Operation Ivy Bells, page 5
I paused but he went on, “No…really. I mean it. I know what your quick thinking accomplished. In part, that’s why you’re here.”
He opened a humidor on his small built-in desk and removed a big, unwrapped cigar. He paused to sniff it, savoring the smell and texture before putting it to the fire. Pointedly, he did not offer one to me, so I waited patiently while he puffed the cigar to life.
“You’ve been briefed, of course?”
I nodded.
“Your troops?”
“On their way. I wanted to check out the system before their arrival.”
The Skipper got to his feet, so I did the same. It wouldn’t do to get off on the wrong foot with this guy. John Craven had hand-picked him for this job. He was clearly one tough customer.
“We sail in three weeks. Keep me informed of your progress.”
I came to attention.
“Aye, aye, Sir!”
CHAPTER FIVE
Winnie & Moo – Vallejo, California
The sun was setting as I pulled up to the Winnie and Moo. The weather was balmy and it didn’t look like rain, so I left the top of my red Vette down. Since it was Friday, the parking lot was already half full.
The building was nothing to look at: Dirty white vertical clapboard with white trim, low, nearly flat roof, small, blanked windows just under the eaves. A billboard-like sign towered over the establishment, graced along the top edge with a submarine silhouette, and bold letters announcing to the world: HORSE & COW. Below the big sign was another, carrying a caricature of a submarine dolphin pin sporting the features of a horse on one and a cow on the other. The words Horse & Cow curved over the “dolphins,” and below “We Service the Fleet.” I pushed open the door and entered.
The room was dark and filled with noise and smoke. I glanced around as my eyes adjusted. Every wall was crowded with submarine memorabilia, dating back to World War II. There was a plaque from every submarine that ever passed through Mare Island, and even some from subs that never reached the West Coast.
My eyes were getting used to the dim light, so I started across the room toward an elbow-polished oak bar with a brass foot-rail that nearly filled one wall. On the far end was a swiveling stool that used to be the stern planes seat on an unnamed World War II-era diesel boat. I knew enough not to sit there; it remained empty in memory of lost World War II subs.
I spotted Bill, Jimmy, and Whitey crowded around the stern planes seat at the bar. Jimmy and Bill had copped seats, and Whitey was standing. Hanging behind the bar over their heads I could see the stainless steel submarine urinal that was occasionally used to initiate a newly frocked submariner. The newbie would put his unworn dolphins in the urinal, and then everyone at the bar would dump whatever remained of his or her drink into the urinal. All the newly qualified submariner had to do was fish the dolphins out with his lips. Usually, this meant drinking his way down to the pin. As I approached the bar I passed a complete maneuvering stand, replete with mahogany-colored coxcombing, seizing, and Turk’s heads tied at each spoke of the helm. Further over stood a shiny silver bow-planes wheel. Behind the bar a ship’s bell hung from a brass yoke, and I spotted several more around the room. The bar was populated by young men and as many women, ranging from young and very pretty to well-worn barflies in the waning years of their short careers. The guys sported jeans, shirts, and trimmed haircuts, many with beards. No freaks here; this was a Navy joint. No, strike that! It was a submarine hangout.
“Hey, El-Tee!” Whitey raised his mug.
“Hush Lad,” I said, laughing. “I’m slumming tonight.”
Whitey’s light hair and pale features caused him to stand out, even in this smoky place. He signaled the bartender, who slid a full mug down the bar at me. I toasted the guys, and Whitey and I leaned back against the bar to watch the action. Across the room the ladies room door cracked, and a silhouette appeared in the opening topped with bright red hair. She was pretty enough, but had obviously been around the block several times.
I grinned and waved.
“Snorkel Patty…over here!”
Snorkel Patty looked in our direction, smiled widely, and elbowed her way through the crowd to our piece of the bar. Bill jumped to his feet.
“Have a seat, Lady.”
Silence fell along the bar as all heads turned toward us.
“You dog-loving somobitchin, goat screwin, g’dam arshole. Who the fuck you callin’ a lady?”
Bill jumped back, obviously shocked by her display. Patty lifted her skirt.
