Operation Ice Breaker, page 17
“If she rolled,” Ham commented to me, “the water surge would probably push them away, but I agree, survey first.”
The divers made a slow swim circuit forward on the starboard side and around the bow.
“Holy shit! Look at that!” Whitey squeaked.
Derrick swept across the bow.
“Looks like you called it, Mac,” the skipper said.
Half the bow fairing was ripped open like a tin can. The sonar sphere was obviously damaged. It was impossible to tell by looking at it if it still worked or not.
“That must have been exciting,” Ham remarked wryly.
“A collision at sea…” I said, letting the words hang in the air, finishing the thought in my head: … can ruin your entire day.
The divers continued their survey with Derrick looking over their shoulders and occasionally darting the Basketball in for a closer look or out for a wider view. When they reached the stern, Whitey said, “Look at them little propellers on the…what are they? Horizontal stabilizers…”
“Those are the stern planes, dumb shit,” Harry said. “But yeah, a four-bladed screw about three feet across on the rear tip of each stern plane.”
Derrick showed us what they were talking about.
“Divers, Control, you need to reverse your survey direction. You’re about to run out of umbilical,” I told them.
They returned to their starting point and then headed aft on the starboard side.
“Come forward along the deck,” I told them.
They swam up to the deck and followed it to the streamlined sail.
“Whoa, look at this,” Harry said. The Basketball showed him peering down inside the sail. “This thing is completely open,” he said.
“That has to be the pod location,” I said to the skipper. “The part that faired into the sail is missing. It must be attached to the pod.”
“The way it’s shaped,” Dr. Brand commented, “It could function like a trimaran’s outriggers if there were flotation at the bottom of each wing.” He had quietly joined us in Dive Control.
That was when I realized that Dr. Brand’s interest had really perked up once we actually made physical contact with the Alfa. He was traveling with us to supply potentially needed expertise for laying the two SOSUS arrays, but he really hadn’t much to do for most of our trip. The Alfa seemed to have changed all that.
“We got a tether and a comms cable,” Harry said.
“Recommend we cut the comms cable but keep the tether for the time being,” I said to the skipper.
He nodded without speaking.
“Cut the comms cable, Harry,” I said. “Whitey, locate the escape hatch. It should be right below you on the hull at the bottom of the sail. Look for a pressure connector.”
“Found it, Boss. It’s a standard metric high-pressure nipple.”
Derrick zoomed in on the fixture. We were in luck. Doug’s people would have a way to marry one of our own HP hoses to that nipple.
The skipper watched the divers for several minutes, and then perhaps a minute later said, “Bring your divers back, Mac. We need to go up to send a burst message.”
USS TEUTHIS—BOTTOMED 8 NAUTICAL MILES NW OF POINT BARROW
The message read:
TOP SECRET—TOP SECRET
TO: COMSUBDEVGRUONE
FROM: USS TEUTHIS SSNR 2
SUBJ: ABANDONED SOVIET ALPHA CLASS SUBMARINE
CURRENT TEUTHIS LOCATION: LAT 71.488085 LON -156.909747, ON BOTTOM, 473 FT.
CURRENT ALFA LOCATION 475 FEET NORTH OF MY POSITION. THE ALFA EARLIER EXPERIENCED AN UNKNOWN CATASTROPHIC FAILURE RELATED TO PROBABLE COLLISION WITH AN ICE WALL. SHE HAS SEVERE DAMAGE TO HER SONAR DOME. INTERCEPTED CONVERSATIONS FROM WITHIN THE SUB INDICATE PROBABLE DRIVE TRAIN DAMAGE AND A NON-RECOVERABLE REACTOR SCRAM. THERE IS NO INDICATION OF RADIATION LEAKAGE OUTSIDE THE SUB (BASED UPON ACTUAL MEASUREMENTS) OR INSIDE (BASED UPON OVERHEARD CONVERSATIONS).
THE ENTIRE ALFA CREW ABANDONED THE SUB IN AN ESCAPE POD. THE POD RESTS DIRECTLY ABOVE THE ALFA UNDER TWO FEET OF SURFACE ICE. POD IS CURRENTLY TETHERED TO ALFA.
THE ALFA IS UNAWARE OF TEUTHIS’ PRESENCE, BUT ALFA (BELIEVED TO BE K-316) HAS DOGGED TEUTHIS SINCE CAREY ØER. IT IS LIKELY ALFA NOTIFIED SOVIET NAV HQ OF GENERAL LOCATION AND INTENT.
REQUEST SOONEST POSSIBLE RESCUE OF ALFA CREW BY BREAKING UP ICE AROUND THE ESCAPE POD WITH EXPLOSIVES OR OTHER MEANS AND REMOVING CREW FROM ESCAPE POD.
