Around the World Submerged

by Edward Latimer Beach

  I leaned forward. “Take in lines two, three, and four!” Then, “Slack one and five port, heave in one and five starboard.”

  Triton slowly and steadily moved away from her dock. Moored stern-to in the slip for torpedo-tube tests, she had only to go ahead and angle right to clear some pilings which were dead ahead.

  The moment of decisive test was at hand. Rudder, engines, and propellers had been thoroughly tested. We knew the turbines would work; we knew that everything would work. Yet this was the first time we were to try it. I felt a thrill of anticipation as I gave the next few commands.

  “Rudder amidships!” I ordered. “All ahead one-third!”

  I turned aft. In a moment, I could see the disturbed water turned up by the two propellers as they rotated slowly in response to my order. Both were moving in the right direction. Water was being pushed aft.

  “Take in all lines!”

  This was the climactic command, intentionally given late in order to retain our hold on the dock until the last possible moment. I heaved an involuntary sigh as our willing deck hands heaved the nylon cables swiftly aboard. Triton gathered way, moving slowly out of the slip where she had lain for so many months.

  “Right ten degrees rudder!” I ordered. When you use rudder on a ship, you swing your stern away from the direction you wish to head. Too much rudder would send our port propeller crashing into the dock, but we had to come right because dead ahead were pilings indicating shallow water.

  My initial estimate had been approximately right, I saw with pleasure, and the ship was answering her helm like the lady we hoped she was. As a matter of fact, she was coming around somewhat more rapidly than necessary.

  “Ease the rudder to five right,” I ordered.

  Conning her carefully, we eased Triton out into the stream and pointed her fair down the Thames River. Once clear, I gave the order “all ahead two-thirds,” and our great ship increased speed as she progressed down the river into Long Island Sound.

  It was just after daybreak as we passed New London Light at the mouth of the river, and I beckoned to Floyd W. Honeysette, who had the quartermaster watch on the bridge. “Keep a sharp lookout to starboard on the first white house on the point,” I told him. “Let me know if they flash a light or make a signal.”

  In a few moments, Honeysette reported that there was no light, but that someone leaning out of a second-story window was waving a red cloth. I directed him to return the compliment by flashing the ship’s searchlight, and this is how Dr. and Mrs. Tage M. Nielsen of New London, friends of many years, became the first persons with whom Triton exchanged signals. Later, I learned the red fabric was a new nylon petticoat belonging to Claudia Nielsen, and that she had made a special reveille in our honor.

  There is something about going to sea for the first time in a ship on which you have labored long and hard that is like no other experience. Triton was already quick with life, but when we got her past Race Rock and rang for flank speed for the first time, our spirits soared with her tremendous response.

  Trigger had been a good ship, outstandingly effective in her business, and Tirante a ruthlessly efficient one, with spirit and stamina besides. Piper’s qualities had remained largely unknown because she had had no chance to win her spurs in combat, but Amberjack had originality and dash. Trigger II, the first of an entirely new class of submarines to enter service, had been a failure because of bad engines. Only recently, approximately eight years after construction and at last fitted with brand new engines, she was showing her mettle as one of the finest diesel submarines in the force. Salamonie, my previous ship, oldest of them all except the never-forgotten Lea, though still a “producer” was nearly worn out from years of strenuous operation.

  But none of these, I knew instantly, had the heart and drive of Triton. The way she leaped ahead when the power was applied made my heart leap, too; we could actually feel the acceleration as we gave her the gun. Water streamed by us on both sides; spray pelted our faces on the bridge and more splashed against its forward edge into thousands of flying, multicolored droplets in the early morning sunshine.

  We headed her southeast into Block Island Sound and toward Montauk Point, aiming her foaming bow directly toward the morning sun.

  In an unbelievably short time we had roared past Cerberus Shoals. Shortly afterward, as we changed course to due south, Montauk Point came up to starboard, and soon we were free on the ocean where two years ago I had steamed with Salamonie and where fifteen years ago German submarines were on the prowl. I kept calling down below for reports of our speed, must have grinned like a small boy each time I heard the figures.

