“Silence on the line, silence on the line! Fire, fire, fire! Fire in propulsion lube oil bay! Class bravo fire in propulsion lube oil bay! Fire, fire, fire!”
After notifying the crew in maneuvering, I quickly donned my emergency air breathing apparatus. The general alarm was sounded. This noise was like someone with a low voice repeatedly saying, “Gong.”
GONG-GONG-GONG-GONG-GONG-GONG-GONG-GONG-GONG
Over the 1MC ship-wide announcing circuit, the Engineering Officer of the Watch repeated what I had said on the 2JV party line.
“FIRE, FIRE, FIRE! FIRE IN PROPULSION LUBE OIL BAY! CLASS BRAVO FIRE IN PROPULSION LUBE OIL BAY! FIRE, FIRE, FIRE!”
Berthing lights came on immediately, guys leapt out of their racks and got dressed faster than the time their girlfriend’s husband came home unexpectedly, and then everyone ran to man their battle stations. One such battle station was the advanced fire-fighting team. That was mine when not on watch.
But I was on watch and couldn’t wait for the team to assemble. Every second counts. I went right up to the fire all by myself with an AFFF extinguisher in hand. That’s an aqueous film forming fucking firefighting foam extinguisher. Wait. That’s too many F’s. Maybe get rid of the “fucking firefighting” part. Whatever, this “A-triple-F” extinguisher was spent in a matter of seconds and had no noticeable effect. I grabbed another A-triple-F extinguisher and ran back to the fire, yet had a change of heart at the last minute.
After seeing how little that first extinguisher did to the fire, I tossed the new one onto the deck went for the fire hose. This was a big one! By that point, other crewmembers were behind me and offered assistance, finally forming our hose team. The whole thing was over in less than ten minutes. There was a 1MC announcement.
“SECURE FROM DRILL!”
It was all a bunch of bullshit. The fire was just some asshole in a red hat waving an orange bed sheet. Some other red hat douche would put a shower cap over my facemask so that I could barely see. That was supposed to simulate smoke. Neither the extinguishers nor fire hoses were actually discharged. The only real part of the drill was the use of these emergency air breathing apparatuses, more commonly referred to as EABs. (That’s spoken as E-A-B and not eeb.)
These emergency air breathing apparatuses didn’t actually have their own air supply. They had no air tank or chemical oxygen candle burner built into them. Instead, they had a rubber hose with a quick disconnect on the end of it. You had to find these little air supplying EAB manifolds located around the engine room and plug your hose into it.
The tricky part is that once you unplug, that’s it. You can’t breathe. If you exhale, no more air can come in, so your lungs stay deflated. Frightening feeling. You better take a deep breath before unplugging! Those tiny little red EAB manifolds are not so easy to find in cramped spaces full of pipes in the overhead, especially when you have a dark grey opaque shower cap over your facemask to simulate a hazy smoke-filled compartment and you’re carrying firehoses or extinguishers.
Noobs run out of air and panic with their poor little deflated lungs when they can’t find a manifold to plug into, and then they rip their face piece off gasping for air. Do that during a drill and you’re screamed at by the chiefs. Do that in a real fire and you’re dead. The chiefs were right to scream at your stupid noob ass for that. Getting familiar with the locations of all the EAB manifolds is probably the single greatest benefit of running these drills.
It took a bit of time to work my way up there, but by this point, I was quite comfortable roaming the engine room while “sucking rubber.” That’s what we called having an EAB attached to your face. I could casually hold my breath, unplug, and take a leisurely set of log readings on the way to the next manifold. Sucking rubber was no sweat for me anymore. Sometimes the drills run for a long time, and you still had to do your primary duty of monitoring your spaces and taking hourly logs during all this pretend time. If the drill is actually in your space however… logs are going to be a wee bit late. Better have your red pen handy.
The rest of my firefighting training was reinforcement of knowledge learned from boot camp all the way through the end of the nuclear peepayleenay. We’re talking about the classes of fires, the “fire triangle,” and the various extinguishing agents to use on them. All of that was beaten so deep down into my cranium that I’m sure my demented senile ass will be barking out orders on what extinguisher to use to the incompetent asshole staff at my nursing home while it’s burning down to the ground. Should I live that long, that is. Probably won’t. I could see liver failure in that future.
Regardless, when I was in my teens and early twenties in the Navy, we had four classes of fires: A, B, C, and D. Note that this is the American system, and that it varies by country. Also note there is now a class K fire. And finally note that in the military, we use the phonetic alphabet for the names of letters:
-Class alpha fires are combustible materials such as wood, cloth, paper, and people. Think ash producing for class alpha. Alpha fires are ash producing.
-Class bravo fires are flammable liquids and gases. Think, maybe, “butane” for class bravo fires. (Or perhaps think benzin or benzina which are the German and Italian words for gasoline.) Butane and benzina fires are bravos.
-Class charlie fires are electrical. Think conductors or charged for class charlie fires. Charlie the charged electrical conductor fire.
-Class delta fires are combustible metals like magnesium, phosphorus, lithium, and sodium. Perhaps think dump overboard because you’re probably not going to be able to put out a class delta fire. Dump the deltas into the sea because even our metals are on fucking fire!
To understand how to extinguish these types of fires, we were taught the “fire triangle.” Each side of the triangle represents a necessary “ingredient” to sustain a fire: fuel, oxygen and heat. Remove any one of those three components, and the fire will be extinguished.
[Note that they added a fourth fire ingredient called “chain reaction” after I left the Navy. I don’t know why they didn’t simply rename the fire triangle as the fire square, but apparently, they just had to name it the “fire tetrahedron” instead. Tetrahedron? Really? Fucking nerd-ass jerks.]
Speaking of that chain reaction, it’s a chemical reaction of the exothermic variety—meaning it releases energy—and that energy is in the form of heat and light. After a reaction with the fuel, the weak bonds between the oxygen atoms in an oxygen molecule (O2) are converted into stronger bonds of the combustion products. That is the main source of the energy. Fire is just a rapid oxidation reaction, kind of like rusting if the rust was on fucking crack.
In perfect combustion of hydrocarbon fuels, the products are carbon dioxide (CO2) and water vapor (H2O). Two common examples of hydrocarbon fuels are natural gas (mostly methane CH4) and diesel (average paraffin of C12H24). Here are their “stochiometric” equations:
CH4 + 2O2 –> CO2 + 2H2O
C12H24 + 18O2 –> 12CO2 + 12H2O
Obviously other things burn besides hydrocarbons. We produce hydrogen gas (H2) when converting seawater into oxygen. That’s highly flammable. And think of all that paperwork signed in triplicate or quadruplicate or something we have in the Navy! Paper, which is mostly cellulose (C6H10O5), obviously burns!
2H2 + O2 –> 2H2O
C6H10O5 + 6O2 –> 6CO2 + 5H2O
Note that those equations are for perfect stoichiometric combustion, and that results in the creation of non-toxic products essential to life whose only danger is creating an oxygen deficient atmosphere. However, in an unregulated fire, significant incomplete combustion occurs due to an improper air to fuel ratio. This results in the production of toxic pollutants such as carbon monoxide (CO) and other partially oxidized compounds.
Some fuels have sulfur in them, so you may end up with hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and sulfur dioxide (SO2), both toxic. If the fire burns hot enough, the nitrogen (N2) in the air will also react and form nitrogen oxides (NOX), nitric acid (HNO3), and even hydrogen cyanide (HCN). And we haven’t even gone into the results of the ship itself burning. Think of all the plastics and rubbers that will ignite, and the toxic furans and dioxins that they will produce!
Don’t you dare rip off that EAB facepiece, shipwreck! You stay sucking rubber!
