for these reasons, I came to learn that they were proud to be serving with the Viperfish crew and they readily trusted us to bring them back from the submerged explorations that lay ahead.
As the qualifications work became more intense and the size of our crew expanded, Marc Birken reported on board the Viperfish. Marc was a veteran of the Polaris submarine USS Daniel Boone and a lover of sports cars and “steaming” (blowing off steam on liberty). He was aching to finish his obligation in the Navy as quickly as possible so that he could return to civilian life and teach in the trade schools of Ohio. Marc was a fun-loving man who viewed the submarine world with a “hang loose, baby” attitude. He was in love with his TR-3 convertible sports car, which regularly squealed him around Waikiki. One of the nukes, he was an electrician by training and his dolphins were the pride of his life.
The first time he passed by the reactor operator area and noticed Bruce Rossi’s characteristic tense face and mean looks, he glanced sideways toward me and struggled to avoid the grin that was his trademark. We quickly became friends, and he regularly chastised me for worrying about Bruce and having too serious an attitude.
The days passed quickly at the submarine base. Working my way through one system after another, I moved beyond any threat of placement on the dink list. When confinement among the men and machinery of the Viperfish, day after day, became too oppressive, the sweet call of liberty in Waikiki beckoned seductively from the east. The process of going on liberty and steaming was widely regarded as the solution to an oppressed mind.
For us, steaming consisted of a high-speed departure from the Viperfish to the barracks, a hot shower with plenty of soap to wash off the unique odors of a submarine, the donning of civvies (civilian clothes) to disguise our military origin, and the jumping into a Cadillac taxi to roar off to Waikiki. We found that the best way to start the steaming process was at the Fort DeRussy Army Base, near the Hilton Hawaiian Village, where decent bourbon could be purchased for about thirty cents per drink. After we had consumed a proper amount of beverage, the stage was set to continue our steaming at the night spots of Waikiki.
Meeting women in Waikiki was not difficult. The surplus of dancing establishments scattered throughout the area was perfect for military men on liberty, and Marc delighted in establishing a relationship with any woman who looked even slightly interesting. On our third or fourth night of steaming, he taught me a remarkably successful way to solidify an emerging relationship with a young lady. The process started with mai tais, moonlight, and sweet Hawaiian music. It was further stimulated by Marc’s gracious manner toward the ladies, mixed with his disarming sense of humor.
After several dances with an attractive woman, he leaned forward and drew her close to him. Before she knew what was coming, he innocently asked “The Question”: “How would you like a tour aboard a nuclear submarine?”
This invariably resulted in a backward movement as the woman stared at him wide-eyed, blinked several times, and finally asked, “A nuclear submarine? Tonight? Are you serious? Are you in the Navy?”
He smiled and told her that he would be happy to give her a tour of his ship if she would find such a tour interesting. “It is a beautiful submarine,” he said, with just the right smile and proper blend of innocence and enthusiasm. “It is called the Viperfish and it is an excellent warship, one of the best in the Navy. It has a nice periscope, the control room has some beautiful lights, and you would be quite safe, being on a military base and all.”
The predictable result became an often-repeated routine. She smiled, having never heard such an offer from any man she had known back in Kansas City or wherever she was from, and her eyes lit up with the excitement of it all. Because the women of Waikiki rarely traveled alone, she usually asked if her girlfriend could come with her. “Of course,” Marc said magnanimously, as he waved in my direction and beckoned for me to join them.
When the Viperfish topside watch saw our group meandering down the dark pier at 0100, we could hear the distant muttering of something relating to Jesus Christ.
After a knowing look or two and a polite salute to welcome the ladies on board, the watch greeted us and cleared the way for our late-night tour. A half hour later, after hearing the excited “ooh’s” and “ah’s” of our female companions, Marc and I felt like heroes for the rest of the night.
All the fun came to an end the morning the captain gathered us together on the pier in front of the Viperfish and told us that we were going to sea in two days. We would leave at 0800 hours, he told us, and conduct our sea trials. The purpose of the exercise, he said in his soft voice, was to test the integrity and capabilities of our submarine. It would be an envelope study of sorts, a test of our underwater limits. Although this was not a Special Project operation, the outcome of the sea trials would help to determine the success of future activities; the sea trials test was, therefore, extremely important to our mission. Once it was established that we could perform submerged activities safely and effectively, we would be ready to proceed to our West Coast shakedown cruise and, finally, to start testing the Fish.
After we completed the morning muster on the pier, I climbed down the engine-room hatch and started studying the next system on the qualifications list. My work was abruptly interrupted by Chief Paul Mathews’s voice bellowing throughout the boat over the loudspeaker system.
“All men lay topside to ‘sally ship’!”
Puzzled, I looked up from by book. “Do what to the ship?” I asked nobody in particular.
Bruce Rossi started climbing up the engine-room ladder to the topside deck. “Sally ship, Dunham,” he barked in my direction. “Important for the calculation of metacentric height of which the center of buoyancy is a part. Get up there.”
With Chief Mathews giving directions from his position in front of the submarine sail, about thirty of us lined up in a long row at the port side of the ship and crowded as close to the edge of the deck as possible. The chief looked at his wristwatch, waited a few seconds, and then hollered at the top of his lungs, “Move to the starboard side!”
We promptly rushed across the deck to the opposite side of the Viperfish. A few seconds later, the chief hollered again.
“Port side!”
We leaped to the port side.
“Starboard side!”
Feeling foolish, I moved with the rest of the men.
“Port!”
“Starboard!”
“Port!”
“Starboard!”
Scurrying back and forth, we paused for about six or seven seconds on each side before the next order. Gradually, I became aware of a rolling movement of the submarine’s deck, like the movement of a rowboat with too much weight on one side, accompanied by the tilting of the periscopes sticking out of the sail. As we continued with the exercise, the rolling increased by larger and larger increments and some of the men had to grab the restraining cable at the deck’s edge for balance. When the deck began to show a prominent sloping with each roll, the chief finally thanked us and ordered, “Secure from ‘sally ship’ exercise.”
Remarkably, nobody said much of anything as the crew nonchalantly dispersed from the bizarre activity and returned to their various tasks. It wasn’t clear to me how one should even ask Paul about the meaning of the event-“Did the sally go well, Chief?” Pushing aside my typical feeling of nearly total ignorance, I wandered toward him.
“It
