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  “OK,” he agreed.

  Our mutual decision crystallized, and when Doc’s turn came, he picked a relatively new Pearl Harbor submarine, USS Tang (SS 563), patterned on the German World War II deep-diving Type XXI U-boats. Tang was commanded by a colorful, former Naval Academy football player, Lt. Cdr. John O. “Bo” Coppedge. When my turn came, I picked the very last of the Pearl Harbor boats available, USS Greenfish, the World War II–era submarine specially streamlined and modified into a GUPPY (greater underwater propulsion power) IIA.

  Our initial elation at choosing where we really wanted to go ended abruptly, however, when we realized we were faced with the problem of explaining our choice of submarine location to our wives. Doc was sure his wife Carol would not be too unhappy with his decision, once she was past the initial shock. I was far less certain about Mary’s reaction. She was already well known in our community for her strong opinions—definitely not someone who took well to unpleasant surprises. A U.S. Naval Academy classmate and good friend, John M. “Jack” Bannon, who had picked USS Dogfish (SS 350) in New London, went so far as to offer to put me up at his house that night and even to trade submarines if need be.

  The domestic fireworks that ensued were far from pleasant when I finally got up the nerve to tell Mary the news. An emotional telephone conversation with her mother in Pennsylvania early the next morning made matters worse, since both were convinced the Hawaiian Islands were still inhabited by savages.

  I stuck with my decision, nonetheless, during the tumultuous days and weeks that followed, with my wife still fuming during the subsequent drive to California with our young son. After a brief stay at the Marine Memorial Club in San Francisco, my family of three descended by military air transport to Honolulu Airport to a resounding welcome from Lt. Cdr. John T. “Jack” Knudsen, who commanded Greenfish at the time, and executive officer (exec) Lt. Cdr. William W. “Mac” McKenzie Jr. It was the end of January 1958, and the weather was balmy. Greenfish’s officers were all in Hawaiian shirts and their wives in muumuus, and they greeted us with flower leis that they draped over our shoulders. Afterward we went to the skipper’s house for a wonderful night of Mai Tais and our first taste of real Hawaiian food.

  The Cold War at that time had been in progress for more than twelve years, with the most recent events of significance being the formation of the Warsaw Pact in May 1955, the brutal suppression of a rebellion in Communist Hungary, and the Soviet Union’s successful launching of Sputnik into orbit in early October 1957. Accordingly, assignment to a frontline GUPPY IIA promised to be exciting duty for a new submarine officer. The continuous advances in Soviet naval technology and in the naval force levels of the Soviet Union, People’s Republic of China, and North Korea required almost continuous monitoring by the United States, using all means available in both the Atlantic and the Pacific. Submarines like Greenfish, with their ability to surreptitiously monitor and collect intelligence, were therefore expected to be increasingly deployed on Cold War missions. Not only did the United States need to stay abreast, but it also had to develop effective means of countering new developments, whether in equipment or complete sensor and weapons systems on their ships and submarines, in order to maintain the tactical and strategic advantage that we held over all three of these countries at the time.

  The original Greenfish was authorized in April 1942 and her keel laid on 29 June 1944. On 21 December 1945 she would be the 101st submarine to be launched at Electric Boat Company in Groton since 1933.2 Her commissioning on 7 June 1946 was too late for her to join her famed sisters in the Pacific during World War II, but she was to play an important role in the coming Cold War.

  Following commissioning and a shakedown cruise to the Caribbean and South America, plus numerous exercises with the fleet in the Atlantic and Caribbean, Greenfish sank the infamous German war prize, U-234, with live torpedoes, during a practice exercise in late 1947. After surrendering to the Allies off Newfoundland on 15 May 1945, U-234 was discovered to be carrying special Japanese and German personnel and a unique high-technology cargo destined for Japan that included 560 kilograms of uranium oxide.3

