Boarding a US NAVY NUCLEAR SUBMARINE in the Arctic - Smarter Every Day 240

DESTIN: (NARRATING) This is the USS Toledo, a U.S. Navy Los Angeles-class fast-attack nuclear submarine. We're about to get onboard. [HELICOPTER FLYING] Thank you. My name is Destin. Arnell. I'm the chief of the boat. You're the chief of the boat? Nice to meet you, Arnell. Absolutely, no problem. All right. Following you guys. --have to use this door over here. [HELICOPTER IDLING] Normally, you guys would've come in through here, but we're not high enough in the ice right now, so there's a little water over our shipping hatch. So we can't open the normal hatch. Great. Sounds good. There's a drop-off. Look up. -I'm Shane. You want me to go first? Sounds good. Cool. Here. Make sure you take a good step, a good grip. Nice to meet you. What's your name? Caleb. Nice to meet you, Caleb. Your steps are right there and then the rungs are on the left side. On the left side? Do you see them? Yeah. Got it. When you do go down-- when you get down to the second set, they rotate. Yeah? Just be careful about that. OK, sounds good. Can I take my gloves off or leave them on? You can leave them on. All right.

MAN: Hey, how's it going?
How's it going? You got some bags for me?
The bags will be coming after me.

DESTIN: (NARRATING) To enter the submarine, I had to climb down a ladder from the top of the sail down into the heart of the boat. Now when I did this, remember, I was going from a negative 30 degree environment. So I kept having problems with my camera fogging up. All footage you're about to see has been cleared through U.S. Navy OPSEC, or operational security. That being said, the Navy has not directed my speech or the content of this video. I am free to say whatever I want.

[LOUD CLATTER] I got it. It was just a hammer. [LAUGHTER] How's it going, sir? Good. How are you? Doing well. Welcome aboard. Thank you, sir. All right. How's it going? Good, good. I'm Michael Mace. I'm the supply officer. I'm Destin Sandlin. Nice to meet you. Pleasure. Camera's all fogged up. Oh, yeah. That makes-- -What happened? Oh, holy cow. There's a bunch of you guys. Oh, yeah. [LAUGHTER] There's a ton of us. What's going on, guys?

[INTERPOSING VOICES]
-I'm Destin.
-Matt. Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you. How's it going?
-Destin?
-Yes, sir.
We're going to step out of the way so she can come on down, please.
OK, which-- Which way would you like me?
-We're going this way.
-Yes, sir.
Perfect, yep. This is the Captain.

-Hey.
-How you doing?
Destin Sandlin. Pleasure to meet you.
Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Welcome.

So Chop's going to take care of you for the next 24 hours.
-All right. So we're going to come on down this way. This is our executive officer's state room. He's asleep currently. So we're just going to-- I'm going to have the guys sneak in and drop your bag off on your rack. You're going to be sleeping on top bunk in here, OK? We're going to go ahead on down the stairs here.

DESTIN: (NARRATING) Now's a good time to point out that every once in a while, you'll hear a female voice. That's Public Affairs Officer Lieutenant Michelle Pelissero. Her job is to make sure I don't have any operational security issues while I'm on the boat. She's awesome. When I first got on board, the medical officer handed me a dosimeter so that they could monitor the level of ionizing radiation I would be exposed to while on board. Turns out, it's nothing. He explained that I had received more cosmic radiation on my flight to the sub than I would during my time onboard. And then, Chop gave me a tour, so I'd understand where I was at on the boat.

All right, so this is the crew's mess. Food mess? This is as real as it gets right here. This is as real as it gets? What's up, guys? How's it going? You doing all right? So this is just like where people hang out?
-Can I go look at the--
-100%, sure.
-The map?
-Yes. Hey, I'm Destin. What's up? Pleasure to meet you.
-What's up, man?
-[INTERPOSING VOICES]
I'm Destin. How's it going, man?
-We're here?
-Yep.

