I was formally qualified for command of submarines on 4 April 1963.
The Thresher Disaster
We bid a sad farewell on 26 January 1963 to Commander Kelly at his change of command of Skipjack and welcomed Lt. Cdr. Shepherd M. “Shep” Jenks as our new skipper. My eight months with Kelly had been pivotal for my Navy career. He had done everything possible to help me more rapidly develop and mature as a submarine officer. He also proved to be a good friend and mentor during our time together on Skipjack and in the years to come.
Commander Jenks came to us fresh from being commissioning engineer of the world’s first ballistic missile submarine, USS George Washington (SSBN 598), but his fame as navigator of USS Nautilus during her 1958 historic first transit of the Arctic Ocean via the North Pole preceded him. We were all quite excited about what the future might hold for Skipjack and her crew. Would we soon be off for the Arctic to further test the capabilities of the world’s fastest and most advanced submarine off the northern shores of our Cold War adversary? Under the command of the submarine force’s acknowledged master navigator, the potential missions for Skipjack were limited only by one’s imagination.
Our primary task as the first of a new class of nuclear attack submarine that could outrun, outmaneuver, and outperform anything on the ocean was to demonstrate Skipjack’s capabilities as an ASW weapon. Skipjack, accordingly, was scheduled for one at-sea exercise after another that pitted us against surface and air ASW forces up and down and across the Atlantic Ocean. These exercises often involved warships of our principal NATO allies such as the United Kingdom’s aircraft carrier HMS Hermes. We operated against ASW-escorted amphibious warfare groups, fast-carrier task forces, and ASW search-and-destroy forces. They were no match for Skipjack’s speed and maneuverability.
It was early afternoon on 10 April, during the course of one of these exercises, that we in the submarine force received the worst possible news. A fleet-wide “Event SUBMISS message” reported that USS Thresher had failed to return to the surface following the conduct of deep-diving tests some 220 miles east of Boston. She had been in company with the submarine rescue vessel USS Skylark (ASR-20). The depth of water chosen for the tests was far in excess of any navy’s ability to conduct successful rescue operations, however. Skylark had lost all contact with Thresher shortly after 9:17 that morning, following the receipt of an alarming series of underwater telephone transmissions from the boat. Beginning at 9:13 a.m., they indicated that Thresher was “experiencing minor difficulty, have positive up-angle, attempting to blow.” Skylark then heard the hiss of compressed air, followed at 9:17 a.m. by a partially recognizable phrase, “exceeding test depth.”2 Skylark conducted an expanding sonar and visual search for Thresher. She continued to call her on the underwater telephone and to signal her on sonar until late afternoon, with no success. The following day, 11 April 1963, the U.S. Navy officially declared Thresher lost with all hands: ten officers, one hundred eight enlisted crewmembers, and twenty-one riders (seventeen civilian technicians and four shipyard/staff officers).
A subsequent court of inquiry, after studying all available data and pictures taken by the bathyscaph Trieste, found that the submarine had broken up into six major sections, with the majority of the debris contained within a single area about four hundred yards square on the ocean floor. The court concluded that the loss of Thresher was due in all probability to a casting, piping, or welding failure that had flooded the engine room from sea. This water probably caused electrical failures that automatically shut down the nuclear reactor, causing an initial power loss, severe flooding, and the eventual loss of the boat as she descended through her estimated crush depth.3 Many of Thresher’s piping joints were sil-brazed, and hence were not as strong as standard welded joints, as discussed earlier.
All on board Skipjack were devastated. Most of our crew and officers had come to know Thresher’s crew and shipyard civilians while we were in Portsmouth Naval Shipyard together during the previous year. Many of us, in addition, had served on other submarines with those lost on Thresher. Her skipper was Lt. Cdr. Wes Harvey, the exec when I was on Seadragon. The engineer, Lt. Cdr. John Lyman, and I had gone to submarine school and nuclear power school together. Lt. Cdr. Mike J. DiNola had been a neighbor of mine in Pearl Harbor, and I had known Lt. Merrill F. Collier from U.S. Naval Academy days.