  In early January 1948 Greenfish entered the Electric Boat Company yards for a major GUPPY IIA conversion, which included changing her basic exterior hull configuration to enhance submerged speed and hydrodynamic efficiency.4 The most significant of her modifications were removing the deck gun and streamlining her deck and superstructure; enclosing the conning tower compartment, bridge, periscope shears, and other mast supports within a one-piece faired sail made of welded aluminum; installing snorkeling equipment, which enabled her to run her diesel engines and charge her batteries while submerged; and increasing her batteries from two to four, for a total of 504 cells, to increase both her submerged speed and the length of time she could remain submerged.5 Finally, Greenfish’s four high-speed electric motors were replaced with two low-speed direct-drive electric motors, to enhance sound quieting.6

  The most significant modification within the submarine, or below decks, was to provide the capability to shift electrical connections among the four main lead-zinc batteries from a normal parallel to connection in series. This shift, used during maximum or flank speed operations only, provided sufficient electrical current, or amperage, to the two direct-drive electrical motors such that they could drive both propeller shafts at a sufficiently high RPM to attain underwater speeds in excess of twenty knots, providing the hull was free of the marine growth that normally accretes from long periods in port. Such high speeds provided a boat, when under attack, with at least one good opportunity to break free of enemy active sonar contact and escape from an antisubmarine warfare (ASW) surface vessel.

  Upon completion of the conversion in August 1948, Greenfish was assigned to the Pacific Fleet and departed for her new home port, the U.S. naval submarine base in Pearl Harbor. With the exception of ASW and harbor-defense exercises in the Puget Sound area in early 1950, and an overhaul in Mare Island, she spent most of her time operating out of Pearl Harbor on local exercises through 1951.

  The Korean War broke out in June of 1950, and in late 1951 Greenfish departed for the U.S. naval base and repair facility at Yokosuka, Japan, for duty in the area. From 31 January to 1 March 1952 she was on her first and only war patrol since commissioning. Following Seventh Fleet exercises off Okinawa, she returned to Pearl Harbor where local and Cold War missions kept her busy until late 1954. Noteworthy during this period was a joint operation conducted with USS Redfish (SS 395) during the summer of 1952 in the sea ice–covered Beaufort Sea. It was during this operation, headed by Waldo K. Lyon, PhD, director of what was to become the famous Arctic Submarine Laboratory in San Diego, that Redfish proved that a suitably configured diesel electric submarine could polynya hop from the Chukchi Sea north of the Bering Strait to the Canadian Arctic Islands and return.7

  Greenfish entered the Pearl Harbor shipyard for another modernization overhaul in 1955, whereupon she departed for a six-month deployment to the Western Pacific (WestPac) with the Seventh Fleet. During this time she conducted several Cold War missions and embarked on a tour of Southeast Asia, visiting ports in Hong Kong, Manila, and Singapore. She was the first U.S. submarine ever to visit Rangoon, Burma.

  Returning to the submarine base in Pearl Harbor in March 1956, Greenfish conducted local operations—exercises along the North American coast—and a number of Cold War reconnaissance missions in the Northern Pacific, the last of which was completed a few months prior to my reporting on board in late January 1958, when my seagoing submarine career began in earnest.

  CHAPTER 2

  On Board USS Greenfish

  When I reported as a prospective watch officer and first lieutenant, Greenfish’s basic characteristics as a fully operational GUPPY IIA submarine were as follows:

  •Displacement: 1,870 tons surfaced, 2,440 tons submerged

  •Length overall: 307 feet

  •Beam: 27 feet 4 inches

  •Draft: 17 feet


  •Speed on surface: 18.0 knots maximum, 13.5 knots cruising

  •Speed submerged: 16.0 knots for 30 minutes, 9.0 knots snorkeling, 3.5 knots cruising

  •Range: 15,000 nautical miles surfaced at 11.0 knots

  •Endurance submerged: 48 hours at 4 knots

  •Armament: Ten 21-inch torpedo tubes, six forward and four aft

  •Crew: 8 officers and 72 crew1

  Greenfish was also outfitted with the latest in sonar and electronic countermeasures equipment plus state-of-the-art antishipping and antisubmarine torpedoes and weapons countermeasures.

