Mail Call (2002–…): Season 4, Episode 11 - Paratrooper Jump Gear/Weapons/Communications/Medical Gear - full transcript
Sit up, pipe down,
and pay attention.
It's time for "Mail Call."
Welcome to "Mail Call."
I got a boatload of emails asking me
what it's like to live aboard an attack submarine.
Well, we're some place in the Pacific Ocean way
up high on the sail of the USS Salt Lake City.
Oorah.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): A fast attack submarine is definitely
the badass of the ocean.
Since she was already at sea, I caught a tugboat ride out
to meet the Salt Lake City.
Permission to come aboard.
Permission granted, Gunny.
Semper fi.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): It's a real thrill
to meet the sailors of the old SSN-716
because it takes a special kind of person
to love this kind of duty.
And I couldn't wait to get inside and have a look around.
This type of boat is called a Los Angeles class fast
attack sub.
There's only three decks, but every one
is packed with the coolest gear you've ever seen.
Captain Tracy Howard and his crew
welcomed me aboard to spend a day
in the life of a submariner.
Skipper, what is the mission of the fast attack submarine?
We can do anything from launching Tomahawk cruise
missiles to strike land targets, to taking on surface
or submerged contacts that we may need to engage in wartime,
to simple intelligence gathering to support a carrier battle
group or strike group that maybe comes into the area.
We can deploy special warfare forces, SEAL forces.
We can also, in some cases, do mined warfare.
So it's a wide variety of missions
that we're capable of conducting.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): Think of the crew of the Salt Lake
City as the utility hitters of the Navy fleet,
ready for anything in combat, support, or reconnaissance.
They are the silent warriors of the sea.
And Jim in Raymond, New Hampshire,
wants to know how long subs have been battle assets.
Well, the first submarine in combat was the American Turtle,
but its 1776 mission to plant a bomb on a British ship
was a bust.
Civil war subs didn't do much better.
The Union Alligator and the Confederate Hunley both sank.
It wouldn't be until 1900 when the USS Holland became
the first true submarine commissioned into the US Navy.
The builder was James P. Holland.
He was considered the father of the submarine, and the company
he founded--
Electric Boat-- still builds America's subs
including the one we're on today, the USS Salt Lake City.
How far down we going to go today, Skipper?
Well, my favorite depth to go to is 716 feet,
because this is the SSN-716, but we can go down to 800 feet.
We'll probably take you down there
and show you what it looks like and what
it feels like to be that deep.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): So enough chit chat.
Let's get down to work, and I do mean down
to the nerve center of the whole shebang, the control room.
That's the heart of the submarine.
Off the deck, last man down, hatch secured, bridge rigged
for dive.
Very well.
This is the conn, the control room of the ship.
They're going to let me give the command to dive.
Watch these guys spring into action.
Dive, submerge the ship.
Submerge the ship, dive high.
Two to the watch on the 1MC, dive, dive.
Two blasts of the dive alarm, dive, dive.
Over to 1MC, dive, dive, two blasts of the dive alarm,
dive, dive, aye.
Dive, dive.
[alarm sounds]
Dive, dive.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): All right,
they didn't exactly spring, but that's 'cause
every inch of this boat is dedicated space.
Technology is numero uno, and privacy is a distant second,
so we're packed in like sardines.
Quarterback--
All vents open.
SAILOR: All vents open.
SAILOR: Ready, forward.
SAILOR: 37.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): And now
that we're diving, I can answer an email from Eddie in Tucson,
Arizona, who wants to know how does a submarine dive?
Now I ain't no nautical engineer Eddie,
but basically, a sub works a lot like an airplane.
See those wings on the conning tower?
Well, they're called planes, and the crew
uses them to move the boat up and down, sort
of like an airplane pilot does.
But this is water, not air.
So as the sub dives, valves and vents
are opened in the ballast tanks to let in seawater.
When it gets to the depth that the captain wants,
they close the vents.
That way the boat weighs the same as the water around it
and the Salt Lake City can fly underwater.
Now after I gave the command to dive, here we go.
We going down.
We blow the ballast.
We go down.
You were saying that we stop at 150 feet.
What's going on with that?
What we do is at 150 feet, we can kind of
stop and make sure all of the systems and the submarine
are in a stable state and are safe.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): If there's one sailor on this boat
who knows it all, it's a COP.
