It is my understanding that when submerged and the hull is under pressure that it creaks and makes other assorted noises, How distracting is this and how did it feel the first time ???
ThanksSuppose the boat were to sink in 1000’ of water, but the hull stays intact. If the compressed air suppy leaks awy, you cannot ascend. How to escape the boat? Are submarine rescue vehicles available to work at that depth? Can a free ascent be made from such a depth?
The numbers are often the only thing requiring a given diagram or manual to be classified. Get enough of the right numbers and you can work out a lot of details.
We’ll take a pressure on the ship prior to shifting to recirculate. We’ll bleed it down recharging the air banks and then do it all again next time we ventilate. The change in pressure the first time you ventilate after being submerged/recirculating for a while can be pretty uncomfortable. Usually you get a boost in [O2], too, so everything seems good.
I’ve never heard anything I’d conclusively attribute to the hull creaking and not a noise being made by some or another piece of equipment. The engineering spaces aren’t exactly quiet. It’s fairly easy to hear waves smacking the sail while surfaced.
They say the rescue submersibles can operate past the depths where you’d reasonably expect the hull to remain intact, but I’m not terribly clear on what they’d be doing for us. Attempts to raise the hull would probably take too long.
I’d describe the escape procedures as a joke, though not a particularly funny one.
Do you still wear 13 button pants?
If the alternative was suffocation, I would try. From that depth, I wouldn’t put the chances of success very high for a free ascent, to say the least. I’d wait for rescue from a DSRV (Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle) as long as possible before making the attempt.
Note that you would still need some high pressure air to operate the escape system. You would need to pressurize the escape trunk to a high enough pressure to overcome sea pressure to be able to open the outer hatch. The deeper the depth, the higher the required pressure, and the less time you can safely stay at that pressure before the chance of decompression sickness becomes a near-certainty.
We used to say that the escape system was for the benefit of “mommies and Senators.” :dubious: However, the Russian submarine Kursk sank in just 350 feet of water, and because they had no free escape system, the crew who survived the initial accident slowly suffocated. 
akira5822,
I’m not a submariner but feel qualified to answer your question.
The ideal shape for a submersible is a perfect sphere.A modern sub is essentially a cylinder terminated by hemispheres.
WWII era subs effected compromises to such shapes to accomodate torpedo launching,and the transitional areas were subject to stresses beyond compressive which would give rise to creaks and the like.Contributing factors were the use of mild steel and cellulosic welding techniques.
Here’s a numbers question that I think you bubbleheads might be able to answer: What’s the boat’s budget for potable water, in terms of gallons per man per day?
If you can’t answer, I do understand.
With respect to the various questions about underwater rescue, AIUI modern US submarine design is based on the philosophy that there is no such point to compartementilizing - if the damage is bad enough that a space would have to be abandoned the chances of that boat’s surface to dive ratio returning to spec (i.e. 1:1) are pretty damned low. And since most US boats operated during the cold war over the abyssal plains, anything that disrupted the boat’s ability to maintain depth would be fatal.
A few more questions on this morbid topic:
Do you still keep Momsen lungs onboard?
And haven’t the DSRVs been decomissioned?
Akira
I’ve never heard the hull itself creak or make any noise at all. OTOH, some internal fittings can make noises during large changes in depth. We usually made a dive to test-depth before every patrol and when the hull compressed it would stress things like sheet-metal lockers and the like. Sometimes it was enough to cause the little pop-rivets to break. This wasn’t anything like a big deal but could cause alarm with the new guys. 
Regards
Testy
ralph124c
AFAIK, you’d just be screwed unless the DSRVs are still around. When I went through sub-school a long time ago, they taught that the record for a free ascent was something like 750 feet. It was supposedly done by a Brit and he was crippled by the bends in the process and never recovered.
Regards
Testy
Testy, it’s little details like this that left me happy to be part of the target fleet. 
OtakuLoki
Nahh, you’d have loved it. Well, one time anyway. It’s the closest your average person will ever get to making a space voyage. How cool is that!
We did have a guy panic over this once. A new guy. We were making his first deep dive and he felt a sudden urge to visit the head. When his business was done we were a lot deeper and the stall door had jammed. He panicked very badly thinking he was about to meet his maker with his trousers around his ankles! The screaming and thrashing was heard through several compartments. 
Regards
Testy
Otaku
Speaking of being part of the target fleet. I would have sold my soul once for being there.
I left on patrol from Charleston, visited the Arctic circle and points East and returned after 3 months. During the same time a buddy on an FFG went from Norfolk to Rosy Roads, through the Panama Canal, and visited almost every country in South America. His description was; “Testy. There’s an entire continent full of drugs and wild women down there.”
Regards
Testy
1010011010
Do they still weld the rescue buoys down before patrol? In sub school they told us all about the fantastic rescue buoys and how they had a telephone and all of that. When I actually went on patrol I discovered they had welded the things down so they didn’t rattle. now that was a joke!
