Posted on 07/11/2009 8:41:19 PM PDT by Jet Jaguar
YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan — Petty Officer 3rd Class Chad Kahl never suffered from a lack of open space while growing up in North Dakota.
When he told friends and family there that he had volunteered to live aboard a 350-foot-long metal tube underneath hundreds of feet of water, they thought he was crazy.
Kahl had done his homework on the submarine lifestyle. But as he prepared to get under way for the first time, he wondered if his friends may have had a point.
"I think everyone that goes doesn’t really know what they’re getting into," said Kahl of the USS Seawolf. "I had never been underneath water before. I was nervous. I didn’t know what to expect."
Like most sub school graduates, Kahl adapted to his surroundings.
However, not everyone is made for sub duty, says Lt. Robert Lovern, a doctor with a psychiatry background and Submarine Group Seven’s undersea medical officer.
Claustrophobia, stress, unusual working conditions and lack of privacy can all lead prospective submariners right back out of the hatch.
"What gets people is the confinement and the inability to escape," Lovern said.
All sailors who volunteer for sub duty complete a screening questionnaire at Naval Submarine School in Groton, Conn.
If any red flags pop up, they are interviewed by medical personnel.
"When I got to my first submarine, I was very claustrophobic, very nervous, very timid," said 21-year sub veteran and Seawolf Chief of the Boat Jared Hofer of Freeman, S.D. "I used to have nightmares of the boat doing things where we didn’t come back. Obviously I survived. [Now] I feel safer on a submarine than I do on the surface."
That would be a huge amount of space if it were an airplane.
No one makes a 90 day trip on an airplane though. :)
Don’t forget the Bean-o...
After living in North Dakota for 15 years, I've found I don't like large crowds or a lot of people in a confined space anymore.... Here I don't have to live with either.
Does anyone have a line on that written test, or is that classified?
ND ping
Thats why I stayed with tin cans...Yeah, we sure were considered targets...But once they took a shot, we had ways of dealing with them!!! Muwahhahahhaaahahahaaaa...
We could tell you, but then we’d have to kill you...
Best line ever!!!
I’m a zoomie. I have no idea.
http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=63670
No comment about that.
Oh yes, sea-riders who are often taken to interesting places to do unusual things in subs also get to sleep in the torpedo room. Usually on top of a Mk48. Half a ton of otto fuel, plus the (less explosive) warhead.
If anything goes wrong, you have the consolation that you won’t feel a thing.
The worst thing about diesel boats is that it takes ages getting the smell out of your hair after a 3 month patrol.
At least we here in Australia have female submariners now, so it’s not just the female civilian “specialists” on board any more. The new subs have facilities the old ones lacked.
There is no substitute when you’re designing equipment that brave men’s lives will depend upon, for actually being there on patrols, asking questions and making observations. Listening to the people who will use the kit, rather than chairbound warriors.
(In memoriam to my opposite numbers who died on the Kursk)
ping
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