That stands for Chief of the Boat.
Master Chief Schell is the senior enlisted man on board,
so I figure he's the guy to answer an email from Brian
in Detroit, Michigan.
Brian wants to know how deep can a nuclear sub go?
Now I notice also on the console
that we've got a couple of, I believe that's the depth
gauges, isn't it?
Why are they covered up?
Well, we don't like to let everybody
know how deep the submarine can go.
We like to keep that quiet.
Oh, I see, so it's classified information.
It is classified information.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): But we do
know it can go at least 800 feet, which is our target depth
today.
Here are the guys who drive it.
The chief of the watch communicates
with the rest of the crew.
The fair water planesman makes the boat go up and down,
and the stern planesman keeps the boat level as she descends.
Now a lot of you out there seem to think
that a sub has windows.
How else could they see?
I thought my viewers were smarter than that.
It's called sonar, people, short for "sound, navigation,
and ranging."
Since sound carries a lot better underwater
than in the open air, subs use highly sensitive microphones
to listen for obstructions and other vessels.
Basically sonar's the eyes and ears of the submarine.
Tell you the truth, everything on every screen
here looks like a bunch of squiggly nothings to me.
Well, because of all the squiggly lines,
those are actually noise spokes that we can look and listen to
and by listening to them and getting
the different information from the contacts,
we can tell what they are.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): Sonar operates in two modes,
active and passive.
Most of the time the Salt Lake City
uses her passive sonar, which means that she's just
listening.
Active sonar is when a sound is generated from the sub, called
a ping.
The time it takes for the echo of that ping to bounce off
the target and return to the sub gives the crew
all the information it needs, like heading,
speed, and depth if it's another submarine.
Wow, lot of moving parts on a submarine.
If you want to get your meat hooks on any of these bells
and whistles, you're going to have to enlist.
If not, stick with me.
We've got a lot more coming up.
Oorah.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): I'm 800 feet under the Pacific
with the crew of the USS Salt Lake City.
135 sailors call this nuclear-powered submarine home
for up to six months at a time.
And if you have a hankering for some sunshine
and wide open spaces, don't even think about signing on here.
You might not see daylight for as long as 26 weeks,
and your rack's going to take up less room than the torpedo
that you're sleeping on top up.
And speaking of torpedoes, Maurice in Palos Verdes,
California, shot me an email asking what kind of weapons
are on a fast attack submarine?
What puts the attack in attack submarine?
You're looking at it, this baby right here.
Ain't it a beaut?
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): This is the Mark 48 ADCAP torpedo,
and the USS Salt Lake City starts out
every deployment with more of these than any other weapon.
The ADCAP, which stands for "advanced capability,"
was introduced in the late 1980s as a response
to the extremely fast Soviet Alfa-class sub.
Clear.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): Petty Officer Herrera
had been on board the Salt Lake City for five years,
and he knows a lot about how to blow stuff up
with these little honies.
Can you guide this torpedo to the target from the boat,
or does it just go to the target?
No, it is a wire-guided weapon.
We can actually send signals to the weapon and have it turn.
The torpedoes use both active and passive sonars.
Passive is the first to acquire it.
After it's acquired its target, it will go active.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): The Mark 48 torpedo is massive.
At 19 feet long and 3,500 pounds,
it can still travel over 30 miles an hour
and destroy a target more than five miles away.
And it doesn't do it with a direct hit
like you might think.
The Mark 48 explodes a few feet under the keel of the enemy
ship.
The pressure from the explosion literally
breaks the back of the target.
How big of a target can this destroy?
Most of your small boys, your DDDs or frigates,
ships of that size, 300, 400 feet long.
No problem.
Aircraft carrier might take a few.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): The Mark 48
ADCAP torpedo is one of the newest in the fleet.
But I got an email from John in Puyallup, Washington,
asking what was the first torpedo fired from a sub?
Well, back in 1866, Englishman Robert Whitehead
produced something called the automobile torpedo.
And pretty soon after, Europe's navy
started experimenting with firing them from a submarine.
But it was the Turkish navy that got off
the first launch in 1886 from their sub the Nordenfelt II.
Unfortunately, the recoil from that torpedo sank the sub.
