Sea Story 3

Let's face it, the only people more fascinated with their shit than sub sailors are baby boys. And baby boys are a lot less ingenious with spreading it around. I was aboard the USS OMAHA shortly before her commissioning back in 1978. We had left EB and were tied up at the State Pier in New London outboard the TINOSA. For some ungodly reason our bows both headed north. As anyone familiar with early 688 class boats knows the sanitary overboard is located in the sonar equipment space, forward port corner of the sphere. (In first flight 688's there was another one in control but that's unimportant for this story.) At the time the practice was to fit the drydock connection on the overboard with a yard or so of firehose attached to discharge directly into the river. The sanitary tank was to be pressurized ONLY to about 10-15 psi for this evolution. (Yeah, I know we had a sanitary pump but it was as useless as tits on a teddy bear.) One midwatch a rather bored IC1 decided to press the tank up to a couple of hundred pounds and let'er rip. Though weighted at the end with a couple of TDU weights the fire hose stood at attention in the same manner as a young recruit on his first visit to a strip club. The angle was perfect to allow discharge towards TINOSA's weapons shipping hatch, coincidentally left open with the skid in place for the following day's weapons load. The only saving factor were the March winds, otherwise their torpedo room would have gotten a full load. As it was, dingleberries and paper flew all over the topside area, the sail, the topside watch, you get the picture. My first indication of trouble as the leading A-ganger was the sight of a well papered State Pier when I arrived the next day. WTF immediately came to mind. Upon coming aboard I heard it all, including the threat (empty as it was illogical) that A-gang would go clean up TINOSA's torpedo room as it was our system that caused the problem. Fortunately the TINOSA moved outboard the FULTON that same day to load her fish and we were left by ourselves. No one relished the thought of crossing over her to go on liberty. And that IC1? He went on to enter the LDO program. Last time I saw him was in Charleston at the Weapons Station where he was a LCDR and the MPA aboard the tender there. Go figure. Pete Ahern