“These knees look like I been kneelin’ in front of an Admiral?”
Bill’s jaw dropped as he discovered the raunchy tattoos gracing her thighs. Grins up and down the bar.
“Ain’t no g’dam for’d battery whore!”
Patty was nose to nose with Bill when the bartender hit the klaxon button. The ah-oooo-ga, ah-oooo-ga drowned out all the noise in the bar. Patty was good. She nearly convinced me.
“Dive! Dive!” The bartender sounded genuine.
Patty reached up and kissed me on the cheek and patted Bill’s ass.
“G’dam brass…” She turned to Bill. “Screwed every bubblehead in the Pacific twice, and startin’ over; might even turn YOU inside out. No more lady-crap! Siddown!”
Bill sat, mumbling, to the hoots and whistles of the guys at the bar.
“Sorry ma…,” but I slapped my hand over his mouth.
“Don’t get her started again, for God’s sake!”
“What kind a fresh meat you got here, Mac?” Patty winked at me.
“A couple of my deep-divin’ boys, Snorkel. Treat ’em right!” I turned to the three.
“A grain of salt, guys. She hasn’t completed the first round yet, ’cause she missed me.”
And to the bartender, “Give Patty whatever she’s drinkin’.”
Dark rum arrived in a shot glass, and Patty hoisted in the air. “Anybody don’t drink straight rum is a friggin’ laaaiiidy,” she shouted as she tossed the drink down her throat.
The bartender said with a chuckle, “Last week it was gin.” He leaned across the bar. “She keeps a hundred dollar bill in her nightstand, says she’ll give to the first man who’s as good as her dearly departed husband.”
“I heard of this place,” Bill said, keeping his green eyes on Patty’s considerable cleavage.
“You ain’t no bubblehead, then?”
I nodded to the bartender, and another shot of rum appeared before Patty. She picked it up and examined Bill’s reddish hair and lightly tanned features through the golden liquid.
“You ain’t no friggin’ bubblehead?”
Bill started to answer, so I kicked him under the bar.
“These guys are special, Patty. They ride submarines, but don’t earn dolphins…not even gold ones.” I toasted her with my mug.
“No friggin’ dolphins?”
I couldn’t tell for sure if she was putting us on or not. I reached into my pocket and hauled out the deep-sea diving pin I had brought for just this occasion.
“They wear these,” I said as I pinned the emblem to her low-cut blouse, copping a generous feel in the process.
She winked at me.
“Oh,” she said, stroking the pin and the top of her ample bosom. “Is it as hard to get as dolphins?”
“Harder,” I said, “much harder.”
“Harder…I like harder….” Her voice drifted off and she locked eyes with me. I shook my head slightly with a rueful half-smile, and Patty’s eyes got wistful and teary. Then she turned to Bill and grabbed his hand.
“C’mon, Billy boy!” Her voice had developed a hard edge. “You gonna earn yo dolphins t’night,” and she dragged him out the door to the hoots and hollers of the crowd.
“What the hell was that all about?” Jimmy lifted his half-empty mug. “You got somethin’ goin’, El-Tee?”
“Easy, Jimmy.” Whitey patted him on the back. “Mac here don’t trespass.”
It was the last night before deployment. I had agreed to meet the guys at the Winnie and Moo for a drink or two, partly to keep them out of trouble in this unfamiliar territory, and partly just because it was so much fun. Before the evening got too old, former submariners Ski and Jer showed up, and the Master Chief himself made an appearance. His understudy, Chief Jack Meredith, and Harry had drawn duty, and were keeping an eye on the system.
Whitey was briefing the Master Chief on Bill and Snorkel Patty. “And she literally dragged him out of here, Master Chief.”
“Dragged…”
“Yeah, dragged. But he wasn’t resisting too hard; he had an eyeful of them melons!”
Master Chief Comstock grinned at me with a lifted eyebrow. He didn’t want to lose any of his men on the last night out.
“He’ll be okay, Ham,” I told him.
Whitey piped in, “Give her another hour, and she’ll have cleaned his clock but good.”
