When you see them in the water, they don’t look that large. When you see the boat in drydock, it’s astonishing how large they are. Both of my boats were built at Newport New shipbuilding and stationed in Norfolk. My second boat transferred to Pearl Harbor a year or so before I got out of the Navy. She was involved in a seamount collision in 2005, but survived because of the crew’s abilities and superior construction.
Part of my job as a sonar technician was to crawl inside the main ballast tanks and sonar dome to look for rattles and “sound shorts”. It was a view of a submarine that most never get to see and I’m grateful for the opportunity to do something fairly unique. As you can see in the post-collision photo, that area was seriously damaged.
