Submariner Morale

Factual Questions
1

A conversation with a friend has prompted me to ask:How is Morale kept up on a US Naval Submarine? By defintion, sub crews are kept in a confined space for extended periods, though apparently morale is not a problem. I’m guessing it’s a combination of the following:

1.)Screening to make sure certain types of people don’t pull sub duty(which I believe is voluntary anyway).

2.)Military discipline

3.)Focus on work.

4.) Good Food(I’ve heard Navy food is good)

5.) Some kind of Recreation, though I have no idea how much you could have on a submarine.

Could any submariners help me with this?

2

When its all said and done the only thing that keeps morale up is the friendships you have. You get really close to people because you spend so much time together under tough circumstances. Along with friendship we always have the latest movies…even before theyre released to the public. We also have various work out equipment to keep us busy. Then of course there are the liberty ports but because of recent global problems those have been limited.

3

You mean weigh benches? Treadmills(is it actually possible to go for a jog on a submarine? In the movie Crimson Tide, the XO is shown jogging around the missle tubes but I’m wary of taking hollywood at it’s word)? I’m trying to imagine how big a gym on a sub could be.

4

You mean weigh benches? Treadmills(is it actually possible to go for a jog on a submarine? In the movie Crimson Tide, the XO is shown jogging around the missle tubes but I’m wary of taking hollywood at it’s word).

5

Ive only been on fast attacks so I cant really speak on Tridents (Crimson Tide was based on a trident). We had a treadmill, a rowing machine, a versa climber, and a stair master. The treadmill was tricky when the boat would take angles changes depth or course…made it challenging. No weight benches normally…they carried a risk of causing noise if dropped.

6

I’ve heard of 2 navies where submarines are allocated the best cooks, one of my favourite chefs was a former submariner and told me all about it. Not a short man btw. Pay is higher as well.

7

OK, for starters, I was on the SSBN 620, a boat that got turned into razor-blades quite a few years ago so what I say may not be applicable now.

As far as norale goes, it really isn’t “kept up” in any formal sense. There are very few morale-raising attempts aside from half-way night where people used to gamble and put on entertainments for each other. (The gambling money went to charity so it wasn’t a problem)
We did work out with weights. We brought a bar and got the machinests to drill-out some trash-disposal-unit weights. We then got a small bench-type locker and did bench presses and the like. We got around the noise part by using a lot of pillows and blankets under the bench as a just-in-case.
As far as the rest of your ideas go, they are pretty good.

Sub duty is always voluntary although once you volunteer it is difficult to claim you were just kidding and go back to surface ships. :stuck_out_tongue:

Discipline is odd on an FBM. In some ways it is very lax while on patrol in that people tend to get shaggy, wear funnny hats occasionally, and things like that. There is very little spit-and-polish. Also, the officers are not the remote sort of demi-gods they tend to be on surface ships. There is no room to maintain that image. OTOH, there is little need for such official discipline. Everyone knows their job and tends to do it without being forced to do so. It will probably upset the surface warfare types and I admit to a bit of bias, but sub crews have always seemed a cut above the rest of the navy.

The food is as good as it can be. Of course you run out of fresh veg and eggs and milk and the like but they do try hard.

As far as “Crimson Tide” goes, I hated that movie. The representation of submarine life was one step away from the seaview and I’m surprised they didn’t have a “flying sub” aboard somewhere. The other thing of course is that the war department does NOT send things to the Captains saying they might want to nuc someone soon. You either get the doomsday message or you do not. Captains do not decide to obliterate someone on their own hook. Besides, they couldn’t do it anyway.

I was on patrol when the Iranian revolution broke out and there was loose talk about flattening some cities in Iran. That was ther only time in five patrols that I ever heard the CO come down on people for such things. He didn’t even want people talking about such things and he was as warlike a man as you’d ever want to meet.

People keep up their own morale. I did a lot of reading. I remember reading the Lord of the Rings and deliberately limiting myself to a few pages per day so it would last. I played a lot of cribbage and spades, usually not for money, just bragging rights. Then there is the “patrol calender.” In my own shop someone would build a calender on a large sheet of graph paper and someone would fill in the day with a picture of some sort every night. These were very popular. Talking was good. I made some very close friends on patrol. As my ex-wife pointed out, I spent more time with my crew mates than I did with her. True enough, but hardly by choice. S Sleep was also a popular choice. One guy claimed to have slept 18 hours once. Aside from that, planning what you were going to do with the SO when you got home was also very popular although not (usually) discussed openly. After my last patrol we didn’t get out of bed for three days. LOL

Some people were unable to keep their morale up on their own and went nuts. A guy did it on my first patrol. He was religious and got into the habit of talking to God. Eventually, God started answering and telling him to do things. He (the guy, not God) shut off the oxygen generator once and about that time he was declared dangerous and locked up. We kept him in a straight-jacket and doped-up for three weeks until we could get somewhere to helo him off.

