Light Weekend Reading

Here are some submarine-related tidbits that have come out in the last week or so:

1) The CO/XO and DH screening messages came out. Everyone on them is so young that I have nothing to add to the traditional "I can't believe that puppy-molester screened" conversation Submariners have. That being said, if you do have something to add, please don't use names in the comments.

2) CDR Salamander had a post about a letter sent out by the CNO directing NAVSEA 08 to "stand up a Navy-wide working group" to reduce administrative overhead. I remember the last such initiative, under ADM Boorda. I remember how there was a message from the CNO directing that one particular program (the part of the ORSE Admin requirement that required A-gang participation) be cancelled immediately. I remember how, at the next ORSE (not officially an NR program, of course, but everyone knows the score on that one), they asked me for these records, and I gave them the message from the CNO from 9 months earlier saying it had been canx'd. I clearly remember how the ORSE board member (look, I didn't capitalize it! Man, that's liberating) said he'd never heard of such a thing. Figuring this would happen, I then gave him the records, since I knew that NR would never let something as insignificant as a direct written order from the CNO get in the way of their ORSE Admin requirements.

That being said, ADM Richardson has been known to be interested in reducing unneeded admin, so we'll see if this initiative comes to anything. Heck, it might even be more successful than the clearly doomed-to-almost-immediate-worthlessness of the new "21st Century Sailor office".

3) USS Cheyenne (SSN 773) got back from a WESTPAC! Subic Bay, Pusan, Yoko, and Guam. I've seen worse sets of port visits.

4) Looks like vehicle decals for Navy bases are going to be a thing of the past as of next month.

5) Hey, we should launch a discussion about the U.S. government intercepting communications on a submarine blog! Not.

6) THE NAVY IS GETTING RID OF ALL-CAPS MESSAGES.

7) Scandal or non-event? I'm thinking that, as most submarines are commanded by O-5s and we still call them "Captain", it's not a big deal.

Update 1518 18 June: 8) A Brit officer becomes just the 2nd UK officer to earn American gold dolphins.

EB To The Rescue!

Good story from the AP yesterday about a miscalculation by Spanish submarine designers:

A new, Spanish-designed submarine has a weighty problem: The vessel is more than 70 tons too heavy, and officials fear if it goes out to sea, it will not be able to surface.
And a former Spanish official says the problem can be traced to a miscalculation — someone apparently put a decimal point in the wrong place.
"It was a fatal mistake," said Rafael Bardaji, who until recently was director of the Office of Strategic Assessment at Spain's Defense Ministry.
The Isaac Peral, the first in a new class of diesel-electric submarines, was nearly completed when engineers discovered the problem. A U.S. Navy contractor in Connecticut, Electric Boat, has signed a deal to help the Spanish Defense Ministry find ways to slim down the 2,200-ton submarine.

Being a 2x Newcon Eng, I worked with EB design guys quite a lot; the ones who were served Submariners were pretty good, but some of the other ones required quite a bit of explaining to understand how their designs translated to issues for the crew. Still, as far as I know all the boats they designed could at least make it back to the surface.

Have you ever worked with civilian submarine design engineers?

Update 0855 07 June: For any non-submariners that wander by, here's a quick and simplified primer on submarine buoyancy. Ships in general float because they displace a volume of seawater with weight greater than the weight of the ship. A submerged submarine strives for neutral buoyancy, in which the submerged submarine displaces a volume of seawater equal to its weight.

For the Spanish submarine problem, assuming it's not carrying 70 tons of extraneous equipment, the simplest solution would be to increase the volume of the boat with a new compartment that weighs 70 tons less than the volume of seawater it displaces. I suggest a win/win solution - put in a big-ass berthing compartment. It wouldn't have a lot of heavy equipment, and would give the crew lots of sleeping space. They could increase the length of the submarine by 10%, displacing about 220 extra tons of seawater, and I'm sure they could bring it in at under 150 tons. Everybody wins!

What Makes A Good Submarine CO?

Recently, a series of articles in the online edition of Time got me thinking about what makes a good CO. The articles don't directly address the topic, but they make one think about the mindset, attitudes, and morals of submarine COs. The articles are here, here, and here, for those who want to read them. An additional post by a sometime TSSBP commenter is here.

