The photo of an emergency surface exercise of the USS Francis Scott Key was taken from the USS Casimir Pulaski at some point after I served on the Pulaski.
While I was on the Pulaski, in late 1974 or early 1975, we performed an emergency surface exercise. I was fortunate enough to be on one of the controls, the fairwater planes.
For some reason, we had more machinest mates than needed for the watchbill. When divisions on board ship had a surplus of junior enlisted sailors, often they would be assigned to the mess decks. However, because I was in the nuclear power program, I was a petty officer before I reported to the boat and petty officers are NOT generally assigned food services duty. Instead, I qualified and stood watch as helmsman, planesman, and, when we were on the surface, lookout.
When we did the emergency surface, I remember being told to keep the angle of the ship from exceeding a certain value. I don’t remember the number, but I do remember, as the angle started rising, pushing forward on the yoke as far as possible and the angle just kept getting steeper. We were moving forward at “ahead full,” if I remember right, and were somewhere between 400 to 700 feet deep when the forward ballast tanks were blown to establish the upward angle. Not too long after that, the rest of the ballast tanks were blown. I don’t remember watching the depth indication, but it would have been changing faster than I had ever seen it change. There was likely a shuddering of the hull as it moved through the water and started to rise, as well as the souds of the water being blown from the tanks with air. Those who were standing would appear to be leaning forward when, in reality, they would be standing straight up as the deck took a steeper and steeper angle. I was seated, looking forward, so really didn’t see any of the crew who were standing.
When the boat broached the surface, it felt a bit like an amusement ride where you’ve been going up and up and up and then all of a sudden levels and drops. After emergency surfacing , the submarine came further out of the water than it would on a normal surface and, because of that, actually went below the surface until its positive buoyancy brought it back up.
Quite a memorable experience.
The video below shows another submarine doing an emergency surface.
An emergency surface exercise is supposed to be a controlled training evolution. As an exercise, it should never be done when there is the slightest possibility of other ships in the immediate area.
On February 9, 2001, the American submarine USS Greeneville (SSN-772) accidentally struck and sank a Japanese high-school fisheries training ship, Ehime-Maru, killing nine of the 35 Japanese aboard, including four students, 10 miles off the coast of O’ahu. The collision occurred while members of the public were on board the submarine observing an emergency surface drill.
A naval inquiry found that the accident was the result of poorly executed sonar sweeps, an ineffective periscope search by the submarine’s captain, Commander Scott Waddle, bad communication among the crew and distractions caused by the presence of the 16 civilian guests aboard the submarine.
– Wikipedia
Needless to say, this was a horrifying incident for anyone who has served on submarines. It never should have happened.
When I first met Fred in Holy Loch, Scotland, in 1976, he had gone to check out a job on the USS Casimir Pulaski, SSBN633 — the fleet ballistic missile submarine where I was one of the crew. When I went back to the engine room that morning, he was sitting there unable to get back to the tender after scoping out the job he was supposed to work on.
While he was checking out the job, the submarine had been moved away from the tender and was on the way to the dry dock.
Fred hadn’t been to breakfast and he hadn’t reported in to the shop, yet. For all we knew, his chief considered him AWOL.
I don’t remember if we told any chiefs or officers about Fred’s dilemma so that his shop could be informed. I do know, though, that I took him to his first breakfast on board a submarine.
Supposedly, the food on submarines is supposed to be the best food in the services. I really don’t know that to be a fact, since the few meals that I ate on any vessel other than the sub were on the submarine tender and I don’t really remember those. However, I seldom had any complaints about what we were served on the boat.
Fred’s job had been assigned to the tender as a temporary duty station. He later served on a submarine.
About 5 years later, I was sitting in the control room of a commercial nuclear power plant when a potential new employee was being given a tour of the plant and the control room. I looked at him and asked, “Where do I know you from?”
He asked what boat I had been on and I told him, “the Casimir Pulaski.”
“You were the guy that took me to breakfast!”
It was Fred.
Fred accepted the job offer and went to work in the same department that I was in, Operations. After I went to the Training Department, we both ended up in the same senior reactor operator license class. He stayed in the Operations Department far longer than I did, but eventually he accepted a job in Training. He is actually older than me, but he stayed at the plant after I retired, retiring almost exactly a year after I had.
Fred is now working as a contractor at a plant in South Carolina.
I’m not a small guy — and I guess I’m not as small as I used to be. Our oldest daughter took this picture of me going down into the after torpedo room on the USS Razorback, a submarine permanantly moored in the Arkansas River at North Little Rock. The Razorback is a WWII era diesel submarine, commissioned toward the end of the war. After its service in the U.S. Navy it was sold to Turkey for another couple of decades of service. After it was decommisioned by Turkey, it was sold to North Little Rock and is now part of a growing maritime museum. It’s named after a type of fish, not the mascot of the University of Arkansas. This was my second trip through this sub. The first was last year and was the first time I had been on a submarine since I stepped off my boat, the USS Casimir Pulaski, thirty years earlier.
This was a pretty full weekend and, with going back to work all of a sudden, I’m finding it a little difficult to squeeze things into the reduced amount of time that I now have. I’m only working 40 hours a week, with no overtime, but, with travel, that’s about 45 hours a week that I had for other stuff before last week. I’m getting up early to go to the fitness center, but the workouts are a little shorter.
However, it is just for a short term contract — 26 weeks — so it won’t be long till I’m free again, plus, we should have some of our recurring bills eliminated, so financially this should be a plus.
It’s bedtime, I’m tired, and I’m starting to babble on, so it’s time to close — I will endeaver to keep up with this blog. We’ll see.
I’ve not started back to work on the contract job yet. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ll probably be out there sometime next week — perhaps.
The real surprise is that it’s occurring at all.
Three years ago, I was in a situation where I really needed help to get everything done that needed to be done. One of the options that was attempted was to bring back another instructor who had retired a couple of years earlier. He would be a contract instructor, much like what I will be doing.
It never happened.
A couple of years later, I happened to run into the man they had wanted to come back as a contractor. He said he had been willing to do it, but after they had initially talked to him, he hadn’t heard anything from them. I subsequently found out that they had not been able to get approval for hiring a contractor.
My contract manager — the guy used to be my boss — called me today about documentation on some of my qualifications, so things are apparently still moving ahead. It appears part of the problem is that recent restructuring has reduced the number of people in the corporate office that looks at contracts from eight people down to one part-time employee who only works three afternoons a week. I’ve heard that other departments are having similar problems.
Maybe Monday. However, I’m planning on going to the bi-weekly retiree breakfast. (They’ll get a kick out of this run-around.)
