Congratulations! 
Maybe it’s just their way of having fun; I’d breach if I could 
Oh absolutely. I breach out of bed every morning. My GF isn’t amused, however.
Another former submariner here. We were permitted to say that our boat’s* maximum depth rating was “in excess of 2000 feet.”
*(both boats I served aboard were Sturgeon-class fast-attack subs)
- checks package literature on my Rolex *
Oh hell.
The usual way for a submarine to surface in the open ocean (not under the ice) is to be moving and to use its planes to drive to the surface. Once at the surface (at this point, the sub has “broached” the surface, but is still more or less neutrally buoyant), a snorkel mast is extended and a low-pressure blower is run to empty the main ballast tanks (MBTs) of seawater. So the upshot is that the sub surfaces with a slight up angle (of a few degrees), and then becomes more horizontal as the MBTs are emptied.
An emergency blow to the surface uses high pressure air to empty the MBTs, causing the sub to rise to the surface much more rapidly with a much larger up angle.
I was actually onboard the first 688I (improved Los Angeles-class) submarine to break through the polar ice back in the early '90s.
This is a carefully controlled evolution to avoid breaking anything. The sub uses a so-called “normal blow” high-pressure air system to carefully empty the MBTs and slowly push up through the ice. The sub can either surface through the ice horizontally (in which case you can only exit the submarine via the sail), or with a slight up angle, in which case a forward hatch can be exposed (with a chainsaw), which makes it easier to exit and enter the boat.
Snow does not gather on the sub after surfacing. There’s actually very little humidity or precipitation in the Arctic air. Instead, there is simply residual ice on the hull, along with the ocean refreezing around the top of the sub within a matter of minutes.
As for wear and tear on the sub, my boat did several dozen through-ice surfacings during our first ICEX, and the boat got pretty dinged up (mostly cosmetic damage). Nevertheless, we had to go into an unscheduled drydocking for minor repairs a few months later.
Yes, it matters a great deal. A sub can surface through ice easily up to 3-5 feet thick, at which point it gets progressively more difficult. At some point it becomes impossible to break through, which is somewhat nerve-wracking should you have an emergency. For example, if you can’t access the surface, you can’t run the emergency diesel generator in an emergency.
The structure on top of the sub is called the “sail.” (In WWII, it was referred to as the “conning tower.”) When the sub is operating on the surface, the bridge is located at the top of the sail.
The density of the ice does not change, but the thickness does. Thickness is determined by simply bouncing sonar vertically up, and then comparing the distance to the ice to the sub’s depth (which is determined by sea pressure). The difference between the two is the thickness of the ice.
Wow robby. Thanks for every detail. Fascinating.
Not breaching but broaching. Noted.
A “bridge” is still the word on a sub, like in a ship and a starship cruiser. Noted.
I thought it couldn’t be plain old distance-pinging because I forgot in general you already know where the top of the ice sheet is.
(Everything else: noted :))
On your ice missions, did every crew member get a chance to stretch his legs, breather fresh air, throw a snowball or two?
Seems a shame otherwise.
Yes, absolutely, on numerous occasions. We called it “ice liberty.”
Except that on a sub, the bridge is not used once the submarine submerges. Indeed, the bridge (which is the open area in the top of the sail used for surface operations) is outside the pressure hull, and is flooded with seawater once the submarine submerges.
During surface operations, the Officer of the Deck (OOD) and the “conn” are on the bridge. Immediately prior to submerging, the OOD (and the conn) move down to the control room (where the periscopes are utilized), and the watertight hatches are shut.
Just drifted past again, and I thought I’d clarify: I don’t think that any sailing dinghies, or any Olympic-class sailboats (since they dropped keel boats) use “ballast”. That is: “ballast” is not a part of the stabiltiy of all “sailboats”.
(Except when the term is used to include the weight of the crew, which I think is outside the present discussion, because the crew moves around to maintain the ballance, so it’s not like a submarine depending on “ballast” for stability underwater)
I did two runs under the ice while aboard the Tautog. First one was a winter expedition, and “ice liberty,” such as it was, consisted of being issued an insulated rubber suit (head-to-toe; we called them “Gumby suits”) and an ice pick, and spending half an hour at a time chipping ice off the sail planes, so that when the time came we’d be able to submerge again.
Our second ice run was at the height of summer; for that one, they set up a barbecue grill topside (fueled by oxygen-generating candles), and we had a weenie roast with lots of fun and games (one of the forward ETs actually stripped down and streaked the North Pole).
Interesting - as it happens, Wiki has some pics of Tautog’s icy sojourns: USS Tautog (SSN-639) - Wikipedia