Early in the discussion about women in submarines, a former submariner wrote of his experiences during a midshipmen operation in 1989. His comments are noteworthy and I post them here, unaltered:

Back in the early part of 1989, USS Pintado took on female midshipmen and other midshipmen for daily midshipmen ops for 30 days. The theory was tested then by a basic damage control test. The testing was very simple. Pick up the portable submersible pump, cord, foot, and all in the Diesel space and carry it up the ladder through berthing, middle level pass, crews mess and down the aft crews mess ladder into the IC space and then AMR 1 and lower the pump into the TDU well for a TDU flooding casualty. None of the females tested were able to complete this most basic of DC tests. They didn’t have the grip strength needed to get up or down the ladders while hauling the 48 pounds of pump including the foot not to mention the 50 or so odd pounds of cords and switch.

This is very basic DC, something we all had to do to qualify. Imagine if there was a casualty and the on watch and off watch A-Gangers were female. Where would that boat be?

Now consider an average female trying to get into the hatch of the battery well or the Diesel on a 637 while wearing an OBA. How about an Aux tank or the pump room. How about Machinery 2 Lower Level. Now add an FFE into the mess with a hose and that brass nozzle with a real back up team hosing them down with applicators. Just wearing the OBA going through those narrow hatches is nigh unto impossible for the average guy. Add normal female anatomy to that with a real fire and a soaking wet FFE (those things are damn heavy dry let alone soaked) with 50 plus pounds of hose and nozzle and tell me if you honestly think you’ll survive.

These tests were then repeated with some very scary female HTs, DCs, and conventional MMs. Bottom line was basic DC things greatly suffered.

Besides, the passageways being less than two feet wide in most spots on a 637 (which would greatly slow “foot traffic”). Think about it. How many times did you brush by someone and be close enough to tell what they just ate in crews mess. You couldn’t pass someone in any passageway on Pintado without touching.

Where would they sleep? Bet the Goat locker would be real pleased being turned out, because that was the only place on a ’37 you didn’t have to take log readings in on an hourly basis. Even then there were still valve handles and knobs you had to be able to access for regular operations. So modesty could never be maintained. Ever.

I don’t even want to think about the difficulties of things like diving the well or cleaning the fan room or field day in the bilge. Just flat out would not work.

Though there are larger boats out there it’s still a thing of rapid response to a casualty is what saves the crew. That response would be severely compromised with females on board. Damage control and rapid response are vital to the survivability on a submerged submarine and females are just not built for that.

Honestly, ask yourself the question about what might have happened on the Bonefish, the Barbell, the Dolphin, or any other submarine casualty you might have heard of.

Granted, I’m not exactly the right person to ask for modern day boats. I’ve never been on a Virginia class boat.

I’ll close with this parting thought. On Dolphin we had to get on a scale before the underway so to the COW would know what we weighed in order to trim the boat, because we were the ballast. You ain’t lived until you hear “All hands not actually on watch sally forward Dive, Dive, Dive.” followed by everyone cramming into the forward room. Top of Form

August 1, 2009 at 10:55pm Bottom of Form