♪♫ "Boys In The Back Ordered Bench Spares" ♫♪
As occasionally happens, I recently got an E-mail from a screenwriter asking about some submarine trivia for a screenplay he was working on, and it got me thinking about supply shortages on the boats.
I was E-Div Officer (concurrently with being RCA) during the pre-deployment workups on USS Topeka (SSN 754) back in '92, and I found that the most important thing for E-Div, supply-wise, was to ensure we had enough spare parts on board for the washer and dryer. Of course, the standard loadout only provides basically one of each spare part for those vital pieces of equipment, so pretty much every boat on the waterfront left with 3 or 4 times the allowed allotment in the form of "bench spares". At the time, I realized this only contributed to the larger problem -- load lists were based on how many parts each boat ordered, and since the boats didn't have to order any additional parts since they were carrying them "off the books" as bench spares, the system never got updated. Still, since I didn't want to get yelled at in the middle of the deployment because the CO couldn't get his knickers washed, I decided not to take a stand and do the right thing, so I got us loaded up with extra spare parts.
What are some of your favorite supply shortage stories?
posted by Bubblehead at 7:34 AM
54 Comments:
For some reason the SKs (now LSs) didn't have an extra towed array cable onboard, so we had to reel it in, cut out the bad part, and splice it back together - oh, and the TLTA handling system was already borked, so we kinda needed it. Worked out in the end, though.
4/16/2010 8:04 AM
A boat in my squadron ran out of toilet paper about 2 weeks before return to port. Kimwipes disappeared shortly thereafter and paperback novels were in high demand, albeit not for reading.
OldCOB
4/16/2010 8:05 AM
F'ing Peanut Butter!
6 weeks into our 6 month deployment we ran out of peanut butter. We eventually ran out of most everything else, (which was expected), but peanut butter!?!? When we pulled into port 2 months later all we could get was some crappy European peanut butter that was just nasty.
Never let the Chop live that one down.
4/16/2010 8:46 AM
In the sixties, my Sub needed an additional mooring line. The Supply system placed the item on back order. The boat across the pier laid out their new mooring lines before stowing them. During the night before our underway, this mooring line disappeared. The resulting JAG invistigation concluded that "since the submarine mooring line was a unique item and could have only been taken by another submarine crew, there was no loss to the US government and no blame. Case Closed." Did I mention that the needed mooring line appeared in the line locker during the topside rig for dive inspection. No questions asked or answered.
4/16/2010 9:26 AM
Worst I ever heard of was from an ELT on the Sam Houston after SSN conversion. Seems they got extended on station and by the time they got back to Yoko, all they had left was green bug juice mix, three-bean salad, flour, and yeast. They had been like that for almost two weeks...green bug and three-bean salad sandwiches. I know I would have looked like a concentration camp survivor after that underway.
4/16/2010 10:18 AM
A T-hull out of K-Bay almost totally ran out of coffee. The fate of the MSCS was tragic because he had serious personal problems that cost him much more than any administrative ass wooping.
4/16/2010 10:26 AM
On the Nevada, we ran out of laundry detergent about halfway through a patrol. Fortunately, Supply department was able to feel some nuclear pain when the CO held a critique. That was probably the worst.
4/16/2010 10:29 AM
Ice Cream! On USS Shark, I could never keep enough of that stuff on board....
4/16/2010 10:48 AM
"For some reason the SKs (now LSs) didn't have an extra towed array cable onboard"
So the SK(StoreKeeper) rate has changed to LS rate? What the heck is an LS? Logistics Slut?
4/16/2010 11:04 AM
During the first of two 90+ day runs on uss pogy in 1982, we ran out of CO2 for the coke machine after only two weeks. The CO (then cdr archie clemmons) was not amused. Needless to say, but there was an "abundance" onboard for the next run
ex a-ganger
4/16/2010 11:06 AM
I knew an FTC who spent an entire pre-underway night soldering in a canabalized (no spares anywhere) circuit board in the MK 19 Weapons Control Panel in the torpedo room because he couldn't shoot any tube. He thought this board was the cause of an interupted firing signal from fire control. As the sun rose, he tested the repair and it still didn't work. Since the ship was essentially defenseless and we were late for underway, the CO mentioned that it might be a good time to call for some help from the tender. An FT2 came down right away, flipped a switch on the MK 22 Weapons Simulator and fixed the problem instantly. Squadron wanted the exhausted chief fired, keel-hauled and flogged, but the squadron TMC stepped-in to save his ass. The lessons were: chiefs can be wrong sometimes, always canabalize as the last resort and never for troubleshooting purposes!
