In The Navy (On the Boat), Part 22

Getting back to that pesky Diesel Boat…

We spent weeks in close proximity to this other Boat. Periodically, we would break contact and move some distance off while it was submerged, so we could catch a satellite position fix and send/receive messages.

One of these times came when I was on watch and the seas were fairly nasty. We came up to Periscope Depth (PD) and I think we blew the sanitary tanks, maybe the bilges too. What wound up happening was, we got too light. The back of the Boat broached the surface (A major No No). The Chief of the Watch (COW) was trying desperately to get us back under. I was on the scope and called out “Aft decks awash.” which means we are sticking out of the water. This aggravated the COW a little and he shot me a look.

Then we rose even higher out of the water, I don’t know what the COW was trying to do, but it wasn’t working. I could see the propeller sticking up! That was a first. I started counting, “One, two, three, four, five six seven.” After a short pause I said, “Yep all the blades on the screw [propeller] are still there.” Most of the Control room cracked up. The Dive Officer barked back at me, “Not funny Petty Officer “ which made everyone laugh, louder this time.

We finished our messages and were ready to get back under, but the COW couldn’t get us down. He kept taking on water into the different ballast tanks, with no effect. I think we must have hit a patch of warmer or saltier water, which is much denser than cold less salty water. It causes you to become more buoyant.

The COW finally got us under and the OOD ordered “Make your Depth 400 feet.” This was so we could trim the Boat. The Dive took us down and then tried to level off at 400 feet. The only problem was, the Boat wasn’t stopping at 400 feet. Even though the helm was trying to drive us up to 400 feet, we kept sinking.

The Dive is of course going insane trying to pump anything he can overboard. The problem is, the deeper you get, the higher the outside pressure is and the less water the pumps could pump out of the trim tanks. Down we went, deeper and deeper…slowly. We were probably back into another colder layer of fresher water and picking up momentum.

I popped down to the Galley to grab some Iced Tea real quick and told the guys there what was happening. A modest crowd had already gathered, watching a depth repeater tick off as we went deeper and deeper. I think they were waiting for the Damage Control Party to be posted or worse. This was certainly a bad situation and word spread fast. No need to sound the alarm, people were getting woken up in all of the berthing areas by other who were awake.

I was relieved of watch, but hung around to see what was going to happen. We just kept sinking. The OOD kept going over to the COW making suggestions. The COW was flustered big time, almost panicked, which is never good. I was ordered out of the Control Room for laughing and went to the Mess Deck. After a bit I crept back into the aft part of the Control Room and stayed out of site.

I can’t say how deep we went, because it would land me in jail. The official max operating depth for a 688 that I found is listed as “greater than 800 feet”, and some report it at over 1400 feet. Use your imagination people; I am not going to the lock-up for a dumb ass blog.

I don’t know for sure, but the Captain must have been awake and watching the situation from his quarters, just a few steps way. He waltzed into the Control Room from the Forward door, buttoning his shirt and yapped “Office of the Deck, when were you going to tell me there was a problem?” He didn’t wait for a reply, he turned to the COW and said “Chief of the Watch, perform a 5 second blow of all main Ballast Tanks.” Then he turned around and left.

The COW did the blow, which makes a lot of noise…very bad timing. We leveled off almost immediately. The Dive was able to drive the Boat up shallow enough to pump out the extra Ballast and we went back to PD to vent the main Ballast Tanks (less noisy that way). Then we went back to 150 feet and waited a long time while the Boat got trimmed up proper by a different, more seasoned COW. To trim the Boat you have to move water from tank to tank (forward/aft/port and starboard) so you are not heavy on any side.

I think that was the closest I came to actually sinking on the Boat, that I know of.