never would otherwise have seen:  Yokosuka Japan,  Subic City Phillippines, Guam, Adak Alaska,  and Hong Kong China.   That said, the visits were quite short, sometimes I was stuck on the ship due to having 24 hour duty, having to repair machinery that parts were waiting for on the pier when we arrived, and sometimes because we had to steam because no shore power was available.  This was the case in both Hong Kong and Adak.  Those places I only saw from the ship.  Guam wasn't even worth getting off the ship for, except that it had beer.

It wasn't all bad.  There were fun times, both on board and ashore.  I made some very close friends, learned a hell of a lot, and saw a handful of cool places.  

However the submarine life is a very hard life.  You live under conditions that they could not inflict on a convicted murderer.  You also forego any hope of living the American Dream.  In the end, I stuck with the decision that I made during the ORSE failure.  I put a solid effort over my four years of sea duty, and when the end of active duty arrived, the Navy and I parted ways.

Part 5 is here: