The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - From the Steel Mill to the Submarine Service with George Pannell (Part 1) | KEV Talks #31

Episode Date: June 12, 2023

In From the Steel Mill to the Submarine Service with George Pannell (Part 1) | KEV Talks 31, I talk to U.S. Navy Veteran and Nuclear Power pioneer George Pannell about his journey from the steel mills of Pennsylvania to the Silent Service of the U.S. Navy.Stay tuned for Part 2 of our discussion coming next week as Dad and I talk through changes in the Nuclear Power world from the 1970s through today.Thank you all for watching here and for listening to the podcast.

Hey everybody, thanks for coming to the KevTalks podcast. Today I'm fortunate to talk with my dad, George Pinnell, who is a fellow U.S. Navy veteran. He was in the submarine service, so we're going to hear about how he grew up in a steel town in Pennsylvania, got out of there, joined the Navy during the Vietnam era, went through some rigorous training to be qualified and get into the submarine program, and then just touch on his transition of getting out of the Navy and working in the nuclear industry. That'll be part one of my discussion with my dad. We had long talks. We talked for like five hours over the course of a couple of days.

So turning that into two episodes. And the second part, we're going to get the scoop. My dad's been in the nuclear industry, nuclear power industry for 50 years. So in the second part of this discussion, we're going to get about an hour and a half of just what's nuclear industry, nuclear power industry for 50 years. So in the second part of this discussion, we're going to get about an hour and a half of just what's nuclear power, you know, what changed in the 70s, what was the truth about Three Mile Island and a whole bunch of other great things and kind of where can the US go with nuclear power and what's the difference between nuclear power and other sources and a lot more. So if you don't know about nuclear power, stay tuned for

episode two, which will be coming out next week thanks so much for being here go to keptalkspod.com for more information subscribe hit that button down there and for now let's go talk to my dad three two one hey everybody thanks for coming back to the capitox podcast episode 31. if you're watching on youtube you may notice the nautical theme between the us navy recruiting the schooner because i'm talking to my father, a fellow Navy veteran. In fact, we're a couple of generations in with the Navy, but I'm really happy and honored that my dad's come on and we're going to talk about some really interesting things from where he's from, his service and particularly nuclear power, because I think it's an area folks aren't really that educated in, but are fearful, fearful of. So hopefully we can dispel some of those fears, educate some folks. And honestly, I just get to talk to my dad. So it's pretty awesome. So thanks for coming on. My dad's name

is George Pinnell for all of you. Who's not his son, but thanks for coming on. Yeah. It's good to see you. Yeah. So I know most of the answers to these, except for the nuclear stuff, I'll be refreshed on that. Certainly when we get to it, but to share with everybody you know some of the the you know your your life journey and stuff where where are you from where'd you grow up uh well i i grew up in a little steel town called pennsylvania it's about 20 miles northwest of pittsburgh and uh i i grew up there with a lot of other uh people that wanted to get out of there because nobody wanted to work in that steel mill for 35 years so our dad or dads were pretty clever they got us work in the summer in the steel mill and if that didn't convince you to become a pro athlete or study your butt off in college nothing ever would so that's why a lot of athletes come out of there uh i was a pretty good athlete

i didn't have i didn't know my real dad so during that time uh fortunately my mother found a guy that was a really good mentor, my stepdad, your grandpap. Yep. And so we all worked really hard to be the best we could be. In that little still town, you really didn't want to have to work in that mill for 35 years. So in high school, I was a pretty good athlete. The problem was I spent more time playing sports than studying so i didn't do as well in high school as i did in in other areas so but i do hold a record uh i used to pitch for the high school team right on one of the games uh we used to only play seven innings instead of

nine so in one game i had 17 strikeouts and seven innings so i think that's that's still a beaver county record as far as i know that's pretty awesome but we uh there's a variety of things we learned from sports, which was one sportsmanship to how to train hard, play hard, but shake hands after the game was over and that sort of thing. So it taught you a lot of life lessons. In addition to baseball, basketball was your other big sport too. Yeah.

