Why I Hate Subs

In April of 1963 my entire B Team was sent on submarine

training. As I recall, the name of the sub was the “Perch.”

It was a World War II diesel sub that had been converted

into a troop ship for special forces, intelligence, and

ranger-type operations. The forward and aft torpedo

compartments had been emptied and about fifty canvass bunks,

just like those on troopships had been installed. They were

stacked four or five high and were very, very close to one

another. The canvass was slack and sagged making them even

closer.

We boarded the sub early one rainy morning at the port in

Naha. My group was assigned to the forward troop

compartment and I took a bottom bunk on the left hand

side against the wall. Sailors call the left hand side of

the ship, the “port side” and the right hand side, the

“starboard side.” They also refer to a wall as a

“bulkhead,” the floor as a “deck,” the front of the ship as

the “bow” or “forward,” the rear of the ship as “aft” or the

“fantail,” the door as a “hatch,” and for some strange

reason, they refer to a latrine as a “head.” The canvass on

my bunk was so slack, I was actually lying on the floor.

The bunk above me sagged so much its canvass was only about

two inches above my chest. If I wanted to roll over, the

guy above me had to either get out of his bunk, pull himself

up out of my way or I had to push him up. There were two

men above me and the top two bunks were full of our gear.

The rain had soaked our clothes while we were boarding ship.

Some of the guys draped their wet fatigues over the hatch

that connected our compartment to the rest of that tub to

dry. While we were heading out of the harbor a sailor came

through and started raising hell about those fatigues and

jerked them off the hatch. When he walked by where I lay, I

grabbed the cuff of his trousers because that’s all I could

see and asked those navy oxfords, “Hey buddy, why are you so

upset? The guys didn’t mean any harm.” The oxfords

replied, “If we ram something and spring a leak up here we

have to be able to close that hatch and seal it off from the

rest of the sub.” Well, with my left hand I pushed up all

the bunks above me, which were occupied at the time, and

rolled out into the aisle. Maybe all of those damn pushups

had done me some good after all. Then this East Tennessee

boy found himself another bunk closer to that damn hatch.

It was also a bottom bunk, but it was a lot closer to that

hatch. In fact, I was right next to it. I vowed to myself,

“They might seal somebody in this compartment, but it won’t

be me. The only part of me that they will ever lock in this

compartment will be the heel of my boot as I go through that

damn hatch.” Shortly after we cleared the harbor and made

it out into the open sea, we submerged. In all fairness,

there was one good point about traveling submerged, that

damn boat didn’t rock! That’s the only good thing about a

submarine that I saw!

Within five minutes after we submerged, the captain came on

the loudspeaker system and announced, “The Thresher is

officially lost at sea.” Those navy oxfords passed by again

and I tugged on the cuff of their trousers and asked them,

What is a Thresher? Did we lose a part off this damn

sardine can?” The oxfords replied, “The Thresher was a

brand new nuclear submarine that just sank on its test

dive.” It was about then that I began to suspect that I

was not going to enjoy training in this rickety-ass old

World War II sardine can.

That’s when I noticed the loud squeaking, actually it was so

loud it sounded more like a twisting or binding of metal.

It had been in the background ever since shortly after we

had submerged, but I was not paying much attention to such

things then. When those oxfords passed by on their way back

out of our compartment, I tugged on the cuff of their

trousers again and asked them, “What is all of that

squeaking?” and they replied, “What squeaking? Oh, that.

That’s just the pressure of the ocean. It’s trying to

squash us.” Well that confirmed it: I definitely was not

going to enjoy this training. That damn noise caused by all

of the stress the hull of our sub was under never ceased as

long as we were submerged.

All of this caused my bladder to notify me that it required

my attention and I wriggled out of my bunk and I went in

search of the latrine. After I didn’t find anything that

remotely resembled a latrine, I asked the first sailor that

I met where it was. He showed me. [By the way, his voice

matched that of the oxfords to whom I had been speaking.]

He opened a door on the port side of our compartment and

about half way forward and there “it” was. It resembled a

metal commode in a wall locker with three knobs on the wall

behind it. There was no water in the bowl, in fact the bowl

did not have exactly the same appearance as a landlubbers

commode, similar but not the same. I asked, “Why so many

knobs?” He quickly explained, “Turn that knob and do your

business, turn this knob after you do your business and then

turn that knob. If performed in proper sequence, the pipes

and the commode will be sealed and sea water will come in

and wash the mess out into the ocean.” Then he left.

I squeezed into that tiny wall locker and stood there and

stared at that machine while I ran the instructions through

my mind again and again. There were no instructions posted

in that damn wall locker nor were the knobs marked in any

way and I was not sure that I had the instructions right.

So I opened the door and looked around for that sailor

again. No luck, he was already gone. That was okay, my

bladder had already changed its mind, there was no rush now.

My bladder had decided that it would rather expand to the

size of a basketball than risk drowning in a wall locker

full of body waste and sea water.

Later we went topside to train on entering the RB-15s

[rubber boats] from the sub. I took advantage of this

opportunity and pissed off the aft end of the deck. One

learns to spit, puke, and piss “with the wind,” when one is

aboard ship.

