"Yessir," said Hanks, thinking of several classmates who were still trying to live down the Admiral's damning faint praise.
"Now," said the Admiral, "tell me about these Polaris subs. From what I hear they're quite different from the ones I chased all through the war during the Battle of the Atlantic. I'm damned glad the Germans didn't have them or maybe I wouldn't be here."
"That's right, sir. First of all, these new boats are true submarines. The old ones weren't. They could submerge for a while, to make an attack or hide, but they were really surface ships. They could go much faster and much farther on the surface than they could submerged. It's the other way around with us. We are designed to operate more efficiently under water than we can on the surface. On the surface our blunt bow pushes up such a big bow wave it cuts down our speed. Submerged, our streamlined shape enables us to go just as fast as you can."
"Yes, I found that out," said the Admiral.
"Even our sonars and listening gear work better submerged than on the surface. The deeper we go the farther out they reach. And as you know, we can often find cold layers in the water and by getting under them we, in effect, put a tin roof over our heads that the surface sonars can't penetrate. Then, of course, there's the matter of firing our rockets. If we had to surface to do it we might get clobbered by an alert enemy. But we don't have to surface. We fire our whole battery of sixteen Polaris missiles without ever sticking up a periscope."
"Tell me more about that," said the Admiral. "How the hell do you know how to aim them down there?"
"Our inertial navigation system keeps track of our position very accurately. It's an array of fantastically sensitive gyros and accelerometers tied in to a mechanical brain that grinds out our latitude and longitude continuously... It has sensors that can detect even a slight crosscurrent in the water that we don't even know about ourselves, and make allowances for it. I won't try to explain it to you because I don't really understand all I know about it myself."
"I know what you mean," said the Admiral. "Don't you ever have to correct this thing?"
"Not really. We do like to check on it now and then by sticking up a periscope for a few seconds at night and getting some star sights or by a loran fix, but whenever we do get outside fixes they agree so closely that we just assume the computer is more accurate than the stars or loran. Actually, we never have to surface with these boats. We can stay submerged for months at a time."
"I can believe that for missile subs that just patrol back and forth waiting for the word to fire at fixed targets on land. But how about commerce raiders? We're still building subs to attack ships."
"Yessir, we are. But they are true submarines too, and with their atomic power plants they never have to surface. They can go out from New London, submerge at the 100-fathom curve, patrol the North Atlantic, and find a convoy either by listening or by sonar. They can sink all the ships in it and return to New London without ever sticking a periscope up."
"I don't believe it," said Admiral Day.
"It's true, Admiral, they've got inertial navigation, hydrophones, sonar..."
"Yeah, I know. You told me about all that. But I still say they can't stay submerged all the time for a number of reasons. The first one is the thing that killed the cat - curiosity. Curiosity is one of the strongest human emotions, and no matter what all your hydrophones and sonar-scopes tell you, you're going to want to stick a scope up and take a little peek now and then."
"Well... maybe you've got something there, Admiral."
"And you're going to have to do it whether you want to or not, because when you come back in claiming you sank a whole convoy CNO won't believe it unless you can tell him you saw the ships sink."
"That's right too," admitted Commander Hanks.
"And finally, SecDef's public relations flicks are going to demand photographs that they can put on the cover of Life."
"Okay, Admiral," said the skipper. "I can't argue with you on that one. But theoretically anyway, a sub never has to come up these days except to get more chow for her crew."
"Now, getting back to the Polaris sub," said the Admiral; "those sixteen rockets you've got poised and ready there pack a bigger wallop than all the stuff used by both sides in World War II."
"Yessir."
"That's a hell of a responsibility you're carrying around."
"Yessir."
"What's to prevent you from going berserk and blowing the world apart?" asked the Admiral.
"One man can't do it, sir. The physical setup is such that my exec must cooperate with me to fire the rockets. He has a key to one lock. I have a key to another. We both have to know the order to fire is legitimate and both must turn our keys before anything can happen."
"Only two of you?" asked the Admiral. "Civilization, if you can call it that, is betting pretty heavily on you two."
"Theoretically, I suppose you could say that the two of us, acting in collusion, could fire an unauthorized shot. But, actually, I doubt if it could happen. Some others on the boat would know about it and stop it. The communications officer certainly would know if an order to fire had been received or not. I would say at least three, and probably more, officers would have to go berserk before you could fire an unauthorized shot."
"How about a phony message telling you to fire?"
"Impossible, sir. Unless the people who sent it had access to that briefcase that goes wherever the President goes and has the up-to-date code words in it."
"Suppose a sneak attack blasted Washington off the face of the earth. What happens then?"
"There is a definite chain of responsibility set up for giving the order to retaliate if Washington is wiped out.
There will always be someone left to do it, no matter how hard they hit us... And the whole system is set up on a 'fail safe' basis all the way from the President right on down to me."
