She would be making room for cargo by:
1) most of the submarine spare parts she was carrying were electrical parts and parts for the reactors - we arent talking a new screw, we are talking fire control equipment, wiring harnesses, various control units, valves, etc.. . Same with the parts for the tanks - most of the parts were small ones of various types, plus track pads, a few sprockets, some roadwheels, lubrication oil, etc.. plus the shells.
2) the weapons for the Romanians were loaded in Israel in exchange for Israel having access to the data from the Russian scientists and for information on Reset - thus they only had to be carried for a short distance instead of all the way from the US
3) she only loaded enough food and consumables for a short mission instead of a long patrol - she had to get more food and consumables in Israel along with the weapons to be able to finish the mission
4) off-loading the torpedoes, harpoon missile and spare parts in Israel and the tank spares and shells in Yugoslavia gave her just enough room for the weapons for the Romanians - thats why they had to go in the sequence as described
I.e. she didnt have enough room to carry everything from Norfolk to Yugoslavia to Israel to the pickup then to Portsmouth and home, which was the orginal mission profile before they found out about the Russian SSBN - she had to count on being able to offload stuff in Israel to have enough room for the weapons needed for Romania, which had to be loaded in Israel, plus be able to load enough food in Israel as their wasnt enough space at Norfolk to load food for the whole mission
its one reason they didnt have a full crew - they had to leave some behind and run reduced normal shifts to be able to fit everything aboard including the characters - our characters got nominated, for instance, to do most of the cooking and other grunt jobs as the crew who normally did that were left behind
|