now showing their appreciation for the submarine war being waged by Cheyenne. They had earlier agreed, in a secret Navy summit at CINCPACFLT's headquarters in Makalapa, to the Tomahawk missile flights over Palawan. Not that it would have made any difference, since the missiles would have been programmed to overfly Palawan anyway. Nevertheless, not having to deal with interfering Philippine aircraft ensured there would not be any international bickering over the flight path.
The crystal-balling by some of the Cheyenne junior officers included bets that the Philippines would offer to reopen Subic Bay, at least for the duration of the war against China's submarines and encroaching warships and aircraft. If the price were right-for free-then the United States might even agree.
Mack listened to his officers with interest. He knew that putting Arco in Subic Bay would provide a nuclear repair capability closer to Cheyenne's current patrol area. Of course, if they did that, then they would be farther away from Cheyenne^ next war patrol assignment and her patrol areas south of the Spratlys.
Mack grinned to himself and shrugged. Pay now or pay later, he thought. In the end, though, it didn't really matter. Arco or no Arco, SEALs or no SEALs, Cheyenne would go where she was ordered and carry out the orders she was given.
9. The Fourth Patrol: From Russia with Love
The third patrol area was quiet. Cheyenne detected no submarines during her short duration patrol. Which was good, Mack thought. It gave his officers and crew the opportunity to catch up on their paperwork. More important, the respite allowed the newest crew members to finally complete their submarine qualification checkouts with the designated subsystem experts.
Before reaching that stage, each enlisted man had to complete certain at sea and in port watch-stander qualifications required by his department-engineering, weapons, or operations. Qualification boards for the enlisted were held in the 'goat locker,' the chief petty officer (CPO) lounge, mess area, and bunk room, all rolled into one small, but cozy space.
These qualification boards were run by several of Cheyenne's senior personnel. The top two were the chief of the boat (COB), who was also the master chief petty officer of the command, and Cheyenne's qualification officer, the combat systems officer. The qualification officer was responsible to the executive officer, in the executive officer's role as the ship's training officer, for ensuring the timely submarine qualification of each and every enlisted man. The rest of the qualification boards were made up of selected qualification petty officers, the designated subsystem experts, and the individual candidate's leading petty officer and division officer.
Once this board made its recommendation to the executive officer, Mack was always quick to hold a ceremony in the crew's mess. He enjoyed pinning me coveiea snvcr dolphins on each sailor's uniform, conferring the right for the crewman to add 'SS' to his official title.
Officer qualification in submarines included qualification as engineering officer of the watch (EOOW) and officer of the deck, as well as the in port engineering duty officer (EDO) and ship's duty officer responsibilities. These required the captain's certification, as did other senior enlisted watch stations.
Other officer qualifications included candidates for engineer officer of a nuclear-powered ship. Completion of this was generally put on hold during wars because the candidate officer was unable to return to Washington, D.C., to be interviewed by the head of Navy Nuclear Propulsion, NAVSEA 08.
For the officers, the same qualification petty officers checked out the candidates, as did the responsible department heads. Once the senior watch officer and the navigator, who was Cheyenne's third senior officer, made their recommendation to the executive officer and captain, a qualification board was held in the wardroom.
The reward for these officer qualifications were the much rarer and even more coveted gold dolphins, which designated the officer as 'submarine warfare qualified.' After Cheyenne's most recent war patrols, Mack felt that all her hands had earned this designation, and he was pleased that they had gotten the chance to catch up on this.
In addition to catching up on paperwork and officer qualifications, the respite also gave Mack the chance to have his junior officers practice their surfacing and diving of the submarine. But Mack didn't let that go too far. This was war, after all, and there was always the chance that some of those pesky Chinese Kilo SSKs were lurking about, so he instructed his junior officers to only simulate blowing the main ballast tanks. That restriction kept Cheyenne safe, and it didn't affect the quality of their practice at all.
Mack wasn't worried about their knowledge. He knew that they had learned, at least on a theoretical level, how to handle the boat. All the officers on Cheyenne were nuclear trained-training which had required all officers to complete Nuclear Power School in Orlando, Florida, along with training at one of the reactor prototypes, either in West Milton, New York; Arco, Idaho; or Windsor, Connecticut. This training had taken a year to complete, and it was so intense that they'd had to memorize volumes of information that, when stacked on top of each other, easily reached over six feet high. And it didn't end there. It was followed by a stint at the Naval Submarine School in Groton, Connecticut.
This was all before they ever got to their first submarine. Once on board, they had new reactor and propulsion plant manuals to study, supplemented by ship's information books, weapons manuals, and at least twenty more documents related to operations against what was now the enemy.
After all this. Mack wasn't worried about what they knew, but they needed practice and experience to go with all that book knowledge. It was the procedural steps and the feel of the ship under their feet that the JOODs needed to learn well enough so that they could surface and dive the ship in their sleep. And even more important, they needed to learn how to think on their feet, in case the unusual were to happen, which might not be covered in books.
Cheyenne's junior officers weren't the only ones boning up for qualification boards, either. Her executive officer was shooting for the 'qualified for command' designation-but he didn't know that Mack had recommended him to CTF 74 prior to their last underway. His first hint that he'd better ready himself for the qual-for-command board was a message stating that their commodore, Commander Submarine Squadron Eleven (CSS 11) in San Diego, would be on board Arco, the floating repair dock, medium (ARDM-5).
Upon receiving that message, the executive officer initially expected that the board would consist of CTF 74, expectation changed, however, when Cheyenne received an operations directive routing them to Subic Bay instead of the safe anchorage off Brunei, where they had originally expected McKee and Arco to be located. Based on the rest of the message traffic, the executive officer wasn't sure there would be time for his qual board.
Message traffic indicated that IUSS (Integrated Undersea Surveillance System) had sniffs of a number of the newest operational class of Russian SSNs. the Akula II, heading south from the Sea of Okhotsk area toward the South China Sea - and the numbers did not match naval intelligence's initial expectations. Satellite imagery of Vladivostok showed three submarines missing, and data from Petropavlosk added another missing sub, for a total of four, but IUSS was picking up seven different Akula class SSNs.
New data, however, showed three more missing from the Russian base in the Kola Peninsula. Naval intelligence had been concentrating on the Pacific theater and had missed the departure of the North Fleet Akula II SSNs the week before. These Akulas had completed an under-ice transfer through the Bering Straits before they were detected in the Bering Sea, and had rendezvoused with the PACFLT Akulas east of the Kurile Islands.
According to the message traffic, Arco was being diverted to Subic Bay for safety. Had she stuck to her original orders, she would have made a long transit at sea protected only by Cheyenne, and the risk of being overwhelmed by the sheer number of Akulas was simply too great.
On a similar note, in order to avoid a repeat of the Chinese Kilo SSK attacks on McKee that Cheyenne had fought off after returning from the first patrol, the submarine tender was now en route to the safety of Subic Bay via the Philippine Sea. She was scheduled to arrive the day before Cheyenne.
