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Passive sonar systems scan the entire spectrum of sound, never sending out telltale tones, and this silent sight promised to provide the crucial edge in any undersea dogfight.
German technology: the unpiloted V-1 “buzz bomb,” a mini-airplane on autopilot with a bomb on board, and the V-2, the first rocket to pass the speed of sound.
“GUPPYs,” an acronym that stood for Greater Underwater Propulsion Power.
They were operating under strict radio silence, on what the Navy called a “simulated war patrol.” No one onshore was supposed to know where they were. When they left England, they were to disappear.
The crew was divided into three groups operating according to three different time zones.
“Eau de Diesel,” the trademark scent of a submariner and one that masked other insults.
The youngster was already sporting talismans against catastrophe, tattoos of a chicken and a pig, one seared onto each foot. That was a tradition of sorts, taken from an old Hawaiian legend. Chickens and pigs, it was said, would always find something to float on and would never drown.
Canisters of lithium hydroxide crystals were placed around the sub to absorb some of the excess carbon dioxide.
The CIA and the National Security Agency—the code-breaking agency that was so super-secretive that even people who worked there joked that NSA stood for “No Such Agency” or “Never Say Anything”—also began to play a larger role in setting the priorities for what intelligence would be collected.
Rickover’s revolutionary boats had a seemingly endless source of power. Reactors split atoms and turned water into steam, steam enough to power a propeller shaft and run a submarine longer and faster than any diesel boat ever could. They also could generate their own oxygen and scrub excess carbon dioxide from their air. Hold-downs would no longer be a threat. These boats would be able to stay underwater indefinitely.
The Navy’s best submarines could reach down just 1,000 to 1,500 feet or so. Go deeper, and there was certain death by implosion from punishing sea pressures great enough to quickly crush even the mighty Polaris subs.
Standard sub reactors were shielded with a foot of lead on either end.
Thirteen feet of water has the same molecular weight as one foot of lead.
Perhaps the all-time Rickover classic occurred when he squared off against a candidate and said, “Piss me off, if you can.” The young man answered without hesitation and without a word. He lifted his arm and with one motion swept Rickover’s desk clean of books, papers, pens, everything. The candidate was accepted.
He was relying on Bayes’ theorem of subjective probability, an algebraic formula crafted by Thomas Bayes, a mathematician born in 1702. Essentially, the theorem was supposed to quantify the value of the hunch, factor in the knowledge that exists in people beyond their conscious minds.
A submarine turns around 180 degrees when a torpedo activates while it is still on board, an event submariners call a “hot run.” The boat turns because that triggers fail-safe devices on a torpedo, shutting it down. The same safety devices keep the weapons from turning and blowing up the submarines they are fired from.
Years later, the mathematicians would write a book based on their work with Craven, entitled Theory of Optimal Search.
The U.S. Coast Guard would adopt the method for search and rescue, and the Navy would use Craven’s interpretation of Bayes to help Egypt clear sunken ordnance from the Suez Canal.
Mizar found Scorpion within 220 yards, one-eighth of a mile, of where Craven, his mathematicians, and a group of experts betting for bottles of scotch had said she would be. The sub was 11,000 feet underwater.
No wonder Bagdasaryan had such a well-developed sense of political cynicism and was so willing to speak out. He especially despised the zampolits, the Kremlin’s political officers who were assigned to every submarine. Ostensibly, they were there to ensure that crews remained Communistically correct, but Bagdasaryan thought them drunks, pests, and inept nags and let them know it. He roared at one, “You have been as useful as a suitcase on my submarine for two months,” after the man accused Bagdasaryan of playing “outlaw’s music” when he put on a tape of a new popular singer to inspire his men.
The problem had been daunting. What is life-giving air on the surface can kill divers down deep. By 300 feet down, air compresses so much that a single lungful contains about ten times the surface amounts of oxygen and nitrogen. At these concentrations, oxygen becomes poisonous and nitrogen has a druglike effect—nitrogen narcosis—that makes divers go squirrelly.
The Velvet Fist photographs, Halibut ’s abilities, and even other submarine spying missions were fast becoming the main attraction in a circus where having a ticket to the show was more important than the performance, where the labels “top-secret” and “need to know” made the spectacle irresistible.
the United States and the Soviet Union were behaving much like two men in a smoke-filled room endlessly playing cards. Both of them were cheating, but neither was able to accuse the other because that would end the game.
A Typhoon could carry twenty SS-N-20 nuclear missiles, each 50 feet long and able to hold ten warheads programmed to hit different targets as far as 4,500 nautical miles away.
Doveryai, no proveryai —trust but verify,” Reagan said, evoking an old Russian maxim at the signing. “You repeat that at every meeting,” Gorbachev teased, chuckling.
Georgi Arbatov, the director of the Soviet Union’s Institute for the Study of the USA and Canada, put it all into words: “We are going to do something terrible to you. We are going to deprive you of an enemy.”
From a high of ninety-eight in the late 1980s, the number of attack subs fell to the low sixties in 1999 and will dwindle to fifty early in the next century and even further as the Los Angeles subs are retired. The fleet of nuclear missile subs, which are still circling quietly in the oceans, will dwindle to ten to fourteen boats from a onetime high of forty-one.
Jane’s Information Group Limited. For a more detailed understanding of submarine tactics and technology, we also relied on Norman Friedman, Submarine Design and Development (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1984); Richard Compton-Hall, Sub Versus Sub: The Tactics and Technology of Underwater Warfare (New York: Orion Books, 1988); and Norman Polmar, The
American Submarine (Annapolis, Md.: Nautical and Aviation Publishing Company of America, 1983). Handy resources for most submarine hull numbers were the United States Submarine Data Book, prepared by the Submarine Force Library and Museum in Groton, Connecticut, and a list of all nuclear-powered submarines distributed by Electric Boat Company, a division of General Dynamics Corporation.
