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

knew what was coming, he innocently asked 'The Question': 'How would you like a tour aboard a nuclear submarine?'

This invariably resulted in a backward movement as the woman stared at him wide-eyed, blinked several times, and finally asked, 'A nuclear submarine? Tonight? Are you serious? Are you in the Navy?'

He smiled and told her that he would be happy to give her a tour of his ship if she would find such a tour interesting. 'It is a beautiful submarine,' he said, with just the right smile and proper blend of innocence and enthusiasm. 'It is called the Viperfish and it is an excellent warship, one of the best in the Navy. It has a nice periscope, the control room has some beautiful lights, and you would be quite safe, being on a military base and all.'

The predictable result became an often-repeated routine. She smiled, having never heard such an offer from any man she had known back in Kansas City or wherever she was from, and her eyes lit up with the excitement of it all. Because the women of Waikiki rarely traveled alone, she usually asked if her girlfriend could come with her. 'Of course,' Marc said magnanimously, as he waved in my direction and beckoned for me to join them.

When the Viperfish topside watch saw our group meandering down the dark pier at 0100, we could hear the distant muttering of something relating to Jesus Christ.

After a knowing look or two and a polite salute to welcome the ladies on board, the watch greeted us and cleared the way for our late-night tour. A half hour later, after hearing the excited 'ooh's' and 'ah's' of our female companions, Marc and I felt like heroes for the rest of the night.

All the fun came to an end the morning the captain gathered us together on the pier in front of the Viperfish and told us that we were going to sea in two days. We would leave at 0800 hours, he told us, and conduct our sea trials. The purpose of the exercise, he said in his soft voice, was to test the integrity and capabilities of our submarine. It would be an envelope study of sorts, a test of our underwater limits. Although this was not a Special Project operation, the outcome of the sea trials would help to determine the success of future activities; the sea trials test was, therefore, extremely important to our mission. Once it was established that we could perform submerged activities safely and effectively, we would be ready to proceed to our West Coast shakedown cruise and, finally, to start testing the Fish.

After we completed the morning muster on the pier, I climbed down the engine-room hatch and started studying the next system on the qualifications list. My work was abruptly interrupted by Chief Paul Mathews's voice bellowing throughout the boat over the loudspeaker system.

'All men lay topside to 'sally ship'!'

Puzzled, I looked up from by book. 'Do what to the ship?' I asked nobody in particular.

Bruce Rossi started climbing up the engine-room ladder to the topside deck. 'Sally ship, Dunham,' he barked in my direction. 'Important for the calculation of metacentric height of which the center of buoyancy is a part. Get up there.'

With Chief Mathews giving directions from his position in front of the submarine sail, about thirty of us lined up in a long row at the port side of the ship and crowded as close to the edge of the deck as possible. The chief looked at his wristwatch, waited a few seconds, and then hollered at the top of his lungs, 'Move to the starboard side!'

We promptly rushed across the deck to the opposite side of the Viperfish. A few seconds later, the chief hollered again.

'Port side!'

We leaped to the port side.

'Starboard side!'

Feeling foolish, I moved with the rest of the men.

'Port!'

'Starboard!'

'Port!'

'Starboard!'

Scurrying back and forth, we paused for about six or seven seconds on each side before the next order. Gradually, I became aware of a rolling movement of the submarine's deck, like the movement of a rowboat with too much weight on one side, accompanied by the tilting of the periscopes sticking out of the sail. As we continued with the exercise, the rolling increased by larger and larger increments and some of the men had to grab the restraining cable at the deck's edge for balance. When the deck began to show a prominent sloping with each roll, the chief finally thanked us and ordered, 'Secure from 'sally ship' exercise.'

Remarkably, nobody said much of anything as the crew nonchalantly dispersed from the bizarre activity and returned to their various tasks. It wasn't clear to me how one should even ask Paul about the meaning of the event — 'Did the sally go well, Chief?' Pushing aside my typical feeling of nearly total ignorance, I wandered toward him.

'It relates to the center of buoyancy, Dunham,' Paul told me even before I asked. 'The rolling provides data for calculating the metacentric height, important for determining the stability of the Viperfish-if we roll far enough to both sides, sufficient data are generated and the design engineers are happy. After our shipyard overhaul, several of the weights inside the boat have shifted to new positions, changing the center of buoyancy. When we surface out there,' he pointed in the direction of the Pacific Ocean, 'these factors can affect our stability. If the weight distribution is wrong, if the center of buoyancy has shifted too far down, it is possible for the first wave that hits us to roll us completely over. This kind of thing would lead to considerable crew discomfort and a probable immediate sinking.'

I stared at the man, my mind trying to comprehend such a disaster. Considerable crew discomfort if the Viperfish rolled over?

He smiled brightly. 'Therefore, it's the kind of thing we like to check out.'

I returned to my qualifications work with a new worry. It would enter my mind every time we surfaced, as I waited to see if that first wave to slam against the side of the submarine would cause considerable crew discomfort.

The next day, the pier alongside the Viperfish was filled with activity. We loaded an endless supply of spare parts, crates of food, fuel oil for our diesel engine, and everything else each man on the boat could think of to sustain his existence at sea. The whole process reminded me of the packing adventures my family used to have before a camping trip. Rushing back and forth around the house, my mother gathered whatever she thought we might need for our trip to the forest or the beach. On a camping trip, however, we could count on certain basic elements essential to existence-oxygen, fresh air, maps, gas stations, warmth, and plenty of room to roam about.

On board the submerged Viperfish, we would be working to survive in an environment hostile to human life. We had to make our own air by producing oxygen and 'scrubbing' (removing) away the carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. To cool the excessive reactor-generated heat, we needed powerful air-conditioning systems; on the other hand, we had to provide warmth to the forward areas of the boat that became chilled from the cold waters around us. We had to navigate under the ocean where there were no stars or sky, create fresh water from the brine of the sea, and carefully monitor our uranium fuel reserves because no reactor refueling services were available on the high seas. For those of the crew who enjoyed hiking about, nothing could be done to accommodate them in the constrained spaces and cramped quarters. There was almost no room to roam-that was a daily fact of submarine life.

I had just finished storing a pocketbook, a box of cigars, and four fresh oranges inside the bunk locker beneath my rack when Marc Birken walked up to the crew's berthing area.

'Aloha, bruddah,' he said to me, grinning widely and relishing his newly acquired Hawaiian dialect. 'What's happening?'

I pointed to the oranges. 'Fresh fruit for the long trip, in case we run out.'

He looked at my oranges. 'We're only going to be gone for a week or two,' he said.

'Or three, or four-'

'Two weeks, or even three weeks, that's nothing! Wait until we go out for two months or even longer. Did I ever tell you about the time I dropped a garbage weight when the Boone was on one of our two-month Polaris patrols?'

I closed my bunk locker and pulled the curtain across the opening of my tiny home. 'What's a garbage