Looking for other "pilots"

Maybe back to some reality here:

Although there will be a few similarities from time to time, IMHO helming or "piloting" a submarine is significantly different than piloting an airplane. I guess one thing I don't know is if either the bow planes and/or stern planes (or whatever is back there on a Seawolf/Virginia...please don't answer) can be moved opposed to each other (like Ailerons). If so, then the actions of the stick might somewhat follow that of an airplane. Otherwise just two significantly different setups.

When your first learn to fly you look out the window, you feel, hear and even smell things. You actually feel the forces on the controls. You will actually sense sometimes more and sometimes less than 1G. I also suspect for every 1 overlapped task you learn while piloting a submarine the airplane pilot will be mastering 2...4. Put as simply as possible...things happen, way, way faster on an airplane. And where a submarine almost always has a final safe way out (HP blow or EMBT Blow) to the surface you still ultimately have to do one thing on every flight...land. And that landing takes mental and physical coordination and I swear every single landing is different.

A specific difference as mentioned earlier: I do not believe any submarines use foot pedals as primary controls. When foot pedals are added to the equation, especially something with a range of variable motion (rudder) your body/brain has to start doing things that few people are good at. I always kid with friends that I think a drummer might master cross wind landings before anyone else. As you think of the layers of learning...just the final and landing...how the feet are needed seems simple on paper but getting your brain to do all that takes lots of repetitions and difference experiences. First you might just learn how much to crab in and CFI lands. Then your learn how to straighten it out right as you near the runway and CFI lands. Then you learn to keep the plane pointing straight down the runway (with all those forces against you) and you or CFI lands. And ultimately, the slip to land where natural instinct is left hand + left foot or vice versa but is really left hand + right foot (or vice versa) but never in any one repeatable set of amounts. And in none of those phases did I mention just what your left hand is doing (turning/leveling with ailerons and pushing/pulling to maintain and ultimately stall the plane). Plus your right hand is on a throttle ready to do several things in succession of something is wrong (throttle, carb heat, flaps, elevator trim, etc).

On a submarine you have backups (systems and people) for problems and casualties. A plane would be like a single person submarine where a single officer HAS to do everything. Hidden in that statement is that a pilot has responsibility for everything. The GA pilot has to make every single decision. On a submarine usually someone else (Conning Officer) decides the course, the pilot or helm steers it. On an airplane you will have to factor in winds, wx, approach requirements just to come up with that course and then actually fly it and do all that while monitoring everything in the plane, talking to ATC, looking for planes, etc.

I actually wish it had been more similar. Heck, even the announcing terminology on a submarine (Navy in general) might at first seem similar. However, if a sub guy took his first lesson at a controlled airport and the CFI asked him/her to do all the talking they would probably be just as lost as a high school kid with no exposure to either field. There is a cadence to both comms. But the pilot version is more terse and yet ironically more free form vs very rigid navy internal circuit command and readbacks.

@Nub_Pilot - I think you are going to love it! Please write about your experiences. If I am wrong I will be the first to admit it. At the same time I would hate for you to realize they are significantly different and give up. I've done both. If I could ride on a submarine on a Saturday afternoon would I...HELL YEAH :) But give me that same choice 100 times and I'll pick the plane 98% of the time. When I get home from flying I feel tired yet fantastic in a way that is hard to describe.
 
My first job out of college in 1975 was Code 2330, Nuclear Controls Engineering Division at Mare Island Naval Shipyard. Yup, I was a yard bird. S5W plants for all the boats we overhauled and refueled. I moved to NAVELEX VJO after a year and never looked back (although a friend and I did make a trip to the industrial area on the yard once on a weekend to perform a TEMPEST survey on a system on a boat). The one question I remember some folks asked was whether you could do a loop in a boat. The people discussing it figured that the boat probably had the hp to do it, but uncovering the heaters in the pressurizer probably wasn't the best idea. So, I don't know if anyone ever tried it, and I suspect that if they did Rickover would have had a fit.
 
If you are a loop...wow. I would think you would exceed test depth if you went deep enough to be able to them pull it back around 360deg and not broach the surface. I'm guess as you near 90deg up the shaft might let go. Since you wouldn't be pulling any 'G's there are several tanks (water, fuel, hydraulics) that might not stay put. Several pumps might stop working. Hell, just being upside and falling onto the ceiling would probably kill everyone.

I've always wondered about a roll. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of tons of lead in the keel to help it not roll all the way over. But even on a trident we took some crazy rolls. Not many people would guess how many degrees of roll you take a few hundred feet under a hurricane :)
 
Maybe back to some reality here:

Although there will be a few similarities from time to time, IMHO helming or "piloting" a submarine is significantly different than piloting an airplane. I guess one thing I don't know is if either the bow planes and/or stern planes (or whatever is back there on a Seawolf/Virginia...please don't answer) can be moved opposed to each other (like Ailerons). If so, then the actions of the stick might somewhat follow that of an airplane. Otherwise just two significantly different setups.