So if we're talking successful torpedo launch,
it was the French Navy that torpedoed a moving battleship
in 1901.
After that, navies caught on pretty quick.
And by the time the Americans got their meat hooks
into the torpedo game, we knew we were on to something good.
And with every successive war, we've
made dramatic improvements in what these babies can do.
The Salt Lake City has four compressed air tubes,
all forward at the bow because our attack subs
don't run from anyone.
Since each Mark 48 torpedo costs around $4 million,
the crew filled one of the empty tubes
with water so I could get a feel for what
it was like to push the button that launches the real thing.
Just hold them there.
Now you're flooding down that torpedo tube.
That noise that I hear is water coming in.
Water coming into the torpedo tube.
All right, torpedo 2 is now flooded down and equalized?
We're going to open our ejection front door.
Select the eject mode which will tell the entire system
that we're going to eject the weapon out.
So like a mine, it would swim out by itself.
Now we'll open our muzzle door, which you'll see the shaft move
over there.
OK.
Now that opens the door on the outside?
That opens your outside muzzle door, yes.
All right, Gunny, whenever you're ready,
go ahead and shoot the tube. - OK.
Shooting the water slug.
3, 2, 1, shoot.
Let it go.
[alarm sounds]
[water rushes]
Hear that?
I think it got something.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): It's basically a big squirt gun that
shoots whatever you put in the tube.
And when a torpedo won't get the job done,
the USS Salt Lake City also has a handy supply
of Tomahawk cruise missiles.
These bad boys have 1,000-mile range,
and enough firepower to destroy just about anything,
depending on what kind of warhead it's got going.
Does an attack submarine carry nuclear weapons?
I can neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons
aboard this submarine, but we do have the capabilities
of carrying them.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): The Salt Lake City
fires all of her weapons from the tubes.
But the newer subs-- starting with the USS Providence--
also have vertical launching systems.
That way, you can fire torpedoes and a salvo of missiles
at the same time, making our boats more lethal.
What other weapons do we have onboard that boat?
Other weapons on board, we carry the UGM-84,
which is your harpoon, as well as your Mark 67 mine.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): Weapons aren't the whole story
on this sub.
One of the Salt Lake City's more secret missions
is to insert and extract SEAL teams.
One of their favorite toys is the SEAL delivery vehicle.
Mounted on the back of the sub, the SDV
gives SEALS a global reach.
Back in the conn, the boys wanted
to show me that their sub is tough, but agile too.
So they went through some evasive maneuver drills.
This is what they call angles and dangles.
And if a guy was going to lose his lunch,
I would think this would probably
be the appropriate time, 'cause we're coming up right now
at about 25-degree angle, amazing stuff, and moving,
I don't know, probably 20 knots or so, coming right up.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): Underwater,
a sub moves a lot like a plane, and if you don't brace yourself
like these guys do, you'll end up with a dent in your coconut.
Gunny, right now we're doing a high-speed turn.
We're simulating what we may do if we were trying
to evade a torpedo.
We're using a large rudder and high speeds,
causing the ship to bank through the turn
and also we'll start to dive.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): And what keeps the whole shebang
running underwater 24/7?
Well, the heart of the sub is its nuclear reactor,
and that's where I'm headed next.
Here I am in the machine room of the USS Salt Lake City.
All I can say is, we have come a long way from bicycle pedals.
Wonder what this does?
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): It takes a lot of high technology
and heavy metal to keep the USS Salt Lake
City down and running.
And when I say heavy metal, I mean heavy.
We're talking uranium, baby, cause this sub runs
on nuclear power that's generated
in a highly-secure clean room deep
in the bowels of the submarine.
A lot of secret places on this boat, I've got to tell you.
Nuclear reactor, yeah.
Hey Gunny, how you doin'?
How you doin', sailor?
Don't 'spose me and the boys could get in there
and have a peek, do you?
No, I can't, security area.
Well then, could you just tell us what's in there?
I can't do that either.
New "Mail Call" coin.
Very rare.
Not many of these floating around.
How much is that ring worth?
Well, ring, not for sale.
All right, I'll keep this.
Hey, hey, hey sailor.
Sailor!
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): On board the USS Salt Lake City,
the head honcho--
when it comes to nuclear propulsion systems--
is the chief engineer.