I’m getting a little sidetracked with the toxic products of incomplete combustion, but the point I was trying to make originally is that you can stop a fire by removing one side of the fire triangle. So, let’s get back to that point. I think it’s plain to see from the perfect combustion equations above that if you remove the oxygen from the fire, you will stop the fire. So that’s one way to combat a fire.
Another way to break the fire triangle is by removing heat. You see, an interesting fact about combustion is that solids and liquids don’t burn, only gases do. These solid and liquid fuels must be heated up to a temperature where they will release vapors. That minimum temperature at which a material will release these vapors and burn in the presence of an ignition source is called the “flash point.” If you can cool your fuel source to below its flash point temperature, then you will put out the fire.
To put out these fires inside the submarine, we had fire hoses charged with an endless supply of seawater, plus we had three different types of fire extinguishers: aqueous film forming foam (ATTF), carbon dioxide (CO2), and purple potassium powder (PKP). Note that K is the periodic chart symbol for potassium.
Water both cools the fire and displaces oxygen. The water absorbs the heat, flashes to steam, and then smothers the fire. Unless the fire is just raging out of control in a compartment, water is only used on alpha fires. Use it on a bravo, and you’ll spread the fire. Use it on a charlie, and you may be electrocuted, especially when using seawater. Use it on a delta, and it might just explode. However, if the explosions are small and you aren’t killed, you can use water on a burning metal fire in a futile attempt to cool it down below its flash point. Good luck!
AFFF is used on bravos. But wait. The A in AFFF stands for “aqueous,” and I just said not to use water on bravo fires because it will spread the fire. Yes, all true. Straight up water is denser than oil, so if you use it on, say a diesel fire, the flaming diesel will float to the surface and go wherever the water runoff goes. Good job asshole. You just spread that fire to the next compartment. However, the additives turning that straight up aqua into foam actually make the water float on top of the liquid fuels. This is the “film” that separates the fuel from the oxygen source.
CO2 is used on charlies so that you aren’t shocked or electrocuted. The ironic thing is that if you don’t ground the CO2 extinguisher by keeping the cylinder on the deck while discharging it, you will get nasty shocks from the static electricity build up due to the gas passing through the plastic nozzle. (Don’t ask me how I know that.) Anyway, the CO2 displaces the oxygen to put the fire out. I was told it has little cooling effect, which surprised me. What about all that frost!?!
PKP is mostly potassium bicarbonate (KHCO3) with purple dye, a dry chemical agent that is used on bravo and charlie fires. The powder keeps oxygen from reaching the fuel. PKP extinguishers are poor little unloved bastards. We were told the AFFF’s were more effective on bravos, plus the electricians said they would kick our asses if we used PKP on charlie fires because of the stubborn caked-on residue it leaves behind. Instead, use CO2 on those charlies so the electricians aren’t cleaning electrical components for days.
The important things to remember when discharging fire hoses or extinguishers are to keep your proper distance, aim at the base of the fire and then sweep back and forth. Some guys liked to make figure-eight motions at the base. I just swept our little fake fires. Proper distance depends on the extinguisher or fire hose nozzle setting, so check the labels! PKP is used from about 20ft away. AFFF from 15ft. CO2 from 5ft. But again, check the labels!
Note that none of these extinguishing agents address the fuel component. That’s something you have to do separately. For example, to fight charlie fires, the first step is to deenergize the equipment. Kill that electricity! (Then it reclassifies as an alpha fire due to burning insulation and other surrounding materials.) If it’s a bravo fire, you might want to shut valves or power down the pumps that may be supplying the fuel spraying into the compartment.
Now for delta fires, I said to dump them overboard. Kind of hard to do on a submarine. Yet we did have a lot of combustible metals onboard. We actually wanted them to burn… just not inside the ship. We use them for torpedo countermeasures by shooting them out of our 6” launcher. They spin around and make noise to confuse incoming torpedoes. But what if they catch on fire inside our boat? We flood their little storage compartment. There’s a deluge system piped right up to it. The countermeasures were obviously designed to work in water, so I’m not sure how effective this fire suppression system was! I’m glad we never found out while I was on the San Fran.
All this Navy firefighting training was very good in my opinion. I mean, we’re our own fire department when out to sea, so we better be damn well trained for it! At the time I’d say that yes, I was damn well trained in firefighting techniques, and yes, I did a pretty damn good job during that fire drill in propulsion lube oil bay. Turns out I didn’t actually do so hot. You see, I followed my training initially, yet fucked up by thinking too much.
I second guessed myself after trying to interpret the red hat’s actions instead of simply following my training. There was this dichotomy of expected responses that was somewhat confusing. Throughout the entire two years of nuclear training, we were expected to “maintain a questioning attitude.” But when you get to the ship, they pound mindless robotic actions for you to carry out in emergencies.
So, for this fire simulation, I wasn’t supposed to think. I was supposed to be a good little robot and take the prescribed actions no matter what. I’m not really a good robot. I wonder things like this:
If we’re trained to use two extinguishers every time, then does that mean the Navy fucked up and ordered ones that were half the size they’re supposed to be?
My non-robotic thoughts with a healthy dose of questioning attitude in this scenario were that maybe the red hat was simulating a giant wall of fire that was clearly too big for a couple of extinguishers. I was wrong. It was discussed during the post-drill critique.
“This drill was supposed to be a quick and easy one, yet it went full bore conflagration instead. Apparently Petty Officer Droughton thinks you’re supposed to throw entire extinguishers whole, right into the fire.”
Everyone laughed. The Executive Officer—second only to the Captain—becomes the Damage Control Officer during emergencies. He was critiquing my poor performance. I defended myself.
“That’s not entirely accurate, sir.”
“Oh, it isn’t? Did you not throw an extinguisher into the fire?”
“Well, sort of sir, but not really.”
“Would you care to elaborate?”
“Yes sir, I would.”
“Go ahead then.”
“I know that we’re supposed to discharge two extinguishers on the fire within two minutes, but I was confused by how the red hats responded to my first extinguisher.”
“How so?”
“Well sir, you would think that if two extinguishers are going to put out an entire fire, then the first one would have some sort of noticeable effect. But the red hat didn’t budge. He didn’t move back a little or even wave the sheet a little less, you know? So, it was a little confusing. When I went for that second extinguisher and was running back, I started thinking that maybe this simulation was supposed to be a massive fire that required a hose team. So, then I put the extinguisher on the deck—I didn’t throw it into the fire—and went for the hose. And when I went for the hose, the red hat advanced the fire right over my unused extinguisher.”
“Alright, perhaps we should work on our simulation a little. But to be clear, the goal is to get two extinguishers on the fire immediately, understood?”
“Yes sir.”
“Very well. Okay, so let’s talk about the steam line rupture now. That one went by the book with the exception of the guy who punched me in the face.”
Those EAB masks we wore during fires and steam line ruptures had a large clear plastic viewing pane that was quite flexible. It was a real hoot to punch a person in the face if they were wearing one. You could get quite a shot in there, yet it didn’t hurt the recipient at all. Well, maybe gave them a little bit of whiplash and a bruised ego, but who cares? It was soooo satisfying.
We did it all the time during drills. You hide behind a corner, and when someone comes around it, you punch and run. Apparently, someone did that to the Executive Officer. Whoever did it must have shit a brick when they looked down and saw his golden officer’s submarine pin. Damn good thing the XO was one of the guys, knew about the prank, and likely socked a few rubber suckers back in his day too. And for the record, no it wasn’t me. Honest.
When not punching someone in the face, these steam line rupture drills are actually quite sobering. It is simulated by waving around a white bed sheet near a large pipe and blowing compressed air out a hose to create a loud burst of noise, all of which seems harmless enough, but after the alarm and announcement, all on-watch personnel in the engine room play dead. Yes, in reality, if one of the main steam lines parted, we would all be cooked alive back there. This happened on the USS Iwo Jima (LPH-2) on October 30, 1990.
