OK!

GROTON, Connecticut--At the Naval Submarine Base New London here, thousands of students go through Submarine School, which encompasses the varied curriculum required of a Naval submariner.

One element of the school is escape training, where the students are taught, over two days, the steps required for a safe and orderly escape from a submarine in turmoil. Similarly, special forces or Navy SEALS may be on board, and may need quick egress for a mission. They two would use the so-called lockout trunk on a sub to leave the vessel.

The training involves several steps, but the most important one is the successful completion of a 37-foot quick ascent made by a student in the current-generation escape unit, who is first placed into a compression chamber that simulates the proper depth, and then climbs up from the now-flooded chamber into the bottom of a huge water tank.

Here, in an image taken through a porthole onto the bottom of the tank, we see a student being given the OK sign by one of the instructors before being released.

Click here to read the related story and click here to see the full photo gallery on the Virginia class nuclear submarine, the North Carolina. Also, click here to check out the entire Road Trip 2010 package.

July 19, 2010 4:00 AM PDT

Photo by: Daniel Terdiman/CNET

| Caption by: Daniel Terdiman