How many levels are there? So there are three levels. There's three levels on the ship. Right above us there's going to be Control and the Radio room. This is the Crew's Mess. We call it middle level. And the lower level is where most of the engineering guys work at, and the weapons handling guys, so the torpedo men.

DESTIN: Chop explained that there are three levels to the submarine, one, two, three. Right now we're in the center of the boat, and he explained that about a third of the crew sleeps at any given time. And then he took me to get a peek at what that looks like.

This is where the majority of the enlisted crew sleeps. So there's going to be people sleeping in here right now. But I just want to show you, kind of, how the guys live in here.

DESTIN: OK. Cool.

CHOP: You'll see there all the rack curtains are shut, all their uniforms are hanging up. Don't want to wear your uniform when you're in the rack.

CHOP: Yep. And they have three high on each side, going all the way down all the way down to the room. And then if we go in here, there's going to be a bathroom that kind of splits forward and aft crew's berthing that all these guys share.

So you want to go take a look at it?
-DESTIN: Yeah. No?
-All right. Don't want to wake 'em up? You don't want to go to that end. [LAUGHING]

DESTIN: Chop continued the tour by explaining that for security and safety, I would not be allowed near the reactor compartment or the aft engine room. After that, I was trained on what to do in the event of a fire, which we'll talk about later. And then it was time to dive.

Just tell me when you're ready.
-Ready, sir.
-Ready?
Yeah, ready to dive.
-The ship is rigged for dive, with the exception of arctic full blow and a sounding of 1490 fathoms beneath the ship. Check with Charlie water depth. I intend to stationary dive the ship to 180 feet.
-All set, submerge ship.
-Submerge ship, aye, sir.
Dive, stationary dive the ship to 180 feet.
-Stationary dive the ship to 180 feet. Dive aye, [INAUDIBLE]. Stationary dive, stationary dive.

[HORN SOUNDING]

DESTIN: (NARRATING) There was a lot going on during the dive, and we'll cover this in a future video. But I got to talk to the captain a little bit. He's been a submariner for 20 years, and he's got a degree in physics and a master's degree in engineering. To be given the command of a fast-attack nuclear submarine is a responsibility reserved for only the best in the Navy's Submarine Force.

Now that we're underway, it's time for us to go down to the wardroom, which is where the officers hang out, and speak to the captain about the challenges of being under ice.

We're on the USS Toledo. This is Captain Castellano. And thanks for having me on board, sir.
Oh, Good morning.

-DESTIN: Yeah.
-Welcome.

DESTIN: I hear the-- I hear the ship creaking right now, by the way. Is that because--
Yeah. We're deeper. We're coming up to a little shallower depth. So that's the hull, actually expanding.
-Expanding and contracting?
-Yeah. It's not a-- that's just not a big deal for you anymore,
-is it? [LAUGHING]
-No.

The Navy allowed me to come out for ICEX. And it's amazing, but it's very different than anything -I've ever seen.

-Yeah. We are under the ice in the Arctic.
-Yeah.

DESTIN: There's something weird to that. I mean, it's-- It's very weird. It's very unique. This is actually the first time I've ever done this, also.

Very challenging environment, very unique environment, just to be underwater with several feet of solid, year-long ice over your head. It really changes how you operate. You don't have the option to just come to the surface or come to periscope depth, as you normally would if you had a fire or some kind of casualty, or needed to communicate. That option's gone, because you're covered with ice for weeks at a time. So that changes how I think about things. That changes how we operate the ship. And we practice a lot. We prepare for any kind of casualty that occurs. But it does-- it is a very challenging environment in that respect.

It's also a challenging environment-- the reason we're up at ICEX in the first place is to learn how to operate in this environment, to learn how our sonar system is going to operate differently because of the challenging and quickly changing sound speed profile of the water.

When you're up under the ice, even the salinity-- stuff we usually don't think about--

DESTIN: Like the salt in the water?

