Operation Ice Breaker, page 7
The thing to remember about all Navy ships is that the commanding officer is the personification of the ship. USS Teuthis was Commander Fred Roken’s ship—in our case, his boat. The crew, all of us, were accessories to his will, assisting him in carrying out his mission. He couldn’t do it without us, but we were not independent agents. Rather, we were there to enable the captain to complete his mission. In reality, of course, we all worked together as a team, but any good skipper ensures that his team knows who is boss.
Before we got underway, the skipper and the Navigator, Lt. Cmdr. Barry Jacobs, laid out the skipper’s intended 2,710-nautical-mile track to the Labrador Sea, that separated Greenland from Canada. The skipper intended to run south from the mouth of the Thames River to the edge of the Continental Shelf, then submerge and turn north to follow the shelf edge to where the Labrador Sea empties into the North Atlantic.
The Maneuvering Watch ended when we dropped off the pilot at the sea buoy. By the time we passed Block Island, half the watch was over. Unlike our experience during sea trials, the sky was powder blue with a crisp breeze from the north as I set a course of 183 degrees at twenty knots. With the wind at our stern, despite the eight to ten-foot waves, we had a comfortable ride as we headed south for the next 113 nautical miles. For me and my topside watch section, this meant three hours of sunshine and a last visual take on a blue ocean covered with foam-topped waves, with frolicking bottlenose dolphins playing in our bow wave.
The skipper looked at his watch. “Got to prepare a couple of dispatches before we dive,” he said, climbing off the sail top and dropping down into Control.
“Captain left the Bridge,” Zeb announced over the squawk box. In addition to the paperwork, the skipper made a habit of walking through the sub, chatting with sailors on their watch stations. He showed up back on the Bridge for the last two hours of my watch. I had turned the watch over to Zeb, except for my underlying legal responsibility, and was seated on the top of the sail with my feet dangling into the bridge open space, simply enjoying the view. After chatting with Zeb for a couple of minutes, getting an update of the overall status, the skipper plunked himself beside me, silently watching the dolphins play.
After a while, he asked, “How is Harry?”
“Still favors his good arm,” I said, “but he didn’t seem any the worse for wear at the Oasis last night.”
“Do you ever miss it,” he asked, “being one of the guys, being enlisted?”
I didn’t answer right away. An honest answer deserved a little thought. Finally, I said, “Sometimes, like last night when one of the girls put the moves on me. But, I was out with the guys and had to turn her down. I left early with a couple of small regrets.” I stopped talking and watched the dolphins for a minute. “This,” I continued, sweeping my arm out over the ocean before us, “is what it’s all about, this, and what we will be doing for the next several months.” We both watched the dolphins for a bit longer. Then I added, “No, Sir! I wouldn’t want to do anything else. If I’m lucky enough to get my own command someday…” I let my voice trail off, thinking about what it would be like to wear the skipper’s shoes, carrying the full weight of the mission.
About three hours later, I was in the Wardroom sipping a cup of coffee and reading some papers when Senior Chief Firecontrolman Ogden Winder, the current Chief-of-the-Watch, announced over the 1MC, “Rig for dive! Rig for Dive!”
In reality, the crew had been rigging for dive ever since the end of Maneuvering Watch. For all practical purposes, all everyone had to do was make one final check (you never fail to do this, never!), and then report to Control.
I went aft and dropped to Dive Control, where I made a final check of its openings to sea—the three egress hatches in the DDC, the Basketball hatch, and the Fish bay. I had total confidence in Ham, but since the legal responsibility was ultimately mine, it was the prudent thing to do, and Ham expected me to do it. Had I not, he would have chastised me.
“This is the captain,” the 1MC blared throughout the sub. “We are about to submerge for our underway operation that will take us to the frozen waters off northern Greenland, then through the ice-clogged channels of the Canadian archipelago to Point Barrow, Alaska, and finally through the Bering Strait to our home port, Mare Island. We anticipate being submerged for the entire time until we arrive off San Francisco. We don’t know precisely how long this will take—two to three months, at least.
