If one deviated by so much as a word from the written instructions, the baggy pants of Rear Adm. Hyman G. Rickover, the Navy’s director of nuclear propulsion, would appear on the horizon as another naval career crashed and burned.
The process was scheduled to begin in the engine room at midnight. A cold brew at Fort DeRussy was out of the question, as was a late-night Viperfish tour with adventuresome ladies. On start-up night, there would be no steaming, no drinking, no nocturnal adventures, no nothing but intense preparation while the rest of the crew slept. I had already come to know the mustached smiling face of Randy Nicholson, one of the three qualified reactor operators who had helped me with qualifications. At midnight, I strolled into the engine room and greeted Petty Officer Nicholson. We began the process to start up the reactor and worked through the night.
At exactly 0800 the next morning, the captain ordered the first backing bell (a pointer device in the engine room that showed the desired throttle speed) to move us away from Pearl Harbor’s submarine pier. Again, Jim McGinn and I were sitting side by side in the engine room in front of the steam plant control panel’s large rubber-coated throttle wheels to control steam to the propulsion turbines. We felt, as much as heard, the grinding sound of another camel being thrashed outside our pressure hull. Because the requirements of the steam plant control panel job were limited to opening or closing the propulsion turbine throttles on command, there was little we could do wrong. Nearby, the electrical operator and reactor operator sat in front of their panels to observe closely everything relating to electrical power and nuclear power, respectively. The engineering officer paced back and forth behind them, his eyes roaming across their panels, watching each meter, studying fluctuations in voltage and neutron levels, with the intent of keeping all of the vital systems in the engine room operating properly. The Viperfish was going to sea, and everybody was doing their jobs to ensure that nothing went wrong.
About five minutes later, with no warning, the captain suddenly hollered “Back emergency! Back emergency!” over the loudspeaker, his normally soft voice replaced by an urgent call for action. Instantly behind us, Bruce Rossi was watching us and monitoring every move as Jim and I bolted to our feet and struggled to crank the “ahead” throttles shut before turning the smaller wheel that reversed the direction of the screws. To make matters more difficult, a loud “reverse direction” alarm built into the steam control system began blaring a warning about throttle conflicts as Rossi bellowed, “Hurry, hurry, hurry!”
Jim and I were both sweating and hyperventilating by the time the turbines began their characteristic high-pitched screams in the reverse (backing) direction. We struggled to stop the Viperfish and back her away from whatever freighter or other threat was before us.
I loudly announced to the engineering officer that we were now answering the back-emergency bell at the same moment that the captain’s voice, more relaxed this time, came over the loudspeakers: “All stop. All ahead one third.”
From the sound of the captain’s voice, it was apparent that the imminent danger had passed. Jim and I lightened our tight grip on our throttle wheels as we took our seats and answered the new bell. Both of us were sure that our quick reactions had saved the boat.
Marc strolled down the passageway at about that time. His grin was bigger than usual. “I was just up in the control center,” he said. “Nice job you guys did answering that bell so fast.”
“Thanks, Marc,” I said, appreciating his recognition of our prompt reaction. “Did you get a look at what we almost hit?”
His smile faded. “Almost hit? We almost hit something?”
“Isn’t that what the back-emergency bell was for?” I asked, starting to feel uncomfortable.
“That is what it can be for, but the captain just wanted to demonstrate to one of the junior officers on the bridge how quickly the Viperfish can stop. The training of the newer officers is one of his top priorities, and probably one of his greatest challenges. Unfortunately, this boat has a weird envelope of performance, and training is a formidable task.”
“Oh. So it was a drill kind of a thing. Did we stop fast?”
“You guys answered the bell fast, and we started churning the water real nice, but it took us damn near forever to slow down. This thing don’t wanna stop, no matter how fast you answer bells.”
“We’re too big,” I speculated, thinking about the appearance of the Viperfish in dry dock.
“We are much too big for a decent submarine,” he mumbled and wandered off to other tasks.
Feeling dumb, Jim and I clutched the throttles as we waited for the next “emergency.”
Obviously, it would be difficult for us to figure out what was going on elsewhere in the submarine. Inside the engine-room hull, where there were no windows and no information about depth or speed, it was easy to visualize the worst possible disaster at the slightest provocation: The back-emergency bell became a terrible impending collision; the blast of an alarm from the steam panel, a major steam leak; the alarm horns over the reactor panel, an unsafe nuclear reactor condition or something even worse. This phenomenon, we were to discover, was especially a problem during intense activities when several alarms were shrieking, men were shouting, and turbines were screaming. This was the curse of working in the engine room. We spent an inordinate amount of time wondering just exactly what was happening elsewhere in the boat.
The Viperfish finally reached the ocean, as evidenced by the pitching and rolling of her hull. Cruising on the surface, she had moved several miles away from Oahu when a voice on the loudspeaker tersely announced the dive.
“Dive, dive!” were the only words called out by the chief of the watch at the ballast control panel. We heard no Klaxon noises or other horns, and there was nothing to suggest that this dive, the first since the Viperfish’s refit, was anything other than a routine event. It was the first submarine dive of my life, however, and I had already identified thousands of mechanical components that could potentially sink us if they failed while we were submerged. Everything about the dive was significant to me.
Idle conversation throughout the Viperfish immediately came to a halt. The men, intensifying their concentration on the systems in front of them, watched for anything that could increase the dangers to 120 men moving beneath the sea. Outside the pressure hull, large valves trapping the ballast air that gave us positive buoyancy suddenly flew open, quickly venting the outside tanks. The tanks began to fill with water, which caused the boat to develop negative buoyancy and become heavier. The massive bulk of the Viperfish rapidly settled down into the water, the bow angling downward as the two planesmen, who sat side by side at the diving station, pressed forward on their wheels controlling the diving planes. All sensations of movement from wave activity came to a halt. Abruptly, we felt frozen in space as the bulk of the superstructure and sail dropped below the surface of the ocean.
Sandy Gallivan, chief of the watch at the ballast control panel, opened the ballast tank vent valves. He flipped switches to start and stop pumps in the bowels of the submarine, thus controlling the transfer of water and fine-tuning the boat’s buoyancy and balance. In the engine room, Randy Nicholson adjusted the reactor controls to maintain adequate steam energy for the propulsion turbines. Donald Svedlow, sitting next to him, controlled the electrical systems. Diving required tightly coordinated choreography of machinery and highly trained men. From one end of the boat to the other, the men were working, watching, thinking, and continuously seeking optimal performance from the equipment under their control.
The captain scanned the ocean surface through the starboard periscope. He ordered the diving officer to