When your first learn to fly you look out the window, you feel, hear and even smell things. You actually feel the forces on the controls. You will actually sense sometimes more and sometimes less than 1G. I also suspect for every 1 overlapped task you learn while piloting a submarine the airplane pilot will be mastering 2...4. Put as simply as possible...things happen, way, way faster on an airplane. And where a submarine almost always has a final safe way out (HP blow or EMBT Blow) to the surface you still ultimately have to do one thing on every flight...land. And that landing takes mental and physical coordination and I swear every single landing is different.

A specific difference as mentioned earlier: I do not believe any submarines use foot pedals as primary controls. When foot pedals are added to the equation, especially something with a range of variable motion (rudder) your body/brain has to start doing things that few people are good at. I always kid with friends that I think a drummer might master cross wind landings before anyone else. As you think of the layers of learning...just the final and landing...how the feet are needed seems simple on paper but getting your brain to do all that takes lots of repetitions and difference experiences. First you might just learn how much to crab in and CFI lands. Then your learn how to straighten it out right as you near the runway and CFI lands. Then you learn to keep the plane pointing straight down the runway (with all those forces against you) and you or CFI lands. And ultimately, the slip to land where natural instinct is left hand + left foot or vice versa but is really left hand + right foot (or vice versa) but never in any one repeatable set of amounts. And in none of those phases did I mention just what your left hand is doing (turning/leveling with ailerons and pushing/pulling to maintain and ultimately stall the plane). Plus your right hand is on a throttle ready to do several things in succession of something is wrong (throttle, carb heat, flaps, elevator trim, etc).

On a submarine you have backups (systems and people) for problems and casualties. A plane would be like a single person submarine where a single officer HAS to do everything. Hidden in that statement is that a pilot has responsibility for everything. The GA pilot has to make every single decision. On a submarine usually someone else (Conning Officer) decides the course, the pilot or helm steers it. On an airplane you will have to factor in winds, wx, approach requirements just to come up with that course and then actually fly it and do all that while monitoring everything in the plane, talking to ATC, looking for planes, etc.

I actually wish it had been more similar. Heck, even the announcing terminology on a submarine (Navy in general) might at first seem similar. However, if a sub guy took his first lesson at a controlled airport and the CFI asked him/her to do all the talking they would probably be just as lost as a high school kid with no exposure to either field. There is a cadence to both comms. But the pilot version is more terse and yet ironically more free form vs very rigid navy internal circuit command and readbacks.

@Nub_Pilot - I think you are going to love it! Please write about your experiences. If I am wrong I will be the first to admit it. At the same time I would hate for you to realize they are significantly different and give up. I've done both. If I could ride on a submarine on a Saturday afternoon would I...HELL YEAH :) But give me that same choice 100 times and I'll pick the plane 98% of the time. When I get home from flying I feel tired yet fantastic in a way that is hard to describe.

As long as I can make it through the medical part and even if I have to settle for the Sport pilot version I plan on getting some air time. I will do my best in documenting my experience and the difference\similarities to submarine piloting.
 
And where a submarine almost always has a final safe way out (HP blow or EMBT Blow) to the surface

Hmmm...you know those valves are also red in color, like the parachute handle...coincidence?
 
But even on a trident we took some crazy rolls. Not many people would guess how many degrees of roll you take a few hundred feet under a hurricane
That's nuts. Would you get much pitching at all too? Or was it mostly rolling? Where efforts made to stabilize it or do you just ride it out?

PS.. since there are some legit submariners on this site.. do (did?) submarines navigate deep ocean trenches to help stay undetected? My knowledge of subs exists solely based on Crimson Tide, Red October, and Down Periscope..
 
That's nuts. Would you get much pitching at all too? Or was it mostly rolling? Where efforts made to stabilize it or do you just ride it out?
I recall rolls between 20deg...30deg down to unclassified depth of 400ft...pretty crazy!!! Zero pitching though and nobody got seasick. The only effort to stabilize is go deeper (can't say those numbers).

Here's the even crazier part. Going up to periscope depth somewhere in that same hurricane area. Waves easily 35ft and probsbly 45ft. It's impossible to hold periscope depth (hey, maybe the new boats can!) so the boat will broach. Captain isn't happy (reserving my thoughts on why the hell we went up in the first place). So you look out the periscope. You see the entire stern and screw underwater...then you see the stern and part of the screw out of the water :eek:. And to make it more interesting...the wave eventually washes over the periscope causing the part up top to violently shake. Newtons law still works on submarines...the bottom of the periscope...that part your eye is pressed up against also shakes. You learn quickly (or the hard way) to time the wave and pull your head back. All that happens in any rough seas though all over the planet.

