7 ms·

Former submariner here (on the officer side). This article is fun and largely true, but also only scratches the surface of the weird culture of US submariners.

by jedc 4y ago

Former submariner here (on the officer side). This article is fun and largely true, but also only scratches the surface of the weird culture of US submariners. Some other things to consider: * submarines deploy for 3-6 months at a time, often-times rarely pulling into ports. Imagine being stuck with 130-150 of your closest friends for that period of time in close quarters. It gets weird. * Law of Conservation of Happiness: Once you're submerged, happiness can be neither created nor destroyed, it can only be taken from others. Easy for the CO/XO to be happy: they run drills & have cleaning days for the crew. But everyone learns other crew members' weaknesses and ruthlessly exploits them if necessary. * Fatigue. I understand it's changed but when I was a submariner the boat operated on an 18-hour cycle: 3 sections of 6-hour watches. Humans aren't meant to operate on an 18-hour day, and so within a day or two of getting underway you just get into this permanent semi-fatigued state. As for me, looking back on my time I enjoyed it and learned a lot. (Maybe more importantly, I learned a lot about myself.) That said, while I was on board it was a lot more difficult experience - it's a challenging life.

SkyMarshal 4y ago
It seems perma-fatigue could be a serious problem on a warship. Any idea why the Navy doesn’t restructure the working/waking hours to better optimize crew alertness and focus?
- newsclues 4y ago
  I think it’s similar to doctors: a combination of traditional and demands of the job/flow of work based on existing process.
- Blackthorn 4y ago
  It has been a serious problem, you read in the news about some warship crash every few years! It's likely that the Navy hasn't restructured things because they simply do not need to and have no incentive to do so. We're not exactly in a peer conflict.
- vkou 4y ago
  Because until an admiral gets fired, nobody takes some minor fatigue-related mishap like a destroyer running into a container ship (killing a few sailors on board, putting the ship out of action, and causing XY million dollars in damages) seriously.
- jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
  It's a pervasive and substantial problem in the US Navy atm. The various collisions, groundings, and sabotage in recent years indicates that. The root of it is the navy is being operated at a tempo that it has insufficient ships and sailors to properly maintain. But congress and leadership keep this mess going.
  - aaronbrethorst 4y ago
    Congress authorized nearly $800 billion dollars for DOD in December. What’s an appropriate figure? https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/22840615/us-defense-spending-increase-afghanistan-withdrawal https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/22840615/us-defense-spendin...
    - ethbr0 4y ago
      Depends on how many oceans we simultaneously want to be able to fight major wars on.
  - SkyMarshal 4y ago
    I have no experience in the Navy, but I wonder if ships and subs couldn’t maintain three different operating tempos, something like Standard, Elevated, and the already existing General Quarters. Standard would be something like dividing the crew into two shifts, and the day into two 12hr blocks. One shift would be on-duty and the other off-duty during each 12hr block. For normal peacetime operations. 12hrs per day of rest time should be sufficient to prevent fatigue on long deployments. Elevated would divide the crew into three shifts, and the day into three 8hr blocks. 2/3rds of the crew would be on-duty during any 8hr block, and 1/3rd off duty. 16hrs on and 8hrs off for every crew member. For operating in hostile areas or similar. And of course there would be the already-existing third operating tempo, General Quarters, where the whole crew is awake and at battle stations, for imminent combat. Then design ships and subs around this concept, with sufficient automation for Standard to be viable with minimum possible crew, and extra redundant control systems to utilize the extra crew during Elevated and GQ (and to still function with battle damage and crew loss if necessary).
- LoveGracePeace 4y ago
  We learned in Navy boot camp, guaranteed 1 hour of sleep per day. I think it was not really a guarantee. Everything from the first day forward is from that perspective.
OzCrimson 4y ago
One story that still haunts me about the culture onboard the submarine. We were dropping the trash and one requirement is that an officer be present. I was told to go get an officer. I found the Chief Engineer sitting in his room reading his Bible. I asked if he could come and be the required officer. He said, "sure." When people saw the Chief Engineer behind me they mocked, "Hey! Couldn't you have gotten someone more senior?" I didn't know that "officer" in this role meant to go find an Ensign or Lieutenant JG, not the officer who's 3rd in command of the whole boat. Folks got a lot of laughs out of that one. Overall, though, life on a submarine is infinitely better than a surface ship. I served on a fast attack sub and a frigate. The people on a submarine help make life better because most of the jobs on a submarine are advanced and require clearances that people can't get if they're on drug waivers or dropped out of school.
- jedc 4y ago
  That Chief Engineer sounds like a good dude. (And he said "sure", so...) 100% agree that submarine life is better than a surface ship. I personally would have had a much harder time with the officer/enlisted relationship on a surface ship, in particular.
  - daenz 4y ago
    Sounds like he knew he was about to be part of this person's all-in-good-fun humiliation. Entertainment like that cannot be passed up!
    - philihp 4y ago
      Haha, exactly! Ultimately harmless and it'll make for a good story that would one day be immortalized on HN. Good judgement call on their part!
  - dctoedt 4y ago
    > 100% agree that submarine life is better than a surface ship. Maybe it's different now, but I spent a week riding an SSN as an NROTC midshipman, when I had orders to nuke school a few weeks later (I was commissioned right after first-class cruise and had already gone through The Interview with the KOG; long story). In nuke school I switched to surface, asked for and got sent to the Enterprise, and was pretty happy to be there at the center of the action with great port calls. Standing OOD underway on a carrier — the officer on watch who's in charge of the entire ship, and de facto of the task force — was the most rewarding thing I've ever done professionally, especially during evolutions such as night flight ops. And you deal with (and learn to lead) sailors of all educational levels and from all walks of life, not just the cream of the crop as on subs.
