Silent and Unseen Read online

  This book was brought to publication with generous assistance of Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest.

  Naval Institute Press

  291 Wood Road

  Annapolis, MD 21402

  © 2015 by Alfred Scott McLaren

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  McLaren, Alfred Scott.

  Silent and unseen : on patrol in three Cold War attack submarines / Alfred Scott McLaren.

  pages cm

  Summary: “Silent and Unseen is a memoir of a submariner’s life on a U.S. attack submarine during the Cold War by Capt. Alfred S. McLaren, an experienced submarine officer and nuclear attack submarine commander. He describes in riveting detail the significant events that occurred early in the Cold War during his seven years, 1958-1965, on board three attack submarines: the USS Greenfish (SS 351), USS Seadragon (SSN 584), and USS Skipjack (SSN 585). He took part in the first submerged transit of the Northwest Passage, a Baffin Bay expedition, and, as commander of USS Queenfish (SSN-651), a North Pole expedition that completed the first survey of the entire Siberian Continental Shelf”— Provided by publisher.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-1-61251-846-6 (ebook) 1. McLaren, Alfred Scott. 2. United States. Navy—Submarine forces—Biography. 3. United States. Navy—Officers—Biography. 4. Submariners—United States—Biography. 5. Submarines (Ships)—United States—History—20th century. 6. Seadragon (Submarine : SSN-584) 7. Skipjack (Submarine : SSN-585) 8. Greenfish (Submarine : SS-351) 9. United States—History, Naval—20th century. 10. Cold War—Biography. I. Title.

  V63.M2867A3 2015

  359.0092—dc23

  [B]

  2015003774

  Print editions meet the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper).

  232221201918171615987654321

  First printing

  The USS Greenfish, USS Seadragon, and USS Skipjack insignias on pages 5, 63, and 139 are from the U.S. Navy.

  To the officers and crews with whom I served on attack submarines during the Cold War and to all my brother submariners who served our great nation, silently and unseen, during this turbulent era.

  Contents

  List of Photos and Illustrations

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  Part I. USS Greenfish (SS 351): Workhorse of the Pacific

  Chapter 1.Early History and Post–World War II Modifications

  Chapter 2.On Board USS Greenfish

  Chapter 3.Our First Deployment: Western Pacific 1958

  Chapter 4.Coming into Yokosuka

  Chapter 5.Off the Soviet Far East Coast

  Chapter 6.Homeward to Pearl Harbor

  Part II. USS Seadragon (SSN 584): Arctic Pioneer

  Chapter 7.My First Nuclear Submarine

  Chapter 8.Into Davis Strait and Baffin Bay

  Chapter 9.Through the Northwest Passage

  Chapter 10.Surfacing at the Pole

  Chapter 11.The Bering Strait and Nome

  Chapter 12.Pearl Harbor at Last

  Chapter 13.A New Commanding Officer

  Part III. USS Skipjack (SSN 585): Root of the New Sea Power

  Chapter 14.First Months on Board

  Chapter 15.In the Mediterranean

  Chapter 16.Home Port in New London

  Chapter 17.Evaluation of the Nuclear Attack Submarine

  Chapter 18.A Year to Remember

  Chapter 19.One More Cold War Mission and a Change of Command

  Chapter 20.England and Then Home

  Epilogue

  Notes

  Index

  Photos and Illustrations

  USS Greenfish (SS 351) at sea

  Lt. (jg) Alfred S. McLaren, gunnery and torpedo officer

  Loading torpedo onto USS Greenfish (SS 351)

  USS Greenfish (SS 351) outboard in nest of diesel submarines

  Lt. Cdr. John A. Davis, Lt. (jg) Alfred S. McLaren, CSC (SS) Valdo J. Alderson, and Supply and Commissary Department

  USS Greenfish (SS 351) mess compartment

  Lt. (jg) Alfred S. McLaren receiving gold “Submarine Dolphins”

  Launch of USS Seadragon (SSN 584)

