41 FOR FREEDOM: BALLISTIC MISSILE SUBMARINERS AND THE NUCLEAR DETERRENT SHIELD DURING THE COLD WAR A Thesis Presented for the Master of Arts Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Jeremy D. Long May 2024 Copyright © 2024 by Jeremy D. Long All rights reserved. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to the UT history faculty, my fellow graduate students, my fellow submariners, and the veterans I interviewed. Special thanks to my advisor, Dr. Chris Magra, and my committee, Dr. Michael Woods and Dr. Victor Petrov. Thanks to my wonderful wife, Cat, and my lovely family for their support: Danyelle, John, Alice, Johnny, and Anna. Thanks owed to the men I served with for teaching me what it means to earn my place in the Brotherhood of the Phin: Josh Cosand, Jason Parker, Pete Jacangelo, Tim Salinas, Johnny Rhoades, Demyer York, Bill Hibbert, Nick Clendenning, Aaron Heinritz, Austin Huggins, Sarito Bastian, Brian Warden, Phil Cortez, Evander Burrell, Ian Hokanson, Jesus Vega, Ken Julian, Lee Rachal, Mike Jones, Mike Nilsen, Pete Alberico, Ricky Hermida, Ryan Mehlhoff, Steven St. Charles, Jason Clough, Tom Alberding, Travis Feiring, Dan Christofferson, and Donte Polson. Unending thanks to the men who shared their stories with me: Carl Pilj, Andy Armbrust, Gene Masters, Jim Keehan, Mike Gorham, Tim France, and Marlin Helms. This project wouldn’t be the same without your contributions. The nation, the submarine force, and I owe you a debt of gratitude. In loving memory of David Campbell and Joseph Ashley, two men whom the submarine force continues to mourn. Fair winds and following seas. ABSTRACT Ballistic missile “boomer” submarines were developed in the 1960s as a response to the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite which proved the Soviet Union could launch a missile targeting anywhere on Earth. They made use of new nuclear power technology which allowed submarines to stay underwater indefinitely, limited only by the food they could carry to feed their crews. Ballistic missile submarines have served continuously since 1960, patrolling the ocean as the second-strike capability that makes nuclear deterrence possible. The men who served aboard the “41 for Freedom” ballistic missile submarines made innumerable sacrifices and contributed greatly to national security during the Cold War, and current ballistic missile submariners continue in that mission today. Despite boomers being the lesser-known side of submarine service, oral histories preserved by the Library of Congress and others conducted by this paper’s author further the claim that the contribution of ballistic missile submarines was vital during a time of heightened tensions worldwide, and, in fact, these contributions are what made nuclear deterrence possible. As nuclear deterrent strategy existed throughout the Cold War, the second-strike capability of ballistic missile submarines became increasingly more fundamental to national security and the men who operated those submarines prevented what would have been a catastrophic conflict. These sailors experienced the Cold War in the isolation of a submarine hundreds of feet underwater with little to no knowledge of the world outside. The rare lucky few submariners who got to see the world they protected saw it through a periscope. Medical emergencies were handled aboard the ship whenever possible with minimal equipment and supplies to ensure the ship could remain on station in support of the mission. They made sacrifices the world will never know about and braved dangers most people could not imagine in order to complete their mission, and their service requires recognition from a grateful world. Table of Contents CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION AND HISTORIOGRAPHY 1 Submariners 1 Historiography 3 Cold War 4 Nuclear Deterrence 6 Big Navy 9 Submarines 10 Medical Considerations 16 CHAPTER 2 SUBMARINE DEVELOPMENT AND COLD WAR BACKGROUND 19 The Threat of Sputnik 21 Steel Boats 23 41 for Freedom 24 Submarine Training 26 Nuke School 26 Boomer Service 28 Nuclear Power 30 Submarine Life Cycle 32 SALT and Other Nonproliferation Agreements 34 CHAPTER 3 SUBMARINERS IN THEIR OWN WORDS 36 A New Era of Submarines 36 Diesel Boats Forever 37 Months of Boredom Punctuated by Moments of Extreme Terror 38 Going Deep 41 Ups and Downs of Submarines 42 A Unique Way of Life 44 Learning on the Job 46 Advancement 50 Family Life 52 Home Sweet Home 54 Life After Submarines 56 CHAPTER 4 MEDICAL CONCERNS 58 Submarine Screening 59 Iron Men 61 Periscope Liberty 64 Radiation 65 Medical Emergencies 67 CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION 70 REFERENCES 74 APPENDIX 84 VITA 86 LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1. The 41 for Freedom 84 14 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION AND HISTORIOGRAPHY Submariners Submarine duty has always required the utmost fortitude to withstand the oppressive environment, the isolation, and the danger inherent in operating deep underwater. With the end of the Cold War, decades of fear and the possibility of nuclear war gave way to increasing