In response, the Thresher transmitted back this garbled, incomplete message: “Nine Hundred N.”
Those were the last words anyone ever heard from them.
The second disaster Pete studied was another US nuclear boat, the Scorpion, lost under more mysterious circumstances in 1968. The boat had been diverted to observe a group of Soviet ships near the Azores in the Atlantic. Commander Francis Slattery, the commanding officer, radioed on May 21, 1968, that he had made contact with the Soviet group and was surveilling them at 15 knots and a depth of 350 feet. No one would ever hear from him again. When the boat was five days late returning home to Norfolk, Virginia, the Navy finally announced that there was a problem and initiated a search. Ninety-nine men disappeared along with the boat.
There were a number of theories about the fate of the Scorpion. Some thought the ship had been done in by one of its own malfunctioning torpedoes. Many others, given the nature of the mission, suspected the Soviets. Incredibly, for a ship that was lost under such mysterious circumstances, the US Navy actually had audio of it sinking. SOSUS arrays, highly sensitive hydrophones mounted to the seabed at critical places throughout the world, had recorded it. Hamlin’s education in submarine disasters finished with that tape, as an instructor pointed out the sounds of air banks bursting and bulkheads collapsing as the great ship imploded on her way to the bottom of the sea.
One disaster they never spoke of in Charleston was the more recent fire onboard the Regulus, the sister ship of the Polaris. Pete thought maybe it was too recent, that the men around him might have known sailors onboard, many of whom did not escape with their lives. He remembered seeing news video of it limping into port at the time, damage visible to its sail and hull, scorch marks and jagged metal. He remembered a later report that the ship was deliberately destroyed, having been declared a total loss, too damaged to repair. But the men with dolphins on their chests in Charleston never mentioned it. The Regulus disaster was still a tragedy, Pete thought, not yet mythology.
The evening after Pete heard the sound of the Scorpion being crushed by sea pressure, he waited on the conn of the simulator for his normal four-hour shift. He reviewed procedures as he waited; there was some problem with the computers and they had to wait while the entire software package was reloaded by the simulator’s operating crew. Commander Ase leaned on the rail and watched him as he paged through the procedure for flooding. First immediate action: ahead full. Maximizing speed maximized the flow of water across the planes, the force that would pull them to the surface.
“What did they teach you today in the classroom?” said Ase, emphasizing the world “classroom” with disdain.
“More submarine disasters,” said Pete. “Lessons learned from the Thresher and the Scorpion.”
“Lessons learned?” He laughed theatrically at that, the sound echoing in the cavernous space that held the simulator. “What did they tell you to learn from the Thresher?”
“Don’t screw around at test depth,” said Pete.
Ase nodded appreciatively, but it was hard to tell if he really approved, his scarred face frozen in its permanent sneer. “That’s not bad,” he said. “Good advice, actually. But I’ll tell you the real lesson.”
“Please do.”
“It was an unlucky boat! They had a scram pierside in Puerto Rico in ’61. Then the diesel wouldn’t work, then the battery crapped out. Got so hot inside they had to evacuate the crew. The Cavalla had to pull alongside so they could draw electric power from her. If that had happened at sea, they would have sunk. In 1962, a tug ran into her in port; she had to go to the yards in Groton to get that fixed. You want a lesson from the Thresher, there’s your lesson: stay off unlucky boats.”
“I’ll do my best,” said Pete. “What about the Scorpion? What’s the lesson there?”
“The lesson of the Scorpion?” Ase pointed a long finger at Pete. Pete noticed for the first time that even the tip of his finger was scarred, the skin waxy and wrinkled, the nail deformed. “Here’s the lesson of the Scorpion. Don’t ever trust the Russians,” he said. “No matter what anybody says.”
The simulator reset with a thud, startling Pete.
“OK,” said Commander Ase, rapping his academy ring against the metal guardrail on the platform. “Let’s get to work.”
Pete drove the simulated ship down to the depth of the range, 632 feet.
“All stop,” he ordered. The engine order telegraph dinged its acknowledgment as the ship slowed, creeping right into the range.
Pete zoomed in on his console, checked the motion of the ship. Current was a negligible .2 knots. That was, Pete knew, the exact value of the historic average current in that area, although you would never know it by the consistently apocalyptic conditions they usually thrust upon him in the trainer. The ship drifted into the degaussing range as Pete waited on the balls of his feet for the next, creative disaster to befall them.
A yellow light came on the diving officer’s panel; the lights dimmed slightly.
“Degaussing is active,” said Pete. He looked out into the darkness, where somewhere Ase and his crew of tormentors were preparing to spring something on him.
The ship slowed slightly near the exit of the range. “Make turns for three knots,” Pete ordered, needing the slight additional thrust to maintain ship control and complete their passage through the range.
The yellow light went off. “Ship is clear of the range,” Pete announced.
He waited, but still no disaster. He walked to the chart. It wasn’t the first time they had allowed him to get this far, but it was rare, so it took him just a second to recall the next step.
“Ahead two-thirds!” he said. “Right fifteen degrees rudder.”
The ship sped up and turned, driving Pete to the position where they’d determined they might squeeze through the shoals at periscope depth, the seven o’clock position, if due north on the island’s clock was high noon. “Make your depth one hundred feet.”
At the shallow depth, Pete slowed and executed a slow right turn to clear his baffles: peeking behind him to make sure no enemy boat had crept up in their sonic blind spot. Sonar reported no contacts.
He stepped to the conn. “Dive, make your depth eight-zero feet,” he ordered, at the same time turning the orange ring of the port periscope. The cylinder rose up smoothly, and Pete flipped out the handgrips as it came up, quickly putting his eye to the soft rubber eyepiece.
He was staring in the ocean now, looking up as far as the scope would let him, turning slowly, watching as they ascended. Even a fishing boat dragging nets could screw things up, although he doubted in real life a fishing boat would be operating here, in the land of the drones. But the simulator crew had never let realism stop them before in their endless pursuit of creative disasters that could stop Pete on his quest.