A great duty day for the nukes...

Another sea story...but not (as you'll see) a "no-shitter".

So there I was...duty RO on a weekend in Norfolk. We'd been commissioned for a couple of months (USS TUCSON SSN-770), and were just biding time until PSA. We'd been playing "rabbit" for this and that TRE and POMCERT for other boats, doing some weapons certs, an ORSE, stuff like that, and we were glad to be in for a few weeks.

Now 688's normally pump sanitaries, as I'm sure you folks know. But we can, like the "old boats", blow sans too...it's just normally reserved for when the san pump is unavailable.

It was this day. Broke, as it often was on TUCSON. "Crapped out", if you'll pardon the pun.

So the forward duty section lined up to blow sans. We had the hose connected to the hull valve, the proper permission, and the lineup was performed without error.

But Mr. Murphy was on duty that day...the same Murphy that coined the law. You know, "if anything can go wrong..."

Oh, did I mention we were outboard another boat?

The hose ruptured, right where it crossed the inboard submarine. Now, with sans pressurized, you can imagine what happened. Blew poo all over the forward end of the inboard boat (thankfully missed the POOD), and dumped a fair quantity in the water before human reaction time kicked in and the valve was shut.

The Duty Officer managed to see the humor in the situation, however. He announced the casualty to the crew on the 1MC, and at the same time identified the inboard boat:

"We have just shit on the Hyman G. Rickover!"

The cheer back aft was deafening...

posted by Robert Schumacher @ 8:50 PM