- 5 months ago
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00:00What is a submarine? A submarine is a steel tube in which we put 3,000 pound
00:10hydraulic pipes, 4,500 pounds per square inch high-pressure air, everywhere you
00:19can reach. We've got 450 volt AC power, 250 volt DC power, we have fans and pumps.
00:27We arm it with the weapons of almost unimaginable destructive power. We
00:33propel it with a nuclear reactor and then we take it out and intentionally sink it
00:39in salt water. That's not inherently safe. What does make a submarine safe? It's the
00:46design features, the crew know how to operate that ship.
00:57in the meantime, we can do the power.
01:01At the time, we can't do it.
01:03I'm so scared.
01:07Wake up.
01:10This can be great.
01:13It actually is a Persian pro.
01:16It's a bad thing.
01:18You can't do it.
01:19We can't do it.
01:22You can't do it.
01:24The latest Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine is limited in its capability by only one thing, how much food she can carry.
01:47Usually, it's 60-day supplies for her crew of almost 150. Getting them on board is a tricky maneuver.
01:59Everything that enters the submarine goes through a narrow hatch, food, men, and weapons.
02:10Below is a sealed world of work, drills, sleep, and more work in a cramped and sunless environment.
02:21The Topeka is preparing to go out on patrol. Only a handful of people know where she's going and for how long.
02:29She may be gone 12 hours or 6 months, patrolling close to Russia or lurking in the Red Sea.
02:37This is the world of the submariner, regardless of his nationality.
02:44The former Soviet Union still has the largest submarine fleet in the world,
03:02though much of it consists of aging diesel electrics, like this Foxtrot.
03:09She is nearing the end of her useful life.
03:18Nonetheless, this patrol could take her as far as the Mediterranean, and for 6 months.
03:25Returning from two months' sea trials in the Atlantic is Her Majesty's submarine unseen.
03:43She is also a diesel electric and is the Royal Navy's most modern non-nuclear submarine.
03:50Submarines have always inspired both fascination and fear.
03:57Their movements remain closely guarded secrets, and the lives of the men aboard a mystery.
04:03They all belong to a closed society, members of an exclusively male club.
04:10I think I saw your test side.
04:20Separation is a fact of life, shared by all submariners and their families.
04:25Once a man goes on patrol, he may as well be on the moon.
04:29It's a continual cycle of separation and reunion.
04:36Some say it's like a divorce every 6 months.
04:40Others, that it's a honeymoon.
04:44I'm not married myself, but my view is on the Navy itself as far as marriage is concerned,
04:55and going to sea, I think it does put a lot of pressure on the marriage.
04:59When a ship goes to sea, like the ones out here, the most I spend at sea, actually at sea,
05:03maybe five or six days where they pull into a port.
05:05We go out, we might spend six to eight weeks at sea.
05:08The only people you see are the people you see around you now.
05:10That's it all the time.
05:11You can't contact your family, you can't write to them.
05:17It must be there.
05:19It's hard to leave the family, hard to leave the children.
05:21I have two little ones, a one-year-old and a two-year-old.
05:24They don't really understand six months, but even when I'm only gone for a week,
05:29they know when I'm gone for a few days and they start asking Mom,
05:32where's Daddy, and that sort of thing.
05:34I stand in the front window, where's Daddy?
05:36When's he coming home?
05:37Why's Daddy not here for dinner?
05:39I feel kind of sad, because you see him for a while and then he takes off,
05:46and then he comes back and then he takes off.
05:50I like it when he comes back, and I don't like it when he leaves.
05:56When his boat moves away from the dock, a submariner enters a world which he cannot share with anyone except those around him.
06:09By tradition, submarine service is the most secretive among the military in any country.
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07:07Once the Topeka reaches deep water off San Diego, she will dive, entering her true element.
