Women to begin serving on U.S. submarines

CNN ^

[mandaladon]

Women will begin serving on four U.S. submarines in December 2011, the U.S. Navy announced Thursday.

Twenty-four are in training to be the first women to serve aboard U.S. submarines, the Navy's Submarine Group 10 said in a statement. The subs on which they will deploy are the USS Wyoming and USS Georgia, both homeported in Kings Bay, Georgia, and the USS Ohio and USS Maine, homeported in Bangor, Washington.

The Navy said it will not identify the women until they have completed their submarine training. The 24, chosen from graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy, ROTC programs and Officer Candidate School, began their training in July, the military said.

Three women will serve aboard each sub at any one time, two as submarine officers and one as a supply officer. The subs have crews of 154. The Wyoming and Maine are ballistic-missile submarines and the Ohio and Georgia are armed with cruise missiles. Each of the submarines has two separate crews - known as the blue and gold crews - that rotate duty time so the subs can spend the maximum amount of time at sea.

[Almondjoy]

You might not but sea weary soliders are rejoicing everywhere!

[Almondjoy]

By the way I think homosexual saliors might actually say the same thing.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Those two need definitely new uniforms...

[Almondjoy]

Their deployments would be short range only. The meanest 5-7 days on the planet. Even Whales would quake at their sonar blasts.

[Pan_Yan]

The reason they are putting three officers on board each boat is so they can have their own berthing compartment. The reason they are putting them on Ohio Class boats is to avoid the problems with hotracking that fast attack subs face.

Here’s one I don’t think anyone has mentioned yet. A sub does not have a doctor on board. There is one, count ‘em, one enlisted corpsman on the boat. His job just got much more complicated and politically dangerous. The submarine force works very hard to make sure the boat does not have to come off station because of the limited ability to deal with a medical problem. They took all my wisdom teeth even though they were years away from coming down. A friend passed his second kidney stone and found himself on a carrier.

Women onboard increase the chances of a submarine not being able to complete its mission.

[Secret Agent Man]

I’d say I think you probably know already.

The Navy has always been against women on subs. Pretty much the same way the military has been against rump rangers (my god they will probably now name a division that)...

[Pearls Before Swine]

“Comfort women?”

[cva66snipe]

I'm not for them being on deployed combat ships at all for several reasons. The first is readiness issues. General Quarters and ZEBRA has a specified time limit to be achieved for very good reasons. That means at Zero dark thirty when the General Alarm is sounded you put on you pants and shoes and dress while running to battle stations. Time means everything. Next is Man Overboard. Same thing except when I was in they told us to get to our work center after hours in our skivvies but get their on the double to muster in. A shipmate is in the water. Knowing who it is helps determine where he may have been and any water survival gear, color of uniform {jersey if on the flightdeck} he may be wearing.

Having separate berthing {sleeping areas for those who are not Navy lingo knowledgeable} means that the berthing area is off limits is my guess. Ships enlisted berthing is up to several hundred persons in one area. That area may lead to someone’s work center and they must pass through it to get there. Next is the mental aspect. Deployments up to 7 months at a time are not joy cruises. It's hard work and Groundhog Day. Would anyone want their daughter ran over by an airplane? How about working in 115 degree heat 100% humidity 16-18 hours a day? A place where a small steam leak the size of a pencil lead could kill them? Even the best tempered sailors nerves somewhere in that six month time frame will get shot for a short duration. Most recognize it and give the person some slack. IOW no added stresses till it passes.

GOD created man and women but GOD did not create them the same physically nor mentally and for very good reasons. That is not to say one is better created than the other but rather each has their unique purposes and natural design for life. There are major skeletal and muscular/tendon capacity differences as to what can be done as well as a completely different mental make up both necessary for the survival of mankind.

If anyone thinks women on ships is a great idea or would encourage a daughter to be on one should see the fligtdeck footage of the Forestall fire off the coast of Nam. It isn’t staged the footage is real as is the deaths you see and it is something you remember all your life. In seconds any ship or sub can become a hellish inferno snuffing out lives in an instant before the first response can be given. The ship’s survival comes before anything. That was just one of several major shipboard fires in that era about as bad. Forestall is the one most remembered though.

Mass Casualities is where the mental aspects become primitive and your natural design kicks in. How you react and handle the carnage will determine your own and your shipmates fates. Again this is a shipboard reality of life.

I would not want my daughter to have to see some of the carnage that happened in my peace time shipboard service. Men still die in peace time Navy on ships. If I had a son it would be rough as well. But I would feel better knowing his shipmates were men as I understand the dangers of it all.

Last is it is by no means being fair to the wives of sailors who's husbands have made the Navy their career choice.. I'd bet the Navy likely has the highest divorce rate as it is due to the deployments and the sea duty roataions for most ratings. First mail call after leaving on deployment the line to the J.A.G. Office is long where sailors are given their Dear John letter from their wife.

[Pan_Yan]

Still, morale and discipline were not always perfectly paired. Gemmill strongly discouraged dating, but officers admit many crew members secretly fraternized. Half a dozen couples went to the captain and announced they had fallen in love. Last month a male and a female crew member videotaped themselves having sex in a ship's compartment. The man was caught after he showed the tape to other sailors. "We have taken the focus away from being a potent fighting ship and made the Ike a showboat," grumbled a lieutenant. "We succeeded in this deployment, but would we succeed in combat?"