  USS Seadragon (SSN 584) under way

  Crews mess, USS Seadragon (SSN 584)

  USS Seadragon (SSN 584) encounters gigantic iceberg with Teddy Roosevelt profile

  Lt. Alfred S. McLaren, diving officer of the watch

  USS Seadragon (SSN 584) route through Northwest Passage

  USS Seadragon (SSN 584) crewmembers explore ice pack in Arctic Ocean

  Heavy sea ice above USS Seadragon (SSN 584)

  USS Seadragon (SSN 584) scuba divers at North Pole

  First pitch in historic first baseball game at North Pole

  “Batter up!” Baseball at the North Pole

  USS Seadragon “First East–West Polar Transit—August 1960” insignia

  USS Seadragon (SSN 584) arrives in Pearl Harbor

  Launch of USS Skipjack (SSN 585)

  Admiral of the Fleet, the Earl Mountbatten of Burma visits USS Skipjack (SSN 585)

  USS Skipjack (SSN 585) under way on surface

  USS Skipjack (SSN 585) moored in the Mediterranean during the Cuban Missile Crisis

  Commanding officer Shepherd M. Jenks and officers, USS Skipjack (SSN 585)

  Lt. Cdr. Alfred S. McLaren receiving Commander Submarine Force Atlantic Letter of Commendation

  Acknowledgments

  I wish to acknowledge and thank, from the bottom of my heart, my wife of twenty-six wonderful years, Avery Battle Russell, for her loving and steadfast encouragement and support from the time I first began this book in 1996 until its completion in 2014. I also wish to thank her for her absolutely superb editorial advice and countless hours of editing during the course of preparing this book for publication.

  Heartfelt thanks go to Ms. Wendy Gulley, archivist at the Submarine Force Museum and Library, Groton, Connecticut, for allowing me access to the submarine boat books, scrapbooks, and cruise books, and for her patient and invaluable assistance during a series of visits. I also thank Cdr. Don Ulmer and former Greenfish shipmate Jim Kyser for refreshing my memory with regard to Greenfish’s maneuvering room and engineering spaces.

  I also thank Lt. Cdr. Thomas J. Cutler, USN (Ret.), director of professional publishing at the Naval Institute Press, for his encouragement and sage advice as I pursued publication of this book. I further thank Marlena Montagna and Gary Thompson—editorial assistant on the editorial staff of the Naval Institute Press—for helping me bring this book to fruition. Finally, my heartfelt thanks go to Ms. Alison Hope for an extremely thorough and invaluable copy edit of my original manuscript.

  In conclusion, I thank my former wife, the late Mary Louise Eisenhower, and my children for their loyal and steadfast support in holding down the home front during the many, many months I spent at sea and away from home on board three Cold War attack submarines: USS Greenfish, USS Seadragon, and USS Skipjack.

  Introduction

  My first book, Unknown Waters, recounted just one of many exciting submarine Cold War missions that I was fortunate, as a U.S. Navy submarine officer, to be a part of.1 Among other subjects, the book related how I came to pursue a career in submarines, how Rear Adm. Hyman G. Rickover (later vice admiral, eventually full admiral) selected me for nuclear submarines, and some detail of my pre- and postcommissioning executive officer’s tour that preceded my taking command of USS Queenfish (SSN 6
51) in 1969.

  In this book, Silent and Unseen: On Patrol in Three Cold War Attack Submarines, I describe some of the more significant events that occurred on board the first three of five attack submarines on which I served: USS Greenfish (SS 351), USS Seadragon (SSN 584), and USS Skipjack (SSN 585). I hope to convey even more fully than I did in Unknown Waters the day-to-day life of a U.S. Navy submariner during the Cold War. I hope, too, to convey how interesting and satisfying a life it is for a young man, and I assume for a young woman one day soon, who might consider pursuing a career in submarines and joining a centuries-old undersea fraternity.

