Twenty-five Sailors assigned to submarine tender USS Emory S. Land (AS 39) completed a two-week period of shift work in support of five tended units Sept. 17.

Machinery repairmen on Emory S. Land worked around the clock in service of Ohio-class ballistic submarine USS Ohio (SSGN 726), and Los Angeles-class attack submarines USS San Francisco (SSN 711), USS Buffalo (SSN 715), USS Topeka (SSN 754), and USS Columbia (SSN 771). The list of completed jobs includes cleat bushings, bolt removals, locksmith jobs, Maintenance and Material Management (3M) checks, and more than 140 engravings.

"I've been here 13 years and I haven't seen five submarines here at once before," said Chief Machinery Repairman Sam Graves. "There were bodies in the shop 24 hours a day, seven days a week for 14 days. We had eight people taking care of all of the admin, doing planned maintenance systems checks, spot checks and maintaining the shop while the rest were on shift work. It was one big, team effort."

In order to complete the workload, personnel assigned to shift work were split up into three eight-hour shifts ranging from 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., 3:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m., and 11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m.

"In shift work we're separated from everything else on the ship," said Machinery Repairman 3rd Class Sam Leonard. "On a normal day there are drills, the duty sections, production meetings and maintenance. On shift work you don't worry about any of that; you just have the work in front of you. Each shift had a work center supervisor who gave out tasks and we'd focus entirely on those tasks. It really made the time go by faster, but then after two weeks you stand there and realize 'Oh man, it's the middle of September.'"

"You're just a lot busier throughout the day," said Machinery Repairman 3rd Class Nolan Thoma. "Things need to get done, so you can't be out running around getting qualifications or stuff like that. When you're at work, you're working; it's nonstop work. We would eat really quickly and then go back to the shop and hammer out work. It was rough, but that's what the job is."

Graves is more than satisfied with the ability of his Sailors to push through and complete their hefty workload, but stressed the importance of focus while working on tended units.

"Our Sailors took care of it pretty well," said Graves. "They stepped up to the plate and took care of business like it's supposed to be handled. It's all about the Sailors in the shop. The team did a great job. It's rough, but the subs come first; we get them deployed and we go from there."

Emory S. Land is one of two forward-deployed expeditionary submarine tenders homeported in Guam, conducting maintenance on submarines and surface ships in the U.S. 5th and 7th Fleet areas of operations.

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