Yeah. I used to love to play basketball. So matter of fact, when we were going to college, all the guys would be home for the summer and we'd get together on the uh playground basketball court in the afternoon and we'd play two or three hours then we'd go work the midshift in the mill oh wow then we'd come back good again the next day yeah those were the days where it was truly no blood no foul quit your wine and shoot the ball just go yeah just go and i remember you know talking about the mill and some stories and getting some is it i don't know the right

term if it's slag but basically hot molten metal in your shoe or something on you, right? Some of the hazards of, well, one of my jobs, uh, one summer was when they pour steel, they've got this gigantic ladle. And the way it works is there's a stopper in the bottom of the ladle. And the way that works is there's a steel rod surrounded by what they call fire brick. And there's a little pneumatic piston that the guy that's pouring the steel operates to open the stopper and close the stopper. And then when the ladle was empty,

somebody has to retrieve that stopper rod. So one of my jobs was the guy in the crane would bring the ladle over and then he would tip it over facing me so you were like walking into the sun then you went up hit out it knocked out a taper pin and hauled that uh rod out of there with the fire brick well part of your job was to then break the fire brick off the steel rod because they had to put it back on there well one day a piece of that hot fire brick went in my shoe and i think i hold the world's record for taking a high top shoe off without untying it and throwing it about 20 feet oh my gosh so uh that's why you didn't want to stay in that mill. Yeah. It's hard work.

And our dads were pretty smart. They convinced us, hey, study, learn to play ball, do something. Don't end up here like we did for 35 or 40 years. I mean, it wasn't it was a good living. Yeah, for sure. Boy, it was hard. You got to want to be there. And for grandpap, he was a chemist. Yeah, it was in the middle want to be there and and for grandpap he was a chemist yeah it was in the middle chemist yeah so what they do is they they do a heat of steel and it had to meet certain specifications so so after it's solidified they they whack off a sample send it to the lab and he would uh evaluate whether that still meant spec or not, as far as chemical constituents were in there.

And it depends on the type of heat they ran, you know, high quality steel to just run in the mill stuff and that, but he'd have to let them know if the heat was okay or not. So. And this was in kind of the heyday of, of American steel, right? In the fifties and sixties. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. kind of the heyday of of american steel right in the 50s and 60s yeah yeah right yeah the problem was later on as i got older it was clear the guys in the local mills weren't keeping up with the world the problem was a lot of the guys running the mill were ex-world war ii guys like yeah World War II guys, like generals, senior people,

and they couldn't change with the times. So the Japanese just went right by us. They started making steel. They had different techniques. They could crank out more high-quality steel than we could, and that was kind of the demise of the u.s steel basically got run over by the train or was that from just their efficiencies and the methodologies they started using just they could oh yeah more steel yeah more modern ways to do it faster ways to do it

produce higher quality of course they use technology instead of doing wet testing. Like your grandpap did, they had, you know, machines to do it. They'd run a little sample through there and it would spit out quality of the steel. So we just, you know, it's like the old saying, if you're sitting still on the tracks, eventually the train's going to run you over. So that's what happened to the U S steel business. Yeah. And especially in that area, it was a huge, u.s steel business yeah especially in that area it was a huge huge negative impact to thousands of people in that area oh yeah they'll start

shutting down and absolutely well you couldn't when you're going uh full when the mill was going a full blast you could not see across the river for the buildings, all the buildings, 10 mil, no, just the buildings. You could, I mean, they were, you couldn't look across the river because the buildings overlapped and they were two or three stories high. And now they're all gone. It's all flat. So that's what happens if you can't don't keep up and realize you're in a world market, not just the U.S. market. That's what I think happened to our U.S. steel business. That's a good point.

Yeah. And even at a smaller level, if you're leading a project or a big program. And, you know, I always say don't, as much as I'm a stickler for a good looking and well put together plan. When you fall in love with your plan and you won't let go of it. You got it. It's going to be a problem. The train's coming. Yeah. And even, you know, when, when, whether it's now in healthcare or in public safety before that, the plans we would make, particularly with,

with the guys you store with in public safety, we knew as soon as I print that it's out of date, right? That's why you have a red pen. That's why when you do a briefing and someone says, no, it's this now. And you're like, Oh crap. Especially these days. You got to even be quicker before the train catches up to you. Yeah. Yeah, that's true.

