Anyone still have their notebook with their countdown calendar? Was going through some stuff and found mine. I had this book from Sept. 92 to November 94 when I got out. Did other boats calculate the infinite happiness factor? On the second image are my flights home from La Maddalena/Olbia when I took terminal leave.
That's a 688 problem if I ever saw it. Happiness factor only improves with your DD-214 and provable evidence of disability.
I was on a 637.
What was your opinion on the 688s when you were in? Just curious because the 688s were already old when i joined
When I was in, the biggest thing I heard was the 688 boats did not have enough berthing. That and the 637 was laid out better. This was in 1992 when they started decommissioning the S5W plants. So people from boats like the Sculpin and Skipjack came to my boat. They were also offering some rates 15 year retirement because so many boats were being decommed. The guys from the Sculpin and Skipjack talked about how those old S boats were like sports cars. There was one guy from the Baton Rouge and another from the Los Angeles. So not much knowledge of the 688s. Also at the time in Norfolk the 688s were on one pier with their own sub tender (maybe the Holland) and the 637 were on a different pier with the Emory S. Land. So not a lot of interaction between 688 and 637 crews. Also since they had long since stopped building the 637 and were actively decommissioning them, there was some sentimentality for them. Add in there were plenty of nukes with enough time left coming to us from decommed 637s.
I've mentioned before... literally every single person I've ever met who served on 637s and then another class (be it 688/Ohio/VA) preferred the living conditions on the 637s.
Given it's a 100% approval rating I don't think it can be chalked up to Ustafish-itis... obviously they did something right.
Funny how it never changes. Now you have the 688 guys complaining about the control room layout on the Virginias, especially Sonar guys who no longer have their own shack to hide in.
I wonder if anyone who served on a 637 is still serving.... Looks like Parche lasted till 2004. A bunch of guys went to the L. Mendel Rivers which was the last S5W submarine in Norfolk if I remember. That decommed in 2001.
The next comparison will be the Columbia class to Ohio class.
I was in drydock in Bremerton when they were chopping the parche up. We got some of their toilet paper lol.
Can tell, due to Lithium Bromide A/C plant. 688’s just had 4 R114 plants.
It was an interesting piece of equipment until we fucked it up. Rocked up the heat exchanger during angles and dangles. Then when we were in an SRA a whole bunch of corrosion clogged the heat exchanger.
I always heard they were interesting. We studied them briefly in A school but I had no understanding of the cycle whatsoever.
I went to R114 school in Charleston, but never once did any serious work on them. I don’t remember them ever giving us any trouble, but I was an ELT and although I did a lot of mechanical work, I was able to cherry pick what I wanted to help out with.
I still have an ASW pump impeller nut cotter pin on my keychain.
Shit we need that.
In all seriousness, before I got to the boat, they forgot to sign off on the QA sheet for torquing the impeller nut on the main seawater pump. So sure enough they had to take it apart and check it.
We had to rebuild a chill water pump and the guys doing it forgot to put the mechanical seal in before putting it together.
Good stuff!
We used to have to rig out one of the three ASW pumps after every run longer than a few weeks to replace the mechanical seal. It was the least reliable piece of gear in the S6G engine room.
We had a lot more room back aft than on a 637, but it was still tight and it was a big pump and motor. We were supposed to lay it on its side on wood stringers, but that took hours of rigging so we never did it. We’d just hang it on 3 chainfalls at an angle, add a couple of come-alongs for extra safety, and work up under the pump. We’d station a NUB at the ERUL ladder to watch out for khakis, and then if one came back aft, we’d just pretend we were still rigging it out.
We had the reactor cooling water heat exchanger would grow moss inside it over time. So we would have to take the spool pieces out to "mow it". Problem was when we were on the surface we could take those spool pieces out no problem all day every day. Of course we never had a problem on the surface. Any kind of depth and the hull would compress enough that when you were trying to put the spool piece in it would cut the o-ring. We would have to get come alongs etc. to try and compress pipe. Maybe if we had a porta power that spanned the hull.