CAPTAIN CASTELLANO: The salt content of the water-- that's something that's usually pretty normal, pretty steady across the ocean. But up under the ice, because of the fresh water at the top, the salinity changes all throughout the depth column. So that's one thing we have to learn how to operate and learn how our weapons systems work, learn how our sonar systems work, learn how it affects the ability to ballast the ship properly, to maintain depth. Because that changing salinity changes the density of the water, which affects both how sound propagates through water, and it affects how the ship can maintain the proper depth, because that density constantly changes. It can change by 10,000 pounds in a second, and you have to constantly account for that.

OK. So the Toledo is an attack submarine.
Mm-hm.

So I assume your mission is to attack. [LAUGHING]
Sure. We can attack.

DESTIN: So what are you doing?

Well, our missions are highly classified, so I can't go into detail about what we specifically do. But I can tell you the missions that we train to, of tracking submarines, shooting submarines, tracking surface warships, killing surface warships, intelligence gathering, tomahawk strikes, special forces insertion. Those are the things we train to and are good at it.

The main point of a submarine is, you know, anything that you don't want the enemy to know you're doing, you put a submarine there. Because wherever we're at, no one knows we're there. And that's the main power of a submarine is, you don't know if there's a submarine lurking close by to take you out.
-So stealth.
-Stealth.

So that is what we do.

Typically on mission we get, you know, tasking, and it's very broad in most cases. And, hey, there's a couple of discrete things, missions we want you to accomplish. But other than that, we're not talking back-- we're not reaching back to home. We don't-- once we go on a mission status, we don't communicate, because that can give away that stealth that I just talked about. So we're pretty much operating autonomously when we're at our mission areas, until the mission is complete.

DESTIN: You're given those orders at some point in the past. You go under. Once you're underway, you have the orders, but you have to make decisions and you don't talk back.

No. And sometimes you would, obviously if there's-- certain things happen. And we can always passively receive new stuff from off-hull. So we're constantly receiving intelligence updates, any kind of changes to what the priorities are.

But no, like, one of the great things about this job is, they put a lot of trust and confidence in us to be able to make those decisions on, hey, I see A, B, and C happening. I think B is more important, so I'm going to go do B.

DESTIN: So the whole time I was onboard, I accepted that I was under ice, which is kind of like swimming in a pool with a pool cover on, but I could never really visualize it, because there are no windows on a submarine. It wasn't until I got back topside that I was given footage that showed me the reality of the situation.

This opportunity arose as a result of the Navy's ICEX exercise. It's a joint military and civilian exercise, meant to demonstrate Arctic region capabilities and perform scientific research. It is a part of a multi-national coalition.

I'm on a Zoom call with Lieutenant Bradley Howard. Thank you for being with me.
-Thanks, Destin.

-DESTIN: OK. So it's my understanding that we missed each other at Camp Seadragon by a day.

LT. HOWARD: Yep. You flew up with my research advisor Henrik and two of the students, Oscar and Ree, in my lab. And then I flew with another student, Dan.

DESTIN: To be clear, the Navy did not set up this interview. Lieutenant Howard emailed me after she saw the last video, and we wanted to talk.

Yeah. I was not expecting to be interviewed when I emailed you though, I'll say. [LAUGHING] I was, like, just use my drone footage. It looks really cool.

So you're in the Navy. You are active duty Navy. You're not in a uniform right now. Why?

So the Navy gave me a really awesome opportunity, after I was done with my first sea tour to go get a master's degree. Right now I'm a grad student at MIT in the MIT Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute Joint Program. So I applied to MIT and they accepted me. And the Navy said, "That's awesome. Go be a civilian for two years." I'm still on active duty, but I don't wear a uniform to class. And basically when I'm done, having, really this amazing opportunity to get my master's degree, I will go back to the submarine, doing what I love as a department head.

This isn't a recruitment video, but it sounds like you got a pretty sweet gig going on right now.

So everybody was speculating on what Henrik was doing there. And you're on that team. And you were, like, doing research with him. Can you briefly explain what was going on?

LT. HOWARD: Sure. Basically what we were doing up there was demonstrating a concept for under-ice navigation that is almost as good as GPS.

DESTIN: Oh, I see. Because if you go under the ice, you can no longer see satellites.