Now sir, you're the engineer, the big kahuna that
runs this engineering section.
How does this-- see, what's the sequence of events that
makes this boat really go?
Navy nuclear power is based on what
we call a pressurized water reactor system.
It has basically two loops-- a primary loop
and a secondary loop.
In the primary system, you have the reactor core.
Water flows through the core.
As fission occurs, that heats up that water.
That water is then carried to a steam generator.
That steam is then used to turn the main engines, which
are basically steam turbines, and also the turbine
generators, which are used to generate electricity
for the boat.
How often do we have to refuel a nuclear reactor
on a submarine?
Well, that's the beauty of it.
Our newest nuclear submarines in the Navy,
the Virginia-class submarines, has a reactor core
that's designed to last the entire life of the ship.
And I understand that the core on this one
is designed to last about 20 years.
Right.
We've been commissioned on the same core since the early '80s.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): When did submarines
start going nuclear?
Well now, that's the question from Rick in Atlanta.
Well, up until 1955, subs like this one
ran on diesel fuel on the surface, and on battery power
when they were submerged.
But when you ran out of gas to recharge those batteries,
you were sunk.
Back in 1948, Admiral Hyman Rickover changed all that.
He dreamed up the idea of a ship that would never need gas
and designed the first nuclear reactor for the Navy.
A submarine seemed to be the perfect test platform
for the new system, and in 1954, the Navy's
first nuclear powered vessel was born,
and the Nautilus became reality.
Today, the United States Navy has over 70
nuclear-powered subs.
But just like their old granddads,
subs today depend on banks of batteries located deep
in the engineering spaces.
They store the power needed to operate all of the technology
packed inside.
Some of that technology is located right here,
and believe me when I tell you without these gizmos,
the Salt Lake City's crew would be dead in the water.
This is where they make oxygen. And Jack in Reno, Nevada,
wants to know how they do it.
We've been told and we understand
that you can go under the polar ice cap
and you can stay there for months.
You don't have to surface for air.
You have to surface for fresh water.
How does that work?
We can make our own oxygen. Water is made up of hydrogen
and oxygen, and what we do is we,
you know, basically rip apart the hydrogen and oxygen
and we keep the oxygen in which we can then put back
to the ventilation system, and then we, you know,
get rid of the hydrogen. And so we're constantly revitalizing
the atmospheres on the ship.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): And they use the same system
to make fresh water.
We take salt water, boil it off, turn it to steam,
then recondense the steam back into pure water.
And that's your drinking water and the whole works.
Drinking water, water we cook with, water we take showers
with, everything.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): It's been
50 years since the Nautilus first sailed and Commander
Cooper and his team continue the tradition of excellence
in naval engineering.
Our last question comes from Yancey out of Spokane,
Washington.
Yancey wants to know what kind of chow
do you get in the silent service?
Well, since submariners give up sunlight and fresh air
for months at a time, the Navy thinks that's worth
an extra prime rib or two.
So it's not surprising that submariners get the best chow
in the Navy.
But here on the Salt Lake City, they go even one better.
The Pacific fleet holds a competition every year
to find out which command has the best mess.
And this sub is the reigning champ.
When you look inside the kitchen,
it's smaller than the one in most homes,
but this is one place where size doesn't matter.
The culinary specialists on this boat make magic in the mess
just to keep morale up for those long lonely patrols.
When a boat like the Salt Lake City gets underway,
she's loaded to the gills with supplies, stacked
in the passageways, lockers, and every nook and cranny.
The boat gets even smaller.
In fact, food is the only limit to the length of time
a crew can stay submerged.
When chow time approaches, the smell of the grill
fills the whole ship.
The waiting in the chow line--
only being able to go in three at a time--
demonstrates how small this boat really is.
Hi, Chief.
I've been waiting for this all day.
Do you really think this is the best chow in the military?
Best in all the military.
I don't know.
The Marine Corps feeds its troops pretty doggone good,
you know.
Wow.
My compliments to the chef.
Semper fi.
Carry on.
Welcome to email.
OK, I want to get the Atlantic in anyway.
I want to get the Pacific in anyway.
MAN: It'll be a long day.
This is really something.
MAN: Don't hold on, Gunny.
This is amazing.
I got to hold on.
