Hello Peter Berghold and Knapp,

 

Good to know someone here was in New London at the submarine base and/or support facility.

I was in New London/Groton in the mid-1980s serving on the Rayburn, Greene, and Shark. The Shark stressed me out and I was assigned to limited duty in the R-4 Sonar shop. Here's the story I rotated from shore duty to sea duty assigned to the USS Sam Rayburn SSBN-635 that after about a year onboard was pulled from service, sent to the yards to be converted into a floating nuke trainer in Charleston, SC. I was reassigned to the USS Nathaniel Greene SSBN-636 that had an event resulting in becoming decommissioned two years into my sea tour. Then I was assigned to the USS Shark SSN-591 which lasted about eighteen months when I had an episode of a-fib, placing me on limited duty and squadron me to the sonar shop in R-4.

 

Knapp I seem to have missed the post asking about the holding sinks until I read Peter's reply so I'll try to answer. Please remember I am a submarine sonar technician/operator and not one of the engineering types that can describe the workings better.

 

Anyway, the sink in the staterooms, IIRC, were hinged in some manner that allowed the basin to fold up into a niche under the mirror. I think that in some of the staterooms mirror was also hinged allowing access to a storage compartment.

 

The link, I think I sent, to the Navy's habitability site provides the requirements for space allocation for embarked troops, E1 through E6, E7 through E9, junior and senior officers, XO, and CO. I think there is also something on how much space a Flag Officer gets too. The description I'm going to give is my estimates based on the memory of twenty years of service after twenty years of retirement.

 

The closest I can come to an illustration of a submarine officer's stateroom is a Superliner or Viewliner Roomette found on Amtrak trains. There are movies showing that the train roomettes one or both of the bunks fold up. Folding the lower bunk up provides a seat and folding the upper bunk provides more head room.

 

In the submarine staterooms I remember the three bunks, approximately 76 inches long, defined the widest part of the space. When laying flat on the mattress was about 30 inches wide and in the bottom and middle ones had head room of about 30 inches from the top of the mattress to the bottom to the next bunk. The top bunk usually had more head room.

 

Each officer is allotted a small folding desk, which looked to be a just an inch or so bigger than a regular open three ring binder when being used. There is another niche that might have been 12 inches deep that had a small combination safe, slots for filing papers, a small fluorescent light,  and probably a small bookshelf. These desks where set up at a right angle to the bunks with the desk closest to the bunks forming a wall hiding about 6 inches of the bunks end, which IIRC was considered the foot of the bed. The folding sink was next to the desk closest to the staterooms door and measured about 12 inches from left to right and 10 inches from front to back. There was about an inch or two space between the side of the sink and the door. The wall with the door usually had stuff like gauges and maybe hooks for hanging clothing on. The last wall had some closed storage for clothing and additional shelving for material that wouldn't fit in the desk.

 

Oops, I forgot about the chairs that went with the desks.

 

I'm guessing, and I'm probably wrong being an enlisted puke, a three person stateroom had standing space of about 10 square feet when everything was folded up and tucked away.

 

To get a more accurate picture I would recommend checking the manual on http://www.habitability.net/. The downloadable PDF of the manual provides hard numbers for the materials and systems needed for, in theory, the optimum habitability to keep the crew to operate at the highest sustainable state of readiness when at sea for long periods of time.

 

Tom Rux

 

 

From: "Peter Berghold" <salty.cowdawg@gmail.com>
To: "TML" <tml@simplelists.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2015 4:33:31 AM
Subject: Re: [TML] Starship Berthing Philosophies?

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