Spy Sub: A Top Secret Mission to the Bottom of the Pacific Read online

  "Right, that is correct. Very good." I adjusted my ear protectors in the hope that his voice would blend in with the turbogenerators.

  "However, Dunham," he continued, "you will save the reactor if I tell you to save the reactor."

  With that, Lieutenant Sanders had reached his goal. Even though I might want to save the ship, he, as an officer, would force me to do something contrary to training and common sense. It was a power thing. What I should have said at that point was something like, "The choice is yours, sir, because you are the EOOW."

  I felt a flash of irritation at the whole line of questioning, so I blurted out, "No, sir, I would not save the reactor."

  He stopped pacing the deck and stood directly behind my chair. "You would save the reactor if I told you to," he said forcefully.

  My irritation rose. I jotted a couple of numbers from the reactor panel onto my clipboard. "No, sir. I would save the ship, but I would not save the reactor."

  His voice climbed an octave. "You would save the reactor if I told you to!"

  "No, sir."

  I noticed Brian sinking down into his chair. He was trying to be as inconspicuous as possible.

  The lieutenant became livid. "You would if I told you to!" he yelled, bits of sputum flying in all directions.

  "No, sir," I answered politely. "I would not be inclined to save the reactor, sir."

  He began to hyperventilate. A couple of enlisted men standing near the maneuvering area quickly walked away, probably searching for a place to hide. I gnashed my teeth, grabbed the reactor clipboard, and noted some additional information in my logbook as Sanders finally sat down, his face red with anger. I put the clipboard down and wondered if I was going to be court-martialed for refusing a hypothetical order. From my perspective, the entire issue was the result of everybody being annoyed about everything, the failure of our search mission, and the effects of nearly two months of submerged duty. But, for Sanders, it was personal, an enlisted man's insolence, and something, by God, that was going to be taken to Lieutenant Pintard immediately after the watch.

  Ten minutes after I finished the watch, Pintard took me to the hangar compartment, now quiet, and spoke like a father to an errant son, "Dunham, Dunham, Dunham…"

  "Well, he was a bit out of line, sir," I said.

  Pintard smiled. "Lieutenant Sanders is an excellent officer, and next time just tell him what he wants to hear."

  "Hypothetical orders-"

  He raised his hands to stop me. "If Mr. Sanders wants you to save a mermaid swimming to the moon, just tell him you will do everything possible to save the bitch, okay? This is a submarine, but there is a military structure that needs to be followed."

  I agreed, and that was the end of the issue; however, a new phrase, "You will if I tell you to!" entered the lexicon of the Viperfish's crew. It was repeated a hundred times during the days ahead, usually within earshot of Lieutenant Sanders and always in the tone of an authoritarian out of control. If somebody said, "I'm really not sure I'd want to swim in the Ala Moana harbor," the immediate, reflexive response would be a hollered, "You would if I told you to!"

  Because there is no way that any man on a submarine can escape the "pinging" (verbal barbed wire) of the crew, an early lesson of submarine life, for an officer and enlisted man alike, is that there is a price to pay for being obnoxious. The barrage of pinging from the entire crew can become incessant; when somebody with an inappropriate attitude is trapped with the crew, this can eat him alive. Wherever he walks, from bow to stern, other crewmen (officer and enlisted) are everywhere. They sleep above and below him; they sit at his table; they eat meals and watch movies with him; they use the head and take showers next to him.

  If the word is out that he has brought any form of grief to one of the crew, retribution follows-a dig here or there, a phrase, anything that conveys displeasure-and it will not let up.

  Two months is a long time, and there is nowhere to hide. Officers are as much at risk as enlisted men. From the cook serving protein-enriched cereal-"doing the best I can"-to the chief ordering his man to "find it for yourself," to the officer who orders "you'll do it if I tell you to," they will find no mercy from the crew. The pinging continues without pause until enough time goes by that everybody finally forgets the issue or until some redeeming act from the accused brings forgiveness and peace.