What do you mean, don't hold on?
I'll be pulled out of the damn shot.
It's time for "Mail Call."
Welcome to "Mail Call."
I got a boatload of emails asking me
what it's like to live aboard an attack submarine.
Well, we're some place in the Pacific Ocean way
up high on the sail of the USS Salt Lake City.
Oorah.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): A fast attack submarine is definitely
the badass of the ocean.
Since she was already at sea, I caught a tugboat ride out
to meet the Salt Lake City.
Permission to come aboard.
Permission granted, Gunny.
Semper fi.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): It's a real thrill
to meet the sailors of the old SSN-716
because it takes a special kind of person
to love this kind of duty.
And I couldn't wait to get inside and have a look around.
This type of boat is called a Los Angeles class fast
attack sub.
There's only three decks, but every one
is packed with the coolest gear you've ever seen.
Captain Tracy Howard and his crew
welcomed me aboard to spend a day
in the life of a submariner.
Skipper, what is the mission of the fast attack submarine?
We can do anything from launching Tomahawk cruise
missiles to strike land targets, to taking on surface
or submerged contacts that we may need to engage in wartime,
to simple intelligence gathering to support a carrier battle
group or strike group that maybe comes into the area.
We can deploy special warfare forces, SEAL forces.
We can also, in some cases, do mined warfare.
So it's a wide variety of missions
that we're capable of conducting.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): Think of the crew of the Salt Lake
City as the utility hitters of the Navy fleet,
ready for anything in combat, support, or reconnaissance.
They are the silent warriors of the sea.
And Jim in Raymond, New Hampshire,
wants to know how long subs have been battle assets.
Well, the first submarine in combat was the American Turtle,
but its 1776 mission to plant a bomb on a British ship
was a bust.
Civil war subs didn't do much better.
The Union Alligator and the Confederate Hunley both sank.
It wouldn't be until 1900 when the USS Holland became
the first true submarine commissioned into the US Navy.
The builder was James P. Holland.
He was considered the father of the submarine, and the company
he founded--
Electric Boat-- still builds America's subs
including the one we're on today, the USS Salt Lake City.
How far down we going to go today, Skipper?
Well, my favorite depth to go to is 716 feet,
because this is the SSN-716, but we can go down to 800 feet.
We'll probably take you down there
and show you what it looks like and what
it feels like to be that deep.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): So enough chit chat.
Let's get down to work, and I do mean down
to the nerve center of the whole shebang, the control room.
That's the heart of the submarine.
Off the deck, last man down, hatch secured, bridge rigged
for dive.
Very well.
This is the conn, the control room of the ship.
They're going to let me give the command to dive.
Watch these guys spring into action.
Dive, submerge the ship.
Submerge the ship, dive high.
Two to the watch on the 1MC, dive, dive.
Two blasts of the dive alarm, dive, dive.
Over to 1MC, dive, dive, two blasts of the dive alarm,
dive, dive, aye.
Dive, dive.
[alarm sounds]
Dive, dive.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): All right,
they didn't exactly spring, but that's 'cause
every inch of this boat is dedicated space.
Technology is numero uno, and privacy is a distant second,
so we're packed in like sardines.
Quarterback--
All vents open.
SAILOR: All vents open.
SAILOR: Ready, forward.
SAILOR: 37.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): And now
that we're diving, I can answer an email from Eddie in Tucson,
Arizona, who wants to know how does a submarine dive?
Now I ain't no nautical engineer Eddie,
but basically, a sub works a lot like an airplane.
See those wings on the conning tower?
Well, they're called planes, and the crew
uses them to move the boat up and down, sort
of like an airplane pilot does.
But this is water, not air.
So as the sub dives, valves and vents
are opened in the ballast tanks to let in seawater.
When it gets to the depth that the captain wants,
they close the vents.
That way the boat weighs the same as the water around it
and the Salt Lake City can fly underwater.
Now after I gave the command to dive, here we go.
We going down.
We blow the ballast.
We go down.
You were saying that we stop at 150 feet.
What's going on with that?
What we do is at 150 feet, we can kind of
stop and make sure all of the systems and the submarine
are in a stable state and are safe.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): If there's one sailor on this boat
who knows it all, it's a COP.
That stands for Chief of the Boat.
