How to Use the Head (Toilet) on a WWII Submarine

You can support USS Cod here:

https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=23JP2X9KM36W8

[Music] hello I’m Cod president Paul FAS and I’m in the officer’s head aboard USS Cod and we’re going to talk about uh what I think is perhaps the most vital piece of equipment aboard any submarine the head now the fleet submarine is renowned for crew Comforts uh the very fact that they include four toilets or heads is pretty rare and pretty spectacular for World War II um the heads are distributed throughout the boat uh one here in the forward Torpedo Room this one is reserved exclusively for use by officers and a skipper of the Cod this is my domain there are two heads of midships and a third one in maneuvering now there are two basic types of heads on submarines um an air expulsion head like this one and there are two of those and two gravity flushers which are very simple they they have a valve flush and they drain to a holding tank but because of the design of the boat uh this one here number one and number four back in man maneuvering um there’s no space for a large sanitary holding tank so those heads flush overboard with each use and we’ll get into that in a minute um first let’s talk about why you would call a toilet the head well it goes back to the old sailing ship days when you know wooden sailing ships and the wind rushing through the sails pushing the boat forward uh sanitation accommodations are very simple very crude you went to the head of the boat or the bow sprit and uh depending on the size of the ship um you would climb down either on on netting or ropes or if it’s a large warship you would have a platform and um do your business at the bow because remember wind is coming from the back toward the front and uh even though you’re moving through the water the wind is blowing anything forward and it just made more sense you wouldn’t want to do that on the poop deck no pooping on the poop deck because the captain’s uh cabin is generally Below in the transom and you don’t want to you know tinkle on his glass that’s a no no uh so that that is where we get the term head um by the way the the first uh uh a submarine toilet now by submarine toilet I mean a toilet that can flush against sea pressure that isn’t a gravity flush is in fact invented uh let’s see all right 37 years before the first submarine yes 37 years before the first submarine the Holland boat um the uh USS monitor remember that that that that first monitor the uh the cheese box on a raft uh that big heavily armored turret uh that’s where the two dolr guns are or the parrot guns I don’t know I’m not a World War II Civil War buff I mean a civil war buff but anyway uh but below uh in the raft area below basically the water line is where all the crew lives and Erikson that brilliant engineer not only built the first ironclad with a rotating turret and all that but he invented the first toilet for the uh crew of the monitor that can flush up overboard against sea pressure so um if you get a chance to go down to the Hampton Roads Naval Museum you’ll see the monitors uh uh turret and I think the propeller cuz it had the first uh compound screw uh for propulsion apparently the heads uh which in my opinion are as equally Innovative and important historically uh probably didn’t survive 150 years underwater so but anyway so monitor there’s your there’s your toilet history so um back aboard Cod World War II G Class Fleet sub um the Gatos had a a slightly different Arrangement than the later BOS uh the officer’s head up forward is an air expulsion head the bleo class boats Swap this out for a gravity flusher uh they move uh one of the uh air expulsion heads to the crew uh after battery crew birthing where the forward head is an air expulsion next to it is a gravity flusher uh and then the um the maneuvering room head gets moved to the after uh Torpedo Room uh and again that’s air expulsion head um I’m not sure why they did that except perhaps in the event of uh some casualty you didn’t want to lose all of your toilet abilities um so anyway uh we’re going to talk about the officer’s head now this had to be flushed against sea pressure with every use by the way let me stop for a second and just say um the head on COD has an amazing history if you want to go back to an earlier program uh we talk about how our engineering officer Frank Kimble had to write out uh an aerial bomb attack and the near loss of the boat in this cubicle because the cod’s forward Torpedo Room due to losing control during a dive and a an enemy bombing attack uh the forward room was probably down close to 600 ft and the uh the SE pressure uh warped the framing and this door frame enough that he couldn’t get out until we planed up but go back and look at that uh episode and of course a more recent episode uh where we talked about the importance on submarines of TP or toilet paper but as you can see that’s not a problem for us right now we have plenty of toilet paper but let’s talk about using the head now we’re going to have to probably have Evan come in here kind of tight but while we’re here let’s just talk about some of the basic Arrangements um you have the bowl below that you have the pressure vessel uh where the contents of the toilet bowl will drain we’ll get into the details of that later you have a nice wonderful foot pedal right here so that your legs uh are kept somewhat at a uh uh a normal height you know this toilet is is much higher than commodes would be uh at home so they gave you that little platform uh so that your uh your legs are your knees are are at an acceptable height um we’ll talk about why cobia’s uh officer’s head is different in a moment this big pipe back here is actually the starboard vent riser for number one ballast tank that is an engineering uh compromise that’s a dangerous weak spot that is sea pressure inside the people tank but again subject for another uh uh discussion uh and of course we have our our our toilet seat