I decided to join the Navy over the course of just a few days, in early October of 1975. I needed a place to go. Someplace out of the rain. Where they'd feed me regularly. Someplace where they didn't ask too many questions. About how much I drank every day. About what I had been doing for the last few years. The Navy fit the bill. I got a 3X6 enlistment. 3 years active duty and 3 years active reserve. In return, I got a guaranteed Quartermaster A school and the Opportunity to try and make it through sub school. Also, on completion of A school, I got a guaranteed advancement to PO3. I could have just signed up for 2 years active duty, with no guarantee of anything. What I got seemed like a good deal at the time. I never regretted that deal. Sometimes I wondered why I enlisted at all. Living on the street wasn't all that bad and something might have come up.
The training took about 6 months. I reported to the boat in the Spring of '76. Seems to me it was about the middle of March. That gave me 2 1/2 years to experience Submarine life. It seemed like more than enough time. Turns out, it was.
The term coner wasn't in general use at that time. This is what nuclear trained personnel call non nuclear trained personnel on submarines because those not nuclear trained go about their business and have berthing spaces forward of the reactor compartment. I don't think the rift between nucs and non nucs was as pronounced at that time as it later became or as it is now. The nuclear submarine culture was still developing, for one thing. For another, most of the really senior enlisted on nuclear subs were, at that time, still old diesel boat veterans. They were a proud bunch. Also mean, unstable and prone to violence if they felt they were being maligned or slighted in any way, while nuclear technicians, with some notable exceptions, tend to be geekish weenies who listen to their officers as far as physical violence is concerned and in truth, have no real stomach for it. I don't have any stomach for it myself and if you gang up with the sock and soap on some guy that turns out to be the butt boy of some high strung JO, bad things can happen. Still, things were different then. We all made an effort to get along.
I don't want to slight Navy trained nuclear technicians. They go through long, intensive training before they get to a sub. The attrition rate is significant. They work them like dogs, both in port and at sea, under the most junior of officers, who themselves live in a constant state of high stress, during their first rotation at sea. Advancement for junior nucs has little to do with performance but rather how many years you are willing to extend or re enlist for. They make more money than stupid coners but it's a shitty life.
Nucs sign up for 6 years. To get more training and early advancement in rate, as well as a monetary bonus, many nucs extend for 2 additional years after completing the initial didactic training. After 6 years in and still with 2 more to go, they are pressured to re enlist for the full second 6 years. 12 years is a large chunk out of a young man's life. About that time a lot of these guys have married and had a kid or 2. The guaranteed advancement and bonus money look good, especially since they have already obligated themselves for the first 2 years of the second 6 year hitch. After they do it and the bonus money is as gone as the guys they went through training with who never extended, they can get pretty depressed. Too late then.
I always wondered, from my vantage point in the cone, with only a couple years to serve, why the nucs looking at 12 total, working like dogs at jobs they hated, thought they were so much fucking smarter than me. I guess it's all in the way you look at it. I had a pretty good time in the Navy. It wasn't so long. I never thought I was a stupid, useless coner.
6 comments:
My son's a nuke. He says basically the same thing you did here. I think the coner/nuke thing is something the men do to try to stay sane. Everybody needs to feel like they made a smart move.
My son is a coner and I'm damn glad of it because as a Nuke Officer, I know the hell that nukes endure day in and day out. As a coner he will finish his quals quickly and live the life of leasure that no nuke can even dream of during those inport steaming watches or 0400 start ups. The boy was smart enough to be a nuke, but at the last minute opted for sanity (at less money of course).
My first boat sucked for nukes, but it also sucked for coners. My second boat was great for nukes and it was great for coners. I was prepared to get out at the end of six years based on my experience on my first boat, which we decommissioned. My second boat changed my mind and I stayed in, even though I lost a good chunk of change by reenlisting between the 4 and 6 year point rather than before the four year point (lost two years worth of SRB).
In the end, I stayed in until I retired. The quality of life at my subsequent commands was better than my first boat but not as good as my second boat.
It seems to me that the relationship between nukes and coners is kind of like the relationship between two brothers, both of whom are convinved the other brother is getting treated better by their parents. When it is important, they remember that they are brothers and that is what counts.
Of course, there are always a few hard core cases on both sides that don't seem to understand that they are all in the same boat.
I traveled a twisted path in the O gangers navy. I came to the conclusion that if I had a CO Like I had my first tour that I would commit suicide.
So I got out after I had my six years in.
To flesh out my comment a little.
The nuke pipeline for officers was difficult, but nobody in my year group that I know of washed out. There was one guy in sub school who couldn't pass the red/green eye test, and another who couldn't clear his ears in the diving tower and had to go nuke surface.
Being a nuke officer was hard, but no less hard than being an enlisted.
After I qualified on the USTAFISH, I stood a qual board for a nuke ET2 reactor operator.
HE KNEW EVERYTHING. My question to the qual board was, "Give me a reason why we shouldn't award him the dolphins?"
After doing three years on a boat, I thought it was tough all the way around. I have respect for anyone who does it and continues to do it. I was an orficer, so I never caught up in the cone vs. nuke thing, but as the first commenter noted, I believe it's just a way to pass the time.
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