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Comment by OzCrimson | Hacker News Reader

One story that still haunts me about the culture onboard the submarine.

We were dropping the trash and one requirement is that an officer be present. I was told to go get an officer. I found the Chief Engineer sitting in his room reading his Bible. I asked if he could come and be the required officer. He said, "sure."

When people saw the Chief Engineer behind me they mocked, "Hey! Couldn't you have gotten someone more senior?"

I didn't know that "officer" in this role meant to go find an Ensign or Lieutenant JG, not the officer who's 3rd in command of the whole boat. Folks got a lot of laughs out of that one.

Overall, though, life on a submarine is infinitely better than a surface ship. I served on a fast attack sub and a frigate. The people on a submarine help make life better because most of the jobs on a submarine are advanced and require clearances that people can't get if they're on drug waivers or dropped out of school.

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My Cold War trash story - One of my roommates in college served on the USS Peterson (DD-969, a Spruance class destroyer), and in the middle of the Atlantic they decided to have some fun with the Soviet "fishing trawler"[0] that was shadowing them. Normally, the crew would weigh the trash bags down so that they immediately sank.[1] But this time they "forgot" to put the weights in and filled the trash bag with adult reading material with all the good parts cut out. And then coated it with the kitchen slops (potato peelings, spoiled meat, etc).

As the Soviet trawler swooped in to claim their floating prize, the Peterson crew was at the fantail laughing at what their reaction would be when they opened the bag up. Yes, they trolled the Soviet Navy.

[0] https://www.encyclopedia.com/politics/encyclopedias-almanacs...

[1] No classified material was in them - it was mostly to keep the surface of the ocean clear and prevent it from washing up on shore. These days only degradable garbage is thrown overboard. Trash is compressed and stored until the ship makes port.

That Chief Engineer sounds like a good dude. (And he said "sure", so...)

100% agree that submarine life is better than a surface ship. I personally would have had a much harder time with the officer/enlisted relationship on a surface ship, in particular.

> 100% agree that submarine life is better than a surface ship.

Maybe it's different now, but I spent a week riding an SSN as an NROTC midshipman, when I had orders to nuke school a few weeks later (I was commissioned right after first-class cruise and had already gone through The Interview with the KOG; long story). In nuke school I switched to surface, asked for and got sent to the Enterprise, and was pretty happy to be there at the center of the action with great port calls. Standing OOD underway on a carrier — the officer on watch who's in charge of the entire ship, and de facto of the task force — was the most rewarding thing I've ever done professionally, especially during evolutions such as night flight ops. And you deal with (and learn to lead) sailors of all educational levels and from all walks of life, not just the cream of the crop as on subs.

Oh, interesting! I thought that the sub community got all the nukes fresh from school, and the surface nukes all had a sea tour under their belt before getting sent to Power School / Prototype.

You make a compelling case - OOD on a carrier has got to be a hell of an interesting job! Personally I liked the smaller team on a sub, getting to do TS missions, etc. But I can definitely see where you're coming from. (And frankly, I still think submarine life is better than traditional non-nuke SWO life, still.)

I think you’re right, nowadays CVN nukes get a div-o tour before power school. Somewhere they work in SWOS. My class of surface nukes was the first to be sent to SWOS right after prototype (this was 1975), and power school was right after commissioning.

I recently met someone who had desired to be a nuclear operator on a sub, but ended up working an aircraft carrier. At the time that she joined, the Navy didn't permit women to serve underwater-- so apparently operating surface nukes despite having never taken your Jules Verne voyage was permitted, at least ~20 yrs ago.

Sounds like he knew he was about to be part of this person's all-in-good-fun humiliation. Entertainment like that cannot be passed up!

Haha, exactly! Ultimately harmless and it'll make for a good story that would one day be immortalized on HN. Good judgement call on their part!

My experience of Navy personnel from ship visits as a contractor (commissioning and sometimes fixing SATCOM equipment for Australian Navy, US Special Operations ships etc.) has been that quite a lot of the higher ups seem to be pretty good. Maybe they try to weed out the jerks and psychopaths before they get up that high, or perhaps there are natural processes that do it? I have heard that the other services (especially Army) are a lot worse, so perhaps it's all to do with the realities of all these people having to be stuck together for months on ships or subs that means it's much more important to have good leaders at sea?

I had a time when I'd flown out to fix our satellite terminal, it was literally the only thing holding up this patrol boat from deploying, and the CO (commanding officer) came and asked how I was doing and then went and got me a Coke from the galley himself! There was absolutely no annoyance and anger at me because our company's equipment was holding it up, just "what can we all do to get this working as quick as possible". Another time we had to replace a large part of a gimbal on a frigate, with myself and a tech from our company and a couple of low-ranked seamen, and the top WEEO (Weapons Electrical Engineering Officer) happily jumped in and helped us drag a big crate up the side of the ship.

Of course it's different being a contractor coming in than being one of the lower ranked enlisted people, but on all the ships I've been on it always seemed to be pretty good relationally. Of course, I'd usually be on just before deployment so a few weeks or months later things may not have been so rosy either!

Odd comment about the Army there. The culture of Army officership is all about leading from the front, carrying your own rucksack and cleaning your own rifle, eating last, and taking care of people (literally inspecting feet for injuries in the field). Senior Army officers I've met are overwhelmingly gregarious and affable, if not always competent in the broad array of things they're charged with.

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