SIGNAL TEUTHIS WITH TWO SMALL EXPLOSIVE CHARGES IN SHORT SUCCESSION WHEN ALFA CREW SAFELY AWAY FROM ESCAPE POD.
UPON RECEIVING SIGNAL, TEUTHIS DIVERS WILL WINCH ESCAPE POD TO BOTTOM AND SECURE.
UPON SECURING POD TO BOTTOM, TOG OIC LT. CMDR. J.R. MCDOWELL WILL ATTEMPT TO PRESSURIZE ALFA MAIN COMPARTMENT TO 15 ATM, AND THEN TO ENTER THE ALFA. IF SUCCESSFUL, HE WILL PHOTOGRAPH AND RECORD AS POSSIBLE AND WILL COLLECT ALL AVAILABLE DOCUMENTS FOR RETURN TO TEUTHIS.
UNLESS OTHERWISE DIRECTED, TEUTHIS WILL MARK ALFA LOCATION WITH A TRANSPONDER FOR FUTURE INVESTIGATION.
TEUTHIS WILL REMAIN AT PRESENT LOCATION UNTIL RECEIPT OF RESPONSE TO THIS MESSAGE. TEUTHIS WILL EXTEND AN ANTENNA EVERY THREE HOURS ON THE 12, 3, 6, 9, PST.
TOP SECRET—TOP SECRET
Five hours later, we received a message from CINCPACFLT—the Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet. That’s as high as you can get in the operational Pacific Navy. I suspect that most of the high command had no idea that we were in the Arctic and no clue about what we were doing. The DevGroup must have carefully picked how to forward our message so that need-to-know protocol was strictly followed, while it got to the right hands as soon as possible. Believe me, that was a tricky accomplishment.
Their message read:
TOP SECRET—TOP SECRET
TO: USS TEUTHIS SSNR 2
FROM: CINCPACFLT
VIA: COMSUBDEVGRUONE
SUBJ: ABANDONED SOVIET ALPHA CLASS SUBMARINE REF: YOUR MSG SAME SUBJECT RECEIVED 5 HRS AGO
DO NOT, REPEAT, DO NOT PRESSURIZE ANY ALFA COMPARTMENTS.
THE AIR FORCE HAS SENT AN EXTRACTION TEAM FROM FAIRBANKS TO POINT BARROW. THAT WILL ARRIVE APPROXIMATELY TWO HOURS FROM THE TIME OF THIS MSG. THE TEAM WILL FOLLOW YOUR RECOMMENDATIONS REGARDING THE EXTRACTION.
ONCE YOU HAVE SECURED THE POD ON THE BOTTOM, NOTIFY COMSUBDEVGRUONE BY BURST MSG, AND PROCEED POST-HASTE TO WOMAN’S BAY, KODIAK, ALASKA.
YOU WILL BE MET BY A SUBDEVGRUONE REP WITH EYES ONLY ORDERS.
YOU WILL RECEIVE A TEAM OF DIA SPECIALISTS AND WILL ALSO ONLOAD SPECIAL EQUIPMENT.
WHEN READY, AS DIRECTED BY THE SPECIAL ORDERS, TEUTHIS WILL PROCEED WITH UTMOST STEALTH TO ALFA LOCATION.
WHEN ON LOCATION, CO TEUTHIS, OIC TOG, AND DIA TEAM WILL PROCEED AS DIRECTED BY THE SPECIAL ORDERS.
UPON COMPLETION OF ONSITE OPERATION, CONTACT COMSUBDEVGRUONE BY BURST MSG FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.
TOP SECRET—TOP SECRET
The message was simple enough, but I wondered how much of a shakeup our message had caused. The new Soviet Alfa sub was pretty much of a mystery to the West. Getting our hands on one where there was a distinct possibility that the Soviets would not be aware that we had it was a very big deal.
Barry assumed the watch as we awaited the explosions that would signal the extraction team had arrived on the ice. If the message we received contained an accurate timeline, we expected to hear the explosions at any time. I was pretty sure the Air Force had an extraction team based at Eielson Air Force Base. I figured that CincPacFlt probably issued deployment orders within two hours of receiving our message. The remaining three hours before we received their response were bureaucratic nonsense. This meant the extraction team had departed Eielson within three hours of our message, four at the outmost. Their C-130 would have arrived an hour and fifteen minutes later at Barrow Airport. Allow a half-hour to unload, another half-hour to drive the eleven miles to Point Barrow. I presumed they would have brought Zodiac boats and snowmobiles, but I had no idea of the shoreline conditions at the point. They either drove the Zodiacs through icy water for some distance and then dragged them across the ice with the snowmobiles, or they pulled the Zodiacs with snowmobiles right from the shore. In any case, I gave them an hour from the point to the rescue spot.