ChuckNorris89 4y ago
>But everyone learns other crew members' weaknesses and ruthlessly exploits them if necessary. This is literally my worst nightmare. Highschool bullying 2.0 except with no escape. I know for sure I'm not military material.
- jedc 4y ago
  It's really not that bad the majority of the time. However, you train yourself not to have a reaction to stuff... because if you are particularly offended by {extreme porn, seeing penises, people criticizing your favorite team, taking "your mom" jokes to heart} that's an easy button for someone to press if they get bored. Submarines are pretty unique places in that every person is pretty critical in an emergency. So while it can be brutal at times, it's also pretty collegial.
  - mwattsun 4y ago
    Again, it's not that way in general or I would have heard about it. Frankly, I'm appalled that an officer would tolerate and engage in this kind of behavior. Maybe it's a fast attack thing. In that case, I'm very glad I was on a Boomer.
  - daenz 4y ago
    How do fights and conflicts work out? Surely under the stressful conditions of a sub, people have conflict. And keeping that conflict hot can't be good for everyone. Are the personality types less prone to conflict, or is there some general way it gets resolved?
    - jedc 4y ago
      Oh, there's definitely conflict. I'm a pretty calm guy but I got in a pretty memorable screaming match with the senior most enlisted guy on the boat. But most everyone has incentives to work it out - its to no-one's benefit if people are so hung up on something they can't do their job. In my case, because of that screaming match I really earned that guy's trust (and actually my whole watchteam's trust). You do end up getting a spidey-sense for when it's too much for people, though. That quickly gets escalated to the CO/XO and people get transferred off the boat. (That's rare, though.)
alliao 4y ago
I was looking into the ventilation rate of things and not sure if it was a misprint but submarines apparently have 8000ppm of CO2 when submerged, which to me sounds insane as we know for sure 1000ppm is when it starts affecting your mood, judgements, and decision making capability..
- jedc 4y ago
  There are CO2 scrubbers on board, the crew turns them on/off to control concentrations. It's one of the things I checked before I went on every watch as OOD (officer of the deck): the CO2/O2 concentrations. (One of our weapons officers was really sensitive to CO2 concentrations and would s*t all over any OOD who let them get too high.)
  - solveit 4y ago
    I'm led to believe that the CO2 concentrations still routinely go above 2000 ppm though. Is that right?
  - CharlesW 4y ago
    I really enjoyed this Smarter Every Day episode that talks about maintaining air quality on a submarine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3Ud6mHdhlQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3Ud6mHdhlQ
    - alliao 4y ago
      that is pretty darn cool, not sure how to convert that torr to ppm though, in they video they mentioned it's partial pressure? so sounds like one is able to work out percentages therefore ppm by the reading?
      - crmd 4y ago
        To convert a partial pressure in torr (mmHg) to ppm, you divide the partial pressure by the total atmospheric pressure (both in torr) and multiply by 1 million.
  - 4y ago
lisper 4y ago
> the boat operated on an 18-hour cycle Why? That seems incredibly stupid. It's unnecessary and counterproductive and the stakes are high. So why do it?
- RappingBoomer 4y ago
  yeah, it was the same back when i was on a fast attack sub in the 1970s...and here's the fun part--2 other dudes shared my bed/cot...it's called hot racking...I sleep for 6 hours, then get up and go aft to stand watch or do maintenance, and dude #2 gets in the same cot and sleeps for 6 hrs...he then gets up and dude #3 gets in for 6 hrs...you get 6 hrs in bed per day...FTN...
  - lisper 4y ago
    I knew about hot-racking. That actually makes sense. But why not 8-hour shifts instead of 6?
  - LoveGracePeace 4y ago
    It was like that in the 80's and 90's too. When we went on a special run, nearly the entire crew would hot rack.
- iamthemonster 4y ago
  I know this doesn't answer your question but I believe it's a long-standing tradition on many navy and civilian vessels across the world. I only know mariners on oil-producing vessels in Australia but they have all talked about that 6-hour roster. Others will know more than me, but I don't believe this is unique to US Navy.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    Well, I'd imagine the 3 shifts are pretty set, due to habitable space design. So X / 3 = watch duration 24 / 3 = 8 hours, which does seem long to be kept on hair trigger while performing physically and/or mentally taxing tasks. I'd like to think the military did studies on performance with respect to watch duration. Or they could have just pulled them out of a hat. Also, it seems like they might have indeed switched to 8-hour shifts: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchkeeping#US_submarine_system_with_three_sections https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchkeeping#US_submarine_sy...
mwattsun 4y ago
> Law of Conservation of Happiness: Once you're submerged, happiness can be neither created nor destroyed This is an example of the weirdness you were referring to because this is something your crew came up with to cope. Every crew has it's own coping strategy and culture, which I learned when we combined Gold and Blue crew before heading into dry dock. The nukes on my Gold crew were almost universally nice and supportive of each other, save for laughing at the guy who had his girlfriend break up with him at 40 words per week. edit: I was enlisted, not officer but nukes at least blurred a lot of those lines
- x-shadowban 4y ago
  I worked with an ex submariner in the oilfield and he was fond of this phrase, must be a submarinerism
  - mpyne 4y ago
    We certainly had that phrase on my boat.
    - leoc 4y ago
      In the form of "the law of the conservation of misery" it was apparently a favourite saying of Steve Jobs' not-always-loved subordinate manager Bob Belleville https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Discovered_Loops.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor... , and sure enough Belleville had apparently been in the US Navy: https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=The_End_Of_An_Era.txt&sortOrder=Sort+by+Date&characters=Bob+Belleville https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...
  - mwattsun 4y ago
    I was based out of Holy Loch, New London and eventually the yard at Newport News. Never heard it, so maybe it was a WestPac saying
idontwantthis 4y ago
What’s it like getting sick on a submarine? Can you quarantine or do you sometimes just have people bringing vomit buckets to their stations?

