"Welcome to MY engine room!"

Submarine Dolphins History

Many people are interested in the history and development of Navy traditions.  One Navy tradition involves the wearing of Dolphins by qualified submariners.  "Earning Dolphins" is a significant event in a Navy submariner's career, a special high point that instills tremendous personal pride and a sense of accomplishment.

Dolphins are earned through a process of "Qualifying."  Individuals must learn the location of equipment, operation of systems, damage control procedures and have a general knowledge of operational characteristics of the boat on which they are assigned.  Once Dolphins have been earned, they are awarded by the Commanding Officer in a special ceremony.

The origin of the U.S. Navy's Submarine Service Insignia dates back to 1923.  On 13 June of that year, Captain Ernest J. King, USN, later to become Fleet Admiral and Chief of Operations during World War II, and at the time Commander Submarine Division Three, suggested to the Secretary of the Navy, via the old Bureau of Navigation, that a distinguishing device for qualified submariners be adopted.

A Philadelphia firm, which had done work for the Navy previously, was approached with the request that it undertake the design of a suitable badge.  The firm submitted two designs that were combined into a single design.  It is the design in use today.  A bow view of a submarine, proceeding on the surface, with bow planes rigged for diving, flanked by Dolphins in horizontal positions with their heads resting on the upper edge of the bow planes.

The Officer's Insignia was then and is now a gold plated metal pin, worn centered above the left breast pocket and above the ribbons or medals.  Enlisted men wore the insignia, embroidered in silk, in white on blue for blue clothing, and in blue on white for white clothing.  This was sewn on the outside of the right sleeve, midway between the wrist and elbow.  This device was two and three-quarters inches long.  In mid-1947 the embroidered device shifted from the sleeve of the enlisted men's jumper to above the left breast pocket.  Subsequently, silver metal Dolphins were approved for enlisted men.

Regardless of the color of the pin of the insignia at the tops of these pages, members of the Submarine Force wear Dolphins with pride.

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Getting some "Fresh Air" on the bridge.
Underway - South China Sea - 1972

Why an "Engineman"?

When I first reported on board Sailfish, I was assigned to the "Seaman Gang" or "Deck Crew" of the boat. This was because I was "Non-Rated" since I didn't qualify for any schools when I joined the Navy. As "Luck" would have it, I ended up being transferred to the "Engine Room Gang" for calling the weapons officer in charge of the seaman gang an "Over Educated Idiot".  Because of the pure honesty I expressed toward this “Wet behind the ears college boy”, I was awarded a personal “One-On-One” chat with the skipper (Captains Mast).

Apparently they were short handed in the engine rooms, and going there was to be my punishment. (Better than "restriction!") I've always considered that punishment to be the "best" thing that the Navy could have ever done for me!!

What I began to realize, was that I had a 'Real' knack for this "mechanical" stuff and it came kind of "Natural" to me. I had never had the chance to learn anything like this before I joined (which was probably why the Navy said I had NO mechanical aptitude when I joined) and since I enjoyed it so much, I decided that THIS was what I wanted to be!!

Being an "Engineman" on a Diesel Submarine was to me the 'Best' job on the boat! Even though we stood watch in a 125 degree F. engine room with two 12 cylinder Fairbanks Morse opposed piston diesel engines and could never take showers, an "Engineman" was a breed of his own and was 'set apart' from the rest of the crew not only by his 'smell', but more importantly by his 'animalistic' behaviors!!

Since the Sailfish had two engine rooms, an engineman was either assigned to the "forward" room or the "after" room. I started out in the 'aft' engine room and worked there until I made 2nd class. Since the forward room was short on qualified throttlemen, (and no body wanted to be in that room since there was more equipment to run) I was re-assigned there for my part in "Borrowing" a Christmas tree from the officers club in Yokosuka, Japan. Again, yet another "punishment" that worked in my favor!

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EN3 (SS) Lanahan and ENFN Brazby in the After Engine Room after cleaning exhaust manifolds on #3 & #4 Fairbanks Morse 38ND8-1/8 main engines.

Be sure to visit my Engine Room Photos listed on my photos page!

Courtesy of: Bob 'Dex' Armstrong - DBF Subsailor

The Good Book tells us that God created the earth and all in it, in six days and that he and Moses pulled a twenty-four on the seventh day. The Creation was a fairly complicated exercise in fabrication and I figure they were pulling liberty every night so it's no wonder they turned out things like, giraffes, armadillos, hippos, hammerhead sharks, and duck-billed platypuses. They had to have been half-in-the-bag when they bolted some of that stuff together.

