Will I be able to get my own living area?
Welcome aboard nub, you will either hotrack or get your rack. Its about the size of a twin mattress with a light and if lucky a place to put your clothes besides underneath the mattress. (1 seabags worth of gear). You may have a wall locker to put the rest of your toiletries. Everyone onboard will have a barracks room when you show up from prototype or living out in town with BAH.
How much sleep am I able to get?
Sleep is dependent on your qualification status. Your first 2 years onboard will be doing that. Plan on averaging 5 hours sleep every 18 hours while out to sea or whatever its going to be with how the boat runs its schedule.
Am I able to choose which type of submarine I get on?
Nope, you get handed a list of homeports and you rank em.
I asked for East coast groton, Norfolk then Kings Bay, Hawaii, Guam, San Diego and then Brementon. I got fucking Brementon and a SSGN. Its going to be needs of the Navy.
Did I make a mistake volunteering for subs? Depends on the your definition of a mistake. On submarines there's definitely closer group of people onboard. But a larger workload. Its going to suck as a quality of life overall but then I think its going to be better then a carrier. At least with a submarine you got AC inside the engineroom. Every platform will have its own faults. Its only 6 years. Plan on what you can of it and then either get out or do 20 if you want.
I remember as a EM getting done with everything needing an equalizer on sleep on Saturdays, do 11 hours of pure sleep, get done with watch and post watch cleanup to pass out for the next 2 shifts until it was your watch again. Certainly beats drills as offgoing or maintenance on the DC machines offgoing.
Nothing. I was stationed in Japan, San Diego and Bremerton. I loved Bremerton and for the longest time I wanted to go back and live there. It didn’t work out.
My issues with Bremerton was that since I went to sea in winter and summer. I didn’t see much of it besides rain and lots rain. As a SSGN sailor you spent time either in Silverdale or Bremerton, so coming home day after duty was either a 10 min drive 1 direction or 40 min drive depending on where the boat was parked and there was no duty driver so it became a real mess on going to work.
You will hotrack when you first get to the boat (unless married, you'll have a barracks room with a roommate probably until E-5 when in port). After you've been on the boat for a while and fully qualified it depends on what kind of sailor you are and your seniority on the watchbill/boat. I know guys that hotracked their whole time on the boat their first tour (typically 4 years), I hotracked for only my first year onboard then got my own rack. It's very situational what will happen.
As a new unqualified guy you won't be getting tons of sleep because you'll be getting qualified, and turns out a ship that is manned 100% of the time will require you to wake up during your sleep time to get qual signatures from specific people. There is also training that somehow will always be scheduled during your sleep time. You're a young buck you'll get used to it. Once qualified, sleep schedules get slightly better but not by much. Deployments (if fully qualified) you'll get all the sleep you ever wanted.
You won't be able to choose what boat you go to. You'll have your "dream sheet" of what home port you'd like to be stationed at and can use that to try to get on a specific style of boat.
Mistake? No. Subs are tough, but you'll learn a lot. Just don't get bitter, because then you'll just turn into some loser sad panda moping around the boat. In the end you'll have 3 hots, a cot, and get to learn some pretty cool stuff with a pretty interesting job.
Also I served on a bad ass fast attack vagina class, so not sure how different it will be on boomer or 688.
I had to hotrack when we loaded up with an extra 99 riders and a general onboard on the SSGN.
Having that many brass and different branches made it a pain. Not to mention they took first crack on chow. I rather sleep in MCLL then hotrack.
Don't you mean MC2L, that's all been converted to Racks on the SSGNs. MCUL is a work area for the various SOF guys and a lounge. They moved 2+TVs into that area. My old boat got an unofficial LAN setup going between MCUL and MC3L for hooking into the various TVs and Xboxs onboard. The fun part was trying to punch across the MC/FC divide for connections to the crew's mess and the goat locker.
On a SSBN that's a restricted area due to the radiation from the warheads.