The disaster of Thresher did not lead any of Skipjack’s officers or crew to question his choice to serve on submarines. There were no requests to leave the submarine force in the months that followed, to the best of my knowledge. My mother and one sister did call and plead with me to get out of submarines as soon as possible, but neither my wife Mary nor my father, Capt. William F. McLaren, said a thing. I think most of us on Skipjack continued to believe that we were invulnerable and that no such accident would ever happen to us.
Suddenly a Navigator
It was in the middle of the night during one of the fleet ASW exercises in early May 1963 that I was to take on a challenging new assignment. Shortly after 2:00 a.m., not more than an hour after I had gone to bed following a busy evening’s conning watch while we were submerged, the messenger of the watch awakened me to say the captain wanted me to come to the control room immediately. With butterflies in my stomach, I raced to the control room. Captain Jenks was standing at the chart table with Skipjack’s chief quartermaster. Curiously, the hospital corpsman was there as well.
“Good morning, Mr. Navigator,” the captain stated upon seeing me. “Sir?” was my astonished reply. I was at the time the main propulsion assistant to Skipjack’s engineer, Lt. Cdr. Bud Kauderer. I already had considerable time-consuming responsibilities that involved everything associated with Skipjack’s steam propulsion plant.
As it happened, Lt. Ted Hussey, Skipjack’s navigator, had come down with the mumps. He had been immediately relieved of all duties and isolated to his bunk until he could be off-loaded on shore. I was to replace Hussey as soon as I had been briefed on Skipjack’s current navigational position by the chief quartermaster, confirmed it to my satisfaction, and reported to the captain that I was ready to assume all responsibilities associated with the job. I would also pick up Ted’s duties as operations and intelligence officer and electronics material officer. I was in a state of shock. It was not so much that I didn’t have a good feel for where Skipjack was geographically and what she had been doing; I had, after all, just gotten off the conning watch only a few hours before. But our captain was a master navigator and had already established extremely high standards in this department, among others. How could I match his expertise?
We soon came up to periscope depth during a brief rest period between exercises. I was thus able to fix our position electronically, thanks to excellent Loran coverage within our Northeast Atlantic operating area.4 Thankfully, my plotted position was within a mile of that indicated by dead reckoning. With the quartermaster’s working navigational chart tucked under my arm, I reported to the captain in the wardroom. Lieutenant Commander Jenks, who was always somewhat quiet and austere, examined this latest position closely. He then nodded his head and proceeded to tell me what he expected of the Skipjack’s new navigator. He wanted to know just where we were, at all times, whether submerged or on the surface. I was to run my new department, which consisted of enlisted quartermasters and electronics technicians of various rates and degrees of experience, so as to completely support this requirement. Lieutenant Commander Jenks also made it clear that he expected me to personally fix our navigational position every two hours while at sea. Whew! There was definitely no possibility I would be getting too much sleep anytime soon. Thanks to my youth—I was just thirty-one years old—and my good health, I adapted to this new routine without any particular difficulty. I remained on the regular conning officer watch bill as well, although I was able to turn over my myriad duties as main propulsion assistant to another officer within the engineering department.
The next few days were intense. In between navigational fix
es, I verified with the chief quartermaster, who was also the assistant navigator, that we had a full navigational chart allowance with all the latest corrections entered. All this went hand in hand with confirming that we had a full allowance of all required equipments, including verifying that all supporting electronic systems such as Loran, Omega, and the Radio Direction Finder were fully operational within required accuracy specifications.5 I was simultaneously to keep the job of navigator, operations and intelligence officer, and electronics material officer until well into the fall of 1963. During this period, Skipjack conducted a two-month summer Cold War reconnaissance and intelligence-collecting operation in the Barents Sea.