Everyone laughed, and Ham raised his mug. “To Bill.”
“To Bill!” We all clinked glasses, downed our dregs and ordered another round.
That was when the table just across from us burst into flame.
A young sailor in his birthday suit, three sheets to the wind, was attempting to run the length of his table top with the remains of a flaming toilet roll protruding from between his ass cheeks. Someone must have dipped the roll in rum, because it was burning furiously, and the tabletop was covered with blue flames as the fire spread to the spilled rum.
Somebody threw a full pitcher of beer on the flames, but the burning rum just floated to the top of the beer and traveled to the floor, where it quickly spread. The bartender grabbed a fire extinguisher from behind the bar. I reached out, and he handed it to me. Guys were beginning to run in all directions, and several women started to scream.
“Belay that!” I shouted. “Stand still! Stop moving!” And I hosed down the flames with purple-k from the dry chemical extinguisher.
Jimmy, who in another life was a battlefield hospital corpsman, examined the singed behind of the “flaming arsehole” initiate, and announced no serious damage.
“What the fuck was that all about?” Whitey demanded.
“Halibut crew – last night out,” answered Ski.
“You’re shittin’ me. Those guys’r driving our sub?” Jer and Ski nodded. They’d seen this before, of course, since they had been around longer than Whitey and Jimmy.
“They’ll be good as new by morning,” Ham added, “or I don’t know their Division Chief.”
“I knew they was fuckin’ nuts,” said Whitey. “No wonder you took up diving, El-Tee.”
I laughed and glanced at my watch.
“It’s nearly twenty-two-hundred, guys.” I looked at Ham. “You gonna stay around a while, Master Chief?”
“I reckon. A while, anyway.” He glanced around the room. “I guess we’ll wait for Patty to bring Bill back.”
I nodded.
“I’ll get the guys back. Safe and sound, Sir.”
“Roger that,” I responded, and wended my way through the tables to the door.
It was fresh and cool outside, and the air didn’t smell like spilled beer and flaming rum and toilet paper. I jumped over the door into my Vette, and started the engine. The moon was out, the stars were clear. A light breeze carried the odors of lilac and sea salt to the tarmac in front of the Winnie and Moo. The combination triggered special memories as I slowly cruised across the narrow bridge to Mare Island, memories filled with softness and pleasure, memories of touch and scent that would remain just that – memories – until we returned from our uncertain quest into the unknown.
CHAPTER SIX
Mare Island
Morning came early. The Master Chief and I had already completed a last-minute inspection of our system the day before, and since Chief Meredith and Harry had kept things copasetic overnight, I wasn’t worried. I knew I could rely on those guys – let’s face it, my life and theirs depended on it. Besides, I suspected the Master Chief had already gone over the system one final time this morning. It’s not that he didn’t trust me; it’s just how he is.
I left my Vette at the base car storage facility. Mare Island was different than any other facility I had ever known. Everywhere else you made your own arrangements for cars and personal effects, but Mare Island, at least the part I knew, took good care of the guys. While I had to clear out my room at the BOQ, since we would be gone for so long, my stuff was placed in secure storage nearby, and my Vette was inside under lock and key, and covered. The only thing I had to do was make provisions in case I didn’t come back.
Yeah, it may seem bizarre, but it was pretty standard, not just for we the few, the proud, the crazy, but for sailors in general – I mean the arrangements, just in case. So far as the rest of the world knew anyway, we were just another submarine going out on patrol. They always came back…most of the time.
I paused to reminisce about the Thresher and Scorpion. The Thresher happened about the time I was in sub school as a young Sonar Tech. It was sobering but challenging. No one quit the training, however, no one. Thresher was before SubSafe; in fact, it was the cause of Sub Safe.
And Scorpion? Well, Scorpion just happened. I had played a role in locating her. That’s where John Craven made his reputation. We found Scorpion because John told us where to look, made us look there despite what the experts said. That was before he became the expert. I guess that’s how he got there, mostly.
