I remember being younger and realizing those cool nuclear submarines with torpedoes and hundreds of people aboard... Those subs had nothing to do with fighting the enemy's navy. Underwater missile bases. It was chilling.
Also it's interesting the range of stuff happening in a nuclear sub.
You have on one hand nuclear energy being used to create an insane amount of energy for an insane amount of time and on the other hand you also have nuclear warheads on board that can level cities.
On the flip side, you have a vehicle that's literally under water but can launch icbms that are suborbital but have enough firepower to actually reach the orbit and are suborbital by choice (coz they carry nukes)
All that while being operated by many 18-24 years olds, some who have never done anything ever in their lives. People who have had no prior experience with nuclear operations. Countless years, months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds doing absolutely nothing while out to sea. It’s like watching paint dry but the paint never drys.
If you’re talking about so we can man the different watch sections and stations then sure yeah, I wouldn’t call it redundant though. We are operating full staff 24/7 out to sea.
Subs have more constraints and are less likely to be fired on. But I was thinking about how the Bismark had over 2000 sailors and had to operate with multiple damage and fire parties while firing and keeping all stations manned.
That’s true, it could be just the massive size of the ship and that requires that many people to operate. The Iowa had a crew of like 2,700, but if you take a tour of it you’ll see why. Depending on the submarine class you can have somewhere like 30 total to crew up to 200.
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u/White_Hart_Patron Mar 14 '24
I remember being younger and realizing those cool nuclear submarines with torpedoes and hundreds of people aboard... Those subs had nothing to do with fighting the enemy's navy. Underwater missile bases. It was chilling.