Skipjack’s Cold War Mission
Skipjack departed in dense fog in late June 1963 for the North Atlantic and the Barents Sea from State Pier, New London, on a Cold War mission. All went well until the radar failed as we were navigating through Long Island Sound on the surface. From there on, and until we were well into the Atlantic and able to submerge in deep water, I sweated blood as we carefully navigated outbound using a single Loran line, depth soundings, and intermittent Radio Direction Finder bearings. We doubled lookouts on the bridge, maintained watches on both periscopes, and sounded the required foghorn signals throughout this potentially dangerous, several-hours-long passage. Without operational radar, it was of course impossible to detect and avoid merchant ships, tankers, and small fishing craft along our route until we heard and eventually saw them at quite close ranges. Luckily, we arrived at our diving position outside Long Island Sound without close calls or undue delay.
Skipjack was allowed to proceed to wherever she was ordered at top or flank speed. We were authorized to use what was called an unlimited speed of advance where appropriate, indefinitely. Skipjack had the first of the second-generation Westinghouse S-5-W nuclear reactors. Admiral Rickover and his technical staff wanted us to attempt to burn out the uranium fuel core to the maximum extent possible before Skipjack entered Charleston Naval Shipyard to be refueled in mid-1965.6
The transit to a position well within the southern Barents Sea seemed endless although, in fact, we reached our initial patrol position in a little over a week. Then, en route, our number two periscope (observational and navigation) flooded with salt water while Skipjack was running at deep depth, rendering it unusable. This left us with just one usable periscope, our much thinner and more fragile number one attack periscope. Because its smaller cross-section made it much less detectable by radar and visual means, this periscope was normally used in the final stages of an approach and attack at periscope depth. Our particular number one scope was unique in that it came from a German U-boat that had been taken as a prize following the end of World War II. It was a sit-down type—meaning we sat in a special chair to operate it. Through a pair of handles, we could raise, lower, or rotate it, and change its optical elevation and power. We discovered that we could accomplish air, close aboard, and long-range horizon searches much faster with this scope than with the manually operated number two periscope, once we got the hang of it. We loved it, in spite of its reduced-light transmission characteristics.
In the meantime, on a continuous round-the-clock basis, our auxiliary men made every effort to repair number two periscope using the procedure outlined in my command thesis. A powerful vacuum pump was used to drain the salt water, and repeated flushes were conducted with fresh water and high-pressure blows with hot air to remove salt and other foreign matter particles that might be lodged within. At the same time, we checked all possible sources of leaks in and around the periscope head window. The very top, or head window, portion of the periscope was used to capture light images; above and around us as the periscope was continually rotated through 360 degrees, for transmission down the periscope barrel to the observer’s eye. This necessitated our having to broach Skipjack’s sail above the surface on a number of occasions, when it was safe to do so, in order for us to closely examine and retighten the head window to the maximum extent possible. It was an exceedingly frustrating battle, during the course of the mission, with the periscope successfully returned to full service on a few brief occasions. It would then reflood, probably due to a small crack somewhere. Number two periscope ultimately had to be completely replaced upon our return to port many weeks later.
Our mission was standard reconnaissance and intelligence gathering. We were to stay in international waters at all times and above all we were to remain undetected. The latter task proved to be quite a challenge due to the considerable number of Soviet ships and foreign fishing boats in the Barents Sea at that time. We diligently carried out our mission largely at periscope depth, including frequent repositioning in response to signal intelligence, in the most aggressive manner possible. We were not blessed, however, with any major sightings of Soviet warships or electromagnetic intercepts of any significance throughout the almost six weeks on station.
I found the mission to be a difficult navigational challenge. Flat, calm seas with dense fog characterized the environment no matter where we patrolled, so my navigational team and I had to rely much more on already skimpy Loran and radio-direction finding lines of bearing than on known landmarks. Only occasionally was it possible to take sun lines and/or visual fixes on well-charted landmarks, such as Kildin Island. It was also risky to take fathometer soundings due to the possibility of being detected by a fixed acoustic array or another submarine. We became masters at maintaining a hand dead-reckoning plot. This, in addition to the requirement to personally fix, or confirm, Skipjack’s geographical position every two hours, certainly kept me busy. At no time could I be accused of getting too much sleep.
