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

smoke from cigarettes, pipes, and cigars, as well as gases from record-setting belches and fumes from the sanitary tanks and other significant sources. All of this mandated an occasional cleansing of the atmosphere. Beyond surfacing and pumping in fresh air from our open hatches, the only other way to accomplish this was to raise a pipe, called the snorkel mast, above the ocean surface and suck in fresh air with a huge air pump. This air then circulated throughout the boat, a freshening process that seemed to clear our minds and improve morale.

Because ocean waves vary in height, a valve-closure system was introduced on the USS Darter (SS 576) in 1957 to shut the opening to the intake pipe if water from a wave flowed over the snorkel. The system worked well most of the time, although we regularly experienced fluctuations in eardrum pressure whenever the valve shut and the air pump created a vacuum. We became proficient at grabbing our noses and blowing to equalize the pressure in our inner ears when this occurred. Anybody failing to take this action was at risk of a ruptured eardrum.

I was off watch and sound asleep in my rack when the snorkel system failed. We were submerged at periscope depth, with the top of our snorkel mast stuck out of the ocean as the pump circulated air through the vents. A wave lifted over the top of the snorkel and broke off a metallic indicator device at the top of the valve just before the valve slammed shut. The broken piece of metal was immediately wedged inside the seat of the valve, which resulted in an opening that allowed seawater to be sucked rapidly into the Viperfish. As the weight of the water (more than two thousand pounds in the main induction pipe alone) added to the weight of the boat, we immediately dropped farther under the surface and continued to suck in more seawater, which, of course, made us heavier and dropped us even deeper.

The first indication that I had of a problem was the blast of cold ocean water spraying against the right side of my head and covering my pillow, mattress, and blanket. My eyes flew open. Bolting upright, I smashed my head into the underside of the rack above me and heard Chief Mathews announce, 'Surface, surface, surface!' over the boat's loudspeaker system. As I leaped out of my rack, the bow began pointing steeply upward and I could hear the roaring noise from the blowing of our ballast tanks.

Captain Harris was urgently awakened by Commander Ryack, who tapped him on the shoulder.

'Captain,' Ryack said, 'we're having a bit of a problem in the control room.' As the captain swung his feet to the deck and stood up, he noticed that he was ankle deep in water.

We quickly surfaced. As the top of the snorkel cleared the surface of the ocean, water stopped pouring out of our ventilation vents. The ballast control operator's quick corrective action of turning off the main induction pump after seeing it fill with water (visualized through a tiny window called the bulls-eye, designed for this purpose) probably saved the Viperfish from sinking. At the very least, he saved a prolonged period of shipyard repairs.

So, we had another cleanup operation, this one involving the washing and drying of electronic equipment that, unfortunately, was lying in the vicinity of the ventilation vents. The radiomen were especially upset by the damage to their delicate receivers, several of which received considerable saltwater contamination.

I pulled out my pillow and blankets to air dry them, and several other men repaired damage to personal items, such as books and pictures, stored in their racks. I tucked clean sheets around my mattress and then turned my attention to the battery well under the crew's berthing passageway. I was aware of saltwater and electrochemical conversions, the patterns of chlorine gas generation, and the deadly effects of the gas on living tissue. As I walked toward the hole leading to the battery, I noted that, fortunately, the area was dry in spite of the flooding, but I wondered about the consequences of a few thousand gallons of seawater pouring into the battery well should a more substantial event occur. I also wondered how quickly 120 men could escape a submarine filling with chlorine gas.

The failures of machinery on the Viperfish affected our psyches far more than our substance. Although Captain Harris's calm style of leadership rallied us to have faith in our future, we did not accomplish this without some collective soul searching. The unpredictable, random nature of the failures and the potentials for disaster from such tiny malfunctions created special concerns. If a couple of small wires on a cable could cost us weeks of work and the loss of a Fish worth millions of dollars, if a tiny diode could shut down a powerful nuclear reactor and stop a submarine, and if an indicator device no bigger than a finger could cause a serious flood within the internal spaces of the Viperfish, what would happen if something of real significance went wrong?

Again and again, it came down to the spirit, the training, and the quality of the crew that made the difference. Machinery fails, and anything as complex as an operational nuclear submarine can have many failures. When wires break, diodes burn out, and water floods into the boat, the reactions of the crew, borne by training and spirit, determine the outcome. As we completed the final preparations for our secret mission, it was my hope that the remarkable quality of the Viperfish crew would allow us to prevail during the months ahead, no matter what dangers awaited us beneath the sea.

9. The domain of the Golden Dragon

The first six months of 1968 brought armed conflict and disaster to ships and submarines around the world. In January, the Soviet Union protested the dropping of eight time-bombs by 'American jets' on the Soviet freighter Pereslavl-Zalessky in Haiphong Harbor, North Vietnam, that reportedly damaged the ship's engine room. Within a day of this event, bombs from U.S. military planes struck the Chinese Communist ship Hongqi-158 in the North Vietnamese port of Cam Pha. Several crewmen were wounded, and the vessel was seriously damaged.

On January 23, North Korean naval vessels attacked the spy ship USS Pueblo in international waters. Although the ship transmitted numerous radio calls for help during the 2?-hour attack, U.S. naval forces, located far to the south, were unable to provide assistance. An enlisted man was killed during the initial attack, as the commanding officer, Comdr. Lloyd M. Bucher, frantically struggled to clarify international law relating to 'rights of retrieval' of the Pueblo's top secret equipment from the ocean floor while it was being jettisoned overboard. The North Koreans captured the Pueblo's crew of eighty-two men after they surrendered their ELINT (electronic intelligence) vessel.

During the first half of that same year, the Israeli submarine Dakar sank in the Mediterranean, with a loss of sixty-nine men. The French submarine Minerve also sank in the Mediterranean, and another fifty-two men died. On 22 May, the USS Scorpion (SSN 589), while four hundred miles southwest of the Azores, suffered a 'hot torpedo' disaster resulting from an explosion of the MK-37 device that became inadvertently 'enabled' in her torpedo tube. The naval court of inquiry determined that, after the torpedo was ejected from the Scorpion, the fully armed weapon almost immediately struck the submarine at roughly amidships. The Scorpion dropped below her crush depth and sank in ten thousand feet of water. Ninety-nine American sailors died.

Within three days of the loss of the Scorpion, the Soviet experimental nuclear submarine K-27 experienced a major accident, the details of which have never been fully revealed. Five servicemen on board the submarine were killed immediately, and the remaining crew members were hospitalized with serious injuries. Attempts were made to repair the submarine, but the damage was extensive and the vessel was finally scuttled, with its nuclear fuel still on board, near the island of Novaya Zemlya, east of the Barents Sea.

Captain Harris was called to Washington, D.C., at about the time that the Hawaiian police pulled me over for having a cracked front windshield. It was just a tiny crack, I told the burly officers as they filled out the citation. It was minute, almost impossible to see. Besides, I added, there are so many people in Hawaii who drive cars with no front window.

'You have a cracked window, sailor. You have to fix it,' the larger policeman said, handing me the ticket.

'But, officer,' I pleaded, 'I'm going to sea shortly, and we may be gone for a long time. Can I fix it when I get back?'

'Ain't no big thing,' the man said with classic Hawaiian non-chalance, 'just stop by the local precinct and they'll clear you for your voyage.' He smiled and added, 'No problem, bruddah.'

As I drove around Honolulu and looked for the local precinct, Captain Harris was being interrogated by Admiral Rickover about the Viperfish's mission. Rickover had recently emerged victorious