Decommissioned after 32 years of service, she was a massive conventionally powered amphibious assault ship. That type of ship is basically a mini aircraft carrier for helicopters and often referred to as a “gator freighter” due to its mission of transporting, landing, and supporting the US Marines.
What happened on the USS Iwo Jima was a significant wake up call to the Navy. In fact, the very first lesson taught to me in basic training was “attention to detail” with a tie-in to the incident onboard the Iwo Jima. This lesson included an excessive number of push-ups and sit-ups as a reward for when our attention was found wanting. The reasoning behind the punishment was so we remembered that the lack of attention to detail can lead to a major catastrophe.
A large valve in a high-pressure superheated steam system had just been repaired on the Iwo Jima. However, the mechanic performing the repairs rummaged through parts bins on the ship and incorrectly installed black oxide coated brass nuts in place of the proper carbon steel hardware. No one inspected his work. No tests on the system were performed prior to returning to sea.
The ship was underway around 8 am and roughly fifteen minutes later, the newly repaired valve exploded due to the different thermal expansion rates between the steel studs and brass nuts. Ten people were killed, some instantly, some holding on until nearly midnight. These poor souls were trapped in the boiler room and scalded to death by 850*F (454*C) steam. All on account of the mechanic’s lack of attention to detail.
This very possible scenario was therefore a popular drill to run. Instead of sounding the general alarm, they set off the propulsion plant casualty alarm. That one is a very high-pitched medium-speed trill.
DEE-DEL-DEE-DEL-DEE-DEL-DEE-DEL-DEE-DEL-DEE-DEL-DEE-DEL
“STEAM LINE RUPTURE IN THE ENGINE ROOM! THERE IS A STEAM LINE RUPTURE IN THE ENGINE ROOM! STEAM LINE RUPTURE IN THE ENGINE ROOM!”
Our drilling of this casualty was so that off-watch personnel outside the engine room would know what to do once entering the spaces. First, we send in a lone watch stander wearing an air-cooled silver reflective insulated steam suit which does make him look a bit like a baked potato.
The cooling air is provided by the EAB manifolds, necessitating the steam suit occupant to plug into these manifolds with the long black hose coming out the back of the suit, cool off for a bit, unplug and find the next manifold as he made his way deeper and deeper into the engine room to locate the source of the steam line rupture.
His goal was to isolate that steam line rupture and ensure that reactor safety is maintained. The guys in the forward compartment would then start venting the engine room overboard. Eventually a replacement crew could return to the engine room wearing EABs, but without the need for steam suits. I was too new to be the steam line rupture drill hero guy, so it was a pretty boring drill for those of us not wearing the steam suit. There was just so much waiting around doing nothing during many of the drills. A nap would have been nice. (A nice way to get into big trouble.)
During this underway, we were running all sorts of drills for twelve hours a day, day after day after day. Fires, flooding, steam line ruptures, reactor scrams, loss of reactor coolant, loss of reactor pressure, radioactive material release, injured personnel, contaminated personnel, hot bearings, loss of propulsion lube oil, hydraulic line rupture… you name it and we ran it.
One should recognize that the Navy didn’t call these incidents “accidents.” No, these things were not caused by accidents, they were caused by someone not doing their duty. Yes, these incidents were typically caused by someone taking shortcuts. There is nothing accidental about taking shortcuts. Therefore, these incidents were instead called “casualties.”
For example, it’s not a loss of coolant accident (LOCA) as the civilians call them, it’s a loss of coolant casualty (LOCC) in the Navy. There’s a reason pipes welded midweek are less likely to fail than that which were welded on Monday morning or Friday afternoon. Shortcuts, lack of attention to detail, daydreaming about your plans when off work, etc. Failure is not usually simply an accident.
If the equipment was built to spec, the operators stayed within designed parameters, and maintenance personnel followed procedures to the letter, how many “accidents” would actually happen? Unfortunately, human nature means we have to be prepared for these inevitable failures. That means we have to run frequent drills.
I think it was the on-coming watch who wore the red hats and presented scenarios for those on-watch and the just off-watch crewmembers to combat. In order to squeeze in drilling for all three watch sections each day, there were three 4-hour watches during the daytime instead of the usual two 6-hour watches. We called this rotation the “Vulcan death watches” for who knows what reason. That’s just what everyone called them, so I went along with it.
Why were we drilling so much that we had to shift over to Vulcan death rotation? Because of the that thing that rhymes with horse that every nuke dreads: ORSE. It stands for Operational Reactor Safeguard Examination, the annual anal probe of the nuke world. The entity which gives us this probing is called Naval Reactors. It spans both the Department of the Navy and the Department of Energy. They have the power to “remove the keys” to the reactor following a failed inspection. Technically speaking, the keys are to the control rod drive mechanism breakers. They’re padlocked in the open—or deenergized—position. If you can’t pull the poles out of the holes, you obviously can’t bring your reactor to criticality.
During an ORSE, engineering records are rigorously reviewed, there is a meticulous material inspection, the nukes are given exhaustive exams, formidable drills are run on us, and a handful of unlucky nukes are randomly picked for intensive interviews. It’s the three worst days of any nuke’s life each year while on board a sub. The inspectors may as well be wearing latex gloves and sticking their fingers up our poopers.
Since the careers of both the Commanding Officer and Engineer are on the line, there is an onerous ORSE workup to prepare for the actual event. Drills, drills, drills are the order of the day for every day for a few weeks. Sleep? No, there’s no sleep. It sucks, but it’s understandable. We needed the practice. Mistakes were being made.
RRRRAAAARRRR-RRRRAAAARRRR-RRRRAAAARRRR-RRRRAAAARRRR
That’s the collision alarm. Sounded like an old-time police siren.
“FLOODING IN ENGINE ROOM LOWER LEVEL! THERE IS FLOODING IN ENGINE ROOM LOWER LEVEL FROM THE MAIN SEAWATER BAY! FLOODING IN ENGINE ROOM LOWER LEVEL!”
I was one of the red hats running the drill on the watch standers and waving a light green bed sheet around. So far so good. He sounded the collision alarm and called it in. Of the four alarms on the boat—general, collision, dive, and propulsion plant casualty alarms—the collision alarm was the only one that could be sounded outside of the control room or maneuvering. There was a station right there in main seawater bay.
Things were going well until somehow there was confusion as to what side of the main seawater system had the rupture. The wrong side was isolated. The flooding continued and the Lower Level watch rushed to call it back in to maneuvering. In a panic, they isolated all the seawater systems. Now we were about to lose the main engines. Without cooling, it’s only a matter of time before the main condensers over-pressurize and the main steam root valves automatically trip shut.
We need that propulsion to drive towards the surface. That will reduce the rate of flooding due by lowering seawater pressure around us. But if we lose propulsion? That’s the point where the Chief of the Watch would throw the chicken switches to initiate an emergency blow, hurtling us uncontrollably to the surface. If we were in hostile waters, we would be tracked and possibly captured. This drill spiraled out of control due to a miscommunication.
Did the Lower Level forget his port from his starboard? Did someone in maneuvering accidentally close the wrong hull penetrations? Despite the finger pointing and general dissatisfaction with the way the drill played out, one of the lifers added his take on what went down.
“This simulation is garbage anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s just for show, and now a few guys are getting chewed out over a mistake that doesn’t even matter.”
“Doesn’t matter? They mixed up port and starboard. That’s a pretty big deal.”
“Yeah, they fucked up, but these drills aren’t anything like reality.”
He said that as if he were a veteran of actual submarine fire and flooding casualties. Still, I was intrigued by his convictions.
“Well, what’s reality like then?”
“Fucking loud and chaotic. If that main seawater line cracked, there’s no way anyone would be able to hear what the fuck was said on the 2JV. And the seawater would be spraying with so much force, you wouldn’t be able to tell what fucking side it was coming from. They’d have to isolate all the hull penetrations anyway.”
