My other dad story illustrates how this was handled by Joe Citizen Senior Non-Com in (slightly) more innocent times.
Enter Ensign Doug faced with a decision of some import. He is accompanied by a Chief.
Ensign Doug: What do we do now, Chief?
Chief: No sir. Not what do we do, sir. What do you do, sir.
Blackout.
I’m sure that there was, at one time, an actual physical lamp used as an indicator of when smoking was allowed, but now it’s simply a condition set when you can or (more often) cannot smoke.
The smoking lamp used to be out whenever fuel or munitions were being loaded. Now a lot of ships are smoke-free inside, with only a few dedicated smoking areas, all outside. Often you’re not allowed outside, so no smoking at all for long periods.
I always found it amusing that the smoking light was out while we were loading cruise missles. Like some random spark from a cigarette was going to set off a warhead. :rolleyes:
My favourite story from my Dad, who, at the time, was a Lieutenant in the Candian Army in 1943 making its way up Italy from Sicilly. Dad had trained in the field artillery, but when he got to England, he *was *volunteered over to the Beaufort 40mm light ack-ack gun. Turns out he put his field gunner training to good use in Sicily and Italy, because due to a dearth of Stukas and ME-109s and an overabundance of Nazi snipers and MG nests, the 40s were used as light, high precision field pieces. They could knock out a well or a chimney without destroying the nearby farmhouse or tearing down the whole building.
Anyway, this one day, Dad was scouting for a new emplacement on his big Harley-Davidson, which was his ride over there. The front has moved forward out of range, and they had to move forward. He’d had no luck all day, and it was getting near dark. It was fall or winter, and had been raining and cold for a while, and it felt like everything was covered in mud. Just then, bone tired, he saw it: a gunner’s wet dream of an emplacement. It was spot of level ground, covered in coarse gravel. Gravel meant the guns and tractors wouldn’t get stuck in the mud, and much more importantly, the tents wouldn’t get washed out in water and mud. There was a huge boulder in the middle. Dad rode his 650lbs Harley right up to it, clambered up, sits down, and then took his compass bearings so he could fix the place the place on the map. Then he got back on the bike and rode back to his unit. When he returned, well after dark, the only part of him that wasn’t covered in a film of mud were his eyes, where the goggles had been. He’d long since had to remove the mud guards on the bike because they kept getting clogged up with mud and jamming up the wheels.
So the next morning, the whole unit, 6 guns, tractors, ammo trucks, jeeps and the CO make their way to the spot. Of course, now it’s full light. Dad was with his gun, and so not at the head of the column, when they stop, and a few moments later, the word comes down that LT trupa Sr. is wanted by the CO up front. Dad scoots up to the CO’s jeep, and sees they’re stopped right at the field… CO says to dad:" LT, is that the spot? You sure?" Dad, a bit cocky and smug, says, “of course I’m sure, see, there are my tracks from my bike. I sat on that big rock to get the bearings.”
So the CO shakes his head, grunts non-commitally, and points to the ditch with his riding crop, where, now much more visible in the full light of day, was a signpost that had been knocked down. On it, was written:
“ACHTUNG! MINEN!”
My dad had ridden his Harley, back and forth, through a German minefield.
He said his legs actually gave out, and he fell on his knees from the shock. The CO had someone give dad a few shots from a bottle someone had.
The CO liked the emplacement, though, and they called up the engineers to clear it. They found both “bouncing betty” Teller anti-personnel mines, as well as anti-tank mines, that had a charge big enough to blow a track off, and a 200lb trigger plate, which the big old Harley would have set off with no problem.
Oh… and dad did say he say a cow, once, set off an AT mine. He said he had no idea there was so much blood inside one cow, and that it rained hamburger for over a minute.
These are from the Spanish Civil war of 1936-9.
My paternal grandfather and all his side of the family were Carlistas - they fought on Franco’s side. One fateful day, a bullet grazed gramps’ thigh: the wound was bad enough to get him a couple weeks’ leave, but not so much that it had any kind of consequences. Matter of fact, that was the leave when my Dad got made 
hence the saying that Dad owed his life to an Anarchist bullet. At that time my oldest uncle, let’s call him Joe, was 3yo.
So, Daddy goes back to the front, and li’l Joe misses him terribly. He goes to Mommy and says “Mommy, where’s Daddy?”
