This next class was the Sturgeon, already under construction in several shipyards. There it would be equipped with several sonar systems capable of detecting and tracking adversaries, both surfaced or submerged, at long ranges no matter what speed she was making. Finally, it had already been determined that existing sonar arrays and torpedo tubes were in too-close proximity to each other on all U.S. nuclear submarines. The noise involved in preparing a torpedo or torpedoes for launching could cause the submarine’s sonar to lose contact on the potential target at a critical time. This finding resulted in the relocation and reorientation of the four torpedo tubes to an amidships positions, where they were angled outward both port and starboard.
During the course of the exercise, Skipjack made one final visit to Bermuda. A number of us managed to find our way, in spite of almost nonexistent transportation, to the famous old Elbow Beach Hotel for some final nights of good fun and drinking.
After concluding this final submarine-versus-submarine exercise for Skipjack, we pulled into Charleston for a port visit and to lay important preliminary groundwork for entering the shipyard for an extensive overhaul a month’s hence. It was during this time that Lt. Ralph West, from USS Tullibee, relieved me as engineer. I assumed the duties of navigator and operations officer one last time.
After a pleasant week in Charleston, Skipjack departed for State Pier, New London, and a final pre-overhaul upkeep alongside the submarine tender Fulton. The exec’s and officers’ time was spent, in addition, accomplishing the myriad tasks associated with moving the families of all those crewmembers who would be with Skipjack during the course of the overhaul.
The upkeep completed in late March 1965, I had one last opportunity to plan and execute a maximum-speed submerged transit to a point to the east of the entrance buoys to the port of Charleston. We reached that point in early April and surfaced. With the assistance of a pilot, I was allowed to conn Skipjack for one final time up the Cooper River. We moored within the Charleston Naval Shipyard where Skipjack’s overhaul was to include the refueling of its S-5-W reactor, a process that would take almost a year and a half.
I remained on board with little to do as navigator and operations officer for the better part of the month. It was to prove a most enjoyable and relaxing time. I house-sat for some good friends on Sullivan’s Island, took part in the Annual Submarine Ball with gusto, and played a lot of tennis with my commanding officer, Paul Tomb. I was then detached and returned north to the U.S. naval submarine base in Groton, where I began a series of intensive weapons and sonar schools and training courses, including the Prospective Commanding Officers Course, that would prepare me for my next duty, first as officer in charge, and then as precommissioning exec of the second in the Sturgeon-class nuclear attack submarine, the Whale (SSN 638).
Skipjack’s high speed and maneuverability enabled her to remain an effective attack submarine and she stayed in service for another twenty-four years. She received a new seven-bladed propeller in the mid-1970s, replacing a noisier five-bladed propeller with which she had earlier set so many speed records. She was deployed to the Mediterranean on several occasions and, in addition, was assigned Cold War missions until well into the mid-1980s.
In October 1989 this proud boat that had inaugurated a new era of submarine warfare entered the Newport News Shipyard and Dry Dock Company for decommissioning. On 19 April 1990 she was officially decommissioned and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register. The ex-Skipjack subsequently entered the Nuclear Powered Ship and Submarine Recycling Program in Bremerton, Washington, on 17 March 1996. On 1 September 1998, this beautiful entity ceased to exist.2
Epilogue
I have written this memoir of seven years of rich and varied experience on board three Cold War attack submarines to interest students and aficionados of submarines and in hope that it will prove to be of value to submarine officers aspiring to submarine command.
I have not mentioned the unique opportunity I had to act as fire control coordinator throughout my service and training on Seadragon, under the command of George Steele, and on Skipjack under the commands of Leslie Kelly, Shepherd Jenks, and Paul Tomb. The position of fire control coordinator is key, second only to that of the captain during Cold War trailing operations and all submarine battle stations approaches and attacks. The opportunity to perform this function for considerable lengths of time on all three boats was an essential component of my preparation for command of a nuclear attack submarine.
It is the fire control coordinator who coordinates the collection of information from all sources—sonar, visual, electronic, and intelligence—on the threat target of interest; who analyzes all this information, using the boat’s fire control equipment, and who comes up with a best estimate of target identity, range to the target, and the target’s course, speed, depth, and mode of operation.