  Diesel electric submarines that had been recently modified, such as Greenfish, had the capability of remaining submerged throughout the entire duration of a Cold War mission or a war patrol in times of active conflict. Instead of having to follow the usual World War II patrol routine of running submerged on the battery during the day and on the surface at night to both reposition and recharge batteries, GUPPY submarines could now remain submerged both day and night and only had to come to periscope depth to ventilate, communicate, and recharge their batteries using their snorkel system. Snorkeling enabled the submarine to remain completely submerged; it involved raising a special snorkel air induction/diesel exhaust mast just above the surface, opening an air induction head valve atop the mast, and starting a diesel engine. The pressure of the engine exhaust would then blow the exhaust mast free of water through a normally shut diesel exhaust valve. A second diesel engine could then be added and dedicated to recharging the four batteries, with the original diesel engine used for propulsion or both propulsion and battery recharging. When on the surface, a maximum of three of the four engines could be used to recharge the battery even more rapidly. Surface transits were still required, however, if a submarine needed to relocate or reach a particular destination at best speed. Maximum speed while snorkeling was dependent largely on sea state and on how much of the total diesel electric output would be required for recharging batteries. Greenfish rarely ran in excess of five to six knots.

  Crews of seventy-five to eighty men normally manned diesel electric submarines of this era. All submarines—as high-speed, deep-diving warships—are compact, and Greenfish was no exception. By necessity they use every inch of interior space, but without compromising their war-fighting capabilities. Approximately a tenth of crewmembers had to hot bunk: that is, they had to share their bunk with a fellow shipmate, with one man climbing into a bunk as soon as its previous occupant had vacated it. Most hot bunking took place in the forward torpedo room where the most junior members of the crew slept in side-by-side pan bunks, positioned on top of the torpedo reloads.

  Although all boats of this era had heating and air-conditioning systems, the systems were notoriously ill-distributed through any given submarine’s interior, in spite of the improvements that had been made since the war. Adding to crew discomfort when on the surface was the fact that GUPPY submarines now had a rounded bow, versus the previous uplifted, pointed or fleet bow, causing the submarine to ride less comfortably than previously on the surface, particularly when heading directly into rough seas. Finally, none of these older submarines was particularly clean below decks. The need to cram more and more improved equipment within each submarine created innumerable and inaccessible dirt- and moisture-collection areas throughout the boat, especially in the bilges, which became breeding grounds for cockroaches.

  Despite all these discomforts, submarine crews then, as during World War II and today, were made up of the finest officers and crew in the U.S. Navy. All were volunteers, and all had been professionally and psychologically screened. They were successful graduates of rigorous basic training, submarine school, and technical training for their particular rate specialty. Most had also served some time on surface warships prior to volunteering for submarine duty. Officers during the Cold War were required to have served at least two years at sea and to have qualified as an officer of the deck under way, preferably on a destroyer in deployed fast-carrier task forces, before becoming eligible to apply for submarine school.

  Pearl Harbor could not have been a more salubrious location to begin my submarine career, and I soon found Greenfish’s officers to be a most congenial lot. After settling my family into Navy quarters, I was put to work qualifying as an in-port duty officer under the senior watch officer, Lt. Leonard Stoehr.

  Lt. (jg) Alfred S. McLaren, gunnery and torpedo officer, USS Greenfish (SS 351), 1958. U.S. Navy

  One thing that was quite different from my previous two years on board the destroyer USS Gregory (DD 802) was the notable overall spirit of goodwill and comradeship stemming from the Submarine Force Pacific’s glory days of World War II. That spirit pervaded the submarine base and boat crews and their families homeported in Pearl Harbor. We worked hard in port and under way, but we also managed to have great fun during our time on shore. We especially looked forward to Friday afternoon happy hours at the submarine base officers club following a week at sea. Afterward we would go on to dinner with wardroom mates and friends, either outdoors under romantic tiki torches at the officers club or at the nearby Hickam Air Force Base. All looked forward to the frequent parties and all-officer lunches, and to the very competitive bowling nights every Thursday at which each submarine fielded teams of wardroom officers and wives. We were proud of our boats, each with its distinctive patch or insignia. We were also a hard-drinking bunch in those days, particularly when it came to Kamehameha beers and Mai Tais. That was the culture, and I don’t recall a single unpleasant incident or adverse effect on anyone’s personal life or operational performance and readiness from a night out on the town.