  Once clear of the shoal water, I turned the deck over to Brodie and went below to see for myself how things were going. Everywhere about me was an air of relaxed, delighted intensity. Triton was handling almost unbelievably well. There were nothing but smiles in the control room, torpedo rooms, and galley. In the machinery spaces, men were doing their routine tasks with a light in their eyes and a lilt in their voices I had never seen before. One might have imagined we were an orchestra, playing on a new and greater instrument. This air of confident optimism pervaded the ship, and as I listened to the reports coming and going, the watch reliefs turning over, the reports of log entries and the various other minutiae that go into operating a ship, I knew that we had a crew and a ship equal to the best anyone had ever had the good fortune to command. Except for a handful of “boot seamen,” we were all veterans; our first hours under way had been going so smoothly one might have surmised our crew had been working together for years.

  Even taciturn Admiral Rickover, who rarely expressed pleasure with anything (holding, I suspect that to do so might cause his underlings to relax when they should be working harder than ever), was forced to admit that he had never witnessed a more successful beginning to a set of trials. I caught a hint of a smile on his face as I sought him out in the forward engine room.

  “Admiral, the water will be deep enough to dive very shortly, and with your permission we’ll go ahead and take her down as originally scheduled.”

  Admiral Rickover nodded. While not exactly deafening, the roar of machinery was a high-pitched symphony composed of many different sounds from hundreds of pieces of machinery, all operating in a well-ordered cacophony of rhythm. To me, it was sheer music. Music it must have been to him, too, even though I could detect no visible sign.

  I left the engine room and proceeded aft through the remaining engineering spaces, finally reaching the after torpedo room. There, all was calm except for the noise of two huge propellers whirling away just outside. I listened to them carefully. It was hard to realize that they were only a few feet from me, spinning with violent energy, driving water aft at an unprecedented speed and putting more horsepower into the ocean than any submarine had ever done. I could feel the induced vibration shaking the entire after structure of the ship. The noise of the propellers and the roar of the water as it raced past our hull were almost as loud as the machinery a few compartments forward.

  “Do you think you could sleep through this, Rowlands?” I asked the husky First Class Torpedoman’s Mate in charge of the after torpedo room.

  Rowlands grinned. “You can sleep through anything if you’re tired enough, sir, but it sure is noisy.”

  “She’ll quiet down a lot when we dive,” I pointed out.

  Rowlands agreed. “But we’ll have to go pretty deep, Captain, to quiet down them spinning wheels with all that power.”

  He was right. The deeper you go, the less noise your propellers make, but the bigger they are and the faster they spin, the more noise they make. Triton’s propellers, eleven feet in diameter, turning far faster than any other submarine’s, could not avoid making noise at their present shallow depth. But, of course, no other submarine could go as fast on the surface as Triton; when we slowed down to comparable speeds or when we submerged, the chances were that our ship would be as quiet as the others—perhaps quieter.

  It was
nearly time to dive. I hurried forward. Lieutenant Tom Thamm, Triton’s Diving Officer, was already at his station with his number one diving crew. This entire group had trained together for several months at the submarine dive simulator at Electric Boat and at another, fancier, one in the Submarine Base; but, of course, this was the first opportunity for them actually to dive the ship.

  They were, naturally, somewhat keyed up. The weights in a submarine must be so balanced that when she fills her main ballast tanks the ship will be in precisely neutral buoyancy. Otherwise, she would not be controllable. Naturally, as stores or torpedoes are put aboard, consumed, fired, or unloaded, there are changes in internal weights. These are compensated for by the bow and stern trimming tanks, and by two auxiliary tanks located amidships. These four tanks are known as “variable tanks,” because the amount of water they contain may be varied. This can be done without danger of rupture due to internal or external pressure. The “ballast tanks,” by contrast, are always open at the bottom, are empty for buoyancy when the ship is surfaced, and must be fully flooded to dive her. One of the trickiest problems in designing a submarine is to calculate the weights and the volumes so that, with all conceivable weights out of the ship, it is still possible to put enough water into the variable tanks to achieve neutral buoyancy. Conversely, she must be designed so that with maximum weight on board, enough water can be pumped out to restore her to neutral buoyancy. (Ballast tanks cannot be used for this, despite the misleading name, for they must always be fully flooded when submerged. Since they are never under any pressure differential, they are lightly constructed, unlike the extremely rugged variable tanks.)

