submarine crew

Factual Questions
1

Was watching a rerun of West Wing in which a US nuclear sub is mentioned,
with something along the lines of 135 crew members.

It got me thinking: what the heck do 135 people do on a submarine? That seems like A LOT!! _I ask this out of pure ignorance, I really have no idea.

I started guessing how crew might be allocated with what I thought would be
fairly generous numbers – 20 or so in the… well, whatever the room is you steer and navigate from. 5 or 10 guys in the kitchen. 20 to do repairs/maintenence, 20 to stick torpedos in those tubes. Again, this is pure conjecture but it gets me to about 70 crew members tops, barely half of the number I heard.

Anyone have the dope on this? I’m quite curious.

oops – almost forgot the 15 guys who swing across on ropes with their swords at the ready when pulling alongside an enemy vessel.

2

Well, for starters, divide 135 by 3. I’ve only spent time on missle boats (which have more like 160 crew), so it sounds like the 135 is referring to an attack sub. And if they operate similar to the missle boats, then your day is 6 hours on, then 12 hours off. So it is like an 18 hour (rotating) day - I guess this works best when there’s little concept of “day” vs. “night”. At any given time, approx. only 1/3 of the crew is doing their thing.
So around 45 people actually “working” at a time is along the lines of your estimate.

3

cormac has it right.
We had about 120 in the crew. Mine was Sturgeon class so it was a little smaller. About 1/3 were in engineering and the rest were FP’s (foreward pukes). 3 section duty which means 6hrs on watch and 12 doing maintenance and sleeping. Also 24hrs. on board every third day.
So everybody’s busy normally but during general quarters for example there are a lot of guys that are pretty much standing by.

4

Confirm what cormac262 wrote. Standard working day for a fast attack boat is an 18 hr “day”.

Divided into three sections, with 1/3 on duty, 1/3 in the rack, and 1/3 coming on duty. Each section has specific watches, ie., a torpedoman of the watch, fire controlman, sonar (3), the ships control party which has an officer of the deck, two planesman, chief of the watch, diving officer of the watch, quartermaster, radioman.

Not to leave out the engineering watches, of which there could be up to 25 on duty at any one time. There are also a number of newbies on board who aren’t qualified in their respective rate/division yet, so they can usually be found “cranking” on the mess decks when not studying for qualifications. The mess specialists may number up to 5 or 6, with the cleaning and serving duties left to the cranks. Roughly speaking that adds up to about 35-40 on duty during transit.

When tracking “hostile” contacts, the fire control party and the ships control party are assisted by about 10 additional people, boosting the previous total to 45-50.

During battle stations the whole ship is up and ready, as those personnel not directly involved with shooting or maneuvering make up the damage control party.

BF,
ex-squiddly fire control tech

5

What they said, but as to what we did other than stand watch, do maintainence and work on ‘quals’. Lots of reading, listening to music, watching movies. Games, we held tournaments all the time. Chess, bridge, cribbage, hearts, spades, checkers, we played lots of games. Gambling is a big entertainment, poker in the goat locker, dice in the torpedo room. Skits and ceremonys for things like crossing the equator or the international date line. Sometimes one of the larger divisions with lots of personel, like M, E or A div would take on cooking a meal. Lots of sleeping.

6

You should realize that it takes a lot of personnel to do all of the equipment repairs and required preventative maintenance. The amount of equipment and machinery stuffed into a modern submarine is staggering. Oh, and don’t forget that there is a nuclear power plant on board!

Realize also that the personnel onboard also make up the local fire department. In fact, having sufficient number of people on board for damage control is one of the biggest arguments against using automation to reduce crew size.

BTW, the room in the sub where you steer the boat is the “Control Room.” It’s the room with all of the ship controls and the periscopes.

The “kitchen” is called the “galley.”

7

And if you don’t get those terms right, robby will throw you out of one of those funny little round windows.

(Yeah I know subs don’t have portholes, but that old joke was too good to pass up.)

8

Thanks guys! I appreciate the education, no matter what Pink Floyd thinks! (Hey if we’re going for old jokes, that’s right in the ballpark.)

9

You’ve piqued my interest. What do the above people do? Does the officer of the deck report to the skipper? Who heads each section?

thanks,

Rob

10

One of the old model subs had a window much like a porthole but it looked in on the reactor instead of out at the ocean. It was leaded glass of course. If I remember correctly it allowed you to look at a mechanical gauge of reactor pressurizer level. I always thought it was funny to have a window in a submarine.

11

Glad to help (and welcome to the boards).

Officer of the Deck (OOD). Responsible for driving the ship when the CO is not. Usually senior officers not including the CO or XO (executive officer, second in command).

Junior officer of the Deck (JOOD). OOD in training. Tends to get in the way alot. :smiley:

Chief of the Watch (COW). Basically the section leader. Mans the Ship Control Panel which controls ballast tanks, alarms, communications throughout the ship. Besides the rest of the watch section, is responsible to directing the Messenger of the Watch (MOW) (junior enlisted) in routine notifications to the CO/XO. Senior enlisted E-6 and up.