“Anyone wishing to visit the Bridge before we dive, we will take you in groups of four for the next thirty minutes. I wish us all success in our endeavor and God’s speed for a safe return.”
Twenty-five minutes later, the last bridge visitor had dropped into Control, where I was hanging out for the dive. The skipper dropped down the ladder and began sweeping the horizon with the nav scope. Chief Warrant Officer Bert Cobb had the watch. Lt.j.g. Seth Beaumont was his JOOD, and this was his big moment.
“Clear the Bridge!” Seth ordered over the squawk box.
Bert dropped into Control, stating, “This is Warrant Officer Cobb. I have the Deck.” On the squawk box, he said, “Rig the bridge for dive and lay below.” He stepped onto the periscope stand and began sweeping around with the attack scope.
Seaman Jeremiah Walker, face black as coal, hit the deck moments later, looking up, followed by Seaman Greg Patterson’s legs as he waited half-way down to handle the squawk box and hatch lanyard for Seth. I imagined Seth making one final visual sweep, securing the bridge fairing, and dropping through the hatch.
Greg pulled the lanyard while Seth spun the handle. Then Greg dropped into Control, and Seth’s legs appeared as he pulled the hatch shut above him, and Greg pulled the lanyard. Chief Ocean Tech Bart Davidson took his place directly behind the planesmen, and Jerry scrambled to his stern plane seat while Greg stepped back out of the way.
As the lower hatch closed, Seth reported to Bert, “Last man down, hatch secured.”
The Chief-of-the-Watch announced, “Green board!”
“Chief-of-the-Watch, dive the ship,” Seth ordered.
On the 1MC, Oggy announced, “Dive! Dive!” followed by two long Aoogahs! on the klaxon.
“Make your depth six-five feet,” Seth ordered as the main ballast tank valves opened.
A minute later, Bart announced, “At six-five feet, zero bubble.”
Both the skipper and Seth scanned the horizon one final time and then dropped their scopes. Seth ordered, “Helmsman, come left to new course zero-eight-five, ahead full. Diving Officer, make your depth three-zero-zero feet.”
With a sigh, I left Control for the Wardroom, where I intended to spend several hours reviewing details of Teuthis’ compartmentation, piping, hydraulics, and electrical runs and panels. It had been some time since I had qualified, and like everyone else, I needed to brush up.
For the next two days and 970 nautical miles, we charged northward at 300 feet and thirty knots. That speed through the water made us practically “blind” on sonar, but this didn’t keep King and his sonar techs from continuously scanning our surroundings. Roughly every couple of hours, but randomly, we “cleared our baffles,” slowing down for about fifteen minutes while radically changing course, while Sonar made a careful sweep, looking for anything out there.
Due to the improvements made during our overhaul, even at thirty knots, we were virtually undetectable by the best sonar systems available to the Soviets. The skipper was not willing to rely on this, however, so we cleared our baffles.
Near the end of day two, on Barry Jacobs’ watch, we pivoted 35 degrees northward for fifteen hours, and then on my watch, we came around to 360 degrees for our 1,100-nautical-mile-run into the Labrador Sea.
As anyone who has ever worn the dolphins insignia knows, submarining consists of endless hours of boredom interrupted by moments of sheer panic. This leg of our transit was the boring part. Under normal circumstances, there is virtually no ship traffic to and from the Labrador Sea. Thule Air Base in the far north of Greenland has a couple of supply runs, and Hudson Bay gets some limited traffic, but we were well into autumn. The northern waters were beginning to ice up. Furthermore, despite the general lack of surface traffic, we had to be alert for south-moving icebergs. These silent hazards to navigation could extend down well past our transit depth. We kept the under-ice sonar active. This was a high-frequency, short-range device that transmitted from the top of the sail. It would give us warning of the presence of an iceberg ahead, even at thirty knots, but the OOD had to be nimble to turn away quickly.
