Suckin' Rubber
Saw this picture over at NavSource, and it reminded me of one thing that I don't miss about submarines:
It's a picture of the Ship's Control party of USS Nebraska (SSBN 739) during some sort of drill requiring EABs (probably a fire drill). One of the things I hated most was coming to PD while wearing an EAB -- you really couldn't see out the 'scope at all, plus you got maybe 1 1/2 revolutions before you ran out of EAB line and you had to reverse direction. It's definitely something for the younger guys to do. (One of the best things about being Eng was that I was almost always a drill monitor, so I hardly ever had to wear the EABs.)On another, more serious note, the NavSource site recently added some great drawings and pictures of the older pre-Holland submarines with lots of great background information. Boats they have there include American Turtle, Alligator, H. L. Hunley, and Intelligent Whale. Some good stuff for submarine buffs!
posted by Bubblehead at 6:13 AM
7 Comments:
The only thing better than sucking rubber was hearing the 1MC for a nuke drill (high chlorides, hot bearings, etc).
Of course in Sonar we just hold the EAB up to our faces as we make 27MC reports to keep everyone fooled...
Immediate action: Roll over and snuggle up with the blanket while listening to the nukes bitch about having another drill set.
5/15/2006 3:07 PM
What's that type of EAB they are wearing? I haven't seen that one yet, looks like it has a new voice amplifier?
Interesting, but sucking rubber, well, it sucks.
My very last TRE drill as a Dive? Fire in radio/spreads to fanroom, at night, and sucking rubber while rigged for black and emergency ventillating....LOL, I don't miss that at all!
5/16/2006 1:37 AM
when i was a nuke shift test engineer, i was assigned to a boat on the waterfront going through a restricted availability. with the nukes in shiftwork, the command decided to hold drills ... while we were performing hydrostatic tests on several piping systems! they manned a full condition II watchbill int he spaces and held drills. like High Airborne drills that required the crew to don eab's. that was the most insane thing i'd ever seen. and the chief test engineer let the ship's engineer bully him into it. the entire joint test group should have been shitcanned for that. not only were the poor watchstanders having to respond to the drill, in rubber, they also had to monitor very shakey and dynamic plant conditions during a test. the crew conspired, yes that is the right word, conspired to fail their ORSE coming out of the availability, just to get back at the command. that's hard core.
but what i thought was the most telling point during the drills was that the feed station watch would cup his hand over the mouthpiece and do the fake "darth vader" breathing and talking trick we all learned as young nukes. said he was too short to be playing silly reindeer games, and the drill monitors never once dropped down to amr2ll to see what was going on there.
that was one hurting submarine. i'm glad i didn't have to go to sea on her, because that was one of the most unhappy crews i've ever worked with.
they called the engineer "wingnut" to his face. put wingnuts everywhere they could, filled his dress sword scabbard with wingnuts, etc. he never figured out that in enlisted sailor talk, wingnut meant "dick with ears".
5/16/2006 3:16 PM
uh, joel. just curious. did any of your young lads ever call you wingnut? or dweeee?
just wondering!
ping
5/16/2006 3:18 PM
Bo -- Actually, I'm one of those guys who never attracted nicknames; never had one until I was "Eng", and I'm pretty sure I wasn't ever called anything else. I was one of the cool Engineers...
5/17/2006 11:41 PM
One of the benefits of running ORSE workup fire drills until 1130 in the goddamn evening is that, sometimes, it's dark enough for the OOD to get away with energizing LLLTV and turning the scope around while leaning comfortably against the conn handrail. Ah the good old days...
5/18/2006 9:19 PM
Worse than drills back in the engineering spaces running back and forth with EABs with short little 6 foot hoses on them was pulling on the fire/steam suit and OBA. Yeah you didn't have to look around for a connection but you were sweating like a pig and climbing ladders and going through nice tight hatches....
5/30/2006 5:49 PM
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