He probably had a good point. But regardless of how realistic or not the drills were, they were effective in programming us into good little robots. After running all these drills, I’m a machine. I don’t panic. I take appropriate actions in a crisis. I know what to do, and there’s comfort in accomplishing the steps I’ve been programed to do.
If it doesn’t go down exactly like the drill simulation, I’ll improvise to accomplish what I was programmed to do. Flooding? I’ll sound the collision alarm and call maneuvering as trained. But they can’t hear me on the 2JV phone? I’ll run up to engine room upper level, shut the hull penetrations from the valve control station there, then proceed to maneuvering to tell the Engineering Officer of the Watch myself. You will not stop this machine.
As much as I hated running the drills, I knew I needed the experience to become that machine. There is no replacement for actual experience. Read all you want, discuss it all you want, it will never come close to what you learn by actually doing it. It really all comes down to not knowing what you don’t know. How do you prepare for something you didn’t know you didn’t know? Try actually doing something, and very quickly you’ll discover what you don’t know.
Often, it’s the little things. They slip through the cracks because others think that you should just know them. How did you not know that? What kind of special dumbass are you anyway? Yeah, it’s frustrating. All these things you don’t know just waiting to bite you in the butt. How long will it take to be like Chief Queen? He just knew everything. God it’s so frustrating to work your balls off at something for three straight years and still feel like you know absolutely nothing. When do I just get to feel secure in my knowledge?
I have an example of not knowing the little things that you find out through experience, often leading to embarrassment. After being relieved from my maneuvering watch as engine room lower level while pulling out of port, I was standing an under instruction watch in engine room forward. A few of the guys lingered around after the post watch clean up including Jay-Jay, Hash Brown, Bento, and Bruce, as we all knew the drills would soon start. Why bother going up to the cone if we can’t burn a flick or get some good rack time?
We were all gathered by the feed station, shooting the shit. The five of us were doing what sailors do best: bitch up a storm. We all had shit to whine about. Woe were we. There was never any shortage of injustice in the Navy. Or incompetence. Oh yeah, we definitely had a surplus of incompetence in the Navy to bitch about. And when it was my turn to speak, boy did I had a good one for them!
“Yeah, so the fucking guy who tests the alarms never came by my fucking watch station! I had to test the damn collision alarm myself! Believe that shit?”
When we first get underway, all the alarms from all the alarm stations are tested. General, collision, dive and propulsion plant casualty.
“THE FOLLOWING IS A TEST OF THE COLLISION ALARM FROM THE TORPEDO ROOM. DISREGARD ALARM.”
RRRRAAAARRRR-RRRRAAAARRRR-RRRRAAAARRRR-RRRRAAAARRRR
“THE FOLLOWING IS A TEST OF THE DIVE ALARM FROM THE CONTROL ROOM. DISREGARD ALARM.”
AAARRRROOOOOT, AAARRRROOOOOT
This continues for each station. After testing all the alarms from all of the locations, a final announcement is made.
“TESTING OF THE SHIP’S ALARMS IS COMPLETE. REGARD ALL FURTHER ALARMS.”
When the announcement for the test of the collision alarm from Lower Level was made, no one came around to test it. I tossed that bit out there to my fellow shoot-the-shitters, and all four of them looked at me while making a face like I had just farted. Jay-Jay engaged me out of “he can’t be serious” curiosity.
“What guy?”
“The guy who comes around. To uh, you know… to test the alarms. Had to do it myself.”
“There’s no guy.”
“Then who tests the alarms?”
“You do. When they announce for your watch station to test it.”
“Oh! Well, that’s what I did. But uh… like, how do they know where it’s coming from?”
“What do you mean? You sound the alarm when they tell you to. That’s how they know.”
“But I mean, it could be activated from anywhere, right?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So, if all the collision alarms are wired in parallel, as I’d imagine they are, then they can’t tell what station is activated, right?”
“Probably not.”
“So, who makes sure it’s the right one?”
“It’s just a fucking alarm, not some reactor safety bullshit. Stop overthinking it. Jesus, no wonder why the fucking coners fucking hate us.”
I felt so stupid. My turn to bitch about something, to give them an example of incompetence, and I gave them me. This is the knowledge, or lack thereof, that I was talking about. There are just so many little things to know, and I usually found them out the hard way through experience.
This was just a simple alarm test, not a drill, but still, it’s experience. That’s what is so good about running all those actual drills. You learn all those little things that you didn’t think to ask, and no one thought to tell you. Little by little, knowledge was accrued to robotic levels. There was a marked improvement in our performance over the course of these few weeks of sleep depriving drills. A movie montage would probably be in order right about here. After a few weeks of Vulcan death, we were ready for the three days of hell.
I mean I was ready. I stopped throwing entire extinguishers right into the fires apparently. At least that’s what the ball busters were saying about me. Other crewmembers improved dramatically as well. It all came down to drills, drills, drills. And just like clockwork, only minutes after the post-watch clean up concluded, they started the drills.
GONG-GONG-GONG-GONG-GONG-GONG-GONG-GONG-GONG
“FIRE, FIRE, FIRE! FIRE IN THE NUCLEONICS LAB! CLASS ALPHA FIRE IN THE NUCLEONICS LAB! FIRE, FIRE, FIRE!”
The Bull Nuke and the Engineer liked to run complicated drills called “compound casualties.” One of their favorites was this fire in the nucleonics lab with an injured squat just outside lying on the deck unconscious and bleeding profusely. Fire? Check. Radioactive material release? Check. Injured personnel? Check. Contaminated personnel? Check.
They wanted to see what we would do. Fight the fire or prevent the spread of radioactivity first? Treat the injury or decontaminate the victim first? This was the test of our reasoning skills in the face of contradictory immediate actions to be taken. We were trained for these casualties individually, not in such combinations. We were trained to never blast radioactive material with a fire hose. We were trained to never take a contaminated person or object through the mess deck.
Against training, we all hustled up to the nucleonics lab and blasted the radioactive material with the fire hose. Others immediately took the contaminated person out of the burning engine room through the mess deck and into the wardroom where the corpsman and his team were waiting. Our reasoning for violating the rules? Who cares if we prevent contamination of the ship if it’s lost to a fire? Who cares if we decontaminate a guy if he bleeds to death? That is what we reasoned, and we reasoned right. The Bull Nuke, the Engineer and the Executive Officer were all very pleased with the direction of the drill. Right up until the point it all went sideways.
“SECURE FROM DRILL!”
They had to stop the drill immediately. What happened? I didn’t know. I was still in the engine room where things were going well, so it seemed like the issue was up in the cone. The drill debriefing didn’t directly address what happened other than it involved inappropriate treatment of the injured and contaminated squat. Then I heard the story through wide spread scuttlebutt which surfaced later on, specifically from Bruce, who was one of the squats who went up front during the drill.
First, I have to mention that fast attack submarines do not have a doctor onboard. Instead, we have a specially trained corpsman. Basically, we just have a super paramedic to treat all 136+ crewmembers. He does have a few assistants however. The mess specialists become makeshift EMTs during casualties. The corpsman’s little helpers. At his direction, they can dress wounds and apply pressure, perform CPR and other minor medical emergency procedures.
Despite not being nukes, all coners participate in drills for the ORSE and its workup. The contaminated, unconscious engineering laboratory technician with a bleeding head wound in this particular drill was brought up front away from the fire so he could be treated by the corpsman and his mess specialist little helpers. They were being evaluated just the same as the nukes in the engine room.
Once the injured ELT was stabilized, the drill would continue with the other squats decontaminating the victim, the first responders, and any surface touched by contaminated personnel. The drill didn’t get that far, however. At first, I didn’t believe Bruce’s explanation. He claimed to have witnessed what had gone down as he, being a squat, was supposed to be part of the forward compartment decontamination efforts.
