Unrep (Pt. I)

I have hesitated for a long time in writing about underway replenishment. For I was mostly an engineer. I'd sit either in Main Control or in the Oil & Water Lab and monitor the progress of refueling. If the ship wasn't taking on fuel, then I'd normally be in Main Control to keep an eye on the plant. There were a few times as an ensign that I was technically "officer in charge" of the forward refueling station, but make no mistake about it: The Second Class Bosun's Mate ran it. My job was to look for safety violations, like someone stepping into the bight of a line.

So I don't know a whole hell of a lot about Unrep. The blogger over at Chaotic Synaptic Activity served aboard an unrep ship. What to me was a weekly or so affair for fuel and monthly for supplies was what he did.

So first, let's talk about supplies.

In port, in the US, supply was more or less a constant thing. If you really needed something, you could walk a chit though at the local supply center.

If the ship was deployed, then all but the most critical parts came on a monthly basis. Sometimes, it came in port. There would be a series of trucks showing up at the pier. An "all hands" working party would be called away to unload them and then pass the supplies from the trucks, up the gangway, through the ship and down into the storerooms. The Supply Officer and his chiefs acted as traffic directors. Department Heads and the XO were safety observers. Everyone else who was not on watch, including chiefs and junior officers, were in the working party. it took several hours.

In-port resupplies of that magnitude were rare. All of the goods had to be brought by a supply ship to another pier or port and offloaded into trucks. There were, understandably, security concerns that ranged from basic theft to terrorism. In foreign ports, the trucks had to be guarded for customs reasons. Both the Navy and the country where the resupply was taking place pretended that the trucks were never in the country.

And it was a pain in the ass. In a foreign port, where the idea was to try and get time of to see the sights (or get drunk and/or laid), nobody wanted to spend a precious day in port humping truckloads of supplies.

The vast majority of monthly resupply evolutions were done at sea.

Sub Sunk- Plus 55 Years

55 years ago today, the USS Thresher (SSN-593) was lost. She was the lead ship of her class, which was renamed the Permit class.

The loss of the Thresher uncovered a number of problems with quality control and submarine construction methods. They weren't so much of an issue during the war, but the then-new nuclear submarines could dive about a thousand feet deeper than the American submarines built during the war.

The procedures for constructing and QCing submarines was radically changed with the development and implementation of the SUBSAFE program. No SUBSAFE-certified submarine has been lost, as of today. (USS Scorpion was built before the loss of the Thresher )