  Two days later, when I passed by the radio shack, one of the crew angrily handed me an official Navy bulletin recently transmitted to the Viperfish. The bulletins were passed around the boat on rare occasions and served as a kind of Navy-oriented newspaper. After climbing into my rack and pulling the curtain, I turned on the light and scanned the front page. Anything would be more interesting than French lessons.

  The first story reported the tale of an enlisted Navy man who was found guilty of using LSD. The LSD had caused him no problems except for prolonged staring sessions, and he seemed to do fine except for repeated, unpredictable flashbacks. On one such flashback, the man apparently thought he was an orange; the accompanying editorial warned of the dangers to nuclear reactor operators who think they are becoming fruit.

  Because I never used drugs and didn't know of anybody on the Viperfish with any kind of a drug habit, I moved to the second article. This one was written by the captain of a nuclear submarine somewhere in the world who had purged most of the nukes on his ship for various reasons that seemed to have little merit. The article pointed out, however, that Adm. Hyman G. Rickover was quite satisfied with the action, was happy with the action, and the editorial warned us to stay on our toes, or we too might be at risk for a purge. As I remembered the NR Board debacle and began to feel gloomy at the thought of a Mao Tse-tung purification on board our submarine, I became aware of the Viperfish sliding into a steep and sustained down-angle.

  I have never liked the feeling of our boat pointing her bow toward the bottom of the ocean. In most cases, a down-angle is a transient process carrying little risk. The helmsmen push forward on their Republic Aviation control wheels, and the entire vessel rotates forward into a downward slide. The duration of the down-angle affects the psyche of the entire crew. The steeper the down-angle, the greater the anxiety, until it becomes a waiting game — waiting for the down-angle to stop and for the submarine to level out. Depending on speed and buoyancy factors, a submarine can point down for only so long before something dramatic happens.

  Outside the control station, the men had no information about the depth of the submarine during down-angle maneuvers, and no announcement indicated how much deeper the Viperfish was going. It was like being a passenger in a diving airliner that had no windows, with predictable results on the enclosed humans: a fine sweat covering the skin, a hand tightening its grip on the side of the chair, and irritation demonstrated by spontaneous small movements of annoyance.

  When is the dive going to stop? How far down are we going to go?

  Other thoughts, private thoughts, moved through the minds of the men riding the submarine down, thoughts about test depth and crush depth, thoughts about pressures at the bottom of the ocean, and sobering thoughts about survival. It was essential, we all knew, that the destination depth not fall below the ship's maximum test depth. In a steep dive, the time it takes to pass through the test depth and reach the crush depth is a matter of only a few seconds.

  In submarine school, we had been told that submarines in the American fleet will often take steep down-angles under many operational scenarios. It happens all the time, it is normal. "The conning station knows what it is doing, it will not overstress the ship," we had been told. There is no need for panic, everything is under control.

  Fine, but how long does the dive continue, and at what point would it be appropriate to start wondering about our depth?

  I ripped aside the curtain of my rack. Looking up and down the passageway, I checked for anything that seemed unusual. The boat was definitely pointed in a steeply downward direction, and there was no indication that we were going to lev
el out or move into an up-angle at any time in the near future. The off-watch crew was scattered throughout the berthing area, arms and legs protruding into the dark passageways, mouths rumbling out a symphony of snores. Several of the men began stirring restlessly as the down-angle increased a couple of degrees and the submarine seemed to accelerate her dive.

  I swung out of my rack, pulled on my dungarees, and hiked up to the Viperfish's diving station to investigate.

  At 0300 the control center was only dimly lit by glowing red pinpoints of light on the electronic panels-the compartment was fully "rigged for red." The room was unusually silent, and everybody looked grim. Captain Harris paced back and forth next to the lowered periscopes, Commander Ryack leaned across the railing and scrutinized the gauges over the shoulders of the two helmsmen. Chief Mathews and Petty Officer Michael Davidson, wearing life jackets, stood next to the ladder leading up to the sealed overhead hatch. With thick belts encircling their waists and steel chains, ready to be latched to railings on the outside deck, hanging at their sides, they were preparing to climb the ladder. I stared at them as I tried to understand what they were going to do.