and a whole lot of valves and things and we’re going to get into that in a minute so suffice to say um if you’re invited AB board a submarine in operation in in World War II and you need to use this head uh it’s going to be a bit of a challenge in fact when submarines would uh rescue civilians early in the war in fact we had a situation uh where uh C certain early Fleet Boats were picking up nurses uh out of cargador uh well they’re officers and they had one of the Filipino stewards who was the toilet attendant and his job was to instruct the women how to use this and in fact perhaps even flush it for them um but you know that was not an issue aboard Cod so let’s use the head well we’re going to simulate well we’re not even going to simulate we’ll discuss this um so I’m coming in the uh compartment here and I know I am quite large compared to most people who are going to be using this so um depending on whether I’m going number one or number two that’s uh kind of important because the first thing I’m going to do and up here referring to these wonderful instructions on this plate um see that the bll flapper a is closed well that’s this thing and boy you certainly do want to make sure that that flapper valve in the bottom of the bowl is closed it comes up it drops down Evan I think we need a closeup of that cuz that’s so important all right you want to make sure it’s closed the gate valve c right here is uh um it’s the uh uh gate valve c the discharge line is open you want that open and there’s open and closed very good uh then the valve e oh and we can’t talk about EES enough right here is uh uh open next to the bowl to admit necessary water so this valve right here is going to put the the C the uh specific amount of water you need in that bowl uh to use it now if you’re just urinating uh that’s not a problem if you’re you know having a botle movement then of course you want that you know considerable amount of water in there okay and then you want to close DN all right so now you’re doing what you need to do now you’re done well perhaps you were reading Life magazine or the New Yorker April 24th 1943 just before Cod is uh commissioned so yeah in fact it’s the week we’re launched or or whatever so yes we have this period reading material in here but anyway so you’ve read your article and maybe one of the officers is uh uh in need so now we got a flush okay now pull and release lever air a so what I’m going to do is move this lever forward and that’s going to drop the contents now this is uh secured so that you cannot use it uh we had that done in Dry Dock because you could flood the boat now some of you are probably aware a German uboat uh was sunk uh through their uh improper use of their toilets and that can certainly happen with this and in fact uh I understand it happened to silversides when she was in Chicago as a reserve trading boat water in the pipelines froze one winter burst and she flooded her forward room uh so it’s a problem uh but not for us because we’ve uh uh rendered this inoperable but suffice to say this is your flush level you push it forward that flapper valve at the bottom of the uh Bowl drops down and the bowl contents drop into this receiver valve or chamber below that the bowl is mounted on so oh get a lovely closeup of that now I’m going to pull this lever back up which will seat which will seat that flapper valve against the bottom of the bolt and you definitely want to make sure that is seated uh because the next thing we’re going to do is uh rock this outboard okay this is a an air charging uh manifold right here F I’m charging that uh receiver with 10 lbs more air pressure than the outboard C pressure so here’s my C pressure right now we’re at zero uh apparently the red line says you may not have enough air pressure from the ship’s uh basic service air uh to flush this against sea pressure if it’s more than a32 PSI uh if that hasn’t been uh messed with and I don’t believe it has so you’re going to charge uh let’s say we’re at 40 lbs PSI C pressure I’m going to charge that uh receiver with 50 lbs of air pressure and here’s my uh uh air pressure valve so I’m going I know C pressure 40 uh the measuring tank water closet measuring tank is going to be at 50 lbs okay now if I do everything correctly I’m standing above a pressurized crap bomb uh that’s not good especially if um I’m a junior officer reporting aboard his very first submarine and the senior officers have played a little trick on me they have put a stack of maybe three washers at the stop valve for Lever a so I think it’s at a hard stop but there’s a little hairline crack at the bottom of that flapper valve when I go to charge that uh tank down there that hairline crack is going to spray the contents up in my face never a good thing uh They’re laughing and of course I’ve got to clean it up cuz it’s my mess so that did occasionally happen uh on some submarines where the officers were real Jokers anyway so I have got this pressurized crap bomb uh t 10 psi greater than ambient pressure now I’m going to um from the measuring tank um I’m going to rock this lever now in board to blow it overboard so as I move this forward this is pneumatically opening discharge valve and it is blowing the C so physics takes over uh from high pressure to low pressure the contents are now blowing overboard through a uh um uh an overboard discharge line which for us is roughly at our water line uh in normal trim would be about 5T below the um the water line for a normal boat in combat trim now we are going to insert at this point an in incredibly important in fact the only known photograph of a fleet submarine officers had being discharged at Sea I think it’s the USS angler coming into Port there’s probably dignitaries on the uh on the pier there’s probably a band playing the boat is coming in the line handlers are throwing their lines onto the dock or vice versa and somebody one of the officers has just flushed the head you see quite the B in of water again look at that picture