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07:48it's just well some people say it's like flying an airplane and being on an airplane but it's
07:52really frightening you suddenly realize you're actually going underwater for the first time
07:56this whole thing around you is still to go underwater officer of the deck when you're
08:00steady on course submerge the ship i'm steady on course submerge the ship by sir
08:11operating a submarine requires precision teamwork the captain's orders are repeated
08:17and relayed several times before being carried out it's part of a system of multiple checks designed
08:23to eliminate the possibility of error diving officer submerge the ship to 150 feet
08:28submerge the ship 150 feet aye sir
08:34dive dive dive dive to submerge his ship a submariner must do what every surface sailor dreads
08:47take water on board ballast tanks are flooded for extra weight and diving planes steer the boat below
08:54achieving what's called neutral buoyancy is a fine balance between submerging and sinking
09:01next to wash next wash eyes sir full diving foul planes establish a three degree down bubble
09:07seven two technically it would be possible to automate many of these functions but when
09:17a submarine operates as deep as 1500 feet a minor mechanical problem could push it to crushing depth
09:25though quicker to identify emergencies computers cannot combat them as in the cockpit of an aircraft there is no
09:33wrong wrong from mistakes
09:42The line is 9 meters, you can see the crew.
09:44Yes, the line is 9 meters, you can see the crew.
09:48The line is for the average.
10:07Seeing the Foxtrot crew take her down,
10:10you could be forgiven for thinking you are watching a World War II movie.
10:15But once again, rigorous teamwork is everything.
10:19More than in any other branch of naval service,
10:22each man relies absolutely on his crewmate to do his job correctly.
10:28Submariners of all navies know their lives depend on each other.
10:33Whoever else may be friend or foe, they share a common enemy.
10:40The submariner has only one enemy, and that's all around him.
10:45The immensely powerful and utterly implacable sea.
10:52The United States Navy suffers a tragic disaster.
10:56A drama of sorrow is written when the submarine squaless plunges to the bottom of the sea off the North Atlantic coast.
11:01Historically, submarining has proved a dangerous business, reflected in the tradition of hazardous duty pay.
11:09Even peacetime brings its own disasters, as in the case of the squaless.
11:14Who risks his life to help save the 33 survivors now reports everything in readiness for the venture.
11:19And the prospect of rescue remains uncertain.
11:22In most of the waters of the world, you can't recover a submarine.
11:27As one admiral said, the only point in locating a wreck is to know where to send the flowers.
11:33More air is forced into the pontoon, and something's wrong! The second pontoon is broken loose!
11:39The churning water is a bad sign, and the fears of the rescue workers prove well-founded,
11:43as the squaless breaks water momentarily, only to slip silently back to its ocean-bed tomb.
11:48The safety record of our submarines is not perfect.
12:02In particular, we have lost two nuclear submarines over the course of the program.
12:07The Thresher in 1963 and the Scorpion in 1968 were very significant events in our program.
12:19It was in April of 1963 that the Thresher made her last dive,
12:24and became the watery tomb for a crew of 129 men...
12:28The Thresher was the deepest diving combat submarine in the world.
12:32Her loss, caused by flooding and a reactor shutdown,
12:36was a tragic reminder that submarines operate alone,
12:40in an environment as unforgiving as space.
12:43There is no margin for mistakes in a submarine.
12:46You're either alive, or dead.
12:50Officer, the deck, reverse course to the right, using a 25-degree rudder angle.
12:56Reverse course to the right, using a 25-degree rudder angle, aye, sir.
13:00No, I'm right, 25 degrees rudder.
13:0325 degrees rudder, how am I, sir?
13:05Steady course, 180.
13:07180, how am I? I'll stack my rudders right, 25 degrees, sir.
13:11Commander Jablonski is putting Topeka through her paces.
13:17Usually, he warns the crew, but not this time.
13:21Among other things, it's a good check to see if everything's stowed correctly.
13:25If you're being chased, the last thing you want is a tin of baked beans,
13:31banging against the hull and giving your position away.
13:35They call it angles and dangles.
13:38I don't like the rolling and stuff. You know, it's kind of hard to cook when you're going back and forth.
14:01and I'm just catching you back and forth.
14:02I can't remember how fast it's going to be.
14:03If you want to cook on the front, you can get all the equipment and put it in.