  I turned to Sandy Gallivan, standing at my side, and asked him what was going on. He looked at me, his face tense, his words strained.

  "Problem with the Fish winch mechanism," he said quickly. "Gotta hold the boat in a down-angle or our Special Project operation is shot. Bates is keeping us steady at this depth with positive buoyancy, and we're moving real slow." He pointed in the direction of Joel Bates, the lanky ballast control panel operator, who was hunched over his chair, his eyes glaring at his depth gauges.

  "Aren't we moving pretty deep right now, with the down-angle and all?" I asked.

  "Even though we're about four hundred feet," he said patiently, "we're not changing depth because of the positive buoyancy. As we move forward, we float up by an equal amount, holding our depth steady. It is a delicate balance, and Bates is going crazy trying to keep us at four hundred. Mathews and Davidson are going topside to free the hydraulic lock on the Fish's cable reel. In about thirty seconds, we are going to surface."

  "We're going to surface with a down-angle?" I asked.

  "With a down-angle," Sandy confirmed, looking unhappy. "At least we're not dangling a Fish below us."

  Mathews and Davidson rechecked the thick belts holding their rail chains and looked up the ladder at the control room hatch as Philip O'Dell grabbed the microphone to the loudspeaker system.

  "Now, surface, surface, surface!" Chief O'Dell's voice bellowed from speakers throughout the submarine.

  With the rapid movements of practiced experience, the men in the control center flipped the switches controlling the high-pressure ballast air system. As the roaring compressed air blew water out of our ballast tanks, we rapidly ascended-the bow of the Viperfish still strangely pointing down by about 20 degrees. We broke through the surface of the early-morning ocean, and the helmsmen immediately opened the control-room hatch connecting to the sail. The thin form of Gerry Young raced up the ladder in front of Captain Harris. Both men scrambled to the top of the sail, and two lookouts followed closely behind. Mathews and Davidson remained next to the ladder in the control center, as they waited for orders to move out of the Viperfish.

  From sixty-five feet above the deck, Young's voice crackled over the loudspeakers in the control center.

  "Con, Bridge, how do you read me?"

  "I read you loud and clear, how me?" Chief O'Dell called into his microphone.

  "I hear you same," the speakers replied.

  For about ten minutes, the captain and the OOD studied the waves around the Viperfish in the early morning dark as she plowed through the heaving waters. The freezing rain and wind, occasionally carrying blasts of salt-laden sea spray, whipped around the cockpit and blew into their faces.

  The boat rolled vigorously from the cross-wave activity. The lookouts watched for lights of any approaching ships. The dark shape of the Viperfish would not be visible to the crew of another ship because we were running without lights, and there was always a small chance of collision with some random freighter straying out of the shipping lanes.

  Commander Young's major responsibility as the officer of the deck was to establish the best possible course for the Viperfish and head her directly into the driving seas. Swells hitting the bow of the boat were easily traversed, but those striking the superstructure from abeam could cause severe rolling. He ordered several course changes during the first few minutes to move the Viperfish into the best direction through the waves. As each wave rolled out of the dark with an almost predictable regularity and approached the bow, we lifted up smoothly to ride over the top.

  The captain had a bigger problem. Chief Mathews and Petty Officer Davidson were about to leave the security of the boat to walk on a slippery submarine deck. Everybody was aware that we were more than a thousand miles from the nearest land, and there was nobody nearby to help if we had a problem.

  Inside the control room, Mathews and Davidson climbed to the top of the ladder. Dragging their rail chains behind them, they stopped just below the open hatch to the sail. Again, they paused and awaited orders.

  "Mathews, Davidson, lay topside, into the sail!" the captain's order finally crackled down from the control room loudspeakers.

  The two men quickly disappeared through the hatch into the dark interior of the sail, their chains clattering behind them. Within the sail, they turned on their flashlights to light up the door leading to the outside of the sail structure. The chief yanked up on the handle and swung the door wide. As it slammed against the outside steel, torrents of rain and roars from the black ocean stunned the men.

