Or submariners generally, I suppose. Bonus points if you’re a former Soviet submariner. I’m reading a book that addresses a particular point in American/Soviet relations in March 1968, and the action takes place on a Soviet submarine in US waters. I’m fascinated, because it’s a slice of life utterly foreign to me.
What’s it like on a submarine? Do they test you for claustrophobia ahead of time? Does the air get all stale? How long can a submarine be under water? There was some reference to the US Coast Guard or US Navy harassing Soviet submarines and forcing them to surface by using sonar. Any idea how that would work?
Bottom line, tell me what you know about life on a submarine. Anecdotes welcome!
Not a submariner, or indeed, in the Navy, but I’ve been on a couple of subs for various purposes, so I know a little bit, though I’ll stand corrected by any real submariners out there.
Sub duty is fairly prestigious in the general scheme of things and (at least for enlisted men) tends to offer greater opportunities for rapid promotion, but it’s also a very trying duty, with virtually no chance of shore leave (especially for boomers) or even surfacing while on four-to-six month cruises. The training, including damage control and escape muster, is extensive. Sub duty is, like silo duty, one of those jobs where you sit around and wait for something that you don’t want to happen. Plus, there are the unpredictable and often unforeseeable dangers of running into an unmarked marine hazard, ramming a whale, having a vital system go down 5000km from the nearest secure base, a coolant leak or operational problem with the nuclear powerplant, et cetera. It is surprising that we haven’t had more accidents and casualties than the handful we’ve experienced over the last fifty years, and that is in no small part due to the Hyram Rickover-inspired obsessiveness the sub force and and the “Nuclear Navy” has with safety. For engineering officers and crew on a nuclear-powered vessel an assesment called the Operational Reactor Safety Exam (OSRE) is the Damocles sword for officers and commanders; a single substandard rating can limit or end a promising career. As such, maintainence drills are run on a regular basis to maintain operational fitness.
I don’t know about diesel-electrics, but on a nuc the air is clean and “fresh” with just a slight metallic tang; it is continuously filtered and the sub can replunish breathing air indefinitely without surfacing, although it can (slowly) circulate air via a snorkle at periscope depth. Fresh potable water is an issue, and so water use for showering is restricted, and fresh food and produce tends to be used up after the first couple weeks of a cruise, leaving canned or preserved foods for the remainder of the patrol. If my experience was typical, the sub force tends to have cooks that know how to make the best of tinned fare. Interior space is small and at full operational complement attack submariners have to hot-bunk, but I don’t think this happens with current reduced crew sizes. Iowa-class boomers (nuclear attack submarines) actually have a fair amount of interior space owing to the necessity of carrying the large Trident C-4 and D-5 missiles and the area in the missile bay (known as “Sherwood Forest” for the green painted vertical tubes) is large enough to jog around in. I don’t know about earlier Polaris and Posiden subs (Ethan Allen, Lafayette, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin classes), which were all somewhat smaller than the Ohios. The current Los Angeles- and Seawolf-class attack subs are some of the largest non SSBM submarines laid down; preceding American subs and Russian submarines (which tend to be smaller, faster, and devote more space to powerplant and weapons systems) are probably significantly more cramped.
I don’t know how much business the Coast Guard has with submarine deterrence–coastal defense is part of their job, of course, but they don’t have the budget for the kind of high priced hardware that dedicated ASW forces use–but from the mid-Seventies through the Eighties Soviet attack submarines, particularly the Mike- and various Victor-class subs would lie in wait, powerplants dialed down to minimum, outside of US boomer pens waiting for US SSBMs coming out on patrol in hopes of trying to follow them. To deter this the Navy had the practice of sending out one or more Sturgeon- or Los Angeles-class subs in accompanyment along with an ASW patrol, slamming down a rapid fire Yankee search (active sonar), less in hope of locating a waiting sub than to just enervate the crew and keep it pinned down while the boomer made its way into the deep where it was (at least as far as the USN is concerned, well-nigh undetectable).
I’m going to guess that the book you’re reading is either journalist Sherry Sontag’s Blind Man’s Bluff or Craig Reed’s Crazy Ivan; I haven’t read the latter, though I’ve heard good and bad things about it, but the former is a good and easy read about the various exploits (and some of the accidents) that occured to US sub forces during the Cold War, including speculation of what happened with Scorpion and Thresher. It also talks about the Parche mission to tap underwater Soviet communication cables and and an overview of Project Jennifer, the Hughes-CIA program to recover a lost Golf-class Soviet ballistic missile sub in the very deep South Pacific. (The cover story was that they were mining mangenese modules on the ocean floor.)
