#submarines

Submariner from HMS Taku making an addition to the ship's Jolly Roger, c. 1940-1944.

I recently learned that the Royal Navy has a tradition of carrying Jolly Roger flags on submarines that dates back to the start of the 20th century.

When submarines were first adopted by several European navies, the First Sea Lord (head of the Navy) Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson commented that in his opinion, submarines were "underhanded, unfair, and damned un-English", and any captured enemy submariners should be hung as pirates.

In the early months of WWI, after the British submarine HMS E9 successfully torpedoed a German cruiser, the submarine's commander Max Horton remembered those comments and had his signaller make a Jolly Roger that the submarine flew as it came into port.

Not on Europa. Not even the new stuff is rated for the depths you need to hit to dodge by sub-crust sonar installations. Not that it would matter, no light gets past even the first click of opaque surface ice, let alone ten.

You undock, drop through the bay tunnel, dodge a couple of skyscraper sized spires of brine ice sticking down from above, and then nothing. Pings don't find anything bigger than sediment for weeks, and you know it's darker out there than it is on the surface.

Sometimes you gotta do a walk, hop out to check external equipment, so you slip into the clamshell and hope the last guy didn't sweat too hard. Then you sit through inspection. Rooks always complain about inspection, but when your CO points out you didn't bother to tether for the first time you shape up.

Yeah the clams have maneuvering, you could get up to about half fhe speed of the sub at full if you had to, but thats not what the tethers for.

You step out that hatch for the first time and you see the little bits of crud floating in the black, lit by torch like stars? That's magic.

You step over to the side, look down, and see the black that goes forever? Well, that's when you feel the jolt, hear the rattle of the tether going tight at your back and Ops shouting into your headset. Dangling maybe 20 meters under the hull, nothing between you and eternity.

Heard someone say that if you dropped for real you'd sink for a month at least before you hit anything solid, if theres anything solid at all.

I believe them.

And look, I know that after all that you're nodding your head and shootin' a look at your friend accross the table. The SO sardines have the crazies, always so sad to hear it you know? But believe me when I say that when you're falling asleep you can hear them, tapping on the outside of the hull, right by your head.

There's something out there, and if I'm really lucky I finish my tour before we find out what.

Okay. It's 1942.

There's a US submarine, USS Silversides, operating in HIGHLY dangerous Japanese waters.

And one poor bastard, some machinists mate, gets a case of acute appendicitis

They can't radio for an airlift because the Japanese will find them

But they don't have a surgeon on board.

The only medical person they have is a fucking pharmacist's mate

As in, a pill counter guy

As in, the cold and flu and small stitches guy

Not the "cut open a machinists mate on a moving submarine" guy

Not even 3 steps below that guy

But he's all they have, and if they do nothing, this guy is gonna fucking die.