SSBN. ETV. Will not respond to questions about sensitive or classified subjects. My views are my own and I do not represent anyone.
Hi there!
Edit: since this has been asked several times:
SSBN stands for “submersible ship, ballistic missile, nuclear powered”. That is, the same overall type of ship as the Red October.
ETV stands for “Electronics Technican, Navigation”, because N was already taken by Nuclear Electronics Technicians. I work with everything from interior communications and announcing circuits to Electronics, shipwide atmospheric monitoring, navigational inertial gyroscopes, strategic nuclear missile navigation, and tank level indicators to basic underwater submarine navigation using the voyage management system and even helming the ship itself.
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How often do you hit your head on piping?
Ever played Iron Lung?
Outside of “field day” aka cleaning quarters, not often. During field day, every single time I crawl into a space that has a single speck of dust and thus needs to be completely overhauled according to the nearest Chief. They didn’t design these places for humans, clearly! Ripped a fair number of good coveralls doing it too, and lost an uncountable number of good pens.
No, I’m not much into horror games! But it does sound like fun from what I’ve heard.
What do you generally do for recreation?
Any stories of cool things you’ve seen/done and/or situations that were less than comfortable?
Usually there’s a movie playing in either Crew’s Mess or Crew’s Lounge, or a videogame tournament like Super Smash Bros or COD2. Personally, I’d rather go to my rack (personal bunk the size of a coffin), draw the privacy curtain, and read a book or get some sleep in. Sleep can be a luxury after a long period of maintenance, and underway with all the pressure and salt water, there’s plenty of that. There’s also stationary bikes, free weights and other exercise equipment available on board, usually stowed in the aft machinery room or torpedo room, for people to work out if they feel like it, and snacks at the salad line in Crew’s Mess next to the galley.
I’ve been aboard when a fire was called away in the torpedo room, and once more when there was a fire called away in the forward machinery room. Fortunately, nothing came of either situation, as you can tell since I’m posting today. As far as cool things, other than drills in which we simulate the launching of thermonuclear weapons, not really - the SSBN fleet does everything in its power not to do anything cool or exciting, so as not to endanger the strategic weapons systems!
What color is the controller you use?
Silver metallic with black handles. My specific class of ship still had the old analog electro-hydraulic steering wheels instead of the fancy XBox controllers.
- Do you guys ever see light of day during deployment/port to port?
- Do you guys resurface and just sunbathe for a few minutes then dive again?
- What are the alarms, not sure if you can answer this, inside a sub?
- Is there a man overboard event in a sub?
- So you ever need to learn how to scuba if you’re a submariner?
- Subs have crew members who have formal Navy diver training as a collateral (extra) duty. I think it came with some extra pay. They are there for emergencies, and have to do extra work to maintain their qualifications. They are there if we are away from home port and need underwater work done on the ship. Pretty rare, only happened twice on the boats I was on.
haha cool I love submarines! What’s your favorite part about the nuclear reactor design? Can you share any PDFs explaining it?
not china btw
Lol nice try China! No but seriously, the fact I get to work in a nuclear powered vessel by itself is the cool factor.