Late on Friday night, He created Enginemen... They must have been so bent out of shape, they had no idea what they were making... Nobody would have created an Engineman on purpose.

After a few million years (That is like a first-time enlistment for deities and their immediate families), God contacted John Holland and said,

"Hey John... Build me an iron contraption I can fill with some of my most marginal idiots and stick underwater out of sight. And then I'll cram a bunch of Enginemen in the iron monsters to liven the damn things up. After fifty years or so, I'll create a 'Mike Hemming' and turn that wild man loose on one of those subsurface looney bins just to see what happens."

Since then, the U.S. Submarine Force was never the same.

I have it over the rest of you. I actually rode with Mike aka 'The Boy Throttleman'. We were true shipmates. I am sure, given the odds, there must have been other Enginemen as crazy as Hemming, but at least the good Lord fixed it so that they never turned up in the same squadron.

The Engine Rooms were located aft of the After Battery compartment. There were two Engine Rooms each containing a pair of Fairbanks or General Motors engines. The 'Jimmies' (General Motors) engines were configured in a "V" cylinder arrangement and the Fairbanks 38 Ds were configured in opposed-piston fashion with an upper and lower crank shaft connected to a vertical drive. The engines drove 500 kw generators that fed batteries or the electric motors that drove the boat. Engine rooms were noisy, dirty, stunk of smoke and oil, and the interior decor was made up of collections of overflowing butt kits, oily rags, dirty coffee cups, maintenance manuals covered with dirty fingerprints, torn skin books and scroungy, raggedy-ass Enginemen.

Every lad who rode diesel boats will tell you that being an Engineman or a Machinist Mate made you special. We all remember them... We can see their laughing faces. The crazy bastards had the toughest job on the boat. There was no such thing as a 'light' engine part. The rascals who
built the power that kept the old gals plowing saltwater, worked with tools that were Paul Bunyan size. To be an Engineman, a man had to have the arms of a gorilla, the spinal column of a mule, and possess the mechanical ability of a railroad engineer.

They were good... Damn good. In the age before nuclear power, with its aseptically clean engine spaces and spotlessly attired personnel, there were big laughing bastards who kept power going to the big bronze screws that drove iron ships across oceans and helped win a war.

Being an Engineman or a Motor Mac doesn't get you a lot of recognition. The Navy, God bless it, has a reputation for clean efficiency... Clean, well regulated ships and crews... Uniform of the day... Shined brass... Well painted... And officers who looked like they fell off a wedding cake. Submariners in the old smokeboat navy didn't fit that image... And the guys riding herd on the rock crushers that provided propulsion to the diesel-powered fleet submarines were 180 degrees out from that image, so their contribution has never been recognized or acknowledged.

That's a gahdam shame because they did tough work under as rough a set of conditions as any man should be called upon to endure and took it all, including the unmerciful ragging of their shipmates... In good natured stride.

These stories have become an idiot's feeble attempt to recapture a time in submarine history nobody cared about enough to record. From 1945 to 1978, a lot of very good men rode petroleum-powered submarines. We did the unheralded bull work while the sunbeam-powered undersea love boats, the glamorous sweethearts of the heavy braided who, along with their P.R. flacks, were giving the nukes hugs and kisses.

The Navy was building undersea craft that only required some clown to toss a shovel full of neutrons and protons in the propulsion hopper every ten years so they could spend months at a time disturbing marine life. But at the same time, big, ugly hairy-chested, whisker-loaded rascals were still punching holes in the ocean with old wornout pigboats.

And we had Enginemen and Machinist Mates who nursed 32,000 horses in each engine room... Kept them driving generators that made all the sparkies it took to push the old iron scrap yard cheaters, through the saltwater.

Oh hell, we knew that we were no more than warts on the behind of the great Goddess of the Main Induction... The redheaded step children at the family reunion, but dammit, the Navy owed us a few paragraphs to record our passing. Once there were guppy boats... Fleet snorkel conversions... Radar picket boats. Jeezus, how could they gloss over the Cold War contribution of the lads who rode the picket boats? There were boats rigged for UDT (underwater demolition teams) and later SEALs. Hell you could go on and on... But nobody ever did.

You turn on your idiot box and watch programs about 'Submarines', and lately there has been a lot of stuff about the boats. At the end of the program your family turns to you and asks,

"Didn't you do any important stuff?"