And to get you in the mood for reading about subs, I recommend (if you’ve not already seen it) renting the director’s cut of Das Boot which is, bar none, the best submarine movie ever made. Run Silent, Run Deep and The Hunt For Red October don’t even begin to compare. (And don’t even mention Crimson Tide.)
Excellent post, Stranger. Typo nitpick: at one point, you wrote “Iowa-class boomers (nuclear attack submarines)”, while you meant “Ohio-class boomers (ballistic missile submarines).”
There are a few submariners on the SDMB. I served one patrol on a Lafeyette-class boomer, and a full tour as a junior officer aboard an improved Los Angeles-class fast attack submarine.
Modern U.S. nuclear submarines are much more comfortable than the WWII diesel boats. For one thing, we have no shortage of electrical power, so the air is heated and conditioned as needed, and there is an extensive ventilation system that keeps the air moving.
I kept waiting for a test for claustrophobia during my training, but it never happened. The independent-duty corpsman (“Doc”) kept a few straitjackets on board in case the need arose. (No, I’m not kidding.)
Subs can remain underwater indefinitely. They are only limited by the amount of food that can be carried on board. We typically went to sea with about 4-6 months of food for 150 men, with no skimping, although some of the meals toward the end might start getting a little strange. (e.g. chili mac and canned beets).
Subs distill their own fresh water, and electrolysize the distilled water to produce oxygen. Scrubbers remove accumulated carbon dioxide.
I’ve been submerged continuously for as long as 4 months, and gone as long as 3 months without ventilating the ship with outside air. Ventilating is usually done just for aesthetics, and to flush out accumulated odors.
Ohio, Iowa…they’re all just interchangable, roughly rectangular states in flyover country with good college football and boring scenery.
Now if I were naming submarines, I’d name them after mythological deities and demons, all the better to strike fear in the hearts of your enemies. How can you not cower with terror at the words, “Sir, the Cerebus is four thousand meters off our starboard bow!”
For those dopers in the new england area, the sub base in new london has the nautilus welded to a dock and open for tourists … so if you want to see the first nuke sub it is available=) [I think i have toured the damned thing at least 20 times in the last 15 years we have been here … :rolleyes: ]
I will second the motion about das boot … though my absolute favorite scene is when they are trying to pass through gibralters straits and you see them racing across the dark sea with shelling going on - lovely starbursts … very striking.
My oldest brother served on the USS John Marshal in the '70s.
The thing he liked about it was that although a cruise was pretty tough he basically had six months on duty and then six months living in an apartment in San Fran playing guitar and listening to records.
He couldn’t get used to 'hot bunking’m which means sharing your bunk with another person. You sleep when they are on duty and vice versa so he slept down by the reactor.
The book I’m reading, for the curious, is Red Star Rogue : The Untold Story of a Soviet Submarine’s Nuclear Strike Attempt on the U.S. It tells the (purportedly true) tale of a Soviet sub that sank off Hawaii in about March 1968 in the midst of a mission to fire nuclear missiles at Pearl Harbor, in an apparent attempt to incite the US to attack China. (The Soviets were apparently mimicking the Chinese in some fashion, such that when the missile took out part of Hawaii, the US would think it was China and would go after China, thereby getting China off Russia’s back.) Convoluted, perhaps, but quite interesting if true.
The passage that got me curious initially was this passage, discussing the Soviet subs prowling around Cuba in the early 1960’s:
So what does sonar do if you “pound” a submarine with it? Was it done solely to keep them from moving, or does it do something else?
Can you explain that in smaller words/concepts for me? I think what you’re saying is that to sneak the US subs out into the ocean, where they could “disappear” from the Soviet subs, a warship would do something with its sonar so the US sub could sneak past.
And then there’s the air supply.
Is it conceivable that the 1960’s era Soviet subs had a finite amount of air, so that they had to surface after a time? Also, it seems to me that there must be something psychologically wearing about breathing recycled air (or air that you know is recycled).
By the way, thanks everyone for really informative posts. I shouldn’t be, but I am constantly surprised by how much everyone here knows.
There are two types of “sonar” detection; active (real) sonar, also known as “yankee search”, where the detecting vessel emits sound pulses and looks for reflections, analogous to radar. This is a very effective way of detecting other vessels, but the downside is that it also makes the detecting vessel very easy to spot; much more so than the vessel it is trying to detect. In sub movies, when you hear the “ping…ping…ping”, that’s active sonar. It is typically only used to pinpoint a target in preparation for firing, if even then, and since modern torpedos have their own active seeking capabilities, it is effectively never used by ballistic missile submarines.