4/16/2010 11:15 AM
I once pulled a contactor out of the Number 5 water heater (ERUL) to repair the O2 generator while underway.
4/16/2010 11:15 AM
Let's see: I remember running out of coffee about three days before ORSE. ERUL walkways by MS3&4 were lined with once used coffee grounds that were drying in order to become twice, thrice, and more used.
I also remember taking over as the RPPO and getting told to verify all the SSMG bearing change gear. I found only the U-bolt. I had to have everything fabbed new, as you couldn't even order them.
Lastly, hey Joel - you were a former E Div Officer? Did you get your farewell Fluke?
4/16/2010 11:31 AM
I recall the coffee machine on the crews mess breaking one day. After hours of building a new timing unit I never again made fun of a nuclear trained personnel on that boat again.
We also had to fly a hard drive from Guam via commercial air before a deployment. They had the only replacement for our fire control system.
Hours before an under weigh we had a console break. As our fearless 2nd class Petty officers raced to the museum to obtain a replacement part. They cannibalized a display unit and raced back with just enough time to get the console running before we embarked on a long under weigh.
When you have the last weapons system in the fleet it always gets interesting procuring simple little things. The Mk1 fcs uses a paper tape punch for various reasons. I would like to thank the USS Houston for that roll. you guys are still my hero.
4/16/2010 11:42 AM
Two stories. One boat ran out of salt, and ended up evaporating seawater and pulverizing the salt, pouring it into salt containers. It does NOT taste the same by any stretch.
My first boat had massive SSMG brush wear problems. We were literally rebrushing machines every other day. This took a huge toll on our supply of filters, to the point that we were shutting down an SSMG each watch and removing the filters, using a fabric brush on a vacuum cleaner to clean them off, and put them back in. The worst part of this was the sheer amount of carbon dust that ended up on the AEA. I sure hope carbon dust isn't discovered to be carcinogenic if ground into your skin, since I spent nearly that entire patrol with ashen-gray skin.
4/16/2010 11:58 AM
Supply stories. I could go on for quite a while.
I will start with washer and dryer parts. As Joel has stated, because everyone always works around the system, allowance quantities never get updated. Everyone becomes sensitive to the shortages that they have lived through (TP, butter, laundry detergent, etc...). During preparations for deployment while in command I made it a point to ensure that we had adequate washer and dryer parts onboard. My Chop tried to make the system work, but some desk jockey at SUBPAC (who had probably never been u/w with 120 of his closest friends with a broken washer) refused to approve the requests. It took way more energy than it should have, but we got got most of what we wanted on board before deploying. Of course no sooner than getting as far as possible from homeport, the washer broke and the part that we needed was one that we did not have. For what it cost to ship that ten dollar part to us the entire submarine force could have been stocked with all of the repair parts for the washer and dryer.
This is what you get when you try to run a modern force with an antiquated supply system.
4/16/2010 12:17 PM
Washer parts were easy to come by in the early 90's. They were only a quick trip over to Charleston Naval Shipyard away, courtesy of one of the myriad of SSBN's being decommisionned. We stocked up on nearly every part to rebuild the washer and dryer, both used and brand new parts. I personally had an entire washer controller head stashed in the CPO quarters hanging clothes locker, on the deck.
4/16/2010 12:21 PM
I used to take my own Smuckers Strawberry Preserves. Made me a popular dude. But we never ran out of peanut butter or coffee.
4/16/2010 12:23 PM
We pulled into Holy Lock in '85 with nothing left to eat but ham and pancakes. As I recall, we'd been eating ham and pancakes for days, if not weeks, before we pulled in. I swear we would still be out there if the chop had not reported to the skipper that he had just personally opened the last can of coffee on board.
