Spy Sub: A Top Secret Mission to the Bottom of the Pacific Page 16

  By the time the fifth pair of specks appeared, we were all taking bets on the chances of chaos versus a successful landing.

  "He's looking good! He's looking good!" Doc Baldridge hollered.

  "He's going to take out the cameraman!" Chief Mathews yelled.

  "Five bucks says it'll crash!" the cook called out.

  "Five to one!" somebody else said.

  "You're on!"

  "Oh my God, look at that!"

  "Bring it back to the left! It's off course!"

  "It's too high!"

  "Now, it's too low!"

  "Dumb goddamn pilot!"

  Another Regulus missile bounced and spun its way down the runway and finally disassembled into a heap of smoldering metal.

  "Skimmer non-qual puke pilot!" was the usual final observation as money changed hands.

  Finally, about five landings later, one missile actually came safely to an upright halt and the ocean around the Viperfish reverberated from our cheers. An hour and a half later, five or six more missiles landed safely, and we were left speculating about the award that the photographer must have received for filming so many missiles coming right at him.

  The cook finally turned off the projector. Some of the crew drifted off toward their racks for a few hours' sleep, while others wandered off to the far corners of the boat to assume their watches. A half hour later, the next group of men coming off watch assembled in the crew's dining area for snacks and the watching of a special movie, starring the United States Navy, titled Attempted Landings of Regulus Missiles, Using Jets.

  We continued to move through the ocean toward our mysterious destination, the engine room pulsating with the power of a reactor running at nearly 100 percent to drive the propulsion turbines at top speed. From the plummeting temperature of the ocean water, it was apparent that we were moving in a northerly direction, but none of us knew whether we were heading west toward the Soviet Union or east in the direction of the United States. On the fifth day, that issue was settled as we entered the Domain of the Golden Dragon.

  I had not heard of the beast. At the time of the first announcement, I was lying in my rack and studying a lesson related to the conjugation of a long list of French verbs. If I completed ten lessons before our return to Pearl Harbor, there was a good chance that I could soon finish the course and be one step farther along the tortuous pathway to a college degree. It would not be difficult, I reasoned-just conjugate the verbs, memorize the vocabulary, pull out my portable typewriter, and assemble the lesson for the professor in his office at Berkeley. Immediately after I memorized the fourth verb on the list, Chief Mathews made the announcement over the ship's IMC loudspeaker.

  "Now, attention all hands! We have a sonar contact, bearing 275 degrees, one mile off the port bow, closing on the Viperfish at twelve knots!"

  I slammed the book shut and yanked back the curtain covering the opening to my rack.

  A sonar contact closing on the Viperfish? A torpedo? I stuck my head out into the passageway and looked around, half expecting to see men running to battle stations. Nobody was running anywhere, and the only sign that anyone else had heard the announcement was the presence of several other heads looking out from their racks. I reasoned that it must be some kind of torpedo fire-control drill.

  Mathew's voice came out over the loudspeaker system again. "Now, sonar reports the contact has attached to the boat! The contact has attached to the boat!"

  This was getting weird very fast. It had to be a strange homing torpedo, I thought, or maybe a type of mine that was somehow attached to the Viperfish. I jumped out of my rack in a rush and began to dress quickly, as I listened for a call for surfacing, for battle stations, or for somebody to do something.

  "Now, we have entry!" the chief's voice carried the urgency of the situation. "We have confirmed entry of an unauthorized biological form into the wet bilge of the boat."

  The opening to the wet bilge, on the decking immediately next to my rack, was covered by a steel grating that spanned the hole. Unfortunately, at that moment, I was standing on top of the steel grating. I froze and slowly looked straight down into the bilge, my mind struggling with the concept of an unauthorized form somewhere below me. Standing at the bottom of the wet bilge was one of our enlisted men, Willie Washington, looking straight up at me, his eyes wide open and filled with fear.

  Immediately, he began climbing up the ladder as fast as his arms and legs could move. He was shrieking, "There's a biological something coming in! Lemme outa here!"

