Category Archives: Submarine

Sound the Collision Alarm, Flooding in Lower Level Engineroom forward 3

Preparedness, Submarine • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Not really sure which I had more respect for on a submarine; fire or flooding. I think most people who aren’t in a flooding situation will tell you that a fire is more feared. Between the round shape of the hull and all the stuff that can burn, fires have a tendency to spread pretty quickly. Plus, because of the nature of the stuff that typically burns, a lot of smoke is released which explains why we drill so much using emergency breathing masks that are temporarily opaque to simulate reduced visibility.

Flooding was the casualty that gave me recurring dreams though. You might even say they were nightmares since I do remember struggling to get out of my rack in a cold sweat only to find that the berthing area was all quiet except for Petty Officer T’s incessant snoring. I would sheepishly crawl back into the rack hoping no one had seen my momentary panic. But I can assure you I did not fall back asleep no matter how long we had field dayed the boat prior to my short sleep.

When they actually do sound the collision alarm, you don’t ignore it. In your head, you hope it’s a drill but if its done at an unusual time with no hint of a drill coming, you definitely get an adrenaline rush. I think that after five boats, that’s why I still sleep so light. I think if my wife ever really wanted to push me to the next world, all she would have to do is wait for some night when I was in one of my rare deep sleeps and rig up a collision alarm next to my bed.  Yep, that would just about do it as I tried to pull the curtain on my rack aside and hunt for my poopy suit only to find that I was not ready to answer the alarm. Can you spell heart attack?

Central Pennsylvania has been sounding the flooding alarm a lot the last few days. Remnants of Hurricane Lee (tropical storm?) moved slowly through our area similar to what Agnes did almost forty years ago. All up and down the Susquehanna Valley, people who like a nice water view are getting an up close and personal encounter with the water they love so much. Central Pennsylvania is a beautiful area with rolling hills, large expanses of open farmland and gentle streams and creeks that provide a nice backdrop on a sunny day. The typically winding and dipping roads are actually one of the fun things when the weather is nice since it provides you with an experience somewhat similar to what a Le Mans race would be. But when the skies open up and pour ten inches of rain in a day, all of those characteristics work against her.

There had been a lot of rain recently which helped to saturate the ground. Another Hurricane had recently passed to the east but dropped lots of water all through the tributary areas. Lee’s arrival came at a particularly bad time and its slow-moving nature made it a very productive rain maker. Those back roads quickly develop into dangerously unexpected obstacles from fallen trees and accumulated water. If it happens in the night, it becomes harder to see and results in a lot of accidents. Making the wrong choice in which route you travel will almost always result in unexpected delays at best and something much more tragic at their worst. This storm also affected the major highways which line the rivers and streams here. I have never seen a large stretch of the turnpike closed before but it was needed this time to prevent people from getting trapped.

Mandatory evacuations were in place all over the Harrisburg and Hershey areas. We still have electricity so far and water but many of the communities are already under a boil water advisory. The one thing I noticed was that even though the word had been put out days before that this was a very high possibility, how completely surprised so many people were that they would have to be evacuated. Plus, you could tell by their comments, how unprepared they were for even the most basic needs. The shelters are full in all of the counties around us and almost all of those people brought little to nothing with them. The worst part is that in the low-lying areas, they will not have much to go back to.

 

I seriously wish there was a giant collision alarm that I could sound. I wish even more that people would take preparation more seriously before the big event. At the end of the day, it’s still a choice isn’t it. Even the best preparations will not overcome the really big events. But being ready for the types of possible casualties in your area might just mean that one of the first responders won’t have to risk his or her life for someone who didn’t think they would ever be a victim. Well, off to the Church to help dry out the basement. Hopefully the rain will stop soon.

If you have a spare one, a lot of really nice people could use your prayers. The new water ride at Hershey Park is not very welcome at all.

Mister Mack

A Shiny New Coat of Paint Reply

Change, Lean, Submarine • Tags: , , , ,

I think that one of mankind’s greatest achievements is the evolution of paint. I also believe it is mankind’s greatest admission of imperfection.

I have been intimate with paint since I was a young boy. My Grandfather had an old boat on the Monongahela River in Western Pennsylvania called the Dawn. She was a forty-eight foot cabin cruiser originally built for the Great Lakes that Grandpa Bob had bought before I was born.

HMS Dawn

The Dawn had twin Gray Marine diesel engines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_Marine_Engine and an Onan Generator for a power supply. Since she was built for lake cruising, she carried a weeks worth of water, fuel, and had real anchors on the forward teak deck. She was a deep hulled boat so we had to be careful on our many trips up and down the rivers. A basic radar, sonar and marine radios kept Grandpa on top of all the dangers a river can present and the full lifeboat was the only one of its kind I can remember growing up on the river.

Robert W. Parkins

Smaller boats would wait for the Dawn to come by at full throttle since the wake was large enough to create a mini-ski ramp out of water. We use to sit on the back deck and wait for the next boat to take us on. Grandfather was a Commodore in the Coast Guard Auxiliary who had served as a River Patrol officer during the War years up and down the smoky corridors of the steel mills lined on either side of the rivers. He was very careful to make sure the Dawn was as ready as she could be to face any danger. But there was one danger that no amount of preparation could forestall:  The corrosive effects of the river on the painted hull.

As much as the Dawn was the envy of most kids along the river bank, she became one of my hardest tasks as a kid. Part of our payment for the numerous rides we would take during the summer was scrapping and sanding the hull in the spring. No matter what kind of paint Grandfather tried, every spring we would end up scraping most of it off and applying the new brand. The rivers of Western PA are much cleaner now that the mills are mostly gone but in those days they were fired up day and night and the coolant waters eventually ended up in the rivers. That is why they were built next to rivers after all.

The mines in that part of the country also had a lot of runoff which was probably not monitored as well as it should have been. Remember the clean water act wasn’t even signed into place until 1972 and by that time I was on my way to Boot Camp to get some serious exposure to chipping, sanding and painting. So for at least a greater percentage of my young life, I could be found with my brothers walking up and down the hull of the Dawn which was cradled at Engels boat yard.

Young Sailors

The imperfection was the use of wood which had been the standard material for boats of its kind for more generations than I can imagine. Wood obviously was an acceptable substance because it allowed for some level of buoyancy and was relatively easy to manipulate into shapes with the tools and technologies of its day. But having to use something was a self inflicted admission that the greatest minds of the day could not come up with a better substance. Until metal was able to replace it. Finally, in the case of pleasure boating the miracle of all miracles: fiberglass.