14:05We'll be right back and forth.
14:07Okay, so now I'm gonna pull it back and forth.
14:09Let's go.
14:10Let's get back and forth.
14:11Let's go.
14:13Let's do that.
14:14Okay, I'm going.
14:16Let's go.
14:18Okay,掃除.
14:19So, I'm going.
14:22Okay, and then, let's go.
14:24I'm gonna push back and forth.
14:27We're going to make an angle that 50-degree rudder plane group.
14:28To this day, the U.S. Navy will only admit to speeds in excess of 20 knots, but it's
14:49accepted that boats like the Topeka are capable of nearly twice this speed, almost 50 miles
14:56per hour submerged.
14:58In the underwater games of tag played between the superpowers, speed and maneuverability
15:03are essential ingredients, vital for outrunning your opponent, and hopefully even his torpedoes.
15:10Make normal two-thirds turns, now left 15 degrees rudder, steady course north.
15:23Petty Officer Shaw is a nuclear engineer.
15:34His workspace is aft of the crew's mess and occupies almost half of the boat.
15:39It's a classified area where no cameras are allowed.
15:43Beyond this door is the heart of the Topeka, the nuclear reactor.
15:49Highly radioactive uranium generates intense heat, which superheats water in a separate
15:55loop of pipes to produce steam.
15:58This drives a turbine to create electricity, which in turn powers the propeller.
16:07Although nuclear safety is taken very seriously, there's a friendly rivalry about the pros and
16:12cons of working on nuclear as opposed to diesel electric boats.
16:18They call us nuke flukes.
16:19We call them diesel flukes because of the smell of whatever you get from them, and they come
16:22alongside.
16:23We're the real submariners.
16:25I mean, as you can see, we were the forerunners of the submarines, and then these just come
16:30along and take all the limelight, so to speak.
16:34The thing is, they call themselves proper submariners, and these diesel boats in the background, they
16:40spend most of the time on the surface, so, you know, I'll rest my case.
16:44They're dependent on the surface.
16:45Nuclear boats make our own air, our own water.
16:47We don't need the surface at all.
16:48Once when we dive, we stay-dive for as long as the food lasts.
16:51That's the only limit to how long you stay-dived.
16:53Your food.
16:54Yeah, but I don't turn off the lights and glow in the dark, do I, which is what's going
16:59to happen with you.
17:00I mean, you're that close to a nuclear reactor, I mean, you know.
17:03When I started this, I had no idea what I was getting into.
17:05I had the same ideas about glowing people and material and all that stuff.
17:08That's really not how it is at all.
17:10It's very safe.
17:12Every person in the engineer department, in fact, everyone on the boat, on the entire
17:15submarine, wears dosimetry and measures the doses of the radiation that they get.
17:22Mine is something like this right here.
17:23It's a small thing I wear on my belt, and it measures the amount of gamma-neutron radiation
17:28I get.
17:32The U.S. Navy is intensely sensitive to public perceptions of nuclear power and the safety
17:37of its men.
17:39But unanswered questions remain about the effects of exposure and the potential danger
17:44of nuclear submarines in heavily populated ports.
17:48Even the welfare of civilian refit workers is now a matter for debate.
17:55Safety is the biggest aspect.
17:56Safety is everything.
17:57And the entire boat is designed to keep everything in the boat if anything happens.
18:05Russian nuclear submarines have a poor safety record, despite the claims of their designers.
18:11You asked me my assessment of the radiation hazard on board this boat.
18:20I tell you, in fact, that, strange as it may seem, the level of radiation on board nuclear-powered
18:25submarines is lower than what you and I are exposed to when we walk around the city.
18:33All submarines are designed as weapons of war.
18:39Once underway, the rhythm of the machine takes over, whether it's an antiquated diesel-electric
18:45like this or a modern nuclear boat.
18:49Priority is given to the propulsion and weapons systems.
18:53On a deck built for missile tubes, living quarters must be crammed into the spaces left over.
19:07A submariner's life is unique in the military.
19:11Unlike the aviator or the tank driver, he doesn't park his weapon at the end of the day.
