Diesel-electric
submarines were much more than a weapon of war. They meant a way of
life and a positive mind set that lends itself to the phrase "Once
a submariner, always a submariner." That holds true for all those
who "rode the boats" - nuclear or otherwise. A DBFer will always be
a DBFer - it's never completely forgotten. There's not all that
many of us smoke boat riders left now...Author - John D. Przybyla,
Sr. ETC(SS), USN ret. - April, 1999 |
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Many of my submarine acquaintances on the Internet have truly outstanding websites dedicated to the purpose of historical submarine data, and I provide links to them. My site is about submarine people - some of us who regularly put our lives on the line on a daily basis in defense and protection of freedom. Civilians, warriors and above all, submariners (pronounced submareeeeeners). Being called a sub-mariner implies that we are something less than sailors, and we don't like that. It's very much about those of us that were assigned to the conventional diesel-electric fleet boats as often seen in WWII documentaries and movies, but as used in the Cold War conflicts by those like myself. Some may think of us as heroes, but we just saw it as a regular job that we took great pride in. Although each day was potentially lethal for many reasons, to us that aspect was no big deal, and that's the truth of it. The term DBF is short for Diesel Boats Forever. Sort of like "Remember the Alamo!" that Texans holler on occasion, but much more. In general, only those who actually "rode" the smoke boats are entitled to use this term by convention. Depending on how and where it's being used, it can mean many things like Hawaii's Aloha, or the Vietnamese term Xin chao. Xin chao means, "Hi there!" or "Well so long now.." or "How are you?" DBF is used quite a bit by us DBFers at the end of a missive, like "Sincerely yours," but it's actual meaning refers to an attitude and mind set that coincides with the way we were back when we were swashbuckling warriors defending our country and the free world with our lives against more bad guys than most can imagine.
Chainfall, EM1(SS) - ETC(SS) USN (ret.) |
(I use the latter of course, but I was both due to a SCORE Program rate-change) EM1 means Electricians
Mate First Class (pay grade E-6) The
background that you are listening to is a mix that reflects how mostly
the runs are routine in nature for the most part until all Hell lets
loose quite often un expectantly - it's designed to simply remind my
brother submariners of their days of combat .... and remember back when
we were alive (a warrior's term used amongst ourselves across all nations
for centuries). |
Dolphins Braced By Chief's Collar Devices Atop This Page The Insignia of the Chief Petty Officer are worn on each collar of our uniform shirt. I retired as E7, and those are my actual collar devices. A Senior Chief (E8) has one star placed on the anchor, and a Master Chief Petty Officer (E9) as two stars on each. Advancement in pay grade means increased responsibilities with more impact when under normal rotation to shore duty commands. The responsibilities and the co-lateral duties of a Chief make a very long list, and especially aboard any submarine. He is responsible for the Division's technical training of his men both in the vocational field and and overall submarine qualifications. And for the conduct and well-being of his men. To become a CPO, not only involves passing a written examination in fierce competition with all others vying throughout the entire Navy for Chief, but also involves verbal knowledge of current world events, and the role that we play in those events. The Navy has just so many openings at any given time, and depending on the rate it's nothing to be PNA' year after year - Passed But Not Advanced. So it also involves determination and dedication. When finally making Chief, the next event is the Chief's Initiation. What that entails is a closely-guarded secret. Know that once making it through the initiation, then one finally comes into the brotherhood of Chiefs. The Dolphin Insignia is made of Silver as mine are above for the Enlisted Ranks, and Gold for the Officer Ranks. Earning one's Dolphins is not easy, and this is most definitely not something simply handed out to anyone ordered for duty aboard a submarine. Dolphins are earned. A submariner is one who has proven that he can take over for any other submariner in an emergency if that shipmate has become incapacitated or killed. As technologies advance and become incorporated into the submarine war machine, systems become increasingly complex. Dolphins mean a working knowledge of all systems and their respective subsystems in both normal and emergency conditions. A working knowledge is demonstrated for things like hydraulics, pneumatics, auxiliary electrical power, main electrical power, all air systems, and all physics involved with the operation of the submarine war machine. I have personally demonstrated that I can bring up a ship's diesel engine and place it on line to provide electrical power. I have personally demonstrated that I can bring online and shut down an S5W Nuclear Power Plant, and demonstrate a working knowledge of Radiation Health Physics. In addition to the watch standing duties of a Chief Of The Watch underway, at the time of my retirement I was in the process of qualifying as as ship's Diving Officer. My ET's operated the Navigational, Radar and other electronic systems and the attack plots, while I involved Electronics Intelligence. The qualification process is never-ending. Please keep in mind that all systems must remain in operation even when there are those doing their level best to kill us with everything they have. I had been a Look Out on a diesel-electric submarine on the surface in the North Sea under State Five conditions where we had to be lashed by rope into the sail or else be washed overboard by waves crashing in over our heads. I speak of some of these things within this site from time to time when it does not impact National Security. To list all of the things that we do like making systems work when we have to cannibalize parts from other systems means an in-depth knowledge of everything, and it would take a tome to write about. It must be understood that the real life of submariners is not the trash that Hollywood comes up with at all. The boat does NOT go into meltdown whenever any fuse blows. We are trained and trained so that when, not if, when an emergency arises, NOBODY runs around yelling and screaming doom like those fools of the Hollywood movies. We just take care of it, and keep right on going. Normal stuff for us.
