by Larry Bond
“Oh, that’s just my way of telling them apart. The ‘H’ stands for Huey and the ‘D’ stands for Duey.”
Jerry just stood there and stared. The quizzical look on his face made Emily chuckle.
“You mean to tell me you named those two vehicles after Donald Duck’s nephews?”
“Ahh, well, uh. yes… and no,” answered Emily, whose face started to blush.
“Okay, that was as clear as mud,” replied Jerry sarcastically. “C’mon, what do the letters really stand for?”
“I told you,” said Emily defensively. “My babies are named after two of the maintenance robots from the 1971 science fiction movie Silent Running. The robots were named after Donald’s nephews.”
“Silent Running.?” asked a befuddled Jerry. “Isn’t that a submarine movie?”
“Oh, no! It’s classic sci-fi!” Emily’s face brightened, and she became more animated as she described the movie to Jerry. “There were these three spaceships carrying the last existing forests in domes, awaiting the message to return to Earth and renew the world following a devastating nuclear war. And on each ship there were three maintenance robots, and on the Valley Forge the three robots were named Huey, Duey, and Louie.”
Jerry could only stare in utter amazement as Emily just kept babbling on about this movie. She had the same unrestrained zeal for science fiction that his sisters had for shoes, jewelry, and boys. Jerry was now absolutely convinced that Emily Davis was a geek, a nerd — another brilliant engineer who didn’t appear to have a life. She went on for ten more minutes and finally concluded by describing how the tragic hero kills himself with a nuclear bomb. “It’s a wonderful movie with lots of depth and emotion all tied together in a futuristic spaceship motif. You really should see it sometime.”
“Let me get this straight,” Jerry said with deep concern in his voice. “Your favorite movie is about a ship. It has two robots named Huey and Duey. The movie has an environmental theme to it. Its title is Silent Running, which is something we will probably be doing a lot of. And at end, the hero is killed by a nuke. Are you trying to tell me something here?”
“What?” It was now Emily’s turn to be confused. But after a few moments, her eyes widened, her mouth dropped, and she sputtered, “Oh. Oh! No, no, I didn’t mean anything like that at all, Jerry!”
“Good! I’m glad to hear it, because I don’t like your ending.” Both of them laughed over Jerry’s response. The sound was so loud that all of the torpedomen stopped and looked over at the two of them. Foster had absolute disdain on his face.
Before Jerry could explain, the IMC announced, “Man ROV launch stations.”
Pulling himself together, Jerry looked over at Foster and ordered, “Senior Chief, please start loading Huey into tube three.”
Perplexed, Foster replied, “Excuse me, sir?”
“The ROV with the ‘H’ on it, that’s Huey. Please load it into tube three.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Foster said coldly.
Foster turned and signaled TM1 Moran, who opened the breech door for tube three remotely from the weapons launching console. Greer then inspected the tube with a flashlight, while Foster and the other torpedomen positioned the loading tray with the ROV so it lined up with tube three. The hydraulic rammer was connected, and Huey was slowly pushed into the tube, stern first and upside down. Emily showed the torpedomen how to thread the fiber-optic cable through the small penetration in the breech door and made sure there was enough slack so the cable could be hooked up to the connection box on the inboard side of the tube.
Foster and Lee then attached the deployment drogue to the nose probe on the ROV and slipped the retrieval cable through a larger breech door penetration and attached it to the drogue body. Finally a breech support ring was installed in the tube, which firmly secured the ROV and would prevent it from moving inadvertently. After the loading had been finished, Emily and Jerry inspected the ROV to make sure everything was in order. For Jerry, this was more of a quick course on what to look for when double-checking to see that a ROV had been loaded properly.
Satisfied that everything was correct, Emily asked Moran to shut and lock the breech door. She then took the fiber-optic cable, crimped on a connector, and hooked it up to the connection box. While the loading process went well, it still took twenty minutes to complete and it was clear from the torpedo room phone talker that the Captain was getting impatient.