I hope this was what you were looking for.

Testy

8

Oh, and before I forget, there’s porn. Plenty of that to go around. :smiley:

Testy

9

Kinda give a new meaning to “Hot Bunking” :).

10

Heh heh. :stuck_out_tongue: I’m not sure how it happened but in 6 years and 1 month in the Navy I never had to do that.

Testy

11

Thats because you were on a T-Hull…fast attacks have it more often.

12

I’m trying to think of how to say what I mean (I’m hampered this morning by a nasty sinus infection and headache). Among the submariners I’ve known there’s been a… comradery, even an elitism. A feeling that a submarine is the best kind of ship and that submariners are the best kind of sailor. I have spoken to many submariners who told me they would never wish to serve aboard any other kind of ship – wrinkling their noses, they’ll say, “An aircraft carrier? No thanks! Too big! And too many people! How do you find your way around?”

People who aren’t in the military tend to think of the word ‘elite’ as belonging to SEALs or fighter pilots only, but this isn’t true in my experience. Elitism is common in the Navy. Sailors tend to think that their own community is the best. My husband began his career in aviation (a deck ape on an aircraft carrier) and remained in the aviation community throughout most of his career, officer & enlisted – from his early days on the flight deck chipping paint off of pad eyes, until his final command as the third in command of the Supply Department on the USS Nimitz. He was an “brown shoe” and proud of it – and he felt somewhat superior to other, lesser, sailors. When he was commissioned, he was commissioned as a Supply Officer, and that gave him another community to be proud of – he was a ‘pork chop’ and felt somewhat superior to other, lesser, officers. AND, as an officer who had moved up the enlisted ranks, he was a ‘Mustang’ – another community to be proud of, and another reason to lord it over ‘lesser’ officers.

Now, the ‘lesser’ parts above were tongue-in-check, but you can see what I mean. This feeling of being part of an elite community (submariners, aviators, Mustangs…) within a larger community (the Navy as a whole) helps keep morale up within the communities.

13

Friend of mine told me about a friend of his who was a submariner. “On land,” he said of his friend, “He reads as much as you or me.” That’s saying a lot. I devour books. “But on a cruise, he rarely finishes a book.” If it’s al;l true, that implies that you’re kept pretty busy on a tour aboard a sub, which I suspect will keep morale up and friction low.

14

“Crimson Tide” was set on USS Alabama, which I believe is correctly referred to as an Ohio-class boat. (It is armed with Trident missiles, though.)

The movie’s title is a cute play on that; “Crimson Tide” is the name of the U. of Alabama’s football team.

15

Ohio boats are often called Trident boats, as well as other names like the generic “boomer.” It’s not uncommon to see the Ohios referred to as 726 boats, either.

They hide with pride. :wink:

16

There’s actually several plays on words, the “crimson tide” (a colloquial name for a certain type of posionous algae bloom) is something in the water that can kill you.

Back to the OP, onboard the USS Cod (a museum of the WWII submarine service) they talked a lot about how much better the food was – the Cod had an icecream machine for instance, which was pretty cool. I think shore leave locations can be fairly sweet too, my family once met some submariners taking shore leave in St. Croix.

17

Yow. Just out of curiosity, how many straightjackets did you keep on board, normally? I mean, I can see how it’d be handy to have around, but you wouldn’t have, like, enough jackets for every member of the crew minus one, would you?

18

I believe we had two, one for the maniac and one for a buddy if required. :stuck_out_tongue:
The doc would fire the guy up with valium, thorazine, some kind of tranq like that every other day or so. Seriously crazy guy though. Scared me to death.

Testy

19

That was a really interesting treatise, Testy. I learned a lot. Thanks!

20

It is indeed possible to make a short jogging path throught the missile bay, which is known as “Sherwood Forest” for the dull grey-green missile tubes. The boomer I visited also had a resistance-training “weight” machine (I’m not sure if that was Navy issue or something the skipper or crew brought aboard for their own use) and the cooks are indeed able to do some pretty impressive things with mediocre provisions; I wouldn’t doubt that they’re some of the best cooks in the Navy, and if there’s one thing all AS folks can agree on it is that the Navy eats better than anyone else in uniform.

Sub guys seem to be selected for their compatibility to the conditions; not that crackups don’t happen on occasion, but they’re usually some of the better and more stable brains in the Navy, and because the duty is a somewhat prestegious one (with corresponding opportunities for advancement, at least among the enlisted rates) sub guys tend to be on best behavior. It’s stressful, no doubt, but being confined with about only a hundred different faces for up to six months and facing common challenges also creates a sense of comradeship, I suspect.

[thread=345150]Here[/thread]'s a recent thread on submariners for your enjoyment and perusal.

Stranger