The nation’s top military officer has called for lifting the ban on women serving aboard submarines, in a significant step toward reducing the barriers to women in combat.

Navy Seeks to Allow Women to Serve on Submarines – washingtonpost.com

Now anyone who knows me personally knows damn well that I’m hardly the type of person to class women as inferior in any way, shape or from however, as an ex-Cold War submariner I have to say that this is a bad idea all around. And if women were allowed in the submarine force, it should be limited to female officers only. Unless things have drastically changed since my time in the service, allowing women to serve on submarines as officers only at least would allow them some semblance of privacy and separation by rank from the enlisted crew members.

Anyway…

The first reason is privacy. The average age of enlisted on any given boat is around 20 with new “non-quals” (newly reported crew members who are not “qualified in submarines”) running as young as 19. These individuals are can be isolated for up to months at a time from the outside world. Now consider what might happen with a submarine crew of male and female 20-some year olds on a long term operation. As one who used to “be there” all I can say is that it would most likely result in some rather nightmarish conditions.

Officers and enlisted alike literally rub elbows but it’s especially true with the enlisted members. American subs are designed first with it’s equipment in mind and crew comfort coming second. There is no “privacy” on a submarine in the true sense of the word, the only privacy any crew member is allotted is by other crew members being good enough to leave you “alone” from time to time. Even then your still “rubbing elbows” with them.

Secondly, serving on a submarine is f***ing hard and unbelievably stressful. So much so in fact that it can only be qualified as “you had to be there”. If you weren’t there you could never understand. It’s as simple as that.

It takes an entire year just to get through the basic submarine qualifications and until you’re “qualified” you’re worse than useless (and dangerous) and you’re treated that way. The treatment isn’t done out of sheer meanness though. Being mean doesn’t enter into it at all. It’s just part and parcel of what it means to serve on a submarine. They, meaning the qualified members of the crew, have to know where your breaking point is, it’s absolutely vital to find this out and female crew members would be no exception to the rule. Every new crew member goes through this—no exception. There would be no room for anyone citing “abuse” or sexism on a active submarine. You either deal with it or be booted off. That’s one of the reasons that the serving on a submarine is strictly voluntary in nature.

And third. It’s going to cost too much.

Uh, what?

I mean it. Converting a submarine to accommodate women’s special needs was approximated at close to a billion dollars per already existing submarine and that was during my time.

I’m not pulling this out of the air mind you. There was a in depth study already done on the possibility of women serving on a submarine that was included in a larger study done by the Navy to ascertain if the best possible use of submarine crew combinations were  being utilized. They even sent out a nuclear sub with an all female crew that had been specially trained for this study.

They didn’t last long.

Suffice it to say that locking up 90 or so women in a 290’ by 36’ equivalent of an underwater sewer tube became a recipe for disaster despite their training. They just simply could not get along. The other anomaly which no one expected was that the boat came back with the sanitary system that deals exclusively with the “heads” (bathrooms) completely bound up (not a good thing in regards to a submarine). The system simply wasn’t designed to deal with non-degradable items the size of a sanitary napkin. The entire system would have to be redesigned to accommodate these type of items. Perhaps they’ve found a cost effective way around this problem by now.

As a final note, a submarine environment by it’s very nature tends to be rather unhealthy. Cuts and scrapes don’t heal, colds and flu’s tend to last until the next port of call, occasional long periods of high CO2, toxic gas (never, ever deep fry scallops in anything but fresh oil) and other such atmospheric wonders that can occur despite the best in environmental controls can severely degrade the health of any submariner during their tour of sea duty unless things have drastically changed since my time—which I doubt.

I could go on but I won’t. There’s just too much—even to sum up.

So in risk of being labeled a male chauvinist, which I’m not, mixing genders on a nuclear powered submarine is not, in my experienced opinion, in the best interests of the US Navy.

Any dissenting opinions welcome.