  As Diving Officer, Tom’s job was to work out the compensation under the load condition that existed at any given time, and to calculate exactly how much water was required in each variable tank to insure that when Triton’s main ballast tanks were flooded, the ship would be both in neutral buoyancy and balanced fore and aft. When the right amounts of water are thus in her variable tanks, the ship, in submarine parlance, is in “diving trim” or “compensated.”

  “The ship is rigged for dive and compensated, Captain,” Tom reported.

  A submarine cannot submerge until it is “rigged for dive,” by which is meant that all the proper equipment for diving is in correct position, either open or shut, in power or set for hand operation as designated, and that every compartment has been inspected, both by the crew members responsible for rigging it and by an officer detailed to check it. There have been cases when a submarine was lost, seriously damaged, or suffered loss of life because of an improper rig somewhere.

  “How is your trim?” I asked.

  “I’ve pumped it all in,” Thamm said. He added, “I guess we’ll find out how good the trim is as soon as we pull the plug.”

  The indicator lights on the Ballast Control Panel showed that we were ready to dive, except that our main air inlet pipe and the bridge hatch were still open.

  “Shut the induction, Tom,” I said.

  At Thamm’s signaled order, Fitzjarrald, hovering over the Ballast Control Panel, moved the control toggle switch to the shut position.

  I picked up the microphone controlling the speaker on the bridge, told Brodie to reduce speed and shift his watch to the conning tower. There was a “clink” of annunciators, a clatter of feet on ladder rungs, a thump as the bridge hatch slammed shut. The Ballast Control Panel indicated that the last important hull opening was now closed.

  “All clear topside!” Brodie’s voice came from the conning tower, where, according to plan, he would be manning the periscope.

  “Bleed air, Tom,” I said.

  Thamm picked up a microphone in his turn. “Engine room, this is control. Bleed high-pressure air into the ship!”

  For our first dive, we were using the so-called “safe-diving procedure.” For the moment, we were driving along on the surface, entirely sealed, with no one topside. In the meantime, high-pressure air was being released from a connection in the engine room to increase the air pressure slightly within Triton’s hull. If air could not leak out of the ship, then presumably water could not leak in. At the Diving Control Panel was a barometer which would indicate the pressure inside the ship. If this pressure rose and did not drop back after the air valve was shut, the ship had to be airtight.

  Thamm, Fitzjarrald, and I inspected the barometer closely. The needle rose a short distance, then stopped rising and remained rock steady.

  Tom took a long minute to watch it carefully. Finally satisfied, he nodded to me. “The ship is tight, sir.”

  An interested group of observers had silently gathered in the control room. All experienced submariners, some of them tops in the field of submarine construction and design, every visitor aboard had a keen interest in Triton’s first dive. I gave Brodie the order to sound the diving alarm, and a raucous, automobilelike horn reverberated through the ship. Fitzjarrald, his hands on two of the control buttons on the Ballast Control Panel, was watching Thamm.

  “Open the vents,” Tom ordered.

  Swiftly, the Chief ran his fingers down the panel of switches opening Triton’s main vents to the sea. The rush of water into the tanks could be heard through the thick steel plating of the ship’s hull.

  Thamm waited several seconds, then ordered, “Shut the vents.”

  This also was by prearrangement. Our purpose on this first dive was to ease Triton down into the depths easily and gently. Should something be radically wrong with the compensation, or should the controls somehow fail to function properly, we wanted to be able to regulate things immediately. Eight thousand tons of insensate steel running out of control could be a frightening, possibly disastrous experience.