We departed the Barents Sea area later that summer without incident, disappointed that we had nothing special to show for our time there. We did, however, acquire a good feel for the geography, underwater topography, and general environment in what might well be an assigned forward-patrol area in wartime. It was, in addition, an extremely valuable training opportunity for the entire crew. By its end we had definitely jelled as a smooth, competent, and well-disciplined team under our new commanding officer. Our morale, confidence, and ability to operate Skipjack to the full extent of her capabilities could not have been better.
Seeing Things
On the return passage we encountered an unusual physical or atmospheric phenomenon that I had previously only read about. Skipjack had just proceeded to periscope depth about fifty nautical miles to the northeast of the North Cape of Norway, transiting some six hours at deep depth on a westerly heading. Skipjack had come up to copy our dedicated radio broadcast and to fix our position by Loran and, hopefully, to recognize some physical landmark along the northern Norwegian coast. I had the periscope upon breaking the surface at approximately sixty-nine feet. My initial rapid searches for surface contacts or obstacles close aboard confirmed an earlier estimation that the seas would probably be flat calm. But then my visual search for aircraft contacts revealed some inversions of contacts and land masses due to light refraction that could only be well over the horizon. In addition, it appeared I was passing the sun three times in just one revolution of the periscope. How could this be?
After reporting to the captain, “At periscope depth, no close contacts,” I began a series of slower horizon searches. To my utter astonishment, I sighted what appeared to be a long line of steep and quite high brown-colored bluffs to our northwest that extended through some 40 degrees toward a heading of due north. This was impossible. Both the Mk-19 and Mk-23 gyrocompasses indicated we were heading almost due west. Thus, any land within sight could only be the Norwegian coast that was supposedly due south of us. However, it seemed we were too far north to be able to sight any land to our south. “What is going on?” I mumbled to myself. To my further consternation I noted that a sun that should have been shining brightly above the horizon to the southwest also appeared at approximately the same magnitude some 30 degrees to the northwest and again to the southeast. I called the chief quartermaster to the scop
e to take a look. He immediately confirmed all that I had just observed. I ordered, “Helmsman, steady as you go, make minimum turns!” “Steady on course two six five degrees True,” he responded.
I called Captain Jenks to the control room, reported what we were observing, and asked him to take a look through the periscope. I ventured the possibility that we were observing something called parhelia, or sun dogs, which other mariners operating under similar conditions at high latitudes had reported.7 Sun dogs are manifestations of bright spots of light that can appear at approximately 22 degrees to either side of the sun and at the same elevation above the horizon. They are usually made of plate-like hexagonal ice crystals in high and cold cirrus clouds or, during very cold weather, by ice crystals called diamond dust drifting in the air at low levels. These crystals act as prisms, bending the light that passes through them with a minimum deflection of 22 degrees.
On the other hand, what seemed to be a sizable land mass to the northwest couldn’t be explained. Bear Island was over two hundred miles to the north of us and Svalbard was even farther away. It couldn’t be these. The captain confirmed our sightings and also informed us that he had seen what looked like several upside-down ships slightly above the horizon during the course of his 360-degrees’ search of the horizon with the periscope. We concluded that what we were seeing were severe atmospheric inversion conditions due to the absolutely flat calm seas and bright sunlight. But what could we do about it?
We couldn’t help but question our navigational estimate of just where we were. Only our compass headings and a series of secure bottom soundings, which indicated we were in the depth of water expected, corresponded with our best estimate of where we were. We therefore decided to remain at periscope depth and continue to proceed in a generally westerly direction at minimum speed. Hopefully a wind or even slight breeze would soon come up that would help dispel the mirage. Alarming as the sight was initially, we did eventually conclude that what seemed to be land to the northwest was possibly Bear Island.
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