During our baffle-clearing intervals, King and his sonar techs picked up the occasional distant sounds of a cargo vessel or tanker transiting into or out of Hudson Strait on their way to or from ports surrounding Hudson Bay.
During Bert’s watch late on the second day of the Labrador Sea transit, during one of our baffle clearings, Sonar Tech 1st Class Jim Orange called me, asking if I could come to Sonar. I interrupted my requalification studies in the Wardroom and walked aft down the passageway. I opened the door and stepped into the darkened room. Royal Bennett showed up just after me.
“What’s up, Jim?” I asked.
“You used to be a sonar tech, right?” Jim asked.
“Yeah, but it was a long time ago.”
“And you studied oceanography in college,” Jim added.
I nodded. King just listened, probably wondering what was up.
“Listen to this,” Jim said, turning on a reel-to-reel tape recorder.
Both King and I slipped on padded headsets. The first thing I heard was the unmistakable sound of Orcas on an orchestrated attack. I had watched a pod of Orcas in Puget Sound herd harbor seals into a compact group and then attack and consume them all. Their back and forth communication squeals and clicks were identical to what I heard on Jim’s tape.
I held up a finger, and Jim stopped the tape. “That,” I said, “was a pod of Orcas coordinating an attack against something. These guys do that. They work together, herding their prey into a clump, and then they attack and kill the entire batch—whatever it is.” I grinned at them. “Okay, next.”
Jim started the tape machine. What I heard next took some mental filtering. The Orcas were still present, doing their herding thing. The main sounds, however, were familiar but different—something I had heard back when we had transited under the Barents Sea ice several years ago.
“Play that second part again,” I said. This time I got it. “Do you know what a narwhal is?” I asked.
King nodded, but Jim shook his head.
“How about a beluga whale?” I asked.
Same response.
“Okay,” I said, “narwhals and beluga whales are very similar, two thousand pounds and maybe fifteen or more feet long. The main difference is that the narwhal has a five to six-foot-long ivory tusk protruding from its mouth. So far as I know, they live only in the Arctic and sub-Arctic. They communicate with clicks, whistles, and knocks.” I removed my headset and took a breath. “What you just recorded, Jim, is a pod of maybe ten Orcas, herding together and attacking somewhere between six to ten narwhals.”
“You’re sure of this?” King asked.
“As sure as one can be with what we have.”
“I’m keeping this tape,” Jim said. “Shit! This is amazing!”
“You gotta play it for the captain,” King said.
“And the Officer-of-the-Deck,” I added. “Also, what this means is that we are near the ice edge. Narwhals never stray very far from there.”
USS TEUTHIS—BAFFIN BAY
All the Control Room teams and sonar watch sections filled the seats in the Crew’s Mess, chatting quietly among themselves. Lt. Cmdr. Lonnie Franken-Ester, the executive officer (XO), assumed the watch in Control so Bert could join us. All the nav personnel were present, and Chief-of-the-Watch Oggie assumed the Diving Officer position temporarily so Chief Bart Davidson could be there. Jim remained in Sonar so his watch section could participate. He stood in the door looking down the stairwell into the Crew’s Mess so he could hear the briefing.
When sure everyone was present, I mounted the stairwell and turned left past Sonar. I knocked on the door to the Captain’s Cabin, then opened it.
“We’re ready for you, Skipper,” I said and stepped aside so he could precede me.
The skipper stopped briefly at Sonar to say, “Great work, Petty Officer Orange. Can you make a copy that we can play in the Crew’s Mess?”
Jim grinned and handed him a tape reel. The skipper took it and handed it back to me. “Play this after my briefing,” he said, “and then leave it with the Mess Cooks so the rest of the crew can hear it.”
“Attention on deck!” the COB said as the skipper entered the Crew’s Mess.
“As you were,” the skipper said as the assembled sailors began to stand.