I’ll never forget it, seeing Scorpion on the Atlantic bottom about 400 miles WSW of the Azores, telescoped together with the Engine Compartment having crushed its way through to the Reactor Compartment. I remembered an incident that happened to my sub a couple of years after I left sub school when I still was a Sonar Tech.
We were exiting the Med below the layer. Basically, the Med is a shallow ocean. The surface water gets heated by the ever-present sun, and evaporates so that it becomes very salty and heavy. It sinks to the bottom, especially in the Eastern Med, off the coast of Israel and Lebanon. This heavier water then moves westward along the bottom, and flows out of the Med over the lip at the Strait of Gibraltar into the Atlantic. As the warm, heavy water passes the lip at the Strait, immediately it begins to drop like an undersea waterfall to the Atlantic bottom at about 14,000 feet. This “waterfall” isn’t vertical like on land, but slants to the west at about 45 or 50 degrees. The actual location of the “edge” of the “waterfall” moves back and forth depending on a host of complex variables. Oceanographers can actually identify this distinct Med water in deep spots all over the world’s oceans. This heavy water is replaced by much lighter Atlantic water that flows into the Med on the surface.
So the inflowing layer of light Atlantic water is about 500 feet thick, and the outflowing heavy, dense Med water occupies the next 500 feet below that. The interface between these layers is very distinct.
Submarines use Archimedes’ Principle to operate beneath the water. In order to remain at a specific depth, a sub must weigh exactly as much as the water it displaces. As a sub moves from water of one density to that of another, it must pump water in or out depending on whether the new water is more or less dense.
The Soviets wanted to know about American submarine activity in the Med. To accomplish this, they stationed specially-equipped spy trawlers across the Strait of Gibraltar. These disguised vessels maintained sonar listening posts by dipping hydrophones to various depths in the Strait. In principle, they could hear any sub entering or departing the Med.
In fact, we placed our subs in the appropriate layer, powered down, and drifted in or out with the strong currents. Depending on the need for absolute security, sometimes we would shut things down completely, relying on the currents only to get us in or out. More frequently, however, we simply made turns for about six knots where we were virtually silent. Once we departed the Strait, typically we maintained our depth and powered up to normal cruising turns.
On the occasion I am describing, we had been submerged for over two months, and we wanted to get back to Holy Loch. We were trimmed to neutral buoyancy for the deep, heavy layer, and once we were a few miles past the Strait, we cranked our turns to maximum. In fact, the Maneuvering Room guys added a couple of “coming home turns.” So picture a large sub, trimmed heavy to compensate for the dense Med water, cruising at high speed through the deep, dense layer. At some point, our bow poked through the “face” of the “waterfall” into the much lighter water on the other side. Because the sub was so heavy, our bow immediately dropped, and as we passed through the angled layer, we started sliding along the interface toward the bottom nearly 13,000 feet below. As we already were traveling at high speed, we quickly accelerated and rapidly approached test depth – the maximum depth the sub could tolerate. I was in the Sonar Shack at the time, and watched the depth recorder bottom out past the sub’s design depth limit. Unless something happened immediately, we were going to implode like a light bulb.
Fortunately, the Exec had the conn, and he was our most experienced submariner next to the Skipper. In fact, he was in line for his own command. I heard him give the order: “Emergency blow all main ballast!” We were immediately surrounded by a deafening rush of high pressure air as it blasted into the saddle tanks surrounding the sub. A few seconds later our descent slowed, came to a stop, and we began a slow upward rise. As we rose, the pressurized air in the ballast tanks expanded, displacing more and more water, so that within a minute or so, we were rocketing uncontrolled toward the surface. But that didn’t matter, because we were no longer dead men walking, driving toward the bottom, but were on our way toward the surface.
Once on the surface, we collected our wits, verified that the sub was okay, and got back under the waves before we could be spotted by one of the ever-present Soviet trawlers.
I had suspected that this is what happened to the Scorpion. Except that we subsequently discovered damage near her stern that could only have been caused by a torpedo. No one knows for sure, but after further investigation, it appears that Scorpion was sunk by the Soviets, probably in retaliation for their belief that we had taken out their Golf-II missile submarine K-129 off Hawaii – but that’s another story1.
