Sub story

skooma512 posted:
Why in the middle of the night? Where is the command culture coming into this? Are they micromanaging but letting also just signing on whatever?

This is actually really interesting and that's all just follow up Qs. Maintaining a nuclear sub is dope as hell. I just maintain computers and it sucks and nothing has a control rod or is under high pressure.

Right - - Like any sort of specialized bureaucratic insanity this is going to be difficult to condense but I'll try my best. By the way, the SSN-22 is a very special submarine. The nature of the seawolf platform means that suffering amongst the new guys is guaranteed. People typically don't re-up (particularly the nukes), and more senior enlisted come from the 688 class, so the nature of how everything works is completely different. There's 8 torpedo tubes instead of 4 which is twice the maintenance, sure, but SUBSAFE requires paperwork and folks with specialized training to ensure correct assembly of parts. I was a QAI for the nuke MM department, but there were times I would have to help the torpedo division with QA.

I'm not sure if they changed specifically how maintenance worked, but my guess is the general workflow is the same:

Two types of maintenance, corrective (shit broke) and preventative; things that have to be done daily, weekly, monthly, every five years, you name it.

Preventative maintenance has it's own systems, there is a system for primary (nuclear/reactor) maintenance, and secondary (Steam, lube oil, air conditioners, potable water, seawater cooling, to name a few). I didn't work with the preventative maintenance systems, I only understood them from a logistical standpoint - o-rings and shit. (I DID turn wrenches and did QA on every single maintenance item in the engine room, primary and secondary).

For every single maintenance job, there is a question of whether parts are required, and there is a separate system that tracks all maintenance requiring parts. If a shaft seal for a pump quits, generally the workflow would go:

"Oh shit it quit" ->

Inform Maneuvering (Reactor control room, lead by the Engineering Officer of the Watch (EOOW)), and inform the Engineering Watch Supervisor (EWS) and Engine Room Supervisor (ERS). Usually if it's no shit broke then there's some kind of backup and you just use the backup. ->

The Ship's Engineer is informed and if the nature of the problem means it cannot be fixed in the next couple of days, they might make a standing order that gives procedures on how to operate the system in a diminished state (These standing orders will sometimes last for years, there were temporary standing orders that lived longer than my time on the vessel and might still have been in effect). ->

You wake up ProfessorBooty and he's the SNOB so he's kind of annoyed but is also a work obsessed psycho so can't help but to determine the nature of the problem as soon as possible. Also you wake up the chief because of course no problem can't have too many ignorant morons->

A 'job' is opened up in the logistics system I mentioned before. It's like any ticketing system really (It can also be used to request for outside assistance with work, like from a shipyard or a tender). The system is also used to find all the parts required to fix any device on board, and the system will helpfully tell you if the replacement part is stored on board. The shaft seal for the pump might just be in one of the supply department lockers. The system will helpfully tell us that and we can come up with a maintenance plan immediately ->

Now we have to split into the land of 'what's required', and the land of 'What kind of insane imagined bullshit is the command going to put upon us'. And this is where my poorly directed rant came from.

What's required:

Suppose this is a small pump, the shaft seal can be procured onboard, and the sailors are capable of doing it themselves. They come up with a Tag out plan and provide it to the EOOW, they brief the EOOW on the maintenance. The EOOW informs the Engineer and the Engineer informs the Captain. If the captain has any concerns then usually you have an experienced, wise chief who can help the captain at ease, because they've done these shaft seals before on their last boat, which was definitely the same platform. If in port, depending on the shipyard rules, they might have to use a 'Work Authorization Form' (WAF) to formalize proceeding with the work.

What kind of insane imagined bullshit is the command going to put upon us:

The EOOW informs the Engineer who informs the captain. The division chief is woken up, the parts guy is woken up, the division officer is woken up, the MM1 is woken up, Every single moron in the universe crowds the problem like they're looking at Hank Hill's ford.

Of course nobody knows the SUBSAFE requirements, so just in case, they treat anything that has seawater in it like it is SUBSAFE.

ProfessorBooty tries to do method one, determines the parts required, puts in a job and orders the parts, while someone does a Tag Out.

The 'standard' though is that we proceed as if this whole thing is a SUBSAFE system. So ProfessorBooty goes ahead and writes a procedure that meet all of the requirements. It's not a subsafe system, so there are no subsafe parts to track ('software', such as o-rings and shaft seals, are tracked less stringently than 'hardware', such as a valve body, pump body, or a valve shaft). So ProfessorBooty writes the procedure to the level of the maintenance person:

'Using Reference (1) as a guide, repair and replace the pump-01 shaft seal'.