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OTR means Old Time Radio
Click the OTR button on your left for a little surprise
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While attending Walter Scott Grade School on Chicago's South Side, all classes were assembled in the school auditorium one day to watch a movie. This was always a very special event to us kids just going in. But on this day, the movie had some singer doing a song. A very young and really skinny guy called Frank Sinatra. He sang this song that you are listening to. It had a profound impact on me personally. I left that auditorium and returned to class not only as a young student, but as an American Patriot. I had not forgotten that song since then - to this day I remain that Patriot and Warrior. |
A Few Words of Interest and of Importance
When the music of Frank Sinatra ends, you'll note something added to the background. It's music that might be playing as soundtrack to a movie about the various things that we do on a submarine. The first thing that hits you is an order given by the O.O.D (Officer of the Deck) to the Chief of the Watch to dive the boat (Submarines are boats - not ships), and to pass the word on the 1MC (the designator for the all ships public announcement system). I stood port and starboard Chief of the Watch in addition to many other things. Port and Stbd in this case meant 12 hours on watch and 12 hours off watch when I could see to all things necessary for running my ET Division (forward of the Reactor). Lucky, and no drills, I might get 3-4 hours of sleep before going on watch again. I get a huge kick out of civilians bitching about work loads back home. We do this on missions around the clock everyday of the week for six to seven months out at one time before coming back home for weekly operations (Weekly Ops). Long deployments can mean anywhere, but mostly Westpac, Northern or Med runs. Going south is a holiday for us - crossing the Equator or going to someplace like Australia. Came close once - turned back to get home instead of becoming a Shellback because a lot of the other married guys yelling about seeing their wives and girlfriends after a long Westpac -I'm still a pollywog because of that. Oh well. Northern runs mentioned above can also mean going under the ice at the North Pole. Back in 1964 I was riding my first boat, Harder out of Charleston's Swamp Fox Squadron down to Gitmo way before it became a fashionable place to store and pamper our enemy terrorists to delight our brain-dead liberal wimp types. Neat place, surrounded by land mines - Marine guards on towers with powerful weapons protecting us. Alongside the pier I was about to jump off for a swim, but decided to not disturb the barracuda that I was about to land on. Never know about some places... Gulf of Tonkin, we'd surface Sabalo, crack the upper hatch peeking out for any of those poisonous sea snakes that we might have snagged on the way up (3-second, five-second, etc.). We name sea snakes by how long their venom will take to kill you dead thereby spoiling your entire day on you. So we were sort of careful around those critters. The yellow ones looked like strands of yellow rope floating on the harbor surface off of Singapore. Back to passing the word on the 1MC, "DIVE...DIVE" reach up and sound the alarm twice. And I dive the boat. What you hear in the background is the Klaxon of a smokeboat. Nukes use electronic junk (not the same thing, and I don't have that sound to splice in here - sorry.) Before me and to my left are panels of indicator lights, meters, switches and gauges. I open the Main Ballast Tank Vents from the Christmas Tree, and down we go, with the Diving Officer issuing me orders to move water from tank to tank to maintain the boat's trim. How deep? That's classified, okay? To my right, centerline forward are the two Planesmen buckled into their seats watching stuff before them with hands on wheels "flying" the boat with those wheels operating our planes and helm. Leaning forward between them watching the bubble and other things is the Diving Officer who is telling them, and me, what to do. I was in the process of qualifying Dive just before I decided to retire. Behind them nearby the periscopes is the Officer of the Deck, the O.O.D. (oh, oh, dee). He has the Con and gives orders as needed in the Control Room answering to the Captain who may be anyplace at the time. I swivel and look aft on the Portside to my ET of the Watch who is monitoring the Ships Inertial Navigational System (SINS) and other navigational devices. He gives me the thumbs up our equipment is running okay. In combat, he would be manning the strip plot up forward on the starboard side as part of the team to find solutions for killing somebody with our torpedoes. Stbd side aft of the strip plot is the Fire Control Console manned by the FT of the Watch and others watching all sorts of plots I can't go into. Over the White Rat (open mike and speaker) the Sonarman of the Watch is listening to us from the Sonar Room, and hits the 4MC mike if he hears something suspicious. Aft of the Control Room and Sonar, sits another of my ET's (Electronics Technicians) testing out gear that we use for electronic intelligence with some spook riders. The description is of one of the three Nuclear-powered fast-attack submarines that I had ridden (in addition to five smokeboat's) throughout twenty years of service to my country. Boomers, Fleet Ballistic Submarines each had two crews. Fast-attacks only one crew. Boomers changed out crews every three months, while WE were still out at sea for a half a