Sherry Sontag;Christopher Drew

by Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story Of American Submarine Espionage

  The top priority of any spy sub captain was what the Navy called "indications and warning." Captains were supposed to forget about caution, forget about radio silence, and flash a message home from the Barents or the Sea of Japan if they picked up any sign that the Soviet Navy was mobilizing, perhaps preparing to attack. U.S. spy subs also were now using much more sophisticated versions of Austin's "ears" to scan for Soviet missile tests. And submarines, antennas at the ready, were routinely picking up the chatter that told the U.S. Navy how many Soviet ships and subs were ready for sea and what their tactics might be in wartime.

  Increasingly, fleet admirals consulted with Naval Intelligence, becoming partners in espionage. Intelligence officers invited other Navy men to train alongside them, noting in one invitation that they were engaging in the world's "second-oldest profession," one with "even fewer morals than the first."

  Most top government officials were given little if any indication of the risks the sub force was taking, or of what a strange game of machismo was being played. While President Dwight D. Eisenhower had only hesitantly approved U-2 spy flights high over Russia, fearful of aggravating Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, many submarine captains believed it was their job-and forget the niceties of international law-to drive straight into Soviet territorial waters. Fleet commanders graded the captains on how long they kept their "eyes and ears" up out of the water. The more daring the attempt, the higher the grade. This had become a contest of sorts, a test of bravado for the captains, their crews, and their craft. And for most of the captains, these days of unfettered risk would forever mark the high point of their careers. To he sure there was stress and lots of it. Some veteran commanders lost twenty pounds running these long western Pacific deployments-"Westpacs," in the trade. Nobody could tell ahead of time who would be able to take the pressure and who wouldn't.

  Gudgeon shoved off from Yokosuka for her turn at the Soviets with Norman G. "Buzz" Bessac at the helm. Already he had led Gudgeon, undetected, on a reconnaissance mission beneath a group of Soviet ships operating in icy northern waters. Now, he was leading his sub straight into enemy territory, his first command in these dangerous waters. But the thirty-four-year-old lieutenant commander was here in the first place, was on submarines at all, because he craved adventure. In the year and a half since he had taken over Gudgeon, he had convinced his crew that he was one of those "go to hell and back" captains, a man who wanted his sub to make her mark among the lumbering propeller planes, the U-2 jets, and the landlocked listening stations that were keeping an eye on the Soviets from all angles.

  In that, he had a lot in common with the spooks on board his boat. They had their pick of assignments, these men who were the Navy's chief snoops and eavesdroppers. They could have ridden Navy spy planes and been home every night in time for dinner, sleeping with their wives instead of dozing cheek to toe with a half-dozen men and a torpedo or two. But for the spooks, just about everything about submarines seemed to signal importance and drama. They sneaked aboard with uniforms, like those of Cochino's Austin, altered to hear radiomen's sparks instead of their own insignias, the telltale lightning rods and quills. Their written orders said only that they were to report to the "USS Classified."

  It was the spooks' job to monitor the enemy, to bring home the intelligence, to give warning if a sub was detected by Soviet ships and coastal installations that were starting to scan the oceans with radar and sonar. Soviet patrol boats had already given chase after several U.S. subs. These were, after all, the years leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was a time when the Soviet propaganda machine found fodder even in the fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel," churning out a version in which the children of hardworking collective farmers were enslaved by a fat capitalist in a plutocratic residence in the evil West. And Soviet "pen pals" were writing Americans with offers to exchange pictures of "beautiful cathedrals" for scenes of North American coastlines-perhaps including ports and harbors. As the men of the Gudgeon prepared to embark, few of them doubted that they were fighters in an undeclared war. Several American spy planes had been shot down, and Gudgeon's crew could only guess what the Soviets would do if they ever cornered an American submarine.

