
I can hear the responses now..."wait a second, this is supposed to be a blog about becoming a regional airline pilot...what does that have to do with sea stories?" Well, anyone who knows me (especially Cathy!) knows that after 20 years of nuclear submarine operations, I LOVE to tell sea stories. Then again, after almost 30 years of flying, I LOVE to tell flying stories too, but because flying stories are so common as compared to submarine stories, well, you get the idea. Besides, flying stories are too easy to validate...I can tell almost anyone pretty much anything about a submarine and they won't have any idea if I'm telling the truth or not! That is the beauty of a true Navy sea story. Ask any Sailor and they will tell you that the difference between a "true" sea story and a lie is that a sea story starts with "seriously, this is no s$#t!"
I have often said that there are a lot of similarities between "driving" a submarine and flying an airplane. An airplane flies because of lift created when airflow moves faster over the top of a wing than across the bottom (Bernoulli's principle). That lift is what allows us to defy gravity and leave the surly bonds of earth, but it is the dynamic force of the air stream on the control surfaces that allow the pilot to turn, climb and descend the airplane. A submarine does not create lift in the same way that an airplane does, at least to the same extent. A submarine first of all must be very close to being neutrally buoyant. In other words, assume a fully submerged boat displaces 5000 tons of water; if the boat weighed exactly 5000 tons it would be neutrally buoyant. If it weighed more than 5000 pounds, it would tend to sink, if less than 5000 pounds, it would tend to rise to the surface. If a submerged submarine is neutrally buoyant and is brought to a complete stop (as preparing to surface through the ice in the Arctic), it would hold a constant depth and would not end to rise or sink. Yes, airplane pilots too must consider the weight of their aircraft and how changes in weight such as fuel burn affect performance. However, in a submarine there are a lot of other issues at play. Take for instance water temperature. Colder water provides more buoyancy than warmer water, enough so that even a one degree change in water temperature can make the submarine very heavy or light. So, if you were to get a perfect ballast on the boat and then two minutes later you moved into warmer water, guess what? You're sinking. Also, salinity has a huge effect, and although most people never consider it, the salinity of the world's oceans changes dramatically. Unlike an airplane, the submarine's fuel burn does not affect weight. The nuclear reactor is converting Uranium fuel to energy, and because of Mr. Eienstein's equation of E=M(C squared), a very little bit of Uranium goes a long way. Also unlike an airplane that flies for anywhere between 30 minutes and 15 hours, a nuclear submarine may be out for a cruise for months, with the crew consuming tons of food, and discharging the inevitable waste overboard. So, in summary, airplanes and submarines both are controlled by dynamic forces moving over control surfaces, but the changing weight of a submarine is much more critical that the changing weight of an airplane.
Crew coordination and teamwork are critical on both an airliner and a submarine. However, on an airliner in an emergency, the captain or first officer either one are perfectly capable of performing all of the functions necessary to fly the aircraft from either seat by themselves, with the exception of steering the aircraft on the ground. This is because turbine aircraft are steered on the ground using a "tiller", which is small wheel typically mounted near the captain's left hand, which the first officer could not reach from the right hand seat. On a submarine, is it simply impossible for one person to control the entire boat. Not including supervisors, it takes two Sailors to steer and control depth (what we call diving and driving), one to control buoyancy, three guys in a room over 100 feet away control the main propeller shaft speed, the reactor, and the electrical generation equipment, a minimum of two guys in Sonar making sure we don't go bump into anyone, and at least one guy plotting our position all of the time. Unlike airplanes, a submarine can't get a good GPS fix when submerged, so we're using inertial navigation and/or dead reckoning, much like airplanes. Keep in mind that this crew count does not include all of the other folks on board monitoring weapons and equipment, cooking meals, etc. Crew resource management is critical for both submarines and airplanes, but I believe that anyone who has served on any ship at sea, especially a nuclear submarine, is much better prepared to accept that CRM is a way of life. Unlike an airplane, no matter how macho or good you are, you simply can't operate a submarine by yourself.
I've had many pilots who know of my submarine background tell me that because submarines operate very slow (according to the CNO's web site, I'm safe to tell you that subs can go "in excess of 25 knots", and dive deeper than 800 feet), that decision-making is much more critical in an airplane moving a 0.8 mach than a submarine moving at 3-25 knots. Here comes my sea story.
This is no s%#t!...(had to get that in right from the start). Once upon a time, way back when, as a county we used to openly acknowledge that there were bad guys in the world who would like nothing else than to kill a lot of Americans with big bombs. Wait, I know what you are thinking. Yes, that's true today too, but these days too many Americans feel uncomfortable accepting that fact. I digress. In any case, these bad guys liked to have nuclear missile submarines operate near our shorelines so that if push came to shove and the s%#t really hit the fan, they would be close enough to launch their nuclear tipped missiles at us. Shocking I know. We on the other hand liked to have out fast attack submarines placed in position so that if the bad guys ever made such a move, we'd fire a torpedo at them before they fired their missiles. Sort of like whack a mole with torpedoes and nuclear missiles. In any case, one fateful day we picked up the scent of a bad guy's nuclear missile submarine, not near enough our coast to launch, and not even moving toward our coast. In fact, he was doing a elongated race track pattern like he was trying to make up his mind where to go (for you pilots out there, think holding pattern). Well Hell! If he's going to bore slow holes in the ocean, we're going to stick near by and follow him! Should he decide to head toward the good ole US of A, we’d be there just in case the mole needs whacking. Well, after almost a full day of holding (try THAT in a regional jet!), we're still sitting nearby, Mr. Bad Guy has not given us any indication to make us believe he knows we are there, and just like that, things get REAL exciting.
A special tone sounds when the Sonar Supervisor keys the "Torpedo Alarm" mic and makes the following announcement in a very high-pitched voice "Conn, Sonar, torpedo in the water bearing 035 degrees!" Let me paint a picture for you. Think of the letter "V". We're at the bottom of the V, bored out of our wits. The bad guy is at the upper left (bearing roughly 340 if you will), and out of the blue, a torpedo is suddenly fired from somewhere off to the right. Keep in mind that this is NOT during an active war. Also keep in mind that you have no idea who fired the torpedo, but its pretty safe to say that it does not have "made in the USA" painted on it. You have exactly 3 seconds to make a decision on what to do. By the way, if ever fired upon it is always a good idea to fire a return torpedo back at the person shooting at you, which tends to break his concentration. However, if this is a mistake and the Bad Guy is not really shooting at you, and you shoot a torpedo at him and blow him up, well, let's just say that you just killed a lot of innocent people and created one hell of an international incident!
In this scenario, our mystery submarine was simply a target submarine who was sent out to run circles in a particular area, waiting for another submarine to try to find him and then shoot an exercise (non-explosive) torpedo at him. Because the Skipper took a couple of seconds to realize that the torpedo was not heading our way, they never knew we were there, and we quietly slipped away to go change our underwear.
So, airplanes and submarines do have one thing important in common. Good crews are trained to work together, and when something out of the ordinary happens, your first immediate action should be to wind your watch. Take a second to think about what’s happening, absorb the situation, analyze possible actions and outcomes, and then make the decision to act. Taking actions quickly without fully understanding what is really happening is almost always a very bad idea.
Safe skies and seas.