In wartime the fire control coordinator is further responsible for producing a hitting solution for best destroying the threat target, for recommending the most appropriate weapon to be used and how many to use for maximum weapons system effectiveness, and for advising the commanding officer when to launch, or fire, the weapon(s).
Lt. Cdr. Alfred S. McLaren receiving Commander Submarine Force Atlantic Letter of Commendation from Rear Adm. John A. Tyree Jr., USN, Deputy Commander Submarine Force Atlantic, 1965. U.S. Navy
The foregoing experience was to prove invaluable as I proceeded through my various training courses: AN/BQQ-2 Sonar School, the Submarine Prospective Commanding Officers courses at the submarine base in Groton; and the SSN Navigator Course at Dam Neck, Virginia, following my detachment from Skipjack. Most importantly, the experience gained enabled me to serve as a command watch officer for four months on board USS Greenling during a still-classified Cold War operation through the summer and early fall of 1968, and to carry out with great success the many Cold War special operations conducted during my four-year command of USS Queenfish.
I owe a deep debt of gratitude to three of my former commanding officers, Vice Adm. George Steele, Capt. Les Kelly, and Capt. Shep Jenks, who prepared me for submarine command by creating an onboard atmosphere of forceful backup. No officer or crewmember was ever afraid to speak up whenever an unsafe course of action was contemplated or undertaken, there was a better way of doing something, or a wrong order was inadvertently given. Such an atmosphere was, and is, absolutely essential on board an attack submarine if it is going to operate safely and to maximum effectiveness. I strove to create this same environment as skipper of USS Queenfish, particularly during our 1970 Arctic Ocean Expedition and numerous Cold War operations from 1969 to 1973.
In August 1965 I reported as officer in charge of the new nuclear attack submarine, Whale (SSN 638), at the Quincy Fore River Shipyard in Massachusetts, and four months later I reported as precommissioning exec of Queenfish, being constructed at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company, Virginia. It was during this time that I was pleasantly surprised with the presentation of a ComSubLant Letter of Commendation by Rear Adm. John A. Tyree Jr., deputy ComSubLant, for my performance of duty during Skipjack’s last Cold War mission.
Queenfish, although ninth in the new Sturgeon-class nuclear attack submarine, with its keel laid a year and a half after the lead submarine Sturgeon, was the first to be completed and to go to sea, which it did during the fall of 1966.
From being precommissioning, and later commissioning, exec of Queenfish, I was to go on to the U.S. Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island, for duty as a student in the Command and Staff course, 1967–68, and the first nuclear-trained officer to serve on the staff of the War Gaming Department from 1968 to 1969.
I was detached from the War College in April 1969 to proceed to the command of USS Queenfish at Pearl Harbor following my completion of Admiral Rickover’s three-and-a-half-month Prospective Commanding Officers course at his Naval Reactors headquarters in Washington, DC.
The details of this later challenging period will be covered in a planned third b
ook, as soon as declassification permits.
Notes
Introduction
1.Alfred S. McLaren, Unknown Waters: A First-Hand Account of the Historic Under-Ice Survey of the Siberian Continental Shelf by USS Queenfish (SSN-651) (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2008).
Chapter 1. Early History and Post–World War II Modifications
1.David L. Johnston, A Visual Guide to the U.S. Fleet Submarines Part Three: Balao and Tench Classes 1942–1950 (NavSource Naval History, 2012), http://navsource.org/archives/08/pdf/0829295.pdf.
2.Electric Boat Company is now General Dynamics Corporation, Electric Boat Division, Groton, Connecticut.
3.Joseph Mark Scalia, Germany’s Last Mission to Japan: The Failed Voyage of U-234 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2000), 185. Uranium oxide is used in producing nuclear weapons.
4.Gary Weir, “Silent Defense: One Hundred Years of the American Submarine Force,” Chief of Naval Operations, Submarine Warfare Division, Submarine Force History, 27 April 1999, http://www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/n87/history/fullhist.html.
