Counter Poised (14 page)
Authors: John Spikenard
“Well you guys are a real hoot,” said Leona with a hint of irritation in her voice.
George turned back to the drawing.
“Okay, okay. Anyway, the engine room is the last compartment. The awesome power of the reactor and the ship’s engines is shown by the speed at which they can propel this submergible ‘building’ through the water. Although the
Louisiana’s
official maximum speed is published as being over twenty knots, and her maximum depth is stated to be over eight hundred feet, these figures are really conservative. In fact, her top speed is over forty-five knots, and she can operate at depths up to twelve hundred feet.”
“Really? That’s a big difference from the published numbers.”
“I know, but most of the time it really doesn’t matter. On a normal boomer patrol, these figures are somewhat meaningless. The boomer’s mission is to remain in her patrol area, within operational range of all of her missile’s targets, and to be as silent as possible. That means the
Louisiana
will rarely go below five hundred feet and rarely exceed five to ten knots.”
“Why not? It seems like if you go deep you can hide better.”
“That’s true, but we have to be at periscope depth to fire the missiles, so if we spend all our time real deep, we’re not really ready to fire. We also have to be near the surface to pick up the radio commands, which would tell us to fire. And besides that, changing depth and traveling at high speed generates noise, and noise generates attention. The one thing a boomer crew longs for is a boring patrol.”
“I thought submarine duty would be exciting.”
“Well, it used to be a little more exciting than it is now. During the Cold War years, the Soviet Union also had boomers on patrol with missiles targeted for cities and other strategic sites in the United States, and we had to keep track of where they all were so that if the balloon went up, we could take them out before they had a chance to launch their missiles.”
“Hmm, that doesn’t make sense to me.”
“Why not?”
“Well, if
we
were out there tracking their boomers, ready to sink
them
, what makes you think
they
weren’t out there tracking
you
, ready to sink you?”
“We had technology on our side. Soviet submarines were considered noisy by submarine standards, and because of that, U.S. forces generally had a pretty good idea at any one time of where all of the Soviet boomers were located. Our boats, on the other hand, enjoyed the advantage of technology, which enabled them to operate submerged for extended periods of time without generating noise that would lead to their detection by enemy attack submarines.”
“We were that much quieter than them?”
“Yeah, we were. We had computer-aided screw designs, which lessened the noise the large propellers made as they propelled our boats through the water. We also had super-quiet engines and super-quiet primary and secondary coolant pumps.”
“What are those?”
“Oh, they’re part of the cooling system for the nuclear reactor and the steam-generating plant that it powers. We had ours mounted on sound-absorbing mounts, which isolated any remaining noise from the hull. For the longest time, though, it seemed the Soviets must have just bolted theirs directly to the hull.”
“How do you know that?”
“I don’t really. It’s just their submarines were so noisy that if you took one of them out of the water, put it in a dry dock, and hooked up hoses to everything that needs water so you could operate the submarine as if it was submerged, it would deafen you to stand on the dock next to it without ear protection.”
“That’s amazing!” Leona continued to study the drawing. “So how many people serve on one of these?”
“The normal complement is fifteen officers and one hundred forty enlisted members.”
“Gee, and most of them crammed up here in the forward compartment…doesn’t that get a little crowded?”
“Yeah, it’s important to take a shower every day!”
“No, I’m serious. Doesn’t that cause a lot of stress with so many people being in such tight quarters?”
“Yes, it does, but we learn to tolerate each other while we’re on patrol for the sake of the mission. Some people tend to have problems, though, because of all the tension they have bottled up inside from the patrol. They get home, and they really let loose! The navy realizes the stress of this mission is enormous. So, patrols are limited to sixty days, and once off patrol, the crew is rotated to shore for R and R before starting a two-month training cycle leading up to their next deployment. In the meantime, an alternative crew takes the submarine on another sixty-day patrol.”
“There are two complete crews for every boomer?”
“Yes, the Blue Crew and the Gold Crew. The machine, it seems, is able to handle the hardships of patrols much better than the human crew.”
“But why is it so stressful, if all you’re doing out there is playing a long game of hide-and-seek?”
