Question for US Navy guys - submariners...
 

Why is it on US Navy submarines that the men are referred to by first name? What's the history behind it? My Google search must be poor because I couldn't turn anything up on it.

Oops - wrong forum. Could someone move this..?

Edit: thanks for moving to Off Topic

In ancient history ('75), that was not true on my sub.
I was always called by my last name, or some perversion of it.
Or anything derogatory.

What Marcup said, is what I experienced.

I've always wondered what the food is like, and if the boat makes hot water readily available. This is from watching movies like "The Hunt for Red October" and "Das Boot". They make that food look really good, at least for the officers.

My dad spent some time on Fast Attack Nuclear Subs. From what I understand, the food actually wasn't bad, and occasionally, they would have extra special meals that were really good. Since it was a Nuclear sub, I suspect hot water wasn't a problem.

Unfortunately, I can't ask him to confirm.

Rickover choose the best of the best for sub detail. I can see at the beginning it may have had a different attitude than regular Navy. He had 7 rules...

Rule 1. You must have a rising standard of quality over time, and well beyond what is required by any minimum standard.

We have to get better and better at what we do. Our public deserves it. Our personnel deserve it. We must be constantly looking for a better way to do things. Status Quo — we have always done it this way — is no longer acceptable. On an organizational level, there are better ways to get and keep good people. There are better ways to build your policy manual. There are better ways to train your personnel. There are better ways to supervise. There are better ways to discipline errant employees. On an operational level, we must improve our performance in response times, quality and timeliness of written reports, training, candor in performance evaluations, equipment and vehicle maintenance, physical conditioning, and anything else that we can measure. Continuous improvement has got to be part of the way we do business.

Rule 2. People running complex systems should be highly capable.

Successful government operations require people who know how to think. Fifty years ago, you did not need to be all that sharp to be a government employee. Things have changed. Technology, equipment, strategies and tactics involved in providing services to our constituents have all changed. This is an extremely complex job, and if you hire people who can’t think things through, you are in route to disaster. If you allow the hiring of problem employees, they will not disappoint you — they will always be problem employees. In view of the consequences that can occur when things do not go right in your complex, high-risk job — this may end being the cause of a future tragedy. Every nickel you spend in weeding out problem employees up front has the potential to save you a million dollars. And I can prove that statement if you want me to.

Rule 3. Supervisors have to face bad news when it comes, and take problems to a level high enough to fix those problems.

When you take an honest look at tragedies in any aspect of government, from the lawsuits to the injuries, deaths, embarrassments, internal investigations and even the rare criminal filing, so many of them get down to supervisors not behaving like supervisors. The primary mission of a supervisor is “systems implementation.” If you promote people who either can’t or won’t enforce policy, you are in route to tragedy. To be sure, the transition from line employee to supervisor is a difficult one, but the people you choose to be supervisors have to like their people so much, that they will enforce the policy to protect each of them from loss. Not to beat this point to death, but you show me a tragedy in government operations — including some in the news today — and I will show you the fingerprints of a supervisor not behaving like a supervisor.

Rule 4. You must have a healthy respect for the dangers and risks of your particular job.

Many government jobs are high risk in nature, and the consequences for not doing things right can be dramatic. Remember the basic rules of Risk Management. RPM — Recognize, Prioritize, Mobilize. You must do a risk assessment on each job in every government department and identify the tasks that have the highest probability of causing you grief. Then you must prioritize these tasks in terms of potential frequency, severity, and available time to think prior to acting. Finally, you must mobilize (act) to address the recognized risks appropriately and prevent consequences.

Rule 5. Training must be constant and rigorous.

Every day must be a training day! We must focus the training on the tasks in every job description that have the highest probability of causing us grief. These are the high risk, low frequency, non-discretionary time events. We must assure that all personnel are adequately trained to address the tasks that give them no time to think, and that they understand the value of thinking things through when time allows.

Rule 6. All the functions of repair, quality control, and technical support must fit together.

