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My first deployment in a fast-attack submarine, in the fall of 1991. We were working under British operational control, and they ordered us to cruise surfaced, in the North Sea. I was standing watch as a lookout, with another lookout and the Officer of the Deck (OOD), in the sail superstructure of the boat. We were wearing body harnesses and lanyards, clipped into the superstructure - normal procedure.
I was a sailor aboard USS SUNFISH (SSN549), a Sturgeon Class boat, where the sail superstructure was 25 feet tall. We were in 48 foot seas.
The 3 of us on watch that night were washed overboard more than 10 times each. Often all 3 of us at the same time... flung overboard, hanging by our lanyards, trying to roll around and grab onto the ladder rungs, or one another, to get back into the bridge pooka. None of us broke any bones or lost any teeth, but we were pretty battered and bruised by the end of it.
That was the first time I got to see the entire boat out of the water... at the top of the wave, I could see the stem planes, stabilizers, the end of the towed-array housing, and the propeller. At the bottom of each trough, we'd see just a tiny hole of sky, through the water, as it all crashed down upon us, and we all hold on, trying to stay inside the superstructure.
We pulled into the Navy Base at Rosyth Scotland the next afternoon. The windshield, booked in for surface operations, was completely missing, as well a the port running light. We sustained damage to our observation periscope and main communications antenna as well.
The experience was both scary and exhilarating.
Harrowing. But as someone unfamiliar with anything involving with anything naval, why the Hell did they have you do that? In conditions like that, why wouldn't you just cruise submerged and avoid the waves entirely? And why do they have people up there "on watch?" I can't imagine you can actually watch for that many things in such insane conditions. To my ear, it seems like they risked three lives and caused countless thousands of dollars to naval equipment for no damn good reason.
We were told at the time, that the Brits has a surface group in the area, and didn't want a sub submerged in the same area. Neither we, nor our radar saw anything. But in 21 years spent in the navy, I've never seen seas like in that 1st deployment. Modern subs, with round hulls, are optimized for submerged steaming, only cruising on the surface when arriving/departing ports or when operationally necessary (i.e. shallow waters or transferring personnel).
I've probably been out in seas just as bad as that 1st deployment - when the boat is rocking at 600-800 feet submerged depth, it has to be really, really bad on the surface, but being submerged, I really didn't get to see it on those occasions.
Yeah, might as well have had them on watch while submerged, at that rate.
whew !!!