Edit 01/02/09: Okay, I know, where’s the citations, references, etc to the above statements? I  finally had the time to sit down and do some serious searching and I’m posting the links to two PDF documents I’ve uploaded. One is a 2001 study of the medical implications of women serving on submarines and the other is a smaller report covering the late 90′s to early 2000′s of women serving on Victoria class submarines (diesel/electric) which are even smaller than our current fast attack subs at least in size and accommodations. Apparently they have a few female enlisted serving aboard subs already. These are obviously more recent documents than the one I mentioned and tends to contradict my own opinions in some ways and validates them in another but I’ve always believed in keeping an open mind about things. I haven’t had the time to everything these reports have to say of course but what I did see makes for some interesting reading.

US report–”Medical implications of women serving on submarines”

Canadian report of women serving on Victoria class submarines

Many thanks to Grandad. This absolutely horrendous, disjointed post is all his fault but he’ll probably blame it on K8.

And here we go….

I seem to be getting older these days. Not only am I getting older but it seems to be becoming a habit, a perpetual thing if you will. Knowing full well that it’s always a changing world out there, I began to feel that dreaded sensation of old(er) age that life was beginning to pass me by. I just didn’t seem to be attracted to all that new and interesting stuff out there. A mere 5 years ago, life at home was nothing like it is now and things like having a PC and being connected to the Internet hadn’t been part of my life for at least 4 years at that point. When I finally came to live with my honey in old Stove Pipe City, I was more than way behind as far as the old WWW was concerned and my disabilities from my time in the service had begun to take their toll. In short, my health was lousy.

But being a veteran of the Cold War, serving as one of those strange, stubborn, thickheaded, tenacious, twisted breeds of Navy men called submariners (who are always on the best bad behavior), it didn’t take too long to pick myself back up from the stresses of taking care of my folks, getting back to work and start building my life back up again. I even enrolled in the VA and let me tell you, life as a veteran hasn’t been the same since.

Even so, every night I still dreamed of the ocean mist in my face as I stood watch on the bridge of that submarine during the rare times we were surfaced, watching the reflections of the sky dancing on the surface of the water and thinking how beautiful the day was and of all the destruction those nuclear weapons we and other subs carried hidden from sight under the ocean could do to this world, erasing these beautiful days forever. One saving grace was that my boat was a “fast attack” and our job was to prevent just such a thing from happening…and we did.

We pause from this utterly disjointed, meandering post in order to change the subject entirely…

An oddball and an “off the subject” thing I might mention (so I can use up several tags at once) is that I was born in 1959 and this makes me one of those boomers. In fact a lot of these folks my age and up go around advertising this fact quite a lot lately and even more of the same age that hate the word boomer and spend a lot of time making sure everyone knows it. And strangely enough a lot of these folks have blogs out on the WWW. In fact, we have a regular blogging community having adventures in SEO, metrics systems advertising and spam protection using Akismet and Spam Karma. They’re blogging about the going green, clean energy, global warming, warm winters, the weather and hernias. A lot of them also have WordPress installs because they decided to “do it themselves” no less and these bloggers have learned all about wp plugins and the havoc a bad one can cause, upgrading from WordPress 2.1 to WordPress 2.2 to WordPress 2.3 and hacking their own themes. So who says you have to be young to do this?

I find these blogs to be the best reading around with a ton of great info and insight to be found. A regular digital democracy by jeezum!

I call these folks (and myself) BC Bloggers (Before Computers).

We now return you to more of the same boring nonsense as before…

So one morning, shortly before the holidays, while reading a new Yankee Magazine I found myself taking interest in my surroundings again and with a gift of a digital camera from my wonderful lady, my fascination with gadgets came flooding back. Another item I received also helped peak that fascination was my first set of hearing aids. One disability I ended up with from my time spent poking holes in the ocean was being deaf and since this particular form of deafness is self perpetuating, I began to realize that if I was going to hold down a job, I needed to be able to hear. Logical thinking on my part I thought.

By the way, do me a favor and don’t call me hearing impaired please. I’m deaf…period! Thank you very much.

And so came my first pair of hearing aids (complete with remote control no less) and life in general changed drastically–I now could hear the comments made behind my back. Made life at work a great deal more interesting for those so called friends of mine and their brilliant ideas. All of a sudden they found themselves on the business end of my subtle, dry, sarcastic wit and humor as I quietly stabbed them with their own misc nonsense.

