- [Man] Seven zero, six up, point four up, Standby for impact! - Welcome back to Smarter Every Day. I've made a really long
journey to an ice floe in the Arctic Ocean to
board the USS Toledo, a U.S.. Navy fast attack
nuclear submarine, which has punched its
way up through the ice. Today we're gonna learn
how to actually control a sub underwater, and it's very different
from what I thought. After we go back into the ice, we'll go really deep in the ocean, which I found to be a
little bit unsettling, and then we'll go into the control room and learn the complicated
and dangerous process of surfacing a submarine in the Arctic, which involves using
physics to break back up through the thick Arctic ice. All right, here we are. We're at the final episode
of the Smarter Every Day, deep dive series, on
board a nuclear submarine. And there's a lot of
other stuff you can learn in previous episodes: the command structure, how to make oxygen, how to fight fires, but for now, we're gonna go back to the beginning when I first boarded the USS Toledo, and we're gonna learn what
it was like to drop down through the ice and begin our journey. Let's go get smarter every day. [Music] - Okay, Arnell is about to
tell us what's going down. We are literally about to dive and you're gonna walk me
through how that works, right? - Right. - [Dustin] So what's going on. - Basically, what we're about to do is, we're gonna take our boat
from sticking in ice, and we're gonna pull it back
down toward normalcy state, what we're used to operating in. So right now we're operating
with our bow planes in. So basically... - [Dustin] Our what? - The bow planes, which
basically are the wings on the front of the boats
that help us go up and down. They move just kind of like airplane. Just think about the airplane wings, that's what we think about
there inside the boat right now. So we're like an airplane
with no wings right now. - [Dustin] So you wait a second. You said you pull them inside the boat. - So hydraulically, we pull both sets of little
T-Rex arms inside the boat. (Dustin laughs) We pull them in, and they're
stowed inside the boat right now because we don't want to come up and damage them in the ice, when we surface through the boat - [Dustin] No way, there's no bow plane, can I see it though? This is made out of wood. - They're retracted. - [Dustin] They're retracted. - So right around here is where the bow planes come out on this side. This is where I was talking
about the stern planes. So you have the stern planes
in the back that operate. - [Dustin] Yeah. - And on the side, both sides here, it'd be a short set of
planes that stand out, and those are your bow planes. And they control, for
us going up and down. Now the ballast tanks we're talking about, they're located up here and
they're also located back here. This is where we're
gonna take the water on, take water on here, or put more air in to
change buoyancy of the boat. It's the sail the boat right here. - [Dustin] The sail? - The sail. - [Man] Even though it's not a sail. - Even though it's not a sail this is how you got on the boat today. So you come up through here. - [Dustin] And why did
we get on the boat here? - Because when we surface
the weapons shipping hatch, which is normally located here,
we would've popped it open, but when we came through the ice, the superstructure of the
boat was not high enough, there was still water over
the weapons shipping hatch, so if we'd opened the
weapon shipping hatch, there would have been
flooding on the boat. - We're not high enough
because of the ice right now, so there's a little water over
our weapons shipping hatch. We can't open the normal hatch. We decided to go with this option. - [Dustin] That's a good
reason not to do that. (laughs) That's a good reason not to do that. Okay, so my understanding
is you are about to take me to the control room. - That's correct. - And we're gonna do a dive. - We're about to dive the ship. - And you're gonna let me
put the camera somewhere. - You will see something. (laughs) So who am I gonna watch? - So when we go up to control, I'll have you up in the
front where I normally stand, the captain will be on the conn and you'll see the chief of the watch, you will see the diving officer, and you will see the officer deck and the conning officer
who will be in control of the entire evolution. - Okay, got it. Got it, sounds good. And what do I need to not
say to not look stupid in that room? Just keep my mouth shut, right? - Just let it ride. - Yes, sir I'm looking forward to it. I can already tell man, you're my favorite person on the boat. It took me like 10 minutes. Is that why you got me? Is that why you shook my hand first? - That was it, I felt it. - [Dustin] Filming inside the control room of a U.S. nuclear submarine while it's diving in the Arctic
is an incredible privilege. And this is not the kind of access that the Navy takes lightly. Because of this, there's
gonna be some trade-offs, at some point, you're gonna see some stuff blurred out in the background, and at some points the audio
is gonna drop out completely. We're doing this so that
the Navy can take us right up to the line, as far
as classified information goes without revealing
any of the capabilities or limitations of the submarine. Okay, we're gonna dive and I can film here in that direction just because of stuff
that's on the screens. - [Man] Just tell me when you're ready. - Ready, sir.