The day the dawn was sold and replaced with a Chris Craft House Boat remains one of my most bittersweet memories. No more forward bunk room where we fought off imaginary pirates (on our way to Pittsburgh to actually see the real Pirates play). No more lifeboat drills and the difficult maneuvering that was required to navigate the locks on the Allegheny and the Mon. But, no more painting either. Except for a few touch ups done by the professional boat yard guys, our days of painting were behind us forever. Or in my case until I first met the George Washington in Guam coming back from an extended patrol.

Where in the world did all that green crap and all those barnacles come from? The GW had to go into dry-dock for some quick repairs and I even found out more about hull painting. It wasn’t until I reported on board the Halibut a few years later that I really discovered the fine art of painting as we prepared her for decommissioning. Despite the fact that I was a highly trained steely eyed killer of the deep, I was quick to realize that even steely eyed killers had to man a brush in order to cover up man’s imperfection.

That’s right, imperfection. Obviously if some one had designed it well enough or created the right material, it wouldn’t need paint now would it? Have you ever tried telling that to a Chief? Yep, Chief John was seriously unimpressed with my interpretation of man’s inability to overcome his imperfections and actually increased the amount of painting I would get to experience. I learned pretty quickly to keep my observations about philosophy to myself. I believe the Chief was pretty happy I made that discovery all by myself.

MMC Red

I don’t know where you are sitting right now as you read this, but look around you at all the imperfection. Your walls, your furniture, and probably your ceiling are probably a tribute to man’s inability to make the perfect surfaces. Unless you live in a log cabin (which probably has a clear coat of something to protect the wood) you are probably surrounded by paint. I think we have just come to accept that it will be a part of our lives (which undoubtedly makes the paint companies very happy by the way).

One of the disturbing trends I have seen in workplaces over the years however is to use paint to avoid having to actually fully adopt lean principles. Don’t get me wrong, I love the feeling of a workplace that has just gone through a dramatic change because of a dedicated effort. I like the progress charts, the before and after pictures, the happy faces of the workers as the plant manager comes down to congratulate them on their success.

The disturbing part is the rush to get the paint on without understanding the root causes of why it needed painting in the first place. The simple (and wrong) answer would be to scoff “Well of course it was dirty and scarred up… this is a factory”. Really? You want to go with that answer? How about driving to the root cause of why is is dirty and scarred up in the first place. Didn’t the same hands that cleaned and paint the pace have that ability before you and your 5S program showed up?

You see the problem is that even though you have shined it and put a shiny new coat of paint on it, until you change the mindset of the people who live in that place, you will find yourself sometime in the near future staring at a place that need painting and deep cleaning again. Without a culture change that recognizes that the cleanliness and painting is all a part of problem solving and discipline building, you are doomed to repeat this as often as new plant managers rotate through your business.

Paint is a great partner and really helps to cover up the imperfection we design into almost everything. But never lose sight of the fact that you are covering imperfection. The real goal is to find the “fiberglass solution” more commonly known as continuous improvement.

I miss the Dawn sometimes. The throaty roar of those twin diesels and feeling the wind as you charged down the river are memories that will last a lifetime. But I sure am glad I had a few months off before I went into the Navy because of her fiberglass replacement.

Retirement 2

Mister Mac

Monkey See, Monkey Do Reply

Leadership, Submarine, Uncategorized • Tags: , , , ,

As I have gotten older, I have discovered that the words on pages seem to have grown smaller and less distinguishable. I was convinced for some time that this was a result of printing companies using cheaper and less effective ink and smaller letters to conserve costs. Kind of like the fast food restaurants are doing with their burgers these days. I have yet to get one that looks like the one on the advertisements.

Unfortunately, the cost cutting measures could not be equated to my slowly shrinking computer screen and my wife introduced me to my very first pair of reading glasses. Amazingly, at that very moment, I discovered that the printing industry recognized my concerns and returned the quality level to both the size of the letters and relative quality of the ink.

Vision can be a funny thing. It can be affected by a number of things including internal and external factors. This reminded me of the first time I experienced a vision issue related to unusual environments.

As the George Washington was getting ready to surface for the first time in over two months, one of the old salts on board told me to be prepared for what I would see when we finally got to go topside. It turns out that living in a closed metal tube for that long of a period of time has an effect on your eyesight. Once you are topside, everything looks completely out of whack.

There are lots of reasons for the phenomenon. The typical day on a submarine is fractured compared to normal life. Since the watches are broken up into six hour segments, your body is constantly out of whack if you are on an eighteen hour rotation. The lights in the berthing compartment are normally turned to red or off (depending on where you slept) and the control room is varying shades of white to red to black depending on what you are doing at the time.

Depending on your watch station, you find that the most important length of vision is from your body to the gage or panel you are monitoring. If you are a helmsman, its less than a few feet and you are constantly monitoring the course, depth and bubble indicators. Not doing so could result in a swift whack to the back of your head so you learn quickly how to focus. The same can be said for many of the watch standers both forward and aft. You really just don’t need to see that far at any given time.

Climbing out of the forward hatch for the first time, two things are quickly apparent. Even on the cloudiest day, its BRIGHT and everything you see is much larger than you remembered it from two month ago. I think the tender must have grown to three times its size in the short minths we were goneHunley 001.

Your depth perception is out of whack as well. Two conditions (myopia and esophoria) are prevalent in almost all returning sub sailors. Myopia is a near sightedness that grows to be less intense after you are away from the boat. Esophoria is something else completely and apparently affects many submarine guys over the course of their careers. It is described by medical personnel as a tendency of the eyes to deviate inward.

The Naval Submarine Research Laboratory did a number of studies in the 1960’s and 1970’s to determine the long term effects of serving on submarines. Since patrols were lengthened and our ability to stay underwater was increased with newer technology, it made sense to try and figure out why guys were having so many vision problems after leaving the boats.

The submarine environment was always thought to be a contributing factor. Think about it. If the furthest space you could see on a typical submarine was about twenty feet, you would naturally believe that the eyes would focus more on close in objects. Test were done on a number of animals but the most telling ones were those conducted on monkeys.

just monkeying around

Our friends the monkeys have similar sight systems to us so placing them in a comparative confined visual environment showed that they almost immediately started showing signs of progressive visual impairment. When the monkeys were removed from their restricted spaces, they would bump into objects and express frustration at not being able to understand what had changed. Much like the bubbleheads turned loose in fast cars not long after returning from patrol who were unable to perceive the curves they failed to negotiate properly.

