How long would it take for the navy to get me to SOAC?
SUBPAR has recently been bitten by the submarine nostalgia bug. Naturally, whenever one of us mentions that we maybe, kinda, a little, in a totally noncommittal way, miss the boat, the other one says something along the lines of, “Oh, you miss the submarine…have you heard about this thing called SOAC/DH Tour/COBO”.
To be incredibly clear, neither of us are at risk of heading to SOAC.
However, these conversations did spark a debate over how long it would take from the moment we called the detailer saying, “I’m coming back,” until we’re sitting in Bledsoe Hall watching a Boomer JO call emergency deep because they saw their first merchant on the periscope.
Can you help settle this scope bet for us?
First rule of detailing is there has to be a billet. You can say less then 30 days, but is there a SOAC class starting every month? 90ish crews, 270 department heads on 36 month tours so 90 per year- 100 to account for losses, so 4 classes per year, maybe 5. It would be really hard to get you in a class in less then 30 days, so min wait is 45 days or so and max is 4 months. 2.5 to 3 months is best guess.
I wouldn’t bet on <30 days. Remember, PERS-42 is on shore duty. Gotta allow for all the layers of dudes involved that are either leaving work daily at 1300 or on 3 months of paternity leave.