- [Man] Ready? - Yeah, ready to dive? - Captain, sir, all personnel onboard the ship. The ship is rigged for dive with the exception of Arctic full blow and a sounding of 1490
fathoms beneath the ship. Checks with charter water depth, I intend to stationary
dive the ship to 180 feet. - Submersion ship ice sir. Dive, stationary, dive
the ship to 180 feet. - [Man] Stationary dive
the ship to 180 feet. Dive by chief of the watch and the one MC stationary dive stationary dive. Sub two blasts of the diving alarm, stationary dive, stationary dive. - [Man] One MC Stationary
dive, stationary dive, sub two blast diving alarm
stationary dive, stationary dive. Chief of the watch aye. - Stationary dive, stationary dive. - We can bring the water
in, having shut it in half so we can control the
angle that we're using to come down from. The diving and officer of the
watch right now is controlling our angles and our pitch and
roll, which we can see up here. - Where's the depth gauge? - So we have the depth gauge here, you can also reach depth here and digital depth here. And you can read it in digital, up there. - Got it. - Speed, course, depth, pitch, roll. - I can feel it. - Right now we have a 63 down angle. - Understood. - We're trying to come of the ice. - Put 10
- [Man] Put 10 - Upward depth rate, four six five down. Upward depth rate, four four, four down, four two, four down. Upward depth rate, negative acceleration, chief of watch, flooding. - [Man] We're flooding. - [Man] Test turn planes and rudders - Test turn planes and rudder. Test turn planes and rudder. Six four, six six. Extend the bow planes. Extend the bow planes. CSES control extending the bow planes. Seven eight eight zero
downward depth rate, three down, positive acceleration. - [Man] I make it up 240
feet, zero degree bubble. - 240, zero degree bubble aye sir. - You just heard the diving
officer say zero degree bubble. And you may not have heard that before, but you already know what that means. To maintain a level submarine before the ballast tanks are equalized, the submariners have to use
what's called the bow planes and the stern planes. I'm tempted to use an airplane metaphor, but piloting a submarine is
much more like piloting a blimp. There are two main forces at play here. You've got the buoyancy
force, which acts on the sub, whether it's moving or not, and then you've got, what's called the dive planes. You've got the bow planes
and the stern planes. And these are kind of like wings, except they provide both
upward and downward force. And they only have an
effect on the submarine when it's actually
moving through the water. Using the speed and the angle of attack, the submariners can
calculate the amount of force the planes are contributing to maintaining a zero degree bubble. You can then push or pull water into and out of the ballast tanks to equalize the buoyancy force at
that particular depth. You can then slowly dial
this in by allowing the bow and the stern planes to take less and less of a bite of water until ultimately they end up at a zero
degree angle of attack. By trimming out the submarine like this, they can dial it in so that
they can hold the submarine at a certain depth using
only buoyancy forces. This is a really, really big deal. And when we go to punch
back through the ice, this concept is going
to come back into play in a really big way. - So when you do a static dive, you don't have the forward
momentum of the boat and the bow planes to help you. So you have to adjust pitch
and roll with ballast? - If you want to go
zero, just use sea water to just weigh you down
perfectly to match the buoyancy. Under the Arctic is very challenging 'cause the salinity changes so much, normally salinity is pretty
constant in the ocean, but here 'cause of the freshwater on top, the salinity can change all
throughout the water column. So that changes your buoyancy
all the way up and down. - So, if you noticed,
when he first started, he was calling off depth
rates pretty rapidly 'cause it's very heavy
in that fresh water. And then once you hit that salinity acceleration started coming off, the velocity started coming off and it was really more
of a controlled approach. - It's not like a thermocline, it's a different thing
'cause it's salinity. - It's both
- It's both. - It's a pretty strong effect that it has. - Only thing we have to deal with is the temperature
change, which is normal, but other under the Arctic it's both. - Really, it's amazing. So I noticed you were hyper stressed for a short period of time and now you seem chill. What's up with that? - A lot of things happen all at once and if they don't happen
exactly at the right moment, you don't get the angle you need, you don't get the ascent rate you need, you don't get the pitch rate, the planes are moving as
fast as you need them to, everything kind of happens all
at once and then compounds. Once you get ordered up, calms
down pretty significantly. - So sir, you're controlling
the rudder of the ship. - Yes sir, rudder and bow planes. - [Dustin] So you're