year about punching holes in the water. See my dolphins above? That means that I'm qualified in submarines. I can operate ANY system aboard in both normal and emergency situations including the S5W Nuclear Reactor. So can anyone else aboard that wears the dolphins. Officers wear Gold ones, Enlisted wear Silver like mine. Those are my actual dolphins up there that I scanned for this website. On the smoke boats, the diesel-electric fleet boats, you had to actually light off the generators from scratch as part of your quals. On the nukes today, it's just a conversation pass or fail. But it's just as deadly serious. We never STOP training and drilling. Hard to tell if it's the real thing or not, as we treat everything gone bad as real, then we simply take care of it. No sweat. During emergencies like Fire, Collision or Flooding, the Chief of the Watch is the one issuing the orders with fingers flying over his consoles - me. After this twelve-hour watch is when I get to run my division as the Leading Petty Officer with maintenance assignments, training and all the paperwork involved with running a division. I get to do all the above, come back stateside, and have rocks thrown at me walking down Rosecrans Ave., San Diego in uniform with Liberals yelling "Baby killer" at me a lot. Many of these clowns now hold elected office today at the Federal Level. It's something to think over seriously. Top priority is to get weed legalized from state to state today like they smoked back in the days of stoning a warrior. Think about that a bit. Dopers as leaders of our Nation too cowardly to defend it personally. Bet anything that my fellow warriors of other nations reading this are seeing the same things in their own countries a lot today. I realize to most that are reading this it looks like just me babbling and rambling on here... but for any submariner reading this while listening to the background? About the third time though it? Tears. Guarantee that. Remembering what they did and why. Even those that rode us going "in-country" like the tunnel rats and lerps. Not a dry-eye, bet anything. You Can Hear Crazy Ivan! being shouted in the background...A submarine tracking another submarine can take advantage of its quarry's baffles to follow at a close distance without being detected. Periodically, a submarine will perform a maneuver called clearing the baffles, in which the boat will turn left or right far enough to listen with the sonar for a few minutes in the area that was previously blocked by the baffles. Good tactics require a submarine to clear the baffles at irregular intervals and in different directions so that a pursuing submarine cannot predict when and how the next baffle-clearing maneuver will be made. When a submarine clears its baffles, a pursuing submarine must take measures to avoid detection, or worse, collision, with the submarine ahead. In some cases, submarine commanders could choose to clear the baffles by executing one or a series of hard turns in order to not only clear the baffles, but also be in a favorable position to attack the potentially following submarine. Such extreme maneuvers were more commonly used by Soviet Navy submarines during the Cold War than by other forces, leading to the maneuver's nickname: "Crazy Ivan". The "crazy" came from the danger such a maneuver posed to both submarines, first being detection of the following submarine, which was commonly avoided by stopping the engines and going to maximum silence, and secondly by collision, as the momentum of the pursuing boat could result in collision with the leading submarine; dead ahead in the process of turning sharply. A similar baffle-clearing maneuver is known as "Angles and Dangles": a five-hour series of random figure eights, sharp turns, and random depth changes. The maneuver is executed at the start of a voyage, in order to determine if the submarine is making any detectable noise. Most present-day submarines and ships carry a towed array sonar: a sonar mounted on a long cable let out behind the vessel. This can pick up sounds in the area behind the baffles, reducing the need for baffle-clearing maneuvers. A crazy Ivan can get your heart pumping a bit... I copied this info from here: Wikipedia.org as it was explained quite eloquently there. Click that link to find out more about submarine baffles. Angles and Dangles is performed quite often, and EVERYTHING gets lashed down or it goes sailing past your nose on the fly. That's life on a submarine, folks. :-)
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The Heartbroken Firefly
This evening, approximately 2145 hours, 7 JUN 2011, I slowly limped outside cane in one hand, bag of trash in the other making my way to the dumpster. There at the far side of the road on the ground, lay one lone firefly with its light flashing desperately.
Today, no children, little boys or girls, run freely at night, 2145 hours anywhere for fear of kidnapping, torturing and murder before or after being raped. Thanks to the wonderful and thoughtful - but the brainless void of foresight of any measure, who made certain that felons be awarded all sorts of protections and rights dreamed up by a politically-appointed Federal Supreme Court proclaiming the "rights and freedoms" of child molesters. rapists. murderers and felons are guaranteed by the Constitution of our Founding Fathers. Yeah? Where? In Amendments written by professional politicians who are themselves felons stealing and misappropriating tax dollars for material gain? Then pass laws protecting themselves as well?
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