*** IMPORTANT ADMIN NOTE: It's likely that some of you will be able to figure out which former CO is being discussed. That's not the point of this post, and any comments speculating on the identity of said CO will be deleted. ***

As we all know, some COs are jerks, some are nice guys, and most are somewhere in between. We can see which type(s) are rated as most successful by the current Navy hierarchy by seeing who gets the Squadron command and eventual flag slots after their command tours. In generally, the absolute jerks and the "nice" guys don't do well -- it's the middle-of-the-road guys who are most likely to get their own flag aide to pick up their dry cleaning. My question is: Are the kind of officers we're selecting for command the right kind of COs we'd need were we to go to war?

At the beginning of WWII, the U.S. Submarine Force, to be honest, didn't do very well. Sure, our torpedoes were sub-optimal and we hadn't developed the tactics that would eventually win the war, but the existing batch of COs in December 1941 tended to be too timid and didn't press home the attack on the enemy. Only when they were replaced by young, sometimes hard-drinking and partying firebrands did we successfully wage war on the Japanese Empire.

Are we that way today? Are the "young firebrands" of today's force being passed over for command, or leaving the Navy early? Would we pay the price were we to find ourselves in a submarine war in the near future. I'm going to answer the last question first: I don't think so. Our technological supremacy for the foreseeable future (next 10-15 years) is so formidable that we'd still easily defeat any potential enemy. It just might take us a couple of weeks longer than it might if we had more aggressive COs, but we'd be less likely to lose a boat.

So that brings be back to the original question in the previous paragraph -- is the NR-dominated CO selection process and the "zero defect" policy of firing COs at the drop of a hat making us too timid in submarine operations? Have we forgotten that sometimes you "want a man with a tattoo on his dick" to do the job? Or are the people who can't live by the Navy Core Values not trustworthy enough to be given the responsibility of command in the modern world?

The original linked articles described, from one side, a CO who seems to have issues being honorable in his dealings with at least some other people. But does this mean such a person is by definition a bad CO? Or do we need COs willing to skirt the rules (of the Navy, or of decent society) once in a while? Read this study and let us know in the comments (without mentioning names! Anecdotal evidence carries the same weight whether you name the boat/CO or not).

Riding The Bow Wave

Here's a cool propaganda video from the PCU Minnesota (SSN 783) sea trials, with some dolphins riding the bow wave:


IMHO, surface OOD is the best possible watch on a submarine. I've had dolphins make a beeline to the boat from over a mile away to ride the bow wave. I found that they got bored fairly quickly with a 2/3 bell, and a standard bell was a little fast for them and they tired easily. My last surface OOD watch on the Connecticut coming into Groton, we were a little ahead of schedule, so I was able to slow down to "turns for 12" which is right in their sweet spot, and the dolphins rode the wave for about 10 minutes. A most excellent watch.

Any nominees for "best watchstation" on a submarine other than surface OOD?

Why Do People Believe Unbelievable Conspiracy Theories?

From the beginning of writing TSSBP, I consistently railed against two things: idiotic people who believe in unbelievable conspiracy theories and submarines flying "clean sweep" brooms when returning from 2 day underways for Alpha Trials. Somehow, I missed a post from the "Israel did it" 9/11 Truther website with the stunningly deceptive name of "Veterans Today" published a couple years ago that combined both elements: they claim that the "Jimmie" Carter caused the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami by firing "air guns" into the sea floor near the fault line, then bragging about it by returning from their "Alpha Trials" after a couple of months flying the broom. (They actually flew the broom on conclusion of Alpha Trials on 19 November 2004, but actual facts never stand in the way of conspiracy theorists.)

I've always been amused by those whose worldview would lead them to believe that the government could successfully plan, and keep quiet, conspiracies to deprive American citizens of freedoms just because they secretly work for either Nazi fascist oil companies or Nazi fascist Muslims (depending on which party is in charge). This leads people who apparently have enough on the ball to hold their psychoses in check long enough to get elected to public office to believe, for example, that the government staged the Boston Marathon bombings and used actors to portray the "alleged" wounded, or that President Bush let 9/11 happen apparently as part of a plot to build a gas pipeline across Afghanistan.

I'll admit I get concerned rather than amused when I see Submariners on Facebook -- men who've earned dolphins and therefore have shown that they are able to function in a fact-based world -- expressing agreement with conspiracy theories that clearly have no basis in reality. (The current favorite is that the President had a secret plan to get our Libyan ambassador kidnapped before the election so he could trade him for the "Blind Sheikh" -- as if somehow this would help the President get re-elected.)