So there is proof that living in confined spaces for too long will cause changes (short and long term) to the vision of the people in those spaces. That explains a lot to me about Washington DC. The people who work in the capitol building have become myopic and esophoric in the way they see the rest of the country. That explains why some of the decisions they have been making lately seem so cross eyed. They have such limited vision, they can’t see beyond their next election cycle. It also explains why they are so awkward when they are forced to leave their little comfortable confines and tend to bump into things that have always been there.

Maybe all we really need to fix the countries problem is some good eye doctors.

Or maybe just replace the whole lot with monkeys. They will still develop the crossed eyes and shorter vision but will probably do a lot less damage to the country. They surely can’t do much worse and would probably be easier (and cheaper) to maintain.

The Old Metal Box 2

Leadership, Submarine, Teamwork • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

We have moved 18 times in our thirty one years of being married and I moved quite a few times before that dating back to 1972. As far back as I can remember, I have kept two things with me in all of those moves. One is a tattered old World Atlas that I faithfully make a written entry in every New Years Eve about where I was that year and some key events. The other is an old metal lock box (the kind that is supposed to be fire resistant but you hope to never find out if it really is).

The box is kind of dusty since it sits under my desk most of the time. Its rarely ever opened except back in the day when I may have had one or two too many adult beverages and just wanted to see who I had been at some point in my life. On the outside of the box is a sticker I bought at Pensacola the year I went through CWO/LDO school that says “Its hard to be humble when you’re a Mustang”. The day after I bought it, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait so that tells you how old the sticker is.

LDO CWO school grad

Inside the box is a collection of my achievements and reputation as represented with things from my old service records. I am a collector. Please, do not tell my relatives (particularly nieces and nephews) since I do not want to be featured on an episode of Hoarders. The box is fairly compact and hides well under the desk so it really will not cause me any harm. If Debbie has been willing to let me drag it from place to place over these many years, that should be good enough for everyone that knows me to just let me be.

The contents of the box are pretty meaningful and carefully archive much of my growth in the past forty years. Starting with Boot Camp, I have every certificate from every school I ever attended in the Navy. The certificates that followed are like a road map of my life. Great Lakes IL, New London CT, Charleston SC, Pearl Harbor HI, Mare Island CA, Norfolk VA, San Diego CA, Bangor WA, and a bunch of repeats over the years.

Sub School Graduation 001

There are a few professional accomplishments too. Sadly, I lost my original Qual Certificate, but many others of personal importance managed to make it into the box. I particularly like the Master Training Specialist Award since I worked hard to achieve that standing. I am sure it helped to lead to the next important pieces of paper in the box; my authorization to wear the uniform and assume the title of Machinist Mate Chief Petty Officer ( August 16, 1987) and not long after that Chief Warrant Officer (July 1, 1990).

MMC Appointment 001

Three Honorable Discharges allowed me to wear Gold Stripes on my Chief’s uniform. You sometimes forget about the things that once mattered but I have to be honest, it was a good feeling to put all that gold on my dress blues. For my civilian friends, that means one of two things: for twelve consecutive years you either were a stellar example of a highly professional sailor or in some people’s cases it means you never got caught. The pay is the same either way and I knew a lot of really great sailors with red stripes. But it was a mark of honor to be able to put on the gold.

Most career people collect a lot of other pieces of paper along the way. Sailor of the Quarter, Letters of Commendation, Command awards for Battle E and Damage Control DC for instance. Some are highly personal and some are fairly generic but they all make up a record of sorts of the type of person you were perceived as along the way.

Performance evaluations and Fitreps collected along the way are reminders of the tasks you were challenged with. If you did well, they are filled with phrases like:

Integrity, Thoroughness, Tenacity, Exceptional in Every Respect, Clearly superior to his peers, Inspirational Leader, Outstanding Leadership and superb management techniques, masterful planner and administrator, skillful counselor…

Now I need to stop right there and tell you that the same guy in 1974 was barely able to scrape by with a 3.0 average and needed constant reminders about his hair length.  Those outstanding leadership qualities that seemed to appear from nowhere years later were no where present in that young man who had just barely been able to make Third Class Petty Officer. There was little danger of that guy receiving a personal letter of commendation no less a metal box full of personal awards, commendation letters and higher levels of recognition for excellence.

What made the difference? While an internal ability to come to his senses may have played a small role, it was the leadership of people like TMC(SS) Gale Brown (later Chief Warrant Officer). MMCS Bill Phelps and TMCM Nick Dalebout also played key roles in the miracle turnaround. The leaders who saw something in this floundering young guy and gave him every opportunity were the direct reasons he was able to achieve goals and abilities that were later recognized.

You see, in life, we are all capable of more than we sometimes allow ourselves. I could have spent my life accepting that I was just average and probably would never have achieved the things that I was blessed to be able to do. But I also know a lot of people along the way who would not have been able to find themselves if those guys who mentored me had not taken the time to brush the dirt off of the potential I was able to develop.

My contribution was pretty simple really. Given the chance to reinvent myself by a group of “leaders” I was able to find the inner strength in later challenges to continue to move forward. I used their example to try and help a number of guys after that when it was my turn. I hope I did at least as well as the ones who helped me.

Admiral Emery Letter Retirement 001

One challenge I would give you today if you are in a leadership role. Do you have somebody who is struggling in their current role? Have you given them the chance to reinvent themselves in a way that makes them dig deeper inside themselves to succeed? I believe the highest calling of leadership is not to lead people who need little leadership, it is to help develop those who are struggling the most. When you abandon someone who is losing their struggle, two people lose.

I think I’ll hang on to the box. When I stumble on my way through life and someone questions my integrity, its nice to see that at one point in my life, a bunch of people thought my professional ability, initiative, and loyal dedication to duty reflected great credit upon myself, the Submarine Force, and the United States Naval Service.

These days, I just want to be as good a person as my dogs think I am.

036_1A           035_2A

Mister Mac

What Would You Take With You? 15

Continuous Improvement, Submarine • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

One of the questions almost always asked during one of my submarine life talks is about sleeping on the sub. Most people who have been around sub sailors have heard about hot racking and I will have to admit to doing so a few times in my career as a lower rated enlisted man. Getting qualified and getting a few extra stripes on your left arm are keys to being able to avoid this. Sometimes I think that in itself is the main motivator for a guy to advance.

That question always brings back memories of getting ready for patrols (or Spec Ops when on the fast boats). I would have to say that most people I know were very careful about what they would bring with them and for a very good reason. Up until the Trident Class submarine, the average sailor was limited to two storage areas for their stuff; the bed pan beneath their rack and a small foot locker which is really nothing more than a place to store shoes when not in use.

