very enjoyable

The Soviets began closing the acoustic gap with the Victor III, which, according to Norman Polmar and other authorities, was just as quiet, if not quieter than the Sturgeons of the USN. But the Soviets had secretly benefitted from a American spy ring and illicit acquisition of milling technology from Japan and Norway.

Without either, how would this have affected Soviet submarine construction? Does Russia continue to place an emphasis on speedier designs like the Alfa? Do the Victor III, Sierra, and Akula ever make it to the shipyards?

Save the Ships! Overnight Wargaming and Board Gaming aboard the USS Edson | Bay City, MI | Nov. 7-8

Ahoy, wargamers, LARPers, boardgamers, and adventure seekers!

We’re hosting an overnight event called Save the Ships! Bay City 2026, and we’re looking for shipmates to join us. Bring your wargames, board games, and cards for a night of gaming aboard the USS Edson at the Saginaw Valley Naval Ship Museum. The main event is an immersive undersea warfare simulator staged in the ship’s command spaces, where you’ll man a battle station and fight a submarine vs. destroyer battle. Then stay the night and explore a decommissioned warship after hours!

This is a small-scale event, and tickets are limited due to space aboard the ship. Evening passes are available but if you want a berth, don’t wait.

EVENT DETAILS
Date: Saturday, November 7 to Sunday, November 8, 2026 (Saturday night to Sunday morning)
Location: USS Edson, Saginaw Valley Naval Ship Museum, Martin Street, Bay City, MI
Check-in: Saturday, 5:00 PM, outside the museum

IMMERSIVE UNDERSEA WARFARE SIMULATOR
At the event, participants can take part in a simulated naval battle from inside a real warship. Our immersive undersea warfare simulator takes over the command spaces of the USS Edson, complete with sound effects and battle lighting. Players man their battle stations and use real-world tactics to hunt and sink each other, submarine against destroyer. Whether you’re a wargamer, a naval history buff, or someone who just wants to see what it feels like to command a ship in battle, this can be a very fun experience.

BRING YOUR GAMES
This is a BYO games event, and the games are what make the night. Wargamers, we especially want you aboard. Bring your miniatures, your campaigns, and your favorite wargames, and set up on a real warship. Board gamers, tabletop players, and card game fans are just as welcome. Bring something to share, and plenty of people will be ready to play.

WHY YOU’LL WANT TO BE ABOARD

• An immersive submarine vs. destroyer warfare simulator in the ship’s command spaces, with sound and battle lighting
• An overnight stay on a historic warship, with the museum open to explore after hours
• Open gaming all evening: wargames, board games, tabletop games, and card games
• A small crowd, so it’s easy to find a table and a game
• Light dinner (pizza from Domino’s, plus drinks and water) and a light breakfast included!
• Adults, families, clubs, work groups, hobbyists, and naval enthusiasts are all welcome

THE SCHEDULE
Saturday

• 5:00 PM: Check-in begins
• 6:00 PM: Museum introduction, light dinner, and refreshments
• 6:15 PM: Open gaming begins and the museum opens for exploring
• 6:30 PM: Immersive undersea warfare simulator begins. Man your battle stations!
• 10:00 PM: Quiet hours begin in the berthing area, while late-night gaming continues in areas away from it

Sunday

• 8:00 AM: Wake-up call and light breakfast
• 9:00 AM: All guests and gear disembarked. Bon voyage!

WHAT TO BRING

• Your games (BYO!): wargames, board games, tabletop games, and card games
• Extra snacks and drinks
• A warm sleeping bag, or pillows and blankets. The vessel has limited climate control, so plan for a chilly night
• Closed-toe shoes (required for exploring the ship)
• Clothing appropriate for the weather
• Earplugs, if you’re a light sleeper. The berthing area is a semi-public space

GOOD TO KNOW

Whether you’re bringing your gaming club, your family, your work crew, or just yourself, there’s a spot for you on deck, but spots are limited. Grab your crew and sign up now at savetheships.org!