That's a good point. So not wanting to stay in the mills, playing sports, getting ready to graduate. What took you from the baseball fields and the basketball courts of Aliquippa to the United States Navy? I ended up getting my grades weren't that great in high school but i got into penn state uh extension campus in mckeesport so i took up uh what of course called electrical and electronics technology so it was a two-year associate degree okay so i got a little

smarter in terms of studying so i got pretty good grades there and got in the honor society. Then after I got out of there, I got a job with IBM up in Endicott, New York. What I used to do for them up there. IBM at that time, that was like 66. They made all their own stuff. They made chips, circuit boards, everything they needed

to build computers. None of it was outsourced. They had buildings with no windows that were super clean where they made chips and all that stuff. So my job at that time

was to test the complex logics that were going into the computers that were rolling at that time they were they're building what they call a model 360 which for the time was probably the most advanced computer okay going on at the time so interesting story about how simple things make a difference so so i'm sitting on my bench one day testing circuits and somebody walks in with this box full of circuit cards about 10 of them and they had they were sent back from the uk They'd sent them over to the UK. It's part of IBM over there. And none of them worked. So I set one up on the bench, started testing it. Sure enough, about halfway through the logic, quit working. Then I grabbed another one, start testing it halfway through the logic in the same place.

Quit working. Grabbed one more just to confirm I wasn't screwed up right now. Tested the logic, stopped in the same place in the logic. I'm going, huh, that's weird. So I went and pulled the drawings. They used to etch their own circuit boards and one of the one of the design things they used to do because of some of the frequencies on the boards you'd never put a 90 degree circuit in there it always had to be a 45 when you transition and you need to make a 90 degree turn there was no sharp corners so you you had to 45 it right so i go back to the original

drawing for the board and i looked down there and i traced it to where the logic kept not working and i looked down there and sure enough a guy and it was in pencil these lines on the on the drawing uh-huh he inadvertently put a 90 in there and he erased it but he didn't put the 45 back oh gotcha and they etched the board these boards were like 10 grand a piece or something oh no and they etched it that way so i just toted them all over right across the hall was a shop where they did soldering and stuff i said hey guys i need you to put me a jumper from this hole to that hole poof problem solved they work so they can go back that goes to show you in terms of paying attention to detail what can happen if maybe it got whoever was doing it

got distracted could be a him or her who knows they erased it intended to do the right thing make 45 probably walked away and said oh i think i'm done they sent it off to the etching place and they made the word that way so interesting interesting. Yeah, I mean, a lot of lessons too there, right? Of when either you or maybe folks on your team, when you know, when you feel like, or, you know, you've taken too much on, you feel overwhelmed, maybe step back and slow down. Yeah.

Also, if you're leading teams, and I've seen this and I've made this mistake of not more proactively helping my team members manage their level of work. Yeah. Right. When it's too much, when you can say, hey, this is falling behind or that's there. But also I think too, and for me starting in IT to get where I am now, like crawling under desks fixing computers.

Oh, yeah. We started the hardware level. So to your point, going back and looking at, okay, same place, same place. Where's the place? And then with your education and background, knowing the boards a bit, but then also accepting, hey, we can fix this. So you help troubleshoot it and find a solution, not just go, oh, it's all ruined

and we have to scrap this. Well, you never give up. To me, the way I approach things, I was a pretty good electronics technician in the Navy, but my attitude was no dumb machine is going to defeat me i don't care what's wrong with it i'm going to figure it out yeah it's a dumb machine so something in there is busted the tough ones though as you've probably experienced is the intermittent problem yeah i'd rather see smoke than i know that i know where it is yeah as opposed to something

that comes and goes and then you got to try and chase it down or catch it at the right time and figure it out just like your problem in the children's hospital here recently yeah something was going wacky and you had to kind of chase it down follow that yeah look at the constants what's what's the same is it the same place same time is it not is it yeah yeah when it's random times and locations and other things makes it tough that's super hard but the biggest thing i've learned over time uh and whatever i did is persistence don't get all upset don't get frustrated just step back a minute just like you said and say okay what's going on here yeah and get some good people involved yeah actually i found in meetings the best thing you can do there's always the ones that want to talk all the time and they're