The bed pan was really your only “owned” space on the boat. If you are really lucky, your COB (Chief of the Boat) will have a list of suggested things you should bring with you. You quickly find out that your sea bag (as issued in Boot Camp) will probably not all fit in the pan. The one that I was issued had blue wool jumpers and bell bottoms (not very useful in the South Pacific) as well as the white cracker jacks. But if you did pull into a foreign port up north (Japan for instance) you may be directed to have an alternate set of uniforms with you.

The rest of the space needed to be carefully thought out. The bunk itself is fairly compact. At its longest, its about 6 feet, 3 feet wide, and about 2.5 feet to the bottom of the next guy’s rack (or the overhead stuffed with wiring and cables). The bunk pan itself was only 4 inches deep so you can see that you will have to be judicious. Once the hatch is closed, there are no stores on board the ship and you don’t typically pull into the Stop and Go Quickie Mart for a junk food fix.

Compounding that problem, most subs are limited in their laundry abilities. It is made worse if there is a “quiet” operation during your division’s time to wash.

There are specific Laws concerning stowage on a submarine that must be respected. This list is not all inclusive (and I am sure to this day they are still updating it). But here is what I believe were the Cardinal Rules:

1. If you bring it on board, you must stow it in such a manner not to annoy the COB or the XO or bring unwanted attention to your Chief.

2. Stowage space is in direct proportion to your rank, qualification status and your physical intimidation status. There are no appeals. This applies to the few “hooks” on the bulkhead where the ever present poopy suit hangs between watches.

3. You will not get it right the first time you sail. You may as well not even try. All of the older sailors will have filled you with typically useless suggestions if for no other reason to see your discomfort when you realize that canned soda takes up way too much space and there is free stuff on the mess decks anyway.

4. You will make continuous improvements each time you sail (unless of course you are under the impression you can somehow beat rule #1) In any event, your ability to plan and pack will be greatest on your last patrol before you leave the boat (which adds to the list of useless skills you have acquired).

5. Regardless of how many times you sail, you will not have everything you need. In fact, you can almost be assured that something you desperately need will come to your attention at the breakwater before the first dive. Hopefully, this does not include enough skivvies.

6. If you are married or in a committed relationship, you will lose some of that precious space to inanimate objects of someone’s affection to remind you of them for the entire patrol. They will invariably be drenched in some kind of perfume that renders them almost impossible to hide for very long. (Note to any former San Francisco Sailors from the early eighties: I have had several discussions with one of our old shipmates regarding a certain bear that went missing… thirty years have not erased the pain and as you fall asleep tonight, remember that… I’m just saying, sleep lightly dudes… you know who you are)

7. If any of your shipmates discover any intimate unmentionable inanimate articles you will face an inordinate amount of laser like harassment. These objects can and will end up as fodder for the traditional half-way night festivities. (If the “delicate unmentionables” are actually yours you will be pleased to note the coming change to the Navy’s DODT policy – but I would still wait for a bit before you put on your eye shadow and come out to the crew.)

8. If you smoked (back in the day that was actually allowed) you will never have exactly enough cartons of cigarettes to make the actual length of the patrol. Your best intentions about cutting back will disappear (in a cloud of smoke on the first mid-watch) and the panic that occurs to all who are addicted will continue to increase as your now inadequate supply dwindles. As the end of patrol approaches (especially on an extended run) you will find that you could fit quite well into the beggars colony of Calcutta and your soul is stripped bare of any dignity you have ever had.

9. Up until the advent of the IPOD and other mass storage devices, you would quickly discover you also did not bring enough personal music on board with you. Going way back before Sony perfected the cassette deck, some of us even thought it was a wonderful idea to bring aboard our shiny new eight track tape machines with the awesome Koss headphones (that vaguely resemble small coconuts on either side of your head.) These ultimately resulted in power supply wars (limited outlets in berthing) bargaining with the electricians to get the coveted “safety tag” and of course you could only bring along so many tapes. To this day, I am unable to listen to “Bread” and Summer Breeze makes me want to go screaming from the room to the nearest open hatch for air.

10. The only commodity on board which had equal or more power than cigarettes were “adult” magazines. I am not sure why they call them “adult” since it was mostly boys spending any time reading them. These dog eared magazines became a sailors best friend once the hatches were closed and the air was let out of the ballast tanks. Another sign of the changing times is that now, you aren’t even allowed to hang Miss September in public viewing areas like your bunk. Although the lights were off most of the time, field days would reveal a glorious display of all manner of flowery creatures draped in nothing but your imagination.

If you ever want to really know what its like to sail on a submarine for a patrol, gather everything you think you will need and try and stack it into a four inch high, three foot wide, six foot long area. No cheating now!

You may want to remember your soap, razors (no shaving cream… sorry… against the rules), socks, undershirts, skivvies, spare uniforms, candy, and much of the aforementioned gee dunk. I have to admit in retrospect that preparing for a run is actually an art. You had to be as lean as humanly possible or you would pay some kind of price for your lack of it.

As the years went by, I noticed some changes in my needs. The cigarettes finally went away, the music got infinitely smaller, and the need for reading material turned to things that were more age appropriate. Our needs as people change as we mature. We still have needs, but hopefully as time goes by the maturing process helps you identify what is really important and what is not.

If you were forced to prepare for a journey where you could only consume what you brought, what would you bring? What things in your life could you live without and what could you not live without?

Have a great weekend

Mister Mac

Too Big To Fail 2

Communication, Submarine • Tags: , , ,

I was only able to serve on five subs and two of those were 688 class boats so my viewpoint may be a bit limited. But I am under the opinion that the designers did a pretty good job making a machine whose sole purpose was to hunt and kill the enemy. The reactor and machinery spaces took up quite a bit of room, the weapons systems and sonar equipment were neatly packaged and there was just enough Lebensraum for the crew to sleep, eat and shower (even if some of that did have to be managed in rotating shifts). Generally, they were comfortable boats compared to some of the older ones but they were still missing one important feature.

uss-washingtonb

Despite helping to build the San Francisco and spending four years on board, I was never able to find the 1.5 mile PRT track. The George Washington and Halibut didn’t have one either but for some reason there didn’t seem to be any critical urge to prove you could actually run that far back in the early seventies. Maybe the realization that the boat was only three hundred or so feet long drove that point home enough to earlier generations. As long as you could race from the torpedo room to shaft alley in an EAB, that seemed to be quite good enough.

scan

We just sort of watched what we ate mostly and I can only remember one time having a sailor get stuck in the hatch at the end of a patrol. To be fair, Big John was big boned before the patrol started and he did spend quite a bit of time mess cooking too. It always seemed such a waste to throw away the remains of the ice cream so he was merely doing his duty. But I personally think they should have let him put the .45 belt on after he got topside when we returned to Guam. It was funny seeing the “closed” indicator light come back on though and made for quite a discussion after we turned the boat over to the Goldies.