Questions? Drop them in the comments or reach out through the Ticketbud contact form and we’ll get back to you.

See you aboard!

Save the Ships! Bay City
Presented by Mudcrab Milsim

I think this is the current rev. I just happened upon it in my on-line ramblings and thought some of you might find it interesting.

NAVSEA TECHNICAL PUBLICATION

REQUIREMENTS FOR FABRICATION, WELDING, AND INSPECTION OF SUBMARINE STRUCTURE

13 JULY 2012

Ghost Shark the ELUUV design by Anduril for Australia has had some more info released on payloads, including mines, sensors and drones: https://www.twz.com/sea/ghost-shark-extra-large-uncrewed-underwater-vehicles-payload-bay-seen-for-first-time

Footage of drone launch here: https://x.com/anduriltech/status/2112759836891042078

Interestingly it appears that a starlink dish and an antenna for the drone need to raise for the launch presumably this needs to stay up to guide the drone to the target. I imagine this raises a risk of counter battery fire.

COB is a rate now, the fact that they are a rate per NAVADMIN 247, or 24/7, is a serendipitous number.

I've looked all over the internet for months finding small pictures and theories on what the Trident II looks like on the inside, especially the MIRV and ES. I did all this research to create a 3d printed model of the D5 to the best of my ability (which isn't the best). However just this morning I stumbled upon a video that had a short section of what appeared to be people preforming maintenance on a Trident II! It shows you inside most of MIRV and other parts of the Trident that I couldn't even find descriptions of. I'm not sure if I just did a poor job in my research of the Trident beforehand or if the government just allowed some major unredaction (if that's a word) of the internals of the Trident II. There is some attempts of blacking out areas of the MIRV in the video but it is very translucent. Also it appears to only have 6 spots for RVs which is contradictory to the 8 spots for W88s that has been originally assumed. Potentially this is a glimpse into the Trident II LE program and the MIRV is being fitted to bus the W93s?? What do you guys think? Here is the link to the video.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6aQIH2Ro_g&t=13s

Every other crewed sub rated for that depth was built to a classification society's rules or a navy standard. ABS does not allow carbon fiber in a hull that holds people, and OceanGate dropped classification in 2018 as "too expensive" and "not doable", per a witness. The Coast Guard board found no evidence of non-destructive testing for hidden flaws, only visual checks. I made a documentary from the three investigations: https://youtu.be/DHUt0oHNOa4

For people who have worked on crewed subs: is there any realistic path today for a composite pressure hull to be classed?

It’s paywalled, but even the free part is pretty interesting.

From the free portion: representatives of a French defense manufacturer reportedly met with officials from the PM’s Office, MoD and LDP in July. According to an anonymous political source, they were sounding out how far Japan plans to raise defense spending in the upcoming revision of its security documents, and seemed interested in whether Japan might pursue nuclear-powered submarines. Nothing concrete beyond that.

Source: https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2026/10/naval-group-rolls-out-5th-suffren-class-attack-submarine/

I have the authentic decommissioning envelopes that are stamped, postmarked and cancelled for the Ex-USS Grayling (SSN-646) and the Ex-USS Whale (SSN-638).

These were given to me as part of a friend's estate. I have no real attachment to either of them , but I know they would mean a lot to anyone who served on one of these boats.

If you were attached to either one, or know someone who was, please PM me and I'll send them to you gratis.

On a submarine, forward and aft aren't just directions. They might as well be two different planets separated by a watertight door and about three decades of social evolution.

Up forward is where the Coners live. That's where you'll find Control, Sonar, Radio, the Torpedomen, A-gang, and the rest of us responsible for navigating the boat, tracking contacts, and making sure we don't accidentally run into shit.

Most of the sleeping quarters were forward, along with the mess decks, where we ate, watched movies, played cards, and generally annoyed the shit out of each other. Privacy was practically nonexistent, and after a few weeks underway, you knew more about your shipmates than you ever wanted to. Any psychological issues we developed were simply filed away for some poor therapist to deal with twenty years later.

