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

away from my face. Unable to sleep, I was feeling the excitement in the air and sensing the tone and enthusiasm of the conversations up and down the passageway of the crew's berthing area. The entire crew of the Viperfish had channel fever, and the only cure was to enter the waters of Pearl Harbor and go ashore to blow off some steam.

Marc Birken and I sat side by side at the throttle watch as we finally moved up the channel to the submarine base the next morning. Like a couple of excited schoolboys, we both raced up the engine room ladder to the topside deck as the lines were pulled to the pier. Blinking into the bright sunlight, I scanned the crowd of people who had been waiting for our return. Wearing colorful muumuus, wives waved to their husbands as they spotted them climbing from the hatches. Children called to their fathers. A cluster of gold-covered naval officers, in their dress whites, waited to speak with Captain Gillon and the civilian scientists.

I had no reason to expect that anybody would be waiting for me at the pier. My family was in California, I knew almost nobody in Hawaii, and my only friends were the men on board the Viperfish. The brow, lowered to the boat, connected the pier to our topside deck, and the men began streaming across it to their loved ones.

'Let's go hit the beach, bruddah,' Marc Birken said from my side. His voice sounded different, quieter, his enthusiasm damp- ened by the same feelings that I was experiencing. Although these feelings were completely illogical, it seemed that after we had been at sea for so many weeks and accomplished all of the tasks set before us, somebody should be waiting for our return.

I turned to Marc and nodded, 'It's time to go steaming. You get your miserable shore-power cables connected, and we'll check out what's happening in Waikiki.'

Two months later, the scientists on board hoisted two top secret deep-submergence Fish into the hangar spaces of the Viperfish, and we began loading garbage weights and food stores in preparation for the tests that lay ahead. Again, there was no information provided about our upcoming mission. There were no briefings about our future, and nothing was said about where in the Pacific Ocean we were going.

The future mission of the Viperfish remained a secret to all of the crew.

7. The dolphins

Protests against the Vietnam war, fueled by the energy of students soon to be eligible for the draft, began to expand during the early months of 1968. Spreading across the country, the turmoil escalated as the civilian population became polarized into 'hawks' versus 'doves,' and the young became alienated against 'anybody over the age of thirty.' The peace symbol emerged as a protest against Vietnam and all military policies. The hawks promptly ridiculed this clawlike representation and called it the national symbol of the American chicken.

In Vietnam, 7,500 U.S. soldiers were shifted north toward the DMZ to support South Vietnamese Premier Nguyen Ky's efforts to stop the influx of Communist troops. As the Vietcong attacked American troops, protesters in the United States began burning their draft cards. Protesters numbering in excess of 100,000 were led by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; Stokely Carmichael; and Dr. Benjamin Spock on a protest march from New York's Central Park to the headquarters of the United Nations. Other protesters, sponsored by the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam and led by Black Nationalists, later marched in California; 50,000 people heard antiwar speeches at San Francisco's Kezar Stadium by Coretta King, wife of the Reverend Dr. King, and Robert Scheer of Ramperts magazine. As protesters urged students across the country to mobilize against the war, J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, reported to President Lyndon B. Johnson the details of 'antiwar activity'. On NBC-TV, Secretary of State Dean Rusk said, 'Communist apparatus is behind the peace movement all over the world and in our own country.'

Sea trials for the Soviet's Echo II submarine, conducted in the Sea of Japan and the western Pacific Ocean, tested the new SSGN vessel to its designed test depth of 1,148 feet while working to remain well above its collapse depth of 1,900 feet. The extensive testing program included test firings of twenty-one-inch diameter torpedoes, and putting the FENIKS-M sonar and SNOOP SLAB radar systems through their electronic paces. Although the men serving on board submarines of this class did not know it at the time, their submarines were to become infamous as the most dangerously unsafe class of vessel in the Soviet's nuclear navy, with four serious disasters during the decade ahead. Another major problem for the Echo IIs involved inadequate radiation shielding, which endangered the physical health of the crew. The twin reactor system (designated first-generation HEN reactors) of this class, with its associated increased shielding needs, further magnified the dangers to the crew as a result of excessive doses of neutron and gamma radiation. This issue was brought into harsh focus when the Soviets made the shocking discovery that their 'dirty' (high-radiation emitter) boats actually could be tracked by surface craft designed to detect the 'radiation wake' of the submerged submarines.

After completing our shakedown cruise to the West Coast, several fundamental changes occurred on the Viperfish. The first and most significant of these was to welcome on board the new captain of the Viperfish, Comdr. Thomas Harris.

All of us were used to change-of-command ceremonies on board the Viperfish. Whenever anybody of prominence moved in or out of the submarine base command structure, our boat was chosen as background scenery for the ceremony. The reason for this tradition apparently related more to our substantial deck space than to anything we offered as a submarine. Although the ceremonies were generally conducted on the pier next to the Viperfish, common practice was to have sailors in dress whites in the background of any major event. The ceremonies usually had nothing directly to do with the Viperfish; however, because our wide deck could accommodate several rows of photogenic enlisted men, we were often put through the paces.

Wherever we might be moored at the submarine base, the word regularly came down from above to sever our shore-power cables and prepare to move the Viperfish to a central pier location, in front of a cluster of chairs, for another ceremony. Those of us who either happened to be on duty that day or could not otherwise escape our impending fate were then ordered to put on dress whites, with the traditional black silk ties; balance sailor hats on our heads in the proper manner; and 'lay topside' to relocate the boat and partake in a ceremony.

After moving the Viperfish across the base to the waters in front of the ceremony location, we formed several rows of clean-cut sailors standing at various degrees of attention in the relaxed manner that was classic for submarine sailors everywhere. We listened to long speeches about people we did not know, we watched boatswain's mates 'pipe' incoming officers into their new command positions, and we stared at the seated spectators on the pier who stared back at us[5].

At the conclusion of the ceremony, the new officers were in, the old officers were out, and most us returned to whatever we were doing before we were so rudely interrupted.

The arrival of Commander Harris was a different matter entirely. As our new captain, he was important to us because he would set the stage for the quality of our lives and play a major role in accomplishing the mission of the Viperfish. We had been told of his extensive background. He had served on board the USS Trigger (SS 564), Sea Wolf (SSN 575), and Trinose (SSN 606), and he was executive officer of the Polaris submarine, USS Woodrow Wilson (SSBN 624). We also knew that he had completed Admiral Rickover's 'charm school' for the preparation of nuclear submarine commanding officers. There was a rumor that at the last moment, he had been diverted from going to sea on board the Thresher on her fatal voyage and that, as a result, he had recognized a higher calling. We had not yet seen the man, however; as far as we were concerned, Captain Harris was still an unknown factor.

When this change-of-command ceremony was announced, therefore, we paid close attention to the details. We moved the boat across the submarine base as usual and formed our rows in front of the same pier holding the same chairs. After listening to the same kind of speeches, we looked at the brow spanning from the pier to our boat and attentively watched Captain Harris come aboard.

He was a solid-looking man with a square jaw and bright blue eyes burning with the same kind of intensity that I had seen in Captain Gillon's. His manner appeared authoritative, yet reserved. In his brief conversation with