“Daddy’s gone back to war, love.”
“Can I go see him?”
“No you can’t” (wish I could…)
“But I won’t get off the sidewalk!”
The maternal side…
They lived in Barcelona. Great-gramps Sr. was a cop (Guardia Civil), a Sargento de Brigada (very high NCO); his son, my grandfather Jr., was a troublemaker and a half. Heck, he still is and he’s 94.
I don’t really know what’s the BSQ of this one, as gramps is a very good storyteller but about as trustworthy as Enron’s execs. Mind you, some of its details would be easy to verify… but as the Italians say, “si non e’ vero, e’ ben trovato”: it may not be true but it’s well-told. Why spoil a good tale with reality.
During the Anarchist troubles of the late 1920s, one day then-Corporal Sr. and his partner went to the house of a well-known Anarchist leader to bring him in. A very-pregnant woman opens the door, goes as pale as the walls and calls her husband “you have visits.” The man goes as white as his wife, asks if they can let his make arrangements for someone to help her. Corporal Sr thinks and asks for “his word as a man” that he won’t arrange any Anarchist activity, only someone to help his wife. The man says “my word as a man, uh?” laughs and gives him his word as a man. Corporal Sr. gives him until the child is born (it couldn’t be more than a handful of days) and tells him where to go once it is. They shake hands on it and the cops leave.
A few days later, as the Cop family were sitting down to table, the guard on duty asked for Corporal Sr to come to the main desk, a gentleman is asking for him (GC quarters include both living apartments and the office areas). Sr goes down to see his man standing there with a minimal valise. He asks about the baby and the man answers with a grin that escaped his whole face “it was a girl and she’s fine, thank God.” Sr looks at the time and asks “have you had lunch?” “Not yet, no.” “Hrum, in jail they have it at 1pm… c’mon. Lauraaaaaaa!!! Set another plate, we got a guest!”
Fast forward some 14 years. Sr is now a Sargento Brigada; every GC officer in town has fled or been murdered; a rioting group has managed to capture him and put him to The Wall, they’re drawing sorts to see who shots him. A man arrives, yelling “are you guys nuts! Let him off NOW!” and, after some grumbling, the mob does. The man and Sr. sit down on a low wall to share some cigarrettes, while Jr. (who had gone to ask for help) and the man’s bodyguards stand some distance away.
“What the hell are you doing? Don’t you know they’re out for blood? Hasn’t your son told you to get the hell out ot town? You should be in France by now!”
“Eh. You know, I’m wondering… weren’t you an Anarchist? I remember picking you up a few times on grounds of being one.”
“SoOOOOoooo? What’s that got to do with your being suicidal?”
“Well, what’s an anarchist doing in goverment, counselor for Justice nonetheless?”
The man fiddles uncomfortably, doesn’t answer.
“I’ll tell you what, then. You’re doing it because it’s a job needs doing, and it needs a man to do it, and you’re a man. You’re a man of your word, actually. And so am I, and I swore to uphold the law - I swore, ‘everything for our country.’ And I’m a man of my word, too.”
The man sighed, “we’re a pair of idiots.”
“Yeah. Got another cig?”
I have enough stories from Jr’s deeds and misdeeds to fill a book (he switched sides several times; while being one of the guys in charge of a prisoners’ camp in Valencia went AWOL, took a ship to Barcelona to see his first kid born, returned and was imprisoned in that same camp…). But this one is recent, and it focuses on other people. It was prompted by suicidal terrorists.
"You know, those guys are nutter than nuts. I’ve known some big nuts in my time, but none who wasn’t interested in living. When we were in El Ebro, we feared those stupid Carlistas more than anything in the world, because they would do some incredibly suicidal stuff, but they never, ever, tried to get themselves killed. They wanted to live, but because they’d had Confession and believed they’d be able to get to Heaven pretty quick if they died shortly after Confession, they weren’t afraid to die. But they weren’t trying to!
