Under the Ice with Submarine Commander Sean Flanagan
Chatting with Sandra and Sandy today is Sean Flanagan, former captain of the USS Pasadena, a nuclear powered submarine that sails in the Arctic Circle. When operating military machinery under ice caps and keels, some reaching 200 feet deep, the term ‘Cold War’ takes on a new meaning. Since 2009, the U.S. has maintained a national presence in the Arctic to protect our interests throughout the region, and Flanagan’s experience doing so is just what the trio talk about today. After graduating from high school at the age 18, Flanagan joined the Navy for what would turn out to be a very long and successful career.
On today’s episode of the Adrenaline Zone, Sean talks about life beneath the ice, the hard work that granted him such a position, underwater navigation tools, and how he and his team prepare for emergencies. Living and working on the USS Pasadena, Flanagan reckoned not only with the importance of experience, but also the lack of off duty time that accompanies the job. He closes out today’s episode with a brief story remembering a moment when things got a little hairy. So be sure to listen in to today’s special episode to learn a little bit more about life under the ice.
Resources:
If you enjoyed this episode of The Adrenaline Zone, hit the subscribe button so you never miss another thrilling conversation, and be sure to leave a review to help get the word out to fellow adrenaline junkies.
Transcript:
Dr. Sandra Magnus: It lies somewhere between the pit of your stomach, your racing heart, and your brain; somehow, trying to keep it all together. It's an area we call The Adrenaline Zone.
I'm retired astronaut, Dr. Sandra Magnus.
Sandy Winnefeld: And I'm retired Navy Fighter Pilot, Admiral Sandy Winnefeld.
We're two adrenaline junkies who love spending time with people who are really passionate about pushing their boundaries as far as possible.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: US Navy submarines have operated under the ice for decades. The first one reached the North Pole in 1958.
Sandy Winnefeld: The captain of USS Nautilus wrote in a message at the time - “Embarked following personage at North Pole, Santa Claus, affiliation: Christmas.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: We'll have more to say about Santa Claus later in season three, but we've wanted to talk to someone who has actually operated under the ice.
Sandy Winnefeld: Today, we're honored to have as our guest, Commander Sean Flanagan, who was the captain of the nuclear-powered submarine, USS Pasadena.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Many thanks to our sponsor for this episode, Culligan Water.
Sandy Winnefeld: With Culligan's drinking water systems, you can get the ultra-filtered water you need to fuel your high-performance lifestyle right on tap.
Learn more at: culligan.com.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: We caught up with Commander Flanagan not long after he transferred from Command of USS Pasadena.
Sandy Winnefeld: So, Commander Sean Flanagan, welcome to The Adrenaline Zone, and thanks for being with us today.
Sean Flanagan: Well, thank you, sir, for the invite. It's a pleasure. I'm really excited to talk about some of the things that me and my crew have done over the past couple of months.
Sandy Winnefeld: Well, we're really looking forward to it as well. And we have always wanted to interview somebody who's been under the ice because that seems like it's risky and interesting, and with a lot of adrenaline. And I would say, operating a submarine under the ice sort of gives a new meaning to the term, ‘Cold War’, and you've been there several times.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah. And I'm actually looking forward to the conversation because there's a lot of parallels between living on the space station and living in a submarine. But before we get to what you guys were doing in the last few months, let's start at the very beginning. So, what got you interested in the Navy, and what caused you to join, in the first place?
Sean Flanagan: I originally joined about a year after I graduated high school. I enlisted in the Navy as a Nuclear Electrician's Mate when I was 19; really not a whole lot of reason there, other than, I was looking for direction and opportunities, and the Navy provided them. And what I found very quickly that, you know, put some effort in, and perform, and kind of do what you're told, and go a little bit extra, the opportunities just continue to open up for you.