Here's the deal... yes, it's clear the government lies to us sometimes. A good example was when we announced that the reason we had buried OBL at sea right after he was killed was to follow "Muslim practice and tradition", when it is clear to even the most casual observer that we did it to make sure we didn't have custody of the body when court buildings opened on Monday morning on the East Coast, and some lawyer would find some bin Laden family member they could represent and sue for custody of the body -- a suit they would probably win. This is the kind of lie the government can keep secret -- the ones where everyone figures they're doing it anyway, and no one would be surprised if it were to come to light. That's the reason we can keep submarine operations secret -- sure, there would be some hand-wringing by the usual suspects, who would say "I can't believe we're spying on Country Orange", but the vast majority of everyone would say "Good, we should be doing that", or "It would have been a bigger surprise if we weren't" and give a big collective yawn. That's why we don't see submarine ops on the front page of the New York Times; not because there aren't Submariners who would be willing to tell their story, but because the NYT doesn't want to deal with the national security lawbreaking implications of publishing a story that wouldn't really change anything. A story about how the government intentionally killed their own citizens and blamed it on terrorists would make a big enough splash.

Some things, like "rich people get together and talk about how they can make the world economy better for rich people like them"  would invite a mass shoulder shrug, so it's not unreasonable to believe that happens; it is unreasonable to believe that they emerge from the meeting and carry out a plan to use chemicals deposited in the upper atmosphere from airplanes to make people more docile. Other things, like killing President Kennedy or hiding alien spacecraft or packing WTC-7 with thermite or having the Navy shoot down TWA Flight 800, are things people would care about, and therefore things that couldn't be kept secret. If you wanted to do something like those things, you'd need smart people to help you do them, and these smart people would also be smart enough to 1) retain proof of what had been done, and 2) know the right people/press to go to such that they wouldn't be killed if they were going to spill the beans. At least one person involved would recognize those points, and also that they'd become a rich celebrity in the process. Conspiracy theorists can't believe this, but it's true. That's just the way the real world works.

Update 1625 06 May: Speaking of Alpha Trials and brooms, here's a pic of PCU Minnesota (SSN 783) completing her initial sea trials today. I note there is no broom visible. BZ, Minnesota!

"Submarine Training, Sir!"

So I was giving training at work today, and when I finished, I felt like something was missing. Then I realized what it was... no one had given me a Training Critique sheet to sign.

Submarine training is one of the most important things Submariners do, but the admin associated with it always struck me as a little silly. What are your favorite submarine training admin stories?

National Geographic Video On Submarines

Here's a long (50 minute) video from National Geographic on technological advances that have made submarines what they are today. Looks pretty good:


You'll have to put up with the Brit-sounding narrator calling us "sub-MARE-in-ers" rather than "Sub-mar-EEN-ers".

Happy 113th Birthday, Submariners!

In honor of the 113th anniversary of the commissioning of USS Holland (SS-1), the COMSUBPAC PAO put together a video:

50 Years Ago

Fifty years ago this morning, USS Thresher (SSN 593) got underway for sea trials following a 9 month overhaul. At 0918 the next morning, April 10th, during the deep dive, the accompanying ASR heard garbled communications over the underwater comms channel, then a sound like "air rushing into an air tank", then... silence.

129 souls were lost that day. As tragic as this was, I'm convinced that the loss of these brave men, along with the 99 men lost on USS Scorpion (SSN 589) five years later, saved many more men through the advent of SUBSAFE program. The Russians/Soviets have lost 5 commissioned nuclear boats since the Scorpion went down. Other countries have lost several diesel boats. Through the skill of American submarine crews, builders, and designers, we haven't lost any since 1968.

The men of the Thresher and Scorpion will never be forgotten by those who face the perils of operating under the waves.

Back On Line

Sorry that it's been such a long break since my last post, but I'm pretty much worthless as long as Kansas is still alive in the tournament (which we don't have to worry about any more this year). I think my beloved Jayhawks used up too much good karma in their run to the National Final last year.

In any event, here are some things that have been going on in the submarine world since I last posted:

1) The arsonist who started the fire on USS Miami (SSN 755) was sentenced to 17 years in prison. I think it should have been more, but I do like the $400 million restitution order.

2) The O-7 list came out. I recognize Captains Caudle, Crites, Kearney, and Merz.