Regards
Testy
What’s a trim party?
treis
A submarine is usually level within a degree or so. On my own boat we had a table that you could flip over and play bumper pool on. There are people in the control room responsible for keeping the boat level during normal ops and it is usually easy to do using a pair of relatively small tanks in the bow and stern that you either pump water out of or flood.
If you want to really embarrass the guy you get a couple of dozen people and march to the bow which makes the boat take a slight down-angle. The guy in control adjusts for this by either flooding the after trim tank or pumping some water out of the forward one. When the boat levels up, you and your guys march to the stern. Now you have a somewhat larger up-angle on the boat because you have your own weight PLUS whatever he did to fix it the first time. If you do this 4 or 5 times, the guy goes nuts trying to fix a situation that is steadily getting worse no matter what he does. Shortly thereafter, the Captain pops out of his rack and storms into control looking like the wrath of God and puts a stop to things.
It takes quite a few people to do this so trim parties are reserved for people that piss-off just about everyone.
Regards
Testy
I don’t know what rate/field you were, Testy, but not all of the surface fleet got liberty ports like that. I was on a CGN - we weren’t welcome in many of the better ports. And because we didn’t have to get fuel regularly, the powers-that-be often left us on box-ops to nowhere. (Also we were approaching the end of core life, so they were trying to burn us as much as possible.)
Of course, the nuc cruisers were very much odd man out.
We did get some good liberty ports, but we never got to do the new port/country a week that some of the other ships in our division got when they went out on CoNOPs.
I’ll admit I would have liked to take one cruise on a sub at some point. More to say that I have done it, than for any other reason. But, I’m borderline claustrophobic. As long as I know I can get topside, I had no problem aboard ship. You have to be careful about showing a light going at night, but it was always possible. Not quite the same thing for subs, though.
-Loki
OtakuLoki
I was a Nav-Et. (Note: Please! NOT a “navette”! ) A nuc cruiser sounds amazingly cool. I never really understood ports that had a problem with nuc-powered ships. Do they think it’s going to blow-up in the harbor?
I made a 3 trans-Atlantic trips on surface ships before my detailer caught-up with me. Nothing so slick as a nuclear cruiser though. I was on a sub-tender, kind of a floating 7-11 for submarines. I loved going out on the weather decks at night. The brilliance of the stars is something I’ll never forget. We hit a major storm once in December in the North Atlantic with winds of 113 knots. I remember going out (against orders) on the weather deck and looking UP at a wave. I decided I’d seen everything necessary and went back inside. S Unlike the other guys on here, my sub time was on a boomer so our cruises were the ultimate in boredom, floating around at 4 knots in the high latitudes waiting for doomsday.
As far as claustrophobia goes, I never met anyone who had problems with it on a cruise. The boomers don’t do much in the way of “angles and dangles” so it’s more like being in a metal house for a few months. The sensory deprivation bothered most people more than anything else. (me included)
Not to get too nosy, but were you a nuc? And do you still work in that field? I’ve always wondered how civilian training compared to that provided in the Navy. I know they drilled the hell out of those guys in the Navy but I have no idea how you’d go about that in civilian life.
Regards
Testy
I agree about how beautiful it would be on deck at night. Of course you’re not supposed to be out there after darken ship, but it’s still beautiful.
And, yes, there’s something bad about seeing the wave coming down towards you. Worse when you’re fighting to find where vertical might be at the same time.
I was a nuc ELT - chem and radcon guy. I’ve used my chem experience since I got out. Until my depression sunk me, at least. It really did give me a good background. I looked into getting some extra cash radsponging, but never managed to have free time when they needed the rad sponges.
And part of the reason that I wasn’t interested in remaining in the nuclear power field after I left was that the attitudes towards drills were so different from the Navy’s. The drills in the plant were usually a pain in the arse. But I never worried that my watch wouldn’t know what to do if something went wrong. (As sometimes did.)
Let’s see, of the people whom I knew aboard ship, several ended up in various nuclear fields. A couple went to school for rad health physics degrees (medical rad sources and the like), one ended up doing radcon at Los Alamos, and a couple others were in various other things.
In short, like a lot of military training - it can provide a very good base for things later on, if you use it well. In some ways, the most valuable thing, though, was simply having gone through nuke school - a lot of people who do hiring, or screen people for college admissions, have an idea what it takes to succeed there.
-Loki
Otaku
The reason I ask is that I’ve been in a few debates over civilian nuc power. Now, I lived within a couple of hundred feet of a multi-megawatt reactor for years and never got as many rads as I would have on a sunny day at the beach. I was always reassured by the competence displayed by the nucs I dealt with and I knew how hard they “drilled & spilled” you guys in the engineering spaces. The results showed but I could never figure out how you’d do something similar with civilians.
Bottom line, I was asking for something to use as ammunition next time I get in one of those debates.
Thanks and all the best.
Testy
I’m surprised that this isn’t all controlled by computers nowadays. Is there a reason that it isn’t?