  I held the grate open for him as he flew out of the wet bilge and disappeared down the passageway without looking back to see what kind of biological form might be chasing him. I lowered the grating and stood directly on top of it. Looking down into the hole, I wondered how anything attaching from outside our boat could migrate through the maze of pipes into the bilge.

  And that was when Chief Mathews made his final loudspeaker announcement.

  "Now, all skalliwags and non-quals, all pukes and others who have not crossed the 180th meridian, I am authorized to announce that the Golden Dragon has gained entry into the Viperfish! The Dragon will be immediately convening a golden tribunal in the crew's dining area. All non-quals and other pukes without a certified document granting entry to the Domain lay to the crew's dining area for determination of guilt and justice, according to the Honorable Code of the Golden Dragon!"

  The line was long, the trial was short, and the justice was swift. We entered the darkened dining area, one at a time, to find ourselves staring at the face of a huge Golden Dragon with fiery illuminated eyes and a belly that looked remarkably like that of the nuke machinist mate, Joaquin Santos. Paul Mathews had been assigned as the Golden Assistant for the Dragon; there was no defense except useless whimpering pleas for leniency. The creature itself served as the honorable judge, the prosecuting attorney, and the jury; the Dragon's word was absolute and would yield to no appeal.

  I was found guilty of all charges. General malfeasance, corruption, multiple gestures of disrespect to the Golden Dragon, and other compelling but undefined improprieties were included, and the sentencing occurred immediately. A quick swig of the Golden Brew was the punishment, a matter ably attended to by the Golden Assistant, Chief Mathews, who provided me with a ladle filled with the foulest, greasiest, oiliest soup I had ever tasted. As I gulped the solution, large quantities spilled onto my dungaree shirt, leaving me with a musty rotting odor unknown to the civilized world. My stomach immediately rejected the entire mess. With cheers from the crew and an identification card certifying me to be now worthy of the Golden Dragon's domain, I was ordered to leave the court before the tribunal reversed its honored and lenient decision. I returned to my rack, where French books took second place to a quick but thorough shower and a change into clean dungarees.

  After moving through the Golden Dragon's 180th meridian, Chief Mathews expanded my education in naval lore with his story about the Golden Dragon. Since the time that Greek and Roman sailors guided their fragile vessels on the high seas, the benevolence of mythical gods was believed to be essential for survival and success. As the centuries passed and science advanced, the improved understanding of the challenging forces at sea-weather, waves, and unsettled shiftings within the human mind-diminished the importance of the gods. Only two remain in control of these elements today. Although King Neptune continues to dominate sailors crossing the equator, the more fearful Golden Dragon of the international date line, the supreme serpent controlling the 180th meridian in the mid-Pacific Ocean, generates greater respect from sailors entering its waters. Stretching thousands of miles east of the Kamchatka Peninsula and north to the Aleutian Islands, the violent and turbulent seas within the control of this mythical creature are known by all men of ships and submarines as the Domain of the Golden Dragon.

  Continuing our presumably westward journey to enter the icy waters of the Soviet sector, we pushed through the ocean with wide-open throttles for several more days. We finally a
pproached a destination of sorts, somewhere, I guessed, near the Kamchatka Peninsula. The announcement came with an abrupt change in our bell, the first new propulsion order in more than a week, that bolted Marc Birken to attention with the order, "Slow to one-third! Do not cavitate! Do not cavitate!"

  Marc rapidly cranked his throttle wheels nearly shut as everybody sitting in the maneuvering area of the engine room looked up at the cavitation indicator lights. The noise from the tiny bubbles spinning off the screw made a cracking noise that could be heard for miles. It was essential, if we were to avoid detection by others, for us to slow the screws and rig the ship for silence.

  Since "do not cavitate" was now a standing order for the engine room, it was apparent to me that the captain suspected that somebody, out there in the ocean, might be listening for us.

  The captain and executive officer also spread the word for us to do everything possible to maintain silence. Although we could talk, watch movies, and move around the Viperfish in a relatively normal manner, we were careful to avoid slamming the steel hatches separating the compartments and to avoid dropping anything on the decking.