LT. HOWARD: Right.

DESTIN: So you have to figure out another way to figure out where you are under the ice. And that's why being in a submarine under the ice is such a big deal.

-LT. HOWARD: It is, yeah. Being underwater in general is a big deal, but especially under the ice where you don't have the option to come up, and correctly understand where you are with GPS is especially important.

DESTIN: Had you not sent me this footage, I would not have known what it looked like under the ice. Because when I was on the submarine, I couldn't see anything.

So what am I looking at here?

LT. HOWARD: We brought our AUV, autonomous undersea vehicle, on the Macrura with us from MIT. Macrura is being deployed from the hole that we had at Camp Seadragon. So it's slowly moving down. We're pushing it down with a weight right now. But at a certain depth, the mission kicks on and the tail cone takes over and it drives itself down to go do its mission.

DESTIN: So you guys are controlling it, like a video game.

LT. HOWARD: No, actually it's fully autonomous. So we can talk to it once it's deployed, but it has a preloaded mission plan that it executes. And we can update it, but it doesn't need to talk to us all the time to know what it's doing.

DESTIN: So it's time to understand the command structure on the boat. Now I knew there were officers and enlisted service members, but I didn't really understand the exact functions of each. The enlisted personnel have specialties with specific job functions like torpedoes or engineering. The officers manage these enlisted personnel, and they plan missions and provide and assign tasks.

There are three main positions of leadership on the boat. Of course the captain sets the objectives, and then you have two people that carry them out. You have the executive officer, and you also have the chief of the boat, otherwise known as the COB. The COB on the Toledo is Arnell Brantley. He's a master chief, which is the highest enlisted rank in the Navy. I learned very quickly that he knows everything about the boat and everything about the entire crew. All throughout this video series, you'll see that he's an extremely humble guy, but what you don't realize is that he commands respect in every room he walks into, both from the enlisted personnel and from the officers.

These are the chief's quarters, where the senior enlisted personnel come to blow off steam.

Let's listen to Arnell talk about his role on the boat.

So you are the bridge between the officers and the enlisted.

I am. So we have, basically on the boat what we call the triad. So there's the captain, the XO, and then there's me. So captain's on top. And then and me and XO on the side. I'm like the enlisted advisor on the, I like to say, the people problems. I do people problems. And anything's that's going on, I take care of that. The executive officer, he takes care of, like, all the training, all the training, getting people, dealing with stuff. And we basically-- we're the bridge to get the information to the captain, to help him make an informed decision on anything that he wants to make, so I'm just the in between. I like to call myself everybody's dad.
-Somewhere in there.

-DESTIN: Yeah. But, I mean, that position is really important, because he understands things at a very deep level. Right?
Yeah, he's the most important guy on the boat.

Yeah. I've heard multiple people say that, that your senior enlisted person--
These guys-- these guys-- and I always hang in here--
He does.

--a lot. DESTIN: Is he allowed to?
He is. He knows the handshake.

I am in here more than I'm in the wardroom, just because this is where everything happens. This is where all the information comes. These guys really run the boat, completely. So I typically hang out in here a lot more than in most spaces, just because--

DESTIN: Is that normal for a captain?
So, it's not. Like, it's a good thing to have. It really is. It's a good thing to have. Like, the relationship that we have right now with him coming in, and he learns a lot more, and we can talk to him a lot more. So he gets to see a lot more stuff there that-- because there are some commands that they do not function like we function. I think here we probably have it, one of the best overall command-wise team I've seen in a long time and our interaction.

So it isn't normal, but it is a good thing we have here.

DESTIN: Got it. Because normally this-- you know, we call it the club. We're joking a little bit. But normally the captain has to be invited in here. Is that correct?

Uh, I wouldn't say that-- I think most people would probably be uneasy to come in here.
Yeah. But I'm not. It's like, I get along with everyone.
-Yep.
-We're all pretty close.

DESTIN: Got it. Who's best at Xbox? [LAUGHING]
Yeah. So what do you guys play?
Madden. I play Madden and I play Madden.

