Navy Stories - Part 1

In response to Heidi's request, I give you sea stories.  These are distinguished from usual sea stories in that all of these are, to the best of my recollection, 100% true (well, ok, maybe 90%).  To my children: yes, I know you will skip these as you will have already heard [most of] them dozens of times (in that regard they are not at all distinguished from other sea stories which tend to be repeated ad nauseam).  Keep in mind, as you read these, that this was a time in my life when it was important for me to be perceived as male as I could be perceived (which, you may recall, didn't always help).  I also remind you that I was in the Navy between the ages of 17 and 21, so I was a child.

I will likely post one a week (or more) for a while, until we all get bored with them (I will bore with them fairly soon, I suspect, so don't fret).

Kiss your ass good-bye

When I first reported aboard ship (USS Grayback), we were in dry dock.  That meant that the submarine was up on blocks, completely out of the water, and had big holes cut into its pressure hull (a submarine has two (and in some cases, three) exterior hulls, but I won't bore you with a lesson in submarine construction;  there is a scene from "The Hunt for Red October" when Jack Ryan goes to the Navy yard to consult with a friend and walks through a dry dock; that'll give you a good sense of what it looks like). 

After months in dry dock, we were finally ready to put to sea.  The first order of business was to test the ship's systems and watertight integrity.  These activities were called, collectively, sea trials.  We steamed to the island of Guam to conduct our sea trials (dry dock was in Yokosuka, Japan).  Now, I don't know why the Navy decided to conduct sea trials in the Marianas Trench (the deepest part of the ocean), but they did.

During one of our initial dives (but not our very first dive), I was standing watch as Quartermaster (navigation and log-keeping).  I was still new so I had a supervisor who essentially had nothing to do but sit and watch me.  Our test depth (the deepest we were officially allowed to dive) was only 750 feet, but our crush depth was estimated to be closer to 950 feet.  We were doing a deep dive (around 400-500 feet) to test systems, when suddenly a line leading to the depth gauge on the control station came loose (in hindsight we learned that the connection simply worked loose - at the time we did not know that).  Salt water, at sea pressure, started spraying into the control room and, in the process, it short-circuited the planes indicator for the stern planes (the main surface - like a wing - that the ship uses to control its depth).  The seaman on the stern planes announced that he had no control over them.  The diving office (also fairly inexperienced) ordered him to test them, which he did - first by pulling them back to full rise position, and then pushing them forward to full dive.  No change showed on the indicator.  However, as you and I now know, it was the gauge that was at fault and not the stern plane control itself.  The diving officer ordered the seaman to turn off the controls - which left the stern planes in full dive position. 

All this time, sea water is spraying into the control room and people are shouting and we’re manning stations for collision (shutting down watertight hatches and ventilation systems).  My duty was to put on headphones, take reports from other compartments and log the actions and orders of the officer of the deck as well as announce the depth.  I began to call out the depth: "passing 600 feet, passing 650 feet, passing 700 feet, passing 750 feet, passing 800 feet", etc.  The officer of the deck ordered the forward ballast tanks blown clear of water with high pressure air and ordered one of our ballast control tanks (called "negative") blown clear.  The bow raised slightly and the depth gauge slowed its descent.  Then, inexplicably, the bow dove again, and we quickly passed 900 feet.  At this moment, the captain of the ship stepped up, ordered "Emergency Blow" and we popped to the surface like a cork.

As I was making final log entries and stowing gear, I looked back at my supervisor who had remained seated and quiet during the entire time.  He was ashen.  I asked if he was ok and he said that, in twelve years of submarine duty he had never feared for his life, but during that emergency - because he had no duties but to watch - he said that he not only kissed his ass goodbye, but that he had bent over and put a "lip-lock on the M*****F****".