5.Conning the submarine means directing a submarine’s movements through appropriate orders to the helmsman (course and speed) and diving officer of the watch (depth).
6.P. D. Hulme, “USN Guppy Submarine Conversions 1947–1954: The Quest for Higher Submerged Speed & Greater Underwater Propulsion Power,” Barrow-in-Furness Submariners Association, http://www.rnsubs.co.uk/Dits/Articles/guppy.php.
7.A polynya hop is transit under ice from open-water area to open-water area, using each surfacing to recharge the boat’s batteries.
Chapter 2. On Board USS Greenfish
1.Norman Friedman, U.S. Submarines through 1945: An Illustrated Design History (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1995), 242.
2.The 1MC is the primary system for electronically broadcasting communications throughout the submarine.
3.“Five Sailors Die in Explosions on Snorkel Submarine,” Chicago Tribune, 22 February 1955.
4.Submarine school instructor during my class, September 1957.
5.“Project 611 Zulu class,” GlobalSecurity.org, http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/611.htm. Twenty-eight had been built and were in service in 1952.
6.Shannon Rankin and Jay Barlow, “Source of the North Pacific ‘Boing’ Sound Attributed to Minke Whales,” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 118, no. 5 (2005): 3346–51, doi:10.1121/1.2046747.
7.Terry Rodgers, “Mysterious Underwater Noise Is Likely a Whale Mating Call,” http://legacy.utsandiego.com/news/science/20021227-9999_2m27whales.html.
8.“The Mysterious Music of Minke Whales,” by Scott Simon, Weekend Edition Saturday, NPR, 9 April 2005, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4584101.
9.Commanders and lieutenant commanders, or any rank for that matter, who are in command of a submarine or ship are usually addressed as captain by their subordinates by centuries-old naval custom.
10.A ship or submarine captain has the power to award a Captain’s Mast, or nonjudicial punishment, for minor offenses committed by the enlisted personnel under his command.
Chapter 3. Our First Deployment
1.The diving officer of the watch is responsible for keeping the submarine at ordered depth, in a condition of neutral buoyancy overall, and trimmed to a zero bubble (perfectly horizontal) fore and aft (similar to using a carpenter’s level). He reports to the officer of the deck under way. The officer of the deck in port is responsible for the security and safety of the submarine in port. The officer of the deck under way is responsible for the safe navigation and maneuvering of the submarine both on the surface and when submerged. He has control of course, speed, and depth. He reports directly to the commanding officer or command watch officer.
2.Trim means flooded from or pumped to sea internal, hard variable ballast or “trim tanks” as necessary to achieve overall neutral buoyancy. No way on means no forward motion.
3.This layer is where the water temperature decreases such that active sonar emissions from either an ASW surface warship or aircraft sonobuoy are deflected away from the depth to which the boat is headed.
4.To dog a watertight door or hatch is to seal it securely with each of the sealing levers provided.
5.Commands to maneuvering are to the senior and assistant controllers (electrician’s mates) who stand their watch in the maneuvering room.
6.The sonar supervisor and several additional sonar watch standers who man the various passive and active sonars are located in the sonar room. The attack periscope presented a very small radar or visual cross-section and hence was very difficult to detect.
7.So the periscope does not create a wake or “feather” that can be visually detected. The creation of fluorescence trails in the water could also be a problem, particularly in warmer water.
8.During patrol-quiet all noise-making activities and equipment, such as high-pressure compressors, are secured to minimize radiated underwater noise.
9.A snapshot refers to launch of an acoustic homing warshot from an already flooded or ready torpedo tube (as soon as the torpedo tube outer door is open) directly at an immediate threat, ideally within thirty to forty-five seconds of initial detection.
10.Current to real dollars converter (using GDP deflator), http://stats.areppim.com/calc/calc_usdlrxdeflator.php, accessed 29 April 2014.
Chapter 4. Coming into Yokosuka
1.Martin W. Lewis, “Subic Bay: From American Servicemen to Korean Businessmen,” GeoCurrents, 22 October 2010, http://www.geocurrents.info/geopolitics/subic-bay-from-american-servicemen-to-korean-businessmen#ixzz30DLzs2yp
2.Shane Tuck, “Mess Management Specialists Transform into Culinary Specialist,” Navy.mil, 3 March 2004, http://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=12134.
