Silent and Unseen

by Alfred McLaren

  One Helluva Close Call

  It was early in the evening during the late spring of 1962, and Seadragon was submerged in deep water in one of the more distant Hawaiian submarine operating areas. We were there for the sole purpose of testing a prototype passive low-frequency sonar suite, called the sound data gathering equipment (SDGE). This system would enable nuclear attack submarines to detect and track very distant contacts of interest. Navigationally and tactically, we couldn’t be better positioned for this exercise, since we were in the near proximity of several major shipping and military traffic lanes across the Pacific Ocean.

  At the time I was the weapons officer and the only officer who had been with Seadragon since her final months in Portsmouth during the early summer of 1960. I was also the only officer remaining who had taken part in her Atlantic-to-Pacific voyage via the Northwest Passage and the North Pole. At this point, therefore, I was the most experienced officer, having served as supply and commissary officer, missile guidance officer, reactor officer, electrical division officer, damage control assistant and diving officer, main propulsion assistant, and acting engineer for several months. I had additionally participated in an almost-six-month deployment to WestPac during the summer and fall of 1961 and had taken part in Cold War operations assigned to Seadragon since the fall of 1960.

  Seadragon was on station and essentially at all stop. The diving officer was in the final stages of trimming the boat for neutral buoyancy at a depth that would be optimum. Were we on Cold War patrol using SDGE, the fit would have been perfect for passive acoustic detection of low-frequency emissions—broadband, narrow band, and transient—from both surfaced and submerged targets of interest. The battle stations watch section, made up of our most experienced crewmembers, had completed relieving the regular submerged operations watch section, and a condition of patrol-quiet pertained throughout the boat. Ultra-quiet was to follow once the diving officer, Lieutenant P, felt he had achieved a state of buoyancy such that Seadragon could hover at a depth of 350 feet for lengthy periods without the need to initiate noise-generating actions like pumping or flooding water from and to the boat’s variable ballast tanks. The goal tonight was to ensure that no shipboard noise of any sort was generated that might interfere with optimum performance of the equipment to be tested. Ideally, we wanted a condition where, by not radiating noise of any sort, Seadragon would be quieter than the surrounding sea state.

  The diving officer reported, “Three hundred and fifty feet, trim satisfactory!,” to the officer of the deck, who responded, “Very well.” “Rig for ultra-quiet! Rig for ultra-quiet!” was then passed over the sound-powered phones to all compartments.

  For a sonar test of the kind Seadragon was about to conduct, it was necessary to fully shut down the nuclear reactor. Essential rotating equipment, such as the priming pumps for the trim and drain systems throughout the boat, had to be secured.3 All nonessential equipment was to be shut down as well. Crewmembers not on watch or test-monitoring positions were to repair either to their bunks or to the crews mess. They were to remain there until further ordered. They could not even use one of the boat’s three heads. All hands, of course, remained free to move and take whatever action was necessary if an actual emergency suddenly developed like flooding or fire.

  Once ultra-quiet was achieved, all compartment bilges were confirmed dry or pumped dry, and Seadragon was at a very stable degree of neutral buoyancy, we were ready to take the next step. The command watch officer, who was the exec, would be supervising the operation. He directed the officer of the deck to establish an even more austere condition of quietness throughout the boat, called super-quiet, to support the SDGE sonar test.4

  Once the foregoing had been completed, the diving officer had the difficult task of maintaining the boat in a neutrally buoyant condition and on depth for whatever length of time was required, ordinarily two to three hours, to test the capabilities of the SDGE system. If suction was lost on the trim and drain pumps, and depth control was subsequently lost, only Seadragon’s two battery-powered emergency propulsion motors would be instantly available to drive both propeller shafts to regain depth control. This was with the understanding that an overall speed of no more than four to five knots could be attained. If more speed were required, either upward to the surface or downward through test and crush depths, serious loss of depth control could be countered only if the diving officer recognized the situation and took quick action. He would call for immediately flooding the variable ballast tanks or he would initiate a partial or full blow of high-pressure air to all MBTs to prevent what could be a catastrophic depth change. The great danger of loss of depth control is that it can rapidly accelerate, possibly leading to collision with a ship on the surface or, conversely, passing through crush depth and imploding. In summary, Seadragon, or any other nuclear submarine of that era, was in an exceedingly vulnerable and potentially unsafe condition whenever tests of the SDGE and similar experimental sonar equipments were conducted.

