6. Life aboard a nuclear submarine is unique among ships of the United States Navy
Daily life aboard a nuclear submarine can never be fully explained to those who haven’t had the experience. The only privacy to be had, other than for the senior officers, is when one is in one’s bunk, called racks by the sailors. Even that is limited. Showers are timed, in the early days of nuclear submarines limited to three minutes, with the flow of water cut off while “soaping up”. Waking hours are spent on watch, or on working on qualifications, or maintaining equipment. Even after qualifying in submarines and winning the right to wear dolphins – the pin insignia of the submariner – there are additional qualifications to be earned.
Meals are taken in shifts, often served family-style. For leisure periods, especially in 1960, there were reading, board games, movies, and cards. Poker, pinochle, and cribbage were popular. The sailors were subjected to the constant hum of machinery and fans, the announcements over the ship’s intercoms, the smell of cooking, the smell of cleaning, and the smell of human beings. Cleaning the ship was almost constant activity, yet weekly, “field days” of intensive cleaning and maintenance were still required. In the 1960s sailors were allowed to smoke in submarines, except when certain conditions demanded the “smoking lamp” extinguished. One of the studies conducted during the circumnavigation was the effect on smokers’ performance when denied access to nicotine for extended periods. It was not a popular experiment.