  Gudgeon was one of the Navy's newest subs, one of the first diesel boats designed from the start with a snorkel and electronic eavesdropping equipment. From its fabled old shipyard in Groton, Connecticut, Electric Boat Company had already finished the Navy's first two nuclear-powered subs, the USS Nautilus (SSN-571) and the USS Seawolf (.SSN- 575), but Hyman Rickover, now an admiral, wasn't at all sure that he wanted to send his boats directly into the path of the Soviet Navy. He easily wielded enough power to keep them home.

  Rickover was already a master at power politics. Born in the Jewish pale of Makow, Poland, about 50 miles north of Warsaw, his family used congressional connections to get him into the Naval Academy. When he first began working on early experiments with nuclear power, he pushed the Navy to begin building nuclear subs by first getting himself appointed to a top staff job at the Atomic Energy Commission. He was so brash that the Navy twice denied him a promotion to rear admiral, but Rickover called upon a friend in Congress and got that as well.

  Now he was employing his nuclear subs as public relations starsthe Navy budget seemed to get another boost every time another congressman got a nuclear-propelled ride. Indeed, Nautilus was preparing for the ultimate in showmanship: the Navy was trying to mark her as the first submarine to slip under the Arctic ice and reach the North Pole.

  So it was the diesels that were doing all of the spying work, Gudgeon among them as she steamed north toward Vladivostok, the Soviets' largest naval base in the Pacific. She neared her station for this special operation, or "spec op," in early August, carrying three or four spooks, some already hard at work listening for any signs that their approach had been detected.

  Extra eavesdropping equipment was crammed wherever it could fit. One communications tech, trained in Russian, scanned ship-to-shore transmissions for any Soviet cries of "submarine spotted." Another spook began working the electronic countermeasures, listening for radar sweeps that could pick up Gudgeon and signal her need to dive. If he could, he would record a blast of that radar so that U.S. intelligence could look for ways to lain Soviet radar sweeps in the future. A sonar specialist stood ready to help record the "sound signatures" of any passing Soviet subs and ships. Those unique fingerprints of propeller and machinery noises might later help U.S. forces identify Soviet ships and subs at sea.

  As always, what the spooks would ultimately collect had as much to do with luck as skill. There was no way to predict how the mission would unfold.

  Bessac didn't allow his sub to linger long before he gave the orders that sent her creeping up to the 12-mile territorial limit claimed by the Soviets, then just inside. His orders allowed him to do that, to even go inside the 3-mile territorial limit recognized by the United States. This was the real beginning of the operation, the start of a planned onemonth routine. Move in by day, get close, keep most of the sub's 287foot-long and 27-foot-wide bulk hidden underwater, while allowing the periscopes and antennas to broach the surface.

  Each night, Gudgeon was to move out 20 or 30 miles, just far enough so that she could run her clamoring engines and charge her batteries and snorkel, bringing in fresh air and exhaling carbon monoxide and other noxious gases through a special pipe. The exercise would provide enough air and battery power to last through another day of silent submersion in Soviet waters.

  If the mission went as planned, Gudgeon would not run her engines anywhere near the Soviet coast, and she wouldn't surface past snorkel depth until she was well on her way back to Japan. Until then, the men would live in their cramped steel shell, working through a haze of diesel fumes that even snorkeling couldn't erase.

  Her crew hardly noticed the smell anymore. Their clothes, their skin, their hair, everything was drenched in "Eau de Diesel," the trademark scent of a submariner and one that masked other insults. With the c
rew's shower usually filled with food, the men had, at best, a half of a basin of fresh water a day to wash with. Thanks to the new evaporators on Gudgeon, the water was far cleaner than the running rusted tin available on older diesel boats, but it was in short supply. So the men devised tricks for making the most of the precious commodity. To wash: begin face first, then sponge down. The men ran salt water showers from the engine room bilges and mined a few extra cups of water from inside the boat by setting up buckets to collect the ever-present condensation that left everything on board damp to dripping. There was usually enough condensation to allow the men to wash their clothes at least once on each operation. That was bonus enough so that they hardly bothered to curse the mists that rose from the bilges, transforming their bunk spaces into metallic swamps. So what if their mattresses had to be kept zipped up tight against the dank with plastic flash covers? Every submariner learned fast to quickly unzip, slide into bed and zip back up.