The rubber boats and oars were stored [lashed down] inside a

part of the conning tower. Sailors held the rubber boats

alongside the sub so that we could leap into them. We

discovered that this seemingly simple act required a keen

sense of timing. The more you weighed, the more accurate

your timing had better be. You could find yourself going

right through the bottom of that rubber boat or being

bounced like a ping pong ball right out into the ocean. You

jumped when the rubber boat is at the “bottom” of the swell

and the farthest from you and as you fell the rubber boat

would rise on the next swell to meet you. If you jumped

when the rubber boat was on top of the swell, you and the

boat fell together all the way to the bottom of the swell

where both came to a teeth-jarring stop.

The sailors enjoyed watching us learn this simple task and

they especially enjoyed fishing some of the careless ones

out of the ocean. After we got the boat loaded, we then

shoved off and paddled around in a large circle and returned

to unload. Unloading was a helluva lot better than loading.

The next day we tried a second method. In this technique,

you sit in your little rubber boat and let the sub sink from

under you. First we ran a dry run. The sailors lashed the

boats to the aft deck and we got in and practiced releasing

the tie downs. We were great at this, after all it was

daylight and we were sitting on the deck, not in the water.

Then they did it for real and the sub blew its ballast tanks

and sank from under us. That wasn’t so bad. In fact, it

was a lot easier than jumping into the boats.

For our next trick, we were to meet the sub and let it tow

us while it was still running at periscope depth before we

came back aboard. This way the sub could meet us closer to

shore and then tow us farther out to sea before it surfaced

and that way remain undetected.

We lashed our little rubber boats together one behind the

other. From my position as the last man on the right in the

very last boat, I could just barely see the periscope moving

our front from our left to our right. It amazed me how damn

fast that sub can travel while it is submerged. The

periscope was leaving a wake that was as high as I was.

Someone in the front boat tried to lasso the periscope as it

flew past, but he missed. The periscope started to make a

large circle to make another pass. Another guy on the front

boat who was a cowboy from somewhere out west took charge of

that chore.

All five of the rubber boats had been tied bow-to-aft,

bow-to-aft in a line, but while just sitting there they were

not aligned. The boats were just floating on the swells,

some facing this way and some that way.

Our cowboy stood up and rested one foot on the inflated side

of the rubber boat’s bow and re-tied the knot and made

himself a real noose and when that sub passed that time, he

nailed that periscope in one try. As soon as that noose

fell over that periscope, those little rubber boats

literally “snapped” into a straight line and the bow of the

front boat popped up out of the water. In fact, about half

of the front boat came out of the water and our cowboy, who

had been standing in the bow of that front boat, did a back

flip and landed in the ocean. We were flat hauling ass in

our little rubber boats. As we flew past him, I held my oar

out to John Wayne and he grabbed it and two of us pulled him

over the ass-end of our rubber boat. He was grinning from

ear-to-ear as he shouted, “This is great fun, almost as much

fun as bull-riding.” Yeah, Right! Our illustrious leaders

had more of this great fun planned for us. As a matter of

fact, we were going to be lucky enough to try this same

trick that night. Whoopie!

After we were back aboard the sub, the sailors deflated the

boats and re-stored them and the oars and we submerged and

had supper. It takes a while for a sub to feed its crew and

50 or so troops also. The galley and mess hall are

unbelievably small. Everything inside that sub is

unbelievably small. They have storage areas built into

every place possible. The freezer and cooler are beneath

the galley with access through a trap door. The benches in

the mess hall are hollow and that is where they store

potatoes. Some of the offices are so small, the user must

back into it, sit down, and then turn under his desk. All

of the hatches were built for midgets. Anyone assigned to

sub duty should not be allowed to be over 5’ tall and I’m

serious. When we left that damn sardine can, I had half a

dozen scars on my bald head from trying to squeeze through

those damn itty-bitty hatches. The chow was great and you

could have all you wanted. It was said that sub mess

officers get first pick of chow when it’s issued.

Submariners do eat good, but it isn’t good enough food to

justify me being in a sub. The sailors loved to kid us,

“You guys have to jump out of airplanes, sleep in mud, and

eat c-rations. Look at what we got. We always have clean

sheets and good food.” I told them, “I wouldn’t voluntarily

live in a damn wall locker under the water for all the clean

sheets and hot chow in the world.”

During the afternoon a storm came our way. The sub captain

advised our idiot B Team Commander to not put us off the sub

in that weather because it was very stormy and rough. Our

fearless leader was a Missile Command officer who had been

“assigned” to SF duty and hated every minute of it. Our

precious Major decided to put us out anyway. The sub

captain told him, “I have never put troops off in rubber

boats in this kind of weather and you as their commander

must assume full responsibility for that decision.” Of

course us enlisted folks were unaware of all of this at the

time. It came to light in our After Action Report.

Our Missile Major had a brilliant solution. My boat was

designated as the Safety Boat and I would carry a radio set,

I believe it was a Prick 25 [AN/PRC-25]. That was the only

difference between our boat and the rest. Big deal, we were

all powered the same way, oars.

Our mission was, “Disembark via Method #2. Then

rendezvous with one another and travel together towards

shore to a point just outside the breakers. And finally,

return

and rendezvous with the sub using flashlights.” When we

popped up onto that deck, it was pitch black and raining so

hard you couldn’t see a flashlight from fifty feet away had

we been allowed to use one. It was one of those nights

where you can touch your nose with your hand without seeing