19:17He lives inside the machine.
19:20They used to call them sewer pipe sailors.
19:23But nowadays, atmosphere control is rigorous, apart from indulging smokers.
19:28Aerosols, luminous watches, and even boot polish are forbidden, lest they contaminate
19:33the closed environment.
19:35Fresh oxygen and water are made from the sea.
19:39They say the food is the best in the service, but unlike the Royal Navy, no alcohol is allowed
19:44on board.
19:46Enlisted men eat the same as the officers, but there's a chow line rather than silver service.
19:52And if you're low on the pecking order, you can spend a lot of time in the galley, not
19:56eating, but cranking.
19:58Cranking, that's where you actually work in the galley, and what I am basically in civilian
20:06world would be a busboy.
20:09The cooks tell me what they need, what kind of food that they need to prepare, and I get
20:13in and I make the salad.
20:13I set up the tables.
20:15I wash the dishes.
20:18And everybody has to do it.
20:20And I have to do about 120 days of cranking at sea.
20:24All I know is, when you're on the ship, don't say crank.
20:28It's somehow a derogatory statement, I don't know why.
20:32It's just a forbidden word, a taboo.
20:34And if anybody heard the word crank, or if a superior officer heard the word crank coming
20:39from a subordinate, I guess what you'd have to do is crank in the galley for about 60 days.
20:46Trash must be compacted and dumped into the sea, heavily weighted so as not to betray your
20:51position.
20:56Underway, distinction between night and day quickly disappears.
21:00Your time is broken into watches.
21:02Six hours on, six hours off.
21:05Yeah, Rick.
21:06Rick, it's time to get up and go and watch, man.
21:08Weekends become a thing of the past.
21:11The routine is relentless.
21:13Yeah, a day.
21:15Yeah, it's five o'clock.
21:17It's time to get up and go and watch.
21:18Your bunk's really your only place that's yours.
21:21And we have to do things to kind of keep our morale up.
21:24A lot of guys bring personalized sheets when they go to sea.
21:27I've seen Snoopy sheets.
21:28I've seen sheets with hearts on them.
21:31And I've even seen one guy where a guy had a computer image, a full-length computer image
21:35of his wife on the sheet, so.
21:45There's very little privacy on board.
22:05There's none.
22:06There's none.
22:07Well, no.
22:08You do have some.
22:09You have your rack.
22:10Yeah.
22:11It's...
22:12That's the only place on board that you can really, you know, go and get your thoughts
22:16together if you've got a really stressed out day.
22:19You just have to jump in it and close the curtain.
22:23And that's all you've got as far as privacy.
22:25Yep.
22:26That's it.
22:27The rest of it is share.
22:29And share alike.
22:30Share alike.
22:31There you go.
22:32I got some of my rack.
22:44It probably takes a special type of bloke to serve in submarines.
22:48Not all of us are volunteers, however, but there are very few people.
22:53In fact, I can only think of two or three who have not enjoyed the comradeship and the
22:58closeness and the sort of interdependence that you have in a submarine, which is a peculiar
23:04characteristic of submarines.
23:05You are quite literally living in each other's pockets.
23:08You do get close.
23:10I mean, friendship-wise.
23:11Yeah.
23:12Darling.
23:13You do build, I think, a sort of special friendships, you know, that you wouldn't
23:20sort of get outside the Navy on a submarine.
23:23You live in, like, such confined spaces and whatnot, and because you all eat together,
23:28you literally sleep on top of one another, which, not, but, you know what I mean?
23:32Oh, no.
23:33You're sort of, you know, it's, oh, you go out drinking together when you arrive at a port
23:38and whatnot, so you sort of, like, buddies, as I say, all buddies in boats, as they say.
23:42It's very close on board, but when you go along patrols, the tension, it can get a bit
23:47too much at times.
23:48If you need to get away from someone, you've got nowhere to run.
23:51You're on board, you're stuck there, you can't leave.
23:54It takes a special kind of person to be able to handle the stress at times.
23:57If you can't handle the stress, you can't live on board.
