Control Room

One common complaint that sailors often voiced was that the technology used by the Navy was overcomplicated for the sake of over-complication. A cartoon from 1949 shows two sailors mocking a new complicated swab issued since the old ones were considered “obsolete."

Advancements in technology amplified the sailors’ concern that the technology would eventually come to replace them. This was seen in a cartoon drawn for All Hands where a sailor laments to his captain that the Navy is changing as robots perform all the duties around them.

These cartoons demonstrate the need for the Navy to depend on its sailors over its technology since the sailors could be relied upon even when the technology could not. Due to the importance of navigational technology, submariners would often draw cartoons portraying arrivals in unusual places, such as the Sahara Desert.

Sailors explored the theme of daily life in the Navy through their drawings. These drawings illustrate how sailors dealt with the conditions onboard a ship and used that experience to build a common bond.  These submariners expressed concern over the use of technology, focusing on how technology was constantly evolving, becoming overly complicated, and often subject to failure.

Cartoons dealing with technology thus illustrate an attempt among sailors to cope with technological changes in the Navy by depicting technology as inefficient and overly complex. This expression of concern is important since the early Cold War was a time of major transition within the submarine as the Navy moved from diesel to nuclear powered submarines, creating a major shift in how submariners interacted with their vessels. Thus, these cartoons reveal a sense of flux with the submariners’ culture that mirrored the actual changes occurring within the Navy.