Submarine Sea Story (1)

I was stationed at Pearl Harbor for two years in '72/'74....USS Tautog (SSN639). Believe it or not but I was a diesel mechanic. HUGH Fairbanks-Morse ND 8 1/8" opposed piston monster. There's a picture at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Opposed_piston_engine_1.jpg of the same model engines on a boat (USS Pampanito)....she had two engines and the Tautog had one. Those were crazy days. I went there as a "lost" 19 year old and left as a 21 year old husband. Worked 14 hour days and every 3rd day a "stay on the boat for 24 hours day" duty day) when we were in port. That's when I did some really dumb youthful things that I have spent a lifetime trying to forget. ;-)

In '72, the CO made us disconnect the "starter" system (high pressure air), before we went into places we didn't belong doing things that shouldn't have been done...so there was no way the diesel could be "accidentally" started since its noise would have given us away in a second...scariest hours of my life. I remember shaking I was so scared.

I'm afraid that were it to happen NOW I would say to the captain "Please let me off the boat" if they announced we were sneaking into an enemy harbor today. I've become very cautious in my old age.

In '74 I changed my job from mechanic to Sonar Technician and that's where I learned electronics, digital electronics and "computer repair." I was "trained" about computers on a BiTran-6 trainer. http://www.iavalley.cc.ia.us/~thatcher/bitransix.jpg I don't remember much about it, except we programmed it in machine code and punch-tape. It had like 1k of memory and we were SUPER impressed with "all that memory." When I got to my next boat (USS John Adams SSBN620) our sonar computer had 64k and I remember thinking..."What are we going to do with all that memory!!!!" We used it to calculate the speed and path of sound in the water.

In my pre-married days I was a hard charger. I would work all day in port and after work was over and before we could leave the boat I would go in the head and scrub with Lava soap up to about 3 inches above the wrist bone. Then I'd scrub my head, face and hair...all this at the sink. We had to go on liberty in dress uniform (you know, the Donald Duck sailor suit? Only I wore pants.) we'd party until 0200 or 0300 and then get back to the boat and crash until 0600. (The bunks had vinyl covers that zipped up over the matrice and sheets...so you could lay on the bed and not stain the sheets from your dirty greasy bodies. We'd get up exhausted and hung-over and yet work a full day...just to do the same thing over again that night. On the third day we had to stay onboard the boat over night (called "having the "Duty"), so that was when we would properly shower, eat a decent meal and get a good night's sleep....unless you had "guard duty" from midnight until 0400. :-( In the six months between the time I reported aboard and when we went into the shipyards we were in port like 20 days. There was no alcohol allowed on the boat (Navy commandment!!!!) So when we were at sea we had to sober up and fly straight. So when we were in port we felt we had a lot of partying and drinking to make up for.

Trust me... I DO NOT miss those days.

Saturday and Sunday was "stand-down" and there was minimal work on the boat while it was in port. So if you had "duty" on Friday you would have Saturday and Sunday off and didn't have to report back to the boat until 0700 Monday morning.

I started drinking Saturday morning at like 0900 and pretty soon everything goes fuzzy. The next thing I specifically remember was being woken up at 0600 in the Forward Auxiliary Machinery Room behind the #1 Oxygen Generator, face up on the floor. My uniform was cut and ripped, my shoe laces were missing, my wallet was missing (I found it later devoid of money) and I had a HUGH bruise on my right chin/cheek. I found out later that I had gone to a strip club and got punched by the dancer when I tried to tuck a dollar bill into her g-string...from the wrong direction.

After that experience I pretty much swore off drinking hard alcohol and would rarely even have a beer. I quit drinking all alcohol in about 1978... A year before I got out of the navy.