probably the ones that know the least they just want to they just kind of want to show our many the ones you need to draw in are the ones that are just sitting there quiet because they probably have a lot to offer they're just not comfortable in a meeting environment talking so you you would kind of draw them into the conversation and sure enough they pop something out and you'd go, aha. That's something we hadn't thought about. And actually, I found bringing people into the meeting that were less technically oriented asked the best questions. Because they don't know what the heck you're talking about. They're going, well, did you guys think about this?

And we'd go, no. We did not think about this? And we'd go, no. Yeah. We did not think about that. Yeah. But thanks for bringing it up, you know. Yeah. So you never blame anybody. You just get them involved.

Plus, they feel better about themselves when they can contribute. Yeah. Yeah, I heard a good – Wendy and I, and for listeners, Wendy is my wife, went to an education session this week and one of the great points it was about kind of healthy conflict right yeah yeah it's not bad to have conflict if it's respectful all that good stuff but sure but but the tool was specifically for um you know there's like systems one folks like just emotionally active and system two where i gotta sit back and think about it and all these different you know personality types but the

the the tool was in a meeting kind of like you talked about, find a way to draw them in. But the way to draw them in or kind of setting the ground rules was nobody can talk twice until everybody has talked once or spoken at least once. Right. So all the folks that are outspoken and want to, you know, they're excited and for whatever reason, I just want to get it out there and be like, cool, but you've already said something. Let's go to John Smith. What, what do you think? And, and helping call on them. Cause you're right. I mean, one,

especially in technology, a lot of folks like technology because they can just sit there with the technology, not necessarily with people. Right. And, um, but they're, they're gosh, those are the assets on your team when you can have, you know, for me now, a mix of clinical and technical and business folks. Yeah. Hey, what's going on? And we need either the heavy technical person that doesn't really want to talk or speak up, but we need that or from somewhere else. But yeah, so that's a great point of, you know, if you have folks in your meetings, hopefully're, you're populating your meetings with folks that need to be there. Yeah.

But that you, if someone's just kind of sitting there and you're like, Hey, that person probably has a different perspective or a good perspective, like call on them. Yeah. Well, the other thing too, is, is during the meeting, especially when you're leaving the meeting, it's not just all the verbals you sit back when somebody's talking and look around the table yeah see who see who's fidgeting and really wants to say something but they're afraid you can tell yeah they kind of squirm in their seat or they got some weird expression on their face or whatever and then you figure out a way to get them to respond without, that's the other thing, without embarrassing them. Oh, right. Just try and get them to, you approach them and say,

hey, John, you know, it'd be helpful to hear what you have to say. I think you got something to offer as opposed to, come on, John, say something. Right. Whole different deal, right? Yeah. Elicit a very different response. I think that's, you know, with us being remote for,

I've been remote for four years and then kind of, we had to be remote for a couple of years or a year and a half, whatever. But the lost value of being in the same room, I think is huge and in the same office. Oh yeah. But I think we can make up for it a bit if kind of like we are now on, you know, for folks watching this on YouTube, but, but as, as we are regularly either on a zoom or a team's call or is the value of being

on camera to me is huge. And I think honestly should be a standard, right? If you're in a business meeting, you should be seen. Yep. Because you can, you just get a lot more out of it. Like to this point, I can see how you're acting. You're responding to this. Is there a question you get ready to say something, you know, all, all those things you just mentioned yeah so even now in this you know remote hybrid and then if some companies are trying to bring folks back or are yeah um even remotely you can you can read those things i think is a huge value i'm a highly technical guy but

i've learned over the years it's the soft stuff that matters when you're dealing with it's harder to deal with people than a machine. I can figure out what a machine is doing. That's not a problem. What's going through somebody's brain, no? Not so easy. Yeah, that's a good point. Not so easy.