Oh yeah, the sound or should i say terrible shudder of the fairwater planes (the big horizontal ones on the conning tower) seeming like the will be ripped off by each successive wave getting under and then rolling up...that was freaky.

PS.. since there are some legit submariners on this site.. do (did?) submarines navigate deep ocean trenches to help stay undetected? My knowledge of subs exists solely based on Crimson Tide, Red October, and Down Periscope..
I prefer to not comment on that one...sorry.
 
That's nuts. Would you get much pitching at all too? Or was it mostly rolling? Where efforts made to stabilize it or do you just ride it out?

PS.. since there are some legit submariners on this site.. do (did?) submarines navigate deep ocean trenches to help stay undetected? My knowledge of subs exists solely based on Crimson Tide, Red October, and Down Periscope..
Read Blind Man's Bluff.
 
The biggest difference between airplanes and submarines, aside from a wee bit of H20, is that airplanes can fly many thousands of feet in the air.

Submarines can only go down to 400'. :)

(That's an old joke. I wasn't in the Navy, but have worked with sub folks ... and that's all they're allowed to say.)
 
I recall rolls between 20deg...30deg down to unclassified depth of 400ft...pretty crazy!!! Zero pitching though and nobody got seasick. The only effort to stabilize is go deeper (can't say those numbers).

Here's the even crazier part. Going up to periscope depth somewhere in that same hurricane area. Waves easily 35ft and probsbly 45ft. It's impossible to hold periscope depth (hey, maybe the new boats can!) so the boat will broach. Captain isn't happy (reserving my thoughts on why the hell we went up in the first place). So you look out the periscope. You see the entire stern and screw underwater...then you see the stern and part of the screw out of the water :eek:. And to make it more interesting...the wave eventually washes over the periscope causing the part up top to violently shake. Newtons law still works on submarines...the bottom of the periscope...that part your eye is pressed up against also shakes. You learn quickly (or the hard way) to time the wave and pull your head back. All that happens in any rough seas though all over the planet.

Oh yeah, the sound or should i say terrible shudder of the fairwater planes (the big horizontal ones on the conning tower) seeming like the will be ripped off by each successive wave getting under and then rolling up...that was freaky.
Awesome stuff.. I love stories like this. Thanks! My parents had a sailboat and growing up I'd always hoped I could catch of glimpse of a sub at sea when we were by Portsmouth. No such luck then.. here in San Diego you'll sometimes see them by their base in Point Loma.. however I've yet to see one underway.. or actually be on one. I've always thought they were awesome bits of machinery

I prefer to not comment on that one...sorry.
Thanks.. I get it.. "if I tell you I'll have to kill you" kind of thing. The Soviets had some titanium boats that could dive unbelievably deep, and based on this article here I assume some underwater trench "exploring" happens.. https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a24158/uss-san-francisco-mountain-incident/

Amazing stuff
 
Awesome stuff.. I love stories like this. Thanks! My parents had a sailboat and growing up I'd always hoped I could catch of glimpse of a sub at sea when we were by Portsmouth. No such luck then.. here in San Diego you'll sometimes see them by their base in Point Loma.. however I've yet to see one underway.. or actually be on one. I've always thought they were awesome bits of machinery


Thanks.. I get it.. "if I tell you I'll have to kill you" kind of thing. The Soviets had some titanium boats that could dive unbelievably deep, and based on this article here I assume some underwater trench "exploring" happens.. https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a24158/uss-san-francisco-mountain-incident/

Amazing stuff
I always figured a good place to see subs transiting is in/out of Pearl Harbor. Lots of small boat traffic fairly close to us when we'd pull in.

One thing you need to think about their (Russian) deep diving subs, in a way they are like planes that fly at high altitudes. All those cycles of pressurize/depressurize take their toll on the aircraft and eventually might run-out the airframe. So now pick a very tough material like titanium to go deep. Those early cycles...heck yeah! The later deep cycles...I wouldn't want to be one. I always wondered how many deep excursions they were actually designed for. Maybe its 1,000's Or maybe its "Save your bacon and hope it works 5 times over 30 years". Obviously somewhere in between.

The images of the bow of the San Francisco were unbelievable. Its hard to image they didn't flood the entire forward compartment and sink. But you have to remember, the entire ocean bottom is not all perfectly plotted. For all you know they hit a small/shallow/uncharted sea mount going fast at a standard/common operating depth. As you know, watch actions not words. If the CO was fired and relieved of duties he probably could have controlled it. If he kept his command, remained in the service and moved up...it was probably not at all under his control.
 
The construction of the boat is incredible as seen by the pictures of the San Francisco and by the Hartford below:

USS_Hartford_%28SSN_768%29_damaged_sail.jpg


That sail was ripped to the starboard side by 12deg. and the boat sailed home under its own power.
 
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