Burial At Sea Question

[Das Boot]

I know we have a lot of veterans here, and this is a strange question, but I’ll ask anyway. As I understand it, fast attack submarines have six month deployments. If a crew member were to pass away on board at the beginning of the tour, would they have to keep him or her on board until the six months are up, or would burial at sea be an option? I’m sure an autopsy would have to be performed, especially if the circumstances are unknown, but I’m just unsure about the way to keep the unfortunate sailor in storage until the tour is over. I just watched a couple of movies where burial at sea happened. Of course this is Hollywood, but does anyone know the answer to the question?

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

Into the freezer with 'em till they hit port.

[redboat219]

Into the freezer with 'em till they hit port.

ice cream party to make room in the freezer for the body.

Anyway, can you launch a body out the torpedo tube like what they do in WW2 movies to trick the enemy that they've sunk a submarine or impromptu burial at sea?

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

ice cream party to make room in the freezer for the body.

Anyway, can you launch a body out the torpedo tube like what they do in WW2 movies to trick the enemy that they've sunk a submarine or impromptu burial at sea?

And some luckless Torpedoman has to dive the tube to clean up the mess. **** you, ReadBoat!

[CC Clarke]

Boomer patrol or Spec Op, the body would go into the freezer until return to port. We performed a lot of burials at sea, (all ashes) for submarine veterans when we headed out on local ops.

[wlambing]

Not the Freeze Box!!!! The Corpsman has procedures for such an occurrence. If it had to be stored, for a short period, it goes into the Chill Box. All the chow in the box gets moved to the freeze box or eaten. Not legal to keep food in there with our shipmate. Transfer would be made to a surface facility ASAP (or helo). Then our pal would get a free ride to Dover, DE and go into that system. Never had to do this stuff but did help several Corpsman with their SS qualifications. Sometimes, on boring mid-watches I'd get the Manual for the Hospital Corps out of his office and read select passages to the junior kids in the Ship Control Party, of course also employing any relevant illustrations! I did want to get blown out of a 637 sanitary, but they're all gone and nobody will pump me out, 'cos I have too much metal in my body. ;)

[CC Clarke]

On both of my boats, the refrigerators were turned into freezers for extended deployments since we knew the perishable food would be depleted within two weeks, even when stored in cooler spaces like escape trunks and torpedo tubes.

So if you croaked underway, you got body-bagged to prevent freezer burn.