Master Chief Schell is the senior enlisted man on board,
so I figure he's the guy to answer an email from Brian
in Detroit, Michigan.
Brian wants to know how deep can a nuclear sub go?
Now I notice also on the console
that we've got a couple of, I believe that's the depth
gauges, isn't it?
Why are they covered up?
Well, we don't like to let everybody
know how deep the submarine can go.
We like to keep that quiet.
Oh, I see, so it's classified information.
It is classified information.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): But we do
know it can go at least 800 feet, which is our target depth
today.
Here are the guys who drive it.
The chief of the watch communicates
with the rest of the crew.
The fair water planesman makes the boat go up and down,
and the stern planesman keeps the boat level as she descends.
Now a lot of you out there seem to think
that a sub has windows.
How else could they see?
I thought my viewers were smarter than that.
It's called sonar, people, short for "sound, navigation,
and ranging."
Since sound carries a lot better underwater
than in the open air, subs use highly sensitive microphones
to listen for obstructions and other vessels.
Basically sonar's the eyes and ears of the submarine.
Tell you the truth, everything on every screen
here looks like a bunch of squiggly nothings to me.
Well, because of all the squiggly lines,
those are actually noise spokes that we can look and listen to
and by listening to them and getting
the different information from the contacts,
we can tell what they are.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): Sonar operates in two modes,
active and passive.
Most of the time the Salt Lake City
uses her passive sonar, which means that she's just
listening.
Active sonar is when a sound is generated from the sub, called
a ping.
The time it takes for the echo of that ping to bounce off
the target and return to the sub gives the crew
all the information it needs, like heading,
speed, and depth if it's another submarine.
Wow, lot of moving parts on a submarine.
If you want to get your meat hooks on any of these bells
and whistles, you're going to have to enlist.
If not, stick with me.
We've got a lot more coming up.
Oorah.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): I'm 800 feet under the Pacific
with the crew of the USS Salt Lake City.
135 sailors call this nuclear-powered submarine home
for up to six months at a time.
And if you have a hankering for some sunshine
and wide open spaces, don't even think about signing on here.
You might not see daylight for as long as 26 weeks,
and your rack's going to take up less room than the torpedo
that you're sleeping on top up.
And speaking of torpedoes, Maurice in Palos Verdes,
California, shot me an email asking what kind of weapons
are on a fast attack submarine?
What puts the attack in attack submarine?
You're looking at it, this baby right here.
Ain't it a beaut?
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): This is the Mark 48 ADCAP torpedo,
and the USS Salt Lake City starts out
every deployment with more of these than any other weapon.
The ADCAP, which stands for "advanced capability,"
was introduced in the late 1980s as a response
to the extremely fast Soviet Alfa-class sub.
Clear.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): Petty Officer Herrera
had been on board the Salt Lake City for five years,
and he knows a lot about how to blow stuff up
with these little honies.
Can you guide this torpedo to the target from the boat,
or does it just go to the target?
No, it is a wire-guided weapon.
We can actually send signals to the weapon and have it turn.
The torpedoes use both active and passive sonars.
Passive is the first to acquire it.
After it's acquired its target, it will go active.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): The Mark 48 torpedo is massive.
At 19 feet long and 3,500 pounds,
it can still travel over 30 miles an hour
and destroy a target more than five miles away.
And it doesn't do it with a direct hit
like you might think.
The Mark 48 explodes a few feet under the keel of the enemy
ship.
The pressure from the explosion literally
breaks the back of the target.
How big of a target can this destroy?
Most of your small boys, your DDDs or frigates,
ships of that size, 300, 400 feet long.
No problem.
Aircraft carrier might take a few.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): The Mark 48
ADCAP torpedo is one of the newest in the fleet.
But I got an email from John in Puyallup, Washington,
asking what was the first torpedo fired from a sub?
Well, back in 1866, Englishman Robert Whitehead
produced something called the automobile torpedo.
And pretty soon after, Europe's navy
started experimenting with firing them from a submarine.
But it was the Turkish navy that got off
the first launch in 1886 from their sub the Nordenfelt II.
Unfortunately, the recoil from that torpedo sank the sub.
So if we're talking successful torpedo launch,
it was the French Navy that torpedoed a moving battleship
in 1901.
