3 ms·
Former submariner here. Re: bunking - that's largely untrue. The majority of crew members on board do get their own bunk. But there aren't enough bunks for e
by jedc 4y ago
Former submariner here.
Re: bunking - that's largely untrue. The majority of crew members on board do get their own bunk. But there aren't enough bunks for everyone, so people have to "hot rack" (aka, share). On my boat, this typically meant 3 people sharing 2 beds - if three people that share the same watchstation are hot-racking, at least one of them has to be on watch at any given time, so the other two have a bed if they need it.
Also, a decent number (maybe 10-ish) of the beds/racks tend to be in the torpedo room. Those guys just need to be comfortable sleeping next to big underwater bombs. :)
It's changed a bit, but the thing that made everyone fatigued is that your body is used to a 24-hour day, but your work day was an 18-hour day: 3 sections of 6 hour watches.
- sparker72678 4y agoAny idea what motivated the decision to run on an 18 hour day? You mentioned the drawbacks (widespread fatigue), but there must be some (many?) benefits. I'm curious what those might be.
- jedc 4y agoThere's only enough space to have 3 sections of watchstanders on board. So then it becomes a matter of length of watches. 6 hour watches aren't too long, and match up to meals every 6 hours. It's easy/straightforward, and no one gets screwed with always having watch on the midwatch and then also running drills during the day (meaning very little sleep). 8 hour watches could be a bit long, and more problematic is that crew members would always be on the same watch: 0000-0800, 0800-1600, etc. That's potentially even more disruptive.
- sparker72678 4y agoGot it - thank you!
- krisoft 4y ago> crew members would always be on the same watch: 0000-0800, 0800-1600, etc. That's potentially even more disruptive. Does that really matter underwater? After a few days it is just as if you moved to a different time zone. It’s not like one watch would get more sunshine than the other.
- RosanaAnaDana 4y ago8 hours is a ridiculous length for something like sonar. Sonar, even if you are just steaming from one location to another, you are constantly working, thinking, checking, updating. I'm not sure how it has changed since my time, but it was exhausting, and we had to do 8's a number of times when we were short operators. For me though 6's were worse. You lose your sense of which direction 'up' is in time.
- krisoft 4y agoMakes sense. Thank you for the explanation!
- jedc 4y agoYou're not just standing watch, though. There's training (SO MUCH TRAINING), drills (SO MANY DRILLS), meals, and at least a little time for movies/relaxation. Trying to fit all this in is more complicated with 8 hour watches. (With 6 hour watches, you do all training/drills in the 0600-1200/1200-1800 time periods, and it works out easily.)
- krisoft 4y agoOh I see, i didn’t think about the extras. I thought watch means all of those things too. Thank you for the explanation!
- nradov 4y agoBack during the age of sail it was common to divide the ship's day up into seven watches with five four-hour watches plus two two-hour afternoon "dog" watches. That way no one had to stand the same watch every day. But fatigue was still a problem, especially on vessels that were short handed and only had two watch sections; crewmen were frequently punished for falling asleep on watch.
- DoreenMichele 4y agoThank you for serving. And thank you for updating my apparently inaccurate or out of date knowledge.