One of the things they did was, we’d be in the tanks and then we’d see a red beret dashing away from under a tank and go all oh HELL, because you knew that one had laid eggs under that one tank, but you didn’t know if there were eggs under your tank. They’d take the berets, stick them in their shirts, which by then were brown like everything else there, and slink under the tanks, and leave a bundle of grenades there. Then they’d whip out the beret and stick it on and run out, and you’d see them and shit your pants, cos you wouldn’t know whether it was better to run or plug it in. Cos you see, those tanks, they had very weak bottoms, so if you were inside one when an egg hatched, you were dead. But if you ran out of your tank, then they’d shoot at you, so it was real ugly when they did that. Those guys were nuts - but compared with these morons now, they were perfectly sane!"
First of all, if I went into any kind of detail on the stories I accumulated over my 6 year stint in the US Navy It would be a Novel of epic proportions…some highlights however:
On one particular submarine voyage a few too many things went wrong. 1st, engineering had a power surge on the 400hz power bus…for those of you who don’t know, many of the boat’s crucial systems are on the 400hz lines…like navigation, fire control, sonar…etc. oh, and our forward trim pump caught fire as a result of the surge so it was chaotic for a while. So, in a nutshell we were Deaf, Dumb, blind, lost, and unable to fire a weapon for a few days. We were able to get most of our systems back up & running eventually, but I did my part every 15 minutes and checked the Magnetic compass for bearing readings for about a week straight.
On the same trip the oxygen scrubber (a very large device used to recirculate the ships air and keep it breathable) stopped working. so we were forced to burn our Oxygen Candles. Eventually we ran out of those so we just got VERY low on oxygen. Note:Typically the Earths atmosphere contains roughly 20% oxygen. we can comfortably live on 10-14% Oxygen. On this trip our O2 count got below 7%. Yes, it’s painful to have so little oxygen, you get a bad headache and your lungs hurt.
Also on the same trip we ran out of food. We had been extended on station twice and had only brought enough stores for the initial trip. Being extended once was a minor hardship considering our remaining food could be rationed out…but the second extension did us in…our last two weeks on the trip were heinous. The first thing to completely run out was the coffee, then the bread. The Galley crew (God love 'em they tried) was able to pull off meals that consisted of unleavened, nondairy biscuits and bacon grease (without the bacon) and a two ounce portion of grits…It seems nobody EVER runs out of grits in the US Navy.
I have no military experience story to tell, because of my near-military experience story that involves me standing in my underwear at the Oakland AFEES (Armed Forces Examining and Entrance Station) as the orthopedic specialist held my spinal x-ray up to the window, started counting, and when he got to the sixth lumbar vertebra said, “OK, you’re outta here.”
However, over the last 60 years we have gotten a few stories out of my dad, who flew A-20 attack bombers with the 5th Air Force/FEAF in New Guinea and the Philippines in WWII.
The A-20 is a twin-engined aircraft, which is pertinent to both these stories. They had two crew, the pilot and a gunner in a dorsal turret.
Story 1:
In New Guinea, a guy came into one of the squadron tents and asked, “Anybody here checked out in a UC-43? We got to fly some brass back to Australia.” UC-43 was the military designation for the Staggerwing Beechcraft, a single-engine biplane that could hold four people. Dad, thinking about how it would be nice to get to Australia for a break, even if it was just to Darwin, said, “Sure!” Of course, he had never flow a Staggerwing before. They got loaded up, rolled down the runway, and took off. As soon as the wheels came off the runway the aircraft veered and headed directly for the control tower, causing much consternation among the brass (and the tower). Dad was shitting bricks, too. He was so used to the torque of the two engines of the A-20 he had applied the same amount of rudder that he usually did to compensate. The lower powered single engine of the Beech didn’t need that, so once unstuck it just darted off to the side. With some fancy aerobatic flying Dad got things back under control, but had a very quiet flight to Australia, as he was keeping his head down.
Story 2:
Most of their missions were “coconut bombing,” where they would come into the target at 50 to 100 feet and strafe with their machine guns and drop parafrag bombs (a mission at 500 feet was considered a “milk run”). Often, Japanese troops in the area would lie on their back and fire their rifles in the air in the hopes of hitting something. At one time my Dad’s crew chief counted over 70 rifle-caliber holes in the aft portion of the plane–they never seemed to lead the target well enough. Except for one time. Coming off the target, one engine started losing oil because of a lucky rifle shot. It eventually seized and had to be feathered. Dad now had a few hundred miles of flight over ocean with one engine. He was sweating buckets, trimming the aircraft for the most efficiency, and listening to the remaining engine with hyperacute hearing. In the middle of this his gunner came on the intercom and asked, “Captain Stuart, are we going to make it back in time for lunch?” Dad barked out a laugh, and decided that if his gunner was unperturbed enough to ask that question, he’d be unperturbed too. So he calmed down and flew back to base without further incident.