Jerry and Emily hurried back over to the control pallet, and while Jerry put on his headset, Emily brought Huey to life. After a quick diagnostic check, she informed Jerry that everything was functioning normally and that Huey was ready to go. Jerry then reported to the control room, “Control, U-bay. ROV has been loaded and tested. Test satisfactory. Request permission to flood tube three, equalize to sea pressure, and open the outer door.”
The Chief of the Watch in control acknowledged the request and relayed it on to the OOD, who in turn asked the Captain. It didn’t take long before “Permission granted” was passed back to Jerry. Looking over toward Moran, Jerry called out in a loud voice, “Launcher, flood tube three, equalize to sea pressure, and open the outer door.”
“Flood tube three, equalize to sea pressure, and open the outer door, aye, sir,” replied Moran.
Looking back down at the checklist, Jerry marked off the step with a grease pencil. He then looked at the ship’s speed, the digital display read five knots, and he requested control to slow to two knots — bare steerageway.
“Sir, tube three outer door open,” reported Moran.
“Very well,” said Jerry. Now all they had to wait for was for Memphis to slow down enough so that the ROV could leave the tube without damaging itself in the process. It took a few minutes, but as soon as the speed indicator read two knots, Jerry contacted control again.
“Control, U-bay. Tube three outer door is open, all launch conditions have been met. Request permission to launch the ROV.”
As Jerry was waiting for permission from control, Dr. Patterson walked into the back of the torpedo room. He waved her over and offered her his chair. Jerry was surprised to hear her say, “Thank you.”
Control relayed the Captain’s permission, and Jerry looked over at TM2 Boyd at the winch controls. “Winch operator, release the brake.”
“Release the brake, aye. Sir, the brake is released,” said Boyd.
“Very Well.” Jerry then turned to Emily and said, “It’s your show now, Dr. Davis. Launch Huey.”
“Right. Engaging thruster,” she said.
“Louder, Emily. Everyone has to hear you,” chided Jerry.
“Engaging thruster,” repeated Emily in a louder voice.
“Cable paying out,” reported Boyd.
“Very well,” acknowledged Jerry.
The display console showed Huey slowly backing out of the tube. Once clear of the submarine’s hull, the ROV swung around in a lazy arc, righting itself, and assumed a position twenty feet below Memphis.
Emily announced that Huey was in the tow position. This was confirmed by Boyd, who reported that the cable was holding. Jerry then ordered the winch brake engaged and informed control that they were ready to begin the tow test. Slowly but steadily, Memphis increased speed from two to eight knots. At each half-knot increment, Boyd reported the tension on the cable. The stresses were within the specifications provided by Draper Labs. With the tow test completed, Jerry requested that the boat’s speed be reduced to five knots in preparation for the next phase of the trials.
While Memphis was slowing down, Seaman Jobin noticed that some water drops were coming from the fiber optic penetration in the breech door. Surprised, he called out to Emily, “Doctor Davis, ma’am, there are some drops of water leaking from the fiber-optic penetration in the door. Is it supposed to do that?”
Jerry took off his headset and walked over to tube three. So did Foster. As they were moving toward the tube, Emily said, “I was warned that the penetrations through the breech door might weep initially. As lon
g as it is just droplets, it should be fine.”
Both Jerry and Foster looked at the very slow but steady drip from the seal around the penetration. Their instinctive dislike of any seawater entering the boat fought against Dr. Davis’ known engineering credentials. “Senior Chief?” Jerry asked hesitantly. Foster looked at his division officer with an equally questioning expression and shrugged his shoulders. “I have no idea if this is normal, sir. But it doesn’t look too bad.”
“Okay, then, let’s continue the test,” said Jerry as he stood up. “Jobin, keep an eye on it. If it gets any worse, sing out.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” replied Jobin.
“What’s next, Dr. Davis?” asked Jerry.
“It’s time to let Huey go for a short swim.” After pushing a few buttons and then pulling back on the joystick, Emily announced, “Detaching from the drogue.”
Jerry watched as Emily activated the forward-looking sonar and the video camera. Instantly, the sonar display showed the outline of Memphis’ hull, but only a vague shadow could be seen on the video screen. She then turned on the two 150-watt underwater lights and the greenish underside became clearly visible.
