John Anderson
09-02-2006, 10:20 PM
Crushing the airplane or how to soil the crews poopy suits at test depth.
On SSBN's there were several methods of receiving messages. They all involved either raising a mast or trailing a wire or "Flying the Airplane". On occasion some dumb nub of an OOD would forget the wire or airplane was deployed and get it cut or worse. For this they get thier anme on my boat anyway engraved on a plaque "The Royal order of the Hogtail cutters" decorated witha section of the wire and presented on the last day of the patrol. The plaque always stayed on the boat.
The name of the OOD is being withheld to save him embarassment as he was Radio's Dept. Officer to boot!
We were nearing the end of our patrol some where in the deep dark Med. in 1976. There was a Supertanker in the area crossing our course. The OOD was asked by sonar to go under the tanker as they heard something unusual close in to it. The OOD cleared it with the CO and was given the Ok. We went deeper to clear this tanker and proceeded under her. Just as we were sliding under her Radio notified the OOD the Airplane was still streamed. To late ... This antenna was a float shaped somewhat like a stub winged triple finned V-1 as shown here.http://upload4.postimage.org/1033021/airplane.jpg (http://upload4.postimage.org/1033021/photo_hosting.html)
This float was a composite material and well it didn't react well to hitting the side of a tanker. It stopped receiving and so we stowed it and engraved the OOD's name on the Plaque. Well, we kind of put it out of our minds as the patrol continued. The noise turned out to be a biologic a damn whale on the opposite side of the tanker and combined with the flow noise from the tanker sounded odd.
About three weeks later we were on our next to last full day at sea and as anyone can tell you it is a busy time indeed. Part of the end of patrol details to do is a deep submergence. That is you go down to your max operating depth and look for leaks and other problems! Serious I kid you not.
As a MMAST (A-ganger or Machinest Mate Auxillary Systems Tech) the main shaft falls under our care not the Nukes. so on deep subm,ergence I pulled the wonderful job of crawling on my belly under the rotating main shaft spinning at several hundred RPM inches away from my body to the very aft bulkhead where the shaft seal was. Mind you this space was maybe 5 feet in dia. and I'm 6' 3" so here I am flashlight headset and tool belt laying on my gut with the sea mere inches away in one direction and a meat grinder in the other, dark, hot as hell in there looking for water drops squeezing past the shaft seal. Over the 1 MC the XO is calling off the depth as we go deeper and deeper listening to the good old Hog groan and moan as she took the load and shrank. Oh did I mention the rams for the rudder and sternplanes were in this nice area too? So watch your feet and hands 2000 psi hydralics don't notice little things like flesh and bone. So here we are REAL deep leveled off and happy as the Hog could be. No leaks no nothing. YEA!!!! Well just as we were fat dumb and happy there was a very loud rumbling BOOM THUMP WHOOSH noise. The Hog actually whipped her whole length in a massive shudder that poped a couple of deck plates . I was tossed off the deck smacking my head against the shaft and damn near blacking out. I franticly looked around shaft alley and saw nothing there so I clambered out and stared inspecting my area for problems as the OOD punched an emergency blow and up we went at a extreme nose up angle with the turbines reving up to flank to get us the hell out of the deep. We surfaced and finding no apparent damage either internaly or outside through the scope we went back down shallow and finished the patrol. As we submerged agian the Radio shack noticed a floded warning for the airplane. Two and two makes 4 and we figured we crushed it.
Getting into Rota we opened the hanger and all that was left was a ring of composite and a few shards of the airplane. The rest had been turned to dust by it's collapse. We figure that when it smacked the tanker it developed a flaw that failed at depth.
Needless to say the laundry of the boat was very busy after the incident. For myself a headache was my reminder of how close I came to getting real fubared.
On SSBN's there were several methods of receiving messages. They all involved either raising a mast or trailing a wire or "Flying the Airplane". On occasion some dumb nub of an OOD would forget the wire or airplane was deployed and get it cut or worse. For this they get thier anme on my boat anyway engraved on a plaque "The Royal order of the Hogtail cutters" decorated witha section of the wire and presented on the last day of the patrol. The plaque always stayed on the boat.
The name of the OOD is being withheld to save him embarassment as he was Radio's Dept. Officer to boot!
We were nearing the end of our patrol some where in the deep dark Med. in 1976. There was a Supertanker in the area crossing our course. The OOD was asked by sonar to go under the tanker as they heard something unusual close in to it. The OOD cleared it with the CO and was given the Ok. We went deeper to clear this tanker and proceeded under her. Just as we were sliding under her Radio notified the OOD the Airplane was still streamed. To late ... This antenna was a float shaped somewhat like a stub winged triple finned V-1 as shown here.http://upload4.postimage.org/1033021/airplane.jpg (http://upload4.postimage.org/1033021/photo_hosting.html)
This float was a composite material and well it didn't react well to hitting the side of a tanker. It stopped receiving and so we stowed it and engraved the OOD's name on the Plaque. Well, we kind of put it out of our minds as the patrol continued. The noise turned out to be a biologic a damn whale on the opposite side of the tanker and combined with the flow noise from the tanker sounded odd.
About three weeks later we were on our next to last full day at sea and as anyone can tell you it is a busy time indeed. Part of the end of patrol details to do is a deep submergence. That is you go down to your max operating depth and look for leaks and other problems! Serious I kid you not.
As a MMAST (A-ganger or Machinest Mate Auxillary Systems Tech) the main shaft falls under our care not the Nukes. so on deep subm,ergence I pulled the wonderful job of crawling on my belly under the rotating main shaft spinning at several hundred RPM inches away from my body to the very aft bulkhead where the shaft seal was. Mind you this space was maybe 5 feet in dia. and I'm 6' 3" so here I am flashlight headset and tool belt laying on my gut with the sea mere inches away in one direction and a meat grinder in the other, dark, hot as hell in there looking for water drops squeezing past the shaft seal. Over the 1 MC the XO is calling off the depth as we go deeper and deeper listening to the good old Hog groan and moan as she took the load and shrank. Oh did I mention the rams for the rudder and sternplanes were in this nice area too? So watch your feet and hands 2000 psi hydralics don't notice little things like flesh and bone. So here we are REAL deep leveled off and happy as the Hog could be. No leaks no nothing. YEA!!!! Well just as we were fat dumb and happy there was a very loud rumbling BOOM THUMP WHOOSH noise. The Hog actually whipped her whole length in a massive shudder that poped a couple of deck plates . I was tossed off the deck smacking my head against the shaft and damn near blacking out. I franticly looked around shaft alley and saw nothing there so I clambered out and stared inspecting my area for problems as the OOD punched an emergency blow and up we went at a extreme nose up angle with the turbines reving up to flank to get us the hell out of the deep. We surfaced and finding no apparent damage either internaly or outside through the scope we went back down shallow and finished the patrol. As we submerged agian the Radio shack noticed a floded warning for the airplane. Two and two makes 4 and we figured we crushed it.
Getting into Rota we opened the hanger and all that was left was a ring of composite and a few shards of the airplane. The rest had been turned to dust by it's collapse. We figure that when it smacked the tanker it developed a flaw that failed at depth.
Needless to say the laundry of the boat was very busy after the incident. For myself a headache was my reminder of how close I came to getting real fubared.