Act of War

by Jack Cheevers

  Bucher agreed with Johnson’s analysis. Originally, the Pueblo carried only a handful of small arms: Thompson submachine guns, rifles, .45-caliber pistols, and some fragmentation grenades for use against enemy swimmers. Its lone gunner’s mate had no experience with heavy machine guns.

  The Navy eventually delivered only two machine guns, and neither had an armored shield to protect gunners from enemy fire. Bucher mounted one weapon on a railing on the starboard side of the bow and the other near the stern.

  While it foisted unwanted weapons on Bucher, the Navy also kept adding to his pile of classified documents, with more paper accumulating each time the ship reported to a new command. CINCPACFLT had contributed to the stash, and so did COMNAVFORJAPAN. Someone forgot the Pueblo was no longer a cargo ship and sent it an AKL’s allotment of intelligence publications. Somebody else screwed up and delivered documents intended for a converted escort carrier.

  Now the Pueblo groaned under the weight of a small mountain of secret papers. They overflowed the storage lockers, forcing the communication technicians to stack the excess in passageways. Some of the documents—such as instructions on routing mail—probably didn’t merit a “secret” stamp. But others were highly sensitive, including a report on the Pacific Fleet’s intelligence collection program and a memo outlining the fleet’s electronic warfare policy. Also on board was a copy of the North Korean “electronic order of battle,” indicating the location and frequencies of all known radar and radio stations. If war broke out, that document would guide U.S. jets and warships as they tried to knock out or jam critical enemy defenses.

  In addition to all the classified paper, the Pueblo carried several types of top secret code machines. One was the KW-7, a compact device that transmitted encrypted messages between Navy ships and shore stations at a rate of more than 50 words per minute. The KW-7 was the workhorse of U.S. military communications, widely used by Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine units from Vietnam to Germany. Another machine, the KWR-37, deciphered “fleet broadcast” messages sent to all U.S. warships around the clock. Each mechanism came with a special set of codes to operate it.

  Bucher requested permission to offload part of this extraordinary cache, to make sure it never fell into enemy hands. Admiral Johnson consented, but the Pueblo still was left with a large quantity of classified documents and at least a dozen code machines—and no fast, reliable means of getting rid of them in an emergency.

  Bucher began scouring Yokosuka for submarine-style dynamite canisters. The Naval Ordnance Facility on Azuma Island had none, so he contacted old friends at SUBFLOTSEVEN to see if he could take some TNT from a sub rotating back to the States. No luck. He talked to Chuck Clark, who opposed bringing explosives on the Banner. Bucher finally gave up, lest Admiral Johnson conclude he was more interested in blowing up his ship than in executing his mission.

  Even as the captain grappled with these and other problems, his relationship with the man he should’ve been relying on most for help—Murphy—continued to deteriorate.

  The executive officer’s pregnant wife and toddler son had arrived in Japan in mid-December, and Bucher thought he was attending to his duties even less diligently than usual. For one thing, the ship’s office, which Murphy oversaw, was a mess, with paperwork backing up despite the best efforts of the Pueblo’s affable yeoman, Armando “Army” Canales.

  Bucher was tired of having to hunt down Murphy whenever he needed him, and had concluded that his deputy simply wasn’t up to the job. The captain thought about relieving Murphy of duty but procrastinated, knowing such a drastic move would destroy the younger man’s career. He felt he owed Murphy at least one trip to the Sea of Japan to prove himself. Nevertheless, Bucher drafted a letter requesting Murphy’s replacement. He showed it to the exec and told him to shape up, or else.

  The tension between the two officers subsided somewhat in early January 1968, as the Pueblo’s departure date neared. Several new CTs came aboard at the last minute, as did two civilian oceanographers; they and their water-sampling equipment substantiated the cover story that the Pueblo was merely engaged in scientific surveys.

  Among the late arrivals was Robert Hammond, a wiry 22-year-old Marine sergeant with piercing eyes who was supposed to serve as a Korean translator on the voyage.