“We are at the edge of the Arctic ice pack,” Roken commenced. “Petty Officer Orange recorded an interesting event that happened a short while ago near our location. Following this briefing, Commander McDowell will play the recording for you and narrate his best take on what you will be hearing, based upon his own significant oceanographic experience.
“Within the hour, we will no longer have clear water over us. Instead, the surface will be filled with increasingly heavy ice floes until—within five to ten miles—the surface will be solid ice six to eighteen inches thick. As we continue north, the ice will thicken to two feet or more. When we reach the permanent ice region, it may be as much as ten to fifteen feet thick.” He paused to let those numbers sink in.
“I don’t have to tell you that we do not want to surface through ice that thick. This will be our operating mode for the next two months, at least. You men are the best we have, the best submariners in the Navy. You serve on the best submarine in the Navy. I am asking you to be even more vigilant than your usual best.
“We will be bottoming west of Carey Øer, a group of small islands sixty nautical miles northwest of Thule, Greenland. There, Commander McDowell and his divers will lay a special hydrophone array that will integrate into our world-wide SOSUS network. Its location and purpose carry the highest possible security classification. You will not speak of this to anyone who is not here in this room, not to any other crew members, and especially not to anyone outside the crew.
“After that, we will transit through the Canadian archipelago to a location off Hope Point, Alaska, where Commander McDowell and his divers will lay another array. Then we will transit the Bering Strait on our way home to Mare Island.
“During our transit, we will have to surface occasionally to get a good navigation fix. If possible during those times, I’ll allow some topside activity.” The skipper stopped talking and looked around the Crew’s Mess. “Remember, no talk or discussion of the hydrophone arrays! Stick around to hear Petty Officer Orange’s recording.”
As the skipper turned to mount the stairwell, the COB said, “Attention on Deck!”
I mounted the tape on the reel-to-reel at the front of the crowded mess. The guys were fascinated and continued to ask questions until I had to cut them off.
“Drop by Sonar in the next couple of hours. You’ll hear more stuff like this,” I told them as I left.
I knew we would come to periscope depth soon for a nav fix, so I hung around Control after the meeting. Locating one’s position on the globe is no trivial task. Ships at sea and aircraft normally use Loran-C, a radio navigation system that receives signals from ground-based transmitters. It is accurate to a few hundred feet, or even better if you take several fixes. Unfortunately, Loran-C signals do not normally reach the Arctic, and even if they do sometimes at night, the accuracy goes to shit. The Omega system is global, but even at best, it gives a two-mile accuracy, and in the Arctic, it’s much worse. Fortunately, the Navy developed the SatNav system for its boomer fleet and the fast-attacks that chased Soviet missile subs. This system, called Transit, consisted of a bunch of satellites in polar orbits that broadcast info that could be used to calculate a fix within just a few feet. This was the accuracy the boomers needed to launch their missiles, and it was the kind of accuracy we needed to find our way through the iced-in Canadian archipelago.
To use the SatNav system, Barry needed to know our approximate position, a list of times a Transit satellite would be above the horizon where we were, a receiver for the signals, and a computer to process the signals and give a position. In principle, Barry and his guys could use the raw signal data to calculate a position, but this was tedious and prone to error. His SatNav receiver handled the entire task in minutes.
About a half-hour later, Seth slowed to five knots, cleared the baffles, and ordered his Control crew to bring Teuthis to periscope depth. The sub had two scopes. Bert took one and the skipper the other. Barry Jacobs hurried through Control on his way to the Nav Center to make sure his guys got a good location fix.
The JOOD, Seth Beaumont, asked the skipper for his scope when he was done. After Seth had completed a couple full circles, I tapped him on the shoulder. “Let me take a couple of swings, and I’ll give it right back,” I said.
I saw calm, smooth water all around us and a white line several hundred yards off our port side to the north—the jagged edge of the sea ice. As I swung toward the bow, an Orca cleared the water, its entire 25-foot length suspended in the air for a moment.
