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> 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.

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8 hours is a ridiculous length for something like sonar. Sonar, even if you are just steaming from one location to another, you are constantly working, thinking, checking, updating. I'm not sure how it has changed since my time, but it was exhausting, and we had to do 8's a number of times when we were short operators.

For me though 6's were worse. You lose your sense of which direction 'up' is in time.

Makes sense. Thank you for the explanation!

You're not just standing watch, though. There's training (SO MUCH TRAINING), drills (SO MANY DRILLS), meals, and at least a little time for movies/relaxation. Trying to fit all this in is more complicated with 8 hour watches. (With 6 hour watches, you do all training/drills in the 0600-1200/1200-1800 time periods, and it works out easily.)

Oh I see, i didn’t think about the extras. I thought watch means all of those things too.

Thank you for the explanation!

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