In The Navy (On the Boat), Part 16

As we headed North (quite lowly I might point out) I was spending more time on the scope than usual. We seemed to have a lot of message traffic to send and receive (which you can only do at Periscope Depth, or surfaced). This was OK by me, I liked looking out the scope most of the time.

One night I located the North Star..well, because I could. I muttered “Polaris”.

Bart, the QM asked me if I had the North Star? I said yes and he asked me to mark a bearing.

I called out ”Polaris, bearing…mark!” and hit the button on the scope that sends the relative bearing to the Fire Control System and to a visual repeater that displays the info.

Bart quickly pulled a huge book out from under the plot table and started flipping pages. I would have to find out what that was about later and went back to scanning the horizon (I really shouldn’t be looking up at stars).

Once we submerged, I went over to Bart and asked what was up? He explained that with the book, he could use the bearing to Polaris to triangulate (estimating our location) and use that to verify we are where he thinks we are.

It’s pretty complicated and the Nav Sat system we used to get locations is also way too complicated to try to explain here. I will say that “Dead Reckoning”, which is what you do when the Boat is submerged, is an art. You take your best guess at currents, drift, course and speed and try to figure out where you are when you are totally blind. It is always a reset when you come up to PD and a Nav Sat passes over and updates the computers with your actual location. The good QMs will have very little correction to make once you get that position fix, most of the time. Bart was good and a good friend.

I started shooting other stars for him and we had a good system of getting the data he needed to fix our position. It was valuable; because there were a lot of times we went to PD and never got a Nav Sat fix. This was going great until one day Chief K. noticed us doing it and came over and smacked me on the back of the head. He said “You are supposed to be watching to make sure we don’t run into anything, dumbass!”

I told him “I just did a sweep and was doing another one now.”

He scoffed and said “Whatever.” and walked away. He loved saying that, “whatever”. He seemed to like being mad.

Bart and I discovered we both had some musical interests in common and we were busted more than once muttering lyrics from The Dead Milkmen and Suicidal Tendencies. Some people liked silence in the Control Room, unless there was a need to speak, but we didn’t get too much grief.

I saw a lot of funny and strange things in the Control Room. I saw people get mildly electrocuted. We had one “cool” Weps for a while, who liked to take a nap on the deck (floor) with his feet propped up against the forward door (that was so the Captain or XO couldn’t surprise him. He was cool and smart and rare. I saw terrible decisions made and moments of genius.

I saw people laugh, cry and cheer. You would think the Control Room would be a strict place and it usually was, but there were moments on every run.