Steering area of a US nuclear submarine control room.
---
All these ex-submariners - like Darryl Manzer here - dispensing advice about how they lived with "social distancing."
Fact is they were the least socially distanced of any profession.
60 to 150 submariners (who volunteered) to be crammed into a narrow metal tube - slept, worked, ate, watched movies, next to each other, chatting (or formal voice interacting) face-to-face about 18 hours a day. Also physically dodging/squeezing around each other in the narrow spaces for months.
A sailor speaking with
News4Jax (near US east coast Kings Bay SSBN base) on condition of
anonymity, said “close quarters on a submarine means there is no way to
maintain a social distance of six feet between each person.”
Submariner "Social Distancing" bears little resemblance to enforced COVID-19 social distancing. With COVID meaning being involuntarily stuck in your home/flat alone (or with only 1 or 2 others) sharply curtailing the face-to-face interaction you're used to.
Spacially - Submariners being crammed with others night and day is totally unlike COVID 1.5 meter separation social distancing (a COVID "treat" being off to the supermarket for a half hour 2 times a week).
Submariners had/have it tough but COVIDteering (though less so) also has its pressures - in very different ways.
Bunks in 1940s-60s Gato-Balao-Tench (still, 2 Hai Shih) class submarines. Similar lack of social distancing in Oberon class bunks and those in later SSKs.
---
Pete
2 comments:
If you left without the disease, there would be no chance for the disease to get onboard. Submarines once the hatch is shut, everything is contained. But the joy of such a 3 month to 6 month period is that someone has a cold it get spread at least twice as it goes around the entire crew gets mutated then you have it back just in time to get to port.
Hi Anonymous
See my reply at https://gentleseas.blogspot.com/2020/04/extra-pressure-on-submariners-social.html
Regards
Pete
Post a Comment