“It’s a very high stakes game, Leona. During a boomer patrol, our crewmembers have to constantly think the unthinkable. If we receive word that the U.S. is under attack, we’re trained to ‘push the button’ and launch our missiles without question, possibly killing millions of people in the process. And we’re constantly running drills pretending that we’re doing it. It really takes a toll on you.”
“Is that where your receding hairline came from?” Leona teased, running her hand over the top of George’s forehead.
George laughed. “Well I could probably blame genetics, but
submarine stress
makes a more interesting story!”
Upon receiving orders to his new command, one of George Adams’s first actions was to visit his old friend, Lieutenant Commander John “DD” Cornwall at the Bureau of Naval Personnel, otherwise known as BuPers. George and DD had served on two submarines together before George received his assignment at SUBLANT, and DD became the officer in charge of submarine detailing at BuPers.
The detailer was responsible for ensuring that every submarine command had the right personnel assigned to enable the submarine to carry out its mission. Crews for ballistic missile submarines were highly educated and highly trained. Throughout the navy, officers were required to have a college degree. Enlisted members in the surface and aviation communities rarely had more than a high school education. In the submarine community, however, the average enlisted member had over two years of college. In addition, they went through rigorous navy training related to their specialty. Those destined to work in M-Division, the “Nukes,” enrolled in a lengthy Nuclear Power School to learn the ins and outs of running a nuclear power plant.
“DD, I know I can’t officially ask you or order you to pull any strings, but there are certain qualifications I would like to see in at least half of the crew assigned to the
Louisiana’s
Gold Crew.”
“George, you know I can’t promise you anything…”
“I know, but it’s really important to me.” George pulled a sheet of paper from his briefcase and handed it to DD. “First, this is a list of the officers I would like to have assigned. I would also prefer that as many of my crew as possible be Christian and single or divorced with no kids. Those qualifications make up a better profile for a crew member of a boomer. You know the kind of responsibility we have to accept when we agree to go on patrol. You don’t want your crew worrying about their wives and families if the balloon ever goes up; we have to focus on the mission and be willing to press the button.”
“Yes, I know, but I personally doubt that the qualifications of being Christian and unmarried make any real difference in that regard. I’ll tell you what, though—if I happen to have two different personnel files on my desk, both equally trained and destined to boomers, and it makes no difference whether I send them to the
Louisiana
or another boat: I’ll send them your way if they meet your criteria; I’ll send them the other way if they don’t.”
“Thanks, DD, it would be great if at least half the crew met those qualifications,” George responded. “That’s all I could ask of you.”
With a normal complement of fifteen officers and one hundred forty enlisted, George was asking the detailer for about seventy-five satisfactory crewmembers. If he was lucky, he would get the fifty he actually needed.
George continued, “That’s all I could ask…except for one thing. Could you give me three backup sonar operators?”
“Why do you need that many sonar operators?”
“Look, you’ve been out there yourself. From experience you know how important the sonar operator is for a boomer. Our primary mission is to remain undetected, and to do that, we have to have better sonar operators than any of the attack boats that are trying to find us. Well, I’ve found during past deployments, we needed a lot more sonar operators than we had. During crunch times, our sonar operators were working around the clock. And when people get tired, they make mistakes.”
“I’ll take it under advisement,” said DD, not really committing to overstaff George’s boat in this specialty.
George purposely did not request DD to transfer Petty Officer Leona Harris to the
Louisiana
. She was a good yeoman, and he relied heavily on their exchange of ideas each morning when forming his own opinions, but he had other plans for her. Her position inside SUBLANT headquarters and her photographic memory for the number and positions of ships and submarines was going to be very valuable once George’s plan was launched. Besides, it was a
serious
violation of navy regs for George and Leona to be romantically involved, and he did not want to raise any suspicions. Commanding officers were routinely relieved of their commands for such behavior!
There was, however, one special request George made to DD—he requested Lieutenant Commander William “Pappy” Boyington be assigned as his executive officer (XO). George knew William personally to be a fine and very competitive officer. William’s friends had called him Pappy ever since he was a kid. Pappy, of course, referred to Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, the famous World War II Marine Corps flying ace and commander of the Black Sheep Squadron. Although William was not related to Gregory Boyington, the nickname had stuck with him through all the years, through his time at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, and through his ten years of active duty.