Add it up. The extraction team would arrive above us an hour and fifteen minutes to two hours and fifteen minutes from our receipt of CINCPACFLT’s message. I checked the time. We were already in the window.
I put the divers in standby mode so we could deploy them the moment the Alfa crew was gone.
While I was in Dive Control with Ham readying Jer and Jake to retrieve the pod, backed up by Whitey, Ski, and Harry, with Jimmy in the DDC but not getting wet, a string of explosions penetrated the hull. I can only imagine the desperation the Alfa crew members must have been feeling as they bobbed below the ice cover with no way to extricate themselves from their situation. The explosions must have been terrifying. They were loud in Dive Control, 570 feet away as the fish swims. They would have been deafening in the escape pod. Further, they had no idea whether they were being rescued or sent to the bottom.
Forty-five minutes later, I heard two distinct low-power explosions in short succession. That was the all-clear. The twenty-five or so Alfa crew members would have been transported ashore at Point Barrow and hustled inside a couple of trucks. One Zodiac would have remained on-site to drop the charges. By now, it would be well on its way to Point Barrow.
I called Control and spoke to Waverly. “We’re commencing dive operations,” I told him. “You can follow on your monitor. Let us know if there is something you wish to examine more closely.”
ON THE SEAFLOOR—8 NM NAUTICAL MILES NW OF POINT BARROW
By the time Jer and Jake entered the water, the Basketball, under Wally’s steady hand, was flooding the seafloor under the hatch with light. The large underwater marine mammal visitors we had come to expect were nowhere to be found. I suspect the explosions chased them away—for the time being, anyway.
Jer moved to a forward deck locker that contained a hawser and untied the stays. With control T-wrench in hand, Jake moved to the forward capstan and raised it to its operating position and flipped a nearby cleat upright. Jer wrapped the hawser four times around the capstan and attached the bitter end to the cleat. Together, both divers wrestled the hawser out of the locker and over the starboard side of the sub—the side toward the Alfa.
They picked up the other free end and, holding it between them, began swimming toward the Alfa. Once there, they swam the bitter end into the gap in the sail created by the absent pod. Aided by light from the Basketball, they tied off the hawser to a stanchion with a short piece of line and then located the tie-down point of the pod tether.
“Let Wally get a close-up of the tether,” I said to the divers. It was slender, about half the thickness of a little finger. After several seconds I asked, “Does it look like a multi-function tether to you or just a steel strength member?”
“Strength member,” they both said.
“Just a steel cable,” Jake added.
“Any way to remotely decouple it from the sub?” I asked.
“Just a stainless swivel joint,” Jer answered. “The cable is under slight tension that varies as waves pass overhead. It never goes to zero.”
“They must be able to release the cable at the pod,” Jake said.
“Ham, you figure we can follow the plan?” I asked off the circuit.
“The hull is titanium, right?” Ham asked.
“Titanium alloy, I think.”
“What about the superstructure and sail?”
That stumped me. I had no idea.
“Jer, are you sure that swivel joint is stainless? Could it be titanium?” I asked.
Jer pulled his dive knife and scraped along the side of the joint. “Ain’t stainless,” he said. “The cable’s stainless. Everything else seems to be titanium.”
“Okay,” I said, “we’ll follow the plan Ham discussed with you before you got wet—we’ll cut the eye in the wire rope.”
Jake dropped to the Alfa’s deck and flipped two deck cleats. He pulled the hawser around a cleat and swam it to Jer, who carried it up the tether about thirty feet from the swivel and attached it with a tautline hitch. Jer signaled Whitey and Ski to take a strain on the hawser. I turned to Ham.
“Time to put Whitey, Ski, and Harry in the water.” Ham nodded to Bill, who carried it out.
As we watched the monitor, the hawser began to tighten until it was taut.
“Hold it,” Jer said.
Under the Basketball’s watchful eye, Jake retrieved his mini-torch and proceeded to cut the cable eye. Because the cable was stainless, the process took a full five minutes. As he reached the end of the burn, Jake said, “Take more strain before it gets away from us.”
On the monitor, the hawser vibrated a bit as a wave passed overhead, putting a strain between the tautline hitch and the swivel joint.
A sudden POP! interrupted everything.
“Shit! Motherfuck!” Jake yelped.
“Jer, report condition of Jake,” I ordered.
“The cable-eye popped loose and struck Jake’s faceplate. It’s cracked. His helmet is flooding.”
