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Great post KP. During WWII my dad’s workspace was the aft torpedo room and when the boat surfaced he was qualified as a member of the five inch gun crew. After the war he went back to the boats as an officer and was the third officer on his boat. You can see two berths in the photo. During the war this was where my dad slept.
Good piece, KP. Thank you for your service. My only experience dealing with bubbleheads was on a nav system long ago. They are a breed apart.
Seals resting on the USS Nevada. The only mammals that get any rest on a submarine.
After reading this, I’m ready for a nap.
When I was a senior in high school I was offered an NROTC scholarship and was very interested in becoming a nuclear officer (I declined the scholarship for family reasons).
I seem to recall being told several times by the officers I talked with that all submariners are volunteers, meaning once they got to the Navy, nobody forced them to go into submarines, but rather they chose to do so.
After reading a post like this, I always have to ask myself: what kind of person would volunteer for a lifestyle like this? KP, did you know beforehand how crazy (and sleep-deprived) life on a submarine would be? If so, what was it about the job that convinced you to choose it nonetheless?
Whatever the case, I have nothing but respect and gratitude for KP, Jon Gabriel, and anyone else who subjects themselves to such a daily routine for months on end for our protection.
Nothing in the military is as advertised.
My dad was an engineer tech on boomers during the 80s. It was really good pay for a man with a young family and no college or connections.
At the same time, in the almost 25 years since he was honorably discharged, he has quit several jobs because the work schedule was reminding him too much of Navy life and he’s quite adamant about no amount of money being worth subjecting himself to that again.
Thanks and Yikes, KP! Whew, I’m tired now.
Oh my, those photos take me back. USS Nebraska (Blue) here. I was a machinist mate nuke myself, and the Boomers are a 50/50 training platform. I never had a patrol where you had both major inspection teams on board during a single patrol. I’m sure it’s possible but that has to be hell.
So one of the problems that is overlooked is the quality of that sleep, and the oxygen content of the atmosphere. I was on a few patrols where the oxygen got so bad that you couldn’t light a cigarette (back in the bad ol’ days, 2003, when you could still smoke on a sub, and this was still a free country dagnabit!).
Low oxygen environments make you very, very tired all of the time. Sleep is important, but I think it’s more important to learn to deal with irregular sleep. Being deployed is just a different category of existence.
I don’t think I was relieved so late even one time on watch (except port and starboard nonsense, but that’s a different ball game).
Weird question: on the mess decks, did the nukes and A-gang also sit at the aft tables, and were the nuke nubs not allowed to sit there until qualified? That is something we did on the Nebraska, and I never knew if it was a consistent thing to keep you coner scum out of our seats. I’m kind of glad there was that kind of hazing personally. Got me motivated to finish up my quals early.
Somehow, I don’t think these seals went through BUD/S.
Seawriter
Sleep is for the weak.
God bless Lazăr Edeleanu.
… and if you’re lucky, sleep is for the week!
“…there will be sleeping enough in the grave….”
Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbh4u_oA0rk
Bit more rigorous than my last Caribbean cruise…
KP, you should have put a trigger warning on this post; I could almost smell the amine. I joined the Navy right out of high school, planning on OCS and a career on submarines. After 10 days underway, I thought maybe I’d just do 10 years. After a month, I started plotting which degree I’d get as soon as my first enlistment was up.
Subs are tough duty, but I volunteered for their elite nature, higher professionalism and camaraderie. While I am very thankful for the experience, I realized that a life underwater wasn’t for me. Submariners are indeed a breed apart. Thanks to all for their service.
Amazing. Your description of life on a sub is knocking me out. God bless you and all those who endure that life in order to protect the United States.
I have no experience in the military or on submarines, but quite a bit with sleep deprivation trying to meet deadlines on software development projects.
I’m reminded of the discussion in chapter 6 of Peter Robinson’s How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life regarding Reagan’s work habits, where Clark Judge is quoted as saying about Reagan “He never confuses inputs with outputs.”
