Getting Underway

[Subdeacon Joe]

A Facebook find:

 

Getting underway in a Submarine is more than a matter of starting engines, untying lines, and generally swaggering about like we know what we’re doing.

“Cast off all lines!”

The order came from the bridge, but not directly to we the aft linehandlers, it came via sound powered phones.  One of our contingent donned the chest plate and headphones.  His task, in submarine fashion, is to say everything twice - once back on the phones to verify he heard correctly, and then directly to our man in charge.  

The Man in Charge repeated the command, first to the phone talker, then to the rest of us.  Linehandlers on the pier lifted the mooring lines from their pierside cleats, and we, the men of line 3, pulled the line in as smartly as we could, one man feeding it carefully down into the line locker hidden in the deck, two men trying to feed it to him faster than he can put it away.  For submariners, there is nothing that can’t be turned into a contest.

There is a single moment - different depending on where you’re at in the boat, when you can sense the subtle movement of a craft floating freely on the water.  A sailor adapts by an equally subtle shift in mentality, suspending that curious land-based comfort that terra firma is absolute.  Every step contains an acceptance of uncertainty.  Each sailor’s adaptation depends on their experience and the ability to conceive a world of relative position.

When once beyond the protection of harbor, the first real waves of the sea begin to slosh the boat around, and inevitably stuff begins to fall out of where it was stashed.  Modern Submarines are unforgiving topside (on the surface). Quickly thinga are re-stowed, but it is too late.  The XO, wherever he is in the boat, heard it.  The Chief of the Boat heard it.  And if the Skipper didn’t hear it, hell, he will hear about it soon enough from the other two.  But there’s no time now, he’s got a ship to dive.

“Officer of the Deck, Submerge the Ship”

The diving officer sounds the diving alarm, barks orders to his control team, and the announcement goes out, “Dive!”  Dive!”.

Under control of the Chief of the Watch at his Ballast Control Panel, vents open topside, and a plume of air and mist erupt from each hole as water forces its way from below into the ballast tanks, cocooning the pressure hull with a blanket of seawater.  But the only person that can see it is the OOD (Offier of the Deck) and he calls out verification as he watches through the periscope.

Gradually, the swaying of the boat in choppy waters subsides.  If you think about it - and it’s usually better not to – the world has just turned upside down and 3-dimensional in a different way than on land.  And it is here that we must begin our training and preparation as a war craft, able to silently ply the depths to gain tactical advantage.  We must maneuver with skill, of course.  But we must do it silently.

It is at this moment that the XO takes especial pleasure in rattling everyone’s cage, so to speak.  The COB Positions himself in berthing. XO occupies the engineering spaces, and the captain begins giving orders for depth change and course change.  

But he doesn’t order gentle turns.  No, we have commenced one of those invaluably destructive exercises known as Angles and Dangles.  Its gonna be rough for a little while.

With the first sharp dive, bug juice spills out the top of the overfilled dispensers in crews mess.  A pot of beans and weenies is tipped onto the deck of the Galley.  Hard to port now, the few who climbed into their racks getting ready for their next watch are ejected if their rack is on the starboard side of the passageway.  Soon the port side sailors are hanging on to stay off the floor.  A random wrench falls in the pump room, and somewhere an A-ganger thinks, “so THATS where I put that”.  Then the rest of the bag clanks onto the floor.  Books fall from an unsecured shelf in sonar, and the Sonar Sup curses at no one in particular.  Men who have no immediate task take to standing upright - its harder than you think - leaning with the hard angles cackling with glee at the challenge.  Submariners can turn anything into a contest.  Those left not dealing with some personal catastrophe of planning and stowage walk about the boat, checking spaces for leaks, for things out of place, or about to be.  A good dive sees dinner served on time by a happy cook.  A bad dive... well, there’s a million ways to have a bad dive.  Just don’t open the door to Sonar too fast, they’re still picking up books off the floor in there

- Glenn Roesener

[Trailrider #896]

I would suppose the three words that strike terror into every submariner, and makes for a lot of appeals to Heaven are..."Torpedo in the water!" 

[Pat Riot]

12 minutes ago, Trailrider #896 said:

I would suppose the three words that strike terror into every submariner, and makes for a lot of appeals to Heaven are..."Torpedo in the water!" 

Yeah but I’ll bet that 4th word really brings it all together.