Submarine meals

Factual Questions
1

In Big Red, which takes place in 1999, it says that Lieutenant JG Such-and-Such had to pay $500 for the meals he ate on patrol (let’s say 3 months). This is on a Trident-class ballistic missile submarine.

So, dining in the wardroom on such a vessel is pretty nice— I would go for it myself, but this is not going out to eat at the club versus any number of other available choices. What are the alternatives— pack in a month’s worth of sandwiches? How come the Navy does not throw in some complimentary chow? Or did he not absolutely have to pay that?

2

Presumably it’s because the Lieutenant is an officer and gets BAS (Basic Allowance for Subsistence) that he has to manually pay out on his own while enlisted get BAS auto-deducted from their pay. But yeah it’s weird. As you pointed out, nobody aboard a submarine 700 feet underwater has any option for eating anything else.

3

F-d if I know. In Aus, meals in mess are free at sea (Americans sailors wish it was the same), or there is no galley, unless it is a submarine.

The “no galley” rule comes into play if the kitchen is closed while you are in port for maintenance and repair. I am aware that in the American Navy, that rule seems to have been widely interpreted and implemented in different ways. Sometimes the sailors get to keep BAS and get free meals: sometimes they get BAS extracted and the ‘free’ meals are inedible or unavailable.

So what’s the story with submarines? I’m not Navy enough to know. And conditions are different on attack submarines vs ICBM submarines.

There is also the complication of ‘casual’ rates. Officers may be charged casual rates, and not have to pay when not actually present. Sailors don’t usually get that choice.

4

I’m kinda surprised there’s room for it to happen on a submarine, but in pretty much any fort or other installation, there are lots of options to eat.

If you are off-duty, you can eat off-base, as long as you are willing to pay for it. But there are pay options on the base too. There’s always a canteen for the enlisted, and an officers’ club for the officers, and sometimes an all-base club which offers nice dining to all ranks.

Albeit, I understand that service at the canteens is being replaced by fast food options-- in some places, mall-style food courts. (Someone who has served more recently can correct me.) At any rate I think the workers in canteens have been mostly civilian since the 1980s or 90s.

Not sure how the nice restaurants are run-- they are not Grammercy Tavern or Daniel, but you could do worse for a wedding reception. They are more like a very good chain restaurant than a 4-star Michelin that would actually charge $500 for a meal in Manhattan, but I assume that with supply and demand at play after several weeks or months underwater, a Maggiano’s meal has more stars than the Milky Way. Albeit, I’m skeptical that a submarine has a Maggiano’s.

But, there isn’t a lot else to spend money on.

People on patrol of FTX get fed-- the military is good about providing food, but not necessarily tasty food. On FTX, on a base, someone in the kitchen packs up these thermo-tite containers called mermites (hot food hot, cold food cold), filled pallets for each company on FTX, and that was field chow. You didn’t get choices-- 1 fruit (canned fruit cocktail, usually), 1 veggie (frozen succotash, usually), 1 slice white bread, 1 kind of meat (usually some kind of dry patty), 1 8oz container white milk, 1 cookie.

If you were on patrol, or any kind of duty, you got an MRI thrown at you, and ate it cold.

Or, you got a buddy to bring you something better.

Smuggling food from the chow hall was not difficult-- buying better food and bringing it had to be repaid. Depending of where you were on duty, it did or did not pose the smuggler some risk. If a sergeant could catch your smuggler, and confine him to quarters for the rest of his off-duty time, he was going to want something; if it was a war situation, and not stateside, he was taking a real risk, so you might be paying some real money not to eat the MRI.

Is that realistic?

When you have guard duty solo, for a long time, and nothing to break it up, just having a buddy visit for a few minutes is something to look forward to. If he’s bring a hot meal of really good food, OMG, does it make that duty easier to take. When there’s not much else to spend money on, you might bribe someone a few hundred to bring you a $50 meal, sure.