by jedc 4y ago

SkyMarshal 4y ago

It seems perma-fatigue could be a serious problem on a warship. Any idea why the Navy doesn’t restructure the working/waking hours to better optimize crew alertness and focus?

newsclues 4y ago
I think it’s similar to doctors: a combination of traditional and demands of the job/flow of work based on existing process.
Blackthorn 4y ago
It has been a serious problem, you read in the news about some warship crash every few years! It's likely that the Navy hasn't restructured things because they simply do not need to and have no incentive to do so. We're not exactly in a peer conflict.
vkou 4y ago
Because until an admiral gets fired, nobody takes some minor fatigue-related mishap like a destroyer running into a container ship (killing a few sailors on board, putting the ship out of action, and causing XY million dollars in damages) seriously.
jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
It's a pervasive and substantial problem in the US Navy atm. The various collisions, groundings, and sabotage in recent years indicates that. The root of it is the navy is being operated at a tempo that it has insufficient ships and sailors to properly maintain. But congress and leadership keep this mess going.
- aaronbrethorst 4y ago
  Congress authorized nearly $800 billion dollars for DOD in December. What’s an appropriate figure? https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/22840615/us-defense-spending-increase-afghanistan-withdrawal https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/22840615/us-defense-spendin...
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    Depends on how many oceans we simultaneously want to be able to fight major wars on.
- SkyMarshal 4y ago
  I have no experience in the Navy, but I wonder if ships and subs couldn’t maintain three different operating tempos, something like Standard, Elevated, and the already existing General Quarters. Standard would be something like dividing the crew into two shifts, and the day into two 12hr blocks. One shift would be on-duty and the other off-duty during each 12hr block. For normal peacetime operations. 12hrs per day of rest time should be sufficient to prevent fatigue on long deployments. Elevated would divide the crew into three shifts, and the day into three 8hr blocks. 2/3rds of the crew would be on-duty during any 8hr block, and 1/3rd off duty. 16hrs on and 8hrs off for every crew member. For operating in hostile areas or similar. And of course there would be the already-existing third operating tempo, General Quarters, where the whole crew is awake and at battle stations, for imminent combat. Then design ships and subs around this concept, with sufficient automation for Standard to be viable with minimum possible crew, and extra redundant control systems to utilize the extra crew during Elevated and GQ (and to still function with battle damage and crew loss if necessary).
LoveGracePeace 4y ago
We learned in Navy boot camp, guaranteed 1 hour of sleep per day. I think it was not really a guarantee. Everything from the first day forward is from that perspective.