  He reported aboard along with another Marine sergeant trained in Korean, Bob Chicca. The two noncoms were to listen in on North Korean voice communications around the clock and tell Bucher if any aggressive moves were made against his ship. But both men had told superiors at the Kamiseya communication facility, their normal duty station, that they hadn’t used their Korean since 1965, had forgotten much of it, and would be of little use to Bucher. Chicca still understood a little of the language, but only when it was spoken slowly. The sergeants’ protests were to no avail, however. With the Pueblo scheduled to sail only a few days later, there was no time to replace them.

  Scuttlebutt about the ostensible linguists spread quickly, with more and more crewmen figuring out their true destination.

  On the morning of January 4, Bucher, Murphy, Steve Harris, and Schumacher caught a ride to Admiral Johnson’s headquarters for a presail briefing. The admiral’s intelligence staff provided a long-range weather report and pointed out North Korean coastal defenses on a map. They discussed recent clashes between communist and allied troops in the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, as well as North Korea’s aggressive harassment of South Korean fishing boats north of the seaward extension of the DMZ. North Korean patrol craft probably would pester the Pueblo, they said, but nothing more.

  As he had in Hawaii, Bucher asked what kind of help he could expect if he was attacked. The briefers confirmed that no Navy warships would be close enough to bail him out. Should he use his new machine guns against a boarding party? Definitely, said Captain Thomas Dwyer, Johnson’s assistant chief of staff for intelligence. If the communists kept coming, should he destroy his classified materials? Yes again.

  Admiral Johnson appeared toward the end of the briefing. He reiterated his opposition to arming the AGERs, telling Bucher such action “could lead to trouble for you for which you are not prepared.” He urged the skipper to “keep your guns covered and pointed down, or, better yet, stow them belowdecks.”

  Bucher had invited Chuck Clark to the briefing, and the Banner skipper said he intended to keep his guns belowdecks. After the meeting, Bucher argued with Clark about hiding his weapons. If the Navy’s top leaders wanted spy boats armed, then so be it. Bucher said his guns would stay on their mounts, visible to the North Koreans and ready for action.

  “If those bastards come out after me,” he pledged fiercely, “they’re not going to get me.”

  The next morning, Johnson personally inspected the Pueblo. He cast a wary eye on Bucher’s .50-calibers, draped with heavy canvas tarpaulins.

  “Remember, you’re not going out there to start a war, Captain,” he said. “Make sure you keep them covered and don’t use them in any provocative way at all. It doesn’t take much to set those damned communists off and start an international incident. That’s the last thing we want!”

  CHAPTER 3

  ALONG A DREAD COAST

  The Pueblo began backing out of its berth shortly after nine a.m. on January 5, 1968.

  Bucher perched proudly on the flying bridge; directly below him in the pilothouse, Schumacher called orders to the helmsman. Some of the skipper’s sub buddies had gathered in the wardroom earlier that morning to toast his departure with eggnog, and now they were waving good-bye from the dock. Bucher serenaded them with “The Lonely Bull.”

  The captain had decided against taking the northern route, over the top of Hokkaido island, because of winter storms. Instead, the Pueblo would head southwest, sailing around Kyushu at the bottom of the Japanese archipelago. Bucher then would turn north, top off his tanks at the port of Sasebo, and continue through the Tsushima Strait toward N
orth Korea.

  Within hours of leaving Yokosuka, the Pueblo’s officers noticed the rapidly alternating swells and troughs of a “young sea,” the harbinger of a newborn storm. The weather deteriorated abruptly. The sun fled behind menacing dark clouds and the air temperature plummeted. Freezing salt spray whipped the faces of sailors mopping the open decks. The winds rose; the sea began to heave.

  The Pueblo pitched and rolled madly as the storm overtook it. Over and over, the little ship staggered up the face of an oncoming wave, toppled over its crest, and slewed crazily down its back. Steering became so difficult that a second helmsman had to be summoned to help the first control the wheel. High winds and steep waves pushed the boat so far over that the railings on its main deck disappeared in the foaming water. The inclinometer recorded rolls of up to 57 degrees.