  An important strand runs throughout this book: that of the events, experiences, personalities, and particularly the commanding officers who helped to direct the course of my submarine career and to shape me into the commanding officer that I eventually became. The commanding officers that a young submarine officer serves with will have a profound effect on how well prepared he is—not only to do his job day to day, but also to assume his own command years later. This was particularly true in attack submarines, both diesel and nuclear, during those high-risk years of the Cold War.

  Attack boats in my era bore the brunt of Cold War mission requirements. Sometimes it seems as if the officers and crewmembers were almost continually at sea. Each of these missions, which were essentially reconnaissance and intelligence collection and at times early warning, were of potentially great, even extraordinary, value to the government of the United States. Each mission involved a tremendous commitment of a very expensive national military asset and the precious lives of anywhere from 75 to 115 of the nation’s finest and best-trained young men. Each one also represented a wholehearted commitment by the families who steadfastly supported them.

  The success of all these missions depended heavily on accurate outside intelligence, geographical positioning of the boat and, most importantly, the readiness of the individual attack-boat team. I was to learn very early that the latter was made up of three inseparable parts: material readiness of the boat; preparatory training and deployment readiness of the entire crew; and the knowledge, experience, and physical and psychological readiness of the commanding officer. All had to be forged together into the best team possible.

  Always of keen interest to me, and I am sure to each crewmember, was one question: “Will we be safe at sea with the commanding officer we have?” Along with that question were others: “Will our commanding officer be able to develop us into the best team possible?” “Will he be able to inspire us and lead us to success in all we do, including the Cold War missions assigned?” And, finally, “Will he be able to gain us the recognition and respect we deserve as a team?” No one could ever really know the answers to these questions until an individual commanding officer had proved himself through the skillful and safe handling of a life-threatening occurrence, or the conduct of an even-more demanding arduous mission.

  Above all, during the course of a mission the situational awareness, courage, and professional capability and skill of the commanding officer stood out. I was to serve with at least two distinct types during my career: the indecisive and timorous and the skilled and daring. I learned a great deal from both types. From the former I learned what not to do. From the latter I learned what could be foolhardy and what was always worth doing.

  Cold War missions more often than not required sufficient closing of the potential enemy to collect fully the intelligence desired, usually within weapons range—theirs and ours. But, unlike a war patrol, the U.S. attack boat strived to remain completely undetected throughout and did nothing more than count coup, so to speak, as the high-priority intelligence desired was collected. The boat would then, ideally, withdraw as silently and unseen as it had approached. It was the degree to which a submarine commanding officer executed these actions successfully that separated the men from the boys.

  I served with one captain in peacetime who, no matter what opportunity might present itself, seemed to be totally incapable psychologically of closing a potential enemy to gather the intelligence that his boat and crew team were sent out to acquire. He preferred to remain at the outer limit of visibility and detectability, to the increasing impatience and disgust of his officers and crew.

  Another captain I served with was, by contrast, so brave and charismatic a leader at sea that his crew would have gone to the ends of the earth for him. He was, in addition, a truly professional submariner and seaman who knew every aspect of his business. He never hesitated to close a potential adversary sufficiently and, when the opportunity presented itself, to gather all the intelligence possible. He accomplished this while ensuring that our own boat remained undetected.

  My remaining commanding officers fell somewhere in between these two styles. All were dedicated professionals but leaned more toward a more cautious and deliberate manner of conducting submarine missions. I learned from them as well.

  A common theme among submarine sailors was stories about their skippers, officers, and crewmembers. God help the commanding officer who was unskilled, timid, and indecisive, or who was uncomfortable with either his crew or the mission assigned. Then, as now, this would become the talk of the waterfront and reach the ears of his peers, superiors, and even the Commander Submarine Force Atlantic (ComSubLant) or Commander Submarine Force Pacific (ComSubPac) himself. One poor commanding officer during my time drew the unfortunate nickname Captain Tuna, the Chicken of the Sea. That name was to follow him, probably unbeknownst to him, throughout the remainder of his career.