The San Francisco was a thoroughly modern boat with many highly developed technological devices on board. In addition there were large rooms full of cabinets filled with machines that computed speed, distance, and all manner of information. In retrospect, it is kind of interesting that the laptop I am typing on probably has a more efficient operating system but at the time, it was all pretty impressive. What was more impressive was the amount of training and skills that the crew possessed. No matter what the rate or rank, each person brought many months and years worth of training to the boat. Even Auxiliary men (A-gangers) generally received at least a years worth of training to operate and maintain the equipment required to support the submarines operations.

scan

By the early eighties, physical readiness was beginning to creep into the framework of the Navy’s leadership. The enlisted men had shifted back from the fancy but hard to maintain suit jackets (which I believe hid much of the fat that bedeviled the leadership) and returned to the traditional cracker jack outfit. Frankly, the design is much less forgiving for someone who has spent too many hours hunched over a control console plotting a way to kill the enemy (who was assumedly doing the same thing to us). There seems to be a direct connection with how much time one sits and how bad one looks in formation with a polyester white uniform hugging their body.

Personally, I felt the PRT emphasis was also directed at me. First, it only became important as I started getting closer to the age of thirty. Second, it was directly related to my rank. I used to watch guys with absolutely no self control be advanced for many years before that time but suddenly as I became interested in getting more rank, it became a priority. Some of you who are older may have noticed but past the age of thirty, gaining weight becomes infinitely easier and losing weight becomes nearly impossible. Its as if the body realizes it is coming closer to the end and tries to preserve every ounce of fat to try and ward of the imminent end.

Complicating the matter is the type of food available. On a boat that stays under for months sometimes, the only way to keep morale up is to feed the crew well. If its fried, deep fried, or refried, its on the menu. Pizza night is a big must, sliders are a much looked forward to meal and the ever present deep fried shrimp that comes in large buckets to the hungry hordes each week. Whole milk, cheese by the brick, salted butter and gravy on everything round out the epicurean delights that pack on the pounds. To this day, I can still taste and smell the New York Strip Steaks so lovingly prepared on the grill by MS1 Silas with fried potatoes, onions and mushrooms swimming in a sea of butter.  Top that off with a sheet cake covered with butter cream chocolate frosting and you have the epic end of patrol meal that no living sailor can resist or refuse.

It’s ironic that all of the skills and knowledge I had been acquiring pushed me towards a more responsible position at the same time my body decided to start betraying me. The tape measure got smaller each cycle and the running seemed to take much more energy (and time). Frankly, a couple of the “jocks’ on board who helped the XO run the PRT probably snuck out at night and lengthened the course just to throw us off.

The most insulting part was that the course in Pearl Harbor was over by the Marine Barracks. I am sure some old Marine is sitting at a Legion Bar someplace regaling his bar mates about the time the “whales” showed up for their semi-annual run. It normally happened right after we had come back from a run so everybody was pasty white and of course, t-shirts and shorts can only cover so much cellulite. I am told that Hawaii experiences a large number of earthquakes each year that are only detectable by machines. I wonder if anyone ever tried to correlate a pattern between the small quakes and the return of a submarine crew to the “killing fields”.

I have a confession to make. I managed to stay one step ahead of the PRT police just long enough to get promoted from first class to Chief and then on to Chief Warrant Officer. It was tough and I swear, if I ever have to run again now that I am at my retired age, you may as well just go ahead and shoot me.

TTF Instructor of the Year

 

              Indianapolis Commisioning

 

There was only one guy who I ever met who managed to beat the system. I am not sure if it was because we were in Scotland (where the only people who ran were the sheepherders) or if it was because he was in charge of the unit where we were stationed. Maybe it was because he was so huge and frankly pretty gruff that no one dared to actually tell him he may have been over the limit. Of course, the XO (who I still regard as a friend) did me the favor of assigning me as the command’s PRT coordinator. This did much to endear me to the old boy and I can remember a number of delightful conversations leading up to the PRT over lunch.

Consumption was never an issue for the Captain. He had a lot to maintain so it was understandable why extra portions would be required. On the day of the PRT, he brought me his measurements scribbled on a piece of paper. I had never known anyone with a thirty inch neck before but I assumed he would know what his own measurements are and duly recorded it in the log as directed.

The rest of the crew ran a wonderful 1.5 mile route in the beautiful highlands of Scotland. I actually learned to enjoy that run since the air was always cool and the scenery was brilliant. Although I never actually saw the captain run, he apparently did it quite well, always managing to beat his age appropriate time by a few seconds. Pretty miraculous I would say.

Personally, I think that was the origin of the term “Too Big To Fail”.

Scotland England 1990-91_034               Rainbow

Fortunately, the tour came to an end quickly and before I had to monitor another PRT. My last tour was on the USS Hunley where I learned about the special exemption granted to Chief Engineers who smoked three packs of cigarettes a day. Apparently they were also not required to participate in the presence of others for our semi-annual fun run. I have to assume he also never located the 1.5 mile track on his previous commands. I ran with abandon during this tour if for no other reason I knew I would not see him anywhere near the field.

I retired with my dignity and have managed to climb up and down the scales a number of times since then. I am content with who I am now and manage to walk the equivalent of that 1.5 miles every day that I am able. I hope someone has corrected the design flaws in the most modern boats so that the boys (and now girls too I suppose) will be able to be better prepared.

The nation’s future probably depends on it! (at least that’s what I told myself at the halfway point of the run every time I did it).

Need a lift? Reply

Submarine, Underwater Technology • Tags: , , , , , , ,

August 8 1974 was the day when one of the most interesting events of the Cold War came to a dramatic point. On that day, the Glomar Explorer completed a journey and a mission that had been so well cloaked in secrecy, it is doubtful that we even know today all that transpired during the project that was known as “Azorian”.

 

glomar explorer

 

I need to assure you that even though I was a member of the USS Halibut during her final days as an operational US Navy ship, I have no personal knowledge or experience concerning any alleged role Halibut may have played. All of my references come from searches related to the FOIA activity surrounding the project. I have read in a number of locations that this particular project has generated more FOIA requests than anything since the start of the ability to do so. It makes sense why.