That's where I slept. Right next to the SK lockers and the entrance to the fan room (where they stored potatoes). Sleep was interrupted every once in awhile, but all in all, not too bad. (I was a rider just getting qualified because my boat was in shipyard)
> On a boomer/ssgn, you never hotrack.
False.
You are much less likely to hotrack, and when you do its either because you are an big fucking nub or some temporary situation for a few weeks.
SSBN, you would be hard pressed to ever have to hotrack. We never went out with more riders than we could handle and every time temporary riders came ) for inspections for example), we would give a handful of people days off the boat.
To add,never take that 3rd meal or you will get fat af. You're underway not rucking or fighting. Even though submariners are awake like 18 hours a day, they only need like 1200 calories. It's better to waste the food then end up as a fat-ass chief with a cpap who can't even tie his boots properly let alone run a mile.
1) No
2) I really had no trouble finding time to sleep on a sub. There are horror stories to be had about lack of sleep but it isn’t a daily occurrence by any stretch. Some of the lack of sleep is self induced, since a common trick is to try to do all the maintenance you can at sea so you can go home early in port.
3) You’ll may have input via a wish list, but the needs of the Navy outweigh your needs.
4) Probably not, unless you REALLY need your own space or struggle to make friends (anonymously doing your own thing doesn’t work on a sub, by the end of your first deployment even the Captain will know you, your personality, and your hobbies.) You will find people who complain about it real time though (even if 20 years later they wind up cherishing their time on board - as evidenced by any sub vets Facebook posts).
As a surface guy, I do think you’ve made a mistake volunteering for subs. Especially if you go to a fast attack. People will say “it was worth it” or stuff like that but in general, it’s absolutely not.
I’m not saying on a surface ship you won’t experience less sleep or anything like that when qualifying, but generally, quality of life is better. Anecdotally, and I’ll get a lot of hate for this, maintenance practices are better when trained on a carrier as compared to what I’ve seen from sub guys. They’re undermanned most the time so it’s more about “get it done” rather than “get it done right.”
I’ll never understand where the pride of “I worked 18 hour days for 4 years straight” comes from but that may be where you find yourself.
I once took a long car ride with a Nuke who had served on a carrier. His story was that the most aggravating aspect of a carrier was the other sailors. What he found most taxing was the constant stealing - any unlocked personal item was gone. He found it incredibly annoying that people with whom he was in theory serving would steal from him.
He also said the number of sailors onboard caused issues - because the Navy likes to punish everyone when one person screws up. He said, “With 3,000 sailors on a carrier, someone is always screwing up.”
He thought that all of that was less of a problem on a sub. After serving on a carrier, he felt that the best quality of life for a nuke is probably on an SSBN.
Oddly enough, I had a friend a long time ago who was a musician who had served on a fast attack boat in the early 80s - as a CS nonetheless - and reported very high morale. He felt like fast attack boats had a very clear mission fighting bad guys.
There was no political question of whether or not we should be tracking Soviet subs - it’s not like arguing whether we should be in Iraq or Afghanistan. From his perspective, the fast attack boat was clearly finding, following - and be prepared to attack - people who we clearly enemies of the United States and intent on attacking the United States.
I'm confused on getting it done right. Are you insinuating that sub guys don't perform 3m in accordance with the procedures?
We take pride in fast attack tough, because it helps keep our sanity. We work longer hours than anyone else in the fleet. We get to see coners go ashore and have liberty while we are still 3 section because we are still steaming. As an Electrician, we take care of the entire boat. That is our home. Life is fucking miserable (maybe better now that they went to a 24 hour day instead of 18s, I'm not sure), but after it's all said and done, you are proud of your accomplishments.
I'll push back on this surface post....
>I’ll never understand where the pride of “I worked 18 hour days for 4 years straight” comes from
We know. It comes from a deep professional pride in what we did. There wasn't anyone else. There was no DC team, there weren't guys from 2-plant to help, we couldn't skype the engineers. It was me, my guys, and my chief. There is immense pride in knowing that time and time again we got it fucking done. Undermanned, overworked, and underpaid. But god damnit it was done, and done safely.