The other form is passive sonar, in which the operator uses a variety of different sensors to look for anomolous sounds and repetitive patterns in the ambient background. This is tricky, as modern subs (both American Ohio boats and the most recent build of Typhoons are quieter in some regimes than the ambient environment, which leaves sonar ops looking for a “hole in the water”. If you’ve seen the film The Hunt For Red October, Jonsey (the sonar op) is using passive sonar (the waterfall display) to find the slight cyclic noise made by Red October’s magnetohydrodynamic drive. The Red October uses active sonar to communicate with Dallas, and the torps fired by the pursuing Alfa use active sonar to home in on Red October. (There are numerous and egregious technical errors in the film, the least of which is that the notoriously noisy Alfa would be able to sneak up on Dallas, and the whole thing with Dallas being put in harm’s way to deflect the torpedo from Red October. Very silly.)
Anyway, an outgoing boomer wouldn’t want to use active sonar as it would just make it more visible; instead, an accompanying attack sub and surface ASW (antisubmarine warfare) frigates, equipped with sonar tails and Sea King helicopters would scoure the exit path, deliberately letting a Soviet sub know that they were there and driving him off-course if found, so as to let the patrol boat get out to sea and into its patrol sector without pursuit. Once in deep water and without any precursor, it is virtually impossible for an enemy sub (or an American attack boat, for that matter) to find an Ohio unless they literally stumble upon it by chance or an accident/defect reveals the SSBN’s position.
1960’s era Soviet subs were mostly diesel-electric (the Soviet nuclear sub program was both slower to develop and plagued with quality and safety problems, leaving them a cheap second to the combined US and UK forces), and so would have to surface periodically for both environmental air and oxidizer for the engines. D-E boats can be quiet, especially when running on battery power, but they lack the range and high-end powerplant output to keep up with a nuclear powered vessel.
The Soviets also had political problems with their sub force, too; lacking the more complex PAL system and demanding tighter central control over weapon systems they allowed their boomers out on patrol for periods measured in weeks rather than months, which translates into smaller patrol regions and greater chance of detection. This, combined with the SOSUS net (an embedded passive detection system across the Greenland-Iceland-Scotland-North Sea gap) means that the US-UK sub forces had a significant strategic advantage over Soviet forces.
Lest we get too rah-rah “US-is-Best” Tom Clancy on you, though, I’ll point out that while the Sovs had problems with their sub fleet, they also had some very advanced detection and interception systems which threatened our strategic capability. The titanium alloy-hulled Alfa-class hunter/interceptor sub was noisy and problematic, but also extremely fast (operation speeds of about 43 knots) and could dive not only deeper than the Los Angeles-class attack subs but could also dive deeper than the Mk. 48 torpedo; until the ADCAP torp came on line in the late Eighties these subs were nearly invalurnable to attack and counterattack if properly operated.
The Sovs also developed an extensive MAD (magnetic anomoly detection) system which allowed them to determine the approximate location of any large ferrous (steel) hulled vessel above or below the surface around the globe, rendering our efforts at creating a supersilent SSBN moot. (At one point, fearing that these represented the mainstay of the Soviet counter-strategic effort, the US went on a crash program to develop equivilent vessels, but as it turns out the Alfa was so expensive to build and difficult to maintain, plus not really living up to its design parameters, that the Soviets only built six or seven of them, and most were decommissioned by the time the deep-diving 63 knot ADCAP came into service.) The current mainstay of the Russian attack fleet is the Akula-class, which is roughly comperable to a late-flight Sturgeon or a first-flight Los Angeles, but is also armed with the hyper-speed supercavitating Skvall/Squall torpedo from which there is effectively no defense, making our SSBNs sitting ducks for attack.
More than you needed to know, da?
Anyway, color me slightly skeptical about the scenerio laid out in Red Star Rogue; could be have happened, and stranger things have, but I’m more likely to credit the sinking of the Soviet vessel to poor training and bad quality than a struggle between some rogue/cabalistic special forces group and the crew. And while it’s certainly possible that the Glomar Explorer retrieved more than has been acknowledged, the claim that the sub came apart in recovery operations is unsurprising. Andropov was a crazed, dogmatic hardliner but it seems unlikely to me that he’d collect enough serious conspirators to initiate a nuclear attack, especially with such an unlikely plot to decoy as a Chinese sub. (And I don’t think Soviet, and certainly Chinese SLBMs were capable of delivering “megaton-level nuclear warheads” at that time; in any case, an examination of the isotope fractions residue would have told us whether the weapon was of Russian make or not. Perhaps Andropov wouldn’t know this but someone along the line with the knowledge to make this happen should have.) This strikes me as more of a “Gulf of Tonkin” info-fuck. I could be wrong, but I’d want to see some serious and credible sources before getting worked up about a lost Soviet sub alleged to be initiating global nuclear war.