24:00I don't know about her, man.
24:01I heard a few things about her.
24:03Everybody knows, right?
24:04Well, how's her attitude?
24:06She's got a nice attitude.
24:07She's got me.
24:08She's got a good personality.
24:09She's fun to party with.
24:11It's just like a big family when we're underway.
24:15Everyone's really tight.
24:17Yeah, the way you talk to people, the way you touch people, I mean, I think everybody
24:22here is really secure with themselves where they can do things like this underway in this
24:29kind of environment, but in public, it wouldn't be acceptable.
24:35It really interests me, the camaraderie and everything like that, and it interests me
24:40a lot.
24:41So when I was 17, I joined the Navy and I told them I want to go submarines and submarine
24:45torpedo men, and that's how it all began.
24:48The engineers, or nukes, joke that the torpedo man's job is to protect their reactor.
24:54Torpedo men, or coners, call the nukes their chauffeurs.
24:59Either way, the torpedo is central to the hunter-killer's lethal anti-submarine role.
25:13I've worked on weapons my whole career in the Navy, and I think we use them the way they
25:19should be used.
25:20I've never really shot a weapon that's went off.
25:22I've shot a lot of exercise weapons, and I wouldn't mind, you know, shooting something
25:28once, but just maybe a deserted ship or something.
25:33Clear eye.
25:34I don't want to blow somebody up just for a drill.
25:36Equipped with sophisticated active sonar, a Mark 48 torpedo is guided to its target by
25:5020,000 yards of wire.
25:52At a maximum speed of 55 miles an hour, the advanced capability version is fast enough to catch the
25:59swiftest Russian submarine.
26:01Topeka also carries Tomahawk cruise missiles, demonstrated with such ferocity during the Gulf
26:07War by her sister submarines.
26:09Tubes loaded, the Topeka is ready for action.
26:19Well, there's a very little difference between a submarine operating in peacetime and in wartime
26:24as far as the submarine is concerned.
26:28We are going out.
26:29We are covert.
26:34We are doing the same type of missions.
26:38We do everything up to the point of actually firing our weapons, and that is one of the reasons
26:45why our readiness is so high is that when we go into an area, we're not detected, no one knows
26:54we're there, so we can conduct our operation just as if we had a wartime mission in that area.
27:04This is the captain.
27:06Our situation right now is that we are moving into an area where there's been hostile submarine activity.
27:14We've received authorization to attack any hostile submarines, and we're conducting a sonar search for those contacts now.
27:24Carry on.
27:26That sound is the sound of the water running past our hydrophones that we use for underwater communication,
27:36but we can also hear other sounds in the water, and we're listening for close contacts.
27:41You would hear their screw blade noise coming through that speaker.
27:48A fast attack submarine is always only minutes away from responding to or initiating aggression.
27:55At the same time, she might spy on enemy maneuvers or intercept their underwater communication systems.
28:02Essential to all this is stealth remaining undetected.
28:07It requires a state of constant alert.
28:10Commander Jablonski's first priority in wartime would be destruction of enemy boomers before they could launch their nuclear missiles.
28:18This might involve intricate maneuvers under the polar ice cap, traditional territory for Russian submarines.
28:25Pharmaceuticals, military scheduled training of the flooring fleet.
28:28Elvesle ne pas de la고 de lao de lao de lao de lao de lao de lao de lao de lao de lao de lao de lao de lao de lao de lao de lao de lao de lao de lao
28:32Ballistic missile submarines, like the Typhoon, operate to a different rhythm.
28:53Much of their time is spent simply hiding.
28:56Like cosmonauts aboard an orbiting space station,
28:59their crews live a life of virtual, suspended animation.
29:16But not even Jules Verne pictured life like this at the bottom of the sea.
29:21As the world's biggest submarine, the Typhoon deserves the traditional nickname of the floating hotel.
29:35In its atmosphere of a comfortable, if slightly dated, health club,
29:40it's easy to forget its deadly purpose.
29:42It's one way of maintaining crew morale,
29:50despite very low pay, uncertainty about the future, and poor conditions at home.
