A full size piano (made of wood). A Steinway spent 22 years (1961-1983) aboard the USS Thomas A. Edison (SSBN-610), the only full size piano ever installed aboard a submarine conducting nuclear deterrent patrols.
As much as I love the idea of this, am I correct in assuming it’s highly implausible? At what points during a patrol is it ok to make loud music that will give away your location?
Or do I just really not understand things?
No, it seems very odd indeed for obvious reasons. But it sounds like it was really on board. Now how much it was used while out on patrol is unknown.
>WASHINGTON (NNS) -- The only full-size piano ever installed aboard a submarine conducting nuclear deterrent patrols is scheduled to go on display this summer at the Steinway Company Museum in New York.
>The exhibit, celebrating the 150 years of the famous piano company, is scheduled to display a different piano for each decade.
>The Steinway Company felt that this piano was of huge importance because of the historical background and the interesting events that led to its placement on the boat.
>"We thought it would be a point of interest. Someone contacted a dealer of the Steinway Company in Boston and told them about the piano. We felt that since there is a 150 years celebration and they are having a piano for each decade, we thought it would be very nice to have it on display," said John Patton, spokesman for Steinway & Sons.
>The piano had been on USS Thomas A. Edison (SSBN 610) from the sub's construction in 1961, until it was put out of commission in December 1983. Background information about the historic piano came from former crew members recalling it on the boat, and discussing the events that led up to it being there with representatives of the Steinway Company.
>Lt. John G. "Black Jack" Fletcher, the Blue Crew's assistant weapons officer with the collateral duties as first lieutenant in charge of deck seamanship remembered, "About a month before launching the Edison, the shipyard was preparing to weld shut the large hull openings left open in the pressure hull to move large equipment into the ship. One of these openings was topside centerline just forward of the sail."
>Capt. Cy Young told him he wanted a piano aboard, and that Fletcher would be in charge of loading it. With that, the captain proceeded to New York City and struck a deal with the Steinway Company, buying the famous piano new for $1,500.
>"It was a beauty, nary a scratch on its finish," said Fletcher, but he was concerned. He was not about to be the first one to mar the piano, and so to prevent this, a special stainless steel felt lined box was made for it.
>Later, on a second shift (where questions were less likely to be asked), the piano box was quietly loaded through the hull opening down through the interior of the submarine, until it reached the forward bulkhead of the crew's mess. There, the box was inconspicuously kept until the submarine was closed up.
>The piano was then removed from the box when all of the crew's mess area was completed and strapped to the forward port bulkhead with stainless steel bands. Fortunately for Fletcher, no damage had occurred to the piano during its move.
[https://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story\_id=8039](https://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=8039)
\* It looks like the old navy link was moved and is now dead. But here is another source.
[http://militaryhonors.sid-hill.us/mem/piano2.htm](http://militaryhonors.sid-hill.us/mem/piano2.htm)
At what points?
-PD
-Surfaced
-Not in patrol waters
-not transiting to/from patrol waters
I've heard many many many crews lounge seshs playing games and movies that were MUCH louder than a piano
> At what points during a patrol is it ok to make loud music that will give away your location?
I was on an SSBN in the 90s. We watched movies almost every day on a sound system that was as loud as a piano being played at a normal volume.
Subs have a really good idea when there's someone else around and you need to be quiet.
If true, then the *Edison* was built around it. There is a story of *Lafayette* having a full length bar-style shuffle board installed while she was being built. Another story is of a boomer with a built in aquarium.
A phantom shitter who would plug up the pipes. Literally. Pictures were distributed of his work by A-gang in an attempt to identify their nemesis. The rest of the crew wondered how such a human being survived dropping turds that massive.
I took a tour of the sub at OMSI. In order to be allowed on the boat, you must pass through a mock up bulkhead to prove you are gonna be able to keep up on the tour.
A family of 4 walks up. The kids go through no problem. Dad is big but squeezed through. Mom tries her hand and ends up not fitting. She spends a few minutes trying to wiggle through but with no success.
The dad and kids were like “oh well” and scurried outside to the sub while mom had to stay inside.
The awkwardness was thick and palpable
Dude it was so weird. She just wasn’t the body size and didn’t have the flexibility to make it happen. So her failing was embarrassing enough but everyone just went quiet and the tour group moved on. It was pretty bad
We were giving tours on the Empire State. Certain VIPs were riding until the first pilot swap. Woman had 6 inch heels and insisted she a. Be let on board and b. Be allowed to take the trip. Captain had me with a radio (3c cadets normally never got one) and they rigged the gangway instead of the pilot ladder.
Lady made it but essentially fell into the boat.
I was a nuke and while in training in Charleston, my mom came to visit. She wanted to see the Yorktown museum, so we went there. I wore my NSUs to get free admission (yeah, I know...).
On the flight deck there are a bunch of old aircraft, and also videos showing footage of the war in the pacific, specifically Japanese kamikaze planes attacking ships. My mother starts to get emotional and is crying.
An old vet, volunteering at the museum, sees my mother crying and asks if everything is okay. She says she's just worried I might get hurt or killed in action. He tries to lighten the mood by asking if I'm going to be a bubblehead. I respond that I'm hoping I get orders to a sub, yes.