  The wild seesawing created chaos belowdecks, flinging men, chairs, desks, and electronic gear around like toys. Thrown off balance by one sharp tilt, a young radioman hurtled down a passageway and crashed into Bucher, knocking him to the floor.

  “Jesus Christ, sir, I’m sorry!” the sailor said with a gasp. “Are you hurt?”

  The two men clung to each other as the ship careened over in another wide roll. Bucher said he was okay, that he was counting on the radioman to keep his equipment up and running in the storm.

  The sailor gave a wan smile and adjusted his water-spattered glasses.

  “Yes, sir, I’ll be ready. But right now—excuse me, sir, but I’ve got to puke.” He ran off along the lurching passageway.

  Bucher saw fear in his men’s faces as they wondered whether their frail cockleshell of a boat could survive all this twisting and pounding. Almost everybody was throwing up, even experienced hands. One of the few exceptions was Quartermaster Charlie Law, who seemed steadied by some internal gyroscope as he calmly marked the ship’s slow progress on a chart.

  The storm appeared to be moving in the same direction as the Pueblo. Bucher hoped to escape the worst of it when he swung north toward Sasebo. But the tempest, perversely, pivoted with him, tearing at his ship as it fought its way past the threatening shoals of Kyushu’s west coast. Waves surged higher as contrary currents in the area collided. Hail, rain, and snow pelted the ship, and the wind accelerated to 50 knots—a force-ten gale. A big antenna snapped off in the rising howl.

  So loud was the storm that the men in the engine room had to communicate by hand signals. In the forward berthing compartment, fetid with vomit and anxiety, shoes and other personal items floated on several inches of sloshing water. Men’s heads, elbows, and knees slammed into hard metal objects, inducing shrieks of pain.

  Communication technicians skittered across the SOD hut deck in unsecured chairs, banging into steel consoles and gauges. Someone on the bridge tried to warn the men below by yelling, “Roll!” over the public address system each time the ship started to shift. But the CTs got bashed anyway, since their chamber lacked a loudspeaker. Two generators supplying electricity to the hut went dead.

  In the dizzily swaying pilothouse, Bucher struggled to keep the ship from skidding sideways in a trough and getting flipped over by the next wave. He applied power alternately to the port and starboard propellers, trying to keep moving in a relatively straight line. The steering engine was holding so far. But after another round of vertiginous rolls, the skipper ran for shelter in the lee of a coastal island.

  A few hours later, as the big blow subsided and the crew recovered somewhat, Bucher ordered the Pueblo to get under way again for Sasebo, still 100 miles away. Weary from his exertions on the bridge, the captain turned the conn over to Tim Harris and descended to his stateroom for a brief rest. He’d dozed for no more than an hour when the buzzing telephone next to his bunk woke him. He picked it up and heard a heart-stopping report from his inexperienced ensign:

  “Captain, we are on course, but I think I see breakers about a half mile dead ahead.”

  It was one of a ship commander’s worst fears. The Pueblo was headed directly toward a large rock.

  “Back down emergency full!” Bucher shouted into the phone, ordering the twin diesels thrown into reverse. “And come dead in the water! I’ll be right up there.”

  He raced to the bridge. Sure enough, there was the deadly black mass, ringed by white breakers and looming out of the slanting rain 1,000 yards away. Bucher sweated blood for several minutes while he maneuvered away from the reef and took soundings to make certain the Pueblo had enough water under its keel to proceed safely.

  Harris had been following a course plotted by Ed Murphy. If not for the ensign’s timely call to his captain, the ship might be getting battered and gouged to death right now. Bucher could barely contain his anger. He remained on the bridge just long enough to chart a new course for the shaken Harris. Then he returned to his quarters and summoned Murphy.

  The captain demanded an explanation of what he viewed as a stupid and potentially fatal navigation error. The exec replied that it wasn’t his fault; his course had been accurate, but young Harris hadn’t followed it correctly. Bucher felt himself losing it.