Diving Officer of the Watch (DOW). Senior enlisted (E-7 and up) or junior officer. Responsible for ship’s speed and attitude as directed by the OOD. Responsible for the Helmsman (course, speed and bow or fairwater planes) and the Planesman (stern planes).

Quartermaster of the Watch (QOW). Responsible for where we are and when we’re supposed to get there. Qualified enlisted man.

Fire Controlman. Tracks all contacts supplied via sonar and resolves angle of attack for each. Qualified enlisted man.

Sonar. Listens for all sounds, both external and internal to the boat. Provides target bearing for all contacts. Three, one senior enlisted and two qualified enlisted.

Radio. Prepares all message traffic. Qualified enlisted.

Navigation. Monitors all inertial navigation equipment used by the Quartermaster. Qualified enlisted.

Torpedoman. Monitors tubes, weapons, etc. Qualified enlisted.

As for the rest of the ship, in order to keep this relatively short, there are number of engineering watches such as the Reactor Control panel officer (senior officer), 3 reactor controlman, senior enlisted. Roving engineer types who monitor the 400hz plant, the distiller, air quality, reduction gears, and communication equipment.

12

Excellent job on the forward folks, BF.

You didn’t go aft much, though, eh? (Yes, I know what all of the “coners” say: “Shut up and push!”)

Anyway, the senior person on watch in the Engine Room is the Engineering Officer of the Watch (EOOW). The EOOW is normally stationed in Maneuvering, where the reactor controls are. EOOWs are junior officers, either Lieutenants (junior grade) or Lieutenants. (Back in the day, this was my engineering watch.)

Also in Maneuvering is the Reactor Operator (RO), the Electrical Operator (EO), and the Throttleman. These are all Petty Officers, usually.

Out in the engineering spaces is a senior enlisted (a Chief Petty Officer or higher) who stands watch as the Engineering Watch Supervisor (EWS). He oversees the various watches distributed throughout the Engine Room.

13

I used to stand all those ‘various watches distributed throughout the engine room’.

Machinery 2 upper level. Moniter the electric control panels and operate the CO burner.

Machinery 2 lower level. Test boiler water chemistry and keep an eye on the feed station.

Engine room upper level watch. Moniters ships engines, ships turbine generators, hydraulic plant.

Engine room lower level. Operate the distilling plant. Moniter the condensate system. A/C system. oil purification.

Also, Engine room supervisor. A senior enlisted who could relieve any of the others for head break and things like that.

And some special watch stations that aren’t always manned. Oh 2 generator watch when the aft generator is in operation and anchor watch during docking/undocking manuvers.

14

I love the SDMB, because you can learn more about a submarine from one thread than you can from being married to an A-ganger for six years.

15

I’m pretty sure that only missile subs have a Machinery 2 (AMR2) room. On a Los Angeles-class fast attack sub, we had the following personnel in the Engine Room:

–Engineering Officer of the Watch (EOOW)
–Engineering Watch Supervisor (EWS)
–Engine Room Supervisor (ERS)
–Electrical Operator (EO)
–Reactor Operator (RO)
–Throttleman (TH)
–Engine Room Forward (ERF) watch
–Engine Room Upper Level (ERUL) watch
–Engine Room Lower Level (ERLL) watch
–Reactor Technician (RT)
–Auxilliary Electrican Aft (AEA)
–Engineering Laboratory Technician (ELT)

Whew! I think that’s everybody back aft.

BTW, I found this neat link entitled HOW TO START A NUCLEAR REACTOR that really dredges up memories for me.

16

You burn the CO?!? Doesn’t that make him angry? :eek:

17

Gee, robby was I that obvious?!? Except for quals and the occassional drill, going aft of the watertight door was kinda like opening the door to the darkened basement, you really didn’t want know what’s down there… :smiley:

Lunasea wrote:

And it’s not true that we only opened the door to the auxilliary machine room (where the diesel is) and threw raw meat in there. Really, we threw sliders (…mmm … sliders)

18

Sure gorshnak. :slight_smile:
Subs have to cotrol all aspects of the air the crew breathes. The Carbon monoxide can be generated in various ways, cooking, smoking(don’t know if they still allow smoking on subs), so there has to be a way to remove it. Also, the carbon dioxide has to be removed. There are a couple of machines for this. The carbon monoxide passes through a burner and is converted to carbon dioxide. There is another machine that ‘scrubs’ the carbon dioxide from the air and pumps it overboard. Finally, oh 2 genertors electrolyze oxygen from purified seawater to replace oxygen depleted by the crews respiration.

19

How about Nitrogen?, is it recycled or replenished?

20

I figured it was something along those lines, but I refuse to let a little common sense get in the way of a perfectly good joke!