  Early 1958 started at a leisurely pace. Greenfish spent as much time in port as under way on local operations in and around the Hawaiian Islands. With the exception of a ten-day Submarine Force Pacific submarine-versus-submarine exercise in the waters surrounding the island of Maui in the early spring of 1958, an exercise that took place annually, our operations were generally two- and three-day local area operations. These were designed to train new personnel and hone up the boat’s overall readiness for its next scheduled deployment, whether that would be a one- to two-month special operation, as we called submarine Cold War operations, or a full six-month deployment to the Western Pacific.

  I was ordered to relieve another officer as gunnery and torpedo officer within a week of reporting on board and to assume duties as first lieutenant as well. Greenfish had long since removed its deck gun, so my main responsibilities encompassed all personnel within the department, all small arms and associated gun lockers, the forward- and after-torpedo rooms, all fire-control equipment connected with tracking, and computing a hitting solution prior to launching a torpedo or torpedoes at a practice target or actual enemy. My responsibilities also included Greenfish’s ten torpedo tubes (six forward and four aft) and two emergency signal ejectors; and the loading, maintenance, and readiness of all torpedoes loaded on board. As first lieutenant I was in charge of all deck operations whenever we were on the surface, including all line handling when mooring or getting under way.

  Although submarine school did a superb job of preparing a young officer for all these duties, I still had much to learn from my division petty officers and more-experienced officers before I gained the necessary knowledge and confidence to carry out fully all responsibilities assigned.

  Loading torpedo onto USS Greenfish (SS 351), 1958. U.S. Navy

  The All-Important Submarine Battery

  One of the most important things I learned in port was to ensure that Greenfish’s four high-capacity batteries (504 cells) were always fully charged prior to departure for the next scheduled operations. Every new officer’s first responsibility was thus to learn how to inspect and prepare Greenfish’s huge battery and line up her interior ventilation, diesel, snorkel, and electrical systems for the safe conduct of a battery charge both in port and at sea. In conjunction, I had to learn how to monitor and supervise all aspects of the charge while it was in progre
ss, handle any emergencies that might develop such as ventilation interruptions that could quickly lead to a battery explosion, and, finally, how to secure from a battery charge, properly and safely.

  The crucial part of recharging a submarine’s batteries was lining up the ventilation system in order to maintain adequate airflow over all battery cell tops. The ventilation system lineup and fan rotation/flow had to be absolutely correct for both ventilation above the battery cells and continuous exhaust of the air from all battery compartments. Submarine battery cells emit hydrogen gas as they heat up during the course of charging. It is critical that this gas be diffused and ventilated out of the battery compartments. If that was not done it could have become a serious explosive hazard once the gas percentage exceeded 3 percent overall, which could happen very quickly if, for example, ventilation fan rotations were reversed, fan rotation was too slow, or a fan was electrically faulty and began sparking or stopped rotating. Also of importance during the precharging lineup was checking for battery grounds and evidence of electrolyte leakage and loose debris on the battery cell tops. Finally, the battery-charging officer had to post warning signs where appropriate, and to broadcast over the sub’s main circuit (1MC) communications system at periodic intervals the fact that a battery charge was in progress.2

  Although I took it very seriously then, I realize now that the battery-charge qualification was probably the single most important certification among the many that I would have to achieve in the course of earning my Gold Dolphins as a submarine officer. The safety of one’s submarine and crew depended on it. Just one mistake or omission or one moment of inattention could spell disaster, as it did for a sister submarine, USS Pomodon (SS 486). In February 1955, while Pomodon recharged her batteries in the San Francisco Naval Yard, a build-up of hydrogen gas caused a series of explosions and fire that not only seriously damaged the battery and submarine, but also led to the deaths of five men.3 The cause was, in all probability, reversed flow or no flow through one or all of the battery well ventilation fans.4