uncertainty and new threats, while the specter of Russia, ostensibly now an ally, remained. The ballistic missile submarines that had completed their mission and kept the country safe throughout the icy conflict were aging and beginning to be retired and replaced. Collectively, they were known as the “41 for Freedom,” the first 41 nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines built to combat the threat of Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles after the launch of Sputnik. They became the George Washington, Ethan Allen, Lafayette, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin classes and they were named after some of the most important men in American and Naval history. Harnessing nuclear power was an incredible feat of engineering that allowed submarines to stay underwater indefinitely, limited only by their ability to store food to feed the crew. Continual upgrades to nuclear-capable guided ballistic missiles meant that those ships could launch devastation from further and further distances away from their targets. Early conflicts during the Cold War made the need for this technology clear to American foreign policy experts, national security experts, and each branch of the military. While these technological advances and the national security policies that made use of them were incredibly important for the safety of the nation, none of it was possible without the service and sacrifice of the men who volunteered to crew these ships. Submarines operate in the depths and the shadows, and they mostly do their best to avoid public glory. What glory there is tends to go to fast attack submarines because they are the boats that sneakily follow enemy ships and submarines, tap enemy communications, and just generally go where they are not supposed to be. On the other hand, because the mission of boomer submarines is to remain hidden and undetected rather than spy on the enemy, their service is often overlooked. Ballistic missile submariners go through the same isolation, and the same exhausting schedules, and they operate in some of the same dangerous waters as fast-attack submariners. This project seeks to give them well-earned recognition for their service to the safety of the country and the world during an incredibly dangerous time. National security relied on the threat of a second strike. Without the second-strike threat that ballistic missile submarines provided, nuclear deterrence would have been an empty threat. Without the men who served onboard those submarines, the world would have been in much greater danger, and the Cold War might have been lost. This thesis is adamant that the Cold War would not have remained cold overall despite its numerous hotspots without the second-strike threat that nuclear missile submarines provided to national security decision-makers and the presidents throughout the conflict. Chapter 2 tells how submarines came into being, from the earliest, barely submersible ships to the nuclear-powered megastructures of today; the political conflict and nuclear threat that made their evolution into nuclear deterrent necessary; the Admiral without whom the nuclear navy would not have succeeded as it did and still does; and the treaties that resulted from the anti-nuclear proliferation sentiment and protests of the later twentieth century. Nuclear ballistic missiles would have been unable to protect the nation without the men who operated the submarines that contained them. Those men made sacrifices the world will never know except by listening to their own words in Chapter 3. They missed births, deaths, holidays, and uncountable other important events to do their duty and protect the nation. They were rewarded with prestige in secret and by knowing national security secrets which will never be declassified. In Chapter 4, I make clear just how dangerous their mission could be. They were alone in the depths with little to no communication and only their own wits to survive, stay healthy, and complete their missions. For this reason, they have become the subject of isolation studies and psychiatric professional curiosity which helps train other career fields. I conclude with the recognition that these submariners deserve for their contributions to national security, the advances made since the end of the Cold War in nuclear missiles, submarines, and anti-proliferation, and the place of submarines in public attention. Every day, ballistic missile submarines are out there in the oceans, protecting the country and providing nuclear deterrence, with submariners continuing in the duty begun with the 41 for Freedom. Historiography Submarine stories have long fascinated those with an interest in the sea, history, and naval warfare. Submariners, as viewed from the outside, appear almost like mythical creatures, with their environment of the crushing deep and their resistance to claustrophobia. During the Cold War, submariners became the key to nuclear deterrence and the following historiography bears that out. Cold War Cold War historiography is incredibly diverse and begins nearly as soon as the Cold War itself begins. Early Cold War historians fall into the Orthodox school of thought. This taught that the Soviets were to blame for the unfolding situation due to their expansionist objectives and the United States was merely reacting to their new adversaries. This school of thought is exemplified by George F. Kennan’s “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” published in 1947 in Foreign Affairs. This article also coined the term “containment” as the goal of US foreign policy as regards the Soviets and Communism.