What follows is a series of posts about my time about the USS Benjamin Franklin, SSBN 640. I don't know how many parts there will be in this series or how long it will take me to share them. I invite you to enjoy them with me.
When people get to know me, they will eventually figure out somehow, that I served on active duty in the Navy. Most people find this interesting, even more so when they find out I served on a ballistic missile nuclear powered submarine. When they find out that I was a sonar technician, if they know anything at all about the military, they want to get a first hand account of what it was like and all that. Some know the catch phrases that were used back in the day of the underwater warfare games we played with the USSR like, 'cat and mouse' or 'blind man's bluff', or 'cowboys and cossacks'.
These people are frequently disappointed when I tell them that I can't tell them anything about it. I am still bound by the terms of the security clearance that I agreed to after all. And to put it bluntly, I served on a platform that wasn't glamorous. It wasn't exciting by any means. Our job was to take an undisclosed number of nuclear missiles to sea and hide them for an undisclosed period of time. Excitement was not the purpose for which the platform was built.
It was built for strategic deterrence. It embodied the madness that kept the peace for the fifty years of the Cold War. The principle of MAD, or mutually assured destruction was what the submarine I served on was built for. And it is the only piece of military hardware ever constructed that if it did what it was built for, would have failed in its primary mission. You see a ballistic missile submarine, while capable of launching missile, isn't built for that purpose. It is built to deter aggression on a strategic level, and if it ever has to use the capability that it was built with, it fails in its mission of deterring aggression. It means that deterrance didn't work, and force was required. A trully upside down existence that took some getting used to.
When I tell people what life was like on the boat on a day to day basis, in an unclassified way, they find it boring and banal, and with good reason. A typical day on the boat underway was just like living a mundane existance. I would get up in the morning, shower, eat breakfast, and go to work. The only difference between their life and mine is that I lived three decks away from where I worked. And the shower was smaller by half than the shower on a cruise ship, which isn't all that roomy to begin with.
The stories of the good times on the boat get a laugh. All in all, people go away thinking they didn't miss much. They go away disappointed for the most part. In fact, what they realize is that Tom Clancy while an awesome writer, wrote a tale that few if any submariners ever got to live. And that's a good thing. Boredom on a submarine is your friend. It means that life in the outside world isn't absolutely beserk. It means that a submariner has reason to hope that he will survive his tour and get to go home and see his loved ones.
The one thing I knew for absolute certainty was this. In the event of an all out nuclear war, I would live about as long as it took for the Soviet Union to target our submarine with a barrage of missiles. In short, my death was assurred in the second wave of whatever happened. There was no escaping it. The typical barrage explosions would cover an area about the size of the state of Connecticut. Escaping that just wasn't a possibility. My only hope was that I would be a casaulty in the explosion of whatever happened. I really really really didn't want to live long enough to drown.
Living with that knowledge changes you in fundamental ways. It makes you realize that each moment of life is precious. It makes you understand in stark terms, that nothing beyond this one moment is a given. Typically I would assume myself to be a dead man when we went to sea, and if I got to come home at all it was a pure bonus.
They key in living on a submarine isn't in doing the job you've been trained for, that honestly is a given. But rather the key is in finding the simple pleasures along the way, that make the passage of the time aboard the boat endurable. Enjoying a game of spades with friends after your shift was over, or the rare excellent meal (usually pizza night on Saturdays were the best), or getting the short rare communications from home called family grams.
There were more good times than bad. And the memories of those times are things I will always treasure. I will share more about this in the coming days.
When people get to know me, they will eventually figure out somehow, that I served on active duty in the Navy. Most people find this interesting, even more so when they find out I served on a ballistic missile nuclear powered submarine. When they find out that I was a sonar technician, if they know anything at all about the military, they want to get a first hand account of what it was like and all that. Some know the catch phrases that were used back in the day of the underwater warfare games we played with the USSR like, 'cat and mouse' or 'blind man's bluff', or 'cowboys and cossacks'.
These people are frequently disappointed when I tell them that I can't tell them anything about it. I am still bound by the terms of the security clearance that I agreed to after all. And to put it bluntly, I served on a platform that wasn't glamorous. It wasn't exciting by any means. Our job was to take an undisclosed number of nuclear missiles to sea and hide them for an undisclosed period of time. Excitement was not the purpose for which the platform was built.
It was built for strategic deterrence. It embodied the madness that kept the peace for the fifty years of the Cold War. The principle of MAD, or mutually assured destruction was what the submarine I served on was built for. And it is the only piece of military hardware ever constructed that if it did what it was built for, would have failed in its primary mission. You see a ballistic missile submarine, while capable of launching missile, isn't built for that purpose. It is built to deter aggression on a strategic level, and if it ever has to use the capability that it was built with, it fails in its mission of deterring aggression. It means that deterrance didn't work, and force was required. A trully upside down existence that took some getting used to.
When I tell people what life was like on the boat on a day to day basis, in an unclassified way, they find it boring and banal, and with good reason. A typical day on the boat underway was just like living a mundane existance. I would get up in the morning, shower, eat breakfast, and go to work. The only difference between their life and mine is that I lived three decks away from where I worked. And the shower was smaller by half than the shower on a cruise ship, which isn't all that roomy to begin with.
The stories of the good times on the boat get a laugh. All in all, people go away thinking they didn't miss much. They go away disappointed for the most part. In fact, what they realize is that Tom Clancy while an awesome writer, wrote a tale that few if any submariners ever got to live. And that's a good thing. Boredom on a submarine is your friend. It means that life in the outside world isn't absolutely beserk. It means that a submariner has reason to hope that he will survive his tour and get to go home and see his loved ones.
The one thing I knew for absolute certainty was this. In the event of an all out nuclear war, I would live about as long as it took for the Soviet Union to target our submarine with a barrage of missiles. In short, my death was assurred in the second wave of whatever happened. There was no escaping it. The typical barrage explosions would cover an area about the size of the state of Connecticut. Escaping that just wasn't a possibility. My only hope was that I would be a casaulty in the explosion of whatever happened. I really really really didn't want to live long enough to drown.
Living with that knowledge changes you in fundamental ways. It makes you realize that each moment of life is precious. It makes you understand in stark terms, that nothing beyond this one moment is a given. Typically I would assume myself to be a dead man when we went to sea, and if I got to come home at all it was a pure bonus.
They key in living on a submarine isn't in doing the job you've been trained for, that honestly is a given. But rather the key is in finding the simple pleasures along the way, that make the passage of the time aboard the boat endurable. Enjoying a game of spades with friends after your shift was over, or the rare excellent meal (usually pizza night on Saturdays were the best), or getting the short rare communications from home called family grams.
There were more good times than bad. And the memories of those times are things I will always treasure. I will share more about this in the coming days.
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