"How do you mean, 'fail safe'? demanded the Admiral.
"It means that if something goes wrong anywhere along the line, whether it's a mechanical accident or a human error, it automatically stops everything and makes any further action impossible. The system is absolutely foolproof."
"After you've lived as long as I have, son," observed the Admiral, "and met more of the high-powered fools who run this world and seen what kind of incompetency they are capable of, you may not be so sure of that. But, of course, in case of a sneak attack, it really doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference, does it? The order to fire is like Gabriel blowing his horn. What's the use of coming home after you've done it when you know your homeland has been laid waste too? The only way Polaris can accomplish its mission and justify its existence is by never being used!"
"That's right, sir," agreed the skipper. "The way the world is run now, we have to keep it ready for instant use, the Russians have to know it is ready, and we must never use it. It's a pretty delicate knife edge for the fate of civilization to be balanced on."
"Well, there isn't much you and I can do about it," said the Admiral. "May the good Lord guide you, son... Where do you go from here?"
"Back to San Francisco, sir. We're leaving two days from now."
"We go back a few days later. I may see you there. I'd like to take a short cruise with you there if we can arrange it."
"Be pleased to do it any time, sir."
Next day the Admiral paid his respects to CIC Pacific Fleet, Admiral Jones.
"Come in - come in, Windy," said Admiral Jones. "I've been looking forward to seeing you again. I followed your progress out here with great interest. Kept close track of you all the way, in fact."
"Harrumph," observed Admiral Day. "That young submarine skipper is a sharp character. I was very much impressed with him."
"So am I," said the CIC. "And he should be sharp. They're getting the pick of the whole Navy now for those Polaris submarine skippers, and they're entitled to it. Those young men with their three stripes carry a bigger load in some ways than I do with my four stars. You know, I've got a dozen of those
subs in my fleet, but if they ever decide to shoot, I'm not even in the chain of command. The word goes from the White House to the captain of the ship and I just get an information copy of the dispatch."
"It's a different Navy from the one we grew up in... In the old days, before radio, the skipper of a ship often had to act on his own initiative and could commit the United States on fairly important matters of national policy. Now he can't do anything on his own, but he can blow the whole world apart when they tell him to push the button!... Well, what have you got scheduled for me on the way back to Frisco?"
"An air defense exercise like the last one where you pulled that shenanigan on old Bugler. Your group is supposed to attack San Francisco, and he - with help from Continental Air Defense and SAC - is supposed to defend against you. My operations people are briefing your staff on the details of it now. It's a pretty straightforward operation and the Bugler is just itching for another crack at you. I doubt if you'll get away with anything on him this time."
"Maybe not. But I've got some pretty shrewd characters working for me. We shall see."
"Oh, yes, one other thing," added the CIC. "There will be six submarines working with the Air Defense people this time. They're going to be on a picket line about 1500 miles out from S.F. to see if they can intercept you as you cross it. It's just a scouting exercise for them. They're not supposed to attack."
"Okay, we'll see if we can slip through them. Will my friend in the Lafayette be one of them?"
"Yes. He leaves for his station tomorrow. And he has to go there and try to find you when you cross the line. No monkey business of lying on the bottom here this time."
On the Guadalcanal next morning Admiral Day met with what he called his "Dirty Tricks" board to discuss the forthcoming operation on the return trip. Lieutenant Commander Curly Cue was a charter member of this board, and to this meeting he brought along Ensign Willy Wigglesworth.
"Admiral, I want you to meet a newcomer in our squadron. This is Ensign Wigglesworth, sir."
"Please to meetcha, Mr. Wigglewaggle," said the Admiral.
"Mr. Wigglesworth occasionally has some... er... original ideas. He's the one who thought of looking under the ship for the Lafayette," added Curly.
"That's fine," said the Admiral. "Always glad to see young officers who are thinking about something besides the next boat to the beach... Now, gentleman, how are we going to outsmart these people this time?"
"Admiral," said the chief of staff, "this is a pretty straightforward operation, and it's laid out primarily as an exercise for the Air Defense people in finding the task group. They've got a big area to cover and will have quite a job doing it. But there isn't much we can do except make a high-speed run straight in, intercept their snoopers, and try to reach the launching point before they get their SAC helpers out to clobber us. I suggest we detour up to the north and curve down from the direction of Alaska. We may find some foggy weather to hide in coming that way. Outside of that, I haven't much to offer."
