Sailor poets take over U.S. Navy deck logs on New Year's Day | Hacker News Reader

Sailor poets take over U.S. Navy deck logs on New Year's Day

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76 pointsthrow0101d14 comments

Though as I found out firsthand as a young sub sailor, this tradition is not intended for use by nuclear-trained personnel. Whoops.

Somewhere in an archive, there exists a midwatch entry in poem for Shutdown Reactor Operator on a Virginia-class boat.

Any chance that non-tradition is related to loss of the Thresher?

Doubtful; Thresher’s main posthumous contribution (RIP) was SUBSAFE. To her credit, it has so far worked splendidly, as the only other nuclear sub lost was Scorpion, which was not SUBSAFE-certified. Also, of course, there remains controversy over Scorpion’s loss, and some possible causes like a torpedo battery explosion wouldn’t have been covered by SUBSAFE (though a functional emergency blow system, which she didn’t have, _would_ be covered by SUBSAFE).

More likely a commanding officer who didn't care/know about tradition and incorrectly told you no.

I don’t think the CO (technically it would’ve been OIC, as at the time we were not yet commissioned) ever found out. The Engineering Duty Petty Officer lost his mind when he did a log review around 03:00, and then later in the morning, I got a talking-to from various leadership.

The fact that I was fresh out of “A” School and a non-qual probably helped. Nub shields are real.

I don't know your situation but it has happened to others who were able to find the right hermission and get the [whatever] in truoble for making up rules.

Ya, they said that about Norad's santa assistance program too. Now it is a vital part of christmas.

someone tried did this in maneuvering on an 88 in pearl i was stationed on. Nothing crazy like NJP but ENG was not happy at all

To be fair, ENG is never happy.

We must never forget our humanity, least of all in times of conflict. Art, in all its forms, speaks to it, and reminds us we are not, and shall never be, machines.

Very cool, I hope this will continue on and maybe get popular again.

No link to this years poems?

I didn't look because my understanding is they all need to be checked for classified information and thus the public can't see them until late in the month.

Not just classified . . . anything that indicates "this boat was in this spot at time X" is kept close-hold for obvious reasons until no longer deemed as relevant.

It takes years before the logs are sent to the archives, and I have no idea how long until they would be available.

There is a fair amount of sensitive information in ship's logs (or engineering logs).

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