jedc

8 ms·

31.
by jedc 4y ago
Radio is different on a submarine, in that most of the time you're on watch, you actually can't radio anyone. :) So radio spends a lot of their time routing message traffic, preparing outgoing messages, and then a bunch of day-to
32.
by 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 i
33.
by jedc 4y ago
Oh, interesting! I thought that the sub community got all the nukes fresh from school, and the surface nukes all had a sea tour under their belt before getting sent to Power School / Prototype. You make a compelling case - OOD on a car
34.
by jedc 4y ago
My boat used to deploy to the Persian Gulf, and for many years as long as the boat spent at least a little time in certain areas, pay for that month was tax-free. A LOT of re-enlistments (with those 6-figure bonuses) were done to take maxi
35.
by jedc 4y ago
You'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
36.
by jedc 4y ago
I'm jaded because I was in charge of the ELTs division for a while, and during that time, I had one guy pop positive on a drug test (but he said he didn't take anything) and another guy submit a letter saying he was a drug user (e
37.
by 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
38.
by 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 weap
39.
by 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
40.
by jedc 4y ago
oh, man, this is so spot on! "They're also generally liars." / "God's gift to mankind, except for the dumb ones"
41.
by jedc 4y ago
ELT? I was the RCA on my boat. Had some of my notorious stories of my time on board happen when I was the RCA...
42.
by jedc 4y ago
There'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,
43.
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, oft
44.
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 bo
45.
by jedc 5y ago
There was a great documentary series about the making of Frozen 2 that shows exactly this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Unknown:_Making_Froze... I found it fascinating how the team was still developing key p
46.
by jedc 5y ago
There’s special equipment/procedures for surfacing in the Arctic. That’s another really dangerous place to operate. (Default action in a submarine emergency is to get to the surface. That’s… NOT easy when there’s ice above you that’s p
47.
by jedc 5y ago
In my case we were on the surface. Still a bad day, but we had more signs something potentially bad was about to happen. :(
48.
by jedc 5y ago
Exactly, it’s a tiny radar signature, particularly compared to its actual size.
49.
by jedc 5y ago
I personally had what we called an “ass-puckering” moment for exactly this reason once. At periscope depth in fog, huge cargo ship coming at us… it was the only time in 3 years on board I (or anyone else) had to call “emergency deep”.
50.
by jedc 5y ago
Happy injuries were just 11 people. If a submarine is submerged, it's kind of like a weird building without windows, even though it may be traveling at a pretty significant speed. If you imagine being in your own office and then sudd
51.
by jedc 5y ago
Submarines do you passive sonar extensively before going to periscope depth. There are lots of ways to figure out where contacts are, your range to those contacts, and then avoid them all. But there's no sensor that can tell you with
52.
by jedc 5y ago
1 person was killed by injuries upon impact. But there was one piece of equipment on board that normally runs for ~20-30minutes at a time. It had to run continuously until the ship came into port or the submarine would have sank and 130+ p
53.
by jedc 5y ago
Yep, just sound. And you don't even know range, you only know how strong sound is on a particular bearing. The Navy trains to do a series of maneuvers that helps you understand the range to the ships you do hear, and positions the sub
54.
by jedc 5y ago
Under the water you've got sonar, which only tells you sound (and sound pressure levels) from a particular bearing. If you're up at periscope depth you can stick a periscope up to see and other antennas. If you're on the sur
55.
by jedc 5y ago
That's not far off? Our boat grounded on a rock, and it sounds exactly what you'd think a 6000-ton steel tube going over a rock would sound/feel like.
56.
by jedc 5y ago
Possibly? There are far fewer officers on a submarine, so there's more opportunity for training. But submarines don't spend a heck of a lot of time on the surface where piloting skill matters. They stay submerged through the Str
57.
by jedc 5y ago
Sometimes, sometimes not. In the case of the boat I was on, it wasn't fatigue, it was people new to their jobs combined with some stupidity.
58.
by jedc 5y ago
In the Navy the training is invariably PowerPoint, for officers and enlisted
59.
by jedc 5y ago
Former Navy submarine officer here. This sucks, but it happens. (It happened to a boat I was on.) It could be hitting the bottom of the ocean (which nearly killed 130+ people on the USS San Francisco years ago - https://en.wiki
60.
by jedc 5y ago
"This means reacting well to the news that an executive would like to move on." -- I took this section to be talking about accepting it when an executive quits. Some people handle this really well, and others don't.

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