Hoo-rah, and welcome to my Submariner's thread. Anyone is welcome to post comments or questions, or just connect with other submariners, or fans/family/supporters of the submarine community.

A little about myself:

I am a former submariner. I joined the US Navy in December of 2001. I went through bootcamp and then NavSubScol on SUBASE NLON, Groton, CT. Once I graduated Sonar Technician A-school I was assigned to the USS Dallas, SSN 700, stationed in Groton. I served 4 years on "Big D" through 2 Med deployments. I was discharged in December, 2006 at the rank of STS2/ss (E-5, submarine warfare qualified). I am currently in the process of enlisting into the Navy Reserves, changing my rate to a BU, which is a Seabee Builder. I am a California ex-pat , now residing in Las Vegas, NV

I've always thought that being in a submarine must be incredibly scary!  Then again, all I've ever seen of submarines has been in movies, which brings me to my questions: 1) Is it always kind of dark inside them? 2) Claustrophobia?  Anyone ever get that in the submarine?  Or how about, like, "cabin fever", when you feel like you've just been cooped up for too long?

Sorry, I know those questions are kind of juvenile, but I'm sure others will have more technical questions for you.

Everyone asks these questions. Don't worry about it.

Underway, there are 3 watch sections. Each watch is 6 hours in length. There is a meal every 6 hours, to coincide with the watch rotation. 

Breakfast (0500 - 0600)  Watch relieves at 0530

Lunch (1100 - 1200) Watch relieves at 1130

Dinner (1700 - 1800) Watch relieves at 1730

Mid-Rats (Midnight Rations...2300 - 2400) Watch relieves at 2330

Underway, there are certain areas that are lighted all the time, and others that are dark all the time. It just depends on where you are and what you are doing and at what time. For instance, at sea, the Sonar control room and berthing are the only spaces that are dark 24/7 unless they are being cleaned.  The engineroom and machinery room are lighted 24/7 regardless of what is going on. Other areas are subject to light and dark dependent on ship's evolutions, time of day, submerged or PD/Surfaced.

There is litterally NO personal space. They will even come find you in your rack when you are trying to sleep. Or, if you are a junior guy and you share a rack, you might be "racked out" so the other guy can "get his i-pod". So you do what you can to keep yourself sane...study, work out, read, watch movies, play games, hang out (a lot of guys who are bored will go relieve the watch on their off-time to give breaks to the other guys on watch). There isn't a lot to do on board a submarine. Most of the free time one might have goes to qualifications anyway. New guys checking on board get handed a stack of Qual cards to be worked on. At sea is the best time to work on them since everyone is available at some time or another and no one is going anywhere. For junior guys, all free time not standing watch is devoted to quals. They get very little sleep in the process.

As far as cabin fever goes, it happens, but it's not severe. I've never seen anyone "flip out" from being cooped up on the sub. We find ways to amuse ourselves until we get to the next port. It's not as bad as most would think.

Claustrophobic people aren't allowed to serve on subs.  In all reality, it's not that tight. The passageways are about 24" wide. But they usually lead to more spacious areas, such as crews mess or the torpedo room. It's kinda like a big RV, if you can imagine.

Well, I have to get some sleep. I hope this was informative enough for you.

I gotta get to bed, but I hope this was a good start. If you have any other specific questions that I can answer for you, let me know.  

Interesting stuff...great to have you post here.

Thank you for your service!

Do you still have some 14 (?) steps to flushing the loo on modern subs? (toured the USS Cobia with my kids)

Thanks, Mom

This is cool!    I'm so glad you started this!

What is the longest period of time you've spent under water without coming up?  What's average? (is there an average?)  So if you're the sonar guy, then you are in the dark a lot.

And here's a typical AS Junkie question... how do you get mail on a submarine? LOL  Seriously though, is there any way for your families to write to you other than email (do you even have email, or do the sub instruments override other signals?)-do letter get sent to your ports in advance? 

Mom-

No, it's more like 6 now. We've modernize.  Actually, the newer boats (Seawolf and beyond) have "Flush" toilets!!!