So, I very quickly, advanced in enlisted ranks, and then at my first opportunity I had, I put in for an officer package, and I was selected for a commissioning program, and the Navy sent me to North Carolina State University. I got my chemical engineering degree, and I finished with the commission, and I've, you know, just now completed just over 25 years in the Navy Service. You know, starting off as an E-1, in boot camp, and just recently, being relieved as Commanding Officer of a submarine.
Sandy Winnefeld: Well, for our listeners, it's really a big deal to be able to come in as an Enlisted Nuclear Electrician's Mate, which is hard enough training, and a very rigorous job, and, you know, lots of bonuses, and you know, very, very high-quality people. But it's a pretty big deal to go from there to being commissioned as an officer, and then certainly ultimately, as the captain of Pasadena.
So, tell us a little bit about your progression as an officer. What did you have to do before you could become the captain of a submarine?
Sean Flanagan: Well, it's a long process. As you can imagine, most of the officers on a submarine, they're all nuclear-trained, with the exception of our supply officers. So, the remainder of all the other officers are nuclear trained. We all start off in the same place. We go to nuclear power school in Charleston, South Carolina, and we'll get continued nuclear training. So, we spend about a year and a half of just getting basic nuclear operator training, and then we go to a first submarine, where we'll operate as a division officer.
You know, we'll be in charge of one division, maybe a machinery division, or electrical division, and we do that for our first tour, and we learn how to drive the submarine, and manage contacts while we're submerged and how the solar system operates. So, that first tour for a junior officer is basically learning everything that you can, about being a submarine officer, and everything you can about the submarine itself.
And as soon as you know everything, or think you know everything, they send you to a shore duty, and you get a little bit of a break, and then you go right back, and you do as a department head-- submarines have four department heads; three of those are nuclear trained. Again, everybody goes through the same pipeline, same opportunities; you do that for a couple of years, and then go do a shore duty, then come back as an executive officer.
The submarine force is a little unique from the others in that we don't fleet up from XO to CO. So, after we finish an XO tour, we'll go to shore duty, and they'll go back through a training program to be a Commanding Officer. That training program for Commanding Officer, that pipeline process is about, you know, give or take a couple of months, but it's about a year-long doing extensive training in nuclear power.
So, at the beginning, when we learn about nuclear power, we're kind of learning about it in general terms, and, you know, this is kind of how it works, and your mileage may vary when you get to your submarine. But in the process of preparation for being in command, I mean, I went to Naval Reactors in DC for a number of months-- and I knew that I was going to go to the Pasadena, and I knew, you know, every piece of equipment that that submarine had, how many alterations it had, how many modernizations it had, all the different problems that it may have had over the 33 years of its service life. But I learned everything there was to know about that particular ship.
And then after I finished that nuclear power training, then I would go to a tactical performance course, where the prospective commanding officers do about a month or so of classroom training, and do high-fidelity simulation trainers, and we do about another month at sea. So, what they'll actually do, is they'll take all these, you know, two or three submarines that are available, and they'll put the prospective commanding officers, and prospective executive officers, on those submarines for a couple of weeks and basically make us play the role of XO or CO, to kind of learn the final step to how to put all that theory into application, and into command and leadership roles.
And so, you know, everybody who is in my position went the same role all the way from the beginning to now.
Sandy Winnefeld: So, it's quite an investment. By the time you get to be the captain of a sub, you've had at least three submarine tours. You probably had four, because you started off as an enlisted submariner, and then, all this other training and preparation, and then you get to the boat.
Is there any other like special selection criteria, or psychological screening, you know, check people for claustrophobia? I know Sandra had to do that as an astronaut.
Sean Flanagan: Yeah. A lot of those things are taken care of in the initial session’s process. There are some psychological screenings, and just asking simple questions, or, you know, "Are you claustrophobic?" And then maybe the submarine force maybe is not the place for you, the Navy will probably find a place for you under those circumstances. I will say that in the recent years, that sort of mentality of considering the, not just mental health, but mental resilience, and emotional health, has gone into not necessarily the selection process, but in the development process.