[footnoteRef:2] Following the Orthodox school was the Revisionist, or Wisconsin, school which connected US Cold War policy to US imperialism and asserted that economic forces were more responsible than previously thought. The United States needed new markets for its new technologies, products, and capital, and it found these in conflict with the Soviets. This school of thought, which emerged at around the same time as nuclear-powered submarines were being developed, was headed by William Appleman Williams and his The Tragedy of American Diplomacy.[footnoteRef:3] [2: X., “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs 65, no. 4 (1987): 852, https://doi.org/10.2307/20043098.] [3: William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, 50th anniversary ed (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2009).] Toward the end of the Cold War, yet another school of thought emerged in Cold War historiography. Post-revisionist theory once again held the Soviets responsible for the conflict and asserted that Stalin was an opportunist and pragmatist, not a Communist revolutionary trying to spread the ideology. At the same time, the Soviets were the belligerents, and the Americans were merely responding to their aggressiveness. The opening of Soviet archives allowed American scholars to test theories that they had during the years of the conflict. This school of thought gave credit for the peaceful end of the Cold War to President Reagan and Pope John Paul II and considered both internal and external American factors. They considered the Cold War an ideological rather than a geopolitical struggle. This school was led by John Lewis Gaddis and his We Now Know.[footnoteRef:4] Since the end of the Cold War, scholarship has evolved past these schools of thought to include areas of the world outside the superpowers to the “third world.”[footnoteRef:5] Francis Fukuyama claimed that the Cold War was the final victory for democracy and capitalism while Samuel Huntington advanced his “clash of civilizations” theory.[footnoteRef:6] Responding to both of these assertions and continuing a focus on the third world, Paul Thomas Chamberlin deftly counters the peaceful and bloodless myth of the Cold War by connecting Maoist violence in China, the Vietnam War and genocides in Southeast Asian countries, and Middle Eastern conflicts such as the Lebanese Civil War, the Soviet-Afghan War, and subsequent conflicts as a result of the superpowers taking sides and fighting proxy wars in these areas of the world. Especially by training and equipping Muslim forces in the Middle East, the United States helped give rise to violence that it continues to fight today. Chamberlin argues that the devastation brought by American military action gives space for the rise of violent organizations such as ISIS and the Khmer Rouge.[footnoteRef:7] Just because the violence and death happened far away from either the Soviet Union or the United States, that does not absolve these powers from the deaths that they helped to cause and the instability which continues to affect our world today. [4: John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford : New York: Clarendon Press ; Oxford University Press, 1997).] [5: Penny M. Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War, 1st Harvard University Press paperback edition (Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England: Harvard University Press, 2006); Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam, Pbk. ed. (New York, NY: Random House, 2013); Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times, 12th printing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Susanne Bauer and Tanja Penter, Tracing the Atom: Nuclear Legacies in Russia and Central Asia, 1st ed. (London: Routledge, 2022), https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003246893; Jayita Sarkar, Ploughshares and Swords: India’s Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War (Ithaca [New York]: Cornell University Press, 2022).] [6: Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man: With a New Afterword, 1. Free Press trade paperback ed., [Nachdr.] (New York, NY: Free Press, 2006); Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, 1. Simon & Schuster paperback ed, The New York Times Bestseller (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003).] [7: Paul Thomas Chamberlin, The Cold War’s Killing Fields: Rethinking the Long Peace, First edition (New York, NY: Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2018).] Nuclear Deterrence Nuclear deterrence was a key strategy for both sides during the Cold War and since. With nuclear weapons added to the arsenals of the superpowers, the goal was to not use these weapons, a change of the strategy from winning wars to deterring wars from beginning in the first place. As General Russell Dougherty put it, deterrence was the product of capability and will; if either factor was zero, then the product was zero.