My ex made twelve patrols on two SSBN’s (nuclear subs), the Sam Houston and the Abraham Lincoln. He isn’t too into the computer, so I’ll tell you the little I know.
I met him when he was at Nuke school at Mare Island, CA. Just after we married we moved to Idaho Falls, ID for him to go to Nuke school II for six months (the reactor is out in the middle of the desert, or was in 1963); we then went to New London, CT and he started the three months out, three months in, schedule from Holy Loch, Scotland (base closed several years ago after 30 years); the other base was in Rota, Spain. I think it’s still there. Families had to live in the states.
The first month or so was “upkeep” (repair and maintenance) and then they went on patrol and were submerged for two months. He said the “Russians” would watch with binoculars when they left.
Before that he was on diesel subs out of San Diego and he did have to do a test where they sat in an enclosed space and had to make crosses over and over for as long as they could. Some people freaked out.
He worked on the 02 generator that supplied air to the sub. He never mentioned stale air, but did mention the lack of fresh food toward the end of the patrol.
There weren’t enough beds for the crew (126). They rotated depending on their work shifts. There were three bunk beds on top of one another and not very much room between them.
We were allowed to send three messages while they were gone and I forget the letter limit, but it wasn’t much. I had to write it over and over to get in as much as I could in about two sentences. These messages were of extreme importance to the crew. I was told they could only receive, not allowed to send; and not allowed to surface. If you died they put you in the cooler. That’s what they told us.
When the Thresher went down they did hold meetings with the families which of course weren’t that reassuring. Some fault in the hull is what I heard years later.
That’s all I can remember right now.
Later, he became a “mustang” (an enlisted man who becomes an officer) and never went back to subs. He used to see them through overhaul at Mare Island, CA (now closed).
I made 5 patrols on the SSBN 620 in the '70s. The things are fascinating for a while. The closest the average guy will ever get to a spacecraft. You make your own air and fresh water (never enough) and live cut off from almost all communications with the world.
As far as the air goes, it does tend to get stale. There are several methods of cleaning it. There is a “burner” that runs the air through a high-temperature pipe and burns carbon monoxide. The “scrubber” uses a chemical called amine that absorbs CO2 when it’s cold and releases it when warmed. This keeps the CO2 down to reasonable levels although I remember several times when the CO2 was 10X that in the outside air. Last but not least, there are charcoal filters. The standard joke is that the filters are “good for 10,000 farts. Unfortunately, there are 20,000 farts during a patrol.”
As far as using active sonar to make someone surface, I’m not sure how you would make them surface. It would be very apparent to them that staying submerged wasn’t helping them at all and maybe they’d just give up. I’ve been submeged when people were testing sonars and it is something like a WWII John Wayne movie, the nice “PING” on the hull. It doesn’t hurt anything, just lets you know that you are completely screwed.
As Robby mentioned, the corpsman does have straightjackets available. On my very first patrol we wound up using one. A guy came down with some kind of religious mania and turned dangerous. We spent the last three weeks of the patrol guarding this guy while the doc jacked him up with a shot every now and then.
The closest I ever got to a claustrophobia test was in sub school where they make you do a free ascent from 50 feet. The tank at the bottom is very cramped and horrible.
The free ascent training was always considered a joke as the longest free ascent at the time was from 500 feet and the guy was crippled for life. The sub usually patrolled at around 400 feet but would sometimes go much deeper.
The other thing considered a joke was the “rescue bouy.” This was a bouy recessed into the hull with a long cable attached. The idea was that if you sunk and were setting on the bottom, you could release the bouy and it would float to the surface. The thing even had a telephone inside it so your rescuers could chat with you while they got you out of your sunken sub. Unfortunately, the bouy rattled in its slot when underway so the problem was fixed by welding it to the deck. :eek:
Being on subs does teach you to get along with people. When I first came aboard, they told me; “Testy, you are a very big guy and somewhat aggressive but you should work on reigning that in a bit. Just think, the smallest and most humble guy on the boat knows exactly where you sleep and when you’re sleeping. Think about it.”
