Spy Sub: A Top Secret Mission to the Bottom of the Pacific Page 19

  "Paul!" he hollered at the top of his lungs, his eyes moving to the foaming sea that roared past the sides of the boat. He called the chief's name again, but he knew there would be no answer. He took one last desperate look before finally backing into the sail, his mind numb with the shock of losing his shipmate.

  "Man overboard, starboard side!" he screamed up to the four men at the top of the sail. "The chief is gone!"

  "Man overboard! Man overboard!" Young's urgent voice bellowed down into the control room loudspeakers as the captain and the lookouts shined their lights toward the foaming white water beyond the stern of the boat.

  Inside the control room, Young's voice immediately hollered over the loudspeaker, "All back emergency!" to the helmsmen. "Right full rudder!"

  We had performed drills like this a hundred times. Remembering the routine, I raced to the starboard corner of the control room to grab the man-overboard bag, a large white duffel bag filled with life vests and other floatation equipment. I dragged it across the deck to the base of the ladder and dropped it into the water pooling in front of the periscope station. It was obvious that the bag would be of no help to anybody.

  In the engine room, Billy Elstner spun the ahead throttles shut and rapidly opened the reverse throttles that rotated the screws in the opposite direction.

  "Who went over?" a voice called from the other side of the control room.

  "Jesus Christ!" Commander Ryack exploded furiously, his voice filled with rage. "It doesn't matter who went overboard, goddamn it! It is one of our shipmates and that's all that counts!"

  "Are we answering the back emergency bell?" Young's voice from the cockpit filled the control room.

  "Yes, sir!" O'Dell hollered into the microphone, "Answering back emergency."

  The lights throughout the boat briefly dimmed as the men in the engine room drained steam energy from the nuclear reactor in their effort to halt the Viperfish. Sloshing in the water I moved away from the ladder in the control center and felt useless. The life vests inside the bag couldn't even be delivered to the ocean, much less to the man in the water, and he was already wearing a life vest. Further, the flashlights in the bag would be immediately lost in the thrashing sea even if we could toss them out.

  While Commander Ryack spun the starboard periscope around to search into the night, the four men at the top of the sail, two on each side, leaned over the edge of the cockpit as they scrutinized the waters behind the boat. There was no sign of Mathews or his light in the surrounding darkness.

  "I can't see anything out there," the OOD said with frustration.

  "He's out there," the captain said. "We'll go ahead with the 'Y' and we'll find him."

  "Control, bridge!" Young hollered into his microphone under the steel lip of the sail. "Chief Mathews is in the water behind us! Can you see him through the 'scopes?"

  "Negative!" Ryack shot back. "Nothing!"

  The rudder orders came, and we started to make a "Y" turn, a procedure well known to the men at the top of the sail. The object was to back the boat in a tight, rotating movement while keeping the man overboard in full view. Our biggest problem was that nobody had seen the chief since the wave had washed him away. Also, now that we were turning in the sea, the waves began hammering at us from directly abeam, steeply rolling the boat from the lateral forces.

  A larger wave, fifteen to twenty feet high, slammed into us and and hit directly broadside. Roaring through the open sail door, it drenched Davidson with more freezing water. He considered closing the hatch but then decided to leave it open in the hope that he would see the chief as the boat continued to rotate. About that time, however, he realized that Chief Mathews might not be conscious.

  "We're tracking the area," Young called down to the control room as the rolls became more prominent. Both lookouts cursed as they scanned the ocean behind the Viperfish for any sign of a light in the sea.

  "Answering full back emergency!" from the engine room, as we felt the pulsating power of the screws stopping our forward motion.

  "Turn on the running lights and set the fire-control watch!" the captain hollered, ordering the men in the control center to man the dead reckoning tracer (DRT).

  Another wave slammed broadside against us and rushed through the open door of the sail. Again, a column of seawater roared down the control room hatch and flooded the control center.

  "Close the fucking hatch!" the executive officer hollered from the periscope station. One of the enlisted men pulled down on the halyard and slammed the hatch shut. He then activated his microphone to tell the men in the sail that they were sealed outside the Viperfish.

  "Bridge, control!" he called out. "We've taken water in control! The control room hatch is closed!"

  The loudspeakers responded a quick acknowledgment.

  At that moment, I was sure that Chief Mathews was lost forever. There was no way we could recover anybody we couldn't see or reach, a man under the pounding waves, probably a mile or more away from us, a man now freezing in the waters of the Soviet sector. Sloshing through the ankle-deep water, I dragged the man-overboard bag away from the base of the ladder. Small waves moved across the flooded decking of the control room with the movements of the boat, and I looked for a bucket to help clear the water.

  "Grab some sponges and move the water out!" Chief O'Dell hollered, as we rolled another 30 degrees and salt water splashed onto the fire-control panels. The technicians responsible for the electronics systems raced up and down the passageway to turn off everything in danger of salt water contamination.

  I grabbed a fistful of sponges and tried to soak up the water. The boat continued rolling, now more violently as we moved across the "Y" and lateral to the seas. More waves of water splashed against the electronic systems. O'Dell and Ryack, each manning a periscope, rotated them back and forth as they scanned the ocean behind the Viperfish for any signs of Mathew's light. Staring through the lenses into darkness, they saw nothing but the black of a violent, empty night.