29:56Despite all his responsibility, even Captain Zhidilyov earns only a few dollars a month.
30:15And then there's the traditional fruit.
30:45And there's a fringe benefit of the nuclear submarine.
30:55Russia may be finding it hard to feed its civilian population,
30:59but it clearly attaches importance to taking care of the submarine force.
31:08Little things are important out there.
31:10The cooks burn chow, the whole crew gets pissed.
31:13You can't show the movie when you want to.
31:16Upsets people.
31:18We mess with each other a lot.
31:19We'll know something agitates a guy, so we'll do that to agitate him just to get to him.
31:23In those last three or four weeks of patrol, though, you can tell everybody's ready to get home.
31:29Because everybody's, like, at each other's throat going,
31:31Oh, okay.
31:32Yeah, it goes, you know.
31:33Just get out of my face.
31:34It starts out, everyone's in a pretty good mood and happy and having a lot of fun.
31:39And, yeah, towards the end of patrol, we tend to get pretty uptight with each other.
31:46We do little things that are funny to us, might not be funny to other people.
31:50We freeze people's shoes and steal their pillow.
31:53And it sounds like kid stuff, but it breaks the boredom out there.
32:00The isolation is intense.
32:02You can't call home or even write a letter.
32:05But eight times each patrol, the Navy allows you a message from home.
32:09Whatever news can be squeezed into 50 words.
32:12They call them Family Grams.
32:18I know you'll think I'm crazy, but I had to ring home just to hear your voice on the answering machine.
32:25It made me cry.
32:28Can't wait to see you.
32:30All my love, Patty.
32:34Family Grams are really important once we get underway and on toward the end of patrol
32:38because, you know, you just got to have something to keep the guys up.
32:42And keep them going.
32:43And the morale factor on a Family Gram is the biggie on the boat.
32:52One of the joys of being a raider man is after watch.
32:55You get to walk through the ship and you've got a whole stack of Family Grams in your hand.
32:58People are sitting there going, have I got a gram?
33:03Have I got a gram?
33:05Now what's kind of bad is when you have to give them a gram for their mom, right?
33:08Oh, my mom?
33:09All right.
33:10But, you know, my wife?
33:13Yes.
33:13Or you find out that their kids are doing great in basketball.
33:16Yes, yes, yes.
33:18So, it's a good feeling.
33:20It's great.
33:20And it's sort of like a mail call in the old movies.
33:23Mail call.
33:23I talk a lot, so it's hard for me to squeeze everything into 50 words.
33:28But, um, it's, you just, you know, you get 50 words, so that's what you get.
33:35But you pretty much can get everything down.
33:37You know, cars fine, kids fine, house fine, mortgage paid.
33:41In the confinement and isolation, boredom can become a professional hazard.
33:55I think anyone has boredom with their job sometimes.
33:58But you can be sitting on watch and then you pick, the sunnermen pick up a contact
34:02and what was a boring mid-watch, now you're chasing somebody.
34:05All right, attention and control.
34:06We have what's been classified as a hostile submarine, Sierra 34, now Bear 098.
34:14The contact is drawn to the right.
34:18My intention is to move around behind them and get in position to attack them
34:23with a Mark 48 torpedo.
34:25Carry on.
34:34Man at battle stations.
34:36Man at battle stations.
34:48We operate in realistic scenarios.
34:51You don't think about it a lot, but in the back of your mind,
34:55you know that, you know, your profession, if called upon,
34:58is to go out there and destroy the enemy.
35:02And we're ready to do that.
35:04Melton, steady course, 170.
35:05Zero, steady course, 170.
35:07Thirty-nine years old, Commander Edward Jablonski controls a billion-dollar weapon system.
35:13It's a responsibility he relishes.
35:15It's a very challenging time, and it gets your heart pumping
35:22because you know that you're in a position where if you make a mistake,
35:26you have the potential to give away your position.
35:31Weapons officer, tube three will be the first tube, tube four will be the backup tube.
35:37Tube three, first tube, tube four, backup two, aye, sir.
