600mg Motrin is nicknamed Ranger candy in the US Army because Rangers eat them like candy.
I was told by a submariner that there is only one bunk for every three crew members on board, so you learn to sleep anywhere. When he was unable to make his flight home and his parents drove to the airport he was stuck at about 90 minutes from home, they couldn't readily find him because he was curled up around his bag sleeping under some chairs.
Re: bunking - that's largely untrue. The majority of crew members on board do get their own bunk. But there aren't enough bunks for everyone, so people have to "hot rack" (aka, share). On my boat, this typically meant 3 people sharing 2 beds - if three people that share the same watchstation are hot-racking, at least one of them has to be on watch at any given time, so the other two have a bed if they need it.
Also, a decent number (maybe 10-ish) of the beds/racks tend to be in the torpedo room. Those guys just need to be comfortable sleeping next to big underwater bombs. :)
It's changed a bit, but the thing that made everyone fatigued is that your body is used to a 24-hour day, but your work day was an 18-hour day: 3 sections of 6 hour watches.
8 hour watches could be a bit long, and more problematic is that crew members would always be on the same watch: 0000-0800, 0800-1600, etc. That's potentially even more disruptive.
Does that really matter underwater? After a few days it is just as if you moved to a different time zone. It’s not like one watch would get more sunshine than the other.
For me though 6's were worse. You lose your sense of which direction 'up' is in time.
Thank you for the explanation!
And thank you for updating my apparently inaccurate or out of date knowledge.