Submarine Email - Sending to your Sailor on a Submarine - How To - And Why

[NF Mom]

Submarine Email How To and Why - Very Good How To Write Up

Submarine Email - More Why - From Nuke ET Chief Who Has Been There ...

Another Discussion of Sailor Mail - Possible Issues and Problems

Same Information from the Sailor Mail Software Developer Website

Sailor Mail History

Humorous, but enlightening, Sailor Mail Stories

Sailor Mail Expectations - or Non-Expectations

Sailor Mail Worries - Numbering Emails Sent

Sailor Mail - Good News - Bad News

Sailor Mail - Joy of - Not That Other Woman

 

How Often Should I Write to My Sailor on a Submarine

   Everyday -  is the short Answer

 Emails Daily - Comments on Reasons Why - Click Here

Problems with Not, Repeat Not, Sending from a GMAIL account to a Submarine

One other piece of trivia.

You send e-mail to a special e-mail account the Navy set up for your sailor.

But the e-mail account you send from - depending on which e-mail service - and which SMTP servers that service uses - can also prevent you from sending e-mail to your sailor on a submarine.

  Google e-mail accounts ( gmail accounts )  are reported to work reliably with sub-mail ( navy's e-mail system for subs ), others are reported not to, and we experienced problems we could have avoided.

We always used yahoo e-mail, it worked fine until half way through our son's time at sea and then Yahoo refused to deliver any e-mail to that e-mail address ever again.  Yahoo simply reported it was unable to send - because the e-mail address ( the one the navy had given our son ) was bad - at least Yahoo claimed it was suddenly bad after it had been working fine with Yahoo for awhile ) - the replacement G-mail account worked just fine.  It is a feature of Yahoo mail and apparently other e-mails services as well.

Comment by J's mom

"NF Mom, I need clarification on the email. My son had said that he won't get any gmail while out to sea,  only email at the sub address. Is that not the case?"

    Sorry, it is confusing, and I did not help with my post.

    Yes, the account you send e-mail to will be the one your son gives you.

   You can actually figure out what that account will be - click here

    Even if he does not give it to you, you can figure it out by clicking the above link.

     But that account is not the one I was talking about.  That is called a sub-mail account, or sailor mail account,  or something like that.

    I am talking about the account you send e-mail from. I am talking about your e-mail account not his.

    The navy has setup a very special e-mail server ( SMTP server ) to accept e-mail for your son, to hold it for him, and send it on to him when they can.  As has been posted here by TOM ( Link to Tom's post ), the time the navy sends,  your e-mails to your son,  on to his submarine,  may not be until the last day or two before their at sea is over, and  their strategic patrol may be over before the return to base,  and when they are just pleasure cruising back to base and communications is open - they will receive a bunch of delayed e-mail.  But it also may be  at various times during the strategic patrol when they can receive held personal e-mail by some type of electronic communication ( on a space available basis ).

    But if you look around on Navy For Moms,  and on the Internet in general, you will find that people recommend you send that e-mail from a google or gmail account to avoid problems.  My husband tried to find out why before my son first went to sea, but found only a couple of posts talking about the specifics, and he had no luck getting additional details from them.

    So we ignored that advice and found out the hard way.  We liked the old classic yahoo e-mail interface much better than the GMAIL interface so we ignored the advice and sent our e-mail to our son from a Yahoo e-mail account.  Bad mistake.

    Everything worked fine for a while - we sent an e-mail every day -  then about half way thru the at sea, Yahoo decided that that it would never again send to that specific e-mail address.  We were sending one e-mail a day, they all got to him, but one day, yahoo decided his e-mail address was a "bad e-mail address" and would no longer send to it, ever.

    My husband said it was an SMTP server issue, something is special about the Navy's SMPT server(s) they use to hold e-mail bound for submarines, and at some point the Yahoo SMTP server received something from the Navy's SMTP server that caused the YAHOO SMTP server to mark our son's e-mail address down as one it would never even attempt to send to again.  And to this day, Yahoo will instantly reject any e-mail addressed to our son's  e-mail address ( the one we have to send to when he is at sea on the sub).

    You can make up fictitious names on the same submarine and yahoo will send them to the Navy's SMTP server which after a minute or two responds that no such name exists, but if you use the valid name of our son's e-mail address, YAHOO does not even try to send it but instantly informs the sender it is a "bad address".

    Anyway, we set up a gmail account to send from, and the exact same e-mail to the exact same address ( literally a cut and paste from the rejected address on the yahoo e-mail ) works fine. And has continued to work fine ever since.

    We have only tested yahoo and gmail, but other reports of problems   are not limited to Yahoo.  Most posts reporting problems simply say send from a Gmail accounts because that works.

    My husband would appreciate anyone who experiences problems post the details on NFM.

Comment by CO-TwinSalorsMom

"I wonder if it is like this for ships also because my nuke son's twin in on a destroyer and has a gmail address."

    No experience with surface ships, but I believe I read or saw somewhere that sailors on some surface ships, like carriers, have access to the internet so they can just go on the g-mail website and check their e-mail just like anyone would do on land.

    Not sure if you meant you sent e-mail to your son's Gmail account even when he was at sea on his destroyer, or not.

    Subs however, at least boomers, and I believe all subs, do not allow internet access by the sailors on them.  So they can not go to gmail, or yahoo websites to access their e-mail.  They, submariners,  must receive personal e-mails on the sub at sea, if they can receive them at all, via the "sailor mail e-mail servers" sent to their "sailor mail e-mail address".

What a Sailors E-mail Address on a Sub Will Be is Explained Here - ...

    When I was talking about gmail, I was talking about sending from a gmail e-mail account to our son on a submarine to avoid known problems sending from non-gmail e-mail accounts to submarines at sea.

[J's mom]

"NF Mom, I need clarification on the email. My son had said that he won't get any gmail while out to sea,  only email at the sub address. Is that not the case?"

[CO-TwinSalorsMom]

"I wonder if it is like this for ships also because my nuke son's twin in on a destroyer and has a gmail address."

[susank]

I use hotmail to send an email to my submariner. (Always in plain text.) My husband sends using gmail so both work!

[NF Mom]

Thanks Susan.  If those of us sending to subs post both what works and what does not, it might show a pattern.

[susank]

One more thing I will add since it came up- if people send emails to my son's gmail address while he is out, the only way he would get it is when they make a port call and have Internet. (ie a foreign base or Internet cafe) . Guess that seems pretty obvious but just a reminder.

[susank]

This discussion would be a good one on the sub mom website too! Are you on that one NFmom?

[NF Mom]

Yes, but I find this Group a little more active.

[NF Mom]

One of the moms, of  a Sailor,  on the other crew,  on my son's boat,  mentioned the sub-mail was not going through.

I ask my son if they had been told  that sub-mail was down due to budget restraints or something.

He said no, that in fact he had just attended a briefing for crew and family members in the base theater.

They did say some people were having problems sending from yahoo mail accounts to the sailor-mail accounts, and others were having problems sending from gmail accounts to sailor-mail, but sending from hotmail to sailor-mail "might work better".

So, for those of us that have had problems in the past, maybe we are not as crazy as we thought.

[NF Mom]

Based on the briefing my son just had, it is you, me and everyone else who uses it :)

My son has been out once before, we had to switch the account we were sending from half way through, but we did not miss one day of sending, so thinking about it ahead of time never hurts - thanks to my husband for borrowing a jack before we needed one.

[susank]

Bump