Having operated in some of the most state of the art submarines of their day, it still amazes me to think how hard it must have been to find the location of a submarine lost in the Pacific. The depths in which we often operated in are staggering when it comes to proportion and survivability. The pressures at those depths are also beyond imagination to the average person. Submariners are mainly aware of the pressures at great depths on the occasions when they find themselves operating there. I can assure you that in almost every case, I was happy to see the depth gages returning to a safer operating place.

The story has its real start in March of 1968. From the redacted CIA Report:

“The story of “Project Azorian” began on March 1, 1968, when a Soviet Golf-II submarine, the K-129 (the CIA history refers to the submarine by its pendant number – 722), carrying three SS-N-4 Sark nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, sailed from the naval base at Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula to take up its peacetime patrol station northeast of Hawaii. If war had broken out, the K-129 would have launched its three ballistic missiles, each carrying a one megaton nuclear warhead, at targets along the west coast of the United States. But something went terribly wrong, for in mid-March 1968 the submarine suffered a catastrophic accident and sank 1,560 miles northwest of Hawaii with the loss of its entire crew.”

golf_300

Not surprisingly, the CIA history does not mention the cause of the accident, mentioning neither how the agency came to learn of the sub’s demise nor the exact location of its resting place 16,500 feet below the surface of Pacific. This information was probably still Top Secret, and could not be included in the article at the Secret classification level.

The most fascinating thing for me was the information included about the three basic categories of lift that were being considered at the start of the project: total “brute force” or direct lift; trade/ballast/buoyancy; and at depth generation of buoyancy.

These methods are described as follows:

1. Total “Brute Force” Direct Lift was referred to as the Rosenburg Winch. This involved a series of massive floating winches with wire ropes of the needed strength to manage the total weight of the object which was thought at that time to be about 2,000-2200 long tons.

2. Using the Trade Ballast/Buoyancy method, buoyant material would be transferred to the bottom using excess ballast. The ballast would be jettisoned on the bottom generating sufficient positive buoyancy to free the target object and help lift it to the surface.

3. At Depth Generation of buoyancy would involve the generation of gas a depth to create sufficient buoyancy to lift the target. Some of the methods discussed included  electrolysis of sea water, cryonic gasses generation, and various types of chemical generation using active metals or hydrides.

Not surprisingly, the technical details of each suggestion were heavily redacted in the CIA papers. By late July of 1970, the heavy lift concept was clearly favored and from that point on it became the soul source of focus and activity.

 

glomar_color_300

Many articles have been written since about the event and the players. I found the stories to be very interesting and the key players who appear in the articles kept coming back to the fore front from the early 1970’s all the way up until now.

If you have time, here is a good link with some useful background information and redacted copies of the material used in preparation for the history of this project.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb305/index.htm

37 years ago the following activities brought the project to its conclusion:

“The Hughes Glomar Explorer began lifting the K-129 off the sea floor on August 1, 1974, more than three weeks after the ship arrived at the recovery site. It took eight days to slowly winch the remains of the Soviet submarine into the massive hold of the Glomar Explorer, with the sub finally being secured inside the ship on August 8, 1974. The next day (August 9th, 1974), recovery operations were completed and the ship sailed for Hawaii to offload its haul.”

glomar_bw_300

Of course, as we now know the mission was not a complete success. Despite the expenditure of many millions of dollars, the critical components of the sub fell back into the ocean during the lift, never to be recovered. Its hard to say what we truly gained from the recovery. The Glomar Explorer was never again used for the designed purpose. But it is fascinating what could have been. Who knows, maybe someday the whole truth will be finally revealed.

Mister Mac

Disrespected Reply

Leadership, Motivation, Submarine • Tags: , , , , ,

Somewhere, Mrs. Stamps (my third grade teacher) is standing with her shoulders slightly slumped and shaking her head. She has just heard one of her students use a noun as a transitory verb for the hundredth time and feels like her mission of bringing proper English to the children of Mt. Vernon Elementary School has been a failure.

I am not sure where the word disrespected originally came from but I am quite certain it would not have been on any flash cards we would have been issued back in the day. The word “Respect” was of course. A powerful word which was meant to be used for elders, people in responsible positions, and leaders of almost any kind. Disrespect (a noun of course) was what you displayed to someone when you failed to show them the proper respect due to them. Disrespected has just crept into the lexicon and is used to express unfair treatment or actions towards someone.

I mean no disrespect when I say that it annoys me to see a perfectly good English word misused in that manner. Mrs. Stamps was just a very thorough teacher and I feel compelled to try and follow her example, if for no other reason out of my respect for her sacrifice.

I also mean no disrespect to the young former soldier who wrote an article about leadership in the Patriot News this weekend. Frankly, he has done much to serve this country with three tours in Iraq and I am grateful for his service. I just think he missed the mark about what good leadership should be in a functioning military unit.

The main subject was really about the high level of suicide for returning Iraq and Afghanistan soldiers. Statistics are very blunt about the number of soldiers who are coming home with problems. The number of unemployed veterans is higher than non-veterans statistically (just like it was after Viet Nam) and the medical problems are very much a real situation. These men and women do need our help and we as a nation must be ready to put our collective minds and resources together to help them.

The soldier’s main premise however is that one of the main reasons there are so many problems is the added stress caused by poor leadership. As he lists his examples of men being yelled at for not having their “cover” on quickly enough outside, you can almost feel the anger in his writing. He breaks it down in the final few sentences when he talks about being disrespected and having your rights stripped away. If only the Army would choose leaders who didn’t do any of this, the added stress would be gone and no one would be judged unfairly.

Anyone who has done three tours in a combat zone has my respect for his or her service. But even the most remarkable service does not make you a subject matter expert in any particular topic. While leadership has been discussed before in this series of writings, good leadership is not without its moments of demanding exacting standards.

I have never been in combat so it is unfair of me to say that I am more of an expert in that situation. I have been engaged with other units that could have been considered an enemy if not just an opponent. The tension during those engagements was very real and very stressful. When you are trailing a guy for a few weeks and every sound could betray your position or intent, stress never quite leaves the boat. Even out of the control room, there is a heightened sense of awareness.

As a Chief Petty Officer, there were probably a few times that I pulled a struggling young sailor through a small passageway he was resistant to travel through. Leaving them where they were was unacceptable and sometimes action needs to be taken to encourage and enlighten them. I once had an entire division that was struggling with respect for authority. Together we came back to a more traditional place but it was not by me giving up my leadership role.