just looking at gauges. It's not like driving, you can't see what you're doing other than these needles, right? - Just the needles. - [Dustin] So what are you trying to hit? Don't tell me a number, but... - I'm going to a course. I'm going east, going in a
different cardinal direction, so I'm going east. - [Dustin] So you're literally
driving the boat right now? - Yes, sir. - [Dustin] Is it pretty intense? - When you first starting, I would say so. But I've been doing it for a little while, so I got used to it. - [Dustin] So you're pushing
in and out like a yoke, but you're also turning, so is that the bow plane? - It is plane. So I'm trying to keep depth of the planes and then going in my direction. - [Dustin] So left and right is rudder, pushing in and out it's your planes? - Yes. - So, we did the dive
and now we're turning 10 times is that correct? - So we're gonna do 10 turns of the screw. - [Dustin] Of the screw. - That just means the screw's turning 10 revolutions a minute. - Oh okay, so it's a rotation
rate of the propeller. So you're calling that. Okay, got it. - And the goal of that
is to get us to slow down so we can actually do a very microscopic adjustment of the trim. We're taking the planes, which provides some
lift out of the equation by slowing the ship down. So we're finding that neutrally buoyant. So in the event that casually
or something happened where we lost propulsion, the ship wouldn't float
uncontrollably up or down, it would find this happy
depth we would go right there and we'd just stay until we figured out what the next step was or where we're starting to fall. - [Dustin] Got it.
Where'd you learn all this? - A lot of experience
here, on board the ship and previous ships and training commands. - [Dustin] Got it. A little later, once we were underway chief Charlton had a classic demonstration set up for us in the torpedo room. - All right, so we got here is we've got a string tied across from all the way across the ship, towards the starboard
side, at our shallow depth, and what we're gonna do is
we're gonna proceed deep to show you how the hull compresses as we dive the ship. - [Dustin] Really?
- Yeah. Here in a minute, they're
gonna start diving the ship. And then as you see that, you'll see the string starts to lower from the hull compression. - [Dustin] Are you allowed to tell me the difference in depth that we're going like from... - No.
- [Dustin] Okay. I felt it diving now, - I'm gonna lean a little bit forward, you're going to lean in a little bit aft. - I can feel it. - And then as we go deeper, you'll see the string start to dip. - Stuff's starting to move. - [Chief Charlton]
There's something falling. - Wow, that's like a 10 degree tilt. - 10 degree yep. We're starting to get a little
bit of slack on the line already you can see here. - [Dustin] I'm doing the math in my head, at that speed at that angle, we're going deep. - Oh yeah. (laughs) - I'm a mechanical engineer, and one of the things they teach you in mechanical engineering school is the ultimate load
capabilities of pressure vessels. So while I was in this
submarine down in the ocean, I was thinking about
things like hoop stress and axial stress and mechanical buckling and the fatigue strength of wells. There was a lot going through my mind. In this spaceship, the difference in pressure between you and outer space is only one atmosphere, but it's very different in the ocean. For every 10 meters or so that you go deeper in the water, it's like adding another
atmosphere of pressure to the outside of the pressure vessel, and in the Beaufort Sea, where we're at in the Arctic Ocean, there is a lot of available atmospheres worth of depth that we could go just by diving deeper. Okay, you're a smart person, and you know that if
Dustin is in a submarine that's pointed down at 10 degrees and you can approximate a velocity, you can just do the trig
and you can figure out that over a certain amount of time, Dustin is going to be
this deep in the ocean, in the submarine, right? For that reason, I'm having to put a cut
in the video right here, so you don't know how long we did this, but I will tell you this, I could do the math in
my head in the moment, and I was terrified. We were deep. This is the only time on the submarine that I was genuinely uncomfortable, and this is because I
understood the magnitude of the stresses that were on the outside of the pressure vessel
that I was standing in. - So, 10 degrees down, at least eight knots we've been doing it. We're freaking deep. (laughs) Cleaning out now? - Yep, so we can study out our final depth and you can see the line starting to droop here a lot more play than there used to be. - [Dustin] Oh yeah. - [Chief Charlton] That was tight and now. - [Dustin] It was very tight. So what I'm seeing is the deflection, the hull is crushing in. And so it's built to deflate like that. - It is, yep. - [Dustin] And so everything around us has the ability to move. So there's not one thing that's bolted from that side all the way to that side. - Correct, everything kind of floats and it's all mounted in a way that it allows the hull compress without affecting the operation or the normal state of machinery on board. - That's amazing. Okay, the more I think about this, the more interesting it gets. The first thing I learned is that a submarine can control its depth with dive planes and ballast tanks. The second thing I learned is that a submarine can go stupid deep and undergo incredible