“You can’t be serious.”
“No, I am being serious. I was right there. I saw it with my own eyes.”
“Bullshit. They must have been joking around.”
“No, they weren’t joking around. Not during a drill with everyone hovering above them.”
“C’mon. No one can be that dumb.”
“Dude. They call him Turbo for a reason.”
The drill was secured when Turbo tried to stop the bleeding head wound by putting a tourniquet around the victim’s neck. That got the “unconscious” victim’s attention, and he flipped out on Turbo. But I mean, what’s the big deal?
Yesterday it was profuse bleeding from this guy’s leg, so he put the tourniquet around the leg. The day before it was a gushing arm wound, so he put the tourniquet around his arm. Today it was a bleeding head wound. What, where else was Turbo supposed to put the tourniquet he was trained to apply?
Made sense to me. He was just following his training to the best of his abilities. No need to make such a commotion that the drill had to be so abruptly terminated. I mean, this is why we run drills right? Now Turbo knew that breathing is as important as preventing exsanguination. Deficiency corrected. Turbo was now ready to take on the ORSE with extreme prejudice.
I suppose by now you understand the sarcasm behind his nickname. It was not unlike calling a really fat guy “slim.” Turbo was chubby, fittingly so for a cook, and had these squinty, squished in facial features. Plus, with the first three letters being common, saying his nickname with his last name provided some alliteration. Petty Officer “Turbo” Turner was not the sharpest knife in the galley.
It didn’t help Turbo’s cause that had this habit of telling some of the most inane stories known to mankind. This resulted in just about everybody walking away from him without saying a word before they got a nosebleed. Yet Turbo would continue telling the story despite no longer having an audience. Usually, he would just keep on talking into the air until he finished his story.
Other times he would lock on to a fresh target like a terminator whether his newly acquired victim was behind him, across the room or merely walking on by. He of course would not start the story over at the beginning with this new guy. No, no, no. He just kept going on as if this new poor sap already had all the information presented to the previous poor sap. Unlike Skynet, I don’t believe Turbo ever became self-aware.
I dunno, maybe I’m being too hard on Turbo. He was likely just as sleep deprived as the rest of us. Anyone can make the simple mistake of trying to asphyxiate your shipmate while super sleepy. These damn Vulcan death watches continued relentlessly, and rest was a precious commodity. It seemed as if the second your head hit the pillow, it activated a switch, and the general alarm sounded.
GONG-GONG-GONG-GONG-GONG-GONG-GONG-GONG-GONG
“FIRE, FIRE, FIRE! FIRE IN ENGINE ROOM MID LEVEL! CLASS CHARLIE FIRE IN ENGINE ROOM MID LEVEL! FIRE, FIRE, FIRE!”
Everyone got dressed and rushed out of berthing and to our battle stations, resulting in a big logjam in the main passageway. During this short yet troubling delay, I blurted out something to no one in particular.
“They must be cleaning the mess deck. Probably got the chain up or something so we don’t fuck up their floors.”
One of the coners who had heard me replied without any comprehension of my sarcasm.
“Oh no, during a fire, you can step right over the chain.”
“No shit?”
“Yeah.”
“Won’t the cooks get mad?”
“If there’s a fire, it doesn’t matter what they think.”
“Are you sure?”
“Oh, I’m sure.”
“Wow, thanks man. That’s good to know.”
I shit you not, this guy really thought we were having a serious conversation, and he was giving me sage advice. So remember folks, it’s perfectly acceptable to dirty up a freshly swabbed deck if the submarine is on fucking fire, okay? My god. Sometimes it was just best not to engage with coners who have the look. You know, the ones you see and you think,
“Oh yeah, that guy is definitely an idiot.”
Yes, those are the ones. Do not engage. This particular coner perpetually wore a confused and nervous expression on his face; it made him look like he just woke up from a coma and had full-blown amnesia. At least he remembered you can step over the chain during a fire. The logjam eventually cleared up and we made it to our stations to combat the loss of sleep casualty.
We drilled like this each and every day, for twelve hours a day, for two solid weeks. Seemed like any more of this would basically be counterproductive. We were there. We were ready. The crew was now well oiled and itching to take on the ORSE-holes. We pulled back into port very briefly, basically just to take our inspectors onboard, plus to do this one other thing that came as a surprise to me.
The day we pulled in, which was a day before the Naval Reactor inspectors were to come onboard, a strange ritual took place in which to this day I am hard pressed to find understanding. We pulled in pretty early in the morning, wrestled the shore power anaconda cables into place, shutdown the engine room and reactor plant, and took out all the trash. We seemed all set to go home, so I wandered back into the engine room in an attempt to gain my liberty. But then I stopped in Mid Level out of confusion.
A bunch of my fellow nukes were carrying all sorts of objects out of the engine room. Trash cans, boxes of fresh oil rags, toolboxes full of tools, the pressure washer we used to clean bilges, the exercise bike from the catwalk up above in the turbine generator lube oil bay (which now had its neck sawed in half), the rowing machine from Upper Level, boxes of parts, and lots of other crap I’m sure I’m missing. It seemed that anything not bolted down in the engine room had pairs of nukes carrying it through hatches and up or down ladders from the engine room all the way to—according to one of the guys I asked—the torpedo room.
“What’s going on? Is Queen La Chiefa moving in with the torpedomen or something?”
I received the one-word response of “ORSE” as if that explained their actions. Almost immediately, I was ordered to join them by Queen La Chiefa himself once he finally spotted me. Fortunately for me, I somehow escaped the worst of the manual labor. How did I get to fuck off up topside for so long while the others were working like a bunch of ants at a picnic? Nobody had called for me, and I didn’t even know this was an actual thing we had to do. Like I said, I just happened to wander back to the engine room on my own accord in an attempt to be dismissed to go home, and then I was suddenly snagged for this dumbass duty.
By that time, I only had to move a few small and light objects that remained and therefore only thought it was an odd nuisance. And then I thought no more of it until after the ORSE. I went home, slept like a rock, and returned in the morning to participate in the startup. Just a few hours on land and then we were back out to sea for our three-day Operational Reactor Safeguard Exam. The Naval Reactor inspectors’ anal probing turned out to be surprisingly gentle.
The drills were second nature to us and went well. I can’t recall a single fuck up. (I was now a good little robot.) Not sure how I performed on the written test that year, so I can only assume not too bad since I didn’t get any shit for it. And thankfully, Naval Reactors had no interest in interviewing me one-on-one. Maybe I was too new to the crew to be a useful metric. And with that, the ORSE was now over. We pulled back into port for a few days.
I don’t remember how long it took for us to receive our ORSE grade. Maybe the ORSE-holes tallied up our score before even docking. Who knows? Regardless, for 1998, the USS San Francisco with my ass onboard received an ORSE grade of above average. Since there were five possible ORSE grades that we could receive (excellent, above average, average, below average, and failure), I suppose you could refer to them by the more traditional grades of A through F. Therefore, we were graded a solid B. Not too shabby.
I was around for the annual ORSE while onboard Submarine NR-1 the previous year where they also scored an above average, but their ORSE was rather unique compared to the rest of the nuclear fleet. For example, it was performed while tied to the pier whereas every other boat does theirs out to sea. Also, since I was a temporary crew member (TCM), I didn’t really participate in it much. I didn’t even have to run any drills.
So, here onboard the San Fran, I’d say that this was my first real ORSE. And now that my first real one was all over, I started thinking that maybe this ORSE-shit wasn’t so bad after all. Were these really the three worst days of each year for the nukes? While the maneuvering watch was set to pull into port, I didn’t think so.