I am not sure the military will ever be a place where we will completely eliminate stress. Frankly, when I am diving a 630 foot monster through a raging sea, I am not particularly focused on the feelings of one of my sailors. I want them to be laser focused on the mission at hand and be ready to react to any of the hundreds of things that could go wrong at any moment. The survival of that ship at that moment is paramount to completing our mission and we can worry about how we feel at a later date.

I have a confession to make. I probably raised my voice a time or two during my years as a Chief and even as a Chief Warrant. I am not necessarily proud of the moments, but at that time, I felt it was one of the tools in my pouch that was needed.

My belief is that the ultimate way of showing respect for the people who served under me was to teach them to demand better from themselves. Showing them that halfway measures were acceptable may have made them feel “respected” I suppose since I allowed them to give sub-par performance. But if it caused the loss of one life or the ship itself, it would have been the highest form of being disrespected (Sorry Mrs. Stamps, I truly am).

Mister Mac

You want me to do WHAT sir? 1

Leadership, Submarine • Tags: , , , ,

Most of us remember Newton’s First Law of Motion:

An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.

A 688 class submarine operating submerged has a displacement of about 6900 tons. So it goes without saying that if it is motion, it will take some effort to stop it. If it is going really fast, it will take a bit longer. Even maneuvering on the surface at a slower speed dictates paying attention to Newton’s First Law. Underneath the surface, the consequences can become much more serious much quicker since you really can’t see anything in front of you (other than what sonar and your updated charts may have told you).

So it takes a great deal of faith and trust on the part of the planes men and the Dive Team when the Captain comes into the control room and orders the Officer of the Deck to take a twenty degree down angle and ring up all ahead full. It takes even more faith to respond when he says right full rudder. (Don’t try this at home by the way).

You can feel the boat starting to shake a bit as it responds to the increase in throttle. Your heart beats a little faster as you see the trim angle respond to the maneuver. You try to plant your feet on the rests in front of you as you push the yoke of the control planes  forward.  Faster and faster with each second and all around you are the small items that weren’t stowed for sea, rolling like marbles on a steep hill racing to reach the bottom. Time ticks by and the digital indicators are starting to whirl faster and faster. Without even thinking about it, you start to hope that something will be done to overcome Newton’s First Law. You know that the only something in this case is the man standing (or leaning in this case) over by the Officer of the Deck chomping on an unlit cigar.

He orders full rise on both planes and the boat shudders to respond. It’s right about then you realize that what seemed like a long time was less than a few minutes and you start to breath as the depth gage slowly turns positive.

Is it just because you were ordered to do it that you responded? Maybe to an extent. You would probably do it whether you fully trusted the guy or not, but if there is trust, all of the things that needed to be done before that dive were done in a way you had faith that they were done.

I was lucky to have some great Commanding Officers. Almost all were at the least very good, but a few stick out in my mind as great. Commander Bill Previty was one of those guys. He came on the San Francisco during the second part of my tour there and from the moment he got there the mood of the boat was lifted. It was obvious by his mannerisms and his presence that this was a skipper you wanted to go to sea with and probably to war as well. No offence to the previous captain who commissioned the ship, they were just different.

What makes a great leader? Why would you be so willing to do the things needed to shake out a submarine?

I am sure most people have their own answers but mine are pretty simple. First, I need to trust the guy. His training and background need to be such that I know when the unthinkable happens, he is not going to lose his cool. Next, he needs to be consistent in the routine. That means that in the day to day activities, he is not going to let things dangle or put to hard of a rope line around them.

We all have an expectation of what our leaders should be. Firm but fair. Criticize in private and praise in public. Remember that you are leading men not children. Give each man his due respect no matter what station he is in life. Remember that each man plays a role in the team and is valuable for his contribution. See the possibilities in people not their weakest points. And for heaven’s sakes if there are weak points, help the person with real encouragement not cynical badgering. In short, that person should be someone like Bill Previty.

Most of us have had leaders of the other sort as well. I always used to think that sundowners were abused as kids and it was the only way they knew to do what they called “leadership”. Everything is a crisis, every small affront is personal, only a few select people would be in their inner circle and everything was always the fault of some junior officer who had somehow failed to live up to their expectation. The crew were generally miserable and performed as best they could if only not to take a beating for failing to hit the marks the old guy set. The request for transfer box is always full and the Chaplain is kept busy on overtime.

Because the second type of leader often plays people against each other, trust is always in short supply. People are reluctant to stick their heads out of their holes for fear of getting them chopped off. Creativity is squelched and rewards are few and far between. Why in the world would anyone think this is the most effective way to lead? Experience has shown that if that person holds the reins of leadership so tightly, when the situation gets out of control, they do not have the tools or the support to survive the storm. In most cases when that happens, their response is to beat harder.

There is a third type of leader and I think they are the most dangerous of all. This type is the one who always has his eye on the escape hatch. They are already planning for their next promotion so they hate anything and anyone who would keep them from reaching their goal. The current assignment is really nothing more than a necessary stepping stone so they really don’t make much effort to get to know the men. Problems are for the other guy and delegation is not only an artful dodge, it is a mandatory skill.

With the third type of leader, most issues won’t surface until long after they are gone and the problems have festered into a huge blazing sore. Moral is completely shot, trusted leaders are betrayed by his ambition, and if something does go wrong, he is quick to offer up a human sacrifice. If there are conflicts on his own staff, it is easier to just “let them work it out” among themselves. The sad thing is that they seldom do. This type of leader also tries to surround themselves with people who will make him look better. But they quickly learn that there is no reciprocity for their contributions.

When the tough assignments come in, the third type of leader will often quickly volunteer if their name will be prominent. But when things get sticky, they have already groomed the senior staff to understand that they were innocent and someone on their staff had hidden the problems from them too.

If you are smart you will learn to survive both type two and type three. If you are even smarter than that, you will learn never to trust them and develop skills to work around them in order to get the job done. If you are lucky, you will get a chance to serve with one of the Previty’s of the world. I would have then and still would today fallow that man anywhere he wanted to go.

Mark Twain once said “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too can become great.”

Thanks Captain Previty.

Mister Mac

What a mess! Reply

Submarine

Dolphins 1

Imagine yourself on the periscope of a submarine about to shoot a torpedo. You can feel the adrenaline coursing through your veins and there is an icy sheen of sweat on your forehead. You call out for the Quartermaster to take your mark and he rushes over to note the direction. The control room crew is quiet, only the sounds of the rushing water past the hull as you near your prey. You call out for fire control to take a final solution and say “On my mark, tubes 1 and 2 ….”

run silent run deep

“Mac, hey Mac… wake up buddy, its time for you to get up to the galley before the cook gets ticked at you.” And just like that you go from being a steely eyed killer of the deep to a steel wool killer of the grease.