Joe Alferio
4/16/2010 12:28 PM
Since the discussion has branched out to food shortages, the best food shortage story I have occurred on a WESPAC deployment with SEADRAGON in the mid sixties. We fortunate to have two master bakers on board as cooks. For two and one half months the crew was treated to sticky buns that melted in your mouth and bread as light as a feather. Some members would take a whole loaf of fresh bread and a large stick of butter and consume same during the evening movie. Well, the CO held a zone inspection of the supply spaces and discovered that there was just two days of flour left with two weeks left on the atsea period. Bread and sticky buns, etc. went on short rations for those two weeks. Needless to say, we really loaded out the flour when in port. There was also the time the only meat we could get was sides of Kobe beef from the Air Force Officers Club at Kadina Air Base in Okinawa - but that is another whole story.
4/16/2010 1:11 PM
Major morale problem on an FBM early 1960's: ran out of CHUNKY peanut butter, the soup-down must, at four weeks. Plenty of smooth peanut butter and canned Planters peanuts, so mess staff spent two four-hour watches chopping peanuts and stirring them into the smooth.
4/16/2010 1:14 PM
What the heck is an LS? Logistics Slut? I was going for "Lazy Sh!t", but to each their own.
We had an 8K that ate Low Pressure Brine Pumps, about one every three months for a year. Heading out on Mission 2004 and knowing the history of both the 8K and the length of the previous mission I, as MPA, endeavored to obtain a spare. Supply shut me down instantaneously; we had already burned up the PSNS mothball fleet's supply; the Squadron engineering shop located one in Guam which was flown in two days before underway. The PSNS riggers helpfully concocted a believable WAF and we strapped down my insurance policy forward of the R-114s. Where it sat. For the entire mission. The previously installed LPBP worked like a champ. Typical.
@Annon 11:42: a fellow member of the Square Pig club?
-LT L
4/16/2010 1:40 PM
An over abundance story; In Pearl the unit of issue for flour was 1 one pound bag. In Guam the unit of issue was 1 ten pound can. The Chop didn't figure it out, so we ended up loading thousands of pounds of flour into the ER (ten times normal). Turns out we ended up using it all in the ninth month of our six month deployment, but that is a different story.
4/16/2010 1:52 PM
Here's Three:
1) We went on deployment with 115 people and 104 EAB's :(
2) We once CASREPed for a flour mixing bowl.
3) WestPac resupplying stores was dicey, so we would raid the commissary. We had those big boxes of Captain Crunch on the tables and ate them like little kids. We also kept crab legs for special occasions, until we ran out of food and had crab legs breakfast, lunch and dinner for a week. I was sweating grease.
4/16/2010 1:58 PM
nhsparky:
I was TAD on that deployment, I believe...I remember an AOW and an AEF almost coming to blows "debating" who got to dive the buttkits in Control...1 unfiltered Pall Mall was going for $1...and I remember a disastrous spaghetti night in which the MSs used ground-up pepperoni in the sauce for meat...the smell was horrible, and pretty much everyone had an attack of the GIs...
4/16/2010 4:12 PM
Right now its RAM tags! Supposedly there are none on the Island, and being in an Avail makes it kinda tricky. We are almost to the pont of Photocopying them.
4/16/2010 5:09 PM
Once upon a time: U/W in the western pacific. My buddy was the AEA, his EMC was the section's EWS. The two did not get along at all and EMC was constantly berating the AEA for something. One topic of choice was burned out lamps in the ER. In an inspired fit of malicious compliance, the AEA went around and re-lamped everything that looked to be dimmer than a brand new bulb. Of course this used up almost the entire supply of spare bulbs. There were more than a few dark spots in the ER by the end of that cruise.
4/16/2010 5:23 PM
"Right now its RAM tags! Supposedly there are none on the Island, and being in an Avail makes it kinda tricky. We are almost to the pont of Photocopying them."
Right there with ya brother! They really should just give those things an NSN and put them in the supply system. I once had to go an entire year begging/borrowing/stealing RAM tags from the tender and other boats. At one point I did have to resort to xeroxing them and using yellow highlighters to make them look half-legit. Then our print order finally came in and we had to start shuffling lockers to fit them all on the boat...