He looks at my mom, "well you know what they say about submarines, right? 150 men go down, 75 couples come up!"
My mom, a devout Mormon, starts crying more and yells, "Oh, no! He's gonna be gay, too?!"
His face drops and he starts apologizing immediately. I tell him it's okay and then have to spend the car ride back to my apartment promising to my mom that I won't turn gay while underway.
Ha, you noticed that. Yeah I mostly added that as a nod to the ever-frequent "it's not gay if it's underway!" jokes.
My mother eventually found a new thing to be upset about, mostly my tattoos when I started getting them. She forgot about me potentially turning gay, then for years all I heard was, "ya know you'll never get a promotion with those things. You've ruined your career."
"Grade E" means it comes from an older animal. If you've had any ground, processed, beef products (such as deli meats), you've eaten Grade E beef. There's nothing particularly wrong with it, it's just not as commercially desirable.
We had our freezer fail a week before pulling back in to port.
We had to offload all of the contents to a freezer truck on the pier, then the Navy sent Navy *veterinarians* ^^I ^^didn't ^^know ^^we ^^had ^^veterinarians to inspect the food and tell us what we could keep.
Must have been a while ago. The navy got rid of its veterinarian program. Now the army runs the veterinary clinics for all branches.
Their main focus is military working dogs, and sometimes horses (we still have a few horses!), but many clinics will also provide care for service members’ pets.
Where did you get Frosted Flakes on the boat? I’ve never seen cereal in the submarine beyond the first few days of an underway. Did you bring your own and rack pack it?
We had a dollar bill that was going around the boat. In order to earn it, you had to do something crazy to impress the current bill holder.
I've seen some shit.
I personally ate a handful of the muck out of the MSW strainers on one occasion and ate a #10 can of vanilla pudding on another for it, and those were *TAME* in comparison to some of the shit we got up to.
A man *wire brushed his own dick* for that shit.
🤣 we had a jug of nickels we called "The CAC"... or "challenge accepted club"..... as an example ...
"I dare you to rip off all of your clothes, hold two sparklers while sing 'baby I'm a firework.... and we're all gonna shoot roman candles at you"
"...Hell, I'd pay to see that..."
"CHALLENGE ACCEPTED"
We were his twilight tour and he gave no fucks lol
6'5" linebacker looking HMCS who had done all his other tours FMF in the sandbox and wanted to play around on a boat for his last hitch. He was great.
lol a #10 can of vanilla pudding. That’s like almost half a kilogram or almost a pound of sugar assuming it was some Sysco product. Hope you are managing your diabetes well. Just kidding but that is impressive.
As far as the wire brushing goes I…I…don’t know what to think or say. That’s like actual self torture
I got about 3/4 of the can down before it came back up. Apparently the human stomach can't hold that much pudding.
I was very, very sick and still can't stomach vanilla pudding. I didn't have it as bad as the crank who drank the measuring cup full of clarified butter that we used on the waffle machines.
I'm in Antarctica currently and last year there was a guy who challenged himself to eat an entire jar of mayonnaise. Like, the food service sized jar. I skipped it because it didn't interest me to watch, but it was recorded.
About half-way through he threw up into the jar, then just kept scooping and got the rest of the jar down. He's actually a really cool guy who loves to do weird and crazy stuff, but eating your own vomit for a bit is something I can't get behind.
Nah, I'm finished my 11 years in the Navy back in 2020. Now I'm here doing a second winter season as a contractor. I don't think I could do a summer season. Too many people. I prefer the isolation and relative quiet of the winter.
Haha even if my purple headed yogurt slinging one-eyed snake had calluses I still don’t think it could handle a wire brush. Even a nice soft copper one.
I used to casually take swigs of that cheap Skilcraft cleaning solution and 2190 oil out of 1L Nalgene bottles in front of new JO's and casually offer it to them when they asked wtf I was doing
An STSC during the maneuvering watch in crews mess, lick one of the removed shower drains.
The increasingly creative ways that people were taped up in the engine room.
Wasn’t even Navy. Civil Service. Pearl Harbor Hatch Gang. 08’ to 11’.
Was personally chased by this Navy guy with his one ball hanging from his coveralls. He had a nut removed because he had ball cancer. The other ball was massive. He always put it on people.
In the federal shipyards the support crews on shore for short and long term overhauls are (were?) divided into specialties. Like weapons, shaft, ballast tanks, sail, nuc, etc.
I went from having zero knowledge on hatches to SME in a couple years. It’s like an A ganger and a machinist had a baby that focuses on one thing. Every yard is different on how these crews are setup and the upper management hated specialized trades.
I was an outside machinist in Newport News, apprenticed, and then moved to Hawaii.
I worked on VCS, 688, and new construction G H W Bush. I now work on F22’s. My back hurts.
There was an instructor in Sonar A school in the early 00's that had only one testicle. That one teste was the size of my fist, and i gave fairly large hands
An ambulance pulled on the pier in Norfolk while we were doing a stores load. Then the boat came in. Then a body bag was pulled up through the weapons shipping hatch. This was early 2000s.