5

The Royal Navy covers the cost of feeding its crews, including officers, whenever they are operational. Officers have some options (like cheese after a meal) that they have to pay for. Both officers and ratings can buy alcohol. They don’t pay cash, but have to settle up monthly.

6

In the Israeli army they have mess halls, and if you come in in uniform during mealtime, they’ll give you mostly mediocre food (some bases have separate dining rooms for enlisted and officers, but they’re identical, with the same food and facilities). That’s about it. If you want to take some food out for a friend or for later, that’s fine, but don’t take too much or the Kitchen Sergeant will shout at you. I have no reason to think it’ll be any different on a ship.

7

Oh yeah, that’s another thing. Officers can be charged more than BAS, so at sea, American officers (used to ??) pay more than BAS for meals. And at sea American officers (were ??) on fixed rates, not casual, so they paid even for meals they didn’t eat. All had to be settled at the end of the month.

8

Meal Ready to Ingest?

9

She meant MRE: Meal, Ready-to-Eat.

I wasn’t an officer, nor was I on a sub, but we have some retired US Navy Officers that can give this factual question a factual answer instead of speculation.

@iiandyiiii & @robby were both Navy officers IIRC.

So US surface ships have ship stores including Gedunks selling junk foodish products. Vending machines for at least soda were common too. Submarines do not have either of these. Space is at too much of a premium.

10

@Scadian was also a sub officer. Funny, we just had roll-call of sub officers in another thread yesterday or the day before.

My recollection as a USAF officer who also spent a lot of time in the field with the Army was that we were paid BAS everywhere all the time. At home on base anything we wanted to eat cost cash out of pocket. Specifically the O-club, but anywhere else as well.

When we were out in the field the army fed us whatever they were eating, either mermite chow or MREs or aging Viet Nam-era canned C-rats. And we pocketed the BAS; nobody worried about such trifles.


The dollar amount of BAS was set by Congress, so of course over the decades had drifted well away from the actual cost of eating for a month, whether from a grocery store or from the O-club. Most of us just considered it all just “pay”, not an “allowance”. Same with BAQ for those who got it. Any resemblance between BAQ and the local cost of off-base housing was entirely coincidental. It sure didn’t cover the cost in high cost areas and IIRC there was no provision for location differential.

But in low-cost areas the local landlords knew how much BAQ was and priced their rental upwards to that level and not beyond.

11

A bit off topic: It was common for several single guys to go together on renting a place off base in order to pocket some of the BAQ for other things. A lot of guys got into trouble over BAQ because they would obligate the money for some credit purchase, not realizing that once they deployed, the allowance ended but the debt still needed to be paid. Local merchants knew they could come after the money and that the Navy would garnishee wages to get them paid.

12

Navy has always been different than Army. And Israeli Navy was set up by ex English RN officers. And sea meals were never entirely privatized like shore meals. So several reason why it could be different.

13

So there is no such thing as Unter Eats?

14

As an officer, I had a mess bill to pay every month to the supply officer. IIRC enlisted crew didn’t have to pay. I remember it being quite small - like $30-50 most months (about twenty years ago), depending on how many meals I ate. Underway, I was typically so tired I would just eat once or twice a day. I was one of the few crew members who lost weight underway.

15

DoorSplash.

16

You just don’t want to get behind on payments and end up underwater.

17

The founders of the Israeli navy were the underground organizations who smuggled refugees into the country, like on the famous Exodus. While a handful of former Allied naval officers were included in their numbers, they never really saw a need to bring many naval traditions with them.

Remember, Israel doesn’t have a separate army and navy - it’s all one unified service, with the same regulations and logistical tail

18

Grubsub.

19

No, dammit.

Since the last update, of Office, the word replacement thing has turned itself back on, and it is the stupidest damn thing. Kept trying to replace gavel, in a post about courtroom procedure, with gravel.

I turn it off when I remember, but when the machine is off and on again, it’s been reset.

20

Hey, it’s a submarine. They’re supposed to be underwater.