U.S Ships

Sorry, Fiat, but I gotta do this too you again. In WWII the boats are supposed to have had those little airline-sized bottles of medicinal brandy, kept by the pharmacist's mate, and ordered distributed by the captain after a depth-charging as "depth-charge medicine." However, the idea of brandy having any medicinal value at all is a very 19th-century one, and didn't last a lot longer than either that century or its other general cure-all remedy, bloodletting. Today administering brandy to a sick or injured person is regarded as a very bad idea because even though it makes the sufferer feel warmer, that is purely a narcotic effect, as it in fact dilates the blood vessels and retards blood flow to the extremities and brain. And the idea of submarines having a designated diver, which perhaps might have been true at one time, was certainly not the general case either in World War II or in the early 1980's when I was in submarines. Lastly, although our corpsman (basically the Navy term for a medic, which replaced pharmacist's mates throughout the service a long time ago) might have had something like that, I can't remember at this late date hearing of any alcohol aboard any boat I was on except some that was rumored to have been smuggled aboard by a very experienced and deviously clever alcoholic shipmate. Certainly none was ever publicly distributed to anyone. And finally, one WWII submariner who made the mistake of trying some while off his boat between patrols reported that as well as it might have hit the spot after a depth-charging, it was actually terrible stuff, just the kind of substitute for a real drink that you would expect to be issued by the Navy officially as a medicinal ration.

When you look at various people's "sea stories" during the fifties and going into the early 60's, however, it seems that quantities of alcohol had ways of finding their way aboard some submarines as well as various surface ships in derogation of regulations. As far back as 1944 the crew of the famed USS Tang (SS306) were making moonshine in the pump room of the boat while on patrol, though this was not consumed until after returning to base during the period before the next patrol, owing to the difficulty at that time anything but beer in places like Midway Island or Guam. Another 1950's submarine commander (Paul Shraz) reports an unusual race from the Carribbean to New London in order to put ashore a lot of inexpensively acquired island hooch when it was learned that the tea-totaling COMSUBLANT of the time, Admiral James Fife, would be coming aboard for an inspection at the New London area seabuoy 9:00 AM sharp on the day scheduled for their arrival. In a very amusing story he claims to have made it to New London by about 6:00 or so, offloaded the booze, onloaded desperately-needed diesel fuel, and then gone back out to the seabuoy to meet the admiral. Then there is the story of a sailor I met who was the coxswain of the captain's gig (or admiral's barge - I forget which) aboard USS Saint Paul, the Mediterranean fleet's flagship in the early '60's, who explained how they embarked a prostitute to ply her trade out of his embarked craft in between Mediterranean ports of call; presumably, she would have come equipped with appropriate libations. And finally, one of my own kin reports deploying in 1960 or 61 aboard USS Independence (CV62) from Norfolk, Virgina, with two cases of beer smuggled aboard, and returning with a lot of fine European licquers which he and select shipmates were then forced to consume at sea when they learned that for the very first time in history they were going to be subject to a customs inspection upon reaching the US owing to a new policy by the new Secretary of Defense, the deservedly notorious Robert McNamara. By the 1970's and 80's colorful stories like these began to be supplanted by stories of various and sundry fools trying to get away with smoking marijuana at sea (with predictable results - one moron cleverly attempted to secret his illicit activity by performing it in a fan room, which merely blew evidence of his deed all over that part of the ship, announcing both his crime and it's location to anyone and everyone who knew anything about the vessel's ventilation system.) Marijuana and other illicit drug use among submariners has never been widespread or colorful, however, for the submarine force has always had the world's most stringent zero-tolerance policy. Moreover, once nuclear power came to submarines, levels of professionalism generally were kicked up a big notch owing to the organizational culture of Admiral Hyman Rickover's nuclear power program that came to bear.

Thus, where this scene comes from isn't obvious to a submariner of my generation (early 1980's), much less any non-submariner. It could have been inspired by the early pre-nuclear Navy hi-jinx known to exist on some vessels, or it could be pure Hollywood. Most likely a google-query for submariners' sea stories from the period in question would shed more light on it than anything you are likely to read on the IMDB.