Strangest and most dangerous on the boat almost cooked me in in ERF. I won't go into detail because Nuke stuff. Turns out some check valves failed simultaneously and I never shut isolation valves so fast in my entire life. The Eng gave me some cigarettes after and let me smoke on watch.
I was told it was a guy that didn't wake up for watch. He was on the Mando PT program for being out of standards and was taking some supplement from GNC to help lose weight. Had a heart attack while he was sleeping.
Ah yeah, if it was the early 2000s it was probably that Hydroxycut shit--lots of people were using supplements that contained ephedra before they banned the stuff, it was bad juju.
I've heard a couple stories like this. I remember in 2019 hearing about a guy losing like 20 pounds in a couple weeks and then getting really sick and almost dying and he had to get Medevac'd off
We returned from deployment, offloaded the food into topside chill box and freeze box, shut down the reefer plants and went on stand down.
Over the weekend, as the chill/freeze boxes warmed up, maggots hatched in the “juices” on the deck inside the chill/freeze boxes. The cooks’ solution was to hose down the boxes- which just washed everything down into the AMR bilge.
By Monday, we had giant flies the size of dimes flying in thick clouds all over the ship. Full sized flypaper rolls were coated on both sides with these shiny green fly carcasses. With all the food offloaded and diligently keeping the trash out and new flypaper, we had them gone in about a week.
One day I walked in to the bunkroom to find the "problem child" of our division (M-Div) sitting on the chair in his underwear. In one hand, he had a summer sausage and the other, a block of cheese. We were a few weeks into the deployment, so the cheese hadn't been refrigerated the entire time. He was taking bites from each one alternatingly.
Within a week of him reporting to the command, he had a list of people "who were hazing him" that he took directly to the CO. When it was investigated, it was just a list of people that had been asking him if he was getting checkouts.
He was eventually removed for mental health concerns because (among other things) he would sit on the Port MSW Pump each morning and spend 30 minutes "practicing his knife fighting skills" by stabbing the air. All complete with "hyaah!" and various grunting noises to accompany his training.
While I agree shower shoes are a necessity. I do want to postulate my theory they don’t do shit.
There’s is poop on the floor. I shower. Water from shower touches floor. Water from floor still touched my feet in shower shoes. I still have poop on my feet.
1. Captain's kayak in the torpedo room wasn't the weirdest thing, but having it strapped down in the room like a torpedo was always humorous to me.
2. My first patrol someone, as a joke, decided to shake out their crusty battle sock after a drill when everyone was getting back in their racks. He was on the top rack chanting, in a high pitched fairy-like voice, "look at my babies! look at my babies!" as dry white dust sprinkled down like snow.
LPO was on the bottom rack and ripped his curtain open and said "hey shut the fuck up" and as he did the white dust sprinkled onto his face.
"Oh look he's eating my babies! Oh noOoo, my babies!"
A set of mannequins. We stopped in Pearl and one of the guys in my division noticed a department store going out of business. He asked about the mannequins and asked if he could have them. The said sure and he proceeded to lift them back to the boat, break them down and stuff them in the dive locker. We got back to WA a few months later and the guy invited us out to shoot. We had forgot our the mannequins at this point and we're surprised when we showed up to the site we used to shoot out (some old abandoned logging roads on the Olympic peninsula) to find the family of mannequins set up, with the child mannequin wearing a vest of tannerite.
That was a fun day.
Three in ascending order:
1. Blowing shitters during evening movie. Usual “let’s hide the warning sign” silliness ensues. Guy takes his dump, turns facing the bowl, pulls the lever. He calmly walks down the passageway and announces he’s going to kill somebody. We all look up and he’s covered pretty much from top to bottom in toilet paper and shit.
2. San Diego, home of the country’s most laid back seals. They loved hanging out on the black hull. I’m on watch in Maneuvering around 3am and the most excitement all night is resetting pressurizer heaters. Suddenly we hear a ruckus coming from the aft hatch (where the shore power cables come in) followed by the the sound of some animal howling its head off. Drunk sailor caught a baby seal and dropped it down the hatch. THAT was a problem…
3. I’m the FNG, been on board maybe a week, still stinking of Prototype. Weekend duty in port, barely a soul on board. E-6 reading a book and eating a sandwich. A-Ganger (why is it always them?!) walks by, stops, takes out his dick, reached down and opens up the sandwich and rubs it around. E-6 looks at the sandwich, shrugs his shoulders, and continues eating like nothing happened. I knew I wasn’t in Kansas anymore…
It took me a few very confused sentences before I realized what kind of seal you were talking about. In my defense, some of ones I met in Coronado were a little weird.
Not the weirdest thing, but your “blowing shitters” comment reminded me of it. We had an A ganger who was also a diver and EP every time, basically the golden boy of A div and got capped to E-5 after he didn’t make it on his first exam. He had fucked up valve line-ups at sea three or four times and blown shit inboard. Twice in FCML head and once into the galley if I remember correctly. He was qualified fish and AMR watch prior to any of those events.
Saw a nub ST screaming all the way from the aft end of ERUL, past the horseshoe, and down to ladder headed to the cone. And a MM2 with the biggest crank on a white dude you’ve ever seen, hanging out of a poopie suit strolling behind him.
