"Request permission to come aboard!" one of the NR men in a dark blue officer's uniform called out as three men moved across the brow.
Snyder saluted the group and replied, "May I see your identification, sir?"
The officer turned and pointed to the white-haired man. "This is Admiral Hyman G. Rickover!"
"Attention on deck!" Snyder hollered as everybody standing nearby saluted the men again. "May I see some identification, sir?" he repeated.
As the men glared at Snyder, the young submariner suddenly brightened. They were testing him, that had to be the answer. They wanted to see if he would remember to check the shipyard access list. The admiral certainly would be on the access list.
"Would you like me to check for the admiral's name on the access list, sir?" Snyder asked.
The men became further enraged as they turned and stormed off the Viperfish. Snyder looked down at the access list and wondered if he had said something wrong. Shortly after the limousine screeched a streak of rubber down the pier, Snyder called me in the engine room.
"He's gone!"
"Gone?" I said into the telephone. "Admiral Rickover is gone?"
"He's gone and so are the Marines!"
Several minutes later, after a call to the Viperfish, Captain Harris left the boat and crossed Mare Island to the U.S. Naval Headquarters office. As he walked into the room, Admiral Rickover was waiting.
"You do not want me down on your boat?" the admiral demanded. "Are you still keeping some of those goddamn deep-submergence secrets you didn't want to tell me last year?"
"Of course, you may come aboard our-"
"And you are two goddamn weeks behind in refueling the reactor!"
"You know about that, Admiral," Harris said, trying to keep a calm voice. "The shipyard lost the tip of a glove into the..."
"The refueling is not on goddamn schedule!"
"I'm not sure you are getting accurate information, Admiral, and..."
"Enough, Harris, I don't want to see your goddamn boat! You are relieved of command, and your next fitness report will reflect the reason for this action."
As a result of the admiral's concluding sentence and events that followed, the distinguished career of Comdr. Thomas Harris was brought to an end by Adm. Hyman G. Rickover. There was no appeal, and no man in the Submarine Service would risk his own career by challenging the final decision of such an authority.
1 NOVEMBER 1969.
Dear Mr. Dunham:
I recall the mission of the USS [Viperfish], and I have checked into your record of service in the Navy.
Knowing what I do of the extremely demanding test you met on the [Viperfish], I have no hesitation in commending you to any school to which you apply, as meeting the highest tests of character and responsibility.
You are free to use this letter in your applications for medical school.
I hope and expect that you will go forward in your career in civil life with the same distinction you exhibited in the years you served your country.
Sincerely,
President Lyndon B. Johnson
Austin, Texas
5 MAY 1972. Warrant Officer Robbie Teague, Special Project photographer on board the USS Viperfish, was killed in an automobile accident on a Maryland State Highway. He was buried with honors at the Arlington National Cemetery, Fort Meyer Army Base, Arlington, Virginia.
30 APRIL 1975. After the United States Congress rejected President Gerald Ford's request for further supplemental aid to continue the Vietnam War, South Vietnam President Nguyen Van Thieu resigned and fled the country. As the remaining Americans were evacuated from the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon, acting President Duong Van Minh surrendered unconditionally to the North Vietnamese, ending the Vietnam War.
30 JUNE 1976. At Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, California, the USS Viperfish was decommissioned following a brief ceremony at the pier alongside the submarine. Several men from her former patrols attended the emotional event and spoke eloquently of her past. Her Special Projects equipment and nuclear reactor core were removed; the large hole at the base of the vessel's hangar compartment was permanently sealed shut. She was finally delivered to the mothball fleet in Bremerton, Washington, after efforts to scuttle the submarine were abandoned.
On 1 September 1994, the hull of the empty submarine was cut up and the pieces melted down into steel ingots for distribution to recycling plants throughout the United States.
At regular five-year intervals, the men of the spy submarine Viperfish gather together to remember the days gone past and to pay tribute to their shipmates who have "rested their oars" and sailed on to their eternal patrol.
Sources
Most of the information gathered for this story originated from sources that cannot be revealed. The highly classified nature of the Viperfish mission and the sensitivity of events relating to such U.S. submarine operations prevent discussion of additional specifics. All official requests for information through the Freedom of Information Act were denied, as were all appeals of such denials.
The following unclassified sources provided historical and technical information for this story.
Birtles, Philip, and Paul Beaver. Missile Systems. Runnymede, England: Ian Allan Ltd., 1985.
Blackman, Raymond V. B. Jane's Book of Fighting Ships. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966, 1967, 1968.
Bussert, Jim. "The Safety of Soviet Nuclear Submarines." Jane's Defence Weekly, 18 April 1987, 715.
Calvert, lames F. "Up Through the Ice of the North Pole." National Geographic 126 (July 1959): 1.
Clancy, Tom. Submarine. New York: Berkeley Publishing Group, 1993.
Cousteau, Jacques-Yves. The Ocean World of Jacques Cousteau. Volume 1: Oasis in Space. N.p.: Danbury Press, 1973.
Decommissioning Ceremony. Mare Island, Calif: Mare Island Naval Shipyard, 1976. Booklet.
Department of Defense. Soviet Military Power 1984. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1984.
Dornik, William, Roy Armstrong, Dan Simmons, and Phillip Thomas. "Crew Reunion." Private publication for 1991 reunion of [Viperfish] crew.
Friedman, Norman. U.S. Submarines since 1945: An Illustrated Design History. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1994.
Gunston, Bill. Submarines in Color. New York: Arco Publishing Company, 1977.
National Geographic Society. World Ocean Floors, Pacific Ocean. Map. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, June 1992.
The Navy's Nuclear Field. U.S. Navy recruiting booklet, 1 September 1981.
Nuclear Field. U.S. Navy recruiting booklet, 1 March 1985.
Prokhorov, A. M. Great Soviet Encyclopedia. 3d ed. Vol. 5. New York: Macmillan, 1970.
Sobel, Lester A. Facts on File Yearbook. New York: Facts on File, 1966-68.
List of Figures
Примечания
1
The term "boat" is generally used to denote a small vessel that can be hoisted on board a ship. Early submarines were small enough to fulfill this definition. The camaraderie of the first "boat sailors" and their pride in serving on board such unique vessels resulted in this term remaining in common use among submariners. The official U.S. Navy definition of a submarine is a ship, but submarine sailors, in accordance with tradition, continue to call their vessel a boat.
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2
Reactor Operators
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3
To maintain the watertight integrity of the compartments, each massive steel door between compartments has a central handle and a series of clamps that seal the door when the handle is turned. A door is "dogged" when the handle is turned, thus sealing the door.
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4
SCRAM refers to "safety control reactor ax man," a term given to the man responsible for cutting the rope holding the control rods out of an experimental reactor core during a test at the University of Chicago. When the rods dropped back into the core, the reactor was shut down. Although the syste
m for shutting down a nuclear reactor is now profoundly different, the term SCRAM, meaning a total and complete emergency shutdown, has been retained.
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5
The senior enlisted rating in the U.S. Navy is the boatswain's mate. Also called "bo's'n," the boatswain's mate has been in charge of the deck force of a ship since the days of sail. Setting the sails, heaving lines, and hoisting anchor required a coordinated team effort; the bo's'n's whistle signals coordinated the actions. When visitors to the sailing ships had to be hoisted aboard or lowered over the side, the bo's'n's pipe was used to order "Hoist away" or "Avast heaving." As time passed, piping a senior naval officer aboard became an established naval honor. The tradition remains strong, even in the nuclear era.
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6
Preventive Maintenance
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Spy Sub: A Top Secret Mission to the Bottom of the Pacific Page 23