rolling provides data for calculating the metacentric height, important for determining the stability of the Viperfish-if we roll far enough to both sides, sufficient data are generated and the design engineers are happy. After our shipyard overhaul, several of the weights inside the boat have shifted to new positions, changing the center of buoyancy. When we surface out there,” he pointed in the direction of the Pacific Ocean, “these factors can affect our stability. If the weight distribution is wrong, if the center of buoyancy has shifted too far down, it is possible for the first wave that hits us to roll us completely over. This kind of thing would lead to considerable crew discomfort and a probable immediate sinking.”
I stared at the man, my mind trying to comprehend such a disaster. Considerable crew discomfort if the Viperfish rolled over?
He smiled brightly. “Therefore, it’s the kind of thing we like to check out.”
I returned to my qualifications work with a new worry. It would enter my mind every time we surfaced, as I waited to see if that first wave to slam against the side of the submarine would cause considerable crew discomfort.
The next day, the pier alongside the Viperfish was filled with activity. We loaded an endless supply of spare parts, crates of food, fuel oil for our diesel engine, and everything else each man on the boat could think of to sustain his existence at sea. The whole process reminded me of the packing adventures my family used to have before a camping trip. Rushing back and forth around the house, my mother gathered whatever she thought we might need for our trip to the forest or the beach. On a camping trip, however, we could count on certain basic elements essential to existence-oxygen, fresh air, maps, gas stations, warmth, and plenty of room to roam about.
On board the submerged Viperfish, we would be working to survive in an environment hostile to human life. We had to make our own air by producing oxygen and “scrubbing” (removing) away the carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. To cool the excessive reactor-generated heat, we needed powerful air-conditioning systems; on the other hand, we had to provide warmth to the forward areas of the boat that became chilled from the cold waters around us. We had to navigate under the ocean where there were no stars or sky, create fresh water from the brine of the sea, and carefully monitor our uranium fuel reserves because no reactor refueling services were available on the high seas. For those of the crew who enjoyed hiking about, nothing could be done to accommodate them in the constrained spaces and cramped quarters. There was almost no room to roam-that was a daily fact of submarine life.
I had just finished storing a pocketbook, a box of cigars, and four fresh oranges inside the bunk locker beneath my rack when Marc Birken walked up to the crew’s berthing area.
“Aloha, bruddah,” he said to me, grinning widely and relishing his newly acquired Hawaiian dialect. “What’s happening?”
I pointed to the oranges. “Fresh fruit for the long trip, in case we run out.”
He looked at my oranges. “We’re only going to be gone for a week or two,” he said.
“Or three, or four-”
“Two weeks, or even three weeks, that’s nothing! Wait until we go out for two months or even longer. Did I ever tell you about the time I dropped a garbage weight when the Boone was on one of our two-month Polaris patrols?”
I closed my bunk locker and pulled the curtain across the opening of my tiny home. “What’s a garbage weight?” I asked.
His eyes lit up and his face became animated as he savored the memory of his story. “It was terrible! The thing made a hell of a noise! We were on station and rigged for quiet operations, no noise tolerated. When I saw the damn thing falling toward the deck, I tried to catch it. I tried to kick my shoe under it to break the fall. I tried everything I could, but it just slammed onto the steel plate like a damn sledge hammer that probably reverberated sound energy for thousands of miles across the ocean. I just about freaked out-it made a noise that almost blew the earphones off our sonarmen.”
“Marc, what’s a garbage weight?”
“And so,” he clapped his hands together in front of me, “bam! The result was just like that! The instant the thing hit the metal, the captain was out of his stateroom, down the passageway, down the ladder, into the galley, and into my face.”
“Holy Christ, the captain came to the galley? What did you tell him?”
“I told him I wanted to shoot myself. I told him the damn garbage weight weighed five tons, and it slipped from my hand. I told him I was sorry.”
“Did he court-martial you?”
Marc grinned again. “It would have been better if he had, or if he had just beat the hell out of me because, God knows, I deserved it. But he decided to conduct a special training session in the forward torpedo room.”
“What did he train you to do?”
“He trained me to move garbage weights from the starboard side of the ship to the port side. Then he trained me to move them back to the starboard side without dropping them. And then back to the port side, and then the starboard side. For two hours, he sat there staring at me with death in his eyes as I moved hundreds of garbage weights back and forth across the boat.”
Marc then took me to the galley and showed me the small but incredibly heavy cast-iron weights used to sink the garbage ejected from the submarine. They came in tiny boxes, all stacked in cupboards near the garbage disposal unit. Each box of these devices weighed about twenty-five pounds.
That afternoon, Marc and I were assigned to join with the crew and load a couple thousand more weights. It took about fifty men to complete the job, a miserable and sweating process in the tropical sun. We transferred the boxes from a truck alongside the pier and handed them, one at a time, across the brow (gangway), over the deck, through the control-room hatch, down the ladder, into the galley, and finally into the storage locker. When we finished the task, I was sure that our center of buoyancy had shifted another ten feet. I began to worry again about our rolling over when that first wave nailed us after surfacing.
That evening was the last time available for liberty before going to sea. I planned to write a quick letter to my parents before joining Marc for a final steaming session in Waikiki. By then, I had everything necessary for the voyage packed into the tiny spaces available for personal items, and I was ready to go to sea. My fresh dungaree clothing had been stashed around the oranges and books in my bunk locker, and I was ahead of schedule with my qualifications work. A few liberty hours would clear my head for the submerged voyage.
I had just finished the last page of my letter and was preparing to depart to the barracks for the usual quick shower and a change to civvies when Bruce Rossi caught me.
“Dunham,” he said, his voice characteristically tough, “I want you to help Petty Officer Nicholson with the reactor start-up tomorrow morning.”
He didn’t wait for an answer as he turned away and stomped in the direction of the engine room. I had already learned that a “start-up of the reactor” was considerably different from something like turning a key, which energizes most other kinds of engines. The process did not occur quickly nor could it be done casually. A reactor start-up was intense. It required long hours of painstaking checking and double-checking the calibration and accuracy of virtually every single electronic instrument in the engine room. The reactor could be started by one man, but, considering the complexity, it was easier done by two, even if one of the men was a trainee like me. Every single word on page after page of instructions in the start-up manual had to be followed,
