In The Navy (On the Boat), Part 6

John (my LPO), who we called JT most of the time, had one really funny story from the cruise I had missed. The Boat was at Periscope Depth (PD), which it did several times a day, to get or send messages. I guess it was foggy out and out of nowhere, JT saw these giant letters appear through the scope and he started reading them off..”T-O-Y-O…”. He called for Emergency Deep (which means sink the Boat really fast!). It was a Toyota car carrier cargo ship and the Boat was about to smash onto it. They missed.

Those kinds of accidents are typical ones for Submarines. You may recall the Boat that hit a Chinese Trawler a few years ago? Coming to, or near the surface on a Sub is a precarious thing to do, because if a ship is up there with its engine off (sometimes on) it can be missed by passive Sonar. Then there is a “clunk”.

One myth I want to dispel; is the stupid sound effect you hear in the movies whenever a Sub is under water. You hear a ding, ding ding sound the whole time. That is supposed to represent either a fathometer, which is really only used when you are in shallow waters, or active Sonar pings. Active Sonar sends out a high frequency pulse of sound that will bounce off a target and bounce back to the Sonar Dome, so you can get a good range and bearing. The problem is, either one will give away your position to the “target”, because it’s noisy! In the real world, US Subs rarely use active Sonar. Not true for USSR ships and Subs though.

Back in the barracks, I was saddled with a very odd room mate. His name was James, but everyone called him JB, his initials. He was a tall lanky southern guy, maybe a few years older than me. Someone skewed his initials into “Mai-Me” which he would answer to also (maybe a stupor thing??). Short crew cut blond hair and a bit of a southern drawl. He was a Nuke (worked in the Engine Room), so I rarely saw him on the Boat. We never became friends, but we were friendly towards each other. He knew if he needed something, he could count on me and vice versa.

JB had a habit of chasing “fat chicks” and even participated in contests with other guys to see who could bed the biggest on any given night. I only got to see him doing this for real, one time and completely by chance. My friends were winding down one night and we found ourselves at the big Country place close to base. I wandered over to the Country side and grabbed a bench against the wall once I spied JB. He was a different person in here and I was far away enough to take in the whole thing, without him noticing me.

He was at a large round table with two other guys and four “stout” girls. The girls were all smiles and giggles and had no idea that this was all a contest for the guys and had a fairly large payout. That night JB won, and it took every bit of moral strength in my being to not die laughing as he left the place with this huge woman. I knew then, that I would not be going back to the room, most likely. He would have her there.

When we bailed out for the night and got back to the barracks, I propped myself up in one of the lounges with a few beers (available via vending machine right there in the barracks). I was watching MTV, which was all the rage, just down the hall from my room. I don’t know how JB snuck this woman in, but some hours later, when I was dozing on the stiff couch in the lounge, JB woke me as he was taking his girl out and told me the room was free. She was hanging at the door to the lounge, looking happy.

So they left and I crashed, some nights you wind up sleeping in the lounge all night. Ask any Sub sailor and you will hear a similar story. JB didn’t get back till very early in the morning. He told me he had won big, a couple hundred bucks. I think he enjoyed the whole thing and the money was a bonus, but I couldn’t say for sure.

Any time JB had too much to drink, he would wake up the next morning and utter over and over “My head hurts, my head hurts, my head hurts”. He would change the inflection of the sentence so the vocal range would be high to low, then low to high and emphasize a different word each time. It was hilarious. He would utter the same thing all the way down to the Boat on Monday mornings. Everyone raided the huge Aspirin bottle in the Doc’s office on Mondays.