The Navy says disciplinary problems were quickly resolved. The two involved in the videotape incident were kicked out of the Navy. The harassment cases were settled by officers on the ship and deemed minor. Investigators could not find enough evidence that the female crew member was sexually assaulted. Gemmill says the total number of disciplinary cases was less than on previous cruises, while the carrier's maintenance levels and performance improved. Defenders of the new policy point out that the pregnancy rate aboard the Ike was far lower than the overall pregnancy rate for Navy women serving on land. And the six pairs of lovebirds? They were split up-half transferred to shore jobs, half remaining on board. The Navy is willing to tolerate love-as long as love doesn't get in the way of fighting.

ALL HANDS ON DECK Time Magazine, 1995

[Pan_Yan]

Female sailors visited the sick bay aboard one of the U.S. Navy's ships nearly 10 times more than their male counterparts, a "startling difference" the Navy had not expected to see, according to a new study. "With a female-to-male visit ratio of more than 9 to 1, the conversion of a ship with an all-male crew to 10 percent female would essentially double the clinical workload of the ship's medical department," says the article in the latest issue of Military Medicine, a respected professional journal for U.S. military physicians.

The Navy dismissed the findings as an aberration.

Navy Women Head to the Sick Bay Much More Than the Men Time Magazine, 2001

[Pan_Yan]

Thirty-six crew members of the supply ship Acadia were pregnant and had to be transferred during the ship's deployment to the Persian Gulf, naval officials say.

More than half became pregnant after the ship was under way, but a Navy spokesman, Lieut. Comdr. Jeff Smallwood, said there were no indications of improper fraternization between men and women on the ship.

"These women have a right to get pregnant," Commander Smallwood said. "The conclusion somebody is jumping to is that the Acadia is a love boat, and that's not the case."

36 Women Pregnant Aboard a Navy Ship That Served in Gulf (NYT, 1991)

[Screaming_Gerbil]

I suppose now we’ll have “son of a torpedo” and “son of a missile”. That’s really not funny unless one has an understanding of “son of a gun”.

From Wikipedia:

"It is claimed that in British naval slang this term refers to a child of questionable parentage conceived on the gun deck, hence 'son of a gun'. However, the term possibly predates this claimed origin, and Snopes.com lists it as being part of the English lexicon since at least 1708.

It is sometimes claimed that the saying has its origin in the supposed practice of women traveling on board ship and giving birth on a sectioned off portion of the gun deck. For instance, Admiral William Henry Smyth wrote in his 1867 book, The Sailor's Word-Book: Son of a gun, an epithet conveying contempt in a slight degree, and originally applied to boys born afloat, when women were permitted to accompany their husbands to sea; one admiral declared he literally was thus cradled, under the breast of a gun-carriage."

[Nowhere Man]

Operation Petticoat. B-P I remember seeing the 1959 movie and the short lived series that was made around 1979/80 or so. I’m not sure if this idea will fly or not, I’m a bit squeamish too.

[Cindy]

NOTE The following text is a quote:

http://www.defense.gov//News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=61373

Navy Announces First Sub Officer Assignments for Women
By Karen Parrish
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Oct. 21, 2010 – Two dozen women will begin reporting to four submarines by the end of next year, marking a new milestone in the 110-year history of the submarine force, Navy officials announced today.

Six female officers each will join the crews of the USS Wyoming, USS Georgia, USS Maine and USS Ohio, Navy Submarine Group 10 officials announced in a news release.

Three female officers will be assigned to each of the subs’ two crews.

The Wyoming and the Maine are nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines, and the Georgia and Ohio are nuclear-powered cruise missile submarines. Submarines of these two classes are assigned two full crews, known as blue and gold crews, which rotate between sea and shore duty to maximize the time a submarine can spend in its assigned area.

Two of the women in each crew will be submarine officers, and the third female officer will be a warfare-qualified supply officer. They will be assigned to their first submarine duty station after nuclear power school, prototype training and the Submarine Officer Basic Course. They are expected to report to their assigned submarines beginning in December 2011.

Navy Lt. Rebecca Rebarich, the submarine group’s public affairs officer, said today the new submarine officers were commissioned through the U.S. Naval Academy, ROTC programs and Officer Candidate School. All 24 women have been identified and will join their new crews at about the same time pending successfully completing their training.

Submarine Group 10 is commanded by Rear Adm. Barry Bruner, who leads the Navy’s Women on Submarines Task Force.

The Navy’s integration of women into submarine crews has been under way since Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates notified Congress in February the service wanted to add women to its submarine crews. Following a congressional review, Navy officials announced April 29 they would begin accepting women’s applications for submarine officer training.

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, a former Navy surface warfare officer, declared his goal of integrating women into the submarine forces soon after taking office in May 2009. Adm. Gary Roughead, chief of naval operations, seconded Mabus’s initiative. The admiral said in a statement released in September 2009 that his experience commanding a mixed-gender surface-combatant ship makes him very comfortable integrating women into the submarine force.

The Navy first allowed women to serve on surface noncombatant ships in 1973 and on surface combatant ships in 1993.

Related Articles:
Task Force Tackles Integration of Women into Sub Crews
Navy to Start Training Female Submariners in July

[snowsislander]

The most incompetent and incredibly arrogant officers I’ve ever witnessed have been female field grade Naval officers, whom the command dare never criticize nor give a mediocre evaluation thereof, for it might not reflect well of her seniors. They have been not only promoted over their peers, but given more highly placed favorable authority over those over equal rank and considerably more wherewithal.

This means the US military will become even more incompetent in the next 15 yrs until this generation passes, assuming the next generation is more competent.

Once an institution rots in such a stupid way as this, it's not going to ever come back.

The Kenyan Clown is of course delighted to continue his ruin of our country and of our military.

[thulldud]

Will they be converting the torpedo room to a nursery or just cut their cruises short to offload the pregnant females?

Those "hot-running" crew members will get loaded in the tubes themselves....