  Outside the boat, the metal door on the side of the sail repeatedly crashed against the frame of the superstructure. It sounded hauntingly as if Paul Mathews was out there pounding the Viperfish with a hammer and trying to get back inside.

  "Do you see anything through the 'scopes?" the captain's voice called down to the control center.

  "Nothing!" Ryack answered. "Goddamn it, nothing" His thumb remained poised on the TBT (target bearing transmitter) button at the base of the periscope handle, his eyes scanning back and forth.

  "Bridge, this is the engine room!" Pintard called over the loud-speaker. "We are approaching the maximum bearing temperature limits for our backing turbines!"

  "Keep your bell on!" Commander Young's sharp voice yelled down to the engine room.

  "Where the hell is he?" Ryack said, moving the handles of his 'scope. "It's a goddamn hurricane out there-"

  "I don't see anything, either," O'Dell said from behind his 'scope. "He's out there somewhere."

  The speakers filled with another call from the engine room, Pintard's voice now more persistent. "We have exceeded our bearing and oil temperature limits for the backing turbines!"

  "Keep your bell on!" Young's voice roared through our loud-speakers.

  "Gotta get him on the leeward side," Ryack said.

  O'Dell rotated his periscope again.

  "Gotta see him, first," he said.

  "Problem is, we may run over him before we spot him."

  "Goddamnit…"

  "How long have we been backing down?"

  "Probably four or five minutes. It took us two minutes just to stop."

  The speaker came to life again, the EOOW's voice urgent. "Bridge, engine room, the bearing temperatures are now-"

  "Keep your bell on!" Young hollered again from the top of the sail. Although Young was standing the OOD watch, as the boat's engineer, he probably knew the limitations of his turbines better than any other man on board.

  I mashed sponges into the water and w
rung them into the buckets as we struggled to clear more water from the control center. We are going to do everything we can to save him, I though t- we are even going to burn out our propulsion turbine bearings.

  Dipping the sponges into the water again, I cursed the persistent slamming sound of the unlatched sail door. The noise struck blow after blow on the minds of the men in the control center. We heard it as a repetitive call from our man, lost in the howling forces of hell that raged around us, pleading for the crew of the Viperfish to bring him back.

  11. "You can't get to me"

  While president Lyndon B. Johnson was denying plans to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam, the death toll of American servicemen reached the highest level ever in a single week (ending 28 January 1968) when 416 men were killed and 2,757 wounded in the battles at Khesanh and Langvei. This brought the U.S. casualty total in Vietnam to 17,296 killed and 108,428 wounded. Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, after returning from a trip to Vietnam as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Refugees, charged that the Saigon government was infested with corruption and inefficiency. His brother, Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination; his platform included de-escalation of the Vietnam War and reversal of the "perilous course" of American policies.

  A jury in Boston, Massachusetts, convicted Dr. Benjamin Spock and others of conspiracy to violate the Selective Service law. Another jury in Baltimore, Maryland, found the Reverend Philip F. Berrigan guilty of burning and pouring blood on draft records. Meanwhile, Selective Service Director Lewis B. Hershey suspended occupational and graduate student deferments and expanded the draft, as military spending on the war approached $100 billion.

  Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara informed Congress that the Soviet Union had doubled its force of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) during the previous year, but he added that the policy of mutually assured destruction (MAD) would allow for an effective and overwhelming retaliation after any initial Soviet nuclear strike. The Soviet Union news agency TASS reported eleven Cosmos satellite launchings in a time span of only eight weeks. The 65-degree inclination angle of these and other launches suggested the stationing of nuclear bombs in orbit as a part of a multiple orbital bombardment system (MOBS) that could destroy American targets at will.

  A U.S. Navy court of inquiry into the explosion and loss of the USS Scorpion suggested that the vessel had been damaged by a Mk 37 torpedo accidentally set off by stray voltage in its tube. Analysis of SOSUS records, examination of photographs, and reconstruction analysis led to the conclusion that a single torpedo had exploded, probably after homing in on the Scorpion after her crew released the device. Sabotage and collision were considered but ruled out. The submarine had been in a tight turn at the time of the explosion, her sail had blown away, and the crew had tried to surface by blowing the ballast tanks and planing up. The compartments began to collapse, and flooding was widespread, except in the engine room, before the Scorpion reached her collapse depth. After careful consideration of all available evidence, the court of inquiry finally concluded that "the identifiable debris does not lead to a determination of the cause for the loss of the Scorpion."

  The medical consequences of being lost at sea mark a relentless path from initial shock and terror to a final paralysis that destroys the victim's mind and body. The first few seconds, a time when there still might be hope for a rescue, bring a harsh reality — the frantic search into the howling night for the departing ship, the stinging of eyes from the blasting of the water and wind, and the fighting for breath as the foaming ocean tries to invade the lungs.

