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

us at the end of the ceremony, he spoke in a strong and deep voice. Although he gave away no secrets and revealed nothing about our future, he demonstrated a solid, intelligent style that reassured us. His final grade was still to be determined, but Captain Harris passed the crew's initial inspection.

His first action on board the Viperfish was to order replacement of all flickering or dim neon lights throughout the boat. Second, he established a higher level of cleanliness, underscoring the philosophy that morale and pride of serving on the Viperfish would improve. Third, he increased security for all of the secret documents on board. This action was the best clue that no word of our mission would ever leave the boat except under specific extraordinary circumstances, reserved only for information classified as 'compartmentalized top secret.' Because no information was provided to the crew, we assumed that everything relating to our mission was within this classification and continued to remain mystified about what lay ahead of us.

For the next several months, the men assigned to the Special Project team worked to refine the Fish and bring it up to operational capabilities. This required a series of trips from Pearl Harbor into the waters surrounding the Hawaiian Islands. Over and over again, our huge spool holding thousands of feet of cable was unreeled into the water. Far below us, the Fish was towed a few feet above the bottom of the ocean, and technical information acquired in this manner was evaluated and delivered back to the Viperfish.

Each trip lasted from a few days to several weeks, depending on where the Viperfish traveled and what activities were necessary. On some of the trips, we fired torpedoes and engaged in other actions that repeatedly went amazingly well. Our torpedoes were accurate, and our efficiency was high. As a result, the Viperfish earned the coveted Battle Efficiency 'E' and the Fire Control Excellence Award for overall performance, reactor operations, torpedo firing capability, and operational capabilities. Captain Harris was off to a very good start.

In the traditional manner of Navy crews that earn their Battle Efficiency 'E,' we returned to port and proudly painted a large white 'E' on the side of our sail. Although it occurred to many of us that the 'E' was underwater and entirely out of sight most of the time, it provided us with a sense of camaraderie that was important to the morale of our crew and, hopefully, to our future success.

After each of our numerous patrols back and forth to the deeper waters east of Honolulu, Waikiki continued to beckon with the usual incentives to blow off steam. I became tired of paying the hefty fees for taxi rides between Pearl Harbor and Waikiki, so I finally purchased a blue 1955 Chevy from one of the many car lots in the Honolulu area. Although its metallic blue paint was scratched and slightly rusted, its front window had a small crack, and its carburetor leaked gasoline when the float repeatedly sank, it did have a sterling high-speed gearbox, definitely an outstanding feature of the car.

The first time I drove it off the base, Marc Birken challenged me on Kamehameha Highway as he revved his TR-3 engine and grinned like a fool. From his perspective, if it wasn't a sports car, it wasn't a real car. Meeting his challenge, I speed-shifted my new car up through the gears until the carburetor float sank and gasoline drowned the engine. Worried about fire and explosion from the reeking fumes, I quickly pulled over, ripped the carburetor apart, and listened to Marc contribute a long string of obscene and irreverent thoughts about my vehicle. I finally jammed a toothpick into the carburetor float hole to plug the leak forever, I hoped.

My qualifications efforts on the Viperfish continued, whether we were at sea or alongside the pier, as I struggled to learn every system on board the boat. Because I was finished with the nuclear qualifications work, the pressure in the engine room eased and my existence marginally improved. Also, because I was now standing watches at the reactor panel, I felt that I was finally carrying my own weight and contributing to the operations of the Viperfish. I visited Waikiki regularly, however, and surfed the waves at Sunset Beach on the island's north shore at every opportunity. Although I did not fully appreciate it at the time, being in the Navy and stationed in Hawaii probably constituted the best duty that any man could hope for.

On one of my trips to a dancing area in the Hilton Hawaiian Village, I asked a beautiful young lady to dance to the sweet Hawaiian music. She was a teacher, she said, at the Kamehameha Schools on the side of the hill behind Honolulu, and her name was Keiko. An hour later, she said she would certainly enjoy a midnight tour on a genuine nuclear submarine at Pearl Harbor. Her girlfriend and her date asked if they could come too, and soon all four of us piled into my Chevy for the run up to the submarine base.

After a few scans through the control-room periscope to look at the distant lights of Pearl City and a stroll through the remainder of the Viperfish's control center, we took another tour of Makaha Beach under the moonlight at two o'clock in the morning. After that remarkable evening, Keiko and I dated every night that I was in port. We found ourselves aware of an emerging intensity and a new fulfillment that strongly attracted us to each other. As we spent more time together, I found it increasingly difficult to break away from the sweet time on liberty with her, to drive back to Pearl Harbor, and to climb down the engine-room hatch as the Viperfish prepared to go to sea.

Keiko flew back to Los Angeles to continue working on her master's degree at the University of Southern California, while her girlfriend stayed behind and married the young man she had met that night. That was when Keiko informed her parents, both working full time to finance her USC tuition, about the sailor in Hawaii who had asked for her hand in marriage.

'And, you told him?' her father asked, his voice hardening, his mind struggling to remain rational.

'I told him, 'yes,'' Keiko answered, bracing herself.

'And, this man is an officer in the United States Navy?' His voice rose an octave.

'Well, sort of. He works in the engine room of…'

'Then, he has completed college?'

'Well, he does have some college credits, before he joined the Navy. At least, I think he finished part of the first year. He is planning on going back to school after he's out of the Navy.'

'Keiko!' Her father's voice assumed a rigid quality and sounded like it always did when there was to be no further discussion.

'Yes?'

'I think you should wait.'

'Dad,' she said patiently and without hesitation, 'when I finish my master's program next year, we are going to get married.'

Her mother stopped knitting. After a moment of silence, she finally provided the maternal viewpoint, 'I'm sure this boy is a fine young man.'

Keiko continued her education at USC, and her parents scheduled an engagement dinner in Southern California.

For the next two months, the Viperfish sat anchored two miles off the northwest coast of Maui, near the small town of Lahaina. The waters were stunningly clear. Looking straight down from the edge of the deck, we could see details in the sand at the bottom of the ocean. We were going to finish testing the Fish, Captain Harris told us. This would include its electronic capabilities, to be evalu- ated in shallow waters, and the clear water off Maui was perfect.

Anchored within viewing distance of Lahaina, our large black submarine was a strange sight. Many of the tourists showed considerable curiosity about our boat. Various sailboats and catamarans set out from the Lahaina harbor to encircle us. People took pictures and waved, called 'Aloha!' and exchanged pleasantries with us as we wandered around in dungarees on the topside deck. For those of us not actively involved with testing the Fish, the days were filled with long watches in front of our nuclear control panels in the engine room. The civilians worked vigorously with the complex Fish in the hangar compartment and created a number of enhancements that would allow the future accumulation of data from far below the surface of the ocean.

Much of the Special Project testing was done at night in order to simulate the great depths of the dark ocean. The brilliant lighting system of the Fish created flashing distractions for cars moving along the Honoapiilani Highway. We received reports from Lahaina that the bright strobe flashes, lighting up the ocean at odd times throughout the night, contributed to a couple of automobile crashes, although we were never able to confirm the details.

Except for the occasional bombs exploding on the Navy's Kahoolawe Island bombing range twenty miles across the Auau Channel, most of us felt that we had entered the ultimate paradise of submarine duty. We enjoyed barbecues on the topside deck as we watched smiling bikini-clad beauties passing by on sailboats. We also played