For me, however, the best story is that after 98 combat missions he came home.
More or less, yes.
On shore commands, or most places when the ship’s not at sea, it means there are a few designated areas for smoking marked by a butt can and a sign, usually after a long and inconvenient walk to a “well ventilated” area (read: no overhead and in the windiest, rainiest spot).
Upon preview: Danalan got it there faster, cheaper, better than I did.
Motojojo: That’s one of the many reasons why I would never want to be on a Sub. Other than curiosity, with a strict “get me the hell off this boat” clause after two weeks. On top of that, why would anyone in their right mind ever want to be on a boat designed to sink?!
Well, despite not being 100% effective at least it was also designed to come back to the surface…no other ships in the Navy included that feature.
I have a copy of this posting if you’d like to have it up again.
Well I’ll be…
I’m a WWII buff and an aviation buff, and I thought I knew every aircraft that was used in WWII, but I never heard of the A-20 before.
Ignorance fought. Thanks UncaStuart
*
-trupa, *off to research the A-20
I was there at Helles Shithole Barracks,at Catterick shithole Garrison in the area of Greater shithole,which just to make things worse was way up north where the sun didn’t shine and as everyone knows the natives north of Watford gap dont wash,dress in animal skins and converse in animal grunts.
God I loathed that dump it made even Aldershot seem quite pleasant.
Mind youChowder I was there a long after you were,we didn’t wear red coats then and weren’t shipping out to fight the Zulus and Pontius was actually a qualified pilot by then.
It’s funny but after all the years I have been in the military I am having a hard time coming up with good stories. Put me in a group of guys in uniform and they start flowing. Put me in front of a computer and nothing. But I’ll try to come up with something.
In Basic Training there was this guy who had some serious issues. I have no idea how he scored even the minimum score to get in. I think he may have been autistic with maybe some other problems thrown in. He could not grasp even the easiest concepts. Shining his boots (which will now be a lost art) was beyond him. So was making his bunk. We had to help him with everything. After a little while we started to talk about the situation. Teamwork was drilled into us and helping your buddy along but did we really want this guy to be in the army with us? He just couldn’t handle it and soldiers might have to count on him. The first day we were issued weapons was scary. This guy didn’t know which way the bullets came out. Luckily the Drill Sergeants were not clueless. They realized this guy did not belong. Before we hit the day where we were at a range with bullets they pulled this guy out and started to discharge him. I felt bad for him, he was a nice kid and meant well but I knew it was for the best.
A day or so before he went home we were out in a training area. We hadn’t seen the guy in a few days while he was processing out. The Drill Sergeants knew that he was sort of our mascot and gave him the oppurtunity to say goodbye. They did this by temporarily giving him a brown round (Drill Sergeant hat). He went around for about an hour randomly dropping people (push ups). He looked like he was having the best time of his life. We never saw him again.
You’re welcome, Trupa!
It seems to me that the A-20 has always been overshadowed by its younger brother, the A-26 Invader, so there are fewer books, models, etc. However, by late 1943 there were three bombardment groups of A-20s in the Pacific: the 3rd, 312th, and 417th.
<channeling mrAru.
Point one - the 24 hour limit on O2 per the Sub Atmospheric Control Manual is 18%, regardless there would be ventilation going on.
point two - He can keep the O2 level in a boat with full crew and any riders above 18% with a candle furnace without any issues, he has done it before.
point three - the trim pump has nothing including the controller that comes off teh 400mH bus at all. Thrim pumps are all off the 60 mH system and can be operated in local control. The BCP does come off the 400 mH bus but that is just the remote, and with a hosed BCP nobody stays submerged.
I am sure other submariners will be along shortly.
</channeling mrAru >
And no doubt all of them more qualified as submariners than I. I was a CT Rider and only deployed for Special Operations missions (Circa 1990-1994).
