Do you think women should be eligible for submarine service? Provided, of course, with proper sleeping quarters, showers, etc.
Everybody knows that women and seamen don’t mix. 
I’m surprised they’re not considered eligible - given that women take a role in anything from tanks to the space shuttle, without any ‘special’ facilities of any kind.
Hell, if anything they are more qualified. Since the average woman is smaller than the average man, you’d think that they would have less of a problem adapting to the cramped quarters and getting around.
With the extremely close quarters and extreme lack of privacy for long periods of time, I think it would be disruptive.
If it were an all woman crew I’d say yes. Barring that, no. It’s not just privacy, it’s psychology.
Where exactly are you planning on putting those proper sleeping quarters, showers, etc.? Space is kinda limited. I don’t think a mixed sex crew would work for purely practical reasons.
As for the social/psyche reasons… the dynamics of the fairly large amount of body-to-body contact required for something as simple as walking down a passageway on a submarine get significantly more interesting when the crew members involved are of the opposite sex.
An all-female crew might work, but, again, the dynamics of female-female group interaction are different from male-male group interactions. It might be fun to try, but that’s damn expensive experiment. Also, the manning (er, womanning) of a submarine would be far more complex if you had to account for the crew getting pregnant.
There would also have to be some logistical and technical consideration given to the disposal/design of feminine hygiene products. And then you have to deal with the fact that somebody is still going to smuggle on their beloved box of Playtex Gentle Glide and foul up the sanitary pumps.
Yes, we all know what you think.
I think my first porno script is starting to knock itself together. So to speak.
Hell, the men don’t get that.
When my brother reported to his attack sub, he was given a choice. He could either hot rack, which is where guys share a bunk and trade off sleeping while the other is on duty, or he could sleep in a bunk slung under live torpedoes in the torpedo room. He’d just have to give up sleeping any time they decided to move torpedoes around.
The logistics of making this work with a bunch of females aboard isn’t nice to contemplate.
I’ve served with women in the Navy on surface and shore commands, BTW, so my opinion on this subject is reasonably informed.
With the all male or the all female crew?
Wow! He was able to get his own rack in the torpedo room! Lucky guy. When I first reported to my sub I had to hot rack in the torpedo room.
Of Course! I think it is silly to think otherwise.
The fast attack I was on was quite small, but it still had several seperate sleeping quarters. The bulk of the racks were in the bow. In a room aft of that, there was a seperate smaller sleeping compartment with nine racks in it. There was also a sleeping compartment aft of the torpedo room. Then there was the Chief’s quarters known as the “goat locker.” Also, there were aproximately 6 seperate sleeping compartments with two racks each for the officers. And can’t forget, the hot racker’s in the torpedo room.
My point is, if the Navy can make accomodations to give the Chiefs there own sleeping area and their own shower, why couldn’t they do this for the women?
Please :rolleyes: I’ve heard a variant of this when I was serving except it was homosexuals instead of women. You know, how can a soldier be effective in battle if he is either always guarding his backside or being turned on by his mates. The argument was wrong then, and it is still wrong now.
There were rumors of the military starting an all women sub crew when I served so this is not a new idea. Submarines already need to deal with medical emergencies requiring a medivac. A pregnancy medivac would be easier to deal with since there would not be an immediate need and they could wait until a convinient time.
They use pumps now? They used to use compressed air. Leave it to the military to take a simple working system and complicate it. 
Anyway, Submariners are accustomed to being without a lot of “creature comforts.” I would tend to think that the women serving on the sub would be professional and not do this.
This would make a much better sitcom than She’s the Sheriff.
How long are subs down between crew shifts/breaks/personal leaves, in general? Are we talking months, or years?
There are BC pills now that space out periods every three months, and I’d imagine their dual purpose might also come to good use.
Female astronauts serve on the shuttle and space station which has even less space than a submarine.
My sister is currently enlisted in the Navy. The stories she tells about the enlisted men are enough to curl my hair. A decent percentage of them would qualify for Antisocial Personality Disorder. I have another friend who has done two submarine assignments. So I have some idea of how awful the conditions can be.
Given the close quarters, the stir-craziness that develops on board a submarine, and I think that it’s likely the rates of rape of the women crewmembers would be high compared to the population average.
My sister is currently stationed on an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf. It’s tough enough on women to be in that kind of environment (close quarters, 90% men)–and on a ship, there’s room to move around and opportunities to disembark periodically.
I asked my sister if she’d ever agree to be a part of a submarine crew, mostly because the pay is higher than it is even for ship duty. Her answer was an emphatic “no way”–in large part because of fear. Her enlisted female friends agreed that they’d be afraid for their safety.
(Mind you, I am not saying that all enlisted people are scum. Most are decent human beings. But there seems to be something about service in the armed forces that attracts a relatively high number of psychos, compared to the population average.)
I think that one needs to consider the close-knit atmosphere of a submarine and its crew. We’re not talking about stuffing a 50/50 mix (or more likely 70/30 or 80/20) of total strangers into our submarine – we’re talking about a crew that has a far more familiar relationship. Everybody knows everybody; folks call the captain by his first name. Hard to imagine greatly increased crime in such conditions. In addition, there aren’t many dark corners where such acts can occur unobserved. Of course, consentual relationships would be an entirely different matter.
Never served on a sub, though. I was on a carrier, and I do find it difficult trying to picture my ship with a mixed crew (which it indeed has). I would imagine that if there were such crime risks, they would be higher on a carrier due to the total anonymity (I rarely saw the same face twice at lunch) and the plethora of dark corners aboard ship.
Tanks? As part of the battle crew? Do you have a cite for that? I thought the combat MOSs were off limits to women?
Or, were you speaking of maintenance MOSs?