[footnoteRef:8] This strategy depended on having the weapons, being willing to use them, and, importantly, the enemy’s perception that you would be willing to use them if pressed.[footnoteRef:9] It also relied on the man at the tip of the spear being able to trust the system of which he was a part. When the order came to launch, he had to be sure of it.Nuclear deterrence was the defining feature of the Cold War and remains a key strategy in national security today. As a field of study, nuclear deterrence has its own rich and varied historiography and schools of debate.[footnoteRef:10] [8: Chris Adams, Inside the Cold War: A Cold Warrior’s Reflections (Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala: Air University Press, 1999).] [9: David Fisher, Morality and the Bomb: An Ethical Assessment of Nuclear Deterrence (S.l.: ROUTLEDGE, 2022).] [10: Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966); Benoît Pélopidas et al., eds., The War That Must Never Be Fought: Dilemmas of Nuclear Deterrence (Stanford/Cal: Hoover Institution Press, 2015); Lawrence Freedman, Deterrence, Reprinted (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009); Scott Douglas Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate, 1st ed (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995); Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed (New York: Norton, 2003); Scott Douglas Sagan and Kenneth Neal Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate: With New Chapters on Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, and on the Prospects for Global Nuclear Disarmament, Third edition (New York London: W.W.Norton & Company, 2013); Bernard Brodie, ed., The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1946); Vipin Narang and Scott Douglas Sagan, eds., The Fragile Balance of Terror: Deterrence in the New Nuclear Age, Cornell Studies in Security Affairs (Ithaca [New York] London: Cornell University Press, 2022); Paul Huth and Bruce Russett, “What Makes Deterrence Work? Cases from 1900 to 1980,” World Politics 36, no. 4 (July 1984): 496–526, https://doi.org/10.2307/2010184; Do Young Lee, “Strategies of Extended Deterrence: How States Provide the Security Umbrella,” Security Studies 30, no. 5 (October 20, 2021): 761–96, https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2021.2010887.] One theory by preeminent Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis is that nuclear weapons’ deterrent capabilities worked, but they caused the conflict to increase in duration. One of the effects of this longer duration was that nuclear weapons increased in magnitude as destructiveness became the goal when the number of weapons began to be regulated.[footnoteRef:11] Strategy also evolved from an inflexible overwhelming response during the Eisenhower Administration to minimum deterrence with a controlled response under Kennedy, thanks to a recommendation of his Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara. Submarines were a vital part of this nuclear deterrence program starting with the Regulus missile submarines and continuing with the improvement of the Polaris missile and the 41 for Freedom. Second strike capability was the lynchpin requirement for deterrence policy to be effective, and submarines were the key to that capability.[footnoteRef:12] [11: David Kunsman and Douglas Lawson, “A Primer on U.S. Strategic Nuclear Policy,” January 1, 2001, https://doi.org/10.2172/776355, 13.] [12: Todd S. Sechser and Matthew Fuhrmann, “Crisis Bargaining and Nuclear Blackmail,” International Organization 67, no. 1 (January 2013): 173–95, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818312000392; Todd S. Sechser and Matthew Fuhrmann, Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy, 1st ed. (Cambridge University Press, 2016), https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316227305; Isaac Jenkins et al., “Producing Second Strike,” Project on Nuclear Issues (Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), 2018), JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep22425.14.] A key underpinning assumption of nuclear deterrence theory was that the powers who controlled nuclear weapons would act rationally, that is, they would perform predictably and understandably, and they would be deterred by the rational consequences of their actions.[footnoteRef:13] This assumption of rational action could and did create surprises based on differing values between actors. Once rational action was defined, then the value of nuclear weapons on deterrence and deterrence itself could be debated. Robert Jervis theorized that the threat of nuclear weapons meant that the kind of security that was available in the past before the nuclear era was no longer possible in The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy.[footnoteRef:14] Matthew Kroenig responded thirty years later in The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy that nuclear superiority is key. Rather than toeing the conventional line that second strike capability is the minimum necessary and anything over that is too much, he says that nuclear superiority gives the chance to destroy the enemy’s stockpile and enhances the country’s security, whereas others believe that once second strike capability has been achieved, that should be plenty to guarantee security.[footnoteRef:15] Other historians have argued that nuclear weapons increased tensions and provoked conventional action that deterrence theory suggested they should prevent.[footnoteRef:16] Additionally, brinksmanship theory says that nuclear weapons caused leaders to take risks they otherwise would not have to achieve political ends.[footnoteRef:17] Some examples of this are the Berlin Airlift followed by the Berlin Crisis of 1961, the Korean War, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. [13: Stephen Maxwell, “Rationality in Deterrence,” The Adelphi Papers 8, no. 50 (August 1968): 1–19, https://doi.org/10.1080/05679326808448106.] [14: Robert Jervis, The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy, 2. pr, Cornell Studies in Security Affairs (Ithaca, N.Y. u.a: Cornell Univ. Pr, 1986).] [15: Matthew Kroenig, The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy: Why Strategic Superiority Matters (New York: Oxford university press, 2018).] [16: Kenneth L. Schwab, After the Cold War: Questioning the Morality of Nuclear Deterrence, ed. Charles W. Kegley (Place of publication not identified: Routledge, 2021).] [17: David M. Watry, Diplomacy at the Brink: Eisenhower, Churchill, and Eden in the Cold War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2014).] Big Navy World War II, especially the Pacific Theater, showed that the Navy had a much bigger role to play in national defense than it previously did. The Navy added air war to its capabilities and submarines took on a much bigger responsibility than they had had in the past. World War II Americans submarines sank 52% of all Japanese shipping. The Battle of the Coral Sea was fought completely by aircraft launched from ships who remained out of sight of one another. The dawn of the Cold War brought new technologies which would drastically increase the Navy’s combat responsibilities. The Navy took on a significant role in the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, and, at the end of the Cold War, Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.[footnoteRef:18] Nuclear power advances allowed for fossil fuel near independence in submarines, aircraft carriers, and guided missile cruisers.[footnoteRef:19] Aircraft carriers and their support battle groups became the new standard in threat presence around the world. Submarines combined the new technologies of nuclear power and nuclear guided missiles to take on their new role in nuclear deterrence where they could reach far into the interior of continents. [18: Daniel Carrison, “The Role of the Navy in the Cold War,” USNI 85, no. 6 (June 1959).] [19: Nuclear-powered ships and submarines have an emergency diesel generator as a backup for the reactor which requires fossil fuels to run. The fuel also serves extra duty as secondary shielding protecting the crew areas from radiation.] Submarines The nuclear triad consists of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles hidden deep in silos across the Great Plains states, nuclear-capable alert bombers ready to be airborne in minutes before any enemy-launched missile would land, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles hidden in the depths of the ocean. Each of these can provide second strike abilities to the nation, but submarines are by far the most secure side of the triad for second strike due to the unpredictable and expansive nature of the oceans where submarines hide. The connection between submarines and second-strike nuclear deterrence became so obvious that very little interrogation of them as the best choice to fill that role has happened since they were developed.[footnoteRef:20] The United States developed the SOSUS underwater sound array to detect enemy submarines, and it worked.[footnoteRef:21] American submarines remained quiet with new sound silencing developments so they could be an effective nuclear deterrent while Russian submarines were much more easily tracked.[footnoteRef:22] [20: Kevin P. Chilton, “Defending the Record on US Nuclear Deterrence,” Strategic Studies Quarterly 12, no. Spring (January 1, 2018), https://www.jstor.org/stable/26333874; Owen R. Cote, “Invisible Nuclear-Armed Submarines, or Transparent Oceans? Are Ballistic Missile Submarines Still the Best Deterrent for the United States?,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 75, no. 1 (January 2, 2019): 30–35, https://doi.org/10.1080/00963402.2019.1555998; Rose Gottemoeller, “The Standstill Conundrum: The Advent of Second-Strike Vulnerability and Options to Address It (Fall 2021),” 2021, https://doi.org/10.26153/TSW/17496.] [21: William Beecher, “New Soviet Subs Relatively Noisy, Easy to Detect,” New York Times, October 8, 1969.] [22: Cote, “Invisible Nuclear-Armed Submarines, or Transparent Oceans?”] When it comes to books about submariners, many of them are written by submariners about their own experiences.