Under normal circumstances you are correct, O2 candles would normally maintain oxygen levels…but as I said, we ran out of O2 candles. (long before the power surge from engineering)
As For ventilating…that didn’t happen until we pulled off station. We couldn’t risk detection in our area of operation.
I don’t have a good answer for the Trim pump and what Bus it’s on…but when the power surge wiped out everything on the 400hz bus, the forward trim pump billowed black smoke and had to be shut down for the duration of the trip. If it wasn’t on the 400hz bus, it’s an awful strange coincidence that it was that precise moment that it decided to burn up.
Goddamn. I just spend 20 minutes typing out the story of when I attempted to steal the Captain’s Gig. I clicked submit and got popped back to the board’s home page! Came back here and… nuttin.
Freakin’ gerbils in the Chicago Reader’s server room…
Back in the late 80s, I was a gung-ho midshipman first-class who went out on a patrol on old ballistic missile submarine. By working my ass off, I actually managed to qualify as Diving Officer of the Watch (DOOW) with a week to go before the end of the patrol.
(No, the qual was not graped off. I passed all the interviews, and was actually put on the watchbill in place of the Supply Officer, who was getting ready for a big inspection.)
Anyway, on my first watch, I was subjected to a “trim party.” :dubious:
What happened was that 10 guys or so got together, announced that they were throwing a “trim party” for the midshipman, and went up to the forwardmost part of the boat (in the torpedo room), where they sat down.
You might not think this was significant, but our sub was travelling very slow, and was perfectly trimmed (i.e. neutrally buoyant and balanced). So 10 guys equals about a ton of weight that had just moved from the crew’s mess to the forward end of the boat. Which meant that the boat took a slight down angle, which had to be counteracted by the planesmen. This might normally be overlooked, but would certainly not be missed by a hypervigilant DOOW on his first watch.
So after a few minutes, I noticed the down angle, and ordered that 2,000 pounds of water be pumped from the Forward Trim Tank (FTT) to the Aft Trim Tank (ATT).
There is a local indicator in the torpedo room for the FTT, and as soon as the guys saw the needle start dropping…they all headed for the aftmost part of the boat, back in the engine room. 
Along the way they picked up another 10 guys or so.
So my perfectly trimmed submarine went from being perfectly balanced to having 2,000 pounds of water moved aft along with 4,000 pounds of sailors. All of the sudden the planesmen were having to hold down the planes to keep from the boat from rising as the boat took on an up angle.
I then ordered 5,000 pounds or so water to be pumped forward, at which point the sailors headed forward, picking up more sailors on the way, such that a minute later the boat went from a 5 degree up angle to a 10 degree down angle, and started sinking rapidly.
Both planesmen had their planes on full up, and we were still sinking. I ordered water to be pumped from the forward trim tank to sea. We kept sinking. A few seconds later, I was forced to announce, “Officer of the Deck, out of ordered depth band.” We bottomed out about 50 feet below ordered depth before starting to rise again.
The trim party then headed aft. We took on a severe up angle. Along with all the water pumped out, we started screaming for the surface. We topped out about 100 feet or so above ordered depth, halting the rise by flooding water in like mad.
These oscillations continued for another couple of cycles. IIRC, we were oscillating several hundred feet per cycle, and I had gotten to the point where I was requesting additional speed, or permission to energize the automatic depth control system (normally only used for missile launches).
At this point, the whole trim party, now composed of about 50 people (including the XO!), trooped through the control room.
It was quite a relief, actually. Until that instant, I was sure I was going to be disqualified and thrown off the watchbill.
I went through Checkpoint Charlie a few months after the Berlin Wall came down, and had the same thought. However, by this point, a few bits of incongruous color were starting to leak in: a billboard here, a sign there. They stood out so much from all of the surrounding gray that it was jarring. It was like an outside world of forgotten color was slowly infiltrating itself into this drab, gray, monotonous landscape.
In the “useless things sailors do for the sake of tradition” catagory, once in the South China Sea our entire amphib group chaged course because a full-horizon rainbow had formed and it’s good luck to sail under one (or at least as far as you can before it disappears)
In the Phillipines, sailors would pay to have a small incision made in their scrotums, into which a BB-size ball of gold was placed, then be sutured up. I read somewhere that John McCain carries this extra ballast.
Well, what else could he say, really? I’ll bet the VIP enjoyed telling the story for the rest of his life.