4/16/2010 5:28 PM
Ran out of flour one underway. The MS's tried to make the best out of it and used pancake mix to make bread and rolls. Not so good.
Ever been unintentionally ice-picked without the required spare part on board?
4/16/2010 6:05 PM
smag for life:
You may want to check with your local training site if looking for RAM tags... they just might have some stashed away.
4/16/2010 6:24 PM
Mid 70's boomer out of Guam, the SK's didn't have a spare TDU and ours got jammed (interlock problem?).
The rest of the voyage consisted of dry garbage stored between the tubes in MCLL with wet garbage being hauled to the toilets and pushed down with a steel plunger made by the MM's. After the patrol a human chain was formed to get the garbage into some dumpsters on the missile deck. Just a nasty, stinky cruise with lots of fruit flies. A third of the crew got some lymph gland virus too. Doc almost ran out of penicillin (damn SK's again!)
4/16/2010 6:51 PM
2 Days into a 4 day VIP underway we ran out of milk.....SERIOUSLY WTF!?!
Nuke MM1
4/16/2010 9:34 PM
I had a COB who said “Any COB worth his salt never ran out of TP or Pine Sol.
On my first boat, they ran out of salt about half way into the run and the leading MS First still got a NAM.
As an Aganger, my rack was full of parts. I had a ton of our most used O-Rings and some odd sized ones.
I swore I would never let the Ice Cream or Soda Machine go down so I made sure I had plenty of those parts on hand and I had hands on training from the rep from the Soda Machine company.
On the personal side, when I was smoking, I never left the pier with less than 75 cartons, two cans of Bugler Tobacco and rolling papers. I had em stashed all over the place but I never ran out.
I would also carry three cases of Life Savers, Tums, and Bubble Yum. I also had a box of Hot Chocolate, a case of Diet Coke, 8 lbs of Peanut M&M’s. I always carried an extra set of ribbons and medals, 10 dolphins and Dixie Cups for trading.
That Damn Good Looking Aganger From Iowa
4/16/2010 10:18 PM
During our 96 deployment, Hawkbill was ridden by ADM Konetzni. He held a CPO call in the Wardroom. He started off with, "I've heard some of you Chiefs have been hoarding bench spares, getting parts off equipment at the Training Center, or even going so far to buy non-MILSPEC parts from local stores out of your own pocket. Let me tell you, keep it up because even though you're the oldest boat or ship in theatre, you're the only one that's made every commitment." He asked the crew what he could do for them. The A-gang LPO said he'd like to go the PI. After we dropped them off, we got a message informing us of our upcoming port call to the PI.
4/17/2010 6:16 AM
Anon @ 4/16/2010 4:12 PM: Ground up pepperoni? Hey, at least they TRIED to make it sort of Italian, even if ya got sick. We had the cooks try to pass off corned beef hash as spaghetti sauce. On my last boat, we asked the MSSN why there was never any cereal out, and the reply we got was, "Why put out cereal--the crew will just eat it!" Oh, and of course, when the CO likes shrimp and broccoli pizza, that means EVERYONE gets shrimp and broccoli pizza--and nothing else for three weeks. Damn near had a riot over that one.
4/17/2010 6:28 AM
Our main supply problem back in the 60's was "Priorities". We left for our shakedown cruise from the east coast to Pearl and lost a Feed pump bearing before we got to Norfolk. I ordered one in Norfolk only to be told that my priority was a 5 and FBM's had 1's. A bearing was not available. In San Juan the Tender gave me the same story. San Diego, same story. Once again in San Francisco. The hardest was in Bremerton, I had my hand on the bearing when I ordered it and was told there wasn't one available. We left on our first spec op with only 3 feed pumps and returned with two still on line. One day after we returned there were no less than 5 feed pump bearings delivered to the pier.
4/17/2010 7:02 AM
Out of coffee filters - then clean tshirts - then not so clean tshirts --- it was getting ugly.
Out of flour w/ brownies on the menu. CO insisted that if it was on the menu it had to be served. Brownies w/o flour are "odd" Best quote: "I don't know much about cooking, but I know brownies take flour!" There were a lot of leftovers.
Evaporator & still down - low on poty water. With rationing in full force, the search for alternatives was impressive, albeit not very well successful.