"That's okay," said the Admiral. "Lay it out on that basis. There is one little joker I'd like to try on them, though. Their long-range scouts and snoopers will be relying mostly on radar. They know that we've got a carrier, three cruisers, and ten destroyers, and they know that a group of that sort always cruises with a bent screen of destroyers ahead and the heavy ships in the center in a nice geometrical formation that can't be mistaken for anything else on a radarscope. They will be flying quite high where they can't actually see the ships too clearly, and some of the scouts will be Air Force characters who don't know an aircraft carrier from a Staten Island ferryboat anyway. So... right after we leave here, I'm going to pull the carrier out of the formation and run in all alone with her several hundred miles away from the rest of you. Their scouts will find the formation, all right, but observing from high altitude mostly by radar, I don't think they'll notice that the carrier isn't in it. And if any of them happen to run across the lone carrier, especially if it's at night, they wouldn't think one little blip all by itself is a carrier... What do you think of that, boys?"
"I don't think it will fool 'em," said the COS. "For one thing, our formation will only have the three cruisers in the center. I think they would spot that on their radarscopes."
"Put a destroyer in where the carrier belongs," said the Admiral. "That will cut the screen down to nine ships instead of ten, but I don't think they'll be sharp enough to catch that."
"A destroyer won't make anywhere near as big a blip on the radar screen as the Guadalcanal does," objected the COS. "The cruisers will show up much bigger than the can. If their scouts are on the job they will get suspicious and come down low for a good look."
"I know how we can lick that, sir," said Ensign Wigglesworth.
Good, Mr. Wigglesbotham," said the Admiral. "Let's have it."
"We just diddle with the search radar on the destroyer that is posing as the carrier. Our radars will spot any snoopers coming over us. Have the destroyer point one of his search antennas at the snooper and have it rigged to amplify and repeat back the blips it gets from the search radar of the snooper. It would be the same thing as magnifying an echo ashore. If you yell at a cliff half a mile away your voice is pretty weak by the time it gets there and even weaker by the time the echo gets back; but if there's a mike at the cliff that feeds your voice into a loudspeaker, the echo can blast your ears off."
The Admiral nodded approvingly, and said, "I predict a bright future for you in the Navy, Mr. Woggle-"
"Wigglesworth, sir," said Willy.
Turning to his electronics people, the Admiral said, "What do you technical experts say? Since you didn't think of it first, no doubt you have dozens of reasons why this won't work."
"Nossir. It will work all right. Sorry we didn't think of it ourselves. We can just modulate the incoming signal into the high-frequency oscillator of the heterodyne condensers and --"
"That's exactly what I had in mind," said the Admiral. "You gentlemen work out the details. That should take care of their aerial scouts and snoopers. Now, don't forget they're going to have a scouting line of subs. What can we do about them?"
"I don't think we have to worry too much about them, sir," said the COS. "They rely mostly on their hydrophones on a search mission. They can usually hear propellers much farther away than they could see the ship on their radar even if they were surfaced. A big formation of ships making twenty knots stirs up a hell of a commotion in the water. They will hear us forty or fifty miles away and there won't be any doubt about what they are hearing once they pick us up."
"That's right," said the Admiral. "And if any of them should happen to hear the carrier they will 'know' it's just one ship all by itself. I don't think they'll even suspect its us. And to help them conclude it isn't, I'm going to approach S.F. on the great-circle course from Honolulu, the way the tourist ships do."
"There's a couple of more angles we can work on that, sir," said Ensign Wigglesworth.
"Okay, Mr. Whiffleworth, let's have them."
"Wigglesworth," said Willy. "The Guadalcanal has got four screws. Most tourist ships are twin-screws. The subs can tell when they're listening to a four-screw ship very easily. I suggest we make the run in using only two screws."
"Fine idea, young man," said the Admiral. "If you'll pardon the pun, that oughta screw 'em up."
"One more thing," said Willy: "there's an outside chance that a sub might come up near the surface to stick up a periscope and take a look."
"There's a lot more than an outside chance, if you ask me," observed the Admiral.
"If he does it in daytime, the jig will be up. But if he does it at night, I think we can still fox him."
"How will we do that?"
"Those tourist ships are lit up like a saloon on Saturday night. We can rig a couple of rows of lights along the side that will look like portholes at night. We can paint false stacks with the Matson Line colors and insignia on them on that big stack of ours and shine lights on them so
they'll be quite conspicuous. Unless he comes up real close aboard, nobody would think we were anything but a tourist ship."
"Wonderful," said the Admiral. "Tell the Captain of the Guadalcanal to do it right after we are out of sight of land... What's your name again, young man?"
"Wigglesworth, sir. William Wigglesworth."
"Okay," said the Admiral. "I'm just going to call you Bill if you don't mind."
"Aye aye, sir," said Willy.
As the Lafayette sailed out of Pearl Harbor next day, the Admiral sent her the following message: "Don't believe all idle rumors you hear down there at 100 fathoms. Come up and take a look now and then. Good luck. Day."
Two days later the task group stood out, formed up off the entrance, and took a northerly course from Diamond Head as if bound for Alaska. During the night the Guadalcanal broke off from the group and headed southwest to pick up the Hawaii-San Francisco shipping lane, one of the destroyers taking her place in the center of the formation.
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