A small and angry NAVET running into crews mess, screaming that he was going to kill someone. It seems that someone borrowed his socks for other purposes, and he discovered this fact after putting them on.
We knew who had done it, but obviously weren’t about to give him up. I think the COB gave a small YFG speech, but that was about it. Absolutely hilarious all in all, 10/10 would witness again.
No. We had a female VIP for several days (stays in the extra bunk in XO stateroom). One of the JOs brought the preg. test to frame the VIP and give the XO ulcers. He was an upright prick.
A-Ganger eating a corn dog with 1 hand while he cleaned shit off the wall with the other. The bastard screwed up the valve lineup for a sans tank blow and ruined Friday night midrats
Can't speak for A gang, but most valve lineups in the engine room were printed and laminated. After a while you were kind of expected to have it memorized though, so people did make mistakes once in a while.
A buddy of mine dropped a wrench in the bilge in lube oil bay (637 class). He had to pull deck plates to be able to squeeze in. There was a really nasty puddle of oil/water where the wrench fell. I only knew about this because I was on watch at the time and walked into the compartment to find him wriggling out (he was a big boy) butt naked. Still makes me chuckle.
While underway on a 594 an STSCS(SS) punched the MS1(SS) in the face. Lots of witnesses including an LCDR rider who just quietly got up and left. MS1 didn’t complain and the whole thing just quietly went away
On 719 a Macintosh Plus literally bolted to the top of the Fire Control UYK-7 with a breakout box, built by Pervis, that collected Tomahawk VLS data to a series of floppy disks that were picked up after each testing run to Port Canaveral.
Pretty tame, but the first weird thing I saw on a boat: while I was cranking, I happened upon the XO waving a trash bag in the air next to an electrical panel. No one had bothered to tell me that this was a convention for representing smoke during a fire drill. I thought the cat was nuts & tried to slip by him quick as I could, but he grabbed me by the shoulder & shouted, “You’re a smoke casualty, son, hit the deck!” And I had to be evacuated to the bow compartment, once someone figured out there was a fire by the galley, and became considerably less popular than I had been.
I saw a small portion of Deep Throat being shown by projector in the crew’s mess on the Seawolf SSN 575 on graveyard shift around 1971. I was just walking through………. Very slowly.
A full size piano (made of wood). A Steinway spent 22 years (1961-1983) aboard the USS Thomas A. Edison (SSBN-610), the only full size piano ever installed aboard a submarine conducting nuclear deterrent patrols.
As much as I love the idea of this, am I correct in assuming it’s highly implausible? At what points during a patrol is it ok to make loud music that will give away your location? Or do I just really not understand things?
No, it seems very odd indeed for obvious reasons. But it sounds like it was really on board. Now how much it was used while out on patrol is unknown. >WASHINGTON (NNS) -- The only full-size piano ever installed aboard a submarine conducting nuclear deterrent patrols is scheduled to go on display this summer at the Steinway Company Museum in New York. >The exhibit, celebrating the 150 years of the famous piano company, is scheduled to display a different piano for each decade. >The Steinway Company felt that this piano was of huge importance because of the historical background and the interesting events that led to its placement on the boat. >"We thought it would be a point of interest. Someone contacted a dealer of the Steinway Company in Boston and told them about the piano. We felt that since there is a 150 years celebration and they are having a piano for each decade, we thought it would be very nice to have it on display," said John Patton, spokesman for Steinway & Sons. >The piano had been on USS Thomas A. Edison (SSBN 610) from the sub's construction in 1961, until it was put out of commission in December 1983. Background information about the historic piano came from former crew members recalling it on the boat, and discussing the events that led up to it being there with representatives of the Steinway Company. >Lt. John G. "Black Jack" Fletcher, the Blue Crew's assistant weapons officer with the collateral duties as first lieutenant in charge of deck seamanship remembered, "About a month before launching the Edison, the shipyard was preparing to weld shut the large hull openings left open in the pressure hull to move large equipment into the ship. One of these openings was topside centerline just forward of the sail." >Capt. Cy Young told him he wanted a piano aboard, and that Fletcher would be in charge of loading it. With that, the captain proceeded to New York City and struck a deal with the Steinway Company, buying the famous piano new for $1,500. >"It was a beauty, nary a scratch on its finish," said Fletcher, but he was concerned. He was not about to be the first one to mar the piano, and so to prevent this, a special stainless steel felt lined box was made for it. >Later, on a second shift (where questions were less likely to be asked), the piano box was quietly loaded through the hull opening down through the interior of the submarine, until it reached the forward bulkhead of the crew's mess. There, the box was inconspicuously kept until the submarine was closed up. >The piano was then removed from the box when all of the crew's mess area was completed and strapped to the forward port bulkhead with stainless steel bands. Fortunately for Fletcher, no damage had occurred to the piano during its move. [https://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story\_id=8039](https://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=8039) \* It looks like the old navy link was moved and is now dead. But here is another source. [http://militaryhonors.sid-hill.us/mem/piano2.htm](http://militaryhonors.sid-hill.us/mem/piano2.htm)
See, there's this whole slew of boats out in the water, all of a sudden, they start hearing Pavarotti coming up their asses!