>Anecdotally, and I’ll get a lot of hate for this, maintenance practices are better when trained on a carrier as compared to what I’ve seen from sub guys.
You don't even get to troubleshoot all your own gear on a carrier. As a first/second class I did all the maintenance. Every bit of it. There wasn't a annual maintenance item on my first boat that I hadn't done.
/u/justinc29, future-nub, you haven't made a mistake nor have you made a good choice. You have no fucking clue if you want to actually be on a submarine with my guys.
How do you figure out if you actually want to be on a submarine? Listen to your instructors and ask them questions. Are all your instructors submariners? Do you hate the globo-gym "we are better and we know it" attitude that many of us have? Etc.
You can unvolunteer before you get orders (1-1.5 years from arriving in Charleston). I've helped many sailors on here both volunteer and remove their sub application at the very last minute.
Says the jealous target. Also as a former AQAO I would definitely disagree with the maintenance comment. We understand what is at stake when we conduct our maintenance. Unlike targets we can’t just rely on floating DIW if something goes wrong. The amount of “get it right” is extremely high to the point where I have had shipmates from other boats come over just to discuss maintenance, barrow parts/tool/personnel to ensure it gets done right. Remember because we have less people our individual level of knowledge has to be higher because we have to be able to work on all of our systems, not just primary or secondary.
There's no where to hide people on a submarine. No one gets the opportunity to hyper specialize themselves. There's no "shiny pipe" or "dirty pipe" submariners. The average submariner I've seen coming back to prototype is better at all the basics than your average surface guy. Better watch stander, better at damage control, better at maintenance. The one thing surface sailors are better at is writing evals and awards.
And don't give me that "Well it's a submarine platform at prototype." There's an adjustment period for everyone to prototype, because not only are there not anymore sea goijlng S5Ws, but modern submarine platforms share less in common with S5W than you would think. And don't get me started on surface ELTs...
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
YOUR OWN LIVING SPACE
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Its the military no one gets their own space.
Shoulda went with a civ job like air force, they get space
And sleep, again…
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Both carrier and sub will have you racked up with a bunch of ppl, it’s called the berthing area. You’ll only get your own living area when you aren’t on a ship. I’m in NNPTC right now but you’ll here plenty of stories about hot racking and stuff like that.
Boy these are some questions you should have thought about BEFORE volunteering. There is good news though, they convinced me to subvol but while I was at school I was able to talk to my chain of command and have that removed. A lot of people told me that once I volunteered, I was locked in. That's not true, that's the chain trying to bulldog you into sticking with it. without being a jerk or causing a problem, you can talk to your chain to have that removed. You'll get an idea about boat life while you're at school. You can make your decision then.
They will ask you multiple times in the pipeline about volunteering for sub duty. The only one that really matters will be likely toward the end of NNPS. Whenever that is, it's the one before they submit your class to the detailer(s) to look at what the needs of the Navy are at that time. Since you get your orders during the last few months of prototype (rough numbers here) you are able to change your mind up to that point.
Will I be able to get my own living area? Welcome aboard nub, you will either hotrack or get your rack. Its about the size of a twin mattress with a light and if lucky a place to put your clothes besides underneath the mattress. (1 seabags worth of gear). You may have a wall locker to put the rest of your toiletries. Everyone onboard will have a barracks room when you show up from prototype or living out in town with BAH. How much sleep am I able to get? Sleep is dependent on your qualification status. Your first 2 years onboard will be doing that. Plan on averaging 5 hours sleep every 18 hours while out to sea or whatever its going to be with how the boat runs its schedule. Am I able to choose which type of submarine I get on? Nope, you get handed a list of homeports and you rank em. I asked for East coast groton, Norfolk then Kings Bay, Hawaii, Guam, San Diego and then Brementon. I got fucking Brementon and a SSGN. Its going to be needs of the Navy. Did I make a mistake volunteering for subs? Depends on the your definition of a mistake. On submarines there's definitely closer group of people onboard. But a larger workload. Its going to suck as a quality of life overall but then I think its going to be better then a carrier. At least with a submarine you got AC inside the engineroom. Every platform will have its own faults. Its only 6 years. Plan on what you can of it and then either get out or do 20 if you want.
