Co-ed sub? Coming this week

609 sighs of relief, we assume.

Women were authorized to set sail under the sea in 2010, and since then quite a few have joined the submarine service. Currently, there are 609 deployed in the fleet on subs designed for all-male crews.

The USS New Jersey, however, is due to be launched this weekend and is the first Navy sub purpose-built to have a co-ed crew.

Lieutenant Commanders Andrea Howard and Emma McCarthy, who joined the influx of women to the fleet, wrote last year about the adjustments needed — both physical and social — in integrating them on ships designed for all-male crews.

Space is tight, and the distribution of bathrooms and berths doesn’t always match the crew’s needs, they wrote.

“The number of women on board often does not conform to three- or six-man rack configurations,” they said.

Similar issues apply to the washrooms, with some crews dividing up the space and others deciding to use them in all-male and all-female blocks.

“Transit to and from these spaces for showering also warrants an unambiguous, uniform standard for decency,” they said.

I remember when the Army faced this in Germany…a barracks I lived in was completely co-ed. The showers were individual stalls with dressing cubbies and full-length TALL doors to discourage peeping, so it wasn’t unusual  to shower a couple of feet away from one of the opposite sex – totally unknowingly.

Only knew of one pinhead who tried to peep – as I recall no disciplinary action was taken (after he recovered from that unfortunate downstairs fall…you ever see the stone stairwells on old German kaserne quarters? Brutal. Rumor had it he was advised he might trip and fall again if he persisted in trying to look over partitions.)

The first influx of female junior officers also drew sometimes awkward curiosity from male crew members, they said.

“A fishbowl effect developed any time one of the first female junior officers did something for the first time,” they wrote.

The USS New Jersey is the 23rd Virginia-class submarine and the third Navy vessel to be named after the state. In 1900, New Jersey was the site of the construction of the first-ever US submarine.

Be interesting to see what design changes have been made.

The photo above is of the first female sub XO, Amber Cowan.

By the way, you can buy chunks of the teak decking from the old USS New Jersey, which is a dreadnaught class battleship of the same vintage of the Texas.  Looks plain at first but makes for  great knife grips.

Category: Navy