The question had been poised to Pappy many times over the years whether he would have been better suited to being a fighter pilot rather than a submariner. He certainly had the competitive spirit of a fighter pilot, but he was more of an intellectual—not so much the swashbuckling type that fighter pilots seemed to be.
Pappy’s excellent engineering grades at the Academy had prompted the submarine officers stationed there to put the hard sell on him to select submarines when it came time during his senior year to select the branch of the service in which he would serve. His exceptionally high class rank meant he was one of the first midshipmen called to the selection room. As a result, he had his choice of assignments. He could choose aviation, surface line, nuclear power, or Marine Corps, with any starting date he named for his training. He had found over the years, doing your best either got you exactly the assignment you wanted or at least kept your options open. It was those people who considered the minimum requirements to be good enough who found themselves sadly frustrated on service selection day. They wandered the room aimlessly from table to table, trying to decide which was the least objectionable assignment. Pappy had always been thankful his father had instilled in him a tough work ethic and the philosophy he had heard probably hundreds of times while growing up, “If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.”
Pappy met George’s criteria. Pappy had once been happily married, and he and his wife, Jean, had a young daughter, Melody. Jean and Melody were in DC when the city was attacked. Pappy was deployed on board the USS
Kentucky
SSBN 737 at the time. Although he and other members of the crew desperately wanted to return home to determine the fate of friends and loved ones, they knew this was the most critical time for them to be on patrol. If the U.S. was under nuclear attack, the
Kentucky
needed to be right where she was.
Several weeks later, Pappy returned home to an empty house. His in-laws, who lived in Bethesda, told him how Jean had gone into DC that morning to see the monuments around the National Mall. She had taken Melody along to enjoy the beautiful spring day. They had never seen either of them again.
George had no problem recruiting Pappy.
Three months later, after successfully completing Prospective Commanding Officer (PCO) training, George Adams reported to the Commander Submarine Squadron 16 at the Naval Submarine Base at Kings Bay, Georgia, to take command of the nuclear fleet ballistic missile submarine, USS
Louisiana
SSBN 743, Gold Crew. The Gold Crew immediately began preparations and training for the submarine’s next patrol under Captain Adams’s careful guidance. George was surprised how quickly and easily he became used to being called captain. After working to achieve it for over seventeen years, it just seemed natural.
As part of the preparations for deployment, each member of the crew had to undergo a strict security review—part of the Navy’s Personnel Reliability Program, otherwise known as PRP. The PRP review provided an excellent opportunity for Captain Adams and the XO to screen members of the crew and identify potential candidates to participate in the plan.
The XO sat in the captain’s cabin in a visitor’s chair next to the captain’s desk. He was bent over a large spiral binder, studying the detailed instructions for the PRP review. “As I understand it, Captain, the CO or XO must personally review the background report and interview each member of the crew prior to deployment.”
“That’s the way I read it, too. That should be perfect for identifying potential team members. Of course, we’ll have to follow up with informal interviews throughout the deployment.”
“I guess anytime we talk to a crew member, we should be sizing them up to see if they fit the bill. We basically have to whittle down the crew to about one-third of the normal ship’s complement.”
“That’s exactly right. But instead of thinking about who we can eliminate from consideration, let’s work it from the other side. We need to identify and recruit the best fifty crew members on this boat. But it’s more complicated than merely selecting fifty crew members with the right attitude. They also have to have the right skill set to be able to safely operate the boat for several weeks. That means we need to spread our recruiting efforts through all the departments and all specialties. I’ve given a lot of thought to the composition of the ideal team, and we need to strive to pull together a team as close as possible to the ideal team.”
George pulled a binder out of his desk and handed it to Pappy. “You’re my right-hand man, XO. Here’s a binder I’ve put together over the last few months with job descriptions of the ideal team. It will be our recruiting bible so make sure you have it memorized.”
“You’ve done a lot of work, Captain, so I guess it’s high time I earned my keep as well!” Pappy flipped through the pages skimming the job descriptions, then thoughtfully asked, “I can see how in certain departments, we might have situations where the most skilled crewmember is not necessarily the best fit in terms of attitude and reliability. What then?”
“Attitude and reliability come first. Make notes of every discussion that would impact our decision to disclose the plan to them. We have to be absolutely sure, before we tell anyone about the plan, that he or she will be favorably disposed to joining us. We can’t afford to have a whistleblower!”
