A good submariner, DBFer or Nuke rider of today, has to meet many special requirements just to be considered for that sort of duty.  Something like the Navy SEALS, but not quite as stringent as their missions would require.  Here are some typical prerequisites to first enter into the life:

1.  Be of reasonable intelligence.  Back when I first signed up there was an item called the Basic Battery Tests taken while still in Boot Camp.  That's where everyone in the company was awakened in the middle of the night, and marched out stumbling, grumbling and still half asleep,  to be administered the most important tests of his career in the Navy.  Whether that fact sunk in or not,  the grades from those tests followed you for the rest of your life, and determined the type of training and vocation that you'd have in the service.  For example, everything that I had done prior to enlistment on my own, had centered around radio and electronics, including the required mathematics pertaining to that.  We were never informed of the true importance of the Basic Battery Examinations.  By the time the mathematics portion came around, my forehead bounced off the desk from lack of sleep and boredom - I was snoring halfway through the first part of it.  This wasn't exactly a awe-inspiring and exciting event you see, but I did snap awake in time to complete the last half of that portion.   Bad move, that dozing off.  It's for that one reason that I found myself a snipe instead of a seaman - an Electrician instead of Electronics Technician.  So I made the best of it anyway.  Years later, I was finally afforded the opportunity to switch rates under the SCORE Program, and I took it.  So you see...I barely squeaked by on the very first prerequisite...not wary enough to stay awake during a Basic Battery test, which was dumb on my part.  As a footnote, I sat in San Diego's EM "A" school jotting down algebraic formulae such as Impendence in Alternating Circuits from memory (look up the equation sometime) into my notes before they were ever written on the classroom board.  I passed the course without ever having to crack a book, and spent the first legs of my Navy career in the wrong rate.  All because of that Basic Battery examination. The blame is solely on my own shoulders, but that didn't lessen the frustration.  Back in 1963 the highest score attainable on the Basic Battery was 75 for any of the parts.  The part referred to as the GCT was the actual measurement of intelligence used very much to indicate someone's I.Q.  The rule of thumb is to double the GCT score and that is roughly the I.Q. of somebody for what any of this sort of thing is worth.  Okay, okay, mine was 71 which sort of shows the fallibility of these tests - especially when I kept dozing off for this one as well. :-)

Consider this entire portion and the above as a public service announcement       Although I have treated the above lightly I have decided to include this on my website because it is now the year 2004, and the reason that I kept dozing off back then in 1963 is now finally uncovered. It was not due to attitude or lack of discipline or dedication, but a medical condition called Sleep Apnea.  This was unknown back then, and it is not recognized by all Americans today.  What this means is that when someone with this condition is trying to sleep, those muscles dealing with air passage relax to the point of closing and that person literally stops breathing.  The body intantly recognizes that this is a wrong thing, wakes one up without your knowledge so one breathes again until that point of relaxation reoccurs.  All night long.  If you or anyone you know falls asleep at the drop of a hat right in the middle of something like talking to you, this is a very good reason why that happened.  Nobody knows why, and there is no magic pill for it.  There is a machine that some can use to blow air into you when you sleep, but I find that I cannot use it.      Back when I was riding the boats, and everything else since then that I have done professionally required total concentration and focus.  That's pretty draining heaped on lack of sleep to begin with.  If you have a family member or friend that seems to fall into this category, please direct him or her to a doctor for testing of sleep apnea.  It could change their entire lives.

2.  Do not be claustrophobic and volunteer for submarines.  That should be intuitive to anyone.  I saw three cases of that just before retirement.  The requirements of the Cold War were such that they required more personnel than the normal submarine program was providing, and I found three men ordered to submarines straight out of Boot Camp who were claustrophobic.  Events became such that the option of "non-vol" was no longer there anymore.  I'm not certain if this has been reversed as of yet.

3.  You have to be cheerful and get along well with others.  This one is Big Time, and follows lifelong.  Any good submariner will help out another.  Forever.  Kind of like Masonic folks do.  It's a brotherhood. We fight and bicker amongst ourselves like anything, but when the chips are down, we're defending each other's backs to the hilt.

4.  The most important prerequisite of all.  You must display a certain measured insanity.  Can you truly believe that any so-called "sane" person would voluntarily do this for a living?

     This tale is second hand, so I can't vouch for it beyond the certainty that it was related to me by the principles involved  with honest, open, and straight faces, and the event actually had occured.

     This tale is also a heart-felt tribute.  You'll understand why soon...