[footnoteRef:23] Submarine books also tend to be written about fast attack submarines rather than ballistic missile submarines, because fast attack submarines get the more interesting missions.[footnoteRef:24] One of the most well-known books written about fast-attack Cold War submarines and their incredibly dangerous missions was Blind Man’s Bluff, by journalists Sherry Sontag, Christopher Drew, and Annette Lawrence Drew, about submarine special operations during the Cold War.[footnoteRef:25] This was among the first times the public learned about a small percentage of these special operations which included tapping communications cables, salvaging a sunken Soviet submarine, and numerous collisions between submarines. The book was like something out of a Cold War spy novel, and the stories seemed surreal in their excitement. [23: Alfred Scott McLaren, Emergency Deep: Cold War Missions of a Submarine Commander, Maritime Currents: History and Archaeology (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2021); Alfred Scott McLaren, Silent and Unseen: On Patrol in Three Cold War Attack Submarines (Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 2015); CHARLES A. LOCKWOOD, SINK ’EM ALL: Submarine Warfare in the Pacific (Place of publication not identified: LULU COM, 2017); Richard H. O’Kane, Clear the Bridge!: The War Patrols of the U.S.S. Tang, 1st Ballantine books ed (New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 2003); Dan Summitt, Tales of a Cold War Submariner, 1st ed, Texas A & M University Military History Series 95 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004).] [24: Sherry Sontag, Christopher Drew, and Annette Lawrence Drew, Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage (New York: Public Affairs, 1998).] [25: Ibid.] Just after the end of the Cold War, naval historian Dan van der Vat wrote Stealth at Sea, an updated history of the submarine, from the earliest submersibles to his present-day nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed ships.[footnoteRef:26] Submarines began the century barely submersible and ended it as the most dangerous of war machines, and van der Vat did an excellent job sharing that unique story. Historian Thomas Parrish did much the same in 2005 with The Submarine.[footnoteRef:27] He focused on the role of the submarine in World War I, World War II, and the Cold War, respectively; the people who developed submarines; and the heroes who sailed them. These submarine heroes are a popular theme for books about submarines. Lawrence Goldstone wrote in Going Deep: John Philip Holland and the Invention of the Attack Submarine about the man who sold the US Navy its first submarine, his competition for the builder’s contracts, Simon Lake, and the race for early submarine technological development, innovation, and genius.[footnoteRef:28] [26: Dan Van der Vat, Stealth at Sea: The History of the Submarine (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995).] [27: Thomas Parrish, The Submarine: A History (New York, N.Y.: Penguin, 2005).] [28: Lawrence Goldstone, Going Deep: John Philip Holland and the Invention of the Attack Submarine, First Pegasus books edition (New York London: Pegasus Books, 2017).] The Bravest Man by William Touhy covers the story of Medal of Honor recipient Richard O’Kane, who was the most highly decorated Naval Officer of World War II, the Captain of the USS Tang (SS-306) which was the submarine with both the highest tonnage sunk in the war and most ships sunk, and he was one of only five survivors of the Tang’s final patrol when it sank due to its own torpedo.[footnoteRef:29] Investigative reporter James Scott wrote about Tang, Silversides, and Drum in The War Below: The Story of Three Submarines That Battled Japan using oral histories of sailors who were stationed on the boats and their written materials, including letters and diaries.[footnoteRef:30] These personal stories put the reader right into the submarine for battles against the enemy. [29: William Tuohy, The Bravest Man: The Story of Richard O’Kane & U.S. Submariners in the Pacific War (Stroud: Sutton, 2001).] [30: James Scott, The War below: The Story of Three Submarines That Battled Japan, First Simon&Schuster paperback edition (New York London Toronto: Simon & Schuster paperbacks, 2014).] Unique amongst submarine books is Eminent Americans: Namesakes of the Polaris Submarine Fleet by Admiral Hyman G Rickover.[footnoteRef:31] Rickover rode each boat during sea trials, so he began the work while he was still underway on those trials, writing a letter to Congress about each of the 41 for Freedom’s namesakes. Later, desiring to turn these short letters into a full book, he had the time and resources to complete these essays about the men after whom these ships were named, so the admiral expanded each essay into a couple of thorough pages about each of his subjects. Rickover, himself, is a figurative giant in submarine and atomic energy history, although literally, he was a “wisp of a man at barely five and a half feet tall and 125 pounds.”