amounts of pressure. So these two things are actually related, and I want to show you
with a classic experiment called a Cartesian diver. This is just an eyedropper, and I've got a certain amount of water in the eyedropper so that
it just barely stays afloat and check this out. If I simulate going deep in the ocean, by squeezing the bottle and
increasing the pressure, look at what happens to the
air in my ballast tank here. As I squeeze it, you can see my ballast tank
gets smaller and smaller, the air is getting crushed, and then at some point it reaches a point where it is no longer wanting to float. That means the depth of the
ocean affects your ballast tank. So it's like this big feedback system and you have to constantly
change both things to make it work. So at a really deep depth, because you have a lot of pressure, it either takes a whole
lot of air being pumped into your ballast tanks, or what I would do is, I would
maintain a certain velocity so I had control authority
with my dive planes. This is fascinating. It is far more complicated
than I originally thought. And it also means that you
can reach a certain depth where a submarine will want to fall. You're not just controlling
total buoyancy of the boat, you're controlling relative buoyancy from the front and the back. - We will control relative
buoyancy from front and the back. We work a lot on that while
we're doing the Arctic dive. So when we were doing the stationary dive, we were operating the front
main ballast tanks vents and the aft main ballast tank vents, and we were operating them separately. And that's what basically
we're trying to do. We're trying to control our pitching angle because if we open them
both up at one time, we end up sticking our
rudder into the ice, or we'll end up sticking
the sonar dome into the ice, and we don't want that 'cause that's our safety ship where all our sound sensors are at. - So, this sounds easy, but I thought hovering a
helicopter was easy until I did it. - Hovering a submarine sucks. It just takes a lot. - When you say hover a submarine, you're saying that the submarine
just stays right there. - Parking the submarine on
one depth with a zero angle, it's very hard. So basically the diving
officer and watches that are sitting up
there, they're calculating the different waters, different angles and what it's gonna
take to make our ballast basically zero to sit in one place. - I had no idea, man. I thought I knew like even
a little bit about subs. I knew nothing. I'm gonna summarize it this way. You're solving multiple kite equations as a crew at the same time, it's like a continuously iterating loop that is constantly being solved. And if you do it right, you can hover, and in this case you want to pitch up just a little bit and come
up and punch through the ice. But that pitch up is important. - That's exactly what we're doing. - Oh, by the way, you have to do it in the right spot because the ice has a certain thickness. - It gets really thick if you miss. (laughs) - [Dustin] Thank you very much. - No problem. - It's hard to describe, but when we started getting
close to surfacing the ship, I could feel the energy level of the ship start to slowly elevate. Like people were doing things
they weren't doing before and they were making preparations. And interestingly, the
captain went to his quarters and he started putting
on all his Arctic gear. - [Dustin] Sir, what are you doing here? - So when we serve the ship, I'm one of the first ones
to go up to the bridge. So I'm kind of getting halfway
dressed out, not too hot. Might be about negative
30, negative 20 degrees, when we get up there. So when we first surface me
and one of my department heads, we're the first ones to go to the bridge. And our main goal is to clear all the ice off the top of the sail,
so we can raise our mast. We have to raise our induction mast, which we use to bring air in and that's needed to fine tune and finish the servicing procedure. So after we're up on the surface
with our high pressure air, we run a low pressure air system, to push more water out
of the main ballast tank to adjust the angle and get
exactly where we want to be. So I sit here, all my winter stuff. - [Dustin] So, you're
literally gonna go up and like move the ice from the top? - Oh it's pretty neat. It's probably about two to
three feet what we expect. - Is it okay if I throw like
a GoPro on one of you guys? - Of course a GoPro on the weps, it'll be a pretty cool shot. - That's awesome. Okay, sweet I'll get out
and let you do your thing. So you need my dosimeter back? - [Man] We need that back. - Okay, cool. Can you hold that?