Jake turned toward the Basketball and gave two thumbs up. He pointed to his ears and then his mouth, and then drew a finger across his throat.
“Looks like his comms are out,” Ham said, “but he’s breathing. We better bring him back to replace his Kirby-Morgan.”
“Jer, this is Dive, you and Jake return to hatch immediately,” Bill said. “We’ll replace Jake’s helmet and put him back in the water.”
Jer and Jake headed back toward Teuthis, with the hawser stretched out below them. They split at the sub with Jer heading for the after capstan and Jake for the hatch.
“Wally,” I said, “stay with Jake until he enters the hatch. Then proceed to the capstan.”
Jimmy pulled Jake through the hatch while Harry brought him another Kirby-Morgan. Before Jake donned the replacement helmet, Jimmy looked him over and checked his vitals.
“You okay, Bro?” he asked. “Anything hurt, feel funny?”
“Gimme a fuckin’ break, Doc. They need me out there.”
“Easy, Jake. Just makin’ sure,” Jimmy said. “Okay, good to go,” he said, slapping the top of Jake’s head.
“Wally,” I said, “join Jake and Harry and stay with them to the capstan.” And to Jake and Harry, I said, “To the after capstan.”
Jer had already raised the capstan. Jake and Harry flipped a cleat and set the hawser before dropping it to the seafloor. Then Jer and Jake swam it to the Alfa. Once there, Jake wrapped it around the second cleat while Jer swam to the opening in the sail.
“Haul in the forward capstan until Jer stops you,” I said.”
While we watched on the monitor still showing Jer in the Alfa sail, Whitey and Ski commenced hauling the hawser. In less than a minute, the tautline hitch came into view.
“Stop!” Jer said.
The tether stopped moving, and Jer swam thirty feet up the tether and hauled the hawser thrice around the tether and tucked it under itself twice in a traditional tautline hitch. Then he said to Harry, “Harry, take some tension on your capstan.”
As Harry hauled on the capstan, the first hawser began to slack, and Jer undid the tautline hitch and tied off the hawser on a stanchion.
“Okay, Harry, haul away until I stop you.”
A minute or so later, the pod was sixty feet below the ice. We still had to repeat the process fourteen more times. I checked the clock on the bulkhead. We were taking about fifteen minutes per cycle, so it would take us about three and a half hours to bring the pod back to the Alfa. I pointed this out to Ham.
“Good thing our guys are in excellent shape,” Ham commented with a grin.
“By the time they get back, they’re gonna be beat to shit,” Bill added somewhat wistfully. I suspected he would rather have been outside with the guys.
I called Control. “Waverly, we’ve got four hours more to secure the pod. Then a half-hour to stow the hawsers, cleats, and capstans. Once everything’s shipshape outside, Ham will bring the divers back onboard. I’m going to grab a bit of sleep in the meantime.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Transit to Kodiak
USS TEUTHIS—TRANSIT TO BERING STRAIT
We had been submerged for weeks except for our brief tangle with Polar Bears at Barrow Strait. All of us were nose blind to the smells that permeated the sub’s air. Every time we blew sanitaries to sea, we had to vent the pressurized tanks inboard. Sure, they vented through a set of activated charcoal filters, but that didn’t do much. Everything inside the sub was permeated with that smell. We couldn’t smell it, but it was there. Then there were cooking smells, also filtered, but also everywhere. Furthermore, most of the guys smoked, adding stale tobacco smoke on top of the other smells.
We couldn’t smell it, but were you to step aboard the sub, you would quickly become overwhelmed by the oppressive odors. We badly needed to ventilate the sub, since it looked like we would be underway submerged for quite some time still.
Doug and Franklin had the watch as we wrapped up our diving ops. Topside was ready for ultra-quiet running, and the divers were stowing and securing their equipment. Jake and Jer were busy replacing the shattered Kirby-Morgan faceplate.
Franklin gingerly lifted Teuthis off the bottom and brought her to sixty-five feet, periscope depth. After a visual scan revealed nothing, he raised the snorkel mast and started venting the sub while Juby got a good fix. The incoming air was crackling cold, and the sub got downright chilly during the half-hour we ventilated. Nobody complained. The fresh air was wonderful—we couldn’t get enough.
Finally, every molecule of bad-smelling air had been sucked out of the sub. Some of the guys had laid their clothing on their bunks to air out. Most did not, but it probably made no difference anyway. You can go into any bar frequented by sailors and watch the B-girls walk behind the guys on the barstools, sniffing at each. When one of the girls picked up that peculiar submarine smell, she would latch onto the guy. As a submariner, he had more jingle in his jeans.