  Although the chief focus of this book is to describe the experiences that I had under several captains who prepared me to be a submarine commanding officer one day, I also learned a great deal from my brother officers and fellow crewmembers.

  Silent and Unseen consists of three parts, each devoted to one of the attack submarines on which I served: USS Greenfish (1958–59), USS Seadragon (1960–62), and USS Skipjack (1962–65). The remaining two nuclear attack submarines on which I served, USS Greenling (SSN 614) and USS Queenfish (SSN 651), I plan to discuss in a subsequent book that will focus on the immediate preparations for and the entirety of my command of Queenfish during the period from 1965 to 1973.

  PART I

  USS Greenfish (SS 351)

  Workhorse of the Pacific

  USS Greenfish (SS 351) at sea. U.S. Navy

  CHAPTER 1

  Early History and Post–World War II Modifications

  It was by pure chance that I was assigned to USS Greenfish (SS 351) during the final days of my training at the U.S. Naval Submarine School in Groton, Connecticut. The first of five attack submarines on which I was to serve as a young officer during the Cold War, she was one of 128 Balao-class, diesel-electric fleet submarines built from 1942 to 1945 to fight the war in the Pacific.1 Greenfish took her name from a type of fish living in the Pacific and Southwest Asian waters.

  Our entire class, number 105, of some sixty young officers was scheduled to graduate on 20 December 1957. Each of us had drawn numbers for submarine and home port selection, and, in early December I found myself standing behind a good friend, Ens. James “Doc” W. Blanchard Jr., on the day we were to make our selection. Doc’s number was 9 and mine 13. Neither of us could believe our luck: low numbers essentially guaranteed us any submarine and base location we wanted—from New London, Norfolk, Charleston, or Key West on the Atlantic seaboard, to San Diego and Pearl Harbor in the Pacific.

  Doc and I were Navy juniors, fellow U.S. Naval Academy graduates, and good friends. Doc’s father was a famous World War II submarine commander, mine a naval aviator and, at this time, commanding officer of the U.S. Naval Gunfire Support School in Coronado, California. Both of us had traveled a great deal during our upbringing, moving every two years on average and attending countless schools. We were comfortable with change and able to adjust quickly no matter where we were ultimately assigned. Our new wives, on the other hand, would probably not be, since neither had traveled much out of her hometown, except for th
eir years in college. My wife, Mary Eisenhower, for instance, had never been farther west than Rheimersburg, Pennsylvania. As a result, in the weeks preceding submarine home port selection, the four of us had decided that Key West might be the wiser choice. We would remain on the East Coast where we thought we wanted to be, close to our families; at the same time, we would escape the damp, chilly winter of New London and Norfolk. Doc and I thus left our tiny on-base married officers’ quarters on that morning in early December having reassured our wives we would be picking boats out of Key West.

  As Doc and I stood patiently in line waiting to select Key West submarines as we had promised, I looked at the big selection board showing boats and their available home ports. I suddenly remembered we had the unique opportunity of choosing a submarine in the most ideal and exotic location of all, Pearl Harbor, in what was then the territory of Hawaii. The thought of the beautiful yet mysterious islands, the wonderfully clement weather, and the opportunity to surf, swim, and fish year around began to fill my thoughts.

  I remarked to Doc, “You know, we’re really being stupid.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Doc.

  “We don’t have to pick a Key West submarine,” I said.

  “What!” he exclaimed.

  “Doc, why don’t we choose a boat in the best home port in the world? There should be several left when it’s our time to pick where we want to go.”

  “But we promised our wives,” responded Doc, adding, “They won’t be happy.”

  “So what?” I said. “Pearl Harbor’ll be a great place to operate out of—calm seas and terrific weather. Anyway, it’s really our choice, and with all those beaches and the beauty of the islands, family living out there would probably vastly exceed Key West.”

  “Hmmm, not a bad idea,” said Doc.

  “Let’s do it,” I said. “I know Mary will give me hell, but it’ll be worth it in the long run.”