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

'What's that noise?' I hollered to Jim over the whining sounds of turbines and steam.

'It sounds like we just squashed a wooden rowboat against the pier,' he hollered back.

Rossi gave us the answer. We had just crushed a 'camel,' the wooden structure attached near the pilings of the pier. Normally, a submarine gently touches the camel, so that the boat's superstructure is held away from, and not damaged by, the thick pilings. The floating camel has two functions: to protect the pier from the crushing force of a submarine and to protect the submarine from being crushed against the pier. When the camel is approached too rapidly, as the Viperfish had just done, the device is easily crushed. Inside the boat, the noise of splintering wood is exceedingly loud. I would hear this sound many more times during the months and years ahead when various junior officers, working on their qualifications, tried to maneuver the ungainly hulk of the Viperfish near a pier and took out the camels one by one.

After the reactor was shut down, I climbed up the long ladder that passed through the engine-room hatch to the topside deck. Standing on the black steel hull, I looked at the new world around me. The change of scenery from the shipyard was remarkable. Several black submarines, sitting low in the water and looking extremely sleek in comparison to the Viperfish, stretched out in a long row ahead and astern of us.

I could almost sense the presence of the deep Pacific Ocean, only three miles away, waiting to challenge and test us during our upcoming sea trials. Although the Viperfish had not yet submerged and we had crossed only a small span of calm water, this had been my first real submarine voyage, and I had actually controlled the engine-room steam during the trip. I looked at the western horizon, and I felt an excitement that we now had a functional submarine with an operating nuclear reactor. The Viperfish had floated without flooding, and, deep in our bow compartment, we had a mysterious Fish with miles of cable waiting to fulfill our promise for the future.

3. Sea trials

During the first half of the 1960s, the Soviet Union built twenty-nine deadly submarines designed to perform one specific function: deliver high explosives and nuclear warheads from launching platforms at sea. Built in the Severodvinsk and Komsomolsk shipyards, these submarines were deployed to improve the Soviet's ability to counter the perceived threat from Western strike carriers while simultaneously threatening American naval bases, such as shipyards, operational bases, airfields, and supply depots.

As Soviet submarines left their home port of Vladivostok, the microphones of the SOSUS array tracked them across the Sea of Japan and through the choke points at the Kuril Islands. As the SSGN submarines carrying guided missiles patrolled across the Pacific Ocean in the direction of the Hawaiian Islands and the West Coast of the United States, the Soviet Union stepped up its pattern of saber rattling and threats to compete with 'sharp swords' for international military supremacy.

By summer 1966, Soviet anger at the involvement of the United States in the Vietnam conflict increased as B-52 bombers from the U.S. Strategic Air Command began bombing enemy forces in Southeast Asia. Thousands of Americans were drafted into military service, and many participated in ground combat activities, in which U.S. Ranger battalions fought the Vietcong in actions that resulted in large numbers of casualties on both sides. The U.S. Navy became more directly involved in the combat as jets from the USS Enterprise and USS Hancock bombed North Vietnamese tar- gets, including a variety of boats carrying supplies for the Vietcong. The American public became increasingly aroused at the mounting U.S. casualties, and new antiwar activities began to spread throughout the United States.

With the Viperfish floating alongside the pier at Pearl Harbor, qualifications on her systems began to assume a brisk pace. Overhauled equipment, now reassembled, was working; electronic panels with their array of lights and meters were energized; and piping diagrams could be followed until the systems were thoroughly memorized.

The scientists working with our Special Project became known by the crew as scientists on board (SOBs). Although they were not in the Navy, there was a pecking order of sorts, including a senior SOB named Lt. Gerry Short, who seemed to direct the others. Because Lieutenant Short was not strictly a civilian, being attached to some branch of an Air Force Intelligence group, nobody was quite sure how to deal with him. We didn't salute him. He didn't wear an Air Force uniform. He didn't tell any stories about flying airplanes, and none of us ever did figure out why our Special Project required somebody from the Air Force.

Three of the crew on board the Viperfish worked with the Special Project. Lean and quiet Lt. Al Dobkin and the ship's photographer, a perky man named Robbie Teague, were assigned to work with the civilians under the capable but taciturn Comdr. John Spiegel. All three men remained as secretive about the Special Project as everyone else who called the Viperfish hangar their home. The whole collection of civilians, the two naval officers, the Air Force officer, and the enlisted Navy photographer stayed in the hangar area of the submarine most of the time, as they had when we were in dry dock, and seldom mingled with the rest of us.

At mealtime, the SOBs and other Special Project men wandered into the crew's dining area when the food was served. They ate quietly without joining in the ribald humor that characterized our dining experience. When they finished eating, they silently glided back to the hangar. The entire group seemed to be scientific engineering types, with interests selectively focused on their project.

In fact, I learned later that the remoteness of the non-Navy SOBs resulted from a degree of intimidation at being in such a foreign environment and surrounded by more than a hundred submariners. Also, their movements on board were constrained because they were physically bound by the security regulations that held them to the limits of their work with the Fish. Although they did not show much visible excitement for these reasons, I came to learn that they were proud to be serving with the Viperfish crew and they readily trusted us to bring them back from the submerged explorations that lay ahead.

As the qualifications work became more intense and the size of our crew expanded, Marc Birken reported on board the Viperfish. Marc was a veteran of the Polaris submarine USS Daniel Boone and a lover of sports cars and 'steaming' (blowing off steam on lib- erty). He was aching to finish his obligation in the Navy as quickly as possible so that he could return to civilian life and teach in the trade schools of Ohio. Marc was a fun-loving man who viewed the submarine world with a 'hang loose, baby' attitude. He was in love with his TR-3 convertible sports car, which regularly squealed him around Waikiki. One of the nukes, he was an electrician by training and his dolphins were the pride of his life.

The first time he passed by the reactor operator area and noticed Bruce Rossi's characteristic tense face and mean looks, he glanced sideways toward me and struggled to avoid the grin that was his trademark. We quickly became friends, and he regularly chastised me for worrying about Bruce and having too serious an attitude.

The days passed quickly at the submarine base. Working my way through one system after another, I moved beyond any threat of placement on the dink list. When confinement among the men and machinery of the Viperfish, day after day, became too oppressive, the sweet call of liberty in Waikiki beckoned seductively from the east. The process of going on liberty and steaming was widely regarded as the solution to an oppressed mind.

For us, steaming consisted of a high-speed departure from the Viperfish to the barracks, a hot shower with plenty of soap to wash off the unique odors of a submarine, the donning of civvies (civilian clothes) to disguise our military origin, and the jumping into a Cadillac taxi to roar off to Waikiki. We found that the best way to start the steaming process was at the Fort DeRussy Army Base, near the Hilton Hawaiian Village, where decent bourbon could be purchased for about thirty cents per drink. After we had consumed a proper amount of beverage, the stage was set to continue our steaming at the night spots of Waikiki.

Meeting women in Waikiki was not difficult. The surplus of dancing establishments scattered throughout the area was perfect for military men on liberty, and Marc delighted in establishing a relationship with any woman who looked even slightly interesting. On our third or fourth night of steaming, he taught me a remarkably successful way to solidify an emerging relationship with a young lady. The process started with mai tais, moonlight, and sweet Hawaiian music. It was further stimulated by Marc's gracious manner toward the ladies, mixed with his disarming sense of humor.

After several dances with an attractive woman, he leaned forward and drew her close to him. Before she