Many people value working 16–18 hours a day, always getting to the office before anybody else and being the last to leave, etc. but these are inputs: alone they do not determine how effective the person is in getting the job done. It is the outputs: work done correctly and on schedule which matters. For those in creative or executive positions, this includes being able to step back, evaluate the situation, decide that the present approach isn’t working and change course.
I wonder if the Navy isn’t confusing inputs with outputs here. Having the people operating a multi-billion dollar piece of capital equipment with the ability to start World War III (yes, I’m aware of command and control for boomers, but maintenance errors by enlisted personnel can lead to expensive disasters—see the Damascus, Arkansas Titan II accident caused by a dropped socket wrench) operating in zombie mode due to sleep deprivation hardly seems a way to obtain peak performance on those occasions when it is needed. Do you really want your sonar operator to be on the verge of dozing off when identifying a contact may be a life or death situation?
This kind of work schedule may also be counterproductive in retaining the investment in skilled personnel. The Navy makes a great investment in training submariners. If they view deployments as a soul-consuming grind, aren’t they more likely to leave the service at the end of their enlistment, taking all of their skills with them?
Fatigue makes cowards of us all. GS Patton
I thought Navy Seals were supposed to be in terrific shape?
It’s entirely possible I was on the boat when that shot was taken. We were sitting there on Delta North when a young sailor playing around with his .45 shot a round through the guard shack (just below the sentry’s knee). After informing the world the sentry sat on the end of the brow and lit up. When the squadron duty officer told him to put the cigarette out he replied, “No sir. I was just shot at, and I’m going to enjoy this smoke.” The SDO replied, “Carry on.”
Way back, I dropped out of a computer science program and enlisted. I did 4 years in the Army mech infantry – Gulf War vet. Now I do some coding, in addition to my primary work of compliance & maintenance support.
Your point regarding input and output are spot on. From my experience, military work culture can be horrifically unproductive and wasteful of its most precious resource – excellent people.
During my service time, I saw dozens of very good soldiers leave (not re-enlist) due to chronic poor leadership decisions and planning (resulting in 100+ hour peacetime, non deployment work weeks). Add to that workload several month+ deployments during a typical year, and an over-the-road truck driving job looks (and pays) much better than, as you so aptly put it, “a soul consuming grind.”
I think a lot of our senior military leadership don’t really think that they compete with the private sector. Or they don’t really care, because there’s always a new crop of enlistees to train. Throw in other dis-functional personnel issues, from the up-or-out promotion system to the individual replacement system, and you often get a very unpleasant place to make a career.
A recent book to read is from economist Tim Kane: Bleeding Talent: How the US Military Mismanages Great Leaders and Why It’s Time for a Revolution. Historian Christopher Bassford’s The Spit Shine Syndrome: Organizational Irrationality in the American Field Army is also useful, if a bit dated.
Too many conservatives give the military a pass when it comes to efficiency, given its nature. Yes, the US Military DOES an excellent job most of the time – but that fact overlooks that it could be so much better.
Amen brother. And all recruiters sing from the same sheet of music.
There are very, very few comfortable jobs in the Navy, at least if you’re a young man. My sleep schedule wasn’t as bad as yours, but I saw AB’s on deck that often slept as little as you bubbleheads. And in ops/wartime, it’s even worse. My division’s CPO would tell us “In Vietnam, we’d pray for alpha strike”, as this would mean depleting ordinance and having to go off for a few days for an unrep… and getting some sack time in between.
Every sector has it’s hardships. Boomers get almost no port calls and 3 months in the dark. Tin Can sailors get the finest seasickness nature can buy when they roll around in the North Atlantic like a bottle in the surf. Airdales get to wait in line an hour for chow, work 7 a week (and if you want church services on Sunday… gotta give up lunchtime, shipmate), and oh, if Madmansitan is acting up again, there’s a pretty good chance the POTUS orders your carrier to circle off their coast to send a message, stretching your 6-7 month cruise to 10 or 11. Port calls? Ain’t no port calls in Iran, hoss.
Oh, and all those pics in recruiting brochures you saw of sailors playing basketball in the hanger deck? Getting swim call? Sucker.
I wouldn’t be so quick to criticize anybody who can conquer a US nuclear submarine unarmed.