- [Man] Yup. - So this is my radiation exposure, so you're gonna measure
that and tell me what it is? - It's a thermal luminescence dosimeter. So what we do is, we open it up and there's a chip inside. It has lithium fluoride crystals inside and it's exposed to heat and
that releases any electrons that are captured while you're on board. - [Dustin] So you can quantify. - We can quantify how much you get. - That's awesome. Sweet, thanks man. Okay we're about to
surface from under the ice. When we descended under the ice, there was a lot going on. I can only imagine it's gonna be more in the other direction, I
might be wrong, we'll see. I might get to hear the crunch. Because this servicing was part of ICEX, the team that was back at Camp Seadragon warned us to surface the ship in a very specific location
for research purposes. - We've already went and
identified a place in the ice, it's probably about 300 yards wide, probably runs about a mile
straight north and south, and thin enough for us to surface through. My dive just got us hover trimmed, so we slowed down to about a knot and made sure that our water's good, so when we slow and actually hover under where we want to go, we'll be able to just ascend
vertically right there. So I am right now waiting for permission to vertical surface because
the helicopter up there. So we got to wait for them to go. So once I get to go ahead for that, and then I'm gonna go
ahead and position the ship under the spot that we've identified and hover right under there, and then we'll blow a bunch of water off and then vertically surface right there. So you gotta make sure you
come up with the proper angles. Your goal is to have your sail hit first, it's hardened, it's designed
to impact the snow first. And you want to make sure that the rudder and the screw don't
actually get into the ice 'cause you have the
possibility of damaging them. Now we're making our approach right now we're just waiting for permission. - Roger that. Okay, I have an absolutely
ridiculous illustration to show what my concern was. At this point, just roll with this. This is a popcorn ceiling, we're gonna pretend like
it's the bottom of the ice. Okay, so here's the deal. As the submarine is coming up, we have to hit the right angle to bust through the ice, right? But it has to be thin enough
for us to bust through. But there's another problem. Let's say that you're a balloon, right? And you're floating just like a submarine wants to be positively
buoyant in the water, as it comes up, you've
got the center of mass and you've got the center of buoyancy, and the moment where they touch that's when the center of mass
moves, it moves up, right? So check this out. If we have a submarine, as
soon as it touches right there, if there's any disturbance,
like water inside like the ocean flowing, you're
gonna tip that thing over if you don't punch through enough, right? So likewise, as we're coming
up with the submarine, when we touch the surface, we have to go through with
enough force to break the ice. But if we don't, in this
case I'm not going to, if I push really hard, it's
gonna try to tilt over. That's a really big deal, in this case, it's, you
know, kind of scary. - This is a camera that's mounted directly on top of the sail, straight up. - [Man] We'll run a steady
course two one zero. - Turn around and see
different shading of the ice. It helps with the ice thickness. Also, if you look, this is what's gonna help us out, it's part of that vertical surface, we have to be perfectly hovering. That's a zero speed. You heard earlier, we made an announcement for people not to walk around the ship. So it's that sensitive
that if a guy walked from the board compartment
back to the engine room, just the weight to the 150,
200 pound person walking can affect the trim of the ship. It has to be perfectly trimmed. We use this to see if we're
moving through the water. - [Dustin] So we're pretty
close to the ice right now? - Yeah, 150 feet under the water. - [Man] That's about one three
zero feet above us right now. - [Man] I still have
to make an X like that to mark a spot. That's where the previous
day that we surfaced. So mark out the exit, you can see it. - [Dustin] You can see it through the ice. - [Man] Shovel it out.