35:40Our mission is to go in there and destroy specific targets, whether it's with our torpedoes or with our cruise missiles.
35:49And whether we carry nuclear weapons or not is not something that, you know, can be discussed at the unclassified level.
35:58So we'll leave the question at that.
36:01We have tube three to find a press missile, not a door on tube three.
36:06It's a violent profession if you look at it, you know, at the fundamental level.
36:11But you're not going to deter aggression or beat your enemy without some destruction.
36:17Standby. Shoot.
36:25Spitter course, 1-8-0.
36:30Very well, weapons.
36:35That's all right.
36:36600.
36:41Shot looks good on plot.
36:45Very well, plot.
36:48Officer, tech.
36:49Secure from battle.
36:50Secure from battle stations, aye.
36:52Superwatch on the 1FC, secure battle stations.
36:55Secure battle stations.
36:58All stations gone, slowing.
37:01Machine 150 feet, preparation to come to periscope down.
37:05Got shot.
37:06Well, this is clearly the best submarine in the world.
37:08I mean, there is no comparison as far as I'm concerned.
37:14There's no other platform that I would want to be on if the shooting started.
37:21We could take on and defeat anything that's out there.
37:25Officer, the deck. Proceed to periscope down.
37:28For months on end, the captain alone will decide on the submarine's operations, reporting his results only on return to base.
37:37Constant drilling, like this anti-submarine exercise, keeps the edge on his men during the long periods of confinement.
37:43Tough, ruthless training isn't just to gain professionalism.
37:48It's because there's another kind of pressure.
37:52It's not just the sea that exerts pressure.
37:54It's the circumstances.
37:56The psychological pressure.
37:58Aboard the submarine haddock, the Navy's operation hideout draws to a close after two months of being sealed below decks for the 23-man volunteer crew.
38:09It's been a test of human fitness over prolonged periods of submerged conditions,
38:14and the crew's reactions will largely determine the human factor in the Navy's first atomic submarine, designed to stay under indefinitely.
38:20What's the first thing these bearded sea dogs wanted to do after 60 days of confinement?
38:26Why, shave with fresh, hot water.
38:30Admiral Rickover said, we don't know if we have any problems aboard our submarines because we don't send psychiatrists out on them.
38:36And I rather endorse that.
38:40The atomic submarine Nautilus cruised under the Arctic ice on the North Pole itself.
38:45An historic underwater voyage from Hawaii to England.
38:48We had a psychiatrist, for example, on board the Nautilus when it went under the pole.
38:54And looking for the stresses of the people.
38:58The stresses aren't there.
39:00The people aren't stressed in submarine operations.
39:03If they are, they won't get in them or they'll get out of them.
39:06The only person stressed on Nautilus was a psychiatrist because the crew teased him so much.
39:12One place I went when I was on one submarine, we had a very limited amount of water underneath us.
39:18And we had a very limited amount of water above us because of the polar ice.
39:22And the job you did then was very, very important.
39:26And one mistake and everything could be gone.
39:30You either hit the bottom or you hit the ice.
39:32The pressure of separation contributes to the highest divorce rate in the armed services.
39:44One of the bad things about submarining in general is usually each run you're going to wind up with maybe two to three divorces.
39:55After a while of reading the same grams over and over again, you can see when there's a problem, the family grams, they lose the warmth.
40:03And after a while of reading them, you kind of sit down here, you know, don't really want to get the guy the ground.
40:10With bad news, you know, most of the time it's better if you don't hear about it because there's nothing you can do about it.
40:15I mean, you're still going to be out there on patrol.
40:17You're going to be doing your job.
40:18And if you don't know about it, you're better off, you know, until you get back.
40:24There's a great deal of sympathy for folk.
40:26And we do have problems.
40:29People whose wives are unhappy.
40:31People whose wives or whose family are involved in some sort of accident or what have you.
40:37I mean, that has actually happened during this trip.
40:40We were fortunate.
40:40We were able to land the fellow and he was able to go straight home.
40:43But clearly, as you can imagine, on some types of submarine, it is impossible to land them.