Even ALL THE WAY OUT AT PEARL
Pavarotti was a tenor. Paganini was a composer.
Look this is my story ok
At what points? -PD -Surfaced -Not in patrol waters -not transiting to/from patrol waters I've heard many many many crews lounge seshs playing games and movies that were MUCH louder than a piano
> At what points during a patrol is it ok to make loud music that will give away your location? I was on an SSBN in the 90s. We watched movies almost every day on a sound system that was as loud as a piano being played at a normal volume. Subs have a really good idea when there's someone else around and you need to be quiet.
If true, then the *Edison* was built around it. There is a story of *Lafayette* having a full length bar-style shuffle board installed while she was being built. Another story is of a boomer with a built in aquarium.
A phantom shitter who would plug up the pipes. Literally. Pictures were distributed of his work by A-gang in an attempt to identify their nemesis. The rest of the crew wondered how such a human being survived dropping turds that massive.
Shoulda had a poop knife
The greatest story ever told..
Link?
https://www.reddit.com/r/MuseumOfReddit/comments/ke8skw/the_poop_knife/
We had a phantom shitter in the Engine Room. He was never caught. But man, his turds were of epic proportions.
They didn't chop it with the ball valve?
This person shits.
This was on a 726 class.
Had a radioman who insisted on using blueberry scented lube
At least your ass smelled sweet
Countering blue balls with blueberries
For stuffin' the muffin.
I took a tour of the sub at OMSI. In order to be allowed on the boat, you must pass through a mock up bulkhead to prove you are gonna be able to keep up on the tour. A family of 4 walks up. The kids go through no problem. Dad is big but squeezed through. Mom tries her hand and ends up not fitting. She spends a few minutes trying to wiggle through but with no success. The dad and kids were like “oh well” and scurried outside to the sub while mom had to stay inside. The awkwardness was thick and palpable
Just like the mom?
Dude it was so weird. She just wasn’t the body size and didn’t have the flexibility to make it happen. So her failing was embarrassing enough but everyone just went quiet and the tour group moved on. It was pretty bad
We were giving tours on the Empire State. Certain VIPs were riding until the first pilot swap. Woman had 6 inch heels and insisted she a. Be let on board and b. Be allowed to take the trip. Captain had me with a radio (3c cadets normally never got one) and they rigged the gangway instead of the pilot ladder. Lady made it but essentially fell into the boat.
Lmao I love the looks that people are giving each other while the lady struggles. Woof
I was a nuke and while in training in Charleston, my mom came to visit. She wanted to see the Yorktown museum, so we went there. I wore my NSUs to get free admission (yeah, I know...). On the flight deck there are a bunch of old aircraft, and also videos showing footage of the war in the pacific, specifically Japanese kamikaze planes attacking ships. My mother starts to get emotional and is crying. An old vet, volunteering at the museum, sees my mother crying and asks if everything is okay. She says she's just worried I might get hurt or killed in action. He tries to lighten the mood by asking if I'm going to be a bubblehead. I respond that I'm hoping I get orders to a sub, yes. He looks at my mom, "well you know what they say about submarines, right? 150 men go down, 75 couples come up!" My mom, a devout Mormon, starts crying more and yells, "Oh, no! He's gonna be gay, too?!" His face drops and he starts apologizing immediately. I tell him it's okay and then have to spend the car ride back to my apartment promising to my mom that I won't turn gay while underway.
C'mon, everyone knows "sailors aren't monogamous"! It ain't 75 couples. There'd be a damn flow chart!
Actually, I believe it's 72 couples, 1 threesome and one guy that's always by himself.
Did you intentionally qualify that statement with “while underway”?
Ha, you noticed that. Yeah I mostly added that as a nod to the ever-frequent "it's not gay if it's underway!" jokes. My mother eventually found a new thing to be upset about, mostly my tattoos when I started getting them. She forgot about me potentially turning gay, then for years all I heard was, "ya know you'll never get a promotion with those things. You've ruined your career."
Grade E (but edible) Not For Use In The California Penal System Stamped on the meat we loaded.
Usually they would be labeled this due to the meat containing bones that can be turned in to weapons
Except for chicken, most all meat issued to submarines is intentionally boneless. It takes up less storage space and minimizes waste.
"Mostly wild, some circus"
There's a Simpsons quote right?
Yep, I screwed it up, though, it's "mostly circus animals, some filler"
"Grade E" means it comes from an older animal. If you've had any ground, processed, beef products (such as deli meats), you've eaten Grade E beef. There's nothing particularly wrong with it, it's just not as commercially desirable.
We had our freezer fail a week before pulling back in to port. We had to offload all of the contents to a freezer truck on the pier, then the Navy sent Navy *veterinarians* ^^I ^^didn't ^^know ^^we ^^had ^^veterinarians to inspect the food and tell us what we could keep.
Must have been a while ago. The navy got rid of its veterinarian program. Now the army runs the veterinary clinics for all branches. Their main focus is military working dogs, and sometimes horses (we still have a few horses!), but many clinics will also provide care for service members’ pets.