Audits and inspections are an important part of your job as a leader in government. We cannot assume that all is going well. We must have control measures in place to assure things are being done right. This is not micro-management — it is called doing your job. If you do not have the audits (formal and informal) in place, you will not know about problems until they become consequences, and then you are in the domain of lawyers. That is too late for action, as all you can do then is address the consequences. And if you take the time to study the life of Admiral Rickover, you will quickly learn that he was widely despised in the Navy because of his insistence on using the audit process as a tool to hold people accountable.

Rule 7. The organization and members thereof must have the ability and willingness to learn from mistakes of the past.
Analysis of past data is the foundation for almost all of risk management. We (government operations) keep on making the same mistakes over and over again. As I read the lawsuits, injuries and deaths, organizational embarrassments, internal investigations and even the rare criminal filing against our personnel, I know that we can learn so much by studying the mistakes we have made in the past.

Rickover... fascinating guy.

Last name (or a perverted form thereof) was the norm...there were exceptions.

For example, we had a guy with the last name Gleason...but we all called him 'Jackie'. There were other similar variations.

Regarding the food quality - not so good, at least on my boat. Think of it like this - you can't go to the store and replenish supplies (especially on a Ballistic Missile boat). That means after about 3 weeks - no fresh fruit or veggies or dairy products. After about 5 weeks (maybe 6) - eggs are all gone. Just about everything comes out of a can.

When I first reported for duty, I was told to bring plenty of smokes and 2 of the biggest bags of P-nut M&Ms I could find.

You can live on P-nut M&Ms.

Submarines......
 

When I was in the Navy Seabees, we would occasionally get some nice soft, high quality toilet paper that we referred to as "Nautilus Class Paper"!

A lot of the enlisted men would call each other by first names, but we generally discouraged that on watchstations in the name of professionalism. Officers and chiefs referred to others by their rank and rate (as in "EM1" to refer to the First Class Electrician's Mate), or as "Petty Office so-and-so," or by title (as in "Navigator."). That said, submarines tend to have a far more "family" or "small town" feel than surface ships. We lived in a tiny tube depending on each other to stay alive, so you really do get to know each other.

The food on my first boat was really quite good, as food goes. I mean, take into consideration that they're cooking for 150 people using a kitchen that's only slightly larger than your average home kitchen. Oh, and none of the food is fresh after the first couple of weeks. Things like milk and lettuce disappear quickly. So to simulate this, get a 6x8 storage unit and put 6 months worth of frozen food for you and your family in it. Eat your way slowly through, cooking on a camp stove.

Heating water is easy. Getting water is harder. Submarines make their fresh water by purifying seawater. The older boats used steam-powered distilling plants, the newer ones use reverse osmosis. Generally, submariners take showers that minimize water usage: get in and run just enough to get damp, soap up, then run just enough to rinse off.

submariners- 150 men go down, 75 couples come back up.

Thanks guys - interesting stuff.

The food was OK but not great, similar to above.

Lots of joking about 75 couples or duty "rack" but that was just a test to see if you were squeemish. Anyone that got caught would have gotten hurt, AFAIK.

Good story about the quality of people and I'm sure there was some selection, but by the time I was in it wasn't volunteer (for the sub) and anyone who passed school was just shipped off.
Engineering did not go thru any specialized sub training.

I think Mr. Darling started it all.

The above is just one of many. Others include:

. Submarine = a long tube filled with seamen
. How does passive sonar find a submarine? By the screw [propeller] noise.
. Submariners = guys who like to go down with other guys

Of course, the submariners respond simply with:
. There are 2 types of ships - submarines and targets.

Ancient history (mid-70s) I was in the Navy and never heard of the first name thing you asked about being limited to subs despite having some buddies who were "in the boats". Fyi, subs were (and still are, I believe) called "boats" not ships for historical reasons. Enlisted men called each other by first names or nicknames often in informal situations, as did junior officers to each other. What djmcmath describes above is similar to my experience.

- from a former USN STG3
(my job was to find the sneaky bastards)

O-Gang, eh? Yeah, I guess the food was probably better served in the Wardroom. :D

We all know the best food was in the Chief's Mess :)

You sub folks are an amazing bunch.

fify