  The condition of super-quiet and near-perfect neutral buoyancy at a depth of 350 feet was achieved by approximately 9:30 that evening. The SDGE sonar test was commenced and so reported by the officer of the deck to the command watch officer (exec) on the scene and to the captain who, mysteriously, was in his stateroom with the door closed, just forward of Seadragon’s control room.

  Although the captain had been in command for well over a year, his knowledge of Seadragon’s capabilities and limitations, not to mention his expressed knowledge of submarine operations in general, had not inspired a great deal of confidence in his abilities or in his determination to ensure our general well-being and safety should we suddenly find ourselves in an operational emergency or a Cold War suddenly grown hot. Our lives were in his hands, yet he remained largely an enigma. We were about to conduct a completely unfamiliar and high-risk operation. Certainly the captain’s reputation with the crew was not helped on this particular evening by his already being in bed, or so we assumed.

  With the exception of the chief of the boat and a number of senior chief petty officers who had chosen to hang around the control room, those men not needed in their particular battle stations position were either in their bunks or in the crews mess. So too were several officers not on duty, with the exception of a few of us in the wardroom.

  About an hour and a half into the test, a messenger rushed in and whispered to me excitedly, “Lieutenant, lieutenant, the chief of the watch requests you come to the control room immediately!” I hurried after him. As I entered the control room, I saw alarm on the faces of all the enlisted watch standers, particularly the chief of the watch and the auxiliary man of the watch, who was operating the high-pressure air manifold.

  The chief of the watch, with a gesture, directed my attention to the depth gauge above the planes and helmsmen. It indicated we were well below the 350-foot depth called for by the test and just twenty feet short of Seadragon’s test depth of seven hundred feet. It was obvious the boat was sinking at an accelerating rate of descent. The auxiliary man of the watch already had his hands on the high-pressure air valves as he anxiously awaited a command from someone to “Blow all main ballast tanks!” The diving officer, the officer of the deck, and the exec, who was acting as command watch officer, on the other hand, appeared eerily calm considering the condition of extremis that Seadragon was rapidly entering.

  The diving officer was attempting to use the drain pump, ordinarily used as a back-up to the trim pump, to pump water from the trim tanks to sea in order to check the boat’s downward descent and regain positive buoyancy. As I moved into the control room, he looked at me saying, “The trim pump doesn’t work either!” I immediately reminded all within earshot that suction had in all probability been lost on both these critically important pumps because their respective priming pumps had been defused as part of the rig for super-quiet. I turned toward the exec and officer of the deck and said, “I strongly recommend that you blow all main ballast tanks now!” At the same ti
me I recommended they immediately inform the commanding officer of the situation.

  Amazingly, there was no reaction or response from either officer. They appeared to be mesmerized by the increasingly dangerous predicament that Seadragon was in. In the meantime, the expressions on the faces of the chief of the watch and the auxiliary man of the watch were agonized, pleading for some forceful corrective action to be taken at once.

  Since there was no time to lose, I stepped in as Seadragon’s senior watch officer and ordered, “Blow all main ballast tanks!” I picked up the 1MC mike and ordered, “Maneuvering, conn, make maximum turns on the EPMs [emergency propulsion motors]!” I followed this with, “Maneuvering, conn, commence emergency reactor startup!”

  The engineering officer of the watch in the maneuvering room acknowledged and repeated both orders to the engineering watch who instantly responded. Even so, Seadragon continued to sink below test depth.