Chapter 5. Off the Soviet Far East Coast
1.Emanuel M. Ballenzweig, “The Weather and Circulation of September 1958,” Monthly Weather Review 86, no. 11 (1958): 359–82, http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/086/mwr-086-09-0359.pdf.
2.These were not absolute sound pressure recordings. Greenfish did not have this capability at the time. The captain was to play the most interesting of these recordings at subsequent debriefings in Yokosuka and Pearl Harbor and, on special occasions, for certain high-level visitors on board Greenfish.
Chapter 6. Homeward to Pearl Harbor
1.Cumshaw is an international seagoing term for petty graft and secret commissions.
2.Clay Blair Jr., The Atomic Submarine and Admiral Rickover (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1954).
3.Described in McLaren, Unknown Waters, 6–8.
4.There were not more than seven such submarines: Nautilus, Seawolf, Triton, Skate, Sargo, Swordfish, and Skipjack, plus another half dozen under construction.
5.This chapter is a difficult and complex portion of the Submarine Qualification notebook that consisted of hand-drawn reproduction of each and every shipboard electrical system as one personally hand-over-hand traced it. The production of each drawing that would meet engineering drawing standards took many hours.
6.McLaren, Unknown Waters, 9.
7.“USS Greenfish (SS 351) Deployments & History,” HullNumber.com, http://www.hullnumber.com/SS-351.
8.“Museum Visit to the Scrapping of USS Greenfish,” San Francisco Maritime National Park Association, http://www.maritime.org/rioweb/.
Chapter 7. My First Nuclear Submarine
1.The chief operator is a top supervisory position, equivalent to engineering officer of the watch, on an operational nuclear-powered submarine.
2.USS Skate (SSN 578) was the lead nuclear attack submarine in the class, followed by USS Swordfish (SSN 579), USS Sargo (SSN 583), and USS Seadragon (SSN 584).
3.“Milestones: 1953–1960,” U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1953-1960/u2-incident.
4.“584 Commissioning Tomorrow: RADM Grenfel Speaker,” Portsmouth Periscope, 4 December 1959.
5.Dictionary
of American Naval Fighting Ships, Seadragon, http://www.history.navy.mil/danfs/s8/seadragon-ii.htm.
6.John Lyman was later to fleet up to engineer officer of Thresher and was, sadly, one of the some 130 who were on board when she was lost during a dive to test depth in 1964.
7.I was to be the thirty-seventh president of the Explorers Club for four years, beginning in 1996.
8.William Edward Parry, Journal of a voyage for the discovery of a north-west passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific: Performed in the years 1819-20, in His Majesty’s ships Hecla and Griper, under the orders of William Edward Parry; with the appendix containing scientific and other observations (London: John Murray, 1821); Robert John Le Mesurier McClure, The Discovery of the North-West Passage by H.M.S. “Investigator,” Capt. R. M’Clure, 1850, 1851, 1852, 1853, 1854 (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, 1856).
Chapter 8. Into Davis Strait and Baffin Bay
1.Clive Holland, Arctic Exploration and Development c. 500 B.C. to 1915: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland, 1994), 3–11.
2.Ibid., 22, 185–86, 222–23.
3.An 8kHZ active scanning sonar.
4.George P. Steele, Seadragon: Northwest under the Ice (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1962), 118.
5.Gerald E. Synhorst, “Soviet Strategic Interest in the Maritime Arctic,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 99, no. 5 (1973): 843.
6.A Williamson Turn, used to bring a vessel back to a point it has previously passed through, calls for running a short distance, then changing course to port or starboard 60 degrees using 15 degrees rudder then reversing course and heading back toward the center of the area where the vessel wants to return.
7.Steele, Seadragon, 128.
8.Crewmembers were known to relieve themselves in the bilges after a night of heavy drinking in port.
9.An 8kHZ active scanning sonar.
10.William M. Leary, Under Ice: Waldo Lyon and the Development of the Arctic Submarine (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1998), 193.
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