As an example, prior to my executive officer tour, I did several hour-long surveys, I did interviews with operational psychologists, and he sort of, you know, kind of gave, I wouldn't say did any sort of a clinical analysis, but, you know, this is how you best operate and, when bad things happen, or when stress happens, this is how you tend to react. And it helps to develop the self-awareness to kind of proceed in times of stress.
And they continue to develop that process. And, you know, just the other day, we're getting sort of notification that they want to increase that, and make sure that, you know, the folks that are doing the selection of leadership in the submarine force understand what the operational psychologists are talking to us about.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Operating under the ice; why did the Navy decide that that was a place to be in the first place? That that was a domain where they definitely wanted to send submarines for long periods of time.
Sean Flanagan: You know, in 2009, President Bush signed the National Security Presidential Directive 66, which basically said that our role in the Arctic is to assert a more active and influential national presence, to protect those interests, and to project sea power throughout the region. And it's been carried forward all the way through to the present day. There are no arctic treaties for the eight Arctic nations, so we kind of all agree that "Hey, this is an area that we want to be familiar with." And, and particularly, the submarine force is one of the best-suited assets to protect that resource and project sea power in the region.
You know, of the allies that we have, there are eight Arctic nations, and then there are some competitors that have Arctic borders. And, you know, submarines, particularly, United States nuclear summaries are kind of the only show in town when it comes to getting deep into the Arctic; to the tune that 1958, the USS Nautilus was the first really vessel to be in the vicinity of the North Pole. And a year later, in 1959, the USS Skipjack went back to the North Pole, but this time surfaced through it. And it's almost been a constant drumbeat on an annual basis, or even more frequently, to get a submarine back into the Arctic.
And every time we go, we go under the same general pretenses of projecting sea power, and then creating an influence in the region.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Have the dynamics changed a little bit since the ice is melting in certain places, and it's not really under the ice so much? Or has that not really affected the situation?
Sean Flanagan: Seasonally, the ice changes from like completely covered, and then in spring and summertime, it melts, and it does recede, and then currently, it may be receding a little bit more than it has in the past. But when you look at it on a micro scale, which is, you know-- when I have gone out there - there was a lot of ice, and pretty much everywhere we operated was covered in ice, to the tune of a couple of feet, to higher.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Wow.
Sean Flanagan: But certainly there are expectations that, you know, there's an economic value to sea lanes that may open up in the Arctic based on either long term, or seasonally-receding ice lines.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Right.
[Advertisement]
You're passionate about pushing yourself always to be better. Culligan's water experts feel the same.
Sandy Winnefeld: That's why their smart reverse osmosis filtration systems do more than deliver the ultra-refreshing, pure-tasting water you deserve. Their app also lets you set drinking water goals, see water quality information, and get filter change alerts.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: And with cleaner, safer, great-tasting water available right from the tap, you can also feel good about all those single-use plastic bottles you're saving from landfills.
Sandy Winnefeld: Get started today by scheduling your free water test, at: culligan.com.
[End of Advertisement]
So, you're out there under the theory that if you're not there, then somebody can claim this, or, you know, like other places in the world where we protect our rights to navigation and other rights under the Law of the Sea Treaty, and that sort of thing.
So, you're out there, and one of the great things about having you on The Adrenaline Zone, Sean, is that you've been there, and you've been there quite a lot. You have recent experience under the ice with Pasadena. How many times have you been under the ice yourself, and what exactly is an ICEX, that you might have participated in?
Sean Flanagan: Well, I need to correct one thing. This was actually my first time operating under the ice. And interestingly enough, that question was asked when I was underway, we had the opportunity to take a couple of media guests underway with us, and we were submerged in the ice with them, and surface, and operating in the ice. And the question I was asked by one of those media guests was, you know, "How many times have you done this?" And I had to tell her it was, "Well, counting yesterday, this is my second time."
Sandy Winnefeld: You mean you've never done this? I love it.