After that, navies caught on pretty quick.
And by the time the Americans got their meat hooks
into the torpedo game, we knew we were on to something good.
And with every successive war, we've
made dramatic improvements in what these babies can do.
The Salt Lake City has four compressed air tubes,
all forward at the bow because our attack subs
don't run from anyone.
Since each Mark 48 torpedo costs around $4 million,
the crew filled one of the empty tubes
with water so I could get a feel for what
it was like to push the button that launches the real thing.
Just hold them there.
Now you're flooding down that torpedo tube.
That noise that I hear is water coming in.
Water coming into the torpedo tube.
All right, torpedo 2 is now flooded down and equalized?
We're going to open our ejection front door.
Select the eject mode which will tell the entire system
that we're going to eject the weapon out.
So like a mine, it would swim out by itself.
Now we'll open our muzzle door, which you'll see the shaft move
over there.
OK.
Now that opens the door on the outside?
That opens your outside muzzle door, yes.
All right, Gunny, whenever you're ready,
go ahead and shoot the tube. - OK.
Shooting the water slug.
3, 2, 1, shoot.
Let it go.
[alarm sounds]
[water rushes]
Hear that?
I think it got something.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): It's basically a big squirt gun that
shoots whatever you put in the tube.
And when a torpedo won't get the job done,
the USS Salt Lake City also has a handy supply
of Tomahawk cruise missiles.
These bad boys have 1,000-mile range,
and enough firepower to destroy just about anything,
depending on what kind of warhead it's got going.
Does an attack submarine carry nuclear weapons?
I can neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons
aboard this submarine, but we do have the capabilities
of carrying them.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): The Salt Lake City
fires all of her weapons from the tubes.
But the newer subs-- starting with the USS Providence--
also have vertical launching systems.
That way, you can fire torpedoes and a salvo of missiles
at the same time, making our boats more lethal.
What other weapons do we have onboard that boat?
Other weapons on board, we carry the UGM-84,
which is your harpoon, as well as your Mark 67 mine.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): Weapons aren't the whole story
on this sub.
One of the Salt Lake City's more secret missions
is to insert and extract SEAL teams.
One of their favorite toys is the SEAL delivery vehicle.
Mounted on the back of the sub, the SDV
gives SEALS a global reach.
Back in the conn, the boys wanted
to show me that their sub is tough, but agile too.
So they went through some evasive maneuver drills.
This is what they call angles and dangles.
And if a guy was going to lose his lunch,
I would think this would probably
be the appropriate time, 'cause we're coming up right now
at about 25-degree angle, amazing stuff, and moving,
I don't know, probably 20 knots or so, coming right up.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): Underwater,
a sub moves a lot like a plane, and if you don't brace yourself
like these guys do, you'll end up with a dent in your coconut.
Gunny, right now we're doing a high-speed turn.
We're simulating what we may do if we were trying
to evade a torpedo.
We're using a large rudder and high speeds,
causing the ship to bank through the turn
and also we'll start to dive.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): And what keeps the whole shebang
running underwater 24/7?
Well, the heart of the sub is its nuclear reactor,
and that's where I'm headed next.
Here I am in the machine room of the USS Salt Lake City.
All I can say is, we have come a long way from bicycle pedals.
Wonder what this does?
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): It takes a lot of high technology
and heavy metal to keep the USS Salt Lake
City down and running.
And when I say heavy metal, I mean heavy.
We're talking uranium, baby, cause this sub runs
on nuclear power that's generated
in a highly-secure clean room deep
in the bowels of the submarine.
A lot of secret places on this boat, I've got to tell you.
Nuclear reactor, yeah.
Hey Gunny, how you doin'?
How you doin', sailor?
Don't 'spose me and the boys could get in there
and have a peek, do you?
No, I can't, security area.
Well then, could you just tell us what's in there?
I can't do that either.
New "Mail Call" coin.
Very rare.
Not many of these floating around.
How much is that ring worth?
Well, ring, not for sale.
All right, I'll keep this.
Hey, hey, hey sailor.
Sailor!
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): On board the USS Salt Lake City,
the head honcho--
when it comes to nuclear propulsion systems--
is the chief engineer.
Now sir, you're the engineer, the big kahuna that
runs this engineering section.
