When Henry Rausch arrived at Stanford in 1979, he thought he was headed for medical school. A summer working alongside doctors changed his mind fast — he realized he didn’t actually want to care for patients, he just liked the idea of being a doctor. What he found instead, almost by accident, was the U.S. Navy’s nuclear submarine program, launched during the Reagan-era buildup of the fleet. On the latest episode of Ask a Vet, Henry — now a retired Navy Commander and author of the bestselling memoir Submerged — walks through what that decision actually meant: two tours on Cold War fast-attack submarines, tracking Soviet boats, and stretches of up to 90 days completely cut off from the outside world.
What stands out most in Henry’s account isn’t the technology — it’s the lack of it. By design, almost nothing on his submarine was automated. Admiral Hyman Rickover, the father of the nuclear Navy, believed automation bred dangerous dependence on tools that could fail under battle damage. So officers hand-synced turbine generators, hand-logged reactor readings, and hand-flew the boat through some of the most technically demanding conditions imaginable — including surfacing through Arctic ice at the North Pole, where compasses stop working and the sun just circles the sky without setting.
The isolation is its own story. Submariners at the time had no email, no phone calls — just occasional five-postcard “family-grams” limited to 50 words, screened by the skipper to filter out bad news. Henry describes finding out his wife had a miscarriage only after pulling back into port, and receiving a message about the premature birth of his own child that he didn’t fully believe until he could hear her voice. That isolation, compounded by months of separation and the pressure of a demanding job, is part of why — as Henry puts it plainly — the divorce rate in the submarine force runs so high.
Henry is candid, too, about what that world cost him personally: the recurring nightmares from a near-collision in the Strait of Gibraltar, the friends who burned out and left the service, the moment he realized command wasn’t just about him but about the men sharing “the same stupid tube.” He’s equally direct about where things stand today. With the U.S. submarine fleet down to around 45 active boats — and China’s growing capability in the Pacific — Henry now spends part of his time giving talks about why he believes the submarine force may be the most strategically vital, and most under-resourced, branch of the modern Navy.
Submerged spent 15 months on the bestseller list, and this conversation only scratches the surface of what’s in it. Listen to the full episode of Ask a Vet to hear Henry’s stories in his own words — including the ones that didn’t make it into the book.
📖 Get Henry’s book, Submerged: https://henryrausch.com/my-books/submerged-life-on-a-fast-attack-submarine-in-the-last-days-of-the-cold-war/