Sean Flanagan: Yes. And so, and soberingly, I would say the vast majority of my crew had never operated under the ice. Now, plenty of them had operated in the Arctic and what we call the marginal ice zone, or in cold waters that have, you know, issues that we have to concern ourselves with, but operating under the ice with the intent of conducting exercises, and ultimately, surfacing through the ice is not done frequently, and generally, not done outside of an ice exercise. There are some exceptions, but majority of the time, there's a reason we do that. And the ice exercises, they have an additional set of goals, objectives, and it changes from year to year; whatever is most important to the fleet, to the force or to, you know, the government organizations that give us direction.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So, what is it like down there? You mentioned the ice goes from a few feet thick and to some unknown depth, and are you constrained in your depth window depending on where you are? And how much stress does that add to the crew when they're operating in that manner?
Sean Flanagan: Yeah. We can be very constrained, you know, to answer this question, I'll sort of have to give a little bit of discussion on how ice is formed. And I went in there thinking that, you know, all the water just freezes, and there's an ice sheet of varying thickness. But it turns out that when the ice forms, the different flows can kind of crash into one another, and instead of fusing together, they create-- like, one will go under the other one and it'll create these long, very deep, ice structures that are called ice keels, and they can go down to, you know, 200 feet deep.
And so, the Arctic Basin is actually very deep, but in order to get there, we have to go through places that are not very deep. You know, the Pacific side, you know, goes to the Bering Strait, and that is not deep. And the route that I took through the Atlantic side went through the Nares Strait, which is body of water in between Greenland and Canada, and that's also not very deep. So, you've got these things over you that are coming down 200 feet, and then you have the ground that is coming up at you. You can be very constrained, I mean, to the tune of several meters above and below you.
Sandy Winnefeld: Wow. So, I guess you're not going very fast when you go through those narrow places-
Sean Flanagan: - Not at all-
Sandy Winnefeld: - you take your time, very careful with your navigation, and the like. So, I was going to ask you is, is it jagged or flat? But I think you've already answered that question.
So, how do you know what's above and what's in front of you when you're going through that? Because, you know, if you've got an ice keel in front of you, it's kind of nice to know what’s there, right?
Sean Flanagan: Yes, sir. One of the certification processes of going into an ICEX, or operating under the ice, is we will train the crew on how to operate, but we also certify our equipment to make sure that our sensors are tuned exactly properly to give us the most accurate information about what's above us and what's in front of us. So, we do have, you know, active sonar sensors that kind of project in front of us, at the side of us, on top of us, and below us, to tell us how deep the water is, or how close the sea bed is. And all those kind of operate in concert to make sure that we are safe in our space of the water that we want to be in.
And, you know, if we're driving and we're not going to know that there is something in front of us until it gets relatively close, to be honest with you. And so, the teams have to be trained to, alright, we have an ice keel in front of us, and, you know, we have some limited number of yards to react. And immediately, the ship control parties, or helms, have to put the rudder like hard over to avoid missing this. And man, it's day in, day out, hour in, hour out, it's, you know, you watching the sensors, and as soon as you get an indication that you’ve got something in front of you, you’ve got to turn.
Sandy Winnefeld: And I guess if that ice keel is between you and your destination, you’ve got to find a way around it, right?
Sean Flanagan: Yes. I think of the ice keels, to kind of visualize them, they're sort of like, you know, the stalactites that form in caves, you know, they're not the impenetrable walls, they're relatively easy to go around. But if a submarine were to hit one inadvertently, it would do significant damage to, you know, some of the more sensitive components on our submarine. So, we definitely take great care to avoid those, and depending on where you are in the Arctic, they can be relatively shallow and spaced far apart, or they can be relatively close together and deep, and you're constantly maneuvering the submarine just to get to your destination.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Wow. You know, I think we have one up on you on the space station. We have windows, and I'm pretty sure you don't have windows. And that's a big deal when you have windows.