  Of greatest importance was the garbage. Any light bulbs in the debris ejected from the Viperfish would implode with a bomb-like detonation that could be heard for hundreds of miles. Silence was imperative. Garbage bags were checked and double-checked. It was almost as if we had started tiptoeing through the dark spaces of a stranger's house because somebody, probably armed with an arsenal of lethal weapons, could be nearby-awake and listening for the sounds of an intruder.

  We shifted in the chairs of our watch stations as these thoughts penetrated our consciousness. The unknown nature of the listening force added to its ominous nature and made it seem more powerful and frightening. Moving slowly and silently through waters that were likely within the Soviet sector, we could almost feel the presence of something or someone above us or around us — listening, waiting, ready to take action against us if we were detected. The crew's morale, already burdened by the problems of the society we had left behind, was further weighted by this new threat. Nobody speculated about what would happen if we were detected, but the subject persistently haunted us while we concentrated on the cavitation monitor and silence.

  Chief Morris obviously felt it as much as the rest of us. That evening, he snapped at one of the crewmen, "There's a flashlight in the engine room with dead batteries. Didn't you guys run the PM[6] last week?"

  "I'm sure we did, Chief," the electrician answered, calmly. "Which flashlight is it?"

  Glaring at the man, the chief stuck out his jaw and said, "I'm not going to tell you. You're going to have to find it yourself."

  The man looked at the chief but restrained himself from making any comment. He roamed throughout the engine room as he tested each flashlight one at a time. It took him a half hour, but he finally found the bad light and replaced the batteries.

  The rest of us jumped on the chief from that point on. In the subtle manner of submarine crews everywhere, we delivered our message without running afoul of the military chain-of-command structure. When anyone asked where something might be located, the answer, almost always within earshot of Chief Morris, was always an impudent, "I'm not going to tell you. You're going to have to find it yourself."

  At that point, we still had almost two more months on patrol.

  There would be no escape for the chief. He would receive the same message, over and over, wherever he might wander throughout the Viperfish. He learned fast, however, and never pulled a "you gotta find it yourself" trick again.

  More than a week after leaving Pearl, and nearly two years since the Viperfish had started her long journey as a spy submarine, we reached a destination that was unknown to most of us The SOBs in the hangar compartment prepared for the search They checked and double-checked our coordinates from the ship's navigation system and compared the data with the information they had been given in Hawaii. Working diligently, they began to prepare the Fish for the complex process required to lower it into the high-pressure ocean.

  Finally, they started lowering the Fish down the hole and out through the belly of the Viperfish. It was a cooperative effort by Lieutenant Dobkin, Robbie Teague, Captain Harris, and the cluster of civilians. They all tossed out ideas and orders as they eased the Fish, one foot of cable at a time, into the ocean on the start of its journey that would take it miles away from our submarine.

  We did not linger around the hangar during this time, so that the SOBs could do their work without our intrusion. Hoping that something worthwhile would come of it, we managed the rest of the boat. It was apparent that our ability to function as a seagoing submarine in matters of military defense was highly limited with the expensive Fish trailing several miles below us. We could not quickly change course, we could not speed up or slow down, and we were unable to change our depth abruptly without destroying the search pattern or damaging the Fish. We were like a military aircraft, flying through the middle of a battle zone at dangerously slow speeds with flaps extended, landing gear down, and controls frozen.

  The Viperfish was vulnerable, and everybody knew it. Even though the Fish was nearly twenty thousand feet below us, it had to be carefully pulled by its cable so that it would remain only a few feet off the ocean floor. The entire operation was extremely delicate, and its success depended on our moving slowly, systematically and deliberately at all times.

  During the first few days of the search, my biggest worry was the consequences of any flooding. The Fish and its cable likely would be destroyed during any emergency surfacing action or by a sudden loss of propulsion power resulting from any problem in the engine room. I found myself forcing these thoughts from my mind during the long hours of sitting in front of the reactor panel and wondering who was out there listening for us. All of us worked hard to concentrate on the meters spread across our panels.