  "Jesus" was all Davidson said, softly under his breath. As the junior enlisted man, he would faithfully follow his chief into the hostile night. He would say nothing more but, rather, concentrate on the job awaiting them and ignore the energy hammering the world around them.

  Waiting for their final orders from the captain, Mathews and Davidson clutched the bar inside the open door and tried to see out into the night. High above their heads, the captain, the OOD, and the lookouts continued to scowl at the powerful forces surrounding the boat.

  The captain's deep voice finally rumbled down to the sail from the cockpit: "You're clear for the topside deck!"

  The two men immediately stepped out through the sail door and clamped their short chains to the railing carved into the steel deck. Beginning to inch forward slowly and clutching the handrail on the starboard side of the sail, they dragged their chains behind them as they progressed toward the hydraulic pipes ahead.

  "I can't see a goddamn thing!" Mathews growled to Davidson as he brushed the rain from his eyes and shined his flashlight into the night.

  "Nothing to see but the goddamn freezing rain!" Davidson hollered back over the roar of the ocean. They rounded the front of the sail and prepared to move across the deck, Mathews leading the way in the direction of the hydraulic system's valves.

  Without warning, a rogue wave loomed like a huge black mountain two hundred yards in front of the Viperfish and began rolling directly at the submarine's heaving deck.

  The four men in the cockpit simultaneously saw the massive shape that dwarfed the boat and seemed to become increasingly larger. Driven by the winds and tortured by the forces of the sea pulling up into its face, the black wall of water roared in thunderous slow motion, the crest topped by foaming Whitewater higher than the top of the sail. The lookouts hollered their warning. The OOD and the captain immediately tried to save the men on the deck below.

  "Get back inside!" Young's voice blasted urgently from the top of the sail.

  "Get into the sail!" the captain hollered. "Get inside, now!"

  Young grabbed the microphone communicating into the control center and hollered, "Come right 20 degrees!"

  The helmsman in the control center instantly turned the Viperfish farther to the right. The bow, moving slightly to the new course, pointe
d directly into the wave that seemed to grow like a powerful creature, a living thing preparing to devour the vessel and the men who challenged its waters.

  "Come right another 10 degrees!" Young screamed into the microphone, as he tried to point the Viperfish directly into the powerful wave so that she could bisect and ride over it.

  "Right, 10 degrees, aye, aye, sir!" the chief of the boat called back, and the helmsman responded with the rudder change.

  The men on the deck turned and raced for the safety of the sail. Davidson reached it first, his chain now ahead of the chief. He frantically unlatched his clamp and leaped through the door, while Mathews hollered, "Go! Go! Go! Go!"

  The wave hit the Viperfish head-on and consumed her bow. Crashing high over the outstretched bow planes, it foamed across the top of the bat-cave hump and finally roared across the deck toward the sail. Just as Davidson turned to reach for his shipmate, the decking around him shuddered from the wave's impact. Water flooded over the top of the sail and into the cockpit sixty-five feet above the ocean, drenched the four men, and then roared down the long ladder. It almost washed Davidson back out the door.

  A solid column of seawater crashed through the open hatch of the control room, flooded the decking, and soaked everybody in the area of the diving station. On the deck outside the sail, Mathews held his breath as the wall of water crashed into him. Burying him beneath its violence, the wave forced him away from the door and broke his grip on the sail's handrail. It slammed him against the deck and finally accelerated him toward the stern. Frantically, he reached toward his belt to grasp the chain that strained with the weight of his body dragging the clamp along the steel rail.

  The clamp suddenly broke free from the rail. As the rush of water carried Mathews into the ocean, he struck the deck with a final glancing blow and disappeared toward the churning screws of the Viperfish.

  Davidson, scrambling around inside the sail, tried to stand up again. He grabbed the hinges of the door and looked out into the night for Mathews. His broken flashlight washed out the door with the water clearing from the sail. His fingers clutched the inside railing as he leaned outside the door to search behind the Viperfish for any signs of a light.