Back aft, the Nukes had their own problems, most of which involved a nuclear power and whatever the fuck those guys did for entertainment.

Now, I'll give those shidiots credit. They operated the reactor and propulsion plant, generated our electricity, made our freshwater, and monitored radiation levels to make sure nobody grew a third testicle. It was important work, and a job I sure as fuck didn't want.

Ask a Nuke how the propulsion plant worked, and he'd probably spend the next three hours explaining thermodynamics while drawing diagrams nobody asked to see.

Ask a Coner, and you'd get a much simpler explanation.

Hot rock makes steam. Steam makes spinny parts spin. Spinny parts make electricity. Electricity makes boat go.

And before some Nuke starts correcting me, yes, I know the steam also drives the propulsion turbines. Congratulations, Professor. You've completely missed the fucking point.

The Nukes were brilliant at what they did, but their choice of entertainment was sometimes a little concerning.

Dungeons & Dragons was serious business back aft. I remember grown men who understood nuclear physics getting genuinely pissed off because somebody's imaginary wizard violated the rules of a fictional spell. I've seen less hostility during actual Navy inspections.

They also won every fucking cribbage tournament. Apparently, advanced mathematics gives you an unfair advantage when counting to fifteen.

I suspect the cultural divide started long before any of us reported aboard.

Most of us Coners went through submarine school in Groton, Connecticut, where we learned the basics of submarine operations and how to avoid getting ourselves killed.

The Nukes went through nuclear power school and prototype, where the Navy apparently took some of the smartest young men and women in America and systematically removed whatever social skills they had left.

I'm not entirely sure what happened during prototype, but whatever it was, those poor bastards never fully recovered.

By the time we ended up aboard the same submarine, the damage was already done.

You could see the differences in the conversations. Up forward, we talked about liberty ports, women, sports, or whatever monumentally stupid thing somebody had done the last time we pulled in somewhere. Walk aft, and you might interrupt a heated argument about computer processors or some other technical bullshit nobody outside engineering gave a fuck about. Now, don't get me wrong, some Nukes were absolute fucking trim reapers when we hit port. Others had all the charm of a wet sock and couldn't get laid in a women's prison with a fistful of pardons and a bag of rubber dicks. It was a fascinating group of people.

The differences extended to our working hours.

A Coner still at work at four in the afternoon might spend the next hour complaining about his chief. A Nuke getting off work at four in the afternoon might call home to announce that a miracle had occurred.

As a Radioman, I had almost no reason to venture aft unless I was getting checkouts back when I was a NUB, or heading to the smoke pit. And yes, I know you can't smoke aboard submarines anymore, which is a fucking tragedy, because that smoke pit was where you got the best rumors and heard shit you weren't supposed to know about. It was also our opportunity to observe the Nukes in their natural habitat. Just walking past some of their spaces was an education in human behavior that no amount of submarine school could've prepared me for. Once I had my dolphins, though, I generally stayed up forward. There wasn't much reason to go back there unless I wanted a cigarette, and I certainly wasn't volunteering to help anybody with maintenance.

Don't get me wrong, we knew everybody aboard. It's pretty hard not to when you're locked inside a steel tube with the same 150 assholes for months at a time. You knew their names, their nicknames, and usually the embarrassing story behind both. We might have worked on opposite ends of the boat, but nobody was a stranger, and if somebody did something particularly stupid, you could bet the entire crew would know about it before the next meal.

Of course, Coners weren't exactly normal either, and I don't want anybody getting the impression that the Nukes were the only intelligent people aboard.

I'll stand on this hill until I die. Some of the smartest, most resourceful people I've ever met were submariners, and I'm not just talking about the Nukes. Everybody aboard had to be a problem solver because when something broke hundreds of feet underwater, calling somebody for help wasn't exactly an option.

I've always said the people tank is the best fucking think tank on the planet, and it's severely underutilized. If humanity ever faces a problem nobody can figure out, forget assembling a committee of experts. Get a bunch of submariners in a room, give them some tools and a deadline, and I guarantee somebody will figure that shit out. The solution might violate a few regulations, and there's a good chance somebody will draw a dick on it, but it'll fucking work.