So unlike the surface ship behind you, again, for the folks in the video. We used to call those targets. Yeah. You spent lots of time under the sea and a submarine in the video you used to call those targets yeah you spent lots of time under the sea yeah um and a submarine in the navy so what took you from ibm to there well if you recollect that time frame you may not remember as vietnam was going on so i was at ibm for about a year and my draft number came up and my boss tried like crazy to get me a deferment, but he couldn't do it. So I said, well, if I'm going into service, I'm going to decide for myself what I'm going to do. Yeah.

As opposed to being over in the rice paddies in Vietnam. Yeah. Good. So I decided to join the Navy. That's how I ended up in the navy and then of course with my associate's degree in electronics uh they sent me to uh et school in great lakes right electronics technician yeah so uh the guys used to all get mad at me because all the stuff they were teaching was like to me it was like i'd take the test i'd be done in 15 minutes get 100 and go on liberty and they're

still sitting there scratching their head yeah so what ended up happening is some guys were struggling so they would come to my barracks and i'd hold class in the evening and say okay guys let's i'll get you through this let's just do it but they used to hate when we take test that'd be done in 15 minutes and they all look at me like usob going on liberty and i'm in here trying to answer these stupid questions yeah so so anyway so i i was doing that and of course i had enlisted initially for four years and i walked past this poster one day it says nuclear submarines that looks pretty cool yeah so i went and talked to a chief who had been on submarines and he said well here's what's all about here's what the nuclear stuff's about pretty tough program but you know if you want to do it you can do it but you got to send

sign up for another two years gotcha i said so i went back to the barracks thought about it said yeah i'd like to do that so i said that's how i ended up in the in submarines uh so basically of my six years in the service the first three of it was all schooling between electronics electronic school there was a little lull before i went to nuclear prior school there's two parts of nuclear uh training it's one is the theoretical part that's six months so you do about three three years worth of college in six months wow there's no there's no none of the fluff stuff none of the english literature action it was just core physics heat transfer fluid flow all that sort of stuff wow and then that program there was no slack if you weren't cutting it your butt was out of there right so so there weren't many options

either you cut it or you didn't cut it right so at the time your mom was pregnant with our first baby so we were in uh having a grace maryland uh that's where the theoretical was and then we were going up to uh saratoga springs okay saratoga springs they have a on-land hunk of a submarine that had the nuclear power plant all that in so that's where you got the hands-on hands-on training so that was a critical point in our lives because we mom carried the baby nine months uh was still born and i was in the middle of trying to finish prototype of sir dougar springs right so i had a decision to make say am i going to be able to hack it get through this thing?

Because that program in the Navy is the hardest one in the military. Yeah. And so what pushed me back to getting finished is after we got through taking care of things because of the baby, I went back to muster. I guess it was only a few days. And I was standing at attention and one of the guys walked over to me and handed me a bunch of money that the guy said you know volunteered because they knew what happened yeah so i said hey this is this kind of people i want to work work with so that's how I made it through that part.

I just had to make a decision, and we got through that. So before I went to the submarine, well, before I went to the nuclear fire school, I was at the subtender because there's kind of a queue to get in nuke school so that was about a i want to say nine months down in norfolk so i worked on electronics for there were still some old world war ii submarines around oh wow so i would calibrate their electronics and actually i mean i'd be up 12 14 hours a day sometimes calibrating this stuff. It was what they call electronic countermeasures. It's a thing they raise up from the submarine,

and it can detect various frequencies of people transmitting and stuff. Oh, wow. But these tuners were very high frequency. So if you had the side plate off the tuner and you waved your hand by it you could see the frequency change in the tuner that's how sensitive they were so i'd work all night calibrating these things and the guys from one of the submarines that come up and get them and i'd go outside the shop and look over the rail. I was on the Orion at the time. And they'd go down the pier and I'd watch them drop them down to their buddy.

After you just calibrated. In the submarine, I'm going, oh, man, you guys are killing me. Oh, man. But when I was on there, because of my work and helping those guys out, I got sailor of the quarter for helping them out. But all my hard work, and then they just dropped the tuner down into the guy below. I'm going, oh, crap, man. I don't know if that thing's still in tune or not.

