It was the spooks' job to monitor the enemy, to bring home the intelligence, to give warning if a sub was detected by Soviet ships and coastal installations that were starting to scan the oceans with radar and sonar. Soviet patrol boats had already given chase after several U.S. subs. These were, after all, the years leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was a time when the Soviet propaganda machine found fodder even in the fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel," churning out a version in which the children of hardworking collective farmers were enslaved by a fat capitalist in a plutocratic residence in the evil West. And Soviet "pen pals" were writing Americans with offers to exchange pictures of "beautiful cathedrals" for scenes of North American coastlines-perhaps including ports and harbors. As the men of the Gudgeon prepared to embark, few of them doubted that they were fighters in an undeclared war. Several American spy planes had been shot down, and Gudgeon's crew could only guess what the Soviets would do if they ever cornered an American submarine.
Gudgeon was one of the Navy's newest subs, one of the first diesel boats designed from the start with a snorkel and electronic eavesdropping equipment. From its fabled old shipyard in Groton, Connecticut, Electric Boat Company had already finished the Navy's first two nuclear-powered subs, the USS Nautilus (SSN-571) and the USS Seawolf (.SSN- 575), but Hyman Rickover, now an admiral, wasn't at all sure that he wanted to send his boats directly into the path of the Soviet Navy. He easily wielded enough power to keep them home.
Rickover was already a master at power politics. Born in the Jewish pale of Makow, Poland, about 50 miles north of Warsaw, his family used congressional connections to get him into the Naval Academy. When he first began working on early experiments with nuclear power, he pushed the Navy to begin building nuclear subs by first getting himself appointed to a top staff job at the Atomic Energy Commission. He was so brash that the Navy twice denied him a promotion to rear admiral, but Rickover called upon a friend in Congress and got that as well.
Now he was employing his nuclear subs as public relations starsthe Navy budget seemed to get another boost every time another congressman got a nuclear-propelled ride. Indeed, Nautilus was preparing for the ultimate in showmanship: the Navy was trying to mark her as the first submarine to slip under the Arctic ice and reach the North Pole.
So it was the diesels that were doing all of the spying work, Gudgeon among them as she steamed north toward Vladivostok, the Soviets' largest naval base in the Pacific. She neared her station for this special operation, or "spec op," in early August, carrying three or four spooks, some already hard at work listening for any signs that their approach had been detected.
Extra eavesdropping equipment was crammed wherever it could fit. One communications tech, trained in Russian, scanned ship-to-shore transmissions for any Soviet cries of "submarine spotted." Another spook began working the electronic countermeasures, listening for radar sweeps that could pick up Gudgeon and signal her need to dive. If he could, he would record a blast of that radar so that U.S. intelligence could look for ways to lain Soviet radar sweeps in the future. A sonar specialist stood ready to help record the "sound signatures" of any passing Soviet subs and ships. Those unique fingerprints of propeller and machinery noises might later help U.S. forces identify Soviet ships and subs at sea.
As always, what the spooks would ultimately collect had as much to do with luck as skill. There was no way to predict how the mission would unfold.
Bessac didn't allow his sub to linger long before he gave the orders that sent her creeping up to the 12-mile territorial limit claimed by the Soviets, then just inside. His orders allowed him to do that, to even go inside the 3-mile territorial limit recognized by the United States. This was the real beginning of the operation, the start of a planned onemonth routine. Move in by day, get close, keep most of the sub's 287foot-long and 27-foot-wide bulk hidden underwater, while allowing the periscopes and antennas to broach the surface.
Each night, Gudgeon was to move out 20 or 30 miles, just far enough so that she could run her clamoring engines and charge her batteries and snorkel, bringing in fresh air and exhaling carbon monoxide and other noxious gases through a special pipe. The exercise would provide enough air and battery power to last through another day of silent submersion in Soviet waters.
If the mission went as planned, Gudgeon would not run her engines anywhere near the Soviet coast, and she wouldn't surface past snorkel depth until she was well on her way back to Japan. Until then, the men would live in their cramped steel shell, working through a haze of diesel fumes that even snorkeling couldn't erase.
Her crew hardly noticed the smell anymore. Their clothes, their skin, their hair, everything was drenched in "Eau de Diesel," the trademark scent of a submariner and one that masked other insults. With the crew's shower usually filled with food, the men had, at best, a half of a basin of fresh water a day to wash with. Thanks to the new evaporators on Gudgeon, the water was far cleaner than the running rusted tin available on older diesel boats, but it was in short supply. So the men devised tricks for making the most of the precious commodity. To wash: begin face first, then sponge down. The men ran salt water showers from the engine room bilges and mined a few extra cups of water from inside the boat by setting up buckets to collect the ever-present condensation that left everything on board damp to dripping. There was usually enough condensation to allow the men to wash their clothes at least once on each operation. That was bonus enough so that they hardly bothered to curse the mists that rose from the bilges, transforming their bunk spaces into metallic swamps. So what if their mattresses had to be kept zipped up tight against the dank with plastic flash covers? Every submariner learned fast to quickly unzip, slide into bed and zip back up.
Comfort was one thing, staying alive was another. And for that, the rules were simple. Stay quiet, stay submerged, and above all, avoid being detected. That was the most crucial rule and one Gudgeon was about to break.
It happened on Monday, August 19, 1957, sometime after 5:00 P.m., Soviet Pacific Coast time. Gudgeon had been submerged for about twelve hours. It would take two or three hours to travel to the isolated spot where she would snorkel, and then several more to take on enough air and create enough electricity to last through the next day. Already, the air on hoard had become heavy. It smelled worse than the usual diesel foul, and it tasted just as bad.
A bunch of men were in the mess watching the first reel of Bad Day at Black Rock. Over the whir of a 16mm projector, Spencer Tracy, Lee Marvin, and Ernest Borgnine were playing out the days just after World War II. The movie was reasonably new. What submarines lacked in water, space, and privacy the Navy tried to make up for with good movies and good food.
Then, for a moment, the sub listed sideways. Only slightly really, the sort of sway that normally happens beneath the surface in rough waters. But in the calm waters off Vladivostok, that sort of list only happened when the sail broached, catching a swell. Then Gudgeon began to dive. Again, it was nothing extreme, not an all-out plunge. This was gentler, just an angle that the crewmen could feel under their feet.
Suddenly the alarm rang. There was nothing subtle about the call that came out over the squawk box: "Battle stations!"
Now everyone was up and running at once, scrambling out of bunks, out of the mess, out of just about every corner, squeezing past one another through passageways not much wider than one man. They were grabbing on to the bars welded over the oval watertight doors, shooting their legs through to the next compartment, shoulders and head following. They came sliding down ladders and down stairs that weren't much more than ladders. All of them were making more noise than they could afford.