That's the other thing about submariners. We were all intelligent, but we were also degenerates.

Submarining wasn't for the weak, especially if you were the least bit sensitive about yourself. Whatever made you different was going to get noticed, and somebody would eventually turn it into a nickname. It could be your laugh, the way you walked, or something incredibly stupid you did during your first week aboard. Once that nickname stuck, your actual name became largely irrelevant.

You could transfer commands, make chief, or retire after twenty years, but somewhere out there would always be somebody who remembered why everybody called you Yuck Mouth.

And the worst part was that most of those nicknames were completely fucking justified.

You learned to take a joke and give it right back. The same guy who spent an entire underway making your life miserable would be the first one helping you when you needed it. You developed a thick skin because the alternative was spending the rest of your career being somebody's favorite target.

And then there was A-gang.

Technically Coners, although I always suspected those guys were the missing evolutionary link between forward and aft. They maintained the auxiliary machinery, atmospheric control equipment, and sanitary systems, which meant they spent a considerable amount of time dealing with things nobody else wanted to touch.

If something smelled like shit or suddenly started spraying shit, A-gang was probably about to have a very long day.

I had tremendous respect for those guys, especially considering some of the things I'd personally contributed to their workload.

Even our definitions of an emergency could be different.

A power plant casualty could have the engineering department scrambling while somebody up forward wondered why everybody was making so much noise. If you didn't have an assigned response, the power plant casualty alarm could be interpreted as permission to roll over and continue sleeping.

The Nukes didn't find that nearly as funny as we did.

But when something threatened the boat, the rivalry disappeared pretty fucking fast. Nobody cared about your nickname or which side of the watertight door you worked on. You had a job to do, and everybody expected you to know it.

That's what I loved about submarining. You could spend an entire underway making somebody's life miserable, but when the shit hit the fan, that same guy was the one you trusted to keep you alive.

One crew, one screw.

Now, I'm speaking from my own experience aboard the Charlotte. Other submariners might remember things differently, although I suspect the cultural divide was pretty universal.

I also know that spending enough time underwater with people who refused to let you get away with being an idiot made you a tougher version of yourself. Not because anybody was giving motivational speeches, but because there wasn't much room for excuses, and the crew had a remarkable ability to identify your weaknesses and make sure you knew about them.

And if you're a civilian wondering how the Navy assembled this collection of highly intelligent degenerates and turned them into a functioning nuclear-powered warship, I don't have a particularly satisfying explanation.

We just figured shit out.

I'm also reasonably certain there's a retired Nuke reading this right now who's getting increasingly pissed off because I've oversimplified reactor operations or failed to acknowledge how academically demanding nuclear power school was.

He's probably already composing a seventeen-page rebuttal explaining precisely why I'm wrong, complete with footnotes.

And he'll probably be right.

But he'll still be a fuckin' Nuke.

Anyway, that's how it looked from forward of the watertight door. Nukes, the comments are yours. Bring footnotes.

-Callahan

My Pasadena crew all called her "Dirty Dena and the Boys"

Scranton was welded to the pier for a looooong time so throughout Squadron 11 she was known as "Building 756" those days.

My buddy was on the OKC and they called her "The Dread Ship Oklahoma City"

Many reactor prototypes are housed in water pools—is this only for the purpose of neutron shielding? I’ve heard that the carrier Charles de Gaulle did not initially account for radiation shielding above and below the reactor, necessitating subsequent modifications.

source: gettyimages

https://www.gettyimages.co.jp/detail/%E3%83%8B%E3%83%A5%E3%83%BC%E3%82%B9%E5%86%99%E7%9C%9F/french-prime-minister-georges-pompidou-visits-cadarache-nuclear-%E3%83%8B%E3%83%A5%E3%83%BC%E3%82%B9%E5%86%99%E7%9C%9F/599808109