Each man appeared tired and anxious, as he sought a few hours' sleep before we were to push away from the submarine base.
'How's the start-up going, Dunham?' each man asked, and I said, 'Perfect! The reactor comes on line at six and we're outa here by eight.'
'Way to go, bruddah.'
By 0300, the sleeping quarters were filled with the crew and the coffeepot was nearly empty. By 0400, I confirmed that the fission process would be safe; by 0500, I established that we would be able to conduct safe emergency shutdowns during the next two months if anything went wrong while the reactor was running.
By 0530, I had one final system to check before starting the reactor. Three large and powerful high-voltage circuit breakers had to be tested-one at a time. They had been previously tested and retested, so it was just a formality that I close the breakers one final time. The first two worked perfectly, but I quickly discovered that the third breaker was seriously damaged, its innards making the strange tinkling sound of pieces of metal falling apart. I looked at the clock-thirty minutes before start-up-and then glared at the breaker. The matter was simple enough: Without the breaker, we couldn't start the reactor; without the reactor, we couldn't go to sea.
Moving as quickly as possible, I turned off all electrical power to the system and tore the circuit breaker apart. I found a small strip of metal, no more than a half inch wide and two inches long, in three pieces instead of one.
There was no way to find a replacement part, not at 0530 or at 1000 that morning and probably not within the next week. The piece was uniquely
I looked around the engine room and tried to figure out what to do next.
Several minutes later, after I had broken every possible regulation that applied to the engine rooms of nuclear submarines, the circuit breaker worked perfectly. A Coca-Cola can,
When Chief Linaweaver entered the engine room, I started to tell him the Coca-Cola story, but I hesitated and then changed the subject. No point in ruining the man's day, I decided. He definitely wouldn't SCRAM the reactor, turn off the electricity, and try to fix it himself, so there was no point in making him worry every time he looked at the circuit breaker during the next two months. I promised myself that I would find an official replacement part as soon as we returned to port. While the
We cleared the entrance to Pearl Harbor at 0830 and promptly descended into the ocean. Our course was unknown, our speed was full power, and our destination was secret.
To the men in the engine room, our intent was clear. We had one last chance before the fuel was gone, and all of us felt a powerful determination to let nothing stop us. The pot-head students, the Vietnam War protests, the disruptions and turmoil of our society were all behind us now, and we found ourselves concentrating on the job ahead.
We ran out of real milk on the second day, and lettuce was gone by the fourth day. When we reached the Search Zone (as we began to call it), we were down to the usual canned, pickled, frozen, and otherwise preserved foods. Nobody was much interested in watching Regulus missile movies. If we crossed the 180th meridian into the Domain of the Golden Dragon, there was no announcement that we had done so. The machinery worked perfectly as our thundering propulsion turbines pushed us into colder waters. We finally slowed enough to allow for nearly silent operations for a couple of days as we made further progress through the ocean; about one week after departure, we reached our destination.
The civilians scrambled to line up the Fish with the hole at the bottom of the hangar. It was soon leaving the
In the engine room, I sat next to Donald Svedlow, both of us watching our panels and monitoring the various conditions that could shut down the nuclear plant or electrical systems. We didn't talk much about Brian Lane, and we didn't discuss the uncertain future of Paul Mathews. During the first few minutes of each four-hour watch, like a ritual, I lit up a cigar and Svedlow broke out a small can of chewing tobacco. As I filled the area with a cloud of smoke, he took a pinch of the stuff and jammed it into the corner of his mouth. We then sat back in our chairs and quietly watched the meters. To my considerable surprise, the reactor performed flawlessly week after week. We settled into a routine while we waited for an indication from the hangar compartment that something worthwhile was being accomplished. Between watches, I tried to read one of my several books, studied my cursed French lessons again, and, in the privacy of my rack, slowly thumbed through my stack of honeymoon pictures.
Every once in awhile, I downed a can of Coca-Cola and thought about circuit breakers.
After almost four weeks of searching, as our uranium fuel became further depleted, a new problem with the Fish equipment interrupted the flow of information from the bottom of the ocean. It was a fundamental design flaw in the winching system that prevented proper movement of the cable, a flaw that nobody could correct and one flaw that created a new level of frustration in the men working on the Fish. We could feel the contained rage of their failure. During meals, they talked little and poked at their food. Eventually, they dragged themselves back to the hangar to study the problem again and again.
By the fifth week, when the searching operation had come to a complete halt, morale dropped to the lowest level that I had seen since reporting on board.
At this point, Captain Harris turned the situation around for us in the form of a loudspeaker announcement, one of his rare broadcasts throughout the boat to all of us. I was calibrating a nuclear control circuit board at the far corner of the engine room when the speaker above my head came to life. I put down the equipment to listen.
'This is the captain speaking,' the deep voice said, the words flowing with the authority of the commanding officer. 'We have become hampered by equipment that was designed without benefit of practical experience. The Fish is now back inside the boat, and our search operation has been temporarily suspended. The flaws in this equipment must be corrected for us to complete our job.'
I glanced down the passageway and noticed that the other men had also stopped their work to listen.
'We have come a long way during these past months,' the captain continued, 'but we have a considerable distance to go. The
Six hours later, as the captain sat in his stateroom and reviewed the design parameters of the winching system, a knock came at his door. Petty Officer Timothy Brown, one of the enlisted men working with the civilians in the hangar, was carrying several pieces of paper covered with penciled drawings. Brown was a big man with a gentle manner. His background was more mechanical than scientific, and he was known by the crew to be more of a worker than an innovator.
'Captain, I'm sorry to interrupt you,' Brown said politely as he opened the door, 'but I believe I have the solution to our problem.'
Harris and Brown hunched over the tiny stateroom table for hours as they reviewed the sketches, criticized and analyzed the new concepts, and bounced fresh ideas back and forth within the cramped quarters.
'We drill a hole here,' Brown said, his pencil racing across the drawing. 'We insert a pin here; this will stabilize the bearing and prevent the movement of the shaft. And then we bolt this clamp here, like so.'
The captain looked up at Brown, his bushy eyebrows drawn together with concern. 'There are some pretty strong assumptions, here,' he said.
'Yes, sir, there are,' Brown answered, simply. 'I did have to make some guesses, but I think it can work.'