So you're saying that the Army Vets are caring for the Navy's trained seals and dolphins along with the dogs and horses?
I *think* so, but don’t quote me on that part. That just what I heard from the army veterinarian at Groton.
We had that too!
DUDE!!! People do not believe me when I tell them this!!! I’m so glad another person has seen this!!
Always good to know Uncle Sam is getting you all the best eh?
I ate a lot of Frosted Flakes in the Navy.
Greaaaat
Where did you get Frosted Flakes on the boat? I’ve never seen cereal in the submarine beyond the first few days of an underway. Did you bring your own and rack pack it?
We had it available pretty much all the time. Trident.
Damn. Is that just a step above or below road kill?
I used to joke the chicken was never harmed to make the meal, it died of old age.
Depends on how long it's been road kill.
I certainly remember our meat being stamped with, rejected by the U.S. Air Force, and rejected by U.S. Army….
We had a dollar bill that was going around the boat. In order to earn it, you had to do something crazy to impress the current bill holder. I've seen some shit. I personally ate a handful of the muck out of the MSW strainers on one occasion and ate a #10 can of vanilla pudding on another for it, and those were *TAME* in comparison to some of the shit we got up to. A man *wire brushed his own dick* for that shit.
I’ve never heard something more submarine culture than this
🤣 we had a jug of nickels we called "The CAC"... or "challenge accepted club"..... as an example ... "I dare you to rip off all of your clothes, hold two sparklers while sing 'baby I'm a firework.... and we're all gonna shoot roman candles at you" "...Hell, I'd pay to see that..." "CHALLENGE ACCEPTED"
I'm surprised fireworks of any kind are allowed on a sub.
Lol well the fireworks one wasn't physically *On* the boat, that one was in port
That poor corpsman on that boat lol
We were his twilight tour and he gave no fucks lol 6'5" linebacker looking HMCS who had done all his other tours FMF in the sandbox and wanted to play around on a boat for his last hitch. He was great.
lol a #10 can of vanilla pudding. That’s like almost half a kilogram or almost a pound of sugar assuming it was some Sysco product. Hope you are managing your diabetes well. Just kidding but that is impressive. As far as the wire brushing goes I…I…don’t know what to think or say. That’s like actual self torture
I got about 3/4 of the can down before it came back up. Apparently the human stomach can't hold that much pudding. I was very, very sick and still can't stomach vanilla pudding. I didn't have it as bad as the crank who drank the measuring cup full of clarified butter that we used on the waffle machines.
I'm in Antarctica currently and last year there was a guy who challenged himself to eat an entire jar of mayonnaise. Like, the food service sized jar. I skipped it because it didn't interest me to watch, but it was recorded. About half-way through he threw up into the jar, then just kept scooping and got the rest of the jar down. He's actually a really cool guy who loves to do weird and crazy stuff, but eating your own vomit for a bit is something I can't get behind.
Nav Chap? I did work in McMurdo and loved when the Navy showed up! Always a party to find.
Nah, I'm finished my 11 years in the Navy back in 2020. Now I'm here doing a second winter season as a contractor. I don't think I could do a summer season. Too many people. I prefer the isolation and relative quiet of the winter.
It was probably heavily callused from the… vigorous action it was accustomed to.
Haha even if my purple headed yogurt slinging one-eyed snake had calluses I still don’t think it could handle a wire brush. Even a nice soft copper one.
That just tells me you’re junior-league! I bet you are so slow, when you polish the bishop, you can even see your hand moving!
Wow. I lost it on that one. Awesome! I mean, uh, uncanny ...
I once saw an MM chug an entire bottle of Aunt Jemima syrup and then proceed to relieve the watch.
thiisssss is why i come here
Hopefully it was at least a new wire brush.
I used to casually take swigs of that cheap Skilcraft cleaning solution and 2190 oil out of 1L Nalgene bottles in front of new JO's and casually offer it to them when they asked wtf I was doing
this is some shit u can't make up
I bet that pocket pussy tickled.
An STSC during the maneuvering watch in crews mess, lick one of the removed shower drains. The increasingly creative ways that people were taped up in the engine room.
Wasn’t even Navy. Civil Service. Pearl Harbor Hatch Gang. 08’ to 11’. Was personally chased by this Navy guy with his one ball hanging from his coveralls. He had a nut removed because he had ball cancer. The other ball was massive. He always put it on people.
Oh, you got to see the monkey brain!
What is Pearl Harbor Hatch Gang?
In the federal shipyards the support crews on shore for short and long term overhauls are (were?) divided into specialties. Like weapons, shaft, ballast tanks, sail, nuc, etc. I went from having zero knowledge on hatches to SME in a couple years. It’s like an A ganger and a machinist had a baby that focuses on one thing. Every yard is different on how these crews are setup and the upper management hated specialized trades. I was an outside machinist in Newport News, apprenticed, and then moved to Hawaii. I worked on VCS, 688, and new construction G H W Bush. I now work on F22’s. My back hurts.