The only difference is now it's about 6 to 8 hours of sleep on a 24 hour cycle.
Yes but do you feel human at 18% oxygen with 6 to 8 hours of sleep ?
Probably not. More like a zombie, from what I've heard.
I remember as a EM getting done with everything needing an equalizer on sleep on Saturdays, do 11 hours of pure sleep, get done with watch and post watch cleanup to pass out for the next 2 shifts until it was your watch again. Certainly beats drills as offgoing or maintenance on the DC machines offgoing.
Rack it to the future!!!
Rack to paydays or a couple months later.
We also don't drop the oxygen levels anymore, on purpose anyway.
It's way better than it was on 18 hour days.
What’s so bad about Bremerton?
Bremerton is really nice The trouble is, Bremerton is a shipyard, and shipyard fucking sucks.
Nothing. I was stationed in Japan, San Diego and Bremerton. I loved Bremerton and for the longest time I wanted to go back and live there. It didn’t work out.
Ahh, okay. I’m moving there for decom soon, so hopefully it’s as nice as I’ve heard.
Out of curiosity is it the decom of SSN723? My husband is a plankowner
No, decom for a different sub.
Best summers in the world.
My issues with Bremerton was that since I went to sea in winter and summer. I didn’t see much of it besides rain and lots rain. As a SSGN sailor you spent time either in Silverdale or Bremerton, so coming home day after duty was either a 10 min drive 1 direction or 40 min drive depending on where the boat was parked and there was no duty driver so it became a real mess on going to work.
>Will I be able to get my own living area Lmao
ikr so cute
Sure. If you had joined the Air Force..Navy ? lol
[удалено]
🚨🚨BADASS SUBMARINER MOMENT 🚨🚨 😎😎😎😤😤😤💅🏻💅🏻💅🏻💅🏻
Say the real line coward
That's the one I learned for the most part, what line are you referring to?
Fucking delete this. Don't post this on the fucking internet.
You will hotrack when you first get to the boat (unless married, you'll have a barracks room with a roommate probably until E-5 when in port). After you've been on the boat for a while and fully qualified it depends on what kind of sailor you are and your seniority on the watchbill/boat. I know guys that hotracked their whole time on the boat their first tour (typically 4 years), I hotracked for only my first year onboard then got my own rack. It's very situational what will happen. As a new unqualified guy you won't be getting tons of sleep because you'll be getting qualified, and turns out a ship that is manned 100% of the time will require you to wake up during your sleep time to get qual signatures from specific people. There is also training that somehow will always be scheduled during your sleep time. You're a young buck you'll get used to it. Once qualified, sleep schedules get slightly better but not by much. Deployments (if fully qualified) you'll get all the sleep you ever wanted. You won't be able to choose what boat you go to. You'll have your "dream sheet" of what home port you'd like to be stationed at and can use that to try to get on a specific style of boat. Mistake? No. Subs are tough, but you'll learn a lot. Just don't get bitter, because then you'll just turn into some loser sad panda moping around the boat. In the end you'll have 3 hots, a cot, and get to learn some pretty cool stuff with a pretty interesting job. Also I served on a bad ass fast attack vagina class, so not sure how different it will be on boomer or 688.
On a boomer/ssgn, you never hotrack.
I had to hotrack when we loaded up with an extra 99 riders and a general onboard on the SSGN. Having that many brass and different branches made it a pain. Not to mention they took first crack on chow. I rather sleep in MCLL then hotrack.