DESTIN: Yeah. [LAUGHING] So it's time to meet the third person in the command structure triad, as the COB called it. This is the executive officer, or the XO.

So this is executive officer Andrews. You're basically the teeth on the ship.
-That's a pretty good way to put it. I try to think of myself a little nicer than that.
-But you're the order on the ship. Is that right?
-I think my personality kind of has a place to be in that sort of situation. Somebody has to do that drive in order to make sure the day-to-day stuff is happening. And I'm the one who goes around, making sure that that happens.

COB is dedicated to making sure the enlisted guys are taken care of. I'm dedicated to making sure the captain doesn't have to worry about the day-to-day, so that he can focus on the big problems. And so I'm the one who hunts down the guy who hasn't turned in his stuff on time. I'm the one who hunts down the guy who hasn't completed his program the way it needs to be completed. And that's just kind of the job.

DESTIN: Where are you from?

I'm from northern Nevada, Gardnerville. It's near Lake Tahoe.

DESTIN: Really. Did you-- did you want to do this? Like, did you just fall into this, or--
A little bit of kind of fell into it. But I loved when I visited submarines as a midshipman, because these are the most amazing people to work with. Everybody I work with is incredibly smart, driven. I can give a task to just about anybody, and they'll excel in what it is that they're doing. So I work with the best group of guys in the world. And I think that's what keeps me coming back and wanting to do more.

DESTIN: So the XO and the COB make things happen. Under the COB you have the crew chief, and under the XO you have the department heads and the junior officers.

Here's one such junior officer, explaining what he likes to do on the boat.

I really like driving the ship, standing officer of the deck. It's a huge responsibility, and the captain just put a lot of faith in his junior officers to carry out his intent. And so, to feel trusted like that always feels really nice.

DESTIN: I spent a lot of time talking to people and trying to build rapport. And every once in a while I flubbed it a little bit.

Good job. I messed that up. I'm sorry. [LAUGHING]

SENIOR CHIEF CARLTON: He was going for the awkward turkey.

DESTIN: I was going-- what is the awkward turkey?

The awkward turkey's when you--
DESTIN: Yeah. [LAUGHING]

So Senior Chief Carlton right here, the guy that taught me about the awkward turkey, he has a pretty interesting job. This is Matt. He's been helping me around the ship, along with Chop. But, uh, what do you actually do?

So I'm in charge of the division that operates the nuclear reactor onboard.
-DESTIN: The nuclear reactor.
-Correct.
DESTIN: You operate the reactor?

I used to, but now I train people how to do it.
DESTIN: So how exactly does that work?

I could tell you, but I'd-- I'd have to stow you away. [LAUGHING]
DESTIN: OK. So we're not allowed to talk about that.

But that's a pretty big deal. That's cool. If you go to the Navy, you learn how to operate a reactor. Pretty special.

One thing that was really surprising to me, as a civilian, when I get on the sub is that I saw people learning and teaching everywhere I went. It was a very cerebral environment. Doesn't matter your rank, does matter your position. They're always learning and teaching. And for every submariner, this path of learning starts with what's called getting your dolphins.

Dolphins is a big qualification on board. Enlisted officer-- everyone has to earn their dolphins when they're first here; that's the first priority. And like I said, when you have it, that signifies that you know how to save the ship in a casualty. So they have to know every system. So if you ask any guy onboard that has dolphins, like, hey, what's that? Hey, what's that? They should know.
-DESTIN: Really.

-Which is very unique to this. Does everybody have a dolphin here?
Oh yeah.

CAPTAIN CASTELLANO: These guys-- these guys are the senior guys. They run the ship. Yeah, I mean, clearly everybody in the club has dolphins. But like, is it like your first tour or whatever you call it-- what do you call it?
The first time you go out, what do you call it?
-Tour-- your first tour.
-First sea tour.

CAPTAIN CASTELLANO: They're typically all second or third.
OK. So on your first sea tour, how long does it take people, normally to get their dolphin?
-You're required to get it in 12 months. Most people are six to eight months, officers a year.