OzCrimson 4y ago

One story that still haunts me about the culture onboard the submarine. We were dropping the trash and one requirement is that an officer be present. I was told to go get an officer. I found the Chief Engineer sitting in his room reading his Bible. I asked if he could come and be the required officer. He said, "sure." When people saw the Chief Engineer behind me they mocked, "Hey! Couldn't you have gotten someone more senior?" I didn't know that "officer" in this role meant to go find an Ensign or Lieutenant JG, not the officer who's 3rd in command of the whole boat. Folks got a lot of laughs out of that one. Overall, though, life on a submarine is infinitely better than a surface ship. I served on a fast attack sub and a frigate. The people on a submarine help make life better because most of the jobs on a submarine are advanced and require clearances that people can't get if they're on drug waivers or dropped out of school.

jedc 4y ago
That Chief Engineer sounds like a good dude. (And he said "sure", so...) 100% agree that submarine life is better than a surface ship. I personally would have had a much harder time with the officer/enlisted relationship on a surface ship, in particular.
- daenz 4y ago
  Sounds like he knew he was about to be part of this person's all-in-good-fun humiliation. Entertainment like that cannot be passed up!
  - philihp 4y ago
    Haha, exactly! Ultimately harmless and it'll make for a good story that would one day be immortalized on HN. Good judgement call on their part!
- dctoedt 4y ago
  > 100% agree that submarine life is better than a surface ship. Maybe it's different now, but I spent a week riding an SSN as an NROTC midshipman, when I had orders to nuke school a few weeks later (I was commissioned right after first-class cruise and had already gone through The Interview with the KOG; long story). In nuke school I switched to surface, asked for and got sent to the Enterprise, and was pretty happy to be there at the center of the action with great port calls. Standing OOD underway on a carrier — the officer on watch who's in charge of the entire ship, and de facto of the task force — was the most rewarding thing I've ever done professionally, especially during evolutions such as night flight ops. And you deal with (and learn to lead) sailors of all educational levels and from all walks of life, not just the cream of the crop as on subs.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago

>But everyone learns other crew members' weaknesses and ruthlessly exploits them if necessary. This is literally my worst nightmare. Highschool bullying 2.0 except with no escape. I know for sure I'm not military material.

jedc 4y ago
It's really not that bad the majority of the time. However, you train yourself not to have a reaction to stuff... because if you are particularly offended by {extreme porn, seeing penises, people criticizing your favorite team, taking "your mom" jokes to heart} that's an easy button for someone to press if they get bored. Submarines are pretty unique places in that every person is pretty critical in an emergency. So while it can be brutal at times, it's also pretty collegial.
- mwattsun 4y ago
  Again, it's not that way in general or I would have heard about it. Frankly, I'm appalled that an officer would tolerate and engage in this kind of behavior. Maybe it's a fast attack thing. In that case, I'm very glad I was on a Boomer.
- daenz 4y ago
  How do fights and conflicts work out? Surely under the stressful conditions of a sub, people have conflict. And keeping that conflict hot can't be good for everyone. Are the personality types less prone to conflict, or is there some general way it gets resolved?
  - jedc 4y ago
    Oh, there's definitely conflict. I'm a pretty calm guy but I got in a pretty memorable screaming match with the senior most enlisted guy on the boat. But most everyone has incentives to work it out - its to no-one's benefit if people are so hung up on something they can't do their job. In my case, because of that screaming match I really earned that guy's trust (and actually my whole watchteam's trust). You do end up getting a spidey-sense for when it's too much for people, though. That quickly gets escalated to the CO/XO and people get transferred off the boat. (That's rare, though.)