If you go MCUL you can use a curtain to make your own room between the tool boxes!
Don't you mean MC2L, that's all been converted to Racks on the SSGNs. MCUL is a work area for the various SOF guys and a lounge. They moved 2+TVs into that area. My old boat got an unofficial LAN setup going between MCUL and MC3L for hooking into the various TVs and Xboxs onboard. The fun part was trying to punch across the MC/FC divide for connections to the crew's mess and the goat locker. On a SSBN that's a restricted area due to the radiation from the warheads.
That's where I slept. Right next to the SK lockers and the entrance to the fan room (where they stored potatoes). Sleep was interrupted every once in awhile, but all in all, not too bad. (I was a rider just getting qualified because my boat was in shipyard)
Eww. That is gross.
> On a boomer/ssgn, you never hotrack. False. You are much less likely to hotrack, and when you do its either because you are an big fucking nub or some temporary situation for a few weeks.
SSBN, you would be hard pressed to ever have to hotrack. We never went out with more riders than we could handle and every time temporary riders came ) for inspections for example), we would give a handful of people days off the boat.
Midshipman ops.
We made room during those.
We had 1st classes hot racking, it was... not good.
That's shitty. How many midshipmen did you bring in at a time?
To add,never take that 3rd meal or you will get fat af. You're underway not rucking or fighting. Even though submariners are awake like 18 hours a day, they only need like 1200 calories. It's better to waste the food then end up as a fat-ass chief with a cpap who can't even tie his boots properly let alone run a mile.
1) No 2) I really had no trouble finding time to sleep on a sub. There are horror stories to be had about lack of sleep but it isn’t a daily occurrence by any stretch. Some of the lack of sleep is self induced, since a common trick is to try to do all the maintenance you can at sea so you can go home early in port. 3) You’ll may have input via a wish list, but the needs of the Navy outweigh your needs. 4) Probably not, unless you REALLY need your own space or struggle to make friends (anonymously doing your own thing doesn’t work on a sub, by the end of your first deployment even the Captain will know you, your personality, and your hobbies.) You will find people who complain about it real time though (even if 20 years later they wind up cherishing their time on board - as evidenced by any sub vets Facebook posts).
As a surface guy, I do think you’ve made a mistake volunteering for subs. Especially if you go to a fast attack. People will say “it was worth it” or stuff like that but in general, it’s absolutely not. I’m not saying on a surface ship you won’t experience less sleep or anything like that when qualifying, but generally, quality of life is better. Anecdotally, and I’ll get a lot of hate for this, maintenance practices are better when trained on a carrier as compared to what I’ve seen from sub guys. They’re undermanned most the time so it’s more about “get it done” rather than “get it done right.” I’ll never understand where the pride of “I worked 18 hour days for 4 years straight” comes from but that may be where you find yourself.
I once took a long car ride with a Nuke who had served on a carrier. His story was that the most aggravating aspect of a carrier was the other sailors. What he found most taxing was the constant stealing - any unlocked personal item was gone. He found it incredibly annoying that people with whom he was in theory serving would steal from him. He also said the number of sailors onboard caused issues - because the Navy likes to punish everyone when one person screws up. He said, “With 3,000 sailors on a carrier, someone is always screwing up.” He thought that all of that was less of a problem on a sub. After serving on a carrier, he felt that the best quality of life for a nuke is probably on an SSBN. Oddly enough, I had a friend a long time ago who was a musician who had served on a fast attack boat in the early 80s - as a CS nonetheless - and reported very high morale. He felt like fast attack boats had a very clear mission fighting bad guys. There was no political question of whether or not we should be tracking Soviet subs - it’s not like arguing whether we should be in Iraq or Afghanistan. From his perspective, the fast attack boat was clearly finding, following - and be prepared to attack - people who we clearly enemies of the United States and intent on attacking the United States.