40:50And then you would, you enter the debate of whether you tell him or not.
40:55OK, well, come say hello to the team.
40:57We're all here waiting for you.
41:00The people who survive that pressure and perform really well are those who've had the toughest training.
41:08Sometimes people say, OK, how do they release that pressure?
41:11Well, I can tell you the best way by far.
41:15It's sex.
41:17Wives and girlfriends are really crucial to sub-mariners.
41:23Now for a more intimate and personal welcome from wives and children, families and friends.
41:28A scene in which America joins while echoing the Navy's traditional words of praise.
41:33Well done.
41:34Very well done.
41:35Some of the wives get awful lonely and they want to let their husbands know that they're lonely.
41:42So they'll sit there and you'll get some spicy family grams.
41:46And not too to the point of being vulgar, but slightly risque.
41:51Something like, I can't wait to wrap my loving arms and legs around you or something to that effect.
41:57Or, can't wait for you to bring home the, have a special dinner ready for you.
42:04Can't wait for you to bring home the meat.
42:06You know, things to that effect.
42:08And those kind of grams will chop out the names so that no one gets embarrassed to protect the innocent or guilty or whatever.
42:15And those become the family grams of the week.
42:19We post those down on the mess deck so everybody can get a laugh out of them.
42:23And a lot of times, some of the other guys will go,
42:25Hey, I don't suppose you'd mind putting my name in this one and then just let me keep it.
42:32But, it's a lot of fun.
42:35It's a lot of fun.
42:36And, I don't think, if it weren't for the grams, sometimes we'd go insane.
42:42Because everybody has to know that, you know, even though this is an adventure,
42:47we've still got a home too.
42:49And it's, you know, we really miss our families a lot.
43:02I got a walk.
43:06Typically, this is the hardest part of a submarine family's life.
43:11The Georgia is preparing to depart on patrol today.
43:15When they say goodbye in a couple of hours' time,
43:18their crew and their families will not see each other for three months.
43:36There's a lot of sadness.
43:50He's been in for almost 14 years.
43:53And, you kind of get used to it, but then you don't.
43:56And, it'll probably hit me tonight that,
43:58oh, I'm going to be by myself with these two.
44:00Fortunately, I was home for every one of my children being born,
44:15but I was gone shortly after.
44:17And, I'd leave home, and they might be a month old,
44:20and I'd come back, and they'd be four or five months old.
44:23And, in some cases, you know, six, seven months old.
44:26And, that's just real hard, missing the children growing up.
44:34I lose my dad almost every year,
44:38and he's gone anywhere from a couple of weeks to six months.
44:42And, you know, other people talk about,
44:44well, I was with my dad, and I did this.
44:46And, I say, well, my dad's at sea again.
44:50So, it's hard.
44:51We usually try something different each patrol that they go on.
45:14This time, we took some lingerie of ours
45:17and sprayed him with our perfume
45:19and put him in a little Ziploc bag,
45:21and they're going to put it all over their boardroom.
45:24And, I guess they're going to try to guess who's is who's.
45:28The lingerie's going to come out just before they come home
45:30to remind them what they're coming home to.
45:33I think the perfume and the lingerie will do it.
45:35I think the perfume and the lingerie will do it.
45:48And, I guess that's the perfume and the lingerie will come up.
45:54I think the perfume and the lingerie will come down if it's what's all over your world.
45:58I think the perfume and the lingerie will come out.
46:01Yeah, leaving the family is really hard.
46:31An hour after the Georgia has pulled away from the wharf, she must pass through this floating
46:54bridge on her way to open sea and her patrol area.
46:58For wives and families, it's the last glimpse of the submarine with their men on board.
47:04And by tradition, some gather here for a final farewell.
47:28And by tradition, some gather here for a final farewell.
47:36And by tradition, some gather here for a final farewell.
47:42And by tradition, some gather here for a final farewell.
47:58And by tradition, some gather here for a final farewell.
48:05And by tradition, some gather here for a final farewell.
48:10And by tradition, some gather here for a final farewell.
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