  I then used the 1MC to pass the word: “Captain to the conn! Captain to the conn!” We were now at a depth of almost seven hundred fifty feet, fifty feet below test depth, with no indication that the actions I had ordered were going to arrest, much less reverse, our rapid descent. Seadragon’s hull was beginning to make loud cracking and groaning noises. Small seawater leaks were being reported from throughout the boat. As we continued to descend, I made status reports to the captain via a messenger and another urgent request, “Captain to the control room! Captain to the control room!” over the 1MC system.

  As we passed seven hundred eighty feet, en route to our still-classified crush depth, Seadragon’s descent began to slow ever so gradually. Finally, at just short of eight hundred feet, or one hundred feet below test depth, we briefly paused and then began to ascend very slowly. By this time everyone’s knees were shaking. Still, to my utter consternation, the captain had yet to make an appearance. Moreover, neither the exec nor the officer of the deck had moved or even made a sound up to this point. They seemed not to have emerged from their mesmerized state. As we slowly passed through 730 feet on the way up, the engineering officer of the watch reported, “Reactor critical!” He further reported that the engineering watch had commenced an emergency warm-up of the ship’s service and main propulsion turbine generators and that he expected maneuvering would be ready to answer all bells (main propulsion orders) in a few minutes.

  I then ordered, “Secure from super-quiet! Secure from super-quiet!” I further directed the engineering officer of the watch to restore all equipment and systems secured for the SDGE sonar test to full operation as soon as possible. The diving officer was ordered to take charge of the dive and to do all he could with the bow and stern planes to slow our ascent.

  “Take charge of the dive! Make your depth 150 feet!” I ordered. “Take charge of the dive! Make your depth 150 feet!” the diving officer responded. The diving officer of the watch now had speed control and initially ordered maneuvering to make turns for sixteen knots as soon as possible. Maneuvering acknowledged the command and began to provide a steadily increasing amount of main propulsion power.

  The dire operational situation up to this point had not afforded us an opportunity to launch a series of emergency red flares to warn off any ships that might be in the vicinity. The key question of concern now was whether we would have main propulsion power back in sufficient time to level Seadragon off at a safe depth of at least one hundred feet below the surface. Sonar had been actively searching for indications of close contacts and reported none. We still could not be sure that the surface was completely clear above us, even so, since we were not yet able to safely change course and to clear our baffles to check for contacts astern of us. My concern about the possibility of inadvertently colliding with a contact on the surface above us intensified as Seadragon began to ascend more rapidly.

  Shortly after beginning the ascent I directed an officer, who had entered the control room a few minutes earlier to assist, to check on the status of the captain. I asked him to determine, if he could, why the captain had not been able to come to the control room during the emergency. The officer soon returned, reporting that the captain was still in bed.

  I glanced at the exec to note his reaction, but he just shrugged his shoulders and looked away. In the meantime, with the steadily decreasing water density and the regain of main propulsion power, Seadragon’s ascent finally began to slow. As we approached a depth of two hundred feet, I felt confident enough to order the MBT vents cycled several times and then left open. It was clear it was not going to be possible to level off at one hundred fifty feet, so I next ordered, “Make your depth one hundred feet!” “Make your depth one hundred feet!” the diving officer responded.

  A subsequent burst of speed thanks to our newly regained main propulsion enabled the diving officer to level the boat off smartly at one hundred feet. The diving officer now proceeded to trim the boat to achieve neutral buoyancy in combination with judicious decreasing of speed as we remained at depth. We cleared baffles to ensure that the surface overhead was all clear prior to continuing on to periscope depth.

  “No close contacts!” reported sonar several minutes later. “Up periscope!” called the exec, who had been taking a more active interest in our recovery since we had begun our ascent. I continued in the role of officer of the deck, which I had so abruptly taken over earlier. The diving officer soon reported, “Trim satisfactory!”