  Another long moment went by while Thamm checked all his instruments. Though lower in the water by several feet, Triton was not yet submerged. Again Tom ordered the vents reopened, and again he shut them. The third time he opened them still longer, and as we felt Triton angling down at the bow, he opened them all. It had taken us several minutes to dive, but we were all well satisfied; our ship had performed exactly as we had predicted. Later, of course, we would strive for a faster diving time.

  The submerged trials started out simply, but rapidly increased in severity. Soon we were running the entire gamut of submerged operations, and our feeling of pride and confidence in our ship grew steadily. Triton behaved beautifully, like the queen she was designed to be. Despite her huge bulk, she could turn around so fast that her gyrocompass indicator would spin like a top in front of the helmsmen. When up or down plane angles were used, she responded immediately—and the smallest angle on the planes was sufficient to bend her to our wishes. When “flank speed” was ordered, we were surprised and delighted; surfaced she was by design faster than any submarine, faster than most surface ships, in fact. Speed under water had been a secondary consideration; yet, submerged, only her immediate predecessor, the football-shaped Skipjack, could equal her. There was absolutely no sensation of passage through the water, nor any water noise. Much of the noise created by a speeding ship is a result of the mixture of air and water at the surface. Thus the water noise is largely a boundary effect. But when the ship is deeply submerged, there is no such boundary, no opportunity for air to mix with water. Our superstructure and hull were firm and solid; there was no rattling or vibration here either; no noise of any kind except for Triton’s propellers and internal machinery back aft.

  Whenever I could absent myself from the control room, which was not very often on this first day under way, I took a turn through the machinery spaces. There, everyone was smiling. Assistant Engineer Don Fears, part of the time Engineering Officer of the Watch in number two engine room and later occupying himself by a continuous working check of all operating equipment, reflected joy and pride every time I saw him. So did Les Kelly, who, as Triton’s Chief Engineer, had overall responsibility for the entire plant. Pat McDonald, our Reactor Control Officer, responsible for theory and practice insofar as the reactors were con
cerned, was positively ebullient.

  “How’s it going, Pat?” I asked him, cornering him in the reactor monitoring area which someone—Pat himself, I had always suspected—had nicknamed “Idiot’s Alley.”

  “Just fine, Captain, just fine!” answered Pat. “She’s humming away like a big watch. I wouldn’t be afraid to take her clean across the Atlantic this very minute—just look at this!”

  Pat pointed with his slide rule to one of the hundred or so “read-out” indicator dials which lined both sides of “Idiot’s Alley.” I looked. The Power Output dial was approaching the edge of the full power mark.

  “We crept up on it slowly,” said Pat, “but we’ve been running just below full power now for the past hour and a half. The Admiral sure believes in working out the machinery!”

  “You can say that again,” I told him. “When the Nautilus prototype out in Idaho was first fired up, he made them take it on a simulated voyage at full power all the way to Europe. Regular watches, course charted, daily positions, and all that. There weren’t many who said it wouldn’t work after that.”

  “Where does the standard Navy four-hour full-power trial come into this picture?” Pat asked.

  “Sometime when we’ve got nothing else to do we’ll run one off just to get it on the record,” I said. “You don’t suppose Admiral Rickover will let Les cut this initial run short of full power, do you—or that four measly hours will satisfy him? Any more than it would satisfy you, if you had to be on board this ship in combat?”

  Pat grinned. Then, as we watched the Power Output dial, the needle slowly climbed until it was exactly centered on the full power mark.

  “There’s part of the answer, Pat,” I said. “Excuse me, but this I want to see,” and I started aft through the watertight door into the engine room, leaving a Reactor Control Officer staring with delight at the evidence his monitoring instruments were presenting.

  In number one engine room, George Troffer had the EOOW watch. Les Kelly was standing right behind him, and Admiral Rickover was seated on a tool chest a few feet away, absorbed in a red-covered book which I took to be a power plant testing manual of some sort. With a side glance at the Admiral, who showed no sign that he had noticed my appearance, I addressed myself to Kelly. “Les, how much power are you indicating back here?” I asked. I had to shout to be heard above the powerful roar of the engine.