  Comfort was one thing, staying alive was another. And for that, the rules were simple. Stay quiet, stay submerged, and above all, avoid being detected. That was the most crucial rule and one Gudgeon was about to break.

  It happened on Monday, August 19, 1957, sometime after 5:00 P.m., Soviet Pacific Coast time. Gudgeon had been submerged for about twelve hours. It would take two or three hours to travel to the isolated spot where she would snorkel, and then several more to take on enough air and create enough electricity to last through the next day. Already, the air on hoard had become heavy. It smelled worse than the usual diesel foul, and it tasted just as bad.

  A bunch of men were in the mess watching the first reel of Bad Day at Black Rock. Over the whir of a 16mm projector, Spencer Tracy, Lee Marvin, and Ernest Borgnine were playing out the days just after World War II. The movie was reasonably new. What submarines lacked in water, space, and privacy the Navy tried to make up for with good movies and good food.

  Then, for a moment, the sub listed sideways. Only slightly really, the sort of sway that normally happens beneath the surface in rough waters. But in the calm waters off Vladivostok, that sort of list only happened when the sail broached, catching a swell. Then Gudgeon began to dive. Again, it was nothing extreme, not an all-out plunge. This was gentler, just an angle that the crewmen could feel under their feet.

  Suddenly the alarm rang. There was nothing subtle about the call that came out over the squawk box: "Battle stations!"

  Now everyone was up and running at once, scrambling out of bunks, out of the mess, out of just about every corner, squeezing past one another through passageways not much wider than one man. They were grabbing on to the bars welded over the oval watertight doors, shooting their legs through to the next compartment, shoulders and head following. They came sliding down ladders and down stairs that weren't much more than ladders. All of them were making more noise than they could afford.

  "We broached," one man shouted to anyone who was there to hear. "The damn Russians are up there. And the old man just took her deep."

  Some of the other men thought the electronic countermeasures mast had been left up too long. It was about a foot wide and 18 inches tall, and the officer of the deck was supposed to bring it down the instant it tasted radar signals that meant the Soviets might be honing in on Gudgeon. Normally the mast was up only as long as the scope was, say, 30 seconds at a time. But for these trips near the Soviet coast, the mast was kept up a bit longer, as other intelligence antennas had been added on as branches. Either the order to take it down came too late or Gudgeon's depth controls were handled badly, perhaps leaving both the mast and part of her sail exposed.

  Either way, anything sticking out of these calm waters would have made Gudgeon all too easy to spot, and spotted she was. Soviet ships were heading her way even as Bessac began shouting the orders for evasive action. Taking his boat down deep, he was looking for a temperature layer, a mass of cold water that could hide his sub by reflecting back to the surface any sonar pings aimed down from ships above. The Soviets would definitely be going active, sending out the deadly accurate sound beams that created the most complete picture of what was below water. They had no reason to try to listen through the static of passive sonar, no reason not to make noise. They weren't the ones being hunted.

  One hundred feet, two hundred feet, Bessac wasn't finding that layer he could hide under. Three hundred feet.

  Then the crew heard it. "Ping. . . . Ping. . . . Ping.... " The Soviet probes rang steel chills through Gudgeon and her crew. A ship had zeroed in on them. Bessac began taking the sub deeper and back outside the 12-mile limit. Many in the crew were convinced they had made their escape, but the Soviets were continuing to chase. Operating just on batteries and submerged, Gudgeon couldn't outrun them, couldn't do much better than a few knots.

  By now, just about every man on board was focused on getting away. Planesmen held the sub steady through the dive. Other men kept an eye on the depth gauges. Bessac stood in the cramped control room issuing orders. Lieutenant John O. Coppedge, the southern-smooth executive officer, "Bo" to the crew, was by the captain's side.