The constant waking up to general alarms right as I fell asleep was not fun, and sucking rubber for hours and hours every day sure did suck, but I thought the ORSE itself wasn’t too, too painful. It was actually a little bit more relaxed than the rather relentless two-week Vulcan Death Watch workup period. Even the drills we were graded on seemed to be easier. But then once the ORSE-holes left the boat, my opinion of this entire production took a pretty hard downward turn. You see, everything that was piled up in the torpedo room had to be brought back to engine room. And this time I was part of the reverse ants-at-a-picnic-like ritual from the beginning.
It was madness. So much shit to bring back. All those trash cans, boxes of fresh oil rags, the pressure washer, the exercise bike that was chopped in half, the rowing machine, boxes of spare parts, extra oxygen candle canisters, filters, rolls of terrycloth, toolboxes full of tools, anything that wasn’t bolted down in the engine room and subsequently removed all had to be carried all the way back from what felt like Kamchatka.
Carlos and I teamed up on the bulkier objects. We ended up lugging one of those heavy-ass, completely-full red toolboxes with the handles at each end, all the way from the torpedo room, up a set of steep stairs to the main passageway, through the mess deck, through the hatch into the engine room, through the reactor tunnel, around the giant starboard motor-generator set, and to the top of a ladder in engine room mid level. There, we paused to sort out the logistics of bringing the toolbox down that ladder into engine room forward.
Once down the ladder, we would then have to go through the flood control hatch into turbine generator lube oil bay, through condensate bay, into the propulsion lube oil bay, and then ratchet-strap it down to the deck on the starboard side. But first we had to get it down that ladder. This pause to assess just how to do that was welcome. That toolbox was fucking heavy. It had to weigh close to a hundred pounds. The handles had really dug into our hands, leaving those deep purple indentations in our palms for a while.
“How do you want to do this?” Carlos asked.
“I dunno. Guess I’ll go down the ladder and maybe support it on one of my shoulders while you hold it up as you go down. Just don’t drop it on me. Would probably squash my head into a pancake.”
“Yeah… wanna empty it out first?”
“My head?”
“Sure, that or maybe the toolbox?”
“Empty the toolbox? Then what? Carry handfuls of tools over a million trips?”
“That or maybe put them in a bucket for fewer trips?”
“Ah. Well that makes way too much sense, so… fuck that. Besides, even that’ll take too long. Let’s just bang it out. We’ve come this far with this heavy-ass fucking thing already.”
“Okay. But do you believe this plan to be… propitious?”
“Uh… if that means really, really stupid, then yes.”
“I don’t know what it means.”
“Right…”
In hindsight, we probably should have went with Carlos’ bucket idea. Or perhaps we should have asked some dudes in the engine room to help us. But we didn’t, and it didn’t go well. I don’t know the exact sequence of events. I had gone first, and maybe I went down the ladder rungs too quickly due to the weight and gravity. Or maybe the ridiculously heavy toolbox had simply slipped out of Carlos’s hands. I don’t know. It all happened so quickly. The toolbox sort of just forced me aside and off the ladder onto my ass, and then it crashed down onto the deck next to me. The impact deformed the toolbox, unlatched it, and the tools spilled out everywhere, including down into the bilge.
Senior Chief Pullman (the Bull Nuke) was somewhere nearby down in engine room lower level and rushed over to engine room forward due to all the racket. He asked me what had happened. I was so angry that I completely disregarded the fact that I was speaking to a senior chief, someone who was three ranks above me.
“That god damn toolbox nearly fucking killed me! I can’t believe we’re playing these stupid fucking games, hiding all this shit from the ORSE inspectors just to bring it back as soon as they leave. Like, really? This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life! It’s like, are we children here? We’re just playing a bunch of games. It’s so childish! It’s so fucking childish!”
“Walk with me…”
It was probably a good thing that Senior Chief Pullman was nearby and responded to the commotion and not Chief Queen. I don’t think my diatribe would have gone over well had I been addressing Queen La Chiefa in this rather insubordinate manner. Fortunately, the Bull Nuke was sympathetic. He actually tried to calm me down and explain the reasoning behind why the most powerful fighting force the world has ever known was reduced to playing these silly, childish hide-and-not-seek, wink-wink fucking games.
Whereas Queen La Chiefa sort of seemed like a “true believer,” the Bull Nuke appeared to me to be someone who compartmentalized all the bullshit and somehow suppressed it. He didn’t have to agree with the command to go along with their orders. Senior Chief Pullman reminded me of how my father tried to explain why I had to pass the theology classes in my Catholic high school in order to graduate when I received poor grades in those courses. I thought those classes were hogwash. My father thought so too but said that I didn’t have to believe any of the nonsense that the teacher wanted me to write down on the tests; I just had to suck it up and do it to pass the class so that I could move on.
My father was a wise man, but I didn’t listen to him. Teenagers always know better. I dropped out of the elite Catholic high school after my junior year and enrolled in the public school for my final year. I probably should have stayed in the elite private school, but I had a really hard time with being forced to do things that I thought were nonsensical just because someone said “just because.” I have to memorize parts of the bible to get a high school diploma? No thank you. In my mind, if you are going to force me to do something, you had better have a really good god damn reason. Knowing that this was my mentality, perhaps enlisting in the military wasn’t the smartest thing for me to do.
And now here I was in an inexplicable situation the Navy had put me in that I could do nothing about. I just could not wrap my head around it. It was a fucking embarrassment and had no idea how the chiefs and officers who had the power to do something about it didn’t feel the same way. I get that they weren’t the ones who had to carry all this heavy shit up and down ladders, so one might conclude that is why they didn’t care to stop the madness. But that wasn’t enough for me to give them a pass.
If I was in charge, I would be outright ashamed that I had let it continue. This is what I was having the hardest time understanding. How the fuck are they not completely embarrassed with themselves for creating a cluster-fuck of a production like this? It felt so armature. Like we’re pretending to be a navy the best we could but failing miserably. It’s like we held an opening at a fine art gallery but on display were a bunch of school kid’s finger paintings. And they’re all proud of ourselves, thinking, “Nailed it.”
Senior Chief Pullman’s little walk away stopped on the starboard side of the propulsion lube oil bay, coincidentally right where the toolbox had been strapped down to prior to the ORSE. I don’t think he realized that, but I sure did. It threw me off for a second and I wasn’t paying attention to exactly what he was saying at first, but I got the sense that his tactic to try to bring me back into line was the same as my father’s:
You have to do it, and there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop it. Therefore, you may as well just go along with it so that you just get it over with as quickly as possible, and with as little pain as possible, and then just move on.
Yup, just like my father. Now merely two years removed from my teen years, I of course still did not accept that line of reasoning. Just take it and move on? Move on to what? The next ass-fucking? The next ass-fucking that will be a lot less painful if I simply didn’t resist? Unacceptable. So, I went on the offensive and assaulted the Bull Nuke with questions about these out of touch ORSE-hole inspectors.
“Who the hell are these people? Who do they think they are to judge us submariners when they clearly had no idea what it was like to live on a submarine?”
To my horror. I found out that all those Naval Reactor inspectors were indeed from either submarine duty or an aircraft carrier assignment. The inspector with the rank of commander (or above) was always a former submarine Commanding Officer (when inspecting a submarine) or aircraft carrier Reactor Officer (when inspecting an aircraft carrier). The other three inspectors (all lieutenant commanders) were previously either Engineering Officers from submarines or some sort of nuclear-qualified officers from carriers. I don’t know those officers’ titles as I know jack-shit about serving on a skimmer. But this was all very alarming.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. So you’re telling me most of these guys used to be on subs? And one of them was actually the CO of a boat?”
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”
“Senior chief! You realize that means they were on the receiving end of an ORSE quite a few times too then?”
“Yes, of course. Many, many times. Many more than you.”