The other issue we had, we replaced the bearings on one of the Sharples lube oil purifier. After that, due lack of experience/knowledge we could never get the belt to not pop off.
We didn’t have that problem with RPFW, but it does remind me of hydroblasting the main condensers. Damn I’m glad I’ll never have to do that again.
Running the bromide was fun, 2k on the other hand not so much.
Ye Olde Shorttimer Calendar!
I was thinking how much effort went into making that calendar. Black pen and then I went back with a red pen for the days left. I wonder if I went forwards or backwards when I created it. I wonder how many times I counted on my knuckles to remember how many days in each month.
Then you’d get really bored on watch and simply crossing off squares wasn’t enough so start calculating the percentage of your enlistment was left!
And lists. There are two pages of music groups that looks like a who's who of 90s music. Here is the list of movies I wanted to get on VHS from blockbuster. Looks like I crossed out the ones I watched:
Wuthering HeightsUnbelievable Truth(this movie takes place where I grew up so I guess nostalgia to watch it)Ben HurBall of FireTrue StoriesWe called them pocket brains
Paper brains, SSN 682
I tried having a countdown calendar once but found it better to just accept the inevitable and live the life watch to watch, day to day. Until, that final night before (we used to refer to them as channel night. The night before or on our way into port) when the beer ration was finally let loose.
This was the US Navy so no beer.
Boooooo!!!!! We, well, anybody in the aft mess was lucky in that regard on O Boats. The beer storage was in the old COTS tank (from when Oberons had two rear firing/facing torpedo tubes). The hatch to the COTS was just fitted on with the nuts tightened and one with a hole drilled through it for the padlock that only the chief coxswain had access (among other senior enlisted) to the key.
Aft mess was usually only stokers and greenies but I usually racked down there. Being stokers, they had the tools on hand to simply undo all but the nut with the padlock on it and just swing it off the bolts and up.
Just like that, hey, free beer! Aft mess always had beer in one of the two fridges. Luckily for me and the others who lived in sleepy hollow, (as it was known) which was just aft of 103 bulkhead to your port facing aft, that fridge was in there. My rack was nearly always mid 103, so it was a doddle to reach out through the curtains of my rack and grab a beer for each of the 3 of us who ‘loved’ on 103 racks.
There were a bunch of diesel boat guys in my Subvets chapter. How far out did you guys go? They always told me the diesel boats were better because they did not really stay out too long when there were nukes and diesels at the same time.
If we were on a ‘sneaky’ boat on patrol, we could sometimes stretch to 9 weeks. Good thing about diesel boats is that, other than being on patrol (dive, patrol and surface where you dove, so no sunlight or ‘jollies’) you always got at least 2 or more port visits in and did a lot of surface transit. So, lots of time for casing BBQ’s, swimex’s etc… Diesel boats were faster on the surface than when dived. So it made sense. Although, I’ve been on a boat that was pushing the teeth loosening speed of 21kts dove, going 40+ degrees bow down, batteries in series, full ahead together, trying to break contact and lose a fish (practice, of course) that had us close enough for it to go to independent pinging.
No BOCOD listed?
I was not married for most of the time. But I was also in my 20s so the recharge time was
hoursminutes not days.I had one on my 637 class - mine was a full sheet of grid paper, numbered down to zero from... ~900 I think.
La Maddalena - that brings back some memories!
R114 thumbscrew part number…must be a nuke
Yep. Opened lots of doors when I got out. Went into the civilian power plant business. Though fossil, not nuke.
Yup, still have my "Last 1000 Days" book. Countdown calendar, diary, and all.
Sing this to the theme song of "Rawhide"...
"Boiling, boiling boiling,
The core's boiling, boiling, boiling,
Average temperature is rising
Boiling
Oh, my head is calculating the xenon we are making
Looks like we're at the end of core life..."
And this was written on the back of a spare module plate on the 6SB salinity panel in manuevering, preserved for posterity here since that panel is long gone...