  After two weeks of quietly moving back and forth across our search pattern, the noise from the first explosion hit our submarine. It was clearly audible to all of us, a distant "whomp!" followed by a long period of stunned silence from our crew.

  "What the hell was that?" I asked Brian Lane. Brian and I had been sitting side by side in front of our control panels for the past three hours, as we watched our meters, puffed on cigars, and tried to stay alert despite the monotony and boredom of our tasks.

  Lane turned in his chair and looked at me. For a moment, I thought he hadn't heard the noise-his eyes didn't seem to register the enormity of an explosion in the ocean thousands of miles from land. He looked inappropriately relaxed as he spoke the hang-loose Hawaiian vernacular of the day, "Ain't no big thing, bruddah."

  I stared at him. "No big thing? Jesus Christ! We're in the middle of the ocean, Brian," I said. "There's not supposed to be anybody else out there."

  "It could be from a thousand things," he said, dismissing the more ominous implications.

  "Or it could be somebody has found us."

  "Survey ships, war games by our guys, fishing fleets detonating fish to the surface, it could be anything."

  Glancing back at the reactor control panel, I scanned the meters and looked for anything even slightly abnormal as more explosions went off. I adjusted the reactor control system and shifted around in my chair.

  The man of the house is looking for the intruder, I thought.

  Behind us, Lieutenant Katz called the control center, asked couple of questions, and listened carefully. "The captain doesn't know what the sound is," he said, hanging up the telephone "The sonarmen think the noise is probably coming from a sonobuoy dropped by something-an aircraft, a ship, or maybe even another submarine."

  Another explosion went off, and all of us waited for the next one.

  "Goddamn!" I said as I put my clipboard down and waited.

  "Somebody out there is exploring the thermoclines," Katz said, referring to the layers of water created by virtue of their different temperatures. A layer of cool water next to warmer water ca
uses the deflection of sonar waves; objects, such as submarines hiding on the other side of the thermocline, are concealed from detection by ships on the surface. To improve the chances of finding deeply submerged vessels, floating sonobuoys eject explosive charges that drop deep below the surface. When the charge sinks to a pre-determined level, it detonates and the sonobuoy broadcasts any reflected echoes to a receiving ship or aircraft.

  It is a tricky business because of the "tunnel effect" that echoes the explosive sound back and forth down the tunnel for many miles and confuses everybody about distances. If we were sitting at the end of a long thermocline tunnel, an explosion from five or ten miles away could sound like it was right outside our hull. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to determine whether or not a tunnel is present. We had no way of knowing if the explosions were from a distant source or right outside our boat.

  10. Man overboard!

  In early 1968, a Soviet Echo II submarine designated PL-751 ("PL" for podvodnaya lodka, or submersible boat), with ninety men on board, returned to her home port of Vladivostok on the eastern coast of the Soviet Union. For a prolonged duration, she had been on station within range of U.S. targets, and her captain and crew were looking forward to several weeks of well-earned time ashore. According to the timetable of Soviet submarine deployment, she was to be relieved by her sister ship, currently undergoing preparation and scheduled for departure at the Vladivostok submarine base.

  To the distress of the men on board PL-751, they were informed on arrival that their relief ship had developed mechanical problems and would not be able to deploy. PL-751 was forced to stock up on food and supplies, cast off her lines, and immediately return to sea for another prolonged period on station in the Pacific Ocean. As she cleared the Sea of Japan, her cavitating screws broadcast their characteristic signature to the listening SOSUS array below. The sounds, as well as her northeast direction of movement, were duly noted by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) monitoring specialists who were thousands of miles away. Cruising north of the Japanese island of Hokkaido, PL-751 passed over the deep Kuril Basin at the edge of the Sea of Okhotsk, navigated between the Kuril Islands, and finally powered into the open waters of the Pacific. She maintained full 30,000 SHP (shaft horsepower) from her twin shafts and dual reactors. Crossing the undersea Shatskiy Rise and approaching the Emperor Seamount, she moved in the direction of her patrol sector within missile range of Midway and the Hawaiian Islands.