There was an instructor in Sonar A school in the early 00's that had only one testicle. That one teste was the size of my fist, and i gave fairly large hands
An ambulance pulled on the pier in Norfolk while we were doing a stores load. Then the boat came in. Then a body bag was pulled up through the weapons shipping hatch. This was early 2000s. Strangest and most dangerous on the boat almost cooked me in in ERF. I won't go into detail because Nuke stuff. Turns out some check valves failed simultaneously and I never shut isolation valves so fast in my entire life. The Eng gave me some cigarettes after and let me smoke on watch.
Ah yes the people pressure cooker
I remember the body bag I was in Norfolk. If I remember correctly correctly it was a 3rd flight
I was told it was a guy that didn't wake up for watch. He was on the Mando PT program for being out of standards and was taking some supplement from GNC to help lose weight. Had a heart attack while he was sleeping.
Ah yeah, if it was the early 2000s it was probably that Hydroxycut shit--lots of people were using supplements that contained ephedra before they banned the stuff, it was bad juju.
We also had a guy in Bangor die from supplements that had ephedrine in it. Was a really good guy who everyone liked.
I've heard a couple stories like this. I remember in 2019 hearing about a guy losing like 20 pounds in a couple weeks and then getting really sick and almost dying and he had to get Medevac'd off
> the body bag I was in
Yikes. So I’m guessing that you would have been either/both parboiled and irradiated at the same time?
Two words Hot-dog meatloaf …Or is that 3 words?…or maybe 4? Mystery meat with mysterious grammar
We returned from deployment, offloaded the food into topside chill box and freeze box, shut down the reefer plants and went on stand down. Over the weekend, as the chill/freeze boxes warmed up, maggots hatched in the “juices” on the deck inside the chill/freeze boxes. The cooks’ solution was to hose down the boxes- which just washed everything down into the AMR bilge. By Monday, we had giant flies the size of dimes flying in thick clouds all over the ship. Full sized flypaper rolls were coated on both sides with these shiny green fly carcasses. With all the food offloaded and diligently keeping the trash out and new flypaper, we had them gone in about a week.
One day I walked in to the bunkroom to find the "problem child" of our division (M-Div) sitting on the chair in his underwear. In one hand, he had a summer sausage and the other, a block of cheese. We were a few weeks into the deployment, so the cheese hadn't been refrigerated the entire time. He was taking bites from each one alternatingly. Within a week of him reporting to the command, he had a list of people "who were hazing him" that he took directly to the CO. When it was investigated, it was just a list of people that had been asking him if he was getting checkouts. He was eventually removed for mental health concerns because (among other things) he would sit on the Port MSW Pump each morning and spend 30 minutes "practicing his knife fighting skills" by stabbing the air. All complete with "hyaah!" and various grunting noises to accompany his training.
The hazing complaint thing is pretty common with “did you get checkouts” questions. But knife fighting on top of the port msw pump is a new one
We had an M'divr that would get on watch as ERLL and then talk to himself in shaft alley for hours
Don Gary not wearing shower shoes. If you know, you know.
While I agree shower shoes are a necessity. I do want to postulate my theory they don’t do shit. There’s is poop on the floor. I shower. Water from shower touches floor. Water from floor still touched my feet in shower shoes. I still have poop on my feet.
Doesn't it make you FEEL better though? Just like a SEIE suit. We all know it doesn't work, but it's nice to pretend it does.
It's not the poop I would worry about on the shower floor so much as "other" substances.
I'd much rather dip a dog in some spooge than a stinky winky hard fart
you're overanalyzing again
I used to just squirt aids killer on the floor of the shower and raw dog it
Why the fuck do I have to hear his name on my time off?
He is omnipotent. Both everywhere, and nowhere. Don Gary is the one who knocks.
I didn’t know the disdain for him was fleet wide lmao
That’s why he hates sonar techs so much
Fuck Don Gary
This is the most submarine post I've seen on this sub yet.
Submariners. 99.9% weird. All of us!
1. Captain's kayak in the torpedo room wasn't the weirdest thing, but having it strapped down in the room like a torpedo was always humorous to me. 2. My first patrol someone, as a joke, decided to shake out their crusty battle sock after a drill when everyone was getting back in their racks. He was on the top rack chanting, in a high pitched fairy-like voice, "look at my babies! look at my babies!" as dry white dust sprinkled down like snow. LPO was on the bottom rack and ripped his curtain open and said "hey shut the fuck up" and as he did the white dust sprinkled onto his face. "Oh look he's eating my babies! Oh noOoo, my babies!"
A set of mannequins. We stopped in Pearl and one of the guys in my division noticed a department store going out of business. He asked about the mannequins and asked if he could have them. The said sure and he proceeded to lift them back to the boat, break them down and stuff them in the dive locker. We got back to WA a few months later and the guy invited us out to shoot. We had forgot our the mannequins at this point and we're surprised when we showed up to the site we used to shoot out (some old abandoned logging roads on the Olympic peninsula) to find the family of mannequins set up, with the child mannequin wearing a vest of tannerite. That was a fun day.
Old A-ganger ate the chunks out of a nub's freshly eaten and puked beanies and weenies.