4/17/2010 9:06 AM
I was the nub on board and took over RPPO duties. First task was to order zincs for the gold crew. Part of my turnover was the green book with the NSN's and number of zincs per heat exchanger. I ordered the zincs only to find out that the unit of issue was 8 ft which meant we cut and threaded the zincs. I didn't find out until gold crew/blue crew changeout in Holy Loch...as soon as I walked thru the hatch in ERUL I noticed the maneuvering chain was made of zinc rod and a bundle of zinc rods between the mains. Someone from the gold crew told me that was about 1/4 of the rods with more in the wine cellar. They TD'd the rest. I don't think I ever needed to order them again.
4/17/2010 9:54 AM
No RAM tags? Easy, get the biggest yellow poly bag you can find, put everything in it, and call it CCM.
4/17/2010 10:54 AM
oz,
I love it. That's the true ELT engineering spirit coming out.
---
MM1/SS
4/17/2010 12:53 PM
Well, I was a CRA.
4/17/2010 1:21 PM
We ran out of butter. Then yeast on the next run. Supply Chief got an award for morale.
MM3 A-ganger
Professional Bad Example
4/17/2010 5:16 PM
Remember the chain your dogtags came with?
I clipped off one of the little ball links and used it (after a little filing) to repair the fathometer chart recorder on mission. The digital readout had half the LED's burnt out (onboard COSAL spare was the wrong part).
The LED degradation was no problem w/ soundings of 4 digits, but in shallow water it was a big deal to have another way to see water depth when you couldn't tell if it was 39 or 89 fathoms off the digital.
As RPPO, I ALWAYS had bench spares for fuses/lamps/splashguards/other crap that broke all the time.
Then I'd enter jobs when using the bench spares to keep up my inventory.
Also would keep a stash of already filled out 1250's (don't miss filling those out) for non-essential crap that the chop wouldn't want to sign. Amazing what I could push through at 3am underway when routing an essential
part form to get Sonar back up. "While you are up Chop/ Captain, could you sign these too?" Worked every time!
4/17/2010 5:57 PM
Barbel, early 80's. DeGaulles Useless Underwater Gadget (DUUG-1C) had this funky one tube oscillator that was necessary to calibrate it. (Why bother, the damn thing was only accurate to +/- 90 deg.) The Navy Supply System was out and there were no more to be had. We found that Honolulu Electronics had 5 of them. We bought 'em all. Still had a few left when I left in 85.
Ken in Yoko.
4/18/2010 6:16 AM
Anyone who has had the pleasure to do an extended overhaul where everything is offloaded and taken to an ILO site for a full COSAL inventory has probably seen some funny scenarios. I was on an older 637 at Mare Island back in the early ‘80s and we located some special tools that were long ago stowed away by some previous crewmembers. It is funny when the very senior, salty, and crusty techs cannot identify a special tool and you have to search a tech manual to find out just what is the purpose of the odd shaped gadget. Then a tech says, wow, that could have saved me a lot of time and pain back in ‘75. I am sure that the old paper 2Ks with the credit card sized data sheets are long gone. Allegedly, some high tech automated system for 2Ks was being developed.
MAC
4/18/2010 8:53 PM
Our shredder in radio stripped little brass gear. Ordering it through supply took forever and cost about $145 if I recall. About 6 months later, stripped again shortly before the monthly destruct. Commo called the maker and asked for a quote for his "personal" shredder and they said it would cost him $8.00. He ordered 2.
Rackburn
4/19/2010 6:44 AM
Westpac 89 our MS Chief and a couple of cranks got caught stealing the ice machine from the club in Yokosuka. They only got caught because the friggin thing wouldn't fit down the hatch!!!
4/19/2010 2:01 PM
Shortages? How about women? Oh wait, that will soon be fixed.
Game on!!
4/19/2010 5:12 PM
It is amazing how you make do when you have to. One of the plastic gears stripped in the crews movie projector (In the OLD DAYS we were using 16mm projectors, you can look it up). The Wardroom would not share theirs. I removed an aluminum valve handwheel from the CO2 Scrubber aft as it was about the right size. A MM using what he had to work with, filed the grooves into the handwheel to mate up with the plastic one in the projector and it actually worked. It was still working when we returned from the OP.