  “Jesus Christ, mister!” he yelled. “Don’t you think maybe you should get the hell out of this business? . . . Shit, man! After all the time and chances you’ve had, do you really expect me to take this kind of crap from you?”

  Murphy stared in distress at his superior.

  “I laid out the course as carefully as I could in these conditions, Captain,” he replied, a defiant note in his voice.

  “You are my executive and navigation officer!” Bucher bellowed. “If I can’t rely on you in those duties, what the hell use are you?”

  Murphy’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “Yes, sir, Captain, I’m trying my best, but . . .”

  “It’s not good enough!”

  A pained silence followed, broken only by the moan of the wind and the crash of green seas on the decks above. Murphy made a stab at a formal exit, trying to come to attention in the rolling cabin and almost missing the door as he walked out. Bucher was convinced the time had finally come to get rid of his XO. But still he couldn’t bring himself to take such drastic action during this inaugural mission.

  At least Bucher now knew exactly what the mission was. Admiral Johnson’s headquarters had radioed him the last details after the Pueblo left Yokosuka. The main objective was to collect fresh information on North Korean shore defenses. The hermetic communist state was believed to have both antiaircraft and antiship missile batteries along its mountainous east coast. Bucher’s crew was to sail to a point near North Korea’s border with the Soviet Union and then turn around and move slowly south, sampling the electronic environment and making visual observations. The Navy and the National Security Agency were particularly interested in coastal radar.

  The Pueblo also was to observe North Korean naval activity, including any movements of the four Soviet-made submarines the North Koreans were suspected of operating out of the port of Mayang-do. After about two weeks, Bucher and his men would head back to Japan, photographing and listening to Soviet warships along the way.

  Throughout the voyage the Pueblo was to maintain strict emission control, meaning its radar and radios were to be kept off unless Bucher was certain his ship had been identified. Only then was he to transmit situation reports to COMNAVFORJAPAN. At no time should the ferret creep closer than 13 nautical miles to the North Korean mainland or offshore islands; the Navy wanted to make sure it stayed outside the communists’ claimed 12-mile territorial limit.

  Admiral Johnson also reiterated his verbal instruction that the machine guns be covered or stowed. The captain was to use them, in the terse language of his sailing order, “only in cases where threat to survival is obvious.” But since the ship would operate entirely in international waters, the order continued, the mission’s risk was rated “minimal.” Once again, Bucher was led to believe that a high-seas assault was unlikely.r />
  The Pueblo arrived in Sasebo on January 9, already behind schedule due to the storm. For the first few hours most of the seamen simply rested, recovering from the stomach-inverting first leg of their journey. Then they began getting ready for the next segment. The boat had to be cleaned up and tossed-about gear put back in place. A hairline crack had appeared in the hull; Japanese divers went down to repair it.

  Lieutenant Steve Harris offloaded more excess classified documents—15 sealed containers in all. But to his dismay he discovered that enough new paper was being delivered to the ship in Sasebo to more than offset what he’d gotten rid of. Why was it that seemingly every Navy command in the Pacific wanted to give him this stuff? So large was the volume of material, he realized, that it couldn’t possibly fit into the canvas bags in which it was supposed to be dumped overboard in an emergency.

  Although Bucher had expected only a 12-hour layover in Sasebo, repairs and refitting took nearly two days.

  The ship was to depart at six a.m. on January 11. At five a.m., a courier arrived with even more classified publications for Steve Harris’s heap. At 5:45 a.m., Bucher rushed aboard after a long night of drinking and playing cards ashore.

  Less than half an hour later, the Pueblo edged out of Sasebo harbor. Despite his lack of sleep, Bucher had the conn. Nearby was Charlie Law, navigating in the chilly predawn darkness.

  The captain had given Law more navigation watches after the near-miss with the reef, and that delighted the quartermaster. He loved the Navy and was proud to the point of cockiness of his talents as a course plotter. He also was grateful to Bucher for qualifying him as an officer of the deck, meaning Law could steer the ship on his own, a rare and exalted station for an enlisted man.