“Whoa! Way cool,” remarked Jerry softly.
Emily drove Huey about five hundred yards away from Memphis and then back. Satisfied that everything seemed to be in working order, she told Jerry it was time to recover the ROV.
Jerry nodded and called to control. “Control, U-bay. Preparing to recover the ROV. Request permission to flood down, equalize, and open the outer door on tube one.”
Permission was granted, and Moran proceeded to open tube one’s outer door. Normally it would not be possible to open both the outer doors in the same tube nest, but Foster had disabled the mechanical interlock. This was necessary since tube one contained a retractable arm that would be needed to assist in the recovery of the ROV into tube three below.
“Activating docking beacon,” announced Emily. The very-high-frequency acoustic beacon provided precise information on the drogue’s location to the ROVs navigation system. This enabled it to find the drogue and dock. As Huey approached the drogue, Emily tweaked the course with slight nudges of the joystick. Once the nose probe of the ROV edged into the drogue, mechanical clamps latched onto it and held the ROV securely.
Turning off the sonar, video camera, and lights, Emily reported, “Huey is docked and ready to be retrieved.”
“Very well,” said Jerry as he moved over to the retrieval arm station. He turned on the black-and-white video camera and lights and then extended the arm. “Winch operator, slowly reel in the ROV to my mark.” Boyd acknowledged Jerry’s order and began to reel in the cable. Jerry watched the video screen intently, waiting for the first sign that the ROV was near the outer door of tube three. He wished he had as clear a view as Emily did from her vehicle’s video system, but the arm used considerably less advanced technology. Soon the ROV’s form emerged from the shadows. Jerry shouted, “Mark!” and Boyd stopped the winch. He then tried to reach Huey with the arm, but the ROV was still too far away. It took a couple of tries before Jerry got a good grip on Huey’s hull. As Boyd started reeling in again, Jerry moved the ROV into place so that it entered tube three cleanly. As Jerry was stowing the retrieval arm, Boyd called out, “Breech ring contact.”
With a sigh of relief, Jerry ordered, “Launcher, close the outer door on tube three, drain the tube, and open the breech door.” He felt like clapping and Emily had a cautious smile. One down, one to go.
Jerry turned to Foster and said, “Senior Chief, have the men pull Huey from the tube and prepare Duey for its test run as quickly as they can.”
“I know what to do, sir,” replied Foster icily.
“Very well, Senior. Carry on,” responded Jerry casually.
The second test run went more smoothly than the first, and Jerry thought his guys were starting to get the hang of deploying and recovering the ROVs. After Duey was recovered, Jerry sent some of the division off to dinner while the others washed down the two ROVs. The first group returned to perform some of the required maintenance, under Emily’s watchful eye, while the others went to the second sitting.
Both Emily and Dr. Patterson were very pleased with the test runs, and both were confident that the ROVs would perform as expected once Memphis reached the Kara Sea. After everything was completed, and Emily had tucked her babies in for the night, Jerry grabbed a cup of coffee in the wardroom and started studying for his next watch.
All in all, Jerry thought, the day had gone remarkably well. The ROVs had performed to spec, Emily was happy with how things went, and both Hardy and Patterson had been civil. Foster was still a pain in the ass, but he had gotten the job done, and that counted for something. Jerry hoped that maybe, just maybe, this crew had turned the corner and that things would improve in the coming days. Jerry even dared to consider the possibility that this mission might not be as bad as he had originally thought. Only time would tell.
9. DRILL TEAM
May 16, 2005
Atlantic Ocean
The obnoxious wailing woke Jerry from a dead sleep and for a moment he thought it was his alarm clock, but as he reached for it, he woke up a little more. It was loud, way too loud for his alarm clock. As his brain began to function, Jerry recognized the sound. It was the Collision Alarm. There was a flooding casualty somewhere on board the boat.
Berg and Washburn were already out of their bunks and pulling on their poopy suits. As Jerry got up, the alarm stopped and he heard the Chief of the Watch’s voice over the IMC announcing system. “FLOODING IN THE ENGINE ROOM! CASUALTY ASSISTANCE TEAM LAY TO THE ENGINE ROOM!”
