Submarine Escape Training Is Not New

Reynolds links to a Wired Magazine article titlted Navy’s New Escape Trainer Helps Submariners Avoid a Watery Grave.

Wired’s short piece reads as follows.

Getting out of a plunging Navy jet is simple: Pull the eject lever. Escaping from a disabled nuclear sub? A bit trickier. You first have to climb into a full-body buoyancy suit (which later transforms into a one-man life raft), then scramble into an escape chamber, seal the door, inflate the suit, and hold on tight as the lock is flooded with icy water. Then open the hatch and try not to panic during that long float to the surface. Luckily, the US Naval School in New London, Connecticut, now has a facility that lets sailors perform not-so-dry runs. The 37-foot-deep, 84,000-gallon tank — the first of its kind in the US — offers exact replicas of the escape chambers in Virginia— and Los Angeles-class submarines. Perfect for teaching sailors how to rise to the top.

What may be “first of its kind” about this facility would only be; to my knowledge as a former submariner who served on the first Los Angeles class sub (SSN688); that the escape chambers at the facility are “exact replicas” of the escape chambers within both the Los Angeles class and Virginia class subs.  There is nothing new about the dive chamber facility itself.

Submarine escape training has been going on for decades.  Pearl Harbor, where I participated in sub escape training, had a dive tower where hundreds of bubbleheads went through sub escape training, while wearing only a Steinke hood, rather than the new MK-10 Submarine Escape and Immersion Equipment (SEIE).

Wired should have done a bit more fact checking.

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