Getting back to what I was saying…at home with the cats, I was just thinkin’ on how I just might finally want to get me that new computer so with hearing aids in my ears I began to peruse the local community at large to see if there was anywhere nearby where I might do this. Okay…there wasn’t. Up here in the Northeast Kingdom by the Canadian border where the local environment, the seasons and the amenities thereof hasn’t changed for the last 50-60 years, I decided the only way to get this new PC was to order it online. My lady was nice enough to let me use her computer to do so.

Too make an already too long post short…

Six months later, DSL finally came to our area (yup, 2004 and all we had was dial up) and with DSL…the blog was born and I was back in business with all my backwoods tech yearnings at full steam. Of course I started with a first post and quickly followed with a few misc posts but then went on to more specific subjects like absentmindedness, at which I excel, posts about space and science and basically ending up wandering all over the place with my various ramblings which entirely confused any readers that happened to stop by thus establishing my reputation as a complete knee biter. Google became my best friend and I even managed to take on a few blog projects put forth by Liz Strauss. I managed to survive them as well (just kidding Liz).

I wrote up posts about my lady’s Long Meadow Farms Quilts (her long time quilting business), quilts, quilting and stained glass. Just so you know, I test each new quilt that she makes by sleeping under it. Good God, I hope she doesn’t read this.

Things have slowed me down of course. I spent quite awhile at the VA hospital in Boston, MA for an endoscopy and surgery for instance and while I was there I spent the initial recovery wandering around as best I could, gazing out of the various windows at the grand vista that was Jamaica Plains…okay, maybe not exactly what one would call a vista but it was better than gazing at all the old farts like me laying in bed in various stages of decomposition. That can get to you after awhile so the hallways and various lounges were the places the hospital staff often found themselves searching after they finally noticed that I had been missing for a day and a half.

Once, while gazing out one of these windows, I noticed that part of the window had been cut out and had been replaced with one of those flat panel LCD TV’s that’s replacing the old CRT sets these days. There was a live interview with an author of some best selling book going on at the time and in my slightly drugged state I remember thinking that this author guy was a real windows live writer. I found out later on that some other author, in a fit of jealous rage, tried to burn down the poor guy’s home and although the local fire department was able to save most of his property, they said it was a real scribefire.

Amazing what you can learn in a hospital. Even more amazing what one will go through to get just three more tags taken care of for the sake of two extremely bad puns.

So there you have it. After starting 3 new sites and keeping one of them, through the 1st writings of nearly 15 years ago to finally publishing on my own blog, seeing my blog referenced in the news section of the online version of Time Magazine, through snow days, spring and Springfield….I’m finally done with this unbelievably horrendous, disjointed, discombobulated, post!

I may not exactly be the person of the year, but you can just call me the ultimate tag warrior! Now where’s my pogo stick?…I’m outta here!

Disclaimer: Of course a few of the tags and categories had the same name which means I really need to weed these things out and none of the tags/categories are necessarily related to the various horrendous, disjointed post subjects. And since I use these tags for my Related Posts feature I decided not to list all them at the bottom of this post for obvious reasons.

Oh yeah, and I simply could not find a way to use Firefox/Thunderbird and JT Evening News so I…wait minute, I guess I used them after all. Good deal!

Did I pass?

Update 11/15/07: It has been pointed out to me that I haven’t tagged anyone with this meme yet. This was strictly due to the fact that whatever brain cells I had left fried for good after I finished this horrible thing. In short, I had to take a few narcotics and pass out on the floor. But now it’s morning and it seems not all brain cells died in the fire of the moment and since my friend Cat stopped by to comment and had the audacity to state that she had over 100 categories and it would be too much hard work…after I managed to shoehorn over 100 tags and categories into the above post…consider yourself tagged Cat!

I also tag Elaine, Emma and Micki as well since I admire these ladies as writers and also because I haven’t given them any reason to harass me lately.

And yes…I was scrutinized by the originator of this meme, K8 and I did indeed pass. Almost makes it all worth it.

On October 15th, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind – the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic. Our aim is to get everyone talking towards a better future.

And here’s my small contribution to the cause:

Arctic Melt Opens Northwest Passage

Climate models had projected the passage would eventually open as warming temperatures melted the Arctic sea ice—but no one had predicted it would happen this soon.

