“Second-class midshipman. Does that mean you weren’t very good?” she teased.
“Very funny. Being a first-class petty officer, I’m sure you know the term refers to a rank. Second-class midshipmen were juniors, and first-class midshipmen were seniors.”
“Yes, I know, but do the senators know? I’m thinking of questions they might ask, too.”
“Good thinking, Leona. Sometimes I take too much for granted. And since these are all freshman senators, they may not know very much about military ranks.”
“So a boomer got you interested in submarines, and now you’re going to command one!”
“Yeah, even though the boomer I visited was pretty old technology at the time. She had been in commission for thirty years and actually was decommissioned only two years after my visit. The following year, I elected to perform my first-class midshipman summer training cruise aboard a nuclear-powered fast attack boat operating out of Pearl Harbor.”
“That sounds funny, too.”
“Now what?” he asked with false exasperation.
“Calling a submarine a boat.”
“Leona, submariners never refer to their submarine as a ‘submarine’ or a ‘ship’; it’s always a ‘boat.’ Just like we always call ballistic missile submarines ‘boomers.’”
“I know, but do they? They’ll probably think it sounds funny.”
George turned back to the schematic of the Louisiana. “Okay, point taken, but there’s nothing funny about this. This is a magnificent feat of engineering. I’ve been in submarines my entire naval career since graduating from the Academy, and I’m still fascinated that we can build something this complex, and it actually works!”
“I’m sure it’s a lot more complicated than that drawing makes it look, too.”
“It is. There are thousands of drawings of every system on this boat. But you know what? Even if you looked at those thousands of drawings, you still wouldn’t get a feel for the role played by the crew. It’s their dedication and hard work that turn these magnificent machines into the world’s most powerful and lethal weapons platforms.”
“Well I’m sure it doesn’t just run on autopilot!” said Leona.
“When a boomer goes on a scheduled patrol, it is gone for a minimum of sixty days. The boat submerges, and no one knows its whereabouts until it resurfaces sixty days later.”
“Wow! That’s a long time to stay under the water.”
“Boomers are capable of remaining submerged for nearly ninety days with a full crew. An air scrubbing system removes carbon dioxide and adds oxygen to the circulated air in the submarine so they don’t need to surface or contact the outside world during the entire patrol. That’s what made them so special during the Cold War. The enormous destructive power of their missiles and their ability to remain undetected for extended periods were two of the main reasons the ballistic missile submarine fleet deterred nuclear war for fifty years.”
“So do you understand all these drawings?” asked Leona as she flipped the edges of the sheets of paper laid out on the table.
“Yes. I’ve had training courses, and I’ve worked with these systems on several different classes of boats. It also helps having an engineering degree. There’s a lot of interaction between the mechanical, electrical, nuclear, and hydraulic systems aboard submarines, and being trained to think like an engineer gave me a leg up during training.”
“Oh, George. You could have been successful in any branch of the navy, but I think you’re right. I think you’re best suited for submarines. You’re serious, quiet, and reflective, and I think that suits you for the silent service.”
“Thanks.”
“I have one question, though. There are a lot of compartments on this drawing. Since submarines are small, aren’t most of these compartments really tiny?”
“Leona, this submarine is NOT small! Haven’t you ever been on a boomer?”
“No. I just got to Norfolk two years ago, and I’ve been on shore duty the whole time.”
“You mean to tell me they don’t give you a submarine tour when you report for duty on the SUBLANT staff?”
“No, they don’t.”
“Well, I’ll have to talk to Buffalo or his replacement about that before I leave,” George said with an air of put-on pomp. “The admin officer should see to it all personnel are properly indoctrinated.”
“So how big is it?”
“Well, the official specifications say she has a length of five hundred sixty feet, a beam of forty-two feet, and a submerged displacement of over eighteen thousand tons.”
“Oh, that helps a lot!”
“Yeah, I figured that wasn’t going to mean a lot to you. To put it in perspective, she’s almost two football fields long, about a third of a football field wide, and uh, very, very heavy.”
Leona laughed. “Well that’s a little better, for football fans at least.”
“So are you a football fan?”
“Enough to be able to picture how long and wide a football field is. So this drawing looks like it’s marked in four sections.”
“Yeah, there’s the forward compartment, the missile compartment, the reactor compartment, and bringing up the rear, the engine room. The forward compartment houses all of the operational command and control areas as well as the crew’s living areas.”
“Everybody lives in that one little compartment? It must be awfully crowded!”
“Not really. The forward compartment is like a four-story building within the submarine. The lowest deck includes machinery spaces and the torpedo room. For defense, the Louisiana has four torpedo tubes capable of firing the Mark 48 wire-guided torpedo. At the level above that, you have the mess deck, the chief petty officer’s quarters, and the officer’s wardroom.”
“Mess deck? Don’t you mean the enlisted dining facility?” Leona teased.
George laughed. “Yeah, I’ll call it that when hell freezes over!”
“George, you’re so old-fashioned.”
“I’m old-fashioned because I’m old… and proud of it!”
They both laughed. George continued. “The main deck is above that and includes a missile control center, computer room, and the ship’s office. The uppermost deck, the control deck, includes the command and control center, navigation center, sonar room, and radio room.”
“It looks like the forward compartment has a fifth floor up here,” said Leona pointing to the conning tower, otherwise known as the sail.
“I guess that’s true in a way. The sail holds the periscope, the UHF radio antenna, and other electronics, and it has a tunnel that goes up through it from the command and control center to a bridge at the top. When we operate on the surface, the officer of the deck drives the ship from up there with the help of a couple of lookouts.”
“He can drive it from up there?”
“Well, he gives the helm commands from up there, and crewmembers in the command and control center carry them out.”
Leona continued to study the drawing. “Okay. So the whole submarine is like a big round tube, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And the tube is big enough to put a four-story building inside?”
“Yep.”
“So how stealthy can that be? How can anything that big hide from ships that are looking for it?”
“It’s a big ocean.”
“Still, it seems pretty dumb to build submarines that big.”
“Well, the size of a boomer is pretty much dictated by the size of these babies,” said George pointing to the drawing where a series of vertical tubes were shown behind the forward compartment.
“What are they?”
“Those are the ballistic missile silos. This is the missile compartment, otherwise known as ‘Sherwood Forest.’”