4/19/2010 6:58 PM
I worked with a departing EM1(SS)for a few months and in early 1985 I became as E-Div RPPO as a Nub EM3. His last act upon leaving was to give me his wheelbook of the location of bench spares he had stashed around the boat and toured me around showing me their locations.
September 1985, about a month before a WestPac, bench spares became a major issue. We RPPOs were being hammered from all directions about eliminating them and/or getting them back into the supply chain. One Thursday night on duty I cleaned out all of my bench spares to the gaylords (~4' x 4' x 3' high cardboard containers) provided for their return on the pier. I alone filled all four of them, meant for all of the divisions.
SK's and the Chop were mingling around the gaylords before the morning muster. After muster I told the SKLPO that I was done, smiled, handed him a copy of the inventory with all of the known NSN's. "Have fun" I told him as I headed for the barracks, my duty day now complete.
Around noon one of my roommates, a nub nuke MM3, came up to the barracks with a written message from the Bull Nuke, "Petty Officer ME, by morning muster on Monday you will have properly disposed of all of the bench spares left on the pier for the Supply Department. Signed EMCM"
Sunday's duty day I spent all of my off-watch time disposing of the bench spares and by morning muster Monday the gaylords were empty. A few months later on WestPac when our supply chain didn't have the necessary brushes to rebrush the AC end of the port SSMG I produced them to EMCM. He smiled at me that I had understood the correct meaning of his note.
RIP Massa Chief Cecil
PW
4/20/2010 3:59 PM
WESTPAC 89 on USS Haddo. We ran out of bug juice mix a week out of port. We were almost completly out of food when we pulled into San Deigo. We had flour, shortening, sugar, coffee, a few cans of pie filling and not much more.
4/21/2010 5:24 PM
On the Ray in the early 80's we were the last Squadron 4 boat in Charleston with the Mk 113 FCS. Our FT's would dress as shipyard bubba's to scavenge parts taken from boats in overhaul. Our Mk 51 analyzers ran off a 1950's era computer that loaded off a paper tape. The lamp in the tape reader burned out and there were no spares anywhere. We used a Kodak slide projector bulb, held by hand over the tape reader, to get the computer to load. The first time we did it, the heat from the lamp caught the paper tape on fire. It only burned up a few inches of leader, so we spliced it and got it loaded. Hung yellow caution tags so no one would turn off the analyzers and thus the computer. When we got back from our pre-deployment work up, one of the civilian MOTU guys found a bulb in his tool box and we were good to go. During the pre-deployment work up, we had a port call in New London. One of the FT’s was wandering through the museum, which featured an “Obsolete Fire Control System”, a Mk 113. We were missing some knobs, so he stole them off the museum piece. Years later I was telling this story at my reserve unit and one of the guys said he was TAD at Sub School assigned to the museum during that time frame and remembered some stuff disappearing off the displays. They couldn’t figure out why someone would steal knobs.
4/21/2010 8:47 PM
As a Chop, I should probably say something defensive about COSAL support, etc, etc, but I have seen us get burned enough times to know that bench spares are a necessary evil. I don't care if someone has them, it's good planning, but PLEASE always order as many as you used of "your own" in the system to show the demand is there for the part...then take the one we get you and replace your bench spare. ;-)
The Navy Supply system is an interesting beast that rewards crappy equipment and punishes reliable stuff...if you have something that breaks all the time, I will have a metric asston of parts for it onboard. Conversely, if you have something that is REALLY reliable and rarely breaks, you better hope it doesn't decide to take the piss while underway, because that will present some interesting challenges...so I guess the moral of the story is break your stuff more often? I don't know...
5/05/2010 2:14 PM
Seadragon 62, Sunday, getting underway for the North Pole on Monday after a hectic week of testing sonars, including a just-received and installed upward-bouncing fathometer. It needed a new stylus so we looked in the spares kit. Nothing.
A squadron guy knew a Shop 67 guy who knew where we could get a sheet of beryllium copper. We opened a warehouse and took it without paperwork. Back at the boat, we made a couple dozen stylii using tin snips, needle-nose, a file, and a little tiny drill. It worked.
12/18/2012 6:05 PM
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