So anyway, I got through that, and that was also the time, I don't know if you recall this, but when the Scorpion got lost. Submarine? Okay. And they couldn't figure out. When I got there, everybody was kind of down in the dumps because they were trying to figure out what happened to the Scorpion. Right. And what they theorized later, there was all kinds of studies and smart guys trying to figure it out, was that they had a track on it and it was going along.

And if a, if a torpedo lights off, it's got a mechanism in it that if it makes a 180 degree turn, it shuts down. That's so you don't shoot yourself. For example, if you, if you launched one, you know, and decided to turn around and come back at you, it would shut down. Well, they made a maneuver just like that for having that kind of problem. Well, apparently it didn't work. And later on, what they found was there was a vendor tech note that said, we've been having problems with the batteries this kind of battery

the battery in that torpedo is right next to the warhead oh no and the tech note was they would short and overheat so they found the remains of the submarine and sure enough

the side was blown out you know splayed out yeah it didn't cave in so that torpedo apparently went off in the while it was in the sub while it was in the sub so it was that one of the nuclear submarines or a world war ii sub that was that was nuclear one yep yep yep yep so anyway i got all through that and uh that was just excellent training right so i rode the submarine around for uh three years and uh that's kind of tough duty sometimes i was gone from you guys and mom for a week and then sometimes a month and then sometimes two months and whatever and it was difficult you get uh people you train people to stay on certain watch stations and you you usually have three people qualified for watch stations so that means you

you stay at a six hour watch and then you're off 12 hours well in that 12 hours you got to eat sleep do your laundry whatever then go back on watch and you're always moving around the clock right so if you stand the midnight to six you're off 12 and then you're on a different time frame for the next watch gotcha if you don't have three people qualified you stand what they call port and starboard that means you're on six you're off six now you got to do all that same stuff in six hours right sleep eat and after about two weeks of that you're like no and you start to worry about your judgment see you're at that reactor panel and you you're just whipped so you you try to get somebody qualified as quick as you can i was going to say that's an

incentive point right yeah to expand your resources there a bit yeah well that's interesting thing about uh going through that process and a lot of people weeded out by the time they got to the submarine. But it was interesting in terms of people's skills, right? So there was always the people that I used to hate these people, they can read a book, and it would just like suck into the brain. So if you ask them a question, they'd say, well, on page 15, third paragraph down, third sentence, it says this. Right. But you put them in a control room with 500 alarms going off. They couldn't deal with it.

But you don't get rid of those people. You just say, okay, what can they do? You make them instructors, right? You don't put them in a control room. Right. So to tamp down some of the ego sometimes when you're getting somebody qualified on the submarine they had a qual card so they they say well i studied system so and so and then you would quiz them to see they really knew the system knew how it worked and all that stuff right so there

was always again there's one of the smart alecks thought, well, man, I'm smarter than anybody. So, oh, really? So our trick used to be, so we'd ask them the normal questions, you know, how's the system work and what are the parameters and blah, blah, blah. Right. And, of course, they'd just whip out this stuff. Then I'd say, let's say they were trying to get qualified on an electric propulsion motor. That's an electric motor that's wrapped around the shaft in case you can't power the submarine with steam.

Okay. So you can get this big old electric motor that drives the shaft. So they'd get close to the end and they were getting pretty cocky. And I'd say, well, what's the serial number on the electric propulsion they go do i need to know that of course of course not of course you don't need to know that what am i going to tell you but you get a little cocky yeah and not only that how many bolts are holding the end plate on the motor? Do you know that? Well, no.

I said, well, if you want to get qualified, you better learn this stuff. So you put a pin in their ego balloon real quick. And of course, you're going to sign them off. Then you kind of temper their thinking. They go, well, maybe I'm not as smart as i think i am what was during during your training pipeline what was the um probably the biggest drop point where you lost the most people uh out of training well it was both the the theory class was pretty rigorous yeah so if you couldn't hack it you were off doing something else the navy's pretty strict about that and then if you got through that part you had to make it

through that prototype and actually operate the reactor and test things and all that stuff so that was another screen the other one was in submarine school there's a 50-foot water tank in Connecticut, and you do a free ascent from the bottom of that tank up, and about every 10 feet, there's a Navy diver, right? So when you enter the equalization chamber, the pressure in that chamber has to equal the depth of the tower, right? So you go open the door and people can go in there. So you go in this little chamber, the instructor sitting on a bench in the middle,