- [Dustin] Gotcha. - [Man] There's another one. That's where they're panicking. - [Dustin] So that's where
they're gonna surface. That's cool. So there's a very complex scene behind me. I'm not allowed to film it, but they're mapping out
exactly where they want to go. They understand their
vector very, very well. And it's very interesting, and I'm sorry I can't show you. You're the captain, you're
letting him control the ship. What's happening there? - That's the best part too, everyone's we're trained so well, so I should just be able to sit back and check big picture of things and we practice it so much
that I'm thinking about, "What's he gonna say next?" And he says it and it checks
with what I'm thinking so I get to sit back and say very well that's where you want to be. If you're involved with
stuff I'm trying already. So we train, this way I can just sit back, see me constantly I'm checking everything. - I'm all back two thirds. I'm all stopped. - Basically what we're trying to do here is parallel park a submarine, when you can only look up at the sky and our parking space is a mile long, but a 300 yard stretch of
thinner or younger ice. The crew of the Toledo had already done something like this before,
when they punched back through the ice when I met up with them and you can see from the aerial footage, when I was coming in the delineation or the thicker in the older ice, in contrast with a
thinner and younger ice. The problem is the aerial footage doesn't tell the whole
story because, yeah, you might have a strip of
young ice, like right here, and you're trying to pop up right there. But what you don't realize
is the water is flowing under the ice in a completely
different direction. So you're trying to hit this, but you're having to deal with forces that are moving you this way. So you might have to
turn into it and then... It's a very complicated dynamic thing. Another question I had, which
was not answered for me, I asked, but I didn't get an answer, is how does submarines know
where to punch through the ice? Like, do they have some
kind of instrument on board where they can guess that thickness above or do they get that
information from someone else? I have no idea, but what I do know is if I was moving through
the ice and I can't surface, I would want to know the closest location where I could surface. So to me, I would constantly
be thinking of escape routes, kind of like when your engine
goes out on an airplane, you're always looking for a field. I would want to know what
is the equivalent of that for a submarine. They would not tell me how that works, but I got to believe that
there's some kind of system in place. - I'm all back two thirds. - [Dustin] The main way
he's propelling this thing is with the propeller, and he's pushing backwards
and forwards with that in tandem use with the rudders. But also from what I infer
here is there some type of retractable outdoor propeller, which extends from the hull and can rotate the bow
in different directions to swing the bowel around. Throughout this whole event, his only relative cue is
being able to see the ice up above from an upward facing camera, that gives the relative sense of motion. - I'm all stopped - Okay, here we go, We're about to punch through the ice. - [Man] Vertically
surface the ship by dive. Vertically surface the ship. - [Man] I want to see vertical surface vertical surface. - Vertical surface, vertical
surface, vertical surface. - [Over The Radio]
Vertical surface control what have you got? - [Man] Eight zero three
up, point three up. - [Man] Seven zero, six up, point four up. - [Man] Stand by for impact. - [Man] Six zero, seven up, point four up. - [Man] Impact! - Angle's staying up. - [Man] It's coming down. - Chief launch three forward. - [Dustin] So that's what it was like down in the control room, but I want you to see what it was like from the sail itself. Weps, or the chief weapons officer, he was up in the sail, which has multiple compartments, and I was able to get a GoPro on his head, and he's up there during
the moment of surfacing. This is what it would've
looked like from above the ice. This is the Toledo doing
an earlier surfacing, and I think it's fascinating
to contrast the experience above to what's actually going on below. - The primary concern now
is to get enough free board so that we can actually
get guys to like a hatch so that water's not coming down and we'll go and dig
it out with chainsaws, ice picks and stuff. - So while I waited, weps, or
the chief weapons officers, he's the lead officer over
the sonar fire control and torpedo divisions, he went up with captain
Castalano to clear the ice off the sail, which was no easy task. - [Man] Upper bridge
access hatch coming open. - [Man] There's a good bit
of ice still on the sail. - Yeah, I could feel
the Arctic air blast me when they opened it. So they're going up there
to clear the ice right now. - [Man] Big chunks come down? - [Dustin] How big are
they when they come down? - About that big sometimes, they range. - [Dustin] So I need to stay over here. - Yes I would recommend
staying behind that drain. - [Dustin] Yes, sir. - [Man] That thing's solid
I hit it with a breaker bar, like six times. - [Dustin] What's up buddy, are you about to go dig us out? - We might get out. - It's gonna be a hit or miss, you may be able to get out, we'll see. I didn't have any Wheaties this morning. - I am starting to learn
how to play cribbage. I'm good with just going straight to the Pacific, if you want. - [Dustin] How was that man? - Intense, sir. - [Dustin] This first
time you've done that? - No sir, third time. - [Dustin] Was it good? - It's getting better
and better each time. - [Dustin] Is it? - [Dustin] How about you man, how was it? Was it good? Yeah, a rush? How did they do man? - Just another Sunday. (laughs) - [Dustin] How'd they do, sir. - They did great. - [Dustin] Did they? What could've been better? Obviously something
could have been better. - It can always get better,
but guys are awesome. - [Dustin] That's awesome. So were you nervous? - I wouldn't say nervous. Definitely, it's always anxious doing that because it's such a dynamic evolution between like positioning
the ship in a spot. Like I positioned a spot that's
only like 150 yards wide, but you know, the ocean current pushing me,
trying to push me out of it. So you're trying to sit yourself up and account for that. So I got to worry about that, but dive, sitting there trying to hover and everything's got to
happen like right like that, 'cause the longer I sit there and wait, trying to, you know, mess
with positioning the ship, the more I'm getting
pushed out of this area. - [Dustin] 'Cause there's no
sideways propulsion, right? - No, I can only like twist
the ship at that point. So usually try to set up like
going into the ocean current because then you can
just kind of sit there, but this one, the way that the surface of feature that we were shooting for, wasn't too oriented in that way. It was only 150 yards wide, so you're not gonna necessarily
be able to come in that way 'cause the ship is so long. With the geometry set up, it was one of those ones where
you had to kind of come in, stop and go up 'cause you
only have so much time before you drift out. You can kind of reach a point like when you get close enough where you're not stopping the ship, so you gotta make sure you meet the parameters. It's definitely dynamic,
It happens pretty quick, but it's probably one of the
coolest things I've done. - [Dustin] When are they
putting the periscope up? - Once they clear.
