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A Look at Life Aboard a US Submarine

Doug Watt
@DougWatt
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I was seven years old when my dad left the Navy. He served in the Submarine Service as an enlisted sailor in WWII. After the war he earned a university degree and was offered an officer's commission. As the Navy began to transition to nuclear submarines, he did not have a science degree so he transferred to the ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence).

When he left his last submarine, he was the only officer on that boat that had experienced submarine combat.

There are two types of nuclear submarines in the US Navy. Fast attack submarines and the larger Ohio class submarines.

Total Submarines in Fleet: 64
Ballistic Missile Submarines (SSBNs): 14
Nuclear-Powered attack submarines (SSNs): 50
Diesel-electric attack submarines (SSKs): 0
Air-independent propulsion submarines (AIPs): 0

The Ohio class subs will be replaced by the new Columbia class subs in the future.

The endurance range of a nuclear submarine is only limited by the amount of food it can carry. The diesel-electric WWII Balao class boats, submariners call them boats, not ships had an 11,000-mile range and capable of a 75-day patrol. Nuclear subs will carry enough food for approximately a 90-to-120-day patrol.

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Discussion (27)

  • Douglas Pratt@DouglasPratt

    I admire the people who serve on them, but my galloping claustrophobia would prevent me ever being one of them. Maxime Faget, who designed the Mercury and Apollo capsules for NASA, was a submariner; that's why the doors were sealed by internal pressure up until the Apollo 1 fire.

  • Comfortably Superannuated@OldDanRhody
    Doug Watt (View Post):
    The endurance range of a nuclear submarine is only limited by the amount of food it can carry. The diesel-electric WWII Balao class boats, submariners call them boats, not ships had an 11,000-mile range and capable of a 75-day patrol. Nuclear subs will carry enough food for approximately a 90-to-120-day patrol.

    The tactical advantage of submarine vs. surface vessel was also much different in WWII: especially in the early part of the Pacific war, a submarine combat cruise had much in common with a suicide mission.

    I also didn't volunteer for submarine service, but I know guys who did. One told me that the only time their cigarette lighters would work would be immediately after they had charged the batteries (not during the actual charging operation, of course, because of the danger of explosion). After that there wasn't enough oxygen in the air to support a flame. I said, "So you couldn't smoke then?" He answered, "Oh, we smoked all right. We'd light our cigarettes off of soldering irons."

  • Douglas Pratt@DouglasPratt

    Has anyone else read the story of the capture of the U-505, the only submarine captured during open warfare, in the north Atlantic? Admiral Dan Gallery, who was the living embodiment of "sea story" and a wonderful writer, detailed it in his biography, "Eight Bells." He was commanding the Navy base in Rekjavik that was responsible for patrolling for German subs, mostly flying PBYs. They worked out a "hold down" plan. When a patrol plane came across a U-boat surfaced to run it's diesel to recharge the batteries, they would shoot at it until it was forced to submerge. Then they would work out a circular search pattern to spot it when it surfaced again. They kept that up until the U-boat had to surface and scuttle. When they saw the Germans abandoning ship, they landed the PBY, taxied up to the U-boat, and dropped an anchor chain down the hatch to keep them from submerging. Then a team of incredibly brave men went into the boat to find and defuse the scuttling charges that were meant to send the boat to the bottom. They knew the U-boats had 12 such charges; they only found 10. The Germans were so sure that the boat was going down, they had only armed two of the charges. And unbelievably, the Germans didn't throw the code books overboard. The U-505 was an incredible intelligence haul. The Americans rescued all the Germans they could, and towed the U-boat home. It is now at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

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