Sean Flanagan: We do have some add-on equipment when we go. So, I would say that every submarine, at least every fast-attack submarine that the United States build, we build them, you know, their stock build, they can go and operate under the ice.
But we do get some additional equipment, sort of add-ons from our Arctic submarine lab, to help us operate in that domain. One of them is the upward-facing camera, so it's got a relatively low light capability and a very small field of view, but it looks straight up.
So, when we are going through the ice and we're trying to find a suitable place to surface, we can look up to make sure that, you know, the ice is relatively flat, and we're not misreading our sensors. So, not a window, but it is a camera.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: That's good.
Sandy Winnefeld: Does that help you determine how thick the ice is, or do you have some other method of-- because if you're going to, we'll get into surfacing through the ice in a minute, but I would imagine if it's brighter, it's thinner. But is it rough, or do you have a pretty good feel?
Sean Flanagan: It’s a pretty good feel with the camera if it's light. The real thing that you can tell with the camera is it should be a consistent color. If there's any ice keels, they'll create a lot of shade and shadows, and it's readily apparent. When we went up there, it was relatively, you know, 24 hours’ worth of daylight, so it was relatively useful for us. You know, if you were going to use it during the times of 24 hours in darkness, probably wouldn't be as much useful. But the camera was sort of a-- it's kind of a nice to have. It was good to look at, but ultimately, our sonar centers, our upward-facing sonar sensors, which would tell us how deep the ice was, is kind of the primary thing we would use.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah.
Sandy Winnefeld: So, Sean, all of our subs have one nuclear reactor. And thanks to the amazing nature of the Navy's program that designs, builds, maintains, trains people to run those reactors, they're some of the most reliable machines on the planet. But you still have to plan for some kind of contingency, I'm sure. And it's got to be different if you're under the ice. You know, especially under ice that's not suitable for surfacing if you have some sort of an emergency where you have to scram your reactor or something like that.
Obviously, you have that on your mind at all times, your crew is really well-trained, but how do you feel? How does that sort of increase the pucker factor as you're driving around under the ice?
Sean Flanagan: Quite a bit. You know, I've been at the navy nuclear power for 25 years, and there have been very few instances where we've been driving around under the water, and have a problem with the reactor, and have to do something about it. You know, it just doesn't happen. They are really, really reliable.
But just to your point, you know, the time, you know, Murphy's Law will have it, to have a problem under the ice, it is a lot more consequential. So, part of our training process is not just training the ship's control party how to operate and maneuver the submarine under the ice, but we do some significant training in our engineering department. And, you know, these are the sort of casualties which would remove propulsion, and what do we do, and how do the rules sort of change under the ice where the consequences are more significant?
So, certain casualties that, you know, we kind of just, I don't want to say don't worry about it under normal circumstances, but in normal circumstances - by normal I mean up, you know, just submerged in water that doesn't have ice on top of it - if the worst thing happens, you always can go to the surface. You know, we have a SUBSAFE program that was established after the loss of the USS Thresher, and one of those principles in the SUBSAFE program is, a submarine will be able to go to the surface through emergency means like an emergency blow, as we call it.
But when you're under the ice, that option is not there anymore. We do an emergency blow under the ice, and the ice isn't thin enough for us to go under, we're just going to bounce off the ice canopy and we can lose a submarine. So, we spend an awful lot of time making sure that the engineering department knows exactly what to do to operate in this domain under, you know, casualty conditions. We go the extra mile; we actually do some practice when we have these reactor scrams. You know, there's a limited amount of time that we have; we have a submarine battery that gives us propulsion and runs our electric equipment, and things of those nature, while we get the reactor back up.