"Twas a dark and gloomy night, Sept 1980
Denny Mac had the watch, the seas were deadly heavy
A scram drill, the normal kind, but now a twist thrown in-
The TG's weren't working right, things were looking grim.
A siren blares, people shout, the poles are in the holes,
The EO tries to shift about without speed control.
That is why the shit came down, the simple fools can see,
But the jerks blamed Dennis for the loss of all AC."
Stupid shit but it helped pass the time...
I'll raise you Ode to The O2 Candle Furnace
The OOD said “Burn two son, we gotta have some air”
He chuckled and grinned as he passed the word, we knew he didn’t care
But the diligent watch had met his fate. His orders were now clear
To meet his maker in Machinery Two, from the beast we all feared.
The Furnace still lay dormant, from the last time we had met.
Two clinkers we’d forgotten about, still deep inside of it.
I popped the top and looked inside, the evil demons throat,
And wondered how far I’d have to swim, if I just jumped off the boat.
To die from shark and frostbite, both nibbling at my feet,
Would be a sweeter death to me, than the match I was about to meet.
The clinkers were both pounded out, and put in empty cans.
Two new candles put in their place, by gloved covered, trembling hands.
I inserted the match and locked the top, then said a few quick prayers,
And thought to myself, there is still time to scramble up the stairs.
With a twist of the match it started to blaze, with white smoke and lots of dust.
To cover my face with a filter mask, I knew was a must.
So they burned those two and then two more, not giving me a break.
And the beast burned into the night, the next watches life to take.
<Raises hand in salute> Well done, shipmate. A piece of history worthy of preservation on the internetz.
Had one just like it in my butt brain. 🤣
Meridiana Airlines, connecting to a TWA flight. Man, that's old-school.
I see it went away in 2018. I flew to Rome from Olbia in 1993 and then when I flew out from Olbia for terminal leave a year later, I had the same flight attendant. I suppose that is not surprising since Meridiana was based in Olbia. Olbia is the first one I remember where you get out on the tarmac. I remember after we got back from Rome on a Sunday night, all the planes were lined up waiting for the next days flights.
Edit looks like just before I flew on them they were called Alisarda.
Yep, got a couple of them.
Looks like something off a prison cell wall 😂
Still have it…with countdown calendar…has all the service tel numbers from SQD 6 and tender for Sonar tech assistance.
Yep I was in Squadron 6. I was the calibration petty officers, so i have numbers for the petroleum lab and the metrology lab in Norfolk. I was in 1988 to 94. 90 to 94 was on the sub in Norfolk. When were you in?
1990-96…USS Norfolk. STS2
Ok. HMM. your sub did not have a seawater pump mechanical seal blow? I think that was the Newport News. I knew a guy from nuke school/prototype that went to the Newport News.
I was in squadron 8 the next pier over from 90-94, in M and L divs. I was in NNPS class 8901 and qualified at D1G.
Can confirm, 688’s have a stupidly small amount of berthing for the size of the boat. All of the added space from 637’s went to the engine room.
I was at DIG from Jan 90 to June 90. NNPS was 8906 if I remember.
Ah yeah cool, you were after me; I finished ELT school in February 1990.
I was offered staff pickup as M-divver, but turned it down for ELT school because I’m a total idiot. Though probably for the better bc I likely would’ve re-upped if I’d been a staff pickup. Nobody but dig-its re-upped after a few months on a fast attack.
I burned mine, made a nice little fire... now I wish I'd kept it...
Mines digital now have a spreadsheet that updates by the second lol I love my boat actually but some people watch that timer religiously
Yes but for my days left in the navy. Underway it was the Orb on the rpcp
To be honest the way the UK BN routine went, doing this just made you more depressed.
You would get to within a week / two weeks / a month and then get an extension. Its not a fun day adding another months worth of date on a page
Still have mine, aye. I’m traveling and can’t verify, but I believe it starts 1,637 days out 😭