That blew my mind. I think what he said was supposed to make me feel better, but I just couldn’t believe it. It was incomprehensible. It wasn’t just the chiefs and officers on the boat allowing this shit-show to take place. No, all the inspectors from Naval Reactors knew exactly what went on before and after an ORSE because they themselves had also participated in these childish games like hiding toolboxes and trashcans from the inspectors for who the hell knows what reason. And yet now on the other side, they let the games continue. I was having a hard time processing this new information.
“Who raised these people!?!”
They knew what it was like to be on this side or ORSE, and they did nothing to stop the madness once they were in power. They took points away from us if they found something like a garbage can in the engine room. Points! They take points away! If using points doesn’t tip you off that this is all just a fucking game, then I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe you’re one of them. But I’m telling you, this shouldn’t be how the world’s most powerful navy operates. It’s madness. I had so many more questions.
“How can they hit us for having trash cans in the engine room? It makes no sense. What are we supposed to do with the oil rags when we wipe up all the oil leaks? Oh wait, that’s right. We’re not even supposed to have oil rags in the engine room to begin with so we don’t even need any trash cans for them. Duh.”
I paused for a second realizing my heavy application of sarcasm towards a superior, but then worked myself up again and continued being snarky towards the Bull Nuke before he could even respond.
“This is ridiculous! What about tools and spare parts? Now that makes no sense! I can almost see the trash cans and oil rags—almost, because I hate cleaning too—but how the hell do they expect us to fix the ship out at sea without tools and parts? Why the hell can’t we have tools and spare parts in the engine room?”
“Of course we can have tools and spare parts in the engine room, but they just have to be in the proper location. We just happen bring extra tools and parts that we think we might need due to past experiences, and because they’re extra, they don’t always fit in their proper places.”
“What do you mean proper places? What makes it proper? If we need it, it’s proper. Just put it somewhere and then say that’s the proper place.”
“That’s not how it works. Everything has to be in accordance with the ship’s blueprints. Anything not in accordance with the ship’s prints is an unauthorized shipalt. You know that.”
[A “shipalt” is another one of those cute little navy portmanteaus that they love so much, and this one meant “ship alteration.”]
“Having extra boxes of parts and bags of oil rags stuffed into unused voids are considered unauthorized shipalts? Really? That’s a shipalt?”
“Yes, that’s a shipalt. An unauthorized one.”
“But we’re not actually altering the ship. We’re not cutting or welding pieces of the boat. We’re just stuffing things into the box girders or ratchet strapping things to the handrails and deck plates. That’s not ‘altering’ the ship! That’s just being a hoarder.”
“Listen, if—”
“Like what if a contractor hangs his coat on your doorknob? He can’t charge you for it like he did some work on your house. Just putting things in places isn’t altering anything. So this is—”
“Listen to me. Stop. Stop.”
“Aye, senior.”
“Look… If a certain location wasn’t designated as a storage area and you’re using it as such, then that’s an unauthorized shipalt.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense. That’s still not actually ‘altering’ the ship. I don’t get this logic.”
“Well, you don’t have to get it. You just have to do it. These are the rules and regulations we must follow, and we’re going to comply with them. This includes you.”
“Aye senior chief. But it still doesn’t make any sense to me.”
“It doesn’t have to. You still have to comply, however.”
“Wait. I kinda get it now.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. We just can’t have anything in the engine room that’s not specified in the ship’s prints, right? And it doesn’t even have to actually alter the ship to be considered an unauthorized shipalt. If it’s not on the blueprints, then it’s an unauthorized shipalt, right?”
“Right. That’s exactly right. Should I be worried that you sud—”
“No, no, no. It makes perfect sense to me now. Yeah, I’m totally onboard with this line of logic.”
“You are?”
“Yes, senior chief, I am. Especially considering that I’m pretty sure I’m not on the ship’s blueprints. So, I better get out of here. Right now, with me just standing here, I’m actually being an unauthorized shipalt to the engine room.”
“I knew it. I knew you would—you’re being a smartass, that’s what you’re being right now.”
“But senior, you know I’m not on the prints! And you say that’s against those rules and regulations we must follow, so I’d better get out of here. I don’t want to lose any more points in this silly little game.”
“That’s not what I meant by being on the blueprints, and you know it. You’re standing in an area designed to be occupied by the crew.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know about that, senior. Does it actually say ‘people space’ on the prints exactly where I’m standing? I don’t know that. I just know I personally am not on the prints. How could I be? So, I had better stay out of the engine room from now on just to be on the safe side. I’ll be in the torpedo room if you want to come by and chit-chat sometime.”
“You’re not going anywhere until you clean up that mess you guys made. Next time try using your head by emptying the toolbox before bringing it down the ladder. Now get your ass back to engine room forward and go clean up that disaster area!”
“Okay, okay, senior. On it.”
That poor, poor Bull Nuke. He was one of the good guys. Unfortunately for him, that would not be the last time I gave him high blood pressure. Looking back, I’m amazed at his tolerance. I think that had I been in his shoes, I would have just called for Chief Queen and ordered him to take care of me. I wouldn’t have patience for my barely-older-than-a-know-it-all-teenager bullshit. And neither did Queen La Chiefa.
Because I felt bad for the Senior Chief Pullman, I walked away from his little peptalk in better spirits. Yeah, it wasn’t because of his line of reasoning during our chat; it was because I felt like I was getting away with murder with that little quip at the end where I started mocking what he had tried to explain to me.
And if that wasn’t enough, I felt even worse upon walking back into engine room forward to see that Carlos had finished fishing all the tools out of the bilge and loading them back into the toolbox. He basically cleaned up the entire mess that I made all by himself. He didn’t seem mad though. Instead, he just told me something in his usual deadpan delivery. Nothing out of the ordinary.
“Queen La Cheifa came by looking for you. I told him you were with Senior Chief Pullman, and he left.”
“Why was he looking for me?”
“He said we need to bring this toolbox back to the torpedo room. There’s another inspection coming up, and we shouldn’t have brought it back here yet.”
“What? Another inspection? Like the TRE?”
“Yeah.”
“Wait. Why would they inspect back here for the TRE? Nah, nah, nah. He didn’t come by and say that. You’re fucking with me.”
“Yeah, I’m just fucking with you.”
“Jerk. Had me there for a second.”
We finally accomplished our mission by carrying the toolbox through the flood control hatch into turbine generator lube oil bay, through the condensate bay, and into the propulsion lube oil bay. While we were ratchet-strapping the toolbox down to the deck on the starboard side, Queen La Chiefa did come down to Lower Level to find me. I was half expecting him to tell us to bring the toolbox back to the torpedo room, fulfilling Carlos’s prophecy, but he actually something else in mind.
“Petty Officer Droughton, before you leave today, you will have the exercise bike welded back together and stowed properly. Understood?”
“Weld the exercise bike back together, chief? Like right now?”
“Yes, right now. Why, do you have something more important to do?”
“Uh… I guess not.”
He glared at me.
“Chief. I do not something more important to do, chief.”
“Petty Officer Piña, you will be his fire watch. Understood?”
“Yes, chief,” Carlos replied, “Understood.”
“Excellent. The pieces of the exercise bike were brought to engine room mid level. Apparently, your little mishap blocked the ladder to bring it down to the welding machine like I had asked.”
He walked off before either one of us suddenly wide-eyed scrubs could respond. Felt like we were just caught with our hands in the cookie jar. I was a bit surprised I didn’t get a talking to for not “working smarter” or perhaps for me being borderline insubordinate to the Bull Nuke.
I immediately thought it was a damn good thing that Chief Queen wasn’t the one who responded to the racket of the toolbox crashing down instead of Senior Chief Pullman while I was still running a bit hot. Then again, it’s doubtful I would have gone off on my diatribe in front of Queen La Chiefa. Once Chief Queen was safely out of hearing distance, even for him, I began a new bitch session.