  In stations set out in a circle around the captain were the fire control officers, who sat ready to aim and fire weapons if given the order, and the quartermasters, those navigators who stood over charts plotting the course changes as Gudgeon moved to elude her tormentors. Out one watertight door, just outside the control room, the sonar techs sat in their darkened closet watching screens and trying to count propeller sounds.

  There were two ships above, then more, all joining to pin down the Gudgeon.

  Men began taking note of their status. Gudgeon's batteries were at that end-of-the-day low, her air that end-of-the-day foul. And there was no way to run the diesel engines and bring in fresh air or recharge, not unless Bessac could drive Gudgeon near enough to the surface to raise her snorkel pipe and keep it there until the air was cleared. Carbon dioxide levels were already high enough that some of the men were feeling nauseous; others had headaches, the kind where it felt as if the tops of their heads were coming off. This was the worst time of the day on any diesel sub, and the absolute worst time to get caught.

  Unessential equipment was shut down to conserve power and to squelch noise. The ice machines were off. The lights were dimmed down to emergency levels, more glow than illumination. Fans and blowers were off.

  Bessac gave the order to switch to relaxed battle stations, allowing many in the crew to take to their bunks to conserve oxygen. Above, a ship pinged Gudgeon, driving her toward another ship, which repeated the sonar assault. Every ping reminded the crew that someone on board had made a mistake, a big one.

  Word came from the sonar shack. There were at least four ships above now. The men cursed "Charlie Brown," their name for the Soviets when they weren't using more colorful descriptions.

  Then came another round of sonar pings. They were followed by something else, something far more terrifying.

  With a series of "pops," a wave of small explosions rained down and around Gudgeon. She had been trying to change course again, trying to elude her captors. And they had answered. The Soviets were dropping light depth charges-they sounded like hand grenades-into the water.

  The sounds came through the hull, loud. The boat was okay; Gudgeon could withstand these small explosions. But what if the Soviets followed through with the real thing, with full-sized depth charges?

  Bessac began giving orders for a new set of evasive maneuvers. In the control room, the men worked, straining to listen beyond the sub. Others lay still in their hunks, listening as well, waiting for the thunder of bigger explosions, the kind that meant Gudgeon might never surface again.

  The younger seamen were noticeably nervous. The grizzled vets, the few who had been through World War II, could hide their fear better, but for them this moment was actually far worse. They knew what a depth charge could do. They knew that their boat's namesake, the World War II sub named Gudgeon, was lost in the Pacific in 1944 and was believed destroyed by en
emy depth charges. They had lost comrades on subs of that era, and some of them had been on boats that just barely escaped when those charges fell. They had felt the furious shocks, been drenched as seawater spurted through the wounded pipes of their fleet boats, wondered how long they could hold out inside fragile steel.

  The Soviets made another pass, then another, raining down pings and grenadelike charges.

  "Stay calm, we'll get out of this," Bessac muttered to a young auxiliary man, still in his teens.

  The youngster was already sporting talismans against catastrophe, tattoos of a chicken and a pig, one seared onto each foot. That was a tradition of sorts, taken from an old Hawaiian legend. Chickens and pigs, it was said, would always find something to float on and would never drown. Several of the men were marked the same way.

  By now, the siege had been going on for nearly three hours. Bessac continued to look for that temperature layer, taking the sub down to test depth-about 700 feet-and then a little farther. No luck. Maybe there was a layer at around 850 feet down. Gudgeon should have been able to withstand the sea pressure even at that extra hundred feet or so below test depth, and Bessac probably would have risked it. But there was another problem, one that prevented the captain from testing the extremes: something had gotten caught in the outer door of the garbage ejector earlier that day. Everything that went into the ejector was supposed to be bagged and secured. Everybody on board knew that. Normally a column of water is forced through the opening, and the water, the garbage, all of it, is forced out to sea. But someone had just tossed something in there, probably thinking nothing of it, and whatever the object was had jammed.