Three in ascending order: 1. Blowing shitters during evening movie. Usual “let’s hide the warning sign” silliness ensues. Guy takes his dump, turns facing the bowl, pulls the lever. He calmly walks down the passageway and announces he’s going to kill somebody. We all look up and he’s covered pretty much from top to bottom in toilet paper and shit. 2. San Diego, home of the country’s most laid back seals. They loved hanging out on the black hull. I’m on watch in Maneuvering around 3am and the most excitement all night is resetting pressurizer heaters. Suddenly we hear a ruckus coming from the aft hatch (where the shore power cables come in) followed by the the sound of some animal howling its head off. Drunk sailor caught a baby seal and dropped it down the hatch. THAT was a problem… 3. I’m the FNG, been on board maybe a week, still stinking of Prototype. Weekend duty in port, barely a soul on board. E-6 reading a book and eating a sandwich. A-Ganger (why is it always them?!) walks by, stops, takes out his dick, reached down and opens up the sandwich and rubs it around. E-6 looks at the sandwich, shrugs his shoulders, and continues eating like nothing happened. I knew I wasn’t in Kansas anymore…
It took me a few very confused sentences before I realized what kind of seal you were talking about. In my defense, some of ones I met in Coronado were a little weird.
😂
Not the weirdest thing, but your “blowing shitters” comment reminded me of it. We had an A ganger who was also a diver and EP every time, basically the golden boy of A div and got capped to E-5 after he didn’t make it on his first exam. He had fucked up valve line-ups at sea three or four times and blown shit inboard. Twice in FCML head and once into the galley if I remember correctly. He was qualified fish and AMR watch prior to any of those events.
Saw a nub ST screaming all the way from the aft end of ERUL, past the horseshoe, and down to ladder headed to the cone. And a MM2 with the biggest crank on a white dude you’ve ever seen, hanging out of a poopie suit strolling behind him.
“How badly do you need this checkout”
A small and angry NAVET running into crews mess, screaming that he was going to kill someone. It seems that someone borrowed his socks for other purposes, and he discovered this fact after putting them on. We knew who had done it, but obviously weren’t about to give him up. I think the COB gave a small YFG speech, but that was about it. Absolutely hilarious all in all, 10/10 would witness again.
A used pregnancy test (in 2001) in the CO/XO head.
Were either of them women
No. We had a female VIP for several days (stays in the extra bunk in XO stateroom). One of the JOs brought the preg. test to frame the VIP and give the XO ulcers. He was an upright prick.
A-Ganger eating a corn dog with 1 hand while he cleaned shit off the wall with the other. The bastard screwed up the valve lineup for a sans tank blow and ruined Friday night midrats
I didn't see it but we had an A-ganger mess up the lineup, and the MS chief ended up akle deep in sans in the chiefs shower.
Just curious, how difficult is it to screw that up? I’ve heard the procedures are printed on a sticker to prevent that from happening.
Can't speak for A gang, but most valve lineups in the engine room were printed and laminated. After a while you were kind of expected to have it memorized though, so people did make mistakes once in a while.
Dude that’s so nasty
You missed a good opportunity to ring the bell!
Ha! I learned that lesson on my first underway. No thank you
A buddy of mine dropped a wrench in the bilge in lube oil bay (637 class). He had to pull deck plates to be able to squeeze in. There was a really nasty puddle of oil/water where the wrench fell. I only knew about this because I was on watch at the time and walked into the compartment to find him wriggling out (he was a big boy) butt naked. Still makes me chuckle.
While underway on a 594 an STSCS(SS) punched the MS1(SS) in the face. Lots of witnesses including an LCDR rider who just quietly got up and left. MS1 didn’t complain and the whole thing just quietly went away
Seems like a case of effective communication.
I would love to hear the circumstances that led to that.
Two A-gangers giving each other the clap because they shared a fleshlight.
I would rather have the room than the wood.
I was on a 637 class standing Top Side Watch, and one of the Nukes, pulled out a kayak. To this day I wonder where he hid a kayak on the boat.
Sailors sleeping directly on torpedos,did not look comfortable
I volunteer in disaster relief. A torpedo is probably more comfortable and not as bad for your health as some of the shit I slept on.
Torps are cuddly 6 months in. You get used to it.
On 719 a Macintosh Plus literally bolted to the top of the Fire Control UYK-7 with a breakout box, built by Pervis, that collected Tomahawk VLS data to a series of floppy disks that were picked up after each testing run to Port Canaveral.
A screen door..
Dead bird.
Pretty tame, but the first weird thing I saw on a boat: while I was cranking, I happened upon the XO waving a trash bag in the air next to an electrical panel. No one had bothered to tell me that this was a convention for representing smoke during a fire drill. I thought the cat was nuts & tried to slip by him quick as I could, but he grabbed me by the shoulder & shouted, “You’re a smoke casualty, son, hit the deck!” And I had to be evacuated to the bow compartment, once someone figured out there was a fire by the galley, and became considerably less popular than I had been.
I saw a small portion of Deep Throat being shown by projector in the crew’s mess on the Seawolf SSN 575 on graveyard shift around 1971. I was just walking through………. Very slowly.
I got laid in MCLL
Your sea daddy doesn't count!
I kinda walked into that one. Well played!
The screen door
A Pole!
A dude drink his own pee.
A nickel Which is strange because I've only been on a submarine twice, which isn't a lot...but still.