[footnoteRef:32] Rickover has been the subject of at least nine biographies including one published as recently as 2023 thanks to the availability of his papers and remains the longest-serving officer in US Navy history at 63 years of service.[footnoteRef:33] Rickover maintained unprecedented control over the men who served on his ships and ran his reactors throughout his tenure. [31: Hyman Rickover, Eminent Americans: Namesakes of Polaris Submarine Fleet, 1st ed. (Government Printing Office, 1972).] [32: Marc Wortman, Admiral Hyman Rickover: Engineer of Power, Jewish Lives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022), 4.] [33: Hewlett, Richard G., and Francis Duncan. Nuclear Navy, 1946-1962. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974; Polmar, Norman, and Thomas B. Allen. Rickover. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982; Polmar, Norman, and Thomas B. Allen. Rickover: Controversy and Geniu; a Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984; Rockwell, Theodore. The Rickover Effect: How One Man Made a Difference. Annapolis (Md.): Naval institute press, 1992; Duncan, Francis. Rickover and the Nuclear Navy: The Discipline of Technology. Annapolis, Md: Naval Institute Press, 1990; Wortman, Marc. Admiral Hyman Rickover: Engineer of Power. Jewish Lives. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022.] Personal submarine histories are important to the historiography of submarines as so much of their work is classified and necessarily shrouded in mystery that remains unavailable to those outside the community. Alfred Scott McLaren wrote two books about his time on Cold War submarines, Emergency Deep about his time commanding the USS Queenfish (SSN-651), and Silent and Unseen about serving on USS Greenfish (SS-351), USS Seadragon (SSN-584), and USS Skipjack (SSN-585).[footnoteRef:34] Similarly, Dan Summit wrote Tales of a Cold War Submariner about his time commanding Seadragon and USS Alexander Hamilton, along with serving at the Pentagon in Naval Reactors under Admiral Rickover.[footnoteRef:35] After serving aboard submarines and then a full civilian career as an engineer, Gene Masters began to write fiction books about submarines based on stories he heard or experienced during his time serving. He has written three of these books so far.[footnoteRef:36] [34: McLaren, Emergency Deep; McLaren, Silent and Unseen.] [35: Summitt, Tales of a Cold War Submariner.] [36: Eugene Masters, Interview with the Author, February 1, 2024.] This is far from a complete submarine historiography, but instead reveals examples of the types of submarine books that have been written in recent decades and their varying purposes. Many are by submariners about their own experiences to share their life and excitement with the wider public.[footnoteRef:37] They do not necessarily have a historical argument to make but are there to inform and even entertain. Other books tell the history of submarines for academics or hobbyists to understand their development.[footnoteRef:38] Still others are written about important figures in submarine history and their achievements.[footnoteRef:39] There are also a few novels that fictionalize real-life submarine events.[footnoteRef:40] The majority of all these previous types of submarine books are written by submariners, or at least by naval historians. Occasionally, writers, especially journalists, from outside the submarine community will find a story and share new details about submarine life with the public.[footnoteRef:41] My own ship was the subject of a CNN segment about Ice Exercise 2011.[footnoteRef:42] ICEX is an excellent opportunity to make submarine operations public because it is a combined scientific and military exercise in an important newly available area of operations, and again this year it attracted wide attention and good publicity.[footnoteRef:43] The public remains fascinated with the Silent Service and these stories are always popular.[footnoteRef:44] [37: Edward L. Beach, Submarine! (New York: Pocket Star Books, 2004); Edward L. Beach, Around the World Submerged: The Voyage of the Triton (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001); Edward L. Beach, Salt and Steel: Reflections of a Submariner (Annapolis, Md: Naval Institute Press, 1999); Ted E. Dubay, Three Knots to Nowhere: A Cold War Submariner on the Undersea Frontline (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2014); Eugene B. Fluckey, Thunder below!: The USS Barb Revolutionizes Submarine Warfare in World War II, 1st pbk. ed (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997); Richard H. O’Kane, Wahoo: The Patrols of America’s Most Famous World War II Submarine, Paperback ed (Novato, Calif: Presidio Press, 1996); William J. Ruhe, War in the Boats: My World War II Submarine Battles (Washington: Brassey’s, 