Everyone in the ship was up and around during the drill period, late-sleepers among the off-watch section having been jolted into consciousness by the daily test of the ship’s various alarm systems, which had been programmed for fifteen minutes prior to the beginning of the exercise.
At the agreed-upon time, I, too, was in the control room, as were Will Adams and Tom Thamm. At my signal, Will picked up the telephone and spoke briefly to Don Fears, who, naturally enough, just happened to be in number one engine room.
Immediately, a strident voice bellowed on the ship’s general announcing system. “Control, this is Maneuvering One. We’ve lost all power, both shafts.”
I watched the engine-order telegraph indicators on the Diving Control Panel shift swiftly from “ahead full” to “stop.”
For a moment, nothing else happened, though I knew our propellers were now only pinwheeling with the ship’s motion through the water. Dick Harris, who had the Diving Officer’s watch, stepped a few inches closer to his planesman; all three were intently scanning the instruments in front of them. Seated on the padded tool box in front of the fathometer, Tom Thamm was doing the same, while two feet farther aft, Chief Engineman E. C. Rauch had squared himself away in front of his Diving Panel and crushed out his half-smoked cigarette.
Elsewhere in the ship, wherever there was a critical station, I knew that the men on watch were standing by to take whatever action might be necessary, and because this was a scheduled drill, at every station there also stood, as observers, the off-watch personnel, the senior petty officer in charge, and the officer responsible.
We had been making just under twenty knots. As the ship slowed, I knew that both Dick and Tom were watching the depth gauges and the plane-angle indications for the first sign that we were, as everyone suspected, considerably heavier than the water we displaced. We waited a long minute, as Triton slowed and her bow and stern planes gradually lost effect. Suddenly, Harris reached his hand out behind him, motioned toward Rauch. “Pump auxiliaries to sea!” he snapped.
I had not seen yet any indications of the ship’s being heavy. “How do you figure we’re heavy, Dick?” I asked.
“Mostly intuition I guess, Captain,” he replied. “There’s really no sign here yet, but I know darned well she’s heavy.”
Another minute passed. We had slowed perceptibly and now it became evident that to hold the ordered depth, the planesmen were required to maintain up angle on both bow and stern planes.
“We are heavy, all right,” I said.
From Harris my response was a tight-lipped smile, but it was Third Class Quartermaster Roger A. Miller, standing watch on the bow planes, who put it into words with a deep-toned whisper which caromed off the deck and bulkheads and brought amused smiles to everyone within earshot.
“This old hog sure has lead in her ass!” said he, as he lifted the bow planes another five degrees.
As speed dropped off rapidly, bow and stern planes soon were at the maximum angles of elevation and then, inexorably, Triton began to sink. In the meantime, Rauch, checking the rate-of-flow meter, was monotonously calling out the amount of water we pumped overboard: “5,000 out—7,000 out—10,000 out, sir—12,000 out—15,000 out.”
Dick made no motion to stop him. Triton’s speed through water had by now dropped to only three or four knots; she was still on an even keel, but the depth gauges were showing a gradually increasing speed of descent.
It was apparent soon that we should not be able to get enough water out of the ship before she had exceeded the maximum depth to which we were allowed to submerge her. Deliberately I waited as long as possible, then finally nodded to Dick, “I guess we won’t be able to catch her, Dick. Blow tanks.”
“Blow forward group! Blow after group!” Dick had the orders ready.
So did Rauch, whose fingers were already on the main ballast blow valve switches. With two quick motions, high-pressure air was roaring into Triton’s main ballast tanks. Dick waited until he saw our downward motion perceptibly reduced, then gave the clenched fist signal to Rauch at the same time as the order, “Secure the air!”
The noise of air blowing stopped. We had lightened the ship by several hundred tons, and Triton’s involuntary dive stopped well above the allowed limit. But this was not the end of the episode.
The depth gauges now started going in the other direction. Triton was rising to the surface, slowly at first and then with increasing speed. We had placed a large air bubble in our main ballast tanks which, like uncorked bottles inverted in the water, were open at the bottom and closed at the top. It was impossible to gauge the amount of air that had to be blown into the tanks so as to put the ship precisely and exactly in equilibrium at a given depth.
Having put enough air into the tanks to stop the descent, it was apparent that the ship would now rise. As she rose, however, the size of the air bubble increased as the sea pressure reduced; and as the air bubble increased in size, it pushed even more water out through the bottom of the ballast tanks, thus making Triton still lighter. In this condition, we would continue to lighten and rise faster until we reached the surface.
Once, during the war, with the old Trigger leaking badly and surrounded by Japanese destroyers listening for us to start our pumps, we had survived just such a situation by putting an air bubble in one of our tanks and then either venting it slowly into the ship (we dared not use the main vents, which would have loosed a betraying bubble of air to the surface) or blowing it carefully. With the desperate skill of emergency, for fifteen hours Johnny Shepherd maintained precise control of our depth, as the accumulated leakage of water gradually made us heavier and heavier, until finally we outlasted the enemy. We had not dared to relieve Johnny.
The situation here was far less tense. There was no enemy; we could afford to let air bubbles come to the surface. Our only problem was to control the size of the bubble in our tanks to keep from broaching surface on the one hand or going too deep on the other.
As Triton ballooned upward, I watched silently for signs of the required action. It is for situations like this that men are qualified in submarines. With approval, I saw Rauch keeping his eyes on Harris, his hand already resting lightly on the controls for the main vents. Thamm was watching, too. Triton rose at an ever-increasing pace and finally Dick gave the order: “Open main vents.”
I could hear the vent mechanism operating and all of us heard the rush of the entrapped air as it escaped from the tank. But Dick was still watching the depth gauges, “Shut main vents,” he ordered. His objective was to catch some of the air still inside the tanks in order to retain some of the resulting buoyancy. In the meantime, with approval, I noted that he had not ordered Rauch to stop the trim pump, that we were still pumping water from the midships auxiliary tanks to sea.
Triton’s rise toward the surface ceased rather abruptly. By this time, we had no forward motion through the water at all. With the ship badly out of trim, she was controllable in depth only by the constant buoyancy of her great hull, plus the variable buoyancy of the expanding and contracting volume of air in the ballast tanks. Undersea ballooning was an apt simile.
But Dick had let out too much air, for Triton was now heavy and began to sink once more; as she sank, the air bubble remaining in the ballast tanks would be further and further compressed, with the result that the ship’s buoyancy would continue to reduce and she would now progressively descend faster and faster—though slower than the first time. Dick was ready for this, however, and after we had sunk some little distance, he again ordered that tanks be blown, but for a considerably shorter time than before. Again, Triton halted her descent and began to rise; and, as she neared the surface, Dick opened the ballast tank vents and allowed most of the air to escape.