and there's a guy on each side of them. So you pressurize that chamber to equal the 50 foot. And as soon as somebody starts sweating or squirming he says out right you're out of here yeah well the other thing was so so you get in the thing and what you do is inflate the vest and do a free ascent up the tower the thing is now the air in your lungs is pressurized, right? So if you don't exhale all the way up, your lungs are going to blow up. So when you get to that first diver, if he doesn't see air coming out your nose or your mouth or both, he just grabs you by the ankle, which is another kind of, if you're claustrophobic and you're underwater, you're not going to do well.

So he just wants you to start exhaling they don't let you go next guy's watching you and of course then you're just like blowing air out you don't want to get held by no doubt that's another screen that's another way you know what somebody that's that afraid of water and stuff and right places to be in a submarine that's no place for them so that's a good point that's a good point what was uh what was your favorite thing about kind of the submarine service and and life i mean you mentioned the people that were amazing which yeah in both subservice and i think the military in general it you know you have that brother and sister that

never goes away either which oh yeah but as a as a submariner what what was your your kind of favorite takeaway which is probably i don't know if it's hard to sing out one thing but well it's just it's maybe a trite uh saying but it's it's the teamwork it's the synergy because you're all dependent on one another to stay alive right every point a third of the crew or half of it's got to sleep right well the other half's doing their job so you got to have faith that they're going to be able to do their job right so that's it that's another interesting story so we went to portsmouth for a year to do an overhaul in the submarine so they cut a big hole in the hole you haul equipment out of there refurbish it stick it down back down the hole put it in place and all that

stuff you say they cut a hole oh yeah that's that's the only way you can get the equipment out of there right it wouldn't go through racking like we're gonna cut it and we promise you then they gotta weld it back up right so then and then you all the equipment out of there refurbish it stick it back where it belongs test it of course so then once you're all done and they and they weld the submarine back up you got to test it so you go do sea trials right so one of the tests you do besides besides, you know, I tested all the electronics and all that, make sure it was working. So we were having a problem with one of those systems, electronic systems.

So I was up for like three days. Wow. Stay on my watch, troubleshoot for whatever, 18 hours, stay on my watch again. So I finally, I used to sleep in the first class quarters which is in the front lower part of the submarine in the bow near the bow and i'm three bunks up from the deck right so i just about get off to sleep my head when i was sleeping faced forward so when i got off watch we were at a thousand feet doing a flank bill which is as fast as a submarine can go forward which is about 30 miles an hour and then we're going to do what

we call a crash back so they were going to go ahead flank to back emergency i mean you're you're reverse the screw and you're testing the shaft and the seals and all that stuff all the mechanical drive for the submarine right is that just in case you gotta you're gonna hit something or something's in your way oh yeah you got it well i mean you're just trying to test that all that is so just in case you need to to use it you know the submarine's gonna work like it's supposed to work so so i'm just about off to sleep and all of a sudden i feel the this pressure on my head and my my eyes pop open my feet are at about a i don't know 15 degree angle above my head about 10 seconds later they're at

about a 30 degree angle above my head about 10 seconds later they're like at a 45 so i'm my head is pressing against the end of the bump right wow and your instinct is to jump out of the bed out yeah well when you look over the edge of that bunk you're not looking at the deck anymore you're looking at the forward bulkhead of the room, of the space. If you jump out of the rack, three racks up, you're going to fall the length of the compartment. Not only that, the ladder you had to get out of, it was a vertical ladder to get in and out of that space. So now it's a monkey bar.

It's not a ladder anymore. It's at a 45-degree angle. So I'm grabbing beams and wires wires and we're all scrambling. What is going on? Right. Well, what happened was they did the crash back, what we call crash back. And the guys on the planes thought we still had headway. In other words, we were going forward.

So they took control action as though you were going forward. Well, if you're backing up, it has exactly the opposite effect, right? So those of us who went to bed thought we were going down at a 45-degree angle, and we're going, in about 30 seconds, we're all going to die. Just going straight down. Yeah, at a 45 degree angle at flank speed. We're going, Oh crap.