That gets kicked back, the engineer wants me to effectively transcribe the fucking book into a procedure, despite the fact that the maintenance workers damn well better have a fucking book to begin with. Also he wants me to track the shaft seal as if it is SUBSAFE, which in my opinion is a huge no-no but I guess nobody in SUBSAFE cares if people show a fundamental misunderstanding on what SUBSAFE even is.

Regardless after the very intentionally made convoluted telephone game of masses of senior idiots who want to feel like they're actually good at what they do, the pump finally gets fixed, and it was so stressful that I'm REALLY not interested in experiencing THAT again.

Because the -22 was one of three boats, and the most evil submarine got top priority (USS Jimmy Carter), generally we would have equipment that was just permanently broken. We had a new command, and his style was insanely draconian. I guess he could have been an alright guy, but the fact that he had to get his nose in everything was fucking frustrating. The most simple of errors happen and he acts like it is the end of the world. At one point, he wanted to be briefed on literally EVERY SINGLE maintenance item, including ones that we technically didn't need permission for, such as lubricating the lathe.

Not only this, but he must have had some kind of Silicon Valley business psycho degree because every single week he would review the number of jobs each division would have in the logistics systems and ask why the ones that have been in there for the longest are still there (THE PART WE NEED DOESN'T EXIST FUCK).

In my time there, we would frequently have days where we would all come in, sit around literally all day while our chief and division officer brief the captain on what we're doing that day, and then when 7 PM rolls around, you know, when the captain finally fucking leaves, we finally start work for the day (No, we are not doing a good job, and if this is a preventative maintenance item, we might pull a 'let's not and say we did').

Eventually weekly, monthly, and some quarterly preventive maintenance items simply wouldn't be done. As a matter of fact, there were some seawater strainers that we would not do, and when the strainer pressure differential was too high, the watchstanders would proceed to correct it without informing the maneuvering room. This involves taking a heavy ass three inch cap off of a strainer, I got so good at it I could do it in less than five minutes.

There were weekly maintenance items I never actually learned to do. The turbine electric generators didn't have a system to keep the shaft turning like the main engines did, so to prevent the shaft from warping from staying in one place, you are supposed to turn on the lube oil pumps, put some crank on the end of the shaft, and then give it a little turn. Turning on and lubing up the lube oil system is enough of a PITA /without/ informing everyone in the whole universe. I think something like that can be coordinated between an E-4 and the Shutdown Reactor Operator (SRO, who is just an enlisted guy who watches to make sure the reactor stays within it's shutdown parameters (such as the temperature)). If I was an ORSE (Operational Reactor Safeguards Examination) inspector, I would personally look at those weekly maintenance items and ask the guys who have been there for less than a year how to do them, and have them pantomime the maintenance, and ask them specific questions like, 'Is it easy to turn? Hard to turn?'

With time, we realized that though the captain PERSONALLY reviewed our maintenance logs, he never questioned the fact that all these things were signed off as done without him being briefed. The paper looks good, so that's good. Isn't that kind of what the liberal mind is? Things don't need to be done right, they need to be documented right?

So with that in mind, imagine having to actual no shit SUBSAFE or level 1 ('level 1' is for systems that can cause catastrophic harm, but aren't specifically for the integrity of the hull/sea water systems. A 'level 1' system would be like a steam system) work. Like replacing the packing gland on a seawater valve, or having to cut a seat and replace the disc on a steam valve.

Well, we're not replacing hardware, so it doesn't have to be tracked by SUBSAFE. We put in the job but the captain is demanding the job list get shorter. What happens is my buddy and I who are always on duty together get back to the engine room at 11 AM and take apart those valves, cut them, replace the disc, repack them, verify they turn smoothly, and nobody is the wiser. Don't even need a tagout.

When the list is shorter, the captain doesn't ask why.

:)

Edit to note: I loved my submarine. I wish I wasn't so socially awkward at the time, but the general culture was really good. When you're a submariner, people treat you different - I had a surface chief stop me on the parking lot for my boots or something, and I just turn around at look at him, and when he sees my fish he realizes i don't give a shit about his smarmy surface ass.

But the command was awful, and there was so much friction just to do the basics, and we were always just there, staying late and miserable. i spent so much time just sitting in the smoke pit waiting until I could actually work.

I was really proud of what I did though, and my friend and I just wanted our submarine to be happy :(