I had a lot of ideas what submarine life was like by watching old WW2 films with John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart,  and Clark Gable. This was in the age before Tom Clancy so the WW 2 depictions were my frame of reference. Who can ever forget the tension between Robert Mitchum and Curt Jurgens as they each struggle to defeat the other in “The Enemy Below”? Or Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster wrestling for control of the sub as the captain obsesses on obtaining his revenge against the Japanese sub that sank his previous boat. And anyone who is qualified probably has their movie card punched for that cheesy classic by Ronald and Nancy Reagan – Hellcats of the Navy.

Or this exchange between Bogart and a young sea cadet on the Murmansk Run trying to dodge German subs:

Lt. Joe Rossi: These nights are killers, aren’t they?
Cadet Robert Parker: Yeah, I lie in my bunk with my clothes on and try to sleep, but every time that engine slows, my heart speeds up. In time, I think I can train myself to have an iron nerve, like you have.
Lt. Joe Rossi: Yeah, let me tell you something about my “iron nerve,” son. It’s made of rubber just like everybody else’s, so it’ll stretch when you need it. People got a funny idea that being brave is not being scared. I don’t know, I always figured, you weren’t scared, there’s nothing to be brave about. The trick is, how much scaring can you take? I got an idea you can take plenty.”

Meanwhile, back on the George-fish, there is a scullery full of dishes with my name on it. Mess cook duty normally went to the newest guys that weren’t Petty Officers (although they did make exceptions from time to time). I think the only ones that never cranked back in the day were the Nucs. (My nephew, Theo the Nuc informed me that that is not the case anymore. I just hope he knew the difference between cabbage and lettuce unlike his Dad but that’s another story). Obviously that caused a bit of tension between the forward and aft guys but it never bothered me since I figured out pretty quickly that I was in the lowest form of human life that could exist… a non-qual. Oh wait, I should clarify that: an air breathing food consuming non-essential lower than whale poop non-qual.

So off to the scullery I went. No poopy suits in there, only dungarees and white tee shirts. The scullery on the GW was a small place with barely enough room to move the dirty dishes and pans around.  You had to be quick during the main meals or the dishes would pile up at the window from the boys finishing their dinners. There was no garbage grinder so all that went into a round chute with a wet bag can underneath. The trick was to keep it as empty as possible to start the watch since many meals ended up producing a lot of waste.

You kind of developed a rhythm after the first couple of days. I actually think I learned some of my lean thinking from trying to figure out a better way to process the dishes. Batch processing always resulted in bottlenecks and those resulted in the right kind of dishes or silverware not being ready at the right time. So you learned to keep a balanced flow through the deep sink and the hot water rinse.

One other thing about the older boats, there was no dishwashing machine. You washed and rinsed everything by hand. The toughest part was retrieving the basket from the heated rinse sink. Man that thing was HOT. You had a pair of black rubber gloves (electricians gloves) and every once in a while at periscope depth you would get a real surprise when the water came in over the top of the gloves.

Probably the only worse thing than being the scullery maid was on garbage day. All garbage had to leave the ship one way or another and the TDU (Trash Disposal Unit) was the preferred method. Dry trash was compacted into metal cans and weighted to sink. Wet bags were also weighted and loaded during TDU ops. An A-Ganger would actually load and fire the TDU but the mess cooks assisted in getting things lined up so that the operation could be done swiftly and quietly.

From the Shipboard Pollution Control Regulations:

“Waste that is discharged overboard must either be pumped out against the ambient sea pressure or blown out using pressurized air. Waste materials are collected and periodically discharged. The potential impact on ship safety associated with opening valves to the sea and on ship detectability by running pumps or blowing tanks to the sea makes waste disposal operations a significant event. Mission considerations may force waste disposal operations to be suspended for some period of time.

Dry waste is consolidated using a trash compactor and then placed in special cans. These cans are fabricated on board from prepunched galvanized, perforated steel sheets, using a roller tool. The resulting cans are 28.5 inches long and 9 inches in diameter. They have metal tops and bottom caps. Metal weights are added to ensure that the cans will go to the bottom. The cans are ejected from the submarine using a trash disposal unit (TDU), which is a long cylindrical, vertical tube connected to the ocean through a ball valve. Several cans are placed atop one another in the TDU, the top of the TDU is sealed by closing a pressure cap, the ball valve is opened, and the cans ejected through a combination of gravity and air pressure.”

Sounds pretty simple right? As long as there weren’t any floaters, life was good.

The one day I learned to hate the most was the day we had to start getting rid of the fresh eggs that were stored in the torpedo room. The cool bilge areas in the torpedo room were ideal temporary storage places for the large gross of eggs that had been carefully loaded before patrol. But at some point, they would start reaching their “maturity” level and an evil popping sound led to a more evil sulphurous smell. Multiply that by a box with 144 of the devilish brew and you had a horrendous reason to get rid of the whole lot.

EAB

So the cranks would carry the reeking boxes up to that tiny little scullery room and start wet bagging them. For a while, you would try to show what a manly man you were and not use an EAB (emergency breathing device). But even the strongest among us finally weakened as the stench permeated the galley. The A-gangers also hated this task since it always seemed to take so long. But we finally managed to liberate all of them and face a few months of powdered substitute (which never in my memory actually stunk in the olfactory sense of the word.)

One side benefit of cranking was the mid watch tour. It was tough getting used to the change in sleep patters but considering the fact that we actually lived in 18 hour cycles most of the time, it wasn’t too bad. On the mid watch, the older guys who came off watch would watch movies and occasionally if you were really quiet you could sneak a peek or two as well. But about mid-way through patrol I noticed that a lot of the old timers couldn’t sleep so well so I always made sure I had some pie and coffee ready for them. You see, these were the guys who could teach me about the boat and after I learned it sign my qual card.

Sub Force Pac

I knew the only way out of this mess was to get qualified as quickly as possible. So I got up early and stayed up late and used every chance I could to learn all about the boat. To this day I can tell you where TD 598 was but for the life of me I have no idea why knowing where an isolation valve for a gauge was so danged important to anyone.

I qualified in less than 90 days but am proudest that my nephew Artie qualified in even less than that using my technique years later.

Some of the best days of my life were in that galley, I just took a while to figure it out. Like everywhere else on the boat, people were honest and could be counted on in a pinch. I learned that service to others is a pathway to higher goals. I thank all the Commissary men and Stewards who took the time to teach me those lessons.

Mister Mac