"Guess not. We just were out there... Smelling weird... Drinking coffee you could patch potholes with... Breathing lousy air, smoking a 'dollar a carton' sea stores and doin' nothing worth mentioning."

But we had Enginemen... We had big ol' noisy, stinking, smoke-belching engines. Every one of us remembers trying to work his way past engine
covers laying in the passageway and greasy, cussing Enginemen and Motor Macs

"Hey Bobby Ray... Ya having bad luck?"

"Bad luck... Are you kidding, horsefly? Hell, with my luck, if I was Jane Mansfield's' baby, she'd bottle feed me... You going forward?"

"Heading that way."

"Well why don't you drag your worthless ass back here with a cup of whatever Rat is perkin' in the pot?"

When an old bastard who wrench-wrestled submarine diesel engines throws his earthly gear in the big Lucky Bag, he goes directly to Heaven... No gahdam receiving station... He reports directly on board one of those low hull numbered, solid gold smokeboats at the big silver pier in the sky... Wears clean socks and silk dungarees... Gets to park his old wornout butt on a rocking chair in the Engineroom and tell lies... Go forward late at night for mid rats of humming bird wings on toast and decent coffee... And there's always a big-titted blonde to scratch his back in the places he can't reach, with a short handled box wrench.

That's something they missed on the History Channel and the book 'Blind Mans Bluff'. While folks were out there bluffing blind men, Mike Hemming and Bobby Ray Knight were out there cussing... Up to their eyeballs in grease and lube oil, baby sitting cantankerous machinery and just being hardworking happy-go-lucky sonuvabitches... And they were not alone.

They don't put up statues of sweat-soaked stinking raghats in parks but somewhere there should be one to the Smokeboat Engineman with a greasy bandana hanging out of his hip pocket and a dirty cup full of coffee in his hand... But it will never happen, horsefly. It's all about stuff
powered by snap, crackle and pop that could fry your cajones... Encased in lead, that lasts for years.

I know... I watch the History Channel.

Oh yes... At the big silver pier in the sky, nobody has to fight for a fuel hose or gets blamed for oil slicks.

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Making "Rate"

I was on the Sailfish for two separate nine month cruises to the "Western Pacific" (West Pac's) while Sailfish operated as a unit of the U.S. Seventh Fleet. During that time I re-enlisted for my 2nd four year hitch, was awarded two letters of "Commendation", received my "VietNam Service" Medal w/Star, and earned my 1st (Believe it or not!) "Good Conduct" Medal.

According to "J.O.", the Navy NEEDED more JUST LIKE ME!!! With that came the evening celebration followed by the "Formal Request" that Sailfish "Leave and Return to Sea". (Hong Kong was too expensive anyway!)

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EN2 (SS) Lanahan and J.O. Ballard - Skipper in Sailfish Control Room

Life on a "Smoke Boat"

What would Submarine life be like without the occasional topside BBQ? (Probably what it's like now a days on the "Nukie Boats" .... “Glow in the dark BOARING!!”) The BBQ pit on Sailfish was secured under a portion of decking just forward of the sail. The "Best" part of the BBQ's was the two beer apiece ration that accompanied the meal!

One thing they did well and did often on the boats was put out the feed-bag! Always a hot meal every four hours and fresh pastries were baked every night. Every Thursday night was "Italian" night so the cooks would put out the 'checkered' tablecloths on the four small tables in the galley and serve Italian Cuisine accompanied by two glasses of the finest "Vino" the boats “slush fund” could buy!

Topside BBQ's did help break the monotony during operation periods, and also gave everyone a chance to take a "Salt Water Bath". Since shower stalls were used for storage while underway, and there was no spare water to take showers with, the occasional "Salt Water Bath" was a welcomed relief to most of the crew.

Yes, we did have two distilling units located in the forward engine room, but any and all water on board was for (#1) use in the batteries, and (#2) for use by the cooks. Running the "Stills" was a job nobody wanted, and anyone caught wasting water had to stand the still watch! Wasting water consisted of anything more than what it would take to brush your teeth, and any good DBF'n Subsailor could tell you that it was "More than enough" to even wash your feet with (providing you brush your teeth first)!!

However, most enginemen didn't participate in this type of activity while underway (both the swim calls and the personal hygiene) due to the fact that it might "ruin" our reputation!!  Besides, once a person gets use to smellin’ a little “ripe”, it’s a little uncomfortable after you’re clean to have to go through the misery of getting “ripe” all over again!

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Topside BBQ & Swim Call

Just a few of "The Crew"