alliao 4y ago

I was looking into the ventilation rate of things and not sure if it was a misprint but submarines apparently have 8000ppm of CO2 when submerged, which to me sounds insane as we know for sure 1000ppm is when it starts affecting your mood, judgements, and decision making capability..

jedc 4y ago
There are CO2 scrubbers on board, the crew turns them on/off to control concentrations. It's one of the things I checked before I went on every watch as OOD (officer of the deck): the CO2/O2 concentrations. (One of our weapons officers was really sensitive to CO2 concentrations and would s*t all over any OOD who let them get too high.)
- solveit 4y ago
  I'm led to believe that the CO2 concentrations still routinely go above 2000 ppm though. Is that right?
- CharlesW 4y ago
  I really enjoyed this Smarter Every Day episode that talks about maintaining air quality on a submarine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3Ud6mHdhlQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3Ud6mHdhlQ
  - alliao 4y ago
    that is pretty darn cool, not sure how to convert that torr to ppm though, in they video they mentioned it's partial pressure? so sounds like one is able to work out percentages therefore ppm by the reading?
    - crmd 4y ago
      To convert a partial pressure in torr (mmHg) to ppm, you divide the partial pressure by the total atmospheric pressure (both in torr) and multiply by 1 million.
- 4y ago

lisper 4y ago

> the boat operated on an 18-hour cycle Why? That seems incredibly stupid. It's unnecessary and counterproductive and the stakes are high. So why do it?

RappingBoomer 4y ago
yeah, it was the same back when i was on a fast attack sub in the 1970s...and here's the fun part--2 other dudes shared my bed/cot...it's called hot racking...I sleep for 6 hours, then get up and go aft to stand watch or do maintenance, and dude #2 gets in the same cot and sleeps for 6 hrs...he then gets up and dude #3 gets in for 6 hrs...you get 6 hrs in bed per day...FTN...
- lisper 4y ago
  I knew about hot-racking. That actually makes sense. But why not 8-hour shifts instead of 6?
- LoveGracePeace 4y ago
  It was like that in the 80's and 90's too. When we went on a special run, nearly the entire crew would hot rack.
iamthemonster 4y ago
I know this doesn't answer your question but I believe it's a long-standing tradition on many navy and civilian vessels across the world. I only know mariners on oil-producing vessels in Australia but they have all talked about that 6-hour roster. Others will know more than me, but I don't believe this is unique to US Navy.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  Well, I'd imagine the 3 shifts are pretty set, due to habitable space design. So X / 3 = watch duration 24 / 3 = 8 hours, which does seem long to be kept on hair trigger while performing physically and/or mentally taxing tasks. I'd like to think the military did studies on performance with respect to watch duration. Or they could have just pulled them out of a hat. Also, it seems like they might have indeed switched to 8-hour shifts: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchkeeping#US_submarine_system_with_three_sections https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchkeeping#US_submarine_sy...

mwattsun 4y ago

> Law of Conservation of Happiness: Once you're submerged, happiness can be neither created nor destroyed This is an example of the weirdness you were referring to because this is something your crew came up with to cope. Every crew has it's own coping strategy and culture, which I learned when we combined Gold and Blue crew before heading into dry dock. The nukes on my Gold crew were almost universally nice and supportive of each other, save for laughing at the guy who had his girlfriend break up with him at 40 words per week. edit: I was enlisted, not officer but nukes at least blurred a lot of those lines

x-shadowban 4y ago
I worked with an ex submariner in the oilfield and he was fond of this phrase, must be a submarinerism
- mpyne 4y ago
  We certainly had that phrase on my boat.
  - leoc 4y ago
    In the form of "the law of the conservation of misery" it was apparently a favourite saying of Steve Jobs' not-always-loved subordinate manager Bob Belleville https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Discovered_Loops.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor... , and sure enough Belleville had apparently been in the US Navy: https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=The_End_Of_An_Era.txt&sortOrder=Sort+by+Date&characters=Bob+Belleville https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...
- mwattsun 4y ago
  I was based out of Holy Loch, New London and eventually the yard at Newport News. Never heard it, so maybe it was a WestPac saying

idontwantthis 4y ago

What’s it like getting sick on a submarine? Can you quarantine or do you sometimes just have people bringing vomit buckets to their stations?