Kristen- 

The longest I have been at sea, from port to port was 87 days. That's pretty long, but I'm sure there has been others who have gone longer. However, during this time, we were surfaced serveral times due to certain activities and whatnot, but very few people in the crew got to see or feel the light of day during those times.  Only the "Small Boat Handling Crew" who would perform at-sea personnel transfers. I was one of those lucky guys.

There is no real average. If it wasn't for the lack of space to store food, a nuclear powered submarine can pretty much stay at sea indefinatly.

As far as mail goes, we mosly rely on E-mail.  Almost every night, the ship will go up to Periscope Depth, which means just below the surface of the water, so that we can stick up the radio antenna and copy sattelite broadcasts, communicate with the "mother ship" (lol) get all our email, weather, sports, news, etc...  When we get to the next port, mail bags are usually waiting for us.  Sometimes, we will pull into a coastal area, on the surface, to pick up supplies, mail and parts, but this is not the norm. Most communication is done through email.  If a sailor is getting a piece of mail, it's usually bills or a birthday card or a magazine subscription.

Wow... they really send you bills when you're on a submarine underwater for 87 days?  That's cold...  LOL  Thank heaven you have email-does everyone on the sub generally get online regularly?  Is it a "byo laptop" arrangement or do you have MWR room down there?

It's funny, my "anysoldier" mind went right into "how could we get packages to these guys on submarines?" and skipped right over "you don't send packages of stuff to people who have to share a rack with their buddy and their buddy's iPod."  I need to think things through better before I type today. LOL

Thanks for answering all of our questions!!!!

BU2ss and Everyone Hello!

Submarines? This article came out in early January of 2005 of how an ocean floors can change.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6791600/

It referred to the ocean floor changes from earthquakes that caused the December 2004 Tsunami.

Just a few days later this happened with SSN 711 grounding:

http://www.ssbn611.org/uss_san_francisco.htm

Be sure to scroll down to the February 4th dry dock photos. The pictures makes one wonder how it stayed afloat.

truely amazing, door

Christian.....what about storms at sea....do you feel the rolling or are you to deep to even notice a storm?

ga_junkie:

If we're running "fast and deep" we don't feel it.  If we are more shallow, then we can feel the waves, and if we are at Periscope Depth, or on the surface, we're rockin and rollin, due to the rounded hull.

Kristen-

 You can still send stuff to those guys. They'd all appreciate it. You don't have to worry about the rack-sharing stuff. There is always a level of trust there and it's rare to find a thief on board. It does happen, but they always get caught. They have no where to hide, and the stolen items always turn up. Submariners need lovin too!  I'm not in the fleet anymore, or else I would accept packages to distribute.

There is not enough room for an MWR lounge. The ship has a few dozen computers hooked up to an intranet, and everyone has access to this system, with their own email account. This is how a lot of people communicate with eachother on board (leadership via email- what a joke) We don't have regular access to the internet due to security issues, since there is a lot of secret information on the ship's server. The Communications dept will download emails sent through a proxy server (via satelite) of which every sailor has an email address to. These emails are forwarded to the ship, then "distributed" by the ship's server to our individual inboxes. It takes about a day to get the email from sender to reciever just because it has to go through like 3 different systems to be routed, reviwed for unauthorized words (there are hundreds of words that might flag a message), then sent to another system, then forwarded to the ship. It's pretty complicated, but we get our email, somehow.

A lot of guys bring their personal laptops aboard, but mostly for watching movies or listening to music. We're not allowed to connect it to the ship's system due to security issues. The ship, and pretty much everything on it is classified Secret.

Thanks for all the info, Christian! Very informative. I don't think I could be on a sub - I'm not claustrophobic, but I don't really like enclosed spaces too much.

Did you have to take vitamins since you weren't getting sunlight? Did it mess up your sleep? (What little sleep you got...)

That's what I was wondering, too, Jenifer!  I don't handle a lengthy lack of sunlight very well myself.  I was wondering if our subs have special lighting in order to avoid the adverse affects of the lack of sunlight.