Hey everybody.
I was just wondering what the deal was with submarines in the enlisted nuke field. It is my understanding that submarine time is voluntary but I look at how many more subs the Navy has compared to carriers and I feel like a large majority of enlisted nukes must be on submarines.
Is serving time on a sub a part of every enlisted nukes career? Can you have a good career staying on carriers only (If that is even possible)?
Also, no offense to any sub people out there. I'm just curious about the distribution of people.
Thanks!
Quote from: nukeplease on Jan 19, 2011, 12:08
Hey everybody.
I was just wondering what the deal was with submarines in the enlisted nuke field. It is my understanding that submarine time is voluntary but I look at how many more subs the Navy has compared to carriers and I feel like a large majority of enlisted nukes must be on submarines.
Is serving time on a sub a part of every enlisted nukes career? no
Can you have a good career staying on carriers only (If that is even possible)?yes
Also, no offense to any sub people out there. I'm just curious about the distribution of people.
Thanks!
A sub has roughly 35-40 enlisted nukes (so SSBNs would have 70-80). A carrier has roughly 350-450 (Enterprise has more I think). The surface numbers may be a little off. When I graduated from prototype in 1986, if you had not volunteered subs before NPTU, you were going surface. I knew several guys who had volunteered subs that still went surface. At the time they were manning up the Ike so many a baby nuke got sent there. My uncle who took to me to the recruiter had been a submariner and recommended I volunteer for sub-duty. My original plan was to be an submarine RM. Once I switched to nuke, I maintained my sub-vol.
Gamecock answered your other questions.
Clarification on surface numbers: Reactor Dept. has about 400 personnel, about 300 are nuclear trained, the others are not.
I had no idea there were so many enlisted Nukes on a surface ship.