Pearl Harbor Shipyarders Take Controls for Engineering Insight

Navy NewsStand ^ | 2 FEB 2004 | Kristin Ching, Commander, Navy Region Hawaii Public Affairs

[BykrBayb]

Story Number: NNS040202-05 Release Date: 2/2/2004 10:08:00 AM

By Kristin Ching, Commander, Navy Region Hawaii Public Affairs

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (NNS) -- New engineers at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard are getting behind the yokes of nuclear attack submarines, running them on the surface, diving them to 150 feet and then returning them to periscope depth, sometimes in rough seas.

While this is actually only done on the dive training simulators at the Naval Submarine Training Center in Pearl Harbor, these civilian engineers are gaining fresh insight into the systems they will maintain.

“It’s as close to getting them underway without getting them underway,” said Master Chief Electronics Technician Bob Ashton, a Shipyard regional transition manager and the prospective chief of the boat aboard USS Charlotte (SSN 766). “It’s a very efficient method of getting them exposed to the submarine environment.”

The ship control team trainer is normally used to train Sailors in basic procedures and casualties too risky to perform in real life. The trainer is a submarine control room replica on a platform which moves on a gimbal with hydraulics. It uses computer-generated surface and wave action effects to simulate at-sea ship operations.

This experience is instrumental, “especially for the younger people to understand the technical requirements,” said Pearl Harbor Shipyard Engineering and Planning Officer Capt. Chuck Doty. “There’s so little margin for error in what we do,” said Doty.

Ashton’s 23 years of service, most aboard a submarine and several in maintenance production, gives him an understanding of the important relationship between the Navy’s maintenance teams and the submarine operators.

“The whole team – from the engineer writing the paper to the engineering technician checking the tags to the worker ripping out the gear and reinstalling it, and through the certification – it’s important for everybody to understand ultimately what the end application is,” Ashton said. “The light bulb comes on and it opens their eyes. They understand they are supporting a warship and what that really means.”

New engineers who use the trainer experience simulated surface running, extreme depth and course changes, and bringing the submarine back up to periscope depth.

Sharilyn Shiramizu, a six-month Pearl Harbor Shipyard engineering technician, felt what it’s like to drive a submarine recently with the help of training center staff Chief Fire Control Technician Rolando Guyos. “It was interesting to see what goes on,” she said. “You actually experience how such slight movements as you’re driving can affect it a lot.”

Shiramizu, who works on the structural side of engineering, said the training helped her realize the importance of her job. “It makes you think twice while you’re writing a job description, especially about the safety aspects,” she said. Doty said it would be just as beneficial for mechanics who work on submarines’ huge mechanical systems to gain this experience, as well.

The program is still unofficial, but “we’re beginning to institutionalize it,” said Doty. “We intend to continue this, but we’ve got a long way to go.”

“I would certainly support something like this,” said Naval Submarine Training Center Pacific Command Master Chief David Minnich. “We want to give the best training to familiarize engineers, to give them insight into the at-sea environment.”

“If the engineer writes a better work package because they went through this, the ship’s force will have a clearer understanding of the work required, what’s going on, and the maintenance gets executed in a much more expeditious manner,” said Ashton. “The whole system gets more efficient.”

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