  During this time, the light attached to the life jacket shines a weak beam into the night with an energy that determines nothing less than the fact of survival itself. For when the battery's energy becomes exhausted, the light will fail as the victim himself will fail. And, as more time passes, the victim accelerates his downward slide that weakens the muscles and begins to spread a deadly paralysis throughout his body. He finally moves into a deep and frozen coma as his hypothermie mind is mercifully shielded from being a witness to his own death.

  When Chief Mathew's chain had pulled away from the rail and he slammed off the Viperfish's hull into the freezing ocean, his shouts for help were immediately extinguished by the roaring of the ocean and the howling of the wind. He checked his light-his only lifeline in the night-and his fists formed a death grip on his life jacket. Struggling to hold his head above the pounding ocean, he knew, as a matter of cold and practical reality, that the shouting of his voice and the waving of his arms could be heard and seen by nobody. He knew from the beginning that his chance of survival was nearly zero.

  He massaged the light attached to his life jacket and thought about pulling it free so that he could hold it high, but he quickly abandoned the idea. What would he do if he accidentally dropped it into the sea? He looked down at the light frequently, taking some assurance that its white glow could possibly mean survival. Without the light, he would be a dark shape in a dark ocean, a figure that could not be seen and would not be saved from the cold waters. For he knew that when hypothermia develops — the dropping of temperature as the body cannot produce adequate heat-the mind slows, body movements weaken, and survival is no longer possible.

  At the periscopes in the control center of the Viperfish, Chief O'Dell and Commander Ryack continued their intense search of the waters behind us as the boat shuddered from the waves pounding the hull. Every roll of the submarine generated another wave of seawater rolling across the deck of the control center and crashing against the electronic control panels that lined our bulkheads. Another call from the engine room about bearing temperatures was followed by orders to maintain the bell, continue backing, proceed with the search for Chief Mathews, and the temperatures be damned.

  Captain Harris saw the first flash of light. He and the other three men were searching from their vantage point high above the Viperfish as the submarine completed her backing bell. By its nature, the "Y" maneuver led to the vessel moving perpendicular to the wave motion, which resulted in the steep rolling that hampered our efforts to clear away the water from the control center.

  It was just a flash, a spark and nothing more, from the center of blackness.

  "Sixty degrees off the port bow!" the captain shouted and pointed into the night.

  "All ahead two thirds!" Commander Young immediately ordered into the microphone connecting to the engine room.

  "Left full rudder!'

  "The light's gone, sir!" one of the lookouts said, his binoculars aimed at the area several hundred yards away.

  "He's probably under water again," the captain said as the Viperfish responded to the new bell. "We'll just close in on the area of the light. Bring her around, Gerry," he said to the OOD.

  "If we don't see the light again, we're going to take a chance on going right over him," Young said.

  "Just keep him downwind of the boat," the captain said patiently.

  From the control room, there was almost no information about the events topside. We knew that the chief was gone; we knew that the backing bell had either destroyed, or come close to destroying, the turbine bearings; and we knew that the Viperfish was now starting to move forward. The two men on the periscopes continued their search, but they were greatly hampered by the steep rolls tilting the periscopes from one side to the other, which prevented them from getting a fix on anything around us. Everybody in the control room worked in a state of stunned silence. As we continued to clear water from the decking, we kept hoping that some progress was being made from the top of the sail, but we also knew that a recovery under these conditions was extremely unlikely. After hearing the ahead bell and the rudder changes and then the all-stop bell, we waited for ten minutes while absolutely nothing happened. The final story of Chief Mathews came to us only later, in bits and pieces.

  From the top of the sail, the men in the cockpit saw the light again, and then ag
ain, as the Viperfish completed the "Y" maneuver and came to a halt, upwind of the chief.

  "Hang on, Mathews!" the captain yelled as the final approach was made. "We're going to get you!"

  There was no answer from the chief as the deck party of look-outs and a thoroughly soaked and freezing Michael Davidson ventured out on the deck for the recovery. They threw lines from the boat in his direction and then threw more lines. Mathews did not reach out for them or move closer to the boat, and he did not respond. In the end, a man went into the ocean to bring him back.

  Suddenly, the hatch above our heads opened, and a splash of water dropped into the control center.

  "Stand by to bring him down the ladder!" Davidson hollered from inside the sail, and we all gathered around the base of the ladder to help.

  Mathews was nearly unconscious when the men carefully lowered him, head first, down the ladder into our waiting arms. He was sobbing, speaking incoherently, and mumbling over and over,

  "I never saw the boat."

  "It's okay, Paul," we told him as Doc Baldridge checked his abrasions, several of which were still bleeding. He had slammed against the boat's superstructure a couple of times when his chain separated, but he had no broken bones or serious head injuries.

  We wrapped him in several blankets and moved him down to his rack, where the Doc repeatedly checked on him for the next two days.

  He had been in the water only twenty to thirty minutes, but, for Mathews, those minutes had been an eternity. While in the ocean, before his mind began to fade and before his muscles developed the malignant paralysis of hypothermia, he was certain that he was going to run out of time. He could not see the boat, he could not know we were closing in on him, and he could not know there was still hope.

  "Let's take her down," the captain said softly to the OOD at the top of the sail.