So, one of the reasons, or one of the requirements to go under the ice is to kind of stretch the legs of the battery. We'll do a thing called [inaudible 22:21] electrical. So, we basically shut everything off in a submarine, people carry around flashlights, and, you know, all our sonar systems are down, with the exception of just the one or two that we need to safely operate the ship, our hydraulic systems go into like an emergency mode in that they don't use a lot of power. And so, the whole goal there is to stretch the limits of the battery while we have the opportunity to get the reactor back up. And it turns out they are well-designed, and we made it through the entire under ice operations without any reactor problems whatsoever, or propulsion problems for that matter.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: On ISS, we train extensively for two really major ones - a fire, and a depressurization. Those are emergencies we train extensively, that's kind of bold faced, you know exactly what to do. I imagine you guys do something similar. You know, Sandy talked about the shutdown, but how do you deal with other emergencies regardless of whether you're under the ice or not? You mentioned an emergency blow, but you'd probably try and fight the situation first. Right?
Sean Flanagan: Oh, absolutely. And it's interesting you mentioned the corollary between the astronaut variants. So, our two casualties that we are most concerned with are also fire, but instead of depressurization, I would call it, over-pressurization, flooding So, some corollary there. And certainly, the goal there is to, you know, to combat the initial casualty so that the small fire in the ship's laundry doesn't turn into a large fire.
Or, you know, but when it comes to flooding, you know, our normal process for flooding might be just to go to the surface. You know, we'll deal with that later, kind of stuff. On this, you know, there are options; like, we'll minimize our depth to minimize that flooding rate while we combat the casualty.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: You know, for the fire on Space Station, the first thing that happens when the smoke detector goes off is that all the ventilation stops, you know, to quit feeding the oxygen to the fire. Do you guys do something similar?
Sean Flanagan: Yes. Our regs for fire will shut off the ventilation, sort of starves it of oxygen, plus, it keeps the smoke from getting elsewhere in the submarine, and kind of localizes the concerns to the immediate vicinity.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah, a lot of parallels.
[Advertisement]
Water is the ultimate health drink. With Culligan's filtration systems, you'll get the superior quality, and pure-tasting, ultra-refreshing hydration you can count on, to power your performance.
Sandy Winnefeld: Culligan smart reverse osmosis systems take it to the next level, helping you set hydration goals, track how much you're drinking, and even see what contaminants are reduced in your water.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: That means you're always getting the exceptional water you need to feel truly good inside and out, ready to face the day, and whatever challenges it brings.
Learn more at: culligan.com.
[End of Advertisement]
Sandy Winnefeld: You know, one of the things that really struck me when I was on Annapolis, and it was a big reminder for me, was the importance of experience. And I remember watching the CO when we were doing a submarine versus submarine thing, and you know, you guys are so quiet, you're so hard to find, that he was the guy who saw on the sonar at the very last second - and it's not lost on me,you know, the captain, the chief of the boat, the executive officer you guys are so critically important in these evolutions - but it must also feel so good when you see your crew able to kind of do it with you just watching.
Sean Flanagan: It is. And it becomes an art too, and being in the right place at the right time, and sometimes, it's as simple as, you know, me or the COB or somebody just asking a simple question, and then creating the pause in somebody's thinking, they, reconsider what they're doing, and they already know the right answer. And they just needed somebody to say, "Hey, did you think about that particular aspect?" And it does come with experience, and that's one of the things that I find very useful about the way we set up our commanding officers for success.
Sandy Winnefeld: Yes. I would mention to our listeners really quickly, because one of the philosophies behind this podcast is that, you know, half the people in the world who take risk are women, and we have our first female Chief of the Boat. You mentioned the COB and I know the submarine service is really proud of that. It's been a while to have women work their way up to the submarine force, and it's good to see that that's happening.
Sean Flanagan: It is.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: In between these training sessions and these exercises, what does the crew do when it's off duty to relax? You know that helps break down the stress and the fatigue. So, I mean, on Space Station, we can look out the window. You guys don't have Windows.
Sean Flanagan: Yeah. I have found that we try to provide outlets for sailors, things like movies, and they have books and that kind of stuff. But what I will say, that in high-risk, high-intensity operations, a lot of their off-duty time is spent preparing for their on-duty time. And then we still have to do things like laundry and eat, and clean, that kind of stuff. So, oftentimes, when we're doing the high-intensity operations, you know, there's not a lot of time for that.