“No, sir. You’re absolutely right. A whistleblower would ruin the entire plan and probably result in you and me going to prison for the rest of our lives.”
“That’s a certainty, XO. If they don’t shoot us.”
“They’d probably shoot us
and
send us to prison!” the XO joked. Both men laughed nervously.
“Okay,” the captain continued. “It’s time to get serious—real serious!”
“I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
“So other than having the right skills, being single, and having no encumbering family ties, what are we looking for in these team members?” asked the XO.
“Patriots first of all. And people who clearly understand the system is broken, and somebody needs to fix it. People of action who will accept that responsibility, rather than pushing it off on someone else.”
“All right. But I think we have a lot of people like that on the
Louisiana
. How do we narrow them down?”
“Well, we can certainly eliminate Muslims,” said the captain. “They’re too unpredictable. Muslims can’t even agree among themselves what their religion says about spreading Islam by the sword. As a result, you never know. Every Muslim is a potential radical.”
“I don’t know anything about that, but I agree Muslims are too unpredictable for this mission, given the world situation today. So who else?”
“New Age types.”
“New Agers? Why them? They wouldn’t hurt anybody.”
“That’s just it. The New Agers are all
peace and love,
so it’s questionable whether they would have the conviction to push the button, if the time comes. What we need are members of a good old fear-based religion like Islam, but ones who are more predictable and reliable.”
“So who would that be?” asked the XO.
“Christians.”
“Christians? But Christianity is a religion of love, not fear. How do you get that?”
“I’ll explain it later. For right now, let’s just say Christians fit the bill.”
“Okay, but I don’t see how this is going to work. Religion is a sort of taboo subject. We can’t just go around talking to crewmembers about their religious beliefs.”
“That’s why I recruited the chaplain.”
“You’ve already recruited Lieutenant Lewis?” the XO asked incredulously.
“Yes. I reviewed Chaplain Lewis’s background and had the opportunity to feel him out on a number of subjects. I asked him a few ‘what if’ questions, and he jumped at the opportunity. He’ll be one of our most valuable members. He’s the only one who can legitimately go around and talk to people about their religious beliefs.”
“Wow! So we already have our third member!”
“Our fourth, actually. Petty Officer Leona Harris is also in, but she’ll be joining us later.”
“Petty Officer Harris? Who’s that? She’s not a member of the crew.”
“She was my yeoman on the SUBLANT staff. She has an incredible photographic memory for ship dispositions and numbers. She’ll be our eyes and ears on the inside while we’re on the run, and then she’ll join us later.”
“You mean a spy?”
“She’ll attend all the admiral’s briefings, and she won’t even have to write anything down—so there won’t be any evidence that she’s spying. She’ll remember every detail until she gets home. Then she’ll write it out and fax it to my cousin, Dwight, at his private fax at GenCon Construction Company.”
“Dwight?”
“Yeah, Dwight Belevieu—a good ol’ South Louisiana Cajun oilman.”
“Sounds interesting. So we have a fifth member! But how would we get the information from him?”
“The old-fashioned way. Dwight has an HF transmitter—like an old ham radio operator. He’ll encrypt it and transmit it to us every evening. At HF frequencies, the radio waves bounce off the charged layer of the ionosphere and come back down to the ground at distances up to two thousand miles away. You can control the length of the hop by varying the frequency.”
“Wow! So I guess we’ll be taking an HF radio along…”
“You got it. And the beauty of it is that the navy doesn’t monitor HF transmissions these days because it’s
old
technology.”
“It seems pretty sophisticated. Why doesn’t the navy use it?”
“Because it’s not very reliable. The ionosphere is real dynamic—it varies hour by hour. When it’s really charged up, you get a good bounce and the signal comes in real clear on the other end. But when it’s weak, you may not get any bounce at all.”
“So some days we may not get the report?”
“Yeah. They’ll repeat the broadcast every few hours and on several different frequencies, and hopefully they’ll hit a combination of frequency and ionospheric conditions that gets the message to us.”
“So what put you onto Harris?”
“I’m a good judge of character.”
“So I guess we’re committed,” ventured the XO.
“Absolutely!” responded the captain.