  The exec searched the surface overhead for signs of nearby contacts or obstacles with which we might collide. As we continued to clear baffles to search astern, sonar confirmed his earlier report of “No close contacts!” The exec next ordered, “Six five feet smartly! Make turns for three knots!”

  Seadragon proceeded to plane smoothly up to periscope depth without incident. The exec made a series of rapid 360-degree low- and high-power periscope searches and reported, “No surface or air contacts!” He then turned the periscope, and watch, over to me and proceeded out of the control room to confer, for want of a better term, with the captain. Radio began to copy our broadcast as we continued to complete securing from an unusually exciting SDGE sonar test. The boat was restored to patrol-quiet normalcy. We remained at periscope depth at minimum turns in our assigned exercise area until early morning. How the overall results of the special sonar test were going to be reported to our superiors was anyone’s guess.

  The captain had yet to appear in the control room, much less do anything more than just acknowledge, without question or comment, the continuous stream of reports he had been receiving via the sound-powered telephones since the emergency first developed. He had offered nothing at any time in the way of advice or orders. Certainly the more senior of us wondered if he had had a stroke or similar debilitating medical emergency.

  He did not appear again until breakfast, looking perfectly normal, as if nothing undue had happened. It was quite evident, however, that he had no interest in talking about the previous evening’s events. One would do so only at his peril. Since the subject remained uppermost in everyone else’s mind, the wardroom atmosphere was subdued as we officers quietly finished breakfast. En route to Pearl Harbor, the exec made it clear to all that upon our return to port, absolutely nothing was to be said about what had transpired during the SDGE sonar test.

  We remained in port for another week or so of routine shipboard maintenance, and life went on as before. What we had just gone through was truly the stuff of nightmares, and definitely trauma producing, yet we all acted as if none of us had come as close as we had to losing our boat and our lives.

  Four days after the event, a messenger informed me that the captain wanted to see me in his stateroom immediately. I knocked and, upon his response, entered. He asked me to close the door and then, to my utter astonishment, proceeded to dress me down severely for, as he termed it, “arbitrarily taking over the watch” during the course of the SDGE sonar test. I listened incredulously and with mounting outrage as he continued to chew me out for saving Seadragon from complete disaster. Wisely I kept
my tongue and temper. As soon as the captain had finished, I left his stateroom and the boat and walked several piers down to where Seadragon’s previous exec, Jim Strong, had recently taken command of a diesel boat. He was awaiting orders to a new nuclear attack submarine being constructed at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.

  Fortunately, he was on board. A crewmember topside ushered me down to the captain’s stateroom. Once the door was closed, I poured out all that had occurred during Seadragon’s recent period at sea. I concluded with the statement that I wanted to get off the submarine as soon as possible and asked if he could help me. Strong was a true professional and a gentleman. After asking a few questions, he said he would see what he could do and I was not to worry or do anything rash. Within a week I received dispatch orders to the submarine Jack (SSN 605), that our old exec, Jim Strong, was to take command of. I was to be detached the following month and, following thirty days’ leave, join her new construction crew.

  Not surprisingly, this did not sit well with either my commanding officer or the exec. Despite their best efforts to get them rescinded, the orders appeared firm and unchangeable. To the best of my knowledge, the two never found out how this sudden receipt of orders came about.

  My family and I departed Seadragon and Pearl Harbor as scheduled in late May 1962 via the wonderful old Matson luxury liner Lurline, en route to San Francisco. There, we picked up a new car and leisurely drove across the continent to Portsmouth via Bangor, Washington, where my father, Dad McLaren, commanded the Naval Ammunition Depot and the Naval Torpedo Station at Keyport, and then via the Trans-Canadian Highway.

  Seadragon’s Demise

  On her second Arctic expedition during the summer of 1962, Seadragon was joined by USS Skate, coming from the Atlantic. They rendezvoused under the vast Arctic Ocean ice pack on 31 July, and both boats surfaced together at the North Pole on 2 August. Seadragon returned once more to the Arctic Ocean for classified operations in 1973.