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

on rubber rafts around the Viperfish and dove into the ocean, from time to time, to look at the colorful fish.

When the bombing became intense, as it sometimes did, Paul Mathews or whoever was on duty in the control room announced over the loudspeakers, 'Navy jets closing off starboard bow!' Those of us not on watch scrambled out of the hatches to watch the high-speed Navy fighters streaking across the ocean, pointing directly at us, and presumably lining up the Viperfish as a target. After screaming over the top of our boat, the aircraft fired their afterburners and headed directly up the side of the nearly 6,000-foot peak of Maui's Puu Ku Kui mountain behind Lahaina. Finally, they flew straight up into the sky and disappeared from sight. Although the Vietnam War seemed a million miles away as we floated on those peaceful Hawaiian waters, we suspected that many of the pilots crossing over our boat were en route to Southeast Asia. A glance at any daily newspaper told us that many of them would not return.

When I wasn't staring at the meters on the reactor control panel or watching strafing runs on the Viperfish, I continued with my qualifications activities. I was moving progressively closer to learning everything I could about our submarine. The entire process seemed endless, but the list of systems that I still had to learn was getting shorter and the precious dolphins began to appear attainable. The biggest activity of the Viperfish, the Special Project with its team of engineers, was not on my list. We still had been told virtually nothing about our secret Fish and its miles of cables. Because we did not have a 'need to know' for performance of our duties, silence on the subject was the order of the day.

Another thirty or forty jets completed their runs on the Viperfish during the following month. We watched every one of them. The Fish strobe light illuminated most of the undersea life near the western coast of Maui, and we scanned and photographed everything within sight. After enough experience with the Fish had been accumulated to satisfy Captain Harris and the hangar scientists, we pulled everything related to the Special Project inside the Viperfish and returned to Pearl Harbor.

On a beautiful Monday morning several weeks later, Captain Harris ordered ten of us to report to the topside deck in our dress whites to receive our coveted silver dolphins. It had taken more than a year for me to master each system that filled the compartments of the Viperfish, and this award signified an end to that long struggle. I now belonged to the select club of those who are deemed 'qualified in submarines.'

Captain Harris lined up the ten of us in front of the rest of the crew. He said some words about the importance of our accomplishments and his personal appreciation for an increase in the number of men qualified on the Viperfish. After pinning the dolphins on our spotless uniforms, he posed with us for the official photograph documenting the event and then quickly moved from the area as we came under immediate attack by the rest of the qualified crew of the Viperfish.

Led by Paul Mathews and Randy Nicholson, they cut off our escape and went after each of us with great enthusiasm. We scattered across the deck. I fought valiantly, but several of the nukes caught me scrambling up the side of the bat-cave hump. Holding my arms and legs, they dragged me to the edge of the Viperfish deck to begin swinging me for the launch overboard.

'Wait!' I yelled. 'Let me save my wallet!'

'To hell with your wallet!' they hollered back in unison, all of them grinning with delight.

They swung me higher and higher and the launch became imminent.

'Let me save my shoes! I just polished my shoes this morning.'

'To hell with your shoes!'

'I have money in my wallet!' I was getting desperate.

The swinging immediately stopped.

'He has money in his wallet,' Nicholson repeated.

'Grab his wallet, protect his money!' somebody else said.

Groping hands whipped out my wallet, while a kindly benefactor ripped off my shoes. Around me, I could hear the sounds of other men yelling, followed by the noise of numerous bodies hitting the ocean. I grabbed the arm of one of my tormentors in the hope of taking him with me, but my grip was immediately broken. Vicelike claws encircled my arms and legs, and the swinging began again.

On the count of three, the men launched me far out into the waters of Pearl Harbor. Spiraling around and around, I somersaulted through the air. My head hit the water first, my sailor hat floating behind me like a strange white Frisbee and my neatly pressed uniform ruined forever. I bubbled back up to the surface and lifted my head out of the water to see the crew watching the show from the edge of the Viperfish's deck. I grabbed my hat before it sank out of sight and swam back with the others to the boat, where several men helped us onto the deck. Standing in front of the crew and dripping salt water from my oil-stained uniform, I enthusiastically shook everybody's hand and felt the crew's camaraderie and acceptance.

Throwing a newly qualified man overboard, a tradition as old as the dolphins, is an important part of the Submarine Service. In a perverse manner, it signifies the respect from men who, in the years ahead, would depend on the new man's skills when machinery failed and his actions could determine the fate of the crew.

I have been told of occasions when submarine crews refused to throw newly qualified men overboard, although I never did see this occur while I was on board the Viperfish. That action is the most visible rejection that a potential submariner can receive. It is reserved for the rare man who is felt to be unworthy of the dolphins, even though he received all of the necessary signatures on his qualifications card. The rest of the crew members do not consider him to be a shipmate, and their rejection can be compared to an unseen scarlet letter. The usual result is that the man finally transfers off the boat.

I called my parents that night to tell them about achieving my dolphins and the unusual ceremony to mark the event. To my surprise, they spoke in somber tones as they congratulated me. Then, they informed me about disruptions among the family in California that were acting to fragment it. The cause was the Vietnam War, they said, and the issue was creating a turmoil that was distressing everyone. My sister's husband, Brad, a man who had served in the Navy many years before and who had encouraged me to join the service, had now become an antiwar activist. He was polarized on the subject, my parents said, and he could not even talk about Vietnam without becoming enraged. They encouraged me not to mention the war if I talked to him in the future. My little brother, Gerry, they continued, was finishing high school and had no interest in joining the Navy or becoming a part of any military service.

'But South Vietnam is depending on us!' I said, feeling an anger that surprised me. 'We promised them, we can't just back out now!'

'Just don't bring up the subject around Brad,' my father said. 'You're in the service and you represent the war in a lot of their minds, especially those who are protesting. Don't bring up the subject, and don't try to discuss it if Brad brings it up.'

'The protesters are all smoking pot, or bananas, or whatever they can find! I didn't start the war-'

'I know that, but it doesn't matter!'

'It doesn't matter? It's the truth!'

'It's hard to tell where the truth is, these days. The whole damn country seems to be falling apart. There's a lot of men dying in Vietnam-'

'And we can't let them die in vain! Haven't you ever heard of the domino theory?'

I was the hawk, my Mom and Dad were neutral, my sister's husband would tear me apart if I brought up the subject, and my brother considered military service to be undesirable. I thanked them for bringing me up to date about my family and hung up, feeling a sense of hopelessness about the entire subject. Walking back to the Viperfish, I wondered again about our mission, and I worried about how much longer the Vietnam War would last.

8. Minor failures, major losses

In California, the hallucinogenic effect of smoking dried banana peels was found to produce a mild 'trip,' and students at the University of California at Berkeley held mass banana 'smokeouts.' As interest in another hallucinogenic drug, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), increased across the country, scientists reported the first evidence of drug-induced chromosomal changes suspected to cause mental retardation in the children of pregnant