ST. MARYS, Ga. — Submariners sleep nine to a bunk room. There are four showers and seven toilets for the roughly 140 enlisted men. The passageways on board the vessel are so narrow that crew members can barely squeeze by each other without touching.
The Navy is considering allowing women to serve aboard submarines, 16 years after bringing female sailors onto surface combat ships.
Some sailors and wives warn that putting men and women together in extremely close quarters underwater for weeks at a time is just asking for sexual harassment cases and wrecked marriages. But supporters of the idea say it is a matter of fairness and equal opportunity, and what worked on ships can work in subs. “There’s just a whole lot less privacy on board a submarine,” said retired Navy Capt. Mike McKinnon. “But I think grown adults and professionally minded people can deal with those issues.”