3) Here's a decently cool video that makes it look like modern nuclear submarines can submerge quickly.


4) For any readers in Idaho's Treasure Valley, if you've ever wanted to appear in a film, here's your chance:

OPEN CALL FOR WWII SUBMARINE FILM
Students and faculty of the Film School at NNU are in the process of building a full-size mockup of the control room of a WWII submarine for an upcoming film.
The story revolves around real events that led to a serious moral dilemma on submarines on and after December 7th, 1941. The set is constructed so that it can tilt to dive and surface, raise a periscope, etc.
Former submariners are acting as technical advisers to make both the set and the script as realistic and accurate as possible.
Filming will be the weekend of April 19-21.
Unfortunately, given the historical era we’re shooting, all roles are for Caucasian males.
LEADING ROLES:
Captain Donnigan – 30 to 45 years old, skipper of the boat, an “old man” in sub service terms, intelligent, compassionate, but very much in charge
XO Spencer – 28 to 40 years old, capable, dedicated to the mission, one of the “new breed” of submariners at the beginning of WWII
Seaman Robbie Patterson – 20 to 25 years old, radio and hydrophone operator, intelligent, inquisitive, capable.
Lt. Watkins – 22 to 30 years old, Officer of the Deck (Diving Officer), in command of the crew
SUPPORTING ROLES (all are speaking roles):
Chief Grigg – 30 to 40, Chief of the Boat (COB)
Seaman Quinn – 18 to 24, helmsman and Robbie’s best friend
Seaman Mirk – 18 to 24, but looks 16, Stern Planes operator
Seaman Landon – 18 to 24, Bow Planes operator
Ensign Gates – 20 to 26, Navigator
Lookout 1 – 18 to 24
Lookout 2 – 18 to 24
Engineer – 18 to 24
The completed film will include screen credits, and will be posted on YouTube and Vimeo, along with the full screenplay from which these scenes are taken.
AUDITIONS will be held the week of April 1st in Nampa, Idaho.
TO AUDITION, send an email to alytreeide@nnu.edu with AUDITION in the subject line.

It looks like it would be a lot of fun!

One Guy Always Has To Go And Ruin It For Everyone Else

Not sure if this really happened or it's the Brit version of April Fool's Day, but check out this picture:



Here's the story that goes along with it.

Submarine Admirals Move Around

As USS Albany (SSN 753) returned from a European deployment yesterday that featured some decent port visits, they came home to the news that there will be new Admirals in two important Submarine Force jobs. From the DoD press release:

The Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert announced today the following assignments:
Navy Rear Adm. Barry L. Bruner, will be assigned as director, Programming Division, N80, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Washington, D.C. Bruner is currently serving as director, Undersea Warfare Division, N97, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Pentagon, Washington, D.C.
Navy Rear Adm. (lower half) Richard P. Breckenridge, who has been selected for the rank to rear admiral, will be assigned as director, Undersea Warfare Division, N97, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Pentagon, Washington, D.C. Breckenridge is currently serving as commander, Submarine Group Two, Groton, Conn.
Navy Rear Adm. (lower half) Kenneth M. Perry, will be assigned as commander, Submarine Group Two, Groton, Conn. Perry is currently serving as vice commander, Naval Mine and Anti-Submarine Warfare Command, San Diego, Calif.

Is this a "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss" situation, or do you think we'll see some changes in how the Submarine Force trains and operates?

Movie Review: "Phantom"

During the first few years of this blog, one of the regular features was movie reviews. I haven't been doing as many of those lately, but I figured I owed it to my readers to take one for the team and see the new submarine movie, "Phantom". I hadn't heard that much about it, and frankly my expectations were pretty low -- I really figured it would have a low level of submarine accuracy.

As it turns out, it's clear that they had an actual Submariner as a technical adviser, and they listened to him for the most part. While I don't have specific expertise on the operations of a Soviet Golf-class submarine in the late '60s, a lot of the submarine verbiage was at least semi-accurate, and the movement of crew members throughout the boat looked pretty realistic. Except for some serious issues with the concept of ordered depths during an attempted underhull, and what seemed like some illogical sequences of operation during surfacing and submerging (although who's to say how the Soviets did things on old diesel boats?) it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected.