so anyway um so we blow that overboard now we’re going to have to secure all these valves close them and uh uh shut everything for the next purpose for the next use now uh just as a courtesy I’m going to put an inch or two of water in the bowl again as a uh as a gas uh seal uh and it’s also good uh cuz if you have a couple inches of water you might notice uh air bubbling out of it that tells you that that uh the uh uh receiver uh uh tank also known as uh um uh the measuring tank contains pressure you want to make sure when you come in here that that isn’t the case so um that’s pretty much all of that to flush the toilet now what if we don’t have the availability of air maybe through a casualty or some other uh thing so there is yet another option for us and I have to kind of move I don’t know how Frank Kimble did it um I’m going to step out here that way I can point to this hand pump uh right next to the Bowl now uh that allows the user uh to hand pump the contents now here is the handle it’s there’s a little bracket in here you will put that in here and then uh of course I’ll have to open and close certain but basically you can hand pump the contents overboard using this uh uh valve handle right here this pump valve so we’re we don’t want to use that so we’re going to kind of stow it right here on this wonderful bracket um by the way uh someone took our valve handle but it’s easily replaced Home Depo you buy uh 1 and A4 inch piping with a cap uh some of the other uh amenities in here I want to point out because it’s you know it’s kind of fun I’m enjoying this um you have uh a fleet submarine A G Class uh EB uh cigarette butt so you can smoke in here and above you get a fan to blow around air and share the love and you have a ventilation fan blowing in uh so uh we have air uh circul ating that’s always a good thing yeah there’s our Val we have a light and all the spare uh spare toilet paper we’re going to need now so this is an air exposion head and as built Cod has one of these exact uh types of heads back in maneuvering which in 1951 uh the electricians mates uh deem um a hazard because people would use that and smell up the uh maneuvering room so they got permission from Captain Francis Rich uh to remove it they said they needed more space for storage so uh we lost uh number four head back in maneuvering we go to three uh but there’s also some differences among our friends by the way we’re going to uh we can include a picture uh that I shot uh or I got from kobia of their wonderful uh maneuvering room head it’s uh wonderful I think there’s also one of more drum but if you look at the uh the officer’s head on Cobia and we’re going to insert a picture that uh I got of cobia’s head uh they have a unique head it it it’s the it’s the same toilet bowl but instead of a small cylindrical uh uh measuring tank or call it the crap tank they have a large kind of an onion Dome shaped uh tank um that actually kind of is a throne you know I’m on a throne but they literally have a throne higher than everybody else and so their little foot uh pedal their little foot rest um is actually it folds up it’s actually quite that high because again you don’t want to have your feet dangling uh cuz they their toilet seed is at least a foot higher now why do they have that large onion Dome receiver tank well again if you are uh running silent you don’t want to be blowing uh the head overboard you need to save it until you’re out of Harm’s Way uh and this would only allow you one use before uh you have to hold off until you can flush it but if you have a receiver or a volume tank measuring tank that’s uh say good for five uh uses well that so much the better so even though um Kobe is built roughly the same time as as Cod same Shipyard um she has that uh Innovation where uh you know several officers can use the head before they need to uh blow it overboard so uh that’s how that works now I have had the incredible honor of using uh heads on pampanito uh the gravity flushers backa uh so this is my resume on on on crapping on Subs so pampanito uh several uh sturgeon class and La class boats uh and I have even used the heads on um the uh the Dutch submarine walrus and uh the brown V in fact I got to tell you a funny story uh in 2015 the Dutch were gracious enough to invite me and uh uh a number of our Cod crew to uh tour uh and in fact have a a nice rice tle dinner on uh Brown V and uh you know after dinner uh I excused myself to the head and um and I said you know my crew probably could use it too and they said oh absolutely of course that was a simple gravity flusher not like this uh and so everybody I think whether they needed to or not was using the head so they could say they had the honor of using a real submarine head um if you uh have seen uh Soviet submarine heads they are nasty and that’s a subject for another uh discussion as we know German OTS only had two and one I think that they had uh stuffed with potatoes and things uh not so with American boats now the um cod with its two gravity flushers of midships uh anybody could use those cuz it’s simply it’s simply this flush lever here you fil fill the bowl with water you move the flush valve handle uh forward and back to drain it and you’re done you put a little water in there as a gas seal by the way um there are no urinals on fleet Subs uh but there is a feature not on this one I think there’s a uh it may have been removed but um instead of uh uh having to sit down and operate that lever by hand uh it’s connected to a foot pedal so like uh like the top of a a a symbol high hat my brother’s a drummer I’m not uh there’s a foot pedal and it’s very similar to that you can operate that that uh valve that flapper valve while you’re standing if you’re a guy so anyway uh so there we are uh that is my tutorial on using heads on COD in this case the the officer’s head and um so remember to hit the like the subscription button the notification Bell um and we’ll be back with more scintillating aromatic content thank you