Submarine Force 2011 Year In Review

Here's an official COMSUBFOR video of the year in review in U.S. submarines:



Happy New Year to all!

Delta IV Shipyard Fire

Reading between the lines of this story about a fire aboard RFS Ekaterinberg (K 84), I'm guessing the shipyard used turpentine-impregnated wood in building the scaffolding. Excerpts:

Television pictures showed a giant plume of smoke above the yard in the Murmansk region of northern Russia as over 100 firemen struggled to douse flames which witnesses said rose 30 feet above the stricken vessel. Emergency workers said efforts to partially sink the submarine at the dock had failed to fully extinguish the fire. A defense ministry spokesman quoted by state news agency RIA said the blaze, which began at 1220 GMT (7:20 a.m. ET), was under control more than eight hours later...
...After hours of trying to put out the flames, officials decided to partially submerge the hull of the 18,200-tonne submarine at the Roslyakovo dock, one of the main dockyards of Russia's northern fleet 900 miles north of Moscow.
Local media reports were vague, but the blaze was believed to have started when wooden scaffolding caught fire during welding repairs to the submarine, which had been hoisted into a dry dock.

Earlier reports said the reactor was shut down after the fire started, but I'm guessing that was just media reporters who don't understand the military coming up with that one there own. Any fire that's bad enough for them to decide to try to submerge a boat undergoing refit must be pretty bad, though. I'm wondering if the Delta IVs have some sort of hull coating, and if maybe it got hot enough for that to catch fire?

What's the dumbest thing you've ever seen shipyard workers do to endanger Sailors?

In Memory Of Mike And Tom

From the video description of this tribute by poster "Grunt Labor" to the Submariners lost aboard USS Minneapolis-St. Paul (SSN 708) 5 years ago today: "My video memorial/tribute to Thomas Higgins and Mike Holtz, who were killed in the line of duty during a pilot transfer off the coast of Plymouth, England."



Sailors, Rest Your Oars.

Jon Swift Memorial Roundup 2011

(The Best Posts of the Year, Chosen by the Bloggers Themselves)Welcome to a tradition started by the much missed Jon Swift/Al Weisel. He left behind some excellent satire, but was also a nice guy and a strong supporter of small blogs. As Lance Mannion puts it:Our late and much missed comrade in blogging, journalist and writer Al Weisel, revered and admired across the bandwidth as the “

Quote Log

I think most boats had a "green book" or something similar where humorous quotes from crew members were preserved for posterity. It seems to be fairly common throughout the military, as shown my the "Staffer's Hard Sayings Log" I saw when I was at CENTCOM. On submarines, a lot of the quotes that make the cut are inherently funny, some are humorous only to Submariners, and others you won't get unless you know the person or people involved. (Some are put in their by the XO because they're trying to be "one of the guys", but the quote is only funny to him.)

Since it's the end of the year, let's collect some of the funnier quotes that you remember from your submarining days, past or present. One from my past the is humorous to me is as follows:

ENG (after being woken by a phone call at home for the third time that night): "Hello... Hello... I can't hear you!"
EDO (shouting, but sounding very distant): "Eng, you've got the phone upside down!"

See, it's not that funny, but the memory makes me smile whenever I dredge it up. So whether it's the CO's wife giving phone permission for a nuclear evolution in perfect nuclearese or something obscene the AMR Watch said during dependent's cruise, share your funniest quote for our own TSSBP "Virtual Quote Log".