The story itself was pretty poor. Supposedly based on the loss of the K-129 in 1968, with a script adapted from "Red Star Rogue" by Kenneth Sewell [who also wrote a book theorizing that USS Scorpion (SSN 589) was sunk by the Soviets], you have to suspend disbelief even more than normal for a Cold War tale. Ed Harris did a good job as the CO, and David Duchovny played the character he always plays -- no better, no worse than normal.

Although I went into the movie expecting to give it "the finger", I was impressed enough by the level of accuracy of submarine operations to move it up to two annoying metaphysical endings out of five.

Good News / Bad News

In good recent submarine news, USS Florida (SSGN 728) was awarded a Navy Unit Commendation for firing 45% of the TLAMs launched during the Libya operation.

And in bad but not unexpected news, we read that if the sequester takes place as currently scheduled, the 2nd submarine scheduled to be ordered in 2014 is at risk, as is work on the new Moored Training Ship. On the other hand, they'll cancel of bunch of summer Middie training, so that will free up submarine crews from being annoyed by a bunch of midshipmen.

Also, we saw last week that both the CO and XO of USS Jacksonville (SSN 699) were DFC'd mid-deployment following their collision at PD last month. The dual relief says to me that maybe the CDO was stationed when the 'scope got bent. Luckily, a frigate CO got fired soon afterward, to break the streak of three consecutive CO firings from submarines.

Bad Cruises

I've been reading with interest the saga of the cruise ship passengers on the Carnival ship Triumph, and generally not feeling too sorry for them, figuring they were just a bunch of "First World Problem" whiners. Some other Submariners had the same attitude, saying things like "on submarines, we called conditions like that 'Tuesday'" and other such things. Then, a submariner pointed out that for a boat to have the same level of problems experienced by the cruise ship people, you would have essentially had to be continuously rigged for reduced electrical with the San tanks backed up and overflowing for 5 straight days.

About 3 1/2 years ago, I posted about the worst deprivation I ever experienced on a submarine; I'll repost it here:

The "Great Topeka Food Depression" of 1992: We didn't have a Chop during pre-deployment preps, and the short-timer MSC in charge of ordering the food didn't take into account that we'd have 20 riders aboard -- the type of riders that never miss a meal (you know the type). Our last port visit before our "mission vital to national security" got cancelled, so we weren't able to pick up the stores load we were counting on after the new Chop did an inventory and figured out we were running low on food. First, we ran out of yeast, but the MS's saved the last bit and tried to grow some more. It ended up dying, but that was OK, because by then we'd run out of flour. The sugar ran out soon thereafter. During the last few weeks, we were reduced to a diet of bologna pinwheels and unsweetened jello; we drank water or "diet bug" with meals (bug juice without sugar -- horrible). When we finally pulled into Bahrain, we only had four tubes of bologna and one pathetic bag of mixed veggies left. We had made a list of the riders we were going to eat first if we got extended. Luckily, we never did run out of coffee; otherwise, I'm sure there would have been a mutiny.
Since the last port visit was canx'd, a lot of guys weren't able to pick up the various personal items they had planned to get there. As a result, a black market started up for things like candy and, especially, tobacco. A couple of smart non-smokers had bought a bunch of tobacco in San Diego before the deployment and made a killing. Eventually, that supply ran out too, and I saw the most disgusting thing I'd ever seen before -- the concept of "ABC" smokeless tobacco. ("ABC" stands for "Already Been Chewed".) Luckily, that all seemed to be used by the original owner; I don't think a market ever emerged for that particular commodity.

What's your story to put the cruise ship weenies to shame?

Diesel Submarine Debates

Here are a couple of good articles discussing the use of diesel submarines by Western Pacific nations -- an article about China's expanding diesel fleet, and a blog post discussing the effectiveness of the Australian boats. I especially liked one quote about the downside for China of sending their boats out more often:

For China one downside of all this training is that the U.S. Navy has more opportunity to practice hunting Chinese subs. This is particularly true for American subs, which are well equipped with passive (listen only) sonar and are even more effective if they have a lot of sound samples for enemy subs operating underwater or on the surface.

I've always been an advocate for our potential adversaries getting their boats out as much as possible, and as close to the U.S. as possible, for that very reason. I've also been a big fan of the "we shouldn't waste our money building diesel boats since we have such excellent nuclear boats" philosophy, but understand that others have a different opinion. It's been a while since we've had this discussion, so I figure I'd open up the floor for it again.