That's not good. Yeah. And sure enough, what happened was the captain was even confused. He came up. Now think the whole submarines at 45 degrees now. So walking and just getting out of your compartment is a task, right?

So you don't slide the length of a compartment or so and he realized what was going on and he just ordered that they blow the forward ballast tanks and when they did that it brought the nose of the submarine back up but those of us that went to bed knowing what the conditions were at the time we're going oh crap i don't want to die this way so we're all trying to figure out what the heck is going on what can we do to help what so that that's the deal i mean those guys were just uh if i had to go in the service i'd do the same thing all over again yeah i mean that's kind of people there and our biggest thrill as a submarine crew was when we could, we played in the fast pitch softball league.

So we had 100 people to choose from to form up a softball team, right? Right. Well, it just so happened that one of the auxiliary men was really a great pitcher. I mean, he could zing that thing. And, of course, I played ball all my life. And so we put together a team, and we used to play the Marines. We used to play the carriers, right? They got 5,000 people to choose from.

Our greatest thrill was we beat a carrier team. We celebrated for three days. Nice. So anyway, it's a small things in life right so seriously all that stuff that's pretty amazing yeah um i think your your service helped prepare me for mine getting a little little navy before i got into the navy so yeah interesting because you know you can't and i think i said this when i talked to another uh travis model who does a elbows tight jujitsu podcast he's he was in the navy

he's out in washington state now actually oh yeah you're talking about just you know when you're when you're ready for it boot camp and and then your your ongoing schools you know not all of them but boot camp in particular when you see folks that aren't used to at least a little discomfort yeah stress even that gets them just going in in the gate let alone the whole pipeline that you went through so it's it's something i definitely always impressed me uh you know about what you've done and and what you did and just you know there's so much i know we've talked about with with subs and and now so fortunate to have other folks in our family and the subservice too which is pretty awesome yeah well i i guess uh it's something that uh when i was born i had the

i have the capability to block out noise i mean it could be bombs going off and i can focus on whatever needs attention the noise doesn't bother me yeah uh so i could zero in on stuff and i don't i don't care 500 alarms are going off i know exactly what i need to look at what to do so that's what differentiates folks that can be in the control room and folks that can't that's a great but like i said you don't throw those people away right like in your field if maybe they're not good technically but maybe they might be good writers of technical material. Right. Right. Maybe they can't do what you do, but they sure can help the team out by writing instructions or doing whatever.

They're just, they're just not good at that other stuff. I can definitely tell them a mix of you and mom. Cause I for sure probably have, you know, a little more emotion, but then when it comes to say like trauma or injury, that's where I zone in. Okay. I'm going to solve the problem. What's going on. Boom, boom, boom. You know, and fluctuated other times. So it's interesting though, how the same kind of mindset can transfer to disciplines, right? Whether you're, you know,

figuring out why your subs descending so quickly or the board, like at IBM, or stopping bleeding, or working through systems in a rapid manner. I think that seems to be the blend of, sure, you've got to know some of the book work, and then you've got to know how to apply it. And then you've got to know how to draw from all of that and your experience and others' experience to your point that are on your team as well, which is huge. So after the Navy, I got out in 73. And so my first job was with Virginia. Hey, everybody. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Kevin Talks podcast as much as I did. Part one with a discussion with my dad, George Purnell.

Always interested to hear about the challenges and how rigorous the submarine training is in the United States Navy. He's so proud of it. We're proud of him, just like him and all the veterans out there. So thank you to everybody that's a veteran out there that's listening to this, watching this on YouTube. Please stand by for part two that's coming in about a week, and we'll focus on nuclear power, his transition from running and keeping safe nuclear-powered submarines to nuclear-powered plants and his 50-year career. And we'll get some of the basics of nuclear power and much more in the next episode. So please go to capitoxpod.com, subscribe to this YouTube channel. And if you're listening

on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, leave a review. That'd be super duper. Thanks so much for being here. Have a plan, everybody. Stay informed and get involved. Godspeed.