“We’re probably 30 years ahead of schedule in terms of the loss of the Arctic sea ice,” said Mark Serreze, a senior scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado.

“We’re on this fast track of change.”

I’m looking up at a plaque that resides upon the wall above my computer desk. It’s a relatively bad relief of a nuclear Fast Attack sub surfaced at the north pole. The name of the sub is called the USS Silversides, one of the “stretch hull” versions of the Sturgeon class of nuclear powered fast attack boats that were the workhorse of the US Naval submarine force during the 70′s and 80′s, a very volatile time of the Cold War in it’s last two decades. On this plaque is inscribed “North Pole. On Top Of It all. ICEX 81. USS Silversides”.

What we were doing up there is irrelevant but the point of mentioning this at all is that we surveyed and plotted the underwater “ice-scape” of the Arctic ice pack surrounding the north pole for a hundred miles around and more and I can assure everyone, since I was the one who initially came up with the technique for effectively plotting this strange and extremely hazardous underwater ice field, that there were no kilometer wide open areas of water anywhere within several tens of miles surrounding the North Pole. My boat had to punch through over 4 feet of ice (a “thin” spot…for a sub that is) just to gain the surface.

Now, 26 years later we have this:

(Photo source: National Geographic News)

North Pole, July 20, 2007? For most of us, swimming a kilometer (0.62 miles) in under 19 minutes is a lofty, if not impossible, goal. But swimming in below freezing water?

When British endurance swimmer and adventurer Lewis Gordon Pugh dove into the icy waters of the North Pole on Sunday, he had two goals in mind: become the first person to swim in the North Pole, and draw attention to global warming. And that’s just what he did.

Gordon swam one kilometer in 18 minutes and 50 seconds in temperatures of minus 1.8 degree Celsius (28.7 degrees Fahrenheit), ?the coldest water ever swum in.

“I hope my swim will inspire world leaders to take climate change seriously. The decisions which they make over the next few years will determine the biodiversity of our world,? Pugh told the world media after emerging from his icy dip.

Pugh, who swam in a water hole once covered by thick polar ice, said “I am obviously ecstatic to have succeeded, but this swim is a triumph and a tragedy: a triumph that I could swim in such ferocious conditions but a tragedy that it’s possible to swim at the North Pole. ”

Source: National Geographic News Photo Gallery: Week in Photos: Space Geysers, ”Fossil Fish,” More

Whether by some natural cycle of things, man-made or more than likely; a combination of both, global warming is very real and from the point of the general population, it’s not trying to slow the process down or attempt to reverse it that matters. For the average human on this globe, it’s preparing for what may turn out to be a major climatic shift. And not just for ourselves but much more importantly, preparing our children and grandchildren who will have to live in what may turn out to be a very different world than the one we know now.

Even if global warming doesn’t turn out to be as severe as some predict for the long run, we need to instill the idea into our children that it is our responsibility to take care of this world we call home and not to interfere in it’s natural processes by polluting it’s biosphere with the waste products of our apathy. This is our home and the home of countless other species as well and we, the people, are the ones who can make our world a safe haven for all life forms on this planet or we can be the ones to ruin it.

A short, cold swim for a man, a great decision for mankind. Let’s hope we choose wisely.

Technorati tags: Blog Action Day, Global warming, north pole, submarines, submariners, Cold war, USS Silversides, Lewis Gordon Pugh, northwest passage

To the crew who lost their shipmates and families who lost their sons under the sea, my heart felt condolences and understanding go out to you. My thoughts are with you during this trying time.

From one who knows,

Kirk M. Blanchard, FTG1/SS, USS Silversides/SSN 679–On board: 1979-1983

Technorati Tags: HMS Tireless, submarines, submariners

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New recruit: “I want to join the submarine force”

Old Timer: “What…Are you crazy?”

New recruit: “Yup!”

Old Timer: “That’s just fine then, sign here.”

Just like that.

