I served on board 5 different nuclear submarines from 1976 to 1999. I was deployed away from my family and homeport for over 17 years out of 23 and I was submerged under the water over 13 years out of the 23 years I served. If you ever have 30-45 mins, look up nuclear submarine life on youtube and you can watch a real life patrol (90 days under the water) where a TV news crew deployed with a nuclear submarine to do a show on life in a nuclear submarine, it was very interesting. I highly encourage anyone desiring to join the U.S. Navy to consider the Submarine Service, it is really a lot of fun, hard work, but well worth the effort. You also get to see many ports overseas that you might otherwise never see in your life, I visited such places as Cartagena Columbia, Brest France, Nova Scotia, Portsmouth England, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Norway, Hawaii, we surfaced under the North Pole crashing through the polar ice cap and played softball and hit golfballs (I even brought back North Pole Water in a bottle), and several other countries that I cannot talk about. I had an awesome experience on board nuclear submarines, It is not as claustrophobic as you might think.