Other things that are different from the “regular” navy. For example, the officer’s mess serves exactly the same food as the crew. This is not the case on surface ships. Officers and crew are much closer than on surface ships. Someone can be a serious martinet on a surface ship and usually get away with it. This does not work on the boats, at all. There are too many ways of being made to look a complete and utter fool for someone to be a hardass. Officers who aren’t aware of this when they arrive usually get the hint very quickly after things start happening to them. Not talking about anything violent or lethal, just stuff like smearing Prussian Blue dye on a black telephone mouthpiece and then calling the guy. He winds up with this huge blue circle around his mouth and can wander around for quite a while before someone tells him.
Another old favorite is the “trim party.” To hold a trim party, you get 30 or more people and march into the stern of the boat. The boat will promptly settle aft by a few degrees. The officer in charge can either flood water into a forward trim-tank or pump water out of the aft trim tank. In either case, the problem is worse when the trim party marches to the bow. The boats winds up porpoising through the water, the Captain gets seriously pissed, and the unfortunate officer of the deck (OOD) gets a serious reaming.
Subs can be tough, as suzeekay mentions it can be very tough on the family. I lost one wife myself over this. I wouldn’t take any amount of money to go again. On the other hand, I wouldn’t take any amount of money to not have done this. It was an adventure.
Nyet. Excellent expanation; just what I needed. I’m sure I’ll be back with more questions as I continue reading. And, yes, I get the impression that the book is more of a docudrama or a work of historical fiction than a history. Doesn’t make it less interesting, but it’s also hard for me to tell what stuff the authors are fudging on and what aspects I should consider to be accurate.
Thanks very much for your stories and explanations, you and suezeekay and everyone. My dad and grandfather were both army, so those are the stories I know; life on a submarine is utterly foreign, and this book is making me very curious. Like I said, though, it’s hard to tell what the book is describing accurately and where the authors are taking creative license. Hence, my trip to the Dope! And, of course, y’all have come through. Thanks.
And you are damned right how difficult it is being a sub wife, mrAru was in for the full 20, I was with him for 15 of those years. I attribute our lasting to 2 things - I was a civillian equivalent to what he did [MMA/ss] and actually could understand his job, and I came from a military family [dad was career army before retiring to a job that had him away from home constantly] so I had the example of a mother having to run a household with very little male input other than a paycheck in the bank and a visit home every month or so.
Family-grams were limited to 25 words, no bad news at all - and extremely censored so no mentioning of the dog dying or anything like that. You were limited to 10 of them for a 6 month deployment. Any real emergency had to go through squadron at the base. I had a seriously amusing run in with squadron when I had to explain to them exactly why mrAru needed to be checked for a sheep disease
If I got seriously ill [and it did happen 2 times, once with a 6 month bout of pneumonia while living in isolation and not able to safely drive anywhere because of the high fever and hallucinations and once with a tumor that decided to go from the size of a pea to pingpong ball in under 30 days] I was essentially on my ownand had to deal with essentially being considered a munchausens navy wife [I took to waiting until i was basically at deaths door before bothering to actually get to the base hospital for anything.]
In exchange for supporting our navy husbands [and wives for the occasional dependant husband out there=)] we get the pleasure of being told that our spouses are baby killers and that if they dont come home because they are dead, they deserved it.
mrAru was on the USS Spadefish, an old sturgeon class, the USS Miami and the USS San Juan [688Improveds] and when on shore did R5 and R9 shops in Groton. I understood no more Rota Spain or Tulon France, but Sardinia was still good…and the northern hot spot is Tromso Norway [interesting fact, the British Embassy was upstairs of the Mack Ale Brewery. One wonders if they have a tap going up =)]
The Coast Guard did indeed engage in anti-submarine warfare - going back all the way to WWI. In fact, the first German POWs taken by the US in WWII was the result of a CG cutter sinking a U-boat off of North Carolina. Throughout the cold war, the CG maintained an ASW capability on the larger cutters through the use of SONAR and torpedos, in addition to the standard deck guns. Funding for this, I believe, came from the US Navy. That all pretty much ended in the early 90s with the end of the cold war; we no longer have those capabilities or weapons. (well, we still have the deck guns)
I read “Big Red: The Three-Month Voyage of a Trident Nuclear Submarine” by Douglas C. Waller (Harper 2002) a few years ago, and mostly liked it. Have any of our SDMB submariners read it? Is it generally accurate? Any praise or criticisms about it that you’d like to share?
(No, I’m not kidding.)
