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

perspective about the niceties, the small amenities, that I had always taken for granted before living on the Viperfish. Such food substances as milk and fresh vegetables became increasingly less important when they became unavailable after leaving port. Genuine milk (different from the white powdered variety that tasted unlike any milk I had ever consumed) disappeared first, followed by fresh vegetables and fruit. Meals then consisted of canned, frozen, and prepared food retrieved by the cooks from our refrigerators and mammoth dry-storage compartments for each meal. The fruit stored weeks before in my bunk locker was long gone, and the galley had none to replace it.

Showers no longer seemed as necessary. We all had some degree of body odor, and nobody much cared whether or not someone else smelled good. On top of that basic fact, the physical act of taking a submarine shower is not an event to relish. First, the individual takes off all his clothes in the cold head and finds a convenient place to hang the towel. Next, before his feet turn blue on the frigid steel decking (moist with the contents of various drains that bubbled out when the sanitary tank was last blown), he jumps into the metal stall. Ignoring the clusters of men who are taking care of their toilet needs in the crowded stalls around him, he stands naked and freezing below the shower head. With a bar of soap in hand, he bravely turns on the water.

A blast of ice water hits him in the face. Clean water on the Viperfish does not come cheaply; every drop is precious. After a quick wetting down, he immediately turns off the water before somebody slaps the side of the stall and yells, 'Hey, quit wasting water! Haven't you ever heard of a submarine shower?' Chilled to the bone, he lathers himself and then turns the shower on for a speedy final blast of water (that is finally beginning to warm up) to wash off the soap.

He jumps out of the stall and dries off before pneumonia bacteria can begin their assault on his freezing body. Finally, just before one of the galley crew comes in and hollers, 'Everybody out, I'm gonna blow the head!' he flees in the direction of his rack.

The briefest of fantasies probably flirts with his mind: What would it be like to take a real shower, just one long steaming hot shower, at home?

Washing hands before eating was another ritual that faded as we grabbed food before or after standing watch. Working in the engine room, or almost anywhere else throughout the Viperfish, resulted in a substantial accumulation of black grease on hands that gripped pipes, turned valves, and flipped switches. The grease was always there-an unwelcome companion, but one that was ignored because of its constant presence. If it was not convenient to wash our hands, we gave them a quick wipe against our dungarees before sitting down to eat. This token effort removed the largest clumps of foreign matter that might actually affect the taste of the food.

After leaving the morning watch on the reactor control panel that last day before reaching Pearl Harbor, I discovered we were having sandwiches, make-your-own style, with fresh-baked bread. Each crew member sliced the bread for his own sandwiches. By the time I reached the table, the loaf on the cutting board was about half gone. The remaining half was considerably darker than the other loaves around it. Closer inspection revealed that a layer of grease had accumulated from the many hands gripping the loaf.

I hesitated briefly, but soon I was sitting with the other men and wolfing down my sandwich. The bread slid easily down my throat, and the greasy grime did not seem to affect the taste to any significant degree.

Sitting next to me at the table was one of our larger nuke shipmates, a man relatively new to the Viperfish, who was known as Baby Bobbie. Immediately, I noticed his distinctly strong body odor. Everybody smelled bad, but Baby Bobbie, for some reason, always smelled worse. In fact, he smelled so bad that most of us habitually sat as far away as possible when we found ourselves in his presence. I took another bite of my sandwich and eased a couple of inches away from the man. Of course, I could always disguise his odor by lighting a cigar-a good cloud of cigar smoke always seemed to make any odor acceptable.

That evening, Lt. Comdr. Gerry Young, the Viperfish's engineer, walked me through the engine room, and asked me hundreds of questions about the many pieces of machinery. He seemed happy with my answers and signed off my engineering qualifications card. He then referred me to the captain.

As the commanding officer, Stuart Gillon held the ultimate authority to grant me the privilege of controlling the nuclear reactor on his submarine. Everything that happened on board, whether or not Captain Gillon was directly involved, was his final and absolute responsibility. It was important to him to pay care- ful attention to the knowledge of the men certified as 'qualified.' For that reason, I expected an extraordinarily difficult examination about the fine points of reactor operations and the minutiae of the control systems.

He brought me into his office and politely asked me to sit down across from the tiny table attached to the bulkhead. To my immense surprise, we talked philosophy for the next half hour. Speaking in his characteristic soft voice, he encouraged me to remain at the peak of my knowledge about nuclear operations and educated me about the various antinuclear protests working to disrupt operations involving nuclear machinery.

'Some of these people are fanatic about their beliefs,' he said, describing various protest movements around the United States. 'They are looking for anything they can find that incriminates nuclear power, no matter how far from reason their claims may be. A safe nuclear operating program on the Viperfish will help protect the Navy from the claims of these activists.'

We talked about the sinking of the Thresher and discussed reasons for serving on board submarines. He finally dismissed me with an announcement that there was soon going to be a change in command on board the Viperfish. Comdr. Thomas Harris would assume the position of the boat's commanding officer, he said, and would lead the Viperfish into the challenges of the mission awaiting us.

At the conclusion of the meeting, I was designated an official reactor operator of the USS Viperfish, a title that allowed me the pleasure of standing regular unsupervised watches in front of the reactor panel. No ceremony and not much in the way of congratulations took place. Rather, a simple notation was added to my service record that I was a qualified Viperfish reactor operator and I could now stand watches. Unfortunately, I still had another six months of work on the remaining components of the Viperfish before I could achieve the coveted position of being qualified in submarines. Until that distant day of glory arrived, I was still just a non-qual puke who could, incidentally, now run the reactor.

That night, we surfaced several miles off Pearl Harbor. Because I was off watch and had nothing to do, I wandered up to the control center and requested permission to 'lay to the bridge.' I scrambled up the ladder out of the vessel and then continued to climb another sixty-five feet up to the cockpit at the top of the sail. The two lookouts and the OOD, the nuclear-trained Lieutenant Katz, were standing in the cramped space and looking out at the world around them.

It was a night to empower the soul. The bow of the Viperfish hissed through the glassy black waters, a florescent glow enriching the white foam on either side of her. The sea was calm, there was no pitching or rolling, and we seemed to be gliding across a carpet of black velvet. The moonless sky was filled with a spray of stars. Thirty degrees off our port bow, near the horizon, the distant lights of Honolulu summoned us to her promised pleasures. It was almost a surrealistic spectacle, the magic and the beauty further enhanced by the weeks of confinement within the Viperfish.

'Got channel fever, Dunham?' Lieutenant Katz finally asked.

'Channel fever, sir?' I vaguely remembered somebody telling me about the condition, a common affliction at the end of a patrol.

'Channel fever,' one of the lookouts repeated. 'Can't go to sleep, can't slow down, can't think, can't do anything of value.'

'You'll feel it more when we've been out longer,' Katz said. 'A month or two out here and you won't be able to sleep for days before we reach the channel.'

'It's like overdosing on about twenty cups of coffee,' the look-out said, putting the binoculars to his eyes and studying the distant lights of Honolulu. 'It's a chompin' at the bit to get off the boat.'

'Haven't had any problem, yet,' I said, confidently. 'Always able to sleep when the time is available.'

After a few more minutes of stars, lights, and florescence, I thanked the three men and left them with their treasure as the Viperfish continued to glide across the waters off Oahu. I stood the mid- watch (midnight to 0400) at the reactor panel and later climbed into my rack for some sleep before we entered Pearl Harbor.

For the next four hours, I lay in my tiny dark enclosure and stared at the aluminum sheet metal four inches