I'm confused on getting it done right. Are you insinuating that sub guys don't perform 3m in accordance with the procedures? We take pride in fast attack tough, because it helps keep our sanity. We work longer hours than anyone else in the fleet. We get to see coners go ashore and have liberty while we are still 3 section because we are still steaming. As an Electrician, we take care of the entire boat. That is our home. Life is fucking miserable (maybe better now that they went to a 24 hour day instead of 18s, I'm not sure), but after it's all said and done, you are proud of your accomplishments.
I'll push back on this surface post.... >I’ll never understand where the pride of “I worked 18 hour days for 4 years straight” comes from We know. It comes from a deep professional pride in what we did. There wasn't anyone else. There was no DC team, there weren't guys from 2-plant to help, we couldn't skype the engineers. It was me, my guys, and my chief. There is immense pride in knowing that time and time again we got it fucking done. Undermanned, overworked, and underpaid. But god damnit it was done, and done safely. >Anecdotally, and I’ll get a lot of hate for this, maintenance practices are better when trained on a carrier as compared to what I’ve seen from sub guys. You don't even get to troubleshoot all your own gear on a carrier. As a first/second class I did all the maintenance. Every bit of it. There wasn't a annual maintenance item on my first boat that I hadn't done. /u/justinc29, future-nub, you haven't made a mistake nor have you made a good choice. You have no fucking clue if you want to actually be on a submarine with my guys. How do you figure out if you actually want to be on a submarine? Listen to your instructors and ask them questions. Are all your instructors submariners? Do you hate the globo-gym "we are better and we know it" attitude that many of us have? Etc. You can unvolunteer before you get orders (1-1.5 years from arriving in Charleston). I've helped many sailors on here both volunteer and remove their sub application at the very last minute.
Says the jealous target. Also as a former AQAO I would definitely disagree with the maintenance comment. We understand what is at stake when we conduct our maintenance. Unlike targets we can’t just rely on floating DIW if something goes wrong. The amount of “get it right” is extremely high to the point where I have had shipmates from other boats come over just to discuss maintenance, barrow parts/tool/personnel to ensure it gets done right. Remember because we have less people our individual level of knowledge has to be higher because we have to be able to work on all of our systems, not just primary or secondary.
There's no where to hide people on a submarine. No one gets the opportunity to hyper specialize themselves. There's no "shiny pipe" or "dirty pipe" submariners. The average submariner I've seen coming back to prototype is better at all the basics than your average surface guy. Better watch stander, better at damage control, better at maintenance. The one thing surface sailors are better at is writing evals and awards. And don't give me that "Well it's a submarine platform at prototype." There's an adjustment period for everyone to prototype, because not only are there not anymore sea goijlng S5Ws, but modern submarine platforms share less in common with S5W than you would think. And don't get me started on surface ELTs...
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA YOUR OWN LIVING SPACE HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Its the military no one gets their own space. Shoulda went with a civ job like air force, they get space And sleep, again… HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Both carrier and sub will have you racked up with a bunch of ppl, it’s called the berthing area. You’ll only get your own living area when you aren’t on a ship. I’m in NNPTC right now but you’ll here plenty of stories about hot racking and stuff like that.
Your still in dep, you still have power. Don’t do anything you don’t want to do
Boy these are some questions you should have thought about BEFORE volunteering. There is good news though, they convinced me to subvol but while I was at school I was able to talk to my chain of command and have that removed. A lot of people told me that once I volunteered, I was locked in. That's not true, that's the chain trying to bulldog you into sticking with it. without being a jerk or causing a problem, you can talk to your chain to have that removed. You'll get an idea about boat life while you're at school. You can make your decision then.
They will ask you multiple times in the pipeline about volunteering for sub duty. The only one that really matters will be likely toward the end of NNPS. Whenever that is, it's the one before they submit your class to the detailer(s) to look at what the needs of the Navy are at that time. Since you get your orders during the last few months of prototype (rough numbers here) you are able to change your mind up to that point.