DESTIN: Is it more difficult for officers?

CAPTAIN CASTELLANO: It's different. It's different. So for an officer, it's a year onboard. But by that time they've already done 12 months of nuclear power school, three months of submarine school, and they show up-- they've got to qualify for different things than the enlisted side. So it takes a little bit longer. So they got to qualify all the way up to officer of the deck to drive the ship before they can get their dolphin.

-So everyone I saw up in the control room, are they all officers?
-Nope.

DESTIN: So what's the ratio on the boat?

CAPTAIN CASTELLANO: 140 total, and there's about 13 officers.
DESTIN: 13 officers?
Thirteen officers, 140, and how many chiefs?
-Thirteen chiefs right now. Normally we have 15 chiefs, and the rest are unlisted.
-OK.

Going around the room here, I'm seeing a lot of fish on name tag. PJ, I notice that you don't have a fish.
-What's up?
-I don't. So I got onboard last June. Typically for officers it takes about a year to get our fish. So right now I'm back aft, engineering-- qualified all engineering. And I'm working on my core systems now. So typically, eight hours back aft, come up, eat real quick, and then get right back on the books.
-DESTIN: Really?
-Mm-hm.

DESTIN: So you're studying to do all this stuff?
Yes. Definitely. Yeah, so, working with, like, uh, Ben over here, to kind of learn how all the different systems work.

DESTIN: So there's a pass-down of knowledge that happens?
-Oh, absolutely, yeah.
-Absolutely.

And I only just finished qualifying about a month ago. So I'm still pretty fresh. I know exactly kind of what he's going through right now.
-Yeah.

And we got all of these guys too. So, like, the other day I was with Diaz, going over torpedo tubes.

-If I'm understanding correctly, you as an officer, to some level, you kind of, like, submit yourself to the enlisted guys. And you kind of take that responsibility on to teach them.
-Yes.
Yes, sir.

And so it's both in our best interest, right, and also it goes along with making sure that they know what they're talking about. Just like-- even if it's not an officer, if it's an enlisted guy, eventually that one person is going to be relieving us of our duties, right. People rotate on and off the ship. So we have to teach the junior guys to be able to operate at our levels. So it's always our job to train the guys below us. And same thing with the officers.

DESTIN: Do you think it's more difficult to be a submariner?
-Yes.
-Absolutely.

DESTIN: Yeah?
There's no person to relieve us. It's just us.
-DESTIN: Really?
-True.

And I've been on a surface ship. So this is completely different, and it's a little harder.
Different-- everything is different. So we're under the water. We're on a ship that sinks on purpose.

DESTIN: Yeah. So it's definitely different.

DESTIN: So if it's harder, then why are you doing it?
Somebody has to do it.
-DESTIN: Yeah.
-Yeah.

I mean, it takes-- I would say it takes a special breed of people to do what we do. I did recruiting for three years, and the first thing people say when they walked in the office, they said, "I don't want to go on a submarine." That was one of the first words that come out of their mouths when I was recruiting. So it's very hard to find people who's willing to do this. But there is some of us. Obviously everybody onboard here and every submarine in the fleet are willing to do it.

I don't know why. We just wanted to, I guess.
DESTIN: Yeah?
Wanted to give it a shot and then end enjoying it, I guess.

DESTIN: Is it more of a challenge?
-Definitely.
-At the beginning.

Over time you start to see-- you start to see the effects of it, and the actual benefits of it. It's worth it.

DESTIN: The thing that was most impressive to me about every submariner I saw was that they valued knowledge and they value understanding, and they worked very hard to obtain it. And I think the reason they do that is they all seem to genuinely love their jobs. And when you love your job, you do it with excellence.

I'm having a blast. This is, uh-- to me this is the pinnacle of my life. This is where I always wanted to get to, command of a fast attack submarine, operational. Just having fun, living life, doing cool things like ICEX. I just-- I love it.

