As he entered the wardroom, a familiar feeling took over as he saw the collection of his officers and men, waiting for him at the table and on the bulkhead sofa seats, some standing, leaning against the bulkheads.
The feeling was an odd mix of affection, gratitude, and obligation. These men had given up their lives and families to go to sea with him, to submerge for months in a steel pipe hundreds of feet underwater, all to drive a nuclear submarine, to poke holes in the ocean in the name of service, the defense of America, in a time of peace, when few if any at home noticed or cared. It was more an honor to be their commander than to command the magnificent machinery of the Tampa itself. As wonderful as the hardware was, it was nothing next to these men. Centuries before John Paul Jones had said, “Men mean more than guns in the rating of a ship.” That was as true in the space age as it had been in the era of wooden sailing ships.
Near the head of the table the Engineer, Lieutenant Commander Jackson “Lube Oil” Vaughn, stood and nodded to Murphy. Vaughn was Murphy’s age, his career delayed by leaving the Navy for several years after his first submarine sea tour. Finding something missing in civilian industry, Vaughn had volunteered to go back to sea. Vaughn’s nickname had survived from a decade before, from his first submarine, Detroit, when he had repaired a DC main lube oil pump himself after the Mechanic Division chief had given up on it. But in the process Vaughn had also flooded engine room lower level with lube oil, requiring a complete main engine shutdown and twenty-four hours with the entire ship’s company to clean up the oily mess. The incident’s survival in his name had always irked Vaughn, but Murphy knew that aboard Detroit he had been much more a hero than a goat from the incident, and the Detroit crew had affectionately called him Lube Oil ever since. Now that he was chief engineer on Tampa, he was rarely called anything other than “Eng,” unless one of his division officers was kidding him on liberty or at a ship’s party.
Vaughn was a solidly built and tall Texan with graying hair and a cowboy drawl. His at-sea beard was fully grown in, since he had quit shaving the day they had left San Diego ten weeks before. Vaughn was a serious officer, which was an advantage when entrusted with the sleeping giant of the ship’s powerful and potentially dangerous nuclear reactor system. Still, Vaughn was capable of sudden bursts of humor and a grin that took over his entire face. But when things went wrong Back Aft, Vaughn was as likely to raise his voice, a stern frown clouding his face, preaching to his officers and men, sometimes even lecturing broken equipment. Ship’s folklore held that more than one stubborn repair problem had been solved shortly after one of Vaughn’s episodes of “counseling” the offending machinery.
“Morning, Skipper,” Vaughn said as Murphy took his seat at the table and Vaughn sat down beside him on the right side.
“How’re you doing, Eng?” Murphy said in his gravelly voice, a signature hoarseness left over from his days as a two-pack-a-day smoker.
“Ready to break the plant?”
“No, sir, just test it a little,” Vaughn drawled, turning to address the men in the room.
“This drill session will start with a reactor scram initiated by the Captain.”
When he finished his briefing, the men grabbed their red caps and left the room for the engineering spaces aft.
Murphy took his place in the forward part of engine room upper level, where the electronic cabinets were jammed forward of maneuvering. Maneuvering was the nuclear-control room, a cubicle twenty feet square where three enlisted nuclear-qualified men operated the reactor under the supervision of a nuclear trained officer. Vaughn walked up to Murphy in the red cap, the red indicating that the wearer was part of the drill team and was to be ignored by the watch standers
“We’re ready, sir,” Vaughn reported.
Murphy nodded and reached into the cabinet next to them, pulled the Plexiglas cover off a switch marked MANUAL SCRAM, and turned the rotary switch lever to the position marked GROUP SCRAM.
All hell broke loose.
The switch Murphy had operated had done an emergency shutdown of the nuclear reactor, which until that moment had provided steam for the four huge turbines that powered the ship’s screw and electrical grid. The turbines aft of maneuvering, so loud before, like jet engines screaming mere feet away, spun down, their steam gone. As they came to a stop they howled mournfully, their cry deeper in pitch as the rotors slowed, until the room grew eerily quiet.
The lights overhead flickered as the battery picked up the ship’s loads. The fans wound down to a stop, the air-conditioning shut down, and the compartment’s temperature almost instantly climbed twenty degrees at a hundred percent humidity. Murphy broke into a sweat, his face and hands and body soaked — the room had become a sauna.
The Circuit One PA. system crackled through the unnaturally quiet space.
“REACTOR SCRAM. RIG SHIP FOR REDUCED ELECTRICAL.”
The deck tilted up, barely perceptible at first, then becoming as steep as a stairway. Like a scuba diver whose air is suddenly cut off, the ship was no longer able to survive deep and had to fight to get to the surface.
Murphy walked aft to look into the maneuvering room to see how the Engineering Officer of the Watch was handling the frantic actions required during a reactor scram. As Murphy leaned over the chain at the door of the cubicle the reply of the control room came over the overhead speaker above the EOOW’s head.
“REACTOR SCRAM, MANEUVERING, CONN AYE.”
The Circuit One speakers again boomed through the space, this time the voice of the Officer of the Deck up forward.
“PREPARE TO SNORKEL.”
Murphy waved at Vaughn, who was now in maneuvering watching Lieutenant Roger Sutherland, the EOOW, trying to control the reactor and steam plants as the men tried to troubleshoot the drill’s simulated problem. As the deck became steeper. Murphy pointed forward, and Vaughn nodded, returning his attention to the reactor-control panel. The panel blinked with alarm lights, showing the failing health of the suddenly paralyzed reactor core.
Murphy walked forward through the reactor compartment shielded tunnel and through the massive watertight hatch to the forward compartment. As he made his way down the narrow passageway the angle came off the deck, the ship leveling out. In the control room the Officer of the Deck was on a phone waiting impatiently. A speaker over the periscope stand crackled as maneuvering reported, “PROPULSION SHIFTED TO EMERGENCY PROPULSION MOTOR.”
The control room was the nerve center of the ship, controlling its speed and depth, the deployment of its weapons and sensors. A visitor to the room would find it ugly, cramped, but to Murphy it was more comfortable than his den at home. It gave Murphy the same familiar feeling that a pilot has for his cockpit, a driver for his steering wheel, a preacher for his pulpit. It was where the captain of a submarine belonged.
For just a moment Murphy let his eyes take in the room. It was about twenty-five feet long by thirty feet wide, its center dominated by the periscope stand, the conn, an oval-shaped elevated platform, the long axis of the oval going from port to starboard. The platform surrounded the twin periscope wells and gave the conning officer a view of the entire room. The hightech type-20 periscope was on the port side, the World War II-era backup scope was on the starboard side. The conn platform was surrounded by brushed stainless steel handrails on the forward end, allowing the conning officer to hold on and look majestically down on the deck of the control room below. Nestled into the crowded overhead above the periscope stand were the UWT underwater telephone console and the NESTOR UHF secure voice radio panel. The room was arched overhead since it was on the uppermost deck beneath the sail, the curve of the cylindrical hull’s steel hoop frames forming an arch ten feet tall at the centerline. But the room still seemed cramped from all the pipes, valves, cables and equipment cabinets set below the frames. A tall man would have to duck to avoid cracking his skull on a protruding valve or pipe.