Ideally, submarines, and pretty much, you know, any military unit, tries to find time for leave when it makes the most sense. But I will say that the majority of time under the ice, there wasn't a whole lot of fun going on. We did have an opportunity to-- as we were transiting to the North Pole, do what we call, a Blue Nose Ceremony, where it's kind of the same thing you would do if, you know, a ship or a submarine crosses the equator and does a shellback ceremony. Just kind of a thing to do, Nintendo tournaments, and that kind of stuff.
But really, I would say most folks, they were really keyed into what we were doing, and, you know, with the stress involved in their operations, they're pretty quick to, you know, "I need to get some sleep so I'm ready and fresh to do this the next day."
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Do you guys have a gym on board for people to work out and relieve stress that way, or is it too cramped quarters?
Sean Flanagan: It's cramped. I mean, we will try to get equipment underway, and every submarine class has figured out a way to get a treadmill somewhere in the submarine. Exercise bikes, rowing machines, things that have relatively smaller footprints, we can kind of cram and them to the nooks and crannies, free weights, exercise bands. We do have those opportunities, and we try to maximize use of those when we have them on board.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah. I mean, we have to exercise for physiological reasons, but it's also a great stress relief. And our equipment’s also very tiny, you know-- but it's important.
Sandy Winnefeld: Yeah. They have to strap you in.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah.
Sandy Winnefeld: So, Sean, I know that you mentioned earlier the submarine service is the silent service. So, just curious if there are any unclassified, sort of hairy stories you can share, or if you tell us, you'll have to kill us?
Sean Flanagan: You know, one of the things that I wouldn't say a scary story, but I went there, you know, letting you know that this was our first time doing this, you know, and the majority of the crew had never surfaced through the ice, and so, we kind of went in there with the expectation that this was going to be hard, and we were going to learn as we went. We did a little practice on some of the evolutions, like surfacing under the ice, we did it in our local operating waters, and we kind of went through the motions, and we didn't do everything because it's really not safe in local waters to stop the submarine and then go up and surface.
In any case, we spent a lot of time practicing surfacing the submarine. And so, even though there was a learning curve associated with it, we did pretty, pretty well in that. We didn't really realize until we got there and we were actually on the surface surrounded by ice that we hadn't really talked about how to get back down. You know, we had a procedure for it, but the first time was quite ugly. So, I told you when we surface the ship, we kind of blow some ballast out of our main ballast tanks. And so, in order to resubmerge the ship, you got to get all that water back in the ballast tanks. So, vent the tanks.
Normally, when we're operating in our normal waters, the boat is driving forward in about 10 or so knots when we submerge the ship. So, the ship is actually positively buoyant and we drive it down, but under the ice or on top of the ice, when you're submerging a ship, you don't have that forward momentum to drive a ship down. So, you have to basically do a controlled sinking in the submarine. You have to make it heavier than water, and it has to go down, and it has to get deeper than all these ice keels before you can start moving forward. And while you're sinking the submarine deeper and deeper and deeper, you don't have your control surfaces, your main engines aren't warmed up yet, because you're doing all these things in the meantime, and so just-- I was not that anxious about it because I sort of did the math in my head, but there were a lot of concerned faces in control, you know, as the depth is getting deeper and deeper and deeper and we're not moving anywhere.
So, I wouldn't say it was, you know, hairy moments, but certainly, you could see on the sailor faces, particularly the more junior ones, when something didn't feel right, there was a thinly-veiled-like concern-
Dr. Sandra Magnus: -It's like, what? What's going on?
Sandy Winnefeld: It's not hairy, but it's way different, I would imagine. And I imagine you could get, you know, wedged in the ice too. It might be hard to get down. I never really thought of that.
Sean Flanagan: It's possible.