Nobody in the stateroom slowed down, and Jerry rediscovered that quickly dressing in a cramped space with two other people took a lot of practice all by itself. He inflicted a nasty blow to Washburn’s rib cage when Jerry’s elbow stuck out a bit too far, and he almost put on Berg’s shoes. As he dressed, Jerry went over his assignment for the different emergency stations. For flooding, he was supposed to muster his division in the torpedo room.
Officers were pouring out of their staterooms like ants from a kicked-over hill. Jerry hurried toward the ladder and slid down the handrails to reach the torpedo room below. Most of the TMs and FTs were already there, including Senior Chief Foster. As he took stock of his spaces, Jerry thought to check his watch. It was 2:23 in the morning.
It was only a drill, of course, so there wasn’t a fountain of cold seawater endangering Memphis. FT3 Larsen was wearing the sound-powered phones that allowed him to pass information on to everyone in the torpedo room as to what was going on in the engine room.
Jerry was ready to sit tight and wait when Foster started grilling the torpedo gang. He pointed to the aft bulkhead. “Seaman Jobin, what do we do if water starts coming under that door? Petty Officer Boyd, how do we fire torpedoes if we lose the high-pressure firing air reducer?”
A door on the aft bulkhead led to a passageway on the lower level, but it wasn’t watertight, so there was little they could do to stop the flow of water. There were, however, emergency procedures for restoring high-pressure firing air, should the reducer fail.
As Boyd simulated setting up the starboard tube nest for a shot, Emily Davis came down the aisle between the torpedo storage racks.
“Is this your damage control station?” Jerry asked.
“What’s that?” Emily asked in return. She seemed nervous.
“The XO was supposed to assign you stations. Places where you’re supposed to go in an emergency,” he explained.
As he spoke, the lights suddenly went out. Battery-powered battle lanterns cut in automatically, creating cones of light filled with angular shadows. Jerry was a little startled, but Davis screamed and headed back toward the door.
“It’s all right!” he called. “They’re just isolating some of the electrical circuits to keep them from shorting out.”
Davis froze, either because of Jerry’s explanation or because the path before her
was dark as well. “It’s just part of the drill.” It was hard to sound soothing without also patronizing her, but she was probably too scared to notice. She held her place between the racks, undecided about which darkness was less threatening. Finally she turned and felt her way back toward Jerry.
TM1 Moran brought over a sound-powered phone headset. “Here, ma’am. Maybe you’d like to listen in on the DC circuit.” He helped her with the headphones and the unfamiliar microphone. Moran then explained how the phones worked; that the energy of her voice created the current that powered the circuit. She grasped the principle instantly and was also interested in the activity on the circuit. “Just don’t press the ‘Talk’ button on top of the mouthpiece,” Moran instructed.
Just as Davis started to calm down, the lights came on, and the IMC announced, “Secure from drill.”
Another voice, the Captain’s, came on the IMC. “That was disgraceful. It took eight minutes for the Casualty Assistance Team to get on scene and twelve minutes to secure the flooding and begin dewatering. Do I have to remind everyone that there is only one watertight bulkhead inside the pressure hull?” It was one of the first things any submariner learned about the Los Angeles class. Only the forward bulkhead to the reactor compartment was fully rated to test depth. The Captain’s caustic reminder was more than a little insulting.
“This was a simple one. In a real flooding casualty, we would have lost vital systems, and the accumulating seawater would have taken out others. But if you prefer standing hip-deep in cold salt water, we’ll let you try it.
“So far, this crew has not demonstrated it is ready to respond to an emergency properly. Until it is, expect more drills. That is all.”
Hardy gave them forty-five minutes before hitting them again. This time it was the general alarm klaxon, followed by “FIRE. FIRE IN THE PORT AC SWITCHBOARD. ALL HANDS DON EABS!” The ventilation fans and lights died immediately, and Jerry had to fumble for a flashlight he kept by his bunk. Berg and Washburn also used them in what now seemed to be an even smaller stateroom.