Men & women in tight quarters?

ST. MARYS, Ga. - Submariners sleep nine to a bunk room. There are four showers and seven toilets for the roughly 140 enlisted men. The passageways on board the vessel are so narrow that crew members can barely squeeze by each other without touching.

And that's on the roomiest submarines.

The Navy is considering allowing women to serve aboard submarines for the first time, 16 years after bringing female sailors onto surface combat ships.

Some sailors and wives warn that putting men and women together in extremely close quarters underwater for weeks at a time is just asking for sexual-harassment cases and wrecked marriages. But supporters of the idea say it is a matter of fairness and equal opportunity, and what worked on ships can work in subs.

Over the past two weeks, top leaders at the Pentagon have said they are considering ending another in the dwindling number of military specialties reserved for men. Officials said a decision could come soon, and women could be aboard subs by 2011.

The Navy will have to work through a host of issues first.

Kings Bay is the East Coast base for the Navy's Ohio-class submarines, which are armed with Trident nuclear missiles and go on 77-day tours of duty underwater. The 18 Ohio-class subs would probably be the first to take on women since they are the largest in the undersea fleet, 200 feet longer than the Navy's fast-attack submarines.

Still, at 560 feet, Ohio-class subs are a tight fit for their 160-man crews. Sailors sleep in cramped bunk rooms roughly the size of walk-in closets. The 140 enlisted men share two bathrooms. (The officers have separate facilities.)

The passageways and hatches are so narrow that those aboard are always rubbing up against each other - a situation played for laughs in the 1959 Cary Grant comedy "Operation Petticoat," in which a World War II sub rescues a group of stranded Army nurses.

The rule change that allowed women to serve on combat ships was pronounced a success by the Navy long ago. But it was not all smooth sailing.

In the mid-1990s, the aircraft carrier Eisenhower was nicknamed "The Love Boat" after 15 women became pregnant and a man videotaped himself having sex with a woman. However, the Navy said 12 of the women who conceived did so before boarding the ship, and the three others got pregnant on shore leave.