On the forward port side of the room was the ship control console, a station that looked like the cockpit of a large aircraft, complete with two pilots’ seats on either side of a central console, each panel with a control yoke, and a supervisor’s seat behind the console.
The men controlling the yokes were the helmsman/bowplanesman, who controlled the ship’s course and depth, and the stemplanesman, who controlled the ship’s angle. The aft seat was for the Diving Officer, a chief petty officer who was responsible for ship’s depth. To port of the ship control station was the wraparound ballast control panel, a complex console of lights and switches and television screens.
On the starboard side of the control room, starting at the forward starboard bulkhead and wrapping around aft, was the attack center, a group of firecontrol consoles and seats for the officers manning them.
The CCS-Mark I firecontrol system consisted of four main consoles, Positions One through Three and the weapons control console, each console containing a large television computer screen and keyboard, each set configured for a different purpose. Above the Pos One console was a sonar display repeater screen, showing the control room officers one of the displays of the sonar system. Aft of the periscope stand were twin plotting tables, one set up as the navigation table, the second used to plot manual firecontrol solutions to targets, as a check on the computers, and also as a backup in the case of a central computer failure. The port wall of the room was taken up with the fathometer and under-ice sonar consoles. On the aft port corner wall, a door led to the navigation room, where the ESGN inertial navigation equipment was housed. At the forward starboard corner, between Pos One and Pos Two, a sliding door opened to the sonar display room, where the sonar computer consoles held the eight television monitors of the BQQ-5D BAT EARS sonar suite. An opening in the forward bulkhead led out of the room to a narrow passageway leading forward to Murphy’s stateroom and further on to the Executive Officer’s stateroom and the sonar firecontrol computer room.
After decades of building cramped and dysfunctional control rooms, DynaCorp’s Submarine Boat Division had finally gotten it right with the Late Flight Los Angeles-class submarines. For a moment Murphy felt pure contentment at the shipshape look of his control room. It was the shout of the officer on the periscope stand that brought Murphy from his reverie.
“Where’s the captain?” he barked into his phone, his back to Murphy.
The officer. Lieutenant Commander Gregory Lee Tarkowski, was the Officer of the Deck for the morning’s drill session. Tarkowski had brown curly hair and a thick red mustache that had swallowed his upper lip, the cause of constant orders to shave it off. He was as lean as he had been when he pitched for the varsity baseball squad at Yale, and tall enough that his head was in constant danger of knocking into the NESTOR UHF radio-telephone console hanging from the overhead of the periscope stand. Considered an officer on the Navy’s fast track, Tarkowski was both the Navigator and Combat Systems Officer, jobs that were usually given to two separate mid-grade second tour officers. But for Tarkowski, the assignment was not unusual. Although a modest man by nature, it was common knowledge among the crew that Tarkowski had graduated at the top of his Yale class with a degree in international relations and a second one in electrical engineering, while still managing to be the baseball team’s star pitcher. He had sustained the same level of energy after graduating — skydiving, scuba diving and flying any aircraft he could get his hands on, including gliders, hang gliders, ultralights and an acrobatic biplane. The married officers’ wives, apparently believing that as a bachelor he was having entirely too much fun for his own good, had conspired to fix him up with one San Diego beauty after another, and two of them habitually jammed the ship’s phones when Tampa was in port.
On this run Tarkowski was also acting Executive Officer, since Commander Kurt Lennox, the ship’s XO, was taking leave in Japan with his wife for the next month. At first Murphy had been hesitant to add the additional duties of XO to Tarkowski’s already heavy load of being the officer responsible for the ship’s weapons and tactical systems as well as navigation.
Unfortunately, the choice for acting XO was only between Lube Oil Vaughn, the Engineer, traditionally the busiest man aboard, and Greg Tarkowski. Murphy had decided to give the job to Tarkowski, and was pleased to see the way the young lieutenant commander had taken to it. Tarkowski seemed to be loving the responsibility of the executive officer, the second-in-command. Murphy began to believe that Tarkowski would be sorry to give the job back to Lennox four weeks from now. It was more than any captain deserved. Murphy thought, to have two department heads, Tarkowski and Vaughn, who were probably the best officers at their level in the entire squadron, perhaps in the entire fleet. To have both of them working under him, and the newest submarine in the fleet, was a Navy miracle.
Murphy stepped up to the conn and tapped Tarkowski on the shoulder.
“Glad we found you. Captain. We’re at depth one five zero feet, no contacts, course zero seven zero, speed five knots. Request to come up to periscope depth and snorkel, sir.”
Murphy glanced at the sonar repeater console above the Pos One firecontrol console. The waterfall display was clean, no telltale streaks showing noise of surface ships. Murphy nodded.
“Offsa’deck, proceed to periscope depth and snorkel when you’re ready.”
“Aye, sir,” Tarkowski replied.
“Dive, make your depth six zero feet. Lookaround number-two scope.”
The ship again took on an up-angle as Tarkowski drove to the surface. Murphy watched as the young lieutenant commander raised the type-20 periscope and began rotating it in furious circles, looking above for surface contacts. On the forward bulkhead of the room a television monitor showed the view out the periscope, complete with crosshairs and range divisions.
Murphy watched, seeing only the underside of the waves high above as the ship ascended.
“Eight zero feet, sir,” the Diving Officer called from a seat behind the airplane-style controls of the ship control panel. The underside of the waves in the television screen grew closer. Tarkowski continued circling at the periscope, trying to avoid colliding with any surface ships.
“No shapes or shadows,” Tarkowski said, his words muffled by his face being pressed against the periscope.
“Scope’s breaking … scope’s breaking …”
On the television, the view was white as waves broke against the periscope lens, the foamy water blocking vision.
“Scope’s clear.”
Suddenly the foam vanished, and the view showed the crisp blue waves of the Pacific spinning by as the periscope was rotated in three full circles.
“No close contacts,” Tarkowski called out, slowing his periscope search to find more distant contacts or aircraft.
“Raise the snorkel mast,” he said to the Chief of the Watch.