I don’t believe any one of us came away clean and most of us like myself, are dealing with the aftereffects of that strange and exciting life. Hence all my trips down to the VA Medical Facility in White River Jct, VT. A trip that runs about two hours down highway 91 that travels over the backs and through the valleys of some rather large mountains and hills and down into the Connecticut River Valley. Not exactly around the corner you might say but when one lives in an area where company provided health insurance is a rare thing indeed, I really can’t complain considering my general health these days.

So what, you may ask, is wrong with me? Besides the fact that the Addams Family is one of my favorite movies that is.

Well, without getting too terribly into details here—I have an injured back, a previously ulcerated esophagus (which abruptly ended my Naval career) that is currently giving me the hee-bee jee-bees and I’m legally deaf. There could be other things wrong as well but due to the latter of the three maladies, I probably couldn’t hear them when they told me about it so everything’s alright there.

Unfortunately I had no choice but to hear what my Primary Care Physician from the VA told me on the phone the other day. You see, I tend to keep the volume on my desk phone cranked right up there so I can listen to the exotic accents of various telemarketers that call during the day when these assorted maladies keep me out of work. That way I know what nationality I’m hanging up on or at least make a good guess. So I heard what my dear doctor informed me of loud and clear and I have to admit, much to my surprise as well.

He informed me that I had type II Diabetes.

Well now. Isn’t that odd.

So upon hearing this wonderful news, I climbed up on my virtual horse and galloped off into the virtual world in search of any information regarding this brand new malady that I supposedly have. After some initial searching about I gathered up some basics starting with what kind of qualities a person must exhibit in order to acquire this particular state of medical quandary.

Only two really stood out:

Being overweight and rather inactive in nature.

Hmmm, I thought but being rather deaf I found I couldn’t hear myself think so I stopped thinking all together which was quite a relief since I didn’t like the way I was thinking anyway.

What it comes down to is this:

• I’m around 5 feet, 11 inches in height.
• I weigh approximately 150 pounds soaking wet.
• My eating habits are moderate meaning….
• I don’t pig out on sweets. I hardly eat sweets at all.
• I don’t drown myself in pasta.
• I have perhaps one can of non-diet soda per day.
• I have one to two cups of coffee a day with a bit of sugar.
• And my honey keeps me well fed at supper and all her meals are well balanced. I can’t say the same for her husband though. Oh wait…that’s me.
• My family (on my mother’s side) has always had to deal with low blood sugar. Go figure.
• And my wife has all she can do to keep me from doing too much.

Obviously I’m a prime type II candidate. Anyone can see that I’m sure.

Now, I’ve always beaten my own very unique path through life but in my opinion this is a just a bit too unique for my taste. I would have happily just settled for being very different than everybody else even to the point of having others thinking me weird (as they often do much to my delight) with no need to pursue my differments any further than they already were but life has apparently taken notice once again and laid down before me another puzzlement to figure out.

Referring back to the first paragraph of this sordid tale, I really don’t believe that spending twelve excellent years in the Untied States Naval Submarine Force had anything to do with this latest adventure in diseases and maladies of the body but what we went through during those years were known to age a man an average of 5 years for every 1 year on board a submarine (fact…from a study run by the powers that be since WWII) which puts me approximately at the ripe old age of 73 and anything can happen at that age don’t you think?

Either way I think the whole thing is bunk which is why I’m calling for whatever test is necessary to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I do indeed have Type II Diabetes. If I don’t…fine and dandy. However, if I actually do—then I’ll have a new gadget to play with and a new mystery to solve even though I probably could have done without it thank you very much.

The majority of those who applied to the submarine force never made it even close to walking up the brow of their first boat. It was a long tough screening for an even tougher experience and once you made it (even though it was a strictly voluntary type service, getting in or getting out) no one ever quit and it’s still the same now. Life is for living, not quitting because things get a little tougher.

And so I’ll screw on my ball cap a little tighter for fear of my head floating off and it’s off to another grand adventure. Well, it might not be so grand but I’m sure it will be an adventure. My father’s side of the family is notoriously long lived and had a bad habit of walking around and bothering the neighbors years after their respective hearts stopped beating so I’m positive that I have plenty of time to deal with this as well. I do take after that side of the family you know.

Of course if the diagnosis proves wrong I’ll try not to complain about it too much.

Technorati Tags: health, diabetes, submarines, cold war, veterens

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