On starships they have artificial light in different sections that are synchronized to duodenal cycles to assure continuous coverage and crew morale (except deck officers who never sleep unless they are to be mentally invaded).
The pre-letter Enterprise didn’t even have holo-decks so the submariners should have done this long ago.
Active Duty ping.
It may be a bit difficult but there’s some support for a 4 phase cycle. Wake early, sleep early, wake late, sleep late, etc.
Essentially folks have pretty restful sleep by having a long period of wakefulness followed by a short sleep followed by a short wakefulness and then another short sleep. It supposedly keeps the mind more alert upon waking and accomplishes the same level of relaxation. I heard it was more popular in the pre-industrial era when artificial lighting was introduce that allowed people to stay up past 8 or 9 PM.
It’s hard to sync to with the modern era which has folks waking post-dawn only to stay up till near midnight.
I’m retired, I sleeps when I want to.
Can’t comment on Navy subs but I did a lot of shift work in the hospital where I worked.Horrible.horrible experience for me.In addition I’ve read that there’s (recent) medical research that shows that shift workers tend to develop serious psych problems and enjoy shorter lifespans.As much as they can (in ways consistent with mission readiness) the Navy should carefully review these studies.
They hate it. Longer workday, longer study day. They see it as a way the Navy is gypping them out of a meal every day.
Yet another way Obastard screws them. He just can’t get enough of pissing off the guys working in the field.
Why are dog watches so called?
Because they are curtailed.
In the Age of Sail, watches tended to be 4 hours, with the crew broken down into either two or three watches excepting certain of the ship’s company called idlers who kept a normal schedule. Dog watches of two hours were used to shift the watch changes by two hours per day so that over time the crew duties were balanced.
And here I though the sleep schedules had something to do with subs going co-ed.
Apparently this will be at the command’s discretion...not a mandatory policy. I wonder how this will work for four section watches....8 on 24 off? I could go for that.
18 hour days were tough. There was nothing worse on my 67 day runs under water than to go to bed and wake up on the same day.
6 hours on watch, 6 hours or so “down time” and 6 hours or so sleep. Wake up and go back on watch
This happened every 3 days and made time go by a LOT slower.
But it was better than the Port & Starboard watch which was 8 hours on and 8 hours off continuous.
I worked pretty much the whole variety of watch patterns on the boat, mainly due to manpower issues. I much preferred the 6 on 12 off, 18 hour day. I credit those years of rotating sleep patterns for my ability to adapt quickly to sleep interruptions in my present day civillian life. i.e. when colicky babies didn’t understand that daddy worked second shift...