“Fuck. Why couldn’t Chief Queen have told us this welding shit before we got involved with carrying the stupid god damn fucking toolbox? Someone else could have carried that fucker while we were setting up to weld the bike. Now they’re all gonna to get cut loose while we’re stuck here welding that fucking thing.”
“I’ve never used the exercise bike. Now I don’t want to. I hate it.”
“Fuck that thing. I’ll weld it back together fucking sideways. This is fucking bullshit.”
We went up to engine room mid level to fetch the pieces. I bitched to Carlos a bit more.
“Oh my god. Why the fuck did they have to cut it like that? They got it up onto that fucking catwalk in the overhead without cutting it. Couldn’t someone have just taken it apart if it didn’t fit through somewhere?”
“I heard they were trying to take it off the boat and it didn’t fit through the hatch.”
“Off the boat?”
“Yeah.”
“Wait. They didn’t cut the rowing machine too, did they?”
“Hmm… I dunno. But La Chiefa didn’t mention it, so probably not.”
“Good point. Alright. Let’s bang this shit out so we can get the fuck out of here.”
We brought the pieces of the exercise bike down to engine room forward by the welding machine. I gave Carlos another “lesson” by making him set up the TIG unit. I maintained my agitated state just looking at the pieces.
“I don’t get why they couldn’t they just disassemble it if they had to take it off the boat.”
“Probably because welding it back together wasn’t their problem.”
“Fucking assholes. I hate this fucking place. One thousand twenty-nine days to go.”
“So, what did Pullman have to say to you?”
“He said I should have listened to you.”
“Really? That sounds… mendacious.”
“Right… whatever that means. He said we should have ‘worked smarter’ by taking the tools out before carrying the toolbox down the ladder—just like you said.”
“Yeah, I guess so. But who knew gravity was gonna be that strong the same day we had to carry a heavy toolbox down a ladder anyway? Just a weird coincidence and an unfortunate set of circumstances.”
“You know what? Pullman is missing the big picture here.”
“What’s the big picture?”
“The big picture is to think about what the smartest way to work is. You know what would have been smarter than taking the tools out? Not having to drag that fucking toolbox all over the god damn boat in the first place. That would have been the smartest solution to prevent what just happened.”
“Just tell Pullman and Queen ‘no’ next time?”
“No, I mean like… we wouldn’t have to say ‘no’ to them if the command had a set of fucking balls and would just stop playing these stupid games.”
“How so?”
“Alright, so Pullman said having any shit in the engine room that’s not on the blueprints is an unauthorized shipalt. So, the ORSE assholes will hit us if they see anything back here not on the prints.”
“Okay. Makes sense.”
“Yeah, so doesn’t that mean we shouldn’t have this shit here at all? Like right now it shouldn’t even be here, right? Either it’s allowed to be here, or it’s not.”
“Right.”
“I don’t live in the barracks anymore, but like, are we allowed to keep drugs and guns in the barracks if there aren’t any room inspectors around?”
“Someone should test that out. You know, theory to practice.”
“But you know that shit wouldn’t fly in the barracks. So why is it okay to have unauthorized shit back here in the engine room once the inspectors leave?”
“I’m going to bring a gun to the barracks.”
“See you in twenty. But no, really. This is all just a big fucking game. Pullman said all those asshole inspectors are nukes from subs and carriers. So they’ve been on both sides of these inspections; they know we’re taking all this shit out of the engine room just to pass the ORSE and then we’re putting it all back as soon as they leave. They all know this. Everybody knows this.”
“I didn’t know this.”
“You do now.”
“Wow. Seems… opprobrious. What do you plan on doing to stop this?”
“Nothing. I can’t do shit. It would take some officers with a set of fucking balls. Like if the Engineer and Captain would just tell the ORSE inspectors, ‘Fuck you. We’ll take the hit. We’ll take the points deduction to ensure our crew’s safety’ or some shit like that. But these asshats here don’t have any balls.”
“Is that why there are no dudes in the engine room?”
“Yeah totally! Fucking ball-less fuck faces only worried about their promotions. They don’t have to carry any of this heavy-ass shit all over the boat or weld stupid fucking exercise bikes back together.”
“Yeah, I get all that. But I don’t get why you’re so mad about it.”
“You don’t get—what do you mean? I just fucking told you.”
“No, no, no. You’re missing the big picture.”
“I thought I—wait. What’s the big picture?”
“If they make us take all the contraband out of the engine room for the ORSE, that means that they know we’re not supposed to have all this crap back here.”
“Yeah, I just said that.”
“And then immediately after the inspectors leave, they make us put it all back where they know we’re not supposed to have it.”
“Right. I said all of that.”
“Yes, so now think big picture.”
“Which is?”
“The big picture is that Pullman basically just said you can do whatever you want in the Navy as long as you don’t get caught. That’s the big picture.”
“You know… I think you’re on to something there. That really is what he said to me when you boil it down. That’s totally what he just said to me.”
“Seems like a pretty good deal if you ask me. This is a good thing. You should be in a good mood.”
“Well, I’m in a less worse one now.”
It was a good bit of lollygagging right there. Then we redirected our attention to the actual task in front of us so we could get the fuck out of there. Looking at the pieces had me worried about those prospects though. I was concerned with how thin-walled the neck of the exercise bike was. I had never welded something so thin.
“Man, I’m going to have to turn the amperage down and weld really fast so I don’t blow holes in these little tubes. Fuck. This shit’s like a sixteenth of an inch thick. I don’t know if I can do this.”
“They didn’t teach you how to weld leisure equipment back together in nuclear-reactor-about-to-melt-down emergency welding school?”
“I was sick that day.”
“That is most… unfortunate. But it’s probably as easy as one-tee, two-tee.”
“Nice.”
Because I was so focused on not melting the thin tube walls, I forgot that I hated the bike and planned on doing a shitty job to spite the fitness freaks and whomever hacksawed the bike in half. I actually approached it like this exercise bike was an important piece of nuclear level equipment. I spent a lot of time prepping the welding surface by removing the paint and cleaning it with alcohol and took great care when clamping the two halves together so that it was perfectly aligned before tack welding. Then I worked my plan of using low amperage and laying a fast bead for the first and what would also be the last pass.
My plan worked. I did not blow any holes through the tiny tubes. To be perfectly honest, I was surprised how nice the tiny little weld bead came out. Not to brag, but it almost like it was done in a factory. I might have just become the most overqualified exercise equipment repairman in Hawaii. Because my weld came out so nicely, I went to engine room upper level to get some primer and black spray paint. I couldn’t have my near perfect weld begin to rust! I spray painted it with primer and asked someone on duty to follow up with the black paint once the primer dried.
With that exercise bike ratchet-strapped down to the catwalk in the overhead of turbine generator lube oil bay, my ORSE-play was officially over. I was so damn relieved that we were done with Vulcan death watches and being woken up for drills! I swear, if I had to hear that gong-gong-gong god damn general alarm go off while trying to sleep and then have to suck rubber for hours and hours just one more time, I’d purposely bash my head against that sadistic low-hanging bracket in shaft alley to get a nice gusher, and then hand Turbo the tourniquet myself.
GONG-GONG-GONG-GONG-GONG-GONG-GONG-GONG-GONG
“FIRE, FIRE, FIRE! FIRE IN THE TORPEDO ROOM! THERE IS A FIRE THE TORPEDO ROOM! FIRE, FIRE, FIRE!”
God damn fucking Tactical Readiness Exam! We barely had a break in port before heading back out again. And I thought the whole thing was about shooting off torpedoes. I didn’t know they did fire and flooding drills during the TRE! Time to suck the rubber…
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ANNUAL EVALUATION REPORT (15 MAR 1998)
Evals are all fluff. Blocks 45 and 46 tell the actual story. There were 28 second class petty officers on the San Fran at that time. I was somewhere in the range of 19th to 27th best. Or 10th to 2nd worst.
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