RED SOUNDING
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I am a military historian. I completed a B.S. in Diplomacy and Military Studies at Hawaii Pacific University, and am continuing my education in the DC area. I created this blog as a scrapbook to keep a record of events I find interesting, and also to record my thoughts.
WHAT'S A REDSOUNDING?
I served in the US Navy from 1990-1996 as a submarine sonar technician. After completing submarine training, and a further eight months of basic and advanced electronics and troubleshooting schools in Groton, CT, I was sent to San Diego, CA, for sonar operator and repair school. I spent my first two years in the navy going to school.
In August 1992, after finishing 2nd in my class, I chose Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, as my duty station where I served on two fast attack submarines: USS Aspro (SSN-648), and USS San Francisco (SSN-711). I completed submarine qualifications, and had my silver dolphins pinned on my chest in March 1993.
My first boat, the Aspro, was a Sturgeon-class fast attack submarine, refitted in 1986 with the AN/BQQ-5C sonar system -- the one I spent months in San Diego learning how to operate and repair. The boat was commissioned in February 1969 (when I was two years old), and I served aboard Aspro for her final two Western Pacific (WESTPAC) deployments prior to her decommissioning in 1995.
I was then assigned to the USS San Francisco in November 1994, and I completed Los Angeles-class submarine qualifications in January 1995. The fact that I was already wearing dolphins made qualifying a breeze.
What first struck me about the San Fran was its size. The differences between the two classes of submarines were stark, particularly in the engine room. The limited space on Aspro -- especially in her after compartments -- was crammed with a nuclear reactor, a propulsion plant and electric plant, water-purification systems, hydraulic plants, air compressors, reduction gears, sea and fresh water pumps, refrigeration plants, and numerous other life support systems. Needless to say, moving around the engine room on a Sturgeon-class boat during a fire drill while wearing a bulky oxygen breathing apparatus required great flexibility and a certain level of acrobatic skill. The forward compartments were not much better.
These Sturgeon-class boats (except the "stretch hulls") were only 292 feet in length, compared to the LA-class's 360 feet. Also, the Sturgeons were more narrow than the LA's, and the slight difference was profound from the inside. Thus, the San Fran featured an extraordinarily large engine room, which seemed to me like a gothic cathedral.
The reason for the larger engine room was rooted in the Cold War. Hyman G. Rickover was tasked in the late 1960s with designing a very fast boat, and in order to do so, its propulsion system had to really crank out the horses. And that it did! Driving the LA-class boats proved nearly deadly during their first sea trials, as the crews struggled to tame the powerful and agile hunter/killers.
My life onboard submarines revolved mostly around my main duties as a sonar technician. During the maneuvering watch, for instance, I spent hundreds of hours operating the boat’s fathometer. Standing for hours at a time, in one place, staring at a stylus running back and forth, back and forth, across a roll of paper, can challenge even the most emotionally stable of individuals.
Driving a $1 billion submarine into and out of port requires the undivided attention of the boat’s navigation team, which is composed of the finest watch standers entrusted with the safety of the crew – generally about 140 men – and one of the world’s most expensive and technologically sophisticated pieces of military hardware. During the maneuvering watch, it is the responsibility of the fathometer operator to alert the navigation team if he's detected anomalous water depths, which typically indicate something’s amiss. When the boat ventures into dangerously shallow water, the fathometer operator alerts the navigation team by shouting “red sounding.”
More to come...
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