Special thanks and recognition to the USS TUNNY for this page. No truer words have ever been written about

 The Submariner

Who are submariners?                                             By:  Dr. Joyce Brothers

 

“There is nothing daredevil-ish about the motivation of a man who decides to dedicate his life to the submarine service. He does indeed take pride in demonstrating he is quite a man, but he does not do so to practice a form of foolhardy brinkmanship to see how close he can get to failure and still snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. On the contrary, the aim of the Submarine Service is to battle the danger to minimize the risk, to take every measure to make certain that safety, not danger, is maintained at all times.

 

Are the men in submarines braver than those in other pursuits where the possibility of sudden tragedy is not constant? The glib answer would be that they are. It is much more accurate from a psychological point of view, to say they are not necessarily braver, but that they are men who have a little more insight into themselves and their capabilities. They know themselves a lot better than the next man, This has to be so with men who have a healthy reason to volunteer for a risk. They are generally a cut healthier emotionally than others of a similar age and background because of their willingness to push themselves a little bit further and not settle for an easier kind of existence.

 

We all have tremendous capabilities, but are rarely straining at the upper level of what we can do; the United States can be proud and grateful that so many of its sound, young, eager men are confident enough about their own status in life and the welfare of their country to pool their skills and match them collectively against the power of the sea.”

To all submariners old and young           by: Buck Conrad QM1(SS) Ret.

 

These ships are now black, they were all gray, and that diesel oil smell it got worse every day.

These ships and their crews worked together a as one and saved our country from the rising sun.

They ran over the oceans and under them too, and never a gripe or a whimper heard you.

The men of these ships were all tried and true, and oh yes, these are boats not ships, to you.

Salt water makes them shine with a glimmer and sheen, and these boats are called a diesel submarine.

When WW II was over and through, the Cold War started and Korea too.

Our men in the boats never missed a beat, they reworked the damned things, now that was a feat. They changed the sails, the shears and all, they put snorkels and batteries and made her look tall. They increased her speed both on top and below and put new young men in her to handle the show.

She traveled far, she traveled wide and she listened and she saw, then on her return she reported it back to the Navy, Ops Bureau and all.

We would be gone 3 months a whack, then lo and behold all of a sudden we’re back.

No one dare ask where we had been or had seen for Top Secrets the word and from us you’ll not glean, one bit of information, nor a word, nor a sign and thanks to all and the new sub design.

But through all this you could not erase, the smell of that dammed Diesel Oil in your face.

It was always there even though you scrubbed and never went away no matter how hard you rubbed.

Then a fresh wind came blowing in and things began a changing. A new type of power did increase the subs size and also her worldly ranging.

With Nuclear Power and the ICBM, the future for diesels was beginning to dim.

By the year of 1975, there is hardly a diesel afloat, she’s given way to nuclear power and now the Navy could gloat; We’ve got a true submersible here, she long, powerful and black and if it weren’t for the crew in her, she never would come back.

But old timers still think of days, when in the boats we were young, how we launched our torpedoes, fired our guns and escaped with the mumsen lung.

When everything we owned smelled of diesel, the smell of the submarine sailor, and every 6 months we bought new dress blues especially made by a tailor.

How we’d always look sharp in our new jumpers of blue and those tight pants with a bell, but you could tell what kind of ships we were from, because of that diesel oil smell.

So here’s to the old time sub sailor, I raise my glass to you, I toast your honor and courage and yes, that diesel smell too.

The Diesel Boats served her purpose, her time has drawn nigh, To our shipmates who’ve gone before us,. That now dwell with the Lord on high, for you I write this poem, and I’ll finish with a sigh, as soon as I make this last request, just before I die.

This last request of the good Lord I make, and its for all in heaven’s sake, please dear Lord, oh please hear me well, Can’t we get rid of that diesel oil smell?

A Sense of Smell                                                                           by: Roy Ator

 

A sense of Smell the sensations of entering the submarine were overwhelming. The sinister shape, the black and dark gray colors of the deck and the sail, the general silence of the deck of a submarine tied to a pier, and these signals told me very clearly that I was entering a strikingly different world, But the most striking sensation of this new home of mine was the fragrance, the peculiar, pungent aroma that clearly, uniquely identified this was a conventional submarine.

 

Everyone who know anything about these old fleet submarines, in any of their variations of their later years, knew about the smell. The odor was not something that we were proud of, but we made no apologies for it. We just accepted that it was our lot to endure and intensity of fragrances that was not acceptable in any other environment.

 

A Diesel-electric submarine lacks one important feature of a steamship, whether that steamship is a submarine or a skimmer, nuclear or fossil-fueled, oil or coal. (Oh, yeah, “skimmer” is the term that submariners use to describe surface ships, and surface sailors. You know, the people who skim around on the surface of the ocean and never really get down into it.)

 

What all those ships have, and what conventional submarines lack, is the ability to distill sea water into (reasonably) fresh water. Almost all surface ship, and all nuclear powered submarines, use large stills, euphemistically known as evaporators, to “make water” for use in the steam plant. A side benefit of these stills is the ability to make water for showers for those lucky crews.

 

All of our hundreds of conventional submarines, on the other hand, used electric powered stills to make fresh water for the needs of the boat and its crew. But the boat itself had first priority on the water that was available. Some of the fresh water was used in the water seals on some of our pumps, centrifuges, and other equipment, And sometimes we took fresh water and we ran it through the stills again, to get the water pure enough that we could add it to our huge lead-acid battery, just as you probably used to do for your car battery.

 

Even the water that was left over for use of the crew was first used for cooking and drinking, for washing dishes, and for providing showers for the cooks and the mess cooks. So hygiene on the part of the rest of the crew was the lowest priority for any use of fresh water aboard the boat. The officers were no different from the enlisted submariners in this regard.

 

And our electric stills were very small. We did not have enough energy stored in the main batteries to operate the stills for very long. The stills also required a full-time attendant, and we did not have enough extra staff to run them as much as we might want, even if the power was available for making water.

 

These old boats had originally put to sea with a crew of sixty good men. By the time I got aboard thirty years later, there were eighty people in the crew, because so many additional specialists were required to operate and repair the modern electronics and other equipment that had been added to the boat over the years.

 

We developed many techniques to help us tolerate the environment. After a month or so at sea, most of these civilizing touches had lost their effectiveness. But we tried to maintain a sense of dignity. It was not uncommon to smell someone enter the compartment, before hearing them or seeing them, We did not comment on such things.

 

Did I mention that, of course, we did not have a boat’s laundry? Eventually I survived an experience that had been joked about for years on the old sewer-pipes. It was trite but true. I was reviewing a checklist in the control room in the middle of the night, while we were running on the surface. I got way back in the corner behind the air manifold. I smelled someone behind me, so I turned around to see who it was. I was alone. HOME.