Sandy Winnefeld: I remember seeing a picture one time, of some polar bears snooping around a submarine that had surfaced through the ice. Did you guys have any company up there at all? What did you do when you got up there?
Sean Flanagan: We did. We wanted to see some polar bears, but that was not in the cards for us. You know, some of the pictures you see-- like I said, the Arctic is huge. A lot of those polar bears don't get too far away from land. At least as far as I understand, they're not walking around the North Pole. They know they kind of get off the coast of Canada or Alaska, and they don't get too far into the ice-covered areas. And we didn't really operate there. We operated a little higher up in the Arctic.
Sandy Winnefeld: So, no Santa sightings or anything like that?
Sean Flanagan: Well, it's arguable. I mean, one of our Liberty events, we were at the North Pole and we actually met up with another submarine at the North Pole - the USS Illinois was there with us. They actually joined us from the Pacific side, and we came up to the Atlantic side, and we met up at the North Pole. And we brought a Santa costume with us, and one of our sailors dressed up as Santa Claus and we took pictures, and it's going to be a lot of our postcards and Christmas cards for this holiday season.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: That's perfect.
Sandy Winnefeld: Very, very cool.
So, Sean, I imagine that you really benefited from lessons learned from other folks who have done this before you, and no doubt you have been expected to write up your own report. You must learn something every time a submarine goes under the ice. Any particular lessons this time that you can share? There may be classified lessons we wouldn't want to get into, obviously, but is the learning curve still steep, or is it pretty well understood how you need to do this?
Sean Flanagan: Yeah, the learning curve is still steep. I think we try to, every time we go, do something new and something different to try to, you know, push the envelope. But you know, when I said that it was my first time operating in the ice, I leveraged all those lessons learned from previous operators under the ice. So, I mentioned earlier, the Arctic Submarine Lab. You know, it's our clearing house from all things Arctic. And they're the ones that put the equipment on us, they're the ones that kind of give us all the training. They'll actually send what are called Arctic Operations Specialists on the submarine with us, and they have operated under the ice before, you know, they're colloquial referred to as ice pilots, but they come with a heavy amount of experience.
You know, my ice pilot, Brian Reed, had done this a number of times, but we'll also go and, you know, he would give me the report when, as an example of the USS San Juan did ICEX in, I think it was 1993. And so, the San Juan is basically like the same make and model with all the trimmings that the Pasadena has. So, I could look at San Juan's report, and I can see exactly how they did certain things. You know, I might not know how long I need to blow the emergency ballast tanks to surface to the ice, but this report said, you know, you do it for three seconds here, or two seconds there, whatever the case may be. So, you know, we leverage all those lessons learned, and you kind of look at all those reports over the past probably, 60, 70 years.
The Arctic Submarine Lab has about 100 or so different versions of either ICEXes or operations under the ice that all those lessons learned in this and we're just building up on top of them. And yes, I was responsible to create, you know, a document upon completion, as well as my Arctic Operations Specialist. He captured a couple of things that were new and unique to this operation.
Sandy Winnefeld: Well, Sean, congratulations to you and your crew for a successful tour as a captain of a submarine, and for obviously, a really interesting ICEX.
It's really cool as a commanding officer of anything to be able to do something that isn't always done. And I know you really relish that experience.
It's been a delight talking to you, and we really wish you the best of luck with the rest of your career as you move forward, and hopefully, you're getting a little break with your family.
So, thanks again for being with us, and thanks for your service.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Thanks for chatting with us. It was really super interesting.
Sean Flanagan: Thanks for having me.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: That was former captain of the submarine, USS Pasadena, Commander Sean Flanagan.
I'm Sandra Magnus.
Sandy Winnefeld: And I'm Sandy Winnefeld.
Thanks again, to Culligan Water for sponsoring this episode. Get exceptional water for exceptional performance.
Learn more at: culligan.com.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Check us out on social media, including a short video of our interview with Sean, on TikTok. Our handle is very simple: @theadrenalinezone.
