Memories. Ahhh Yes, Memories of My Life

A Day In The Life Of A Submariner

A Day In The Life Of A Submariner

         I think that by now most of you know I spent 20 years of my life on Submarines. I saw a post in a group I'm a member of on good ol' FB tonight, and thought I'd share a photo with you, and tell you a little about it.

         First, in the photo, the men are standing up straight, they are not leaning.

         A submarine will do this when they first go to sea. There's a couple of reasons for this, the biggest being, is everything stored correctly? The way you do this, is once you're at sea and submerged, go to a deep enough depth, maybe 500 feet. Then the Officer Of The Deck (OOD) will have the Diving Officer, and the Planesmen take the boat to a shallower depth, maybe 200 feet, only to immediately go back to the previous depth. Imagine going up and down a steep hill in your car if you will. Anything not stowed well will come loose and make a loud noise. Better to have it happen here, early on, than happen when you're trying to be quiet. In the photo, the boat is on a down angle of about 20-25 degrees. The crew is standing straight.

         You see their clothing? That's called a Poopie Suit. It is a one piece outfit that zips up, or down. Yep, just one zipper. Very light weight, fire retardant, you were given 3 to start with, but frequently ended up with 5 or 6. Since your clothes are only washed once a week (you were lucky if they were washed once a week), having 5 or 6 was a luxury. Being so lightweight made them easy to fold and store too.

         On my second boat, the USS Sargo SSN583, we did angles-n-dangles after leaving port. One of my shipmates thought it would be 'cool' to sit on the deck and slide during the angles. All was well, until the one time... Yep, on down angles, he would end up 'bouncing' off the Torpedo Room watertight door. Well, this one time in band camp, someone stepped out of the Chief's Quarters right near that watertight door. My shipmate saw him and tried to stop his slide, and reached out to grab something. Nothing available. But his hand did find a slightly loose piece of CRES (not sure what the metal was, it was lightweight, a bit like Aluminum), and sliced his palm to the bone as he slid by. I happened to go to the head (restroom for you landlubbers) after the angles-n-dangles. He in there with the Corpsman who watched him as he cleaned his palm with a Betadine solution. Yep, the corpsman was making him clean it himself, and was telling him he couldn't do it because the sight of blood would make him faint... Later, that same corpsman stitched his palm. Yes, a corpsman did that, submarines do not have a 'doctor' on board, only a hospital corpsman. Ahhh, such was life when I was young!