- [Dustin] The debris? - Yeah once they clear the ice up there. So it sounds like it's kind of thick so they should have fun. But once that happens, we'll get the scope up,
we can go look at it, take a look around. You'll be able to see ice camp. - [Dustin] That's cool. - It's pretty awesome. - [Dustin] And just like that,
it was time for me to go. - Looks like you're trying to leave. - [Dustin] Thank you,
man, I appreciate that. Pretty awesome. So I took a few more pictures. I took a selfie with
one of the famous locals and said my goodbyes and
headed towards the chopper, which did one orbit around the Toledo, so we could see what it looked like when it punched through the ice. After a short hop in the helicopter, we landed at Camp Seadragon
and I took a couple of last minute photos with the flags, which I thought were really cool. And then the Canadians who
are experts at Arctic flight, took us all the way back to Prudhoe Bay. It was there that an
Arctic fox reminded me of how truly isolated we were. This is like the edge of civilization, and I was struck by both
the beauty and the harshness of this part of the world. It took several days and
several flights to get home, which was wild because
of the crew of the Toledo got to Camp Seadragon via
submarine under the water. This was the last video
in the Smarter Every Day deep dive series in a nuclear submarines. I'd now like to introduce
you to some of the people that made this happen behind the scenes, we'll start with Lieutenant
Michelle Pelissero. You may have seen her in the background of some of the shots
throughout the series. Michelle is the one that
escorted me onto the submarine and introduced me to the
sailors and made sure I had access to the things
I wanted to explore. Here's a quick high five with Michelle at the end of the embark
when we were both exhausted. Thank you, Michelle, for
making this possible. - Thanks for coming out. - [Dustin] Yeah, it was pretty cool. Yeah so all the time, huh? This is what these guys do all the time. That's amazing. - Pretty great job. - [Dustin] Thank you
for, for letting us see what that was like, it was really fun. I want to say thank you
to everyone on board, the USS Toledo, you treated me with respect
the entire time I was there. I hope you feel that I reciprocated. Everyone from the A-gangers,
the cook, the captain, the chief of the boat, executive
officer, everyone on board, thank you so much for your time. I know you went out of your
way to make this happen, and I'm grateful. When someone contacts me
from a public affairs office about a video, oftentimes they have in their mind the exact type of video they want or the message that they want to convey. I want to introduce you to
someone very, very special. Because when I first met
Commander Jodie Cornell, it was clear to me that
we had mutual trust. She trusted me with the Navy's message and I trusted her to
just let me do my thing. This was unlike anything I've
ever done before I promised the Navy one video and
that was about ICEX. But because of the
access that Jodie gave me and the trust she put in me, we created this entire series. So I definitely want to introduce you to Commander Jodie Cornell. This is Commander Jodie Cornell. - Hi.
