Throwing a newly qualified man overboard, a tradition as old as the dolphins, is an important part of the Submarine Service. In a perverse manner, it signifies the respect from men who, in the years ahead, would depend on the new man's skills when machinery failed and his actions could determine the fate of the crew.
I have been told of occasions when submarine crews refused to throw newly qualified men overboard, although I never did see this occur while I was on board the Viperfish. That action is the most visible rejection that a potential submariner can receive. It is reserved for the rare man who is felt to be unworthy of the dolphins, even though he received all of the necessary signatures on his qualifications card. The rest of the crew members do not consider him to be a shipmate, and their rejection can be compared to an unseen scarlet letter. The usual result is that the man finally transfers off the boat.
I called my parents that night to tell them about achieving my dolphins and the unusual ceremony to mark the event. To my surprise, they spoke in somber tones as they congratulated me. Then, they informed me about disruptions among the family in California that were acting to fragment it. The cause was the Vietnam War, they said, and the issue was creating a turmoil that was distressing everyone. My sister's husband, Brad, a man who had served in the Navy many years before and who had encouraged me to join the service, had now become an antiwar activist. He was polarized on the subject, my parents said, and he could not even talk about Vietnam without becoming enraged. They encouraged me not to mention the war if I talked to him in the future. My little brother, Gerry, they continued, was finishing high school and had no interest in joining the Navy or becoming a part of any military service.
"But South Vietnam is depending on us!" I said, feeling an anger that surprised me. "We promised them, we can't just back out now!"
"Just don't bring up the subject around Brad," my father said. "You're in the service and you represent the war in a lot of their minds, especially those who are protesting. Don't bring up the subject, and don't try to discuss it if Brad brings it up."
"The protesters are all smoking pot, or bananas, or whatever they can find! I didn't start the war-"
"I know that, but it doesn't matter!'
"It doesn't matter? It's the truth!"
"It's hard to tell where the truth is, these days. The whole damn country seems to be falling apart. There's a lot of men dying in Vietnam-"
"And we can't let them die in vain! Haven't you ever heard of the domino theory?"
I was the hawk, my Mom and Dad were neutral, my sister's husband would tear me apart if I brought up the subject, and my brother considered military service to be undesirable. I thanked them for bringing me up to date about my family and hung up, feeling a sense of hopelessness about the entire subject. Walking back to the Viperfish, I wondered again about our mission, and I worried about how much longer the Vietnam War would last.
8. Minor failures, major losses
In California, the hallucinogenic effect of smoking dried banana peels was found to produce a mild "trip," and students at the University of California at Berkeley held mass banana "smokeouts." As interest in another hallucinogenic drug, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), increased across the country, scientists reported the first evidence of drug-induced chromosomal changes suspected to cause mental retardation in the children of pregnant women who used LSD. After failing to register as a narcotics violator, Dr. Timothy Leary, former Harvard University professor and founder of the LSD religious cult, was arrested by U.S. Customs officials while promoting his beliefs on the use of LSD. New York City's Bellevue Hospital reported the admission of more than 130 LSD users, many suffering from profound terror, uncontrolled violence, and attempted homicide or suicide. A member of California's Neuropsychiatric Institute informed the American College Health Association in Washington, D.C., that 30 percent of the students in certain high schools had become established users of LSD.
In the Soviet Union, in spite of the numerous problems of radiation, detection, and maintenance of operational capability, the eventual success of the Echo II SSGN testing program established the guided missile submarine in the position of a third order of battle (behind the ballistic missile SSBN Hotel class and the converted Golf and Zulu ballistic missile submarines). When the testing was concluded and the vessels were finally ready for duty, the Soviet crews prepared for prolonged voyages and the fulfillment of their missions in the Pacific Ocean.
Keiko flew back for a few days on Oahu before the Viperfish left for sea to begin the final deep-sea testing of the Fish and the Special Project system. Her father had reluctantly agreed to our marriage, scheduled for June 1968, and she told me of the disruptions on the campus at USC caused by the antiwar protesters, who were now burning their draft cards and yelling, "Hell no, we won't go!"
The two of us had some quiet time together, and Keiko came to the pier with the relatives of the crew to watch us leave for our prolonged patrol. I was already depressed about our separation. For Keiko to watch me go, in many ways, intensified the ordeal of leaving her.
We cleared the Pearl Harbor channel, dropped deep below the surface, and proceeded to the waters off the west coast of the island of Hawaii. The men in the hangar space, working vigorously to prepare our system for its test, checked the tiny high-strength wires welded together to form the cable, measured various test signals provided by the Fish, and tried to make everything work properly. We slowed to all ahead one-third at a depth of three hundred feet and lowered the Fish toward the bottom, nearly fifteen thousand feet below.
We assumed the usual condition of seemingly motionless existence, our little world of men and machinery moving back and forth over the various peaks, valleys, and plateaus at the bottom of the ocean as we gathered data from the Fish. After a week of testing the system, we rolled the cable back onto the spool just before the sonar operator reported that his BQS-4 sonar system had detected a nearby surface craft.
"Hammerclaw! Hammerclaw!" the underwater telephone voice from the ship blasted into the control center. This was the call sign designated for the Viperfish.
Captain Harris grabbed the microphone near the control center and called back a response. He informed the ship that the submarine code-named Hammerclaw was, in fact, nearby. We eased up to periscope depth; the captain and Lt. Comdr. Duane Ryack, the executive officer (XO), raised the two periscopes, and we waited for the beginning of the choreographed action, created weeks in advance of our rendezvous.
The plan was quite simple. The surface ship would bring a target with a characteristic shape into our vicinity and prepare to drop it to the bottom near the island of Hawaii. Because the shape could give away the nature of our future mission, it was classified top secret and enclosed in a huge sealed box on the deck of the vessel. A crane on the ship would lower the box into the water. When the bottom of the box was pulled away, the mystery object would disappear into the depths before the ship's crew had a chance to see it. We would search the bottom of the ocean with our Fish after the ship departed the area and, hopefully, identify the object's location and appearance.