How does this-- see, what's the sequence of events that
makes this boat really go?
Navy nuclear power is based on what
we call a pressurized water reactor system.
It has basically two loops-- a primary loop
and a secondary loop.
In the primary system, you have the reactor core.
Water flows through the core.
As fission occurs, that heats up that water.
That water is then carried to a steam generator.
That steam is then used to turn the main engines, which
are basically steam turbines, and also the turbine
generators, which are used to generate electricity
for the boat.
How often do we have to refuel a nuclear reactor
on a submarine?
Well, that's the beauty of it.
Our newest nuclear submarines in the Navy,
the Virginia-class submarines, has a reactor core
that's designed to last the entire life of the ship.
And I understand that the core on this one
is designed to last about 20 years.
Right.
We've been commissioned on the same core since the early '80s.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): When did submarines
start going nuclear?
Well now, that's the question from Rick in Atlanta.
Well, up until 1955, subs like this one
ran on diesel fuel on the surface, and on battery power
when they were submerged.
But when you ran out of gas to recharge those batteries,
you were sunk.
Back in 1948, Admiral Hyman Rickover changed all that.
He dreamed up the idea of a ship that would never need gas
and designed the first nuclear reactor for the Navy.
A submarine seemed to be the perfect test platform
for the new system, and in 1954, the Navy's
first nuclear powered vessel was born,
and the Nautilus became reality.
Today, the United States Navy has over 70
nuclear-powered subs.
But just like their old granddads,
subs today depend on banks of batteries located deep
in the engineering spaces.
They store the power needed to operate all of the technology
packed inside.
Some of that technology is located right here,
and believe me when I tell you without these gizmos,
the Salt Lake City's crew would be dead in the water.
This is where they make oxygen. And Jack in Reno, Nevada,
wants to know how they do it.
We've been told and we understand
that you can go under the polar ice cap
and you can stay there for months.
You don't have to surface for air.
You have to surface for fresh water.
How does that work?
We can make our own oxygen. Water is made up of hydrogen
and oxygen, and what we do is we,
you know, basically rip apart the hydrogen and oxygen
and we keep the oxygen in which we can then put back
to the ventilation system, and then we, you know,
get rid of the hydrogen. And so we're constantly revitalizing
the atmospheres on the ship.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): And they use the same system
to make fresh water.
We take salt water, boil it off, turn it to steam,
then recondense the steam back into pure water.
And that's your drinking water and the whole works.
Drinking water, water we cook with, water we take showers
with, everything.
R. LEE ERMEY (VOICEOVER): It's been
50 years since the Nautilus first sailed and Commander
Cooper and his team continue the tradition of excellence
in naval engineering.
Our last question comes from Yancey out of Spokane,
Washington.
Yancey wants to know what kind of chow
do you get in the silent service?
Well, since submariners give up sunlight and fresh air
for months at a time, the Navy thinks that's worth
an extra prime rib or two.
So it's not surprising that submariners get the best chow
in the Navy.
But here on the Salt Lake City, they go even one better.
The Pacific fleet holds a competition every year
to find out which command has the best mess.
And this sub is the reigning champ.
When you look inside the kitchen,
it's smaller than the one in most homes,
but this is one place where size doesn't matter.
The culinary specialists on this boat make magic in the mess
just to keep morale up for those long lonely patrols.
When a boat like the Salt Lake City gets underway,
she's loaded to the gills with supplies, stacked
in the passageways, lockers, and every nook and cranny.
The boat gets even smaller.
In fact, food is the only limit to the length of time
a crew can stay submerged.
When chow time approaches, the smell of the grill
fills the whole ship.
The waiting in the chow line--
only being able to go in three at a time--
demonstrates how small this boat really is.
Hi, Chief.
I've been waiting for this all day.
Do you really think this is the best chow in the military?
Best in all the military.
I don't know.
The Marine Corps feeds its troops pretty doggone good,
you know.
Wow.
My compliments to the chef.
Semper fi.
Carry on.
Welcome to email.
OK, I want to get the Atlantic in anyway.
I want to get the Pacific in anyway.
MAN: It'll be a long day.
This is really something.
MAN: Don't hold on, Gunny.
This is amazing.
I got to hold on.
What do you mean, don't hold on?
I'll be pulled out of the damn shot.