- Yeah. So why did you bring me out, Jodie? She's the PAO officer
that did everything here. Why did you do this? - I brought you out because
I wanted you to learn about the submarine force. And I want you to take this message back and show everybody about
all of the officers and the enlisted folks that
work on the submarines, how dangerous it is, how important it is and how interesting it
is to be a submariner. - And can you please explain the rules and stipulations
that you put on me? Like you told me what to make, right? - No, I did not. I let you do whatever you wanted to do. I gave you some ideas
though, before you came out. So before you came out, I sat down with some
submariners and I said, "Hey guys, what are the cool things "that happen on a submarine
that Dustin can cover "while he was out here?" - Jodie's awesome. She's cool, we've been
going back and forth for several days now. She's really fun. But she basically made all this happen, so big thanks to Jodie. - Yeah, thank you. - [Dustin] Thank you, I appreciate it. - Now, hand sanitizer. (laughs) - I have found that the
most interesting content, for me personally, is when
I can simply experience the environment and ask
questions in the moment. So that's what Jodie did
for us in this series, and I'm grateful. Again, thank you to the Navy
for letting us experience the Smarter Every Day deep dive series in a nuclear submarines. This episode of Smarter Every
Day is sponsored by audible. I want to tell you about this
submarine that's behind me. This is the USS Requin. This was a submarine
that was in world war II. It didn't see a lot of
action in the Pacific, but I'm gonna tell you
about a sub that did. That would be the USS Barb. And you can listen to
the book "Thunder Below" when you go to audible.com/smarter or text the word smarter to 500-500, the link will
pop up on your phone, you just click it. Thank you so much if you
watched a lot of videos in this deep dive, it's amazing, but if you still don't
know who Fluckey is, you have not passed the course here. You have to know who Eugene B. Fluckey is in order to complete the deep dive. It's incredible. So if you would consider
supporting the sponsor, that'd be rad. You can do that by going
to audible.com/smarter. You get your first audio book for free, but you also get access
to a huge plus catalog, which has all kinds of stuff, that'll just ease your
mind and just make you genuinely a smarter person. The amazing thing about diesel
electric submarines like this is, this is how the Toledo came to be. They slowly developed the
diesel electric submarine. They built system after system. Eventually the U.S. made the Nautilus, the first nuclear submarine. All these systems didn't
come from nowhere, they had to be developed. Learning about what these guys did way back in the day, it's incredible, and I really want you
to go on that journey. So required listening, "Thunder Below" Eugene B. Fluckey, you're gonna love it. audible.com/smarter. Download that book for
free, you will dig it. Sometimes at the end of
a video on the internet, people say things like, please subscribe or support
me on Patreon or whatever. I'm feeling so much more than that. I'm feeling just grateful,
gratitude for everyone. If you've watched these videos, if you've participated in any way, if you support on Patreon, whatever. This was a thing. The Smarter Every Day, deep dive series into nuclear submarines,
I'm just grateful. And one person in particular,
I want to say thank you to. There was a person in the submarine force that spent a lot of time making sure I could get this stuff cleared
through operational security. They asked that they were not
to be publicly recognized. I just want to say, you know who you are. And I want to say thank
you to that individual. That's just a Testament
to the silent service and what they do. I'm grateful, all over. I'm gonna leave links down
in the video description to the Navy. Haven't been asked to do that,
It just seems appropriate given the subject matter
of this content, also, I'm gonna make a playlist, so that this can live on
for future generations to learn along with me, I'm going to re-watch this stuff too. So I'm grateful. Thank you so much. I am Dustin, you're
getting smarter every day. Have a good, bye.
Destin, this series was amazing.
As a former submariner, this whole series brought me right back to my time in the navy.
I've said it before, but this series is the best thing you've done on your channel IMO. Do an Aircraft Carrier next!!
I have absolutely loved this series, and your curiosity and gratitude are infectious. Thanks Destin!
I wonder how many more views these videos with get from outside of the United States compared to his normal videos.
You know theres going to be people pouring over every frame!
u/mrpennywhistle If could share if you’ve had any noticeable increase from any certain country that’d be super interesting to hear! (Though I guess a VPN would be super easier to get around any normal ip geo location).
Anyways, thoroughly enjoyed the playlist myself!
I’d be curious if someone smarter than me could try and estimate and change in depth with the slacking of the line?
As others have mentioned, this series was phenomenal
After watching this series I listened to the book "Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage ", full of amazing cold war stories, from people who where there. The authors spent many years trying to get sub drivers to tell their stories. Highly recommend it.
That outro at the USS Requin... I live just about 2 miles from where /u/mrpennywhistle was standing.
And as I said in my YouTube Comment:
Did anyone catch how long he was on the submarine? I'm amazed at how much content he made in a seemingly short amount of time
Destin this series was amazing in its depth, no noun intended. Don’t get me wrong I love crazy baseball bats and weed whackers but there was something special about going all in on this. I don’t care if the algorithm likes it, it was very well done!