CASUAL
PODHORETZ, JOHN
Casual NOTES FROM UNDER WATER On a brilliant August morning on a waterway west of Seattle off Puget Sound, I find myself deep inside the USS Ohio, the oldest (18 years) of the nation’s Trident...
...But we’re ready to do what we trained to do,” the master chief says...
...Fifty words each...
...You get between them, tell your guy to cool down while somebody else says the same thing to the other guy...
...I ask her what the messages are like...
...Did you see stairs like that...
...There are no women on submarines in the U.S...
...I mean, it’s stupid and all, but it’s really right about how goofy it can get down here...
...You couldn’t do it...
...Navy...
...Well,” says the master chief in charge of the nuclear reactor, “food is real important...
...It’s ridiculous sometimes, like in Crimson Tide,” says the weapons chief...
...her dad says with a grin...
...The other chiefs nod and murmur their assent...
...Almost in a whisper, her tone martini-dry, she says, “It’s like a vacation...
...I ask, barely noticing the pre-teen girl sitting in the corner...
...And they have the quiet assurance and private amusement of people who know how to do what they do better than anybody else on earth...
...Ack-ack-ack,” says the master chief, imitating the Martians in the movie...
...We’ll spend our time romping about this ship, whose cramped, windowless, perpetually bright interior was itself a state secret until the end of the Cold War...
...What was it the last time we went out...
...Knock wood,” one of them says...
...What bugs me is that old thing, that we’re warmongers,” the sonar chief says...
...It doesn’t take one key to launch...
...Give her a hand...
...They are the hands-on guys, all of them self-made, having risen through the ranks...
...I wouldn’t say something like, ‘I had an accident with the car,’ because he’d just worry...
...The Ohio is armed with two dozen longrange nuclear missiles, each capable of killing millions of people...
...We’ll climb aboard a tug and watch as the Ohio again sinks below the water—there to stay, somewhere out in the Pacific Ocean, in a location known only to its captain, until October...
...We’ll enrich the coffers of the Pentagon by promiscuously purchasing USS Ohio mugs and caps...
...Why is that...
...You know the only movie that really captures what life is like on a sub...
...With the ack-ack-ack...
...The sonar chief ’s wife is sitting with us...
...Oh man...
...Together the 18 Tridents make up the sea leg of America’s “strategic triad”—our sea, air, and land-based nuclear defenses...
...Can you call home...
...Everybody can get eight messages from their family per mission...
...We put a lot of stock in food,” the weapons chief says...
...There’s people running down four flights of stairs in fire gear...
...You’d fall on your ass...
...And in a few hours the submarine will surface and we visitors will stand in the daylight on its topside— the length of two football fields...
...How do your kids cope with it when you leave...
...I say, like an idiot...
...But for now, I’m shooting the breeze with five of the chief petty officers, the senior enlisted men on the boat, in their makeshift lounge, the “goat locker...
...It doesn’t happen very often,” another says...
...I ask...
...When people get less than six hours’ sleep, they start to be grouchy...
...Talking about movies, every boat has a different movie it gets obsessed with,” says the master chief...
...The only way you can keep track of what time it is after a while is by the meal...
...Mars Attacks!,” says the sonar chief...
...What do you do if two of your men get into a fight...
...How do you keep up morale...
...Really...
...She grins right back...
...Man, that means a lot...
...I’m on a six-hour ceremonial cruise about 60 feet under the surface of Hook Canal with three dozen other civilians and the Ohio’s 154-man crew...
...You break it up,” one of the chiefs says...
...No sun, no moon, always the same light,” says the sonar chief...
...While the captain and the officers tend to the mission, the chiefs go about the minute-to minute business of making the boat go, manning the weapons and the engines...
...People musta watched that thing a hundred times...
...And Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington fighting over one key...
...JOHN PODHORETZ...
...God knows I hope I never have to do my job...
...says the sonar chief...
...That’s my daughter, folks...
...No kidding— Down Periscope, with Kelsey Grammer...
...I ask them what they like and dislike when it comes to the depiction of their way of life in the media...
...Two months is a long time to be cooped up together,” I say...
...Like before an inspection, or if we’re on alert...
...You get one, it’s a real morale booster...
...We’ll listen to tapes of whale song recorded by the guys in the sonar room, fire off “water slugs” from the torpedo compartments, and look through the periscope...
...Casual NOTES FROM UNDER WATER On a brilliant August morning on a waterway west of Seattle off Puget Sound, I find myself deep inside the USS Ohio, the oldest (18 years) of the nation’s Trident submarines...
Vol. 3 • August 1998 • No. 48