DESTIN: I had a question while I was onboard, and it was kind of like the elephant in the room, but I didn't know how to ask it. So in order to answer this question, I think Lieutenant Howard is probably best suited to educate me on this topic.

-You're a submariner.
-Right.

-Do you have your dolphins?
-I do. I earned my Submarine Warfare Qualification in December of 2017.

One question about that. When I got on the USS Toledo-- I don't know how to ask this in a correct way, so I'm just going to go straight through the front door. It was all men on the boat. And you're a female. So, and you're a submariner. What's going on? Why were there all men on the USS Toledo? And, I just don't understand.

So in the Submarine Force, women have only been integrated for the last ten years or so. And we have a lot of submarines in our fleet. So when the Navy decided to begin the process of integrating women, they chose to do it on the largest platform that we have first, the Ohio class, because it's just easier to set up areas for men and women to go-- things like sleep and go to the bathroom. It was just easier to integrate those first.

And then slowly over time, we've been bringing women onto other classes of submarines, too, specifically the Virginia class. And now we have women on multiple crews, multiple platforms, both officer and enlisted.

So my understanding is, they're having to modify the existing designs for submarines for these different facilities for men and women. Is that what you're doing?
Right. And really it's a very small change.

Really, recruitment over time has just been building up. You don't suddenly recruit, you know, several hundred submariners overnight. It's like a long, gradual process. Notably, the newest class of submarine that we have, the block-four version of the Virginia class, those are going to be gender neutral.

Thank you for setting me straight on all that.

Now that we have a better understanding of the command structure on a nuclear submarine, I hope you're looking forward to the upcoming topics. This is the first video in the Smarter Every Day Deep Dive into Nuclear Submarines and How They Work. So I hope you would consider subscribing, because we're going to go through a ton of different stuff that happens on the boat.

Like, how do you make oxygen, torpedoes? How do you cook? What's up with sonar? Like, there's so many things we're going to learn, it's amazing. So please consider subscribing. Maybe even ring the bell so that you can be notified when I upload. It's awesome.

I would now like to tell you about a very specific audiobook I think you'll love, that also turns out to be extremely important to the culture of submariners. This episode of Smarter Every Day is sponsored by Audible.

I brought you down to show you this field, because I bush-hogged it while I was in a submarine. At least that's what it felt like. Because I was listening to Thunder Below! by Admiral Eugene B. Fluckey. This guy changed submarine warfare to the point that when they have a promotion ceremony on most submarines, they read passages from this book. It's like a holy text. And every submariner has heard of Fluckey.

So if you want to listen to this, go to Audible.com/smarter, or text the word "smarter" to 500-500 and a little link will pop up on your phone. During World War II, there was this guy named Admiral Eugene B. Fluckey. He later got the Congressional Medal of Honor for what he did on the USS Barb. The Barb sunk the most tonnage of any submarine on the U.S. side in the entire war.

And the techniques and tactics that he used were, like, crazy at the time. He did insane stuff. He put rockets on top of his submarine, which had never been done before. It was incredible. Like, this-- this submarine sunk a train. Think about that. If you don't know what splicing the main brace is, you will after listening to this audiobook. It's incredible.

When you sign up as an Audible member, you also gain access to all the different Audible original titles-- unique pieces of content made specifically for Audible members. Tons of stuff to choose from here, and you can have your pick of all of it.

Go check it out, audible.com/smarter. Text the word "smarter" to 500-500 to get a link. It's a great deal. You will get smarter. You will reclaim your time. Audible.com/smarter.

Real quick on the way out the door here, I want to show you these flowers. These are orange flowers out in this field. And my dad and I do not bush-hog these flowers because butterflies love them. And we want butterflies to be happy. So I don't know what kind they are, but they're really, really pretty. It's a very vibrant orange.

Anyway, I'm so glad you're here, and I hope you subscribe and stick around for the rest of the Deep Dive on Nuclear Subs, here on Smarter Every Day. I'm pumped. Anyway, thank you. I'm Destin. You're getting smarter every day. Have a good one. Bye.