1994).] [38: John Parker and Francis Crosby, The World Encyclopedia of Submarines: A Complete History of over 150 Underwater Vessels from the Hunley and Nautilus to Today’s Nuclear-Powered Submarines (London: Lorenz Books, 2023); David Ross, Submarines: The World’s Greatest Submarines from the 18th Century to the Present, Amber edition (London: Amber Books, 2022); Edward L. Beach, The United States Navy: 200 Years, 1. ed (New York: Holt, 1986); Norman Polmar and Kenneth J. Moore, Cold War Submarines: The Design and Construction of U.S. and Soviet Submarines, 1. ed (Dulles, Va.: Potomac Books, 2005).] [39: Norman Polmar, The Death of the USS Thresher: The Story behind History’s Deadliest Submarine Disaster, Second Lyons Press paperback edition (Guilford, Connecticut: Lyons Press, an impirnt of Globe Pequot, 2017); Tuohy, The Bravest Man; Fran Hawk and Monica Wyrick, The H.L. Hunley Submarine: History and Mystery from the Civil War, Young Palmetto Books (Columbia, South Carolina: The University of South Carolina Press, 2017); Rachel Lance, In the Waves: My Quest to Solve the Mystery of a Civil War Submarine (New York: Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2020); Claude Berube and Samuel Limneos, eds., Rickover Uncensored (Focsle Up, 2023).] [40: Edward L. Beach, Run Silent, Run Deep (London: Cassell, 2003); Gene Masters, Silent Warriors: Submarine Warfare in the Pacific, First edition (Hendersonville, NC.: Escarpment Press, 2018); Irving A. Greenfield, Depth Force (Ilkley: Sapere Books, 2023).] [41: David Schultz, Peril in the Deep: Adventures of the WWII Submarine USS Burrfish, 2022; George J. Billy, The USS Swordfish: The World War II Patrols of the First American Submarine to Sink a Japanese Ship (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2019); Scott, The War Below; W. Craig Reed, Red November: Inside the Secret U.S.-Soviet Submarine War, 1st ed (New York: William Morrow, 2010); Stephen L. Moore, Strike of the Sailfish: Two Sister Submarines and the Sinking of a Japanese Aircraft Carrier (New York: Caliber, 2023); Douglas A. Campbell, Eight Survived: The Harrowing Story of the USS Flier and the Only Downed World War II Submariners to Survive and Evade Capture, Second Lyons paperback edition (Guilford, Connecticut: Lyons Press, 2018); Josh Dean, The Taking of K-129: How the CIA Used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring Covert Operation in History (New York, New York: Dutton, 2017).] [42: CNN Ice Wars - USS Connecticut ICEX 2011 (CNN, 2014), https://youtu.be/4PhvRf1HWMg?si=HpdaT5yQcYpLoGIn.] [43: Michaela White, “Navy Launches Operation Ice Camp 2024 in the Arctic Ocean,” SUBLANT, March 8, 2024, Online edition.] [44: How I Boarded a US NAVY NUCLEAR SUBMARINE in the Arctic (ICEX 2020) - Smarter Every Day 237 (Smarter Every Day, 2020).] Submarine books are often regarded by scholars as belonging to the unfortunate category of popular history rather than the subject of serious academic historical study. Part of this has to do with their biographical or autobiographical nature, part has to do with the classified nature of their operations, and part has to do with criticisms of traditional military history in general. Regardless of academic biases, submarines and the submariners who sail them are deserving of serious scholarship. Their stories, their sacrifices, and their steadfast devotion to duty deserve historical study worthy of their efforts. The men who operated the 41 for Freedom deserve to have their lives remembered for the isolation, the missed family time, and the hardship they endured. Not only did they make those sacrifices, but they also served and protected the country for decades during a tumultuous time. Medical Considerations In addition to the challenges that submariners must face coping with the stress and psychological difficulties associated with isolation, they must also be prepared to deal with illness and injury while remaining on station as much as necessary for their missions in support of national security. Navy Lieutenant Dr. Luke Beardsley compiled a recent review study on the status of submarine medicine, its progress over the decades, and gaps in the body of research that need to be filled. In 2019, he published Submarine Medicine: An Overview of the Unique Challenges, Medical Concerns, and Gaps as the first comprehensive overview of submarine medical practice since the 1950s. Beardsley includes some key concerns regarding submarine medicine, including major medical concerns, illness and injury, long-term health effects, submarine atmospheres, fatigue, reproductive health, radiation health, and cardiovascular health associated with long hours at sea and minimal exercise equipment. The gaps he identifies in submarine knowledge include mental health screening and support, escape and rescue, atmospheric monitoring, long-term health effects, fatigue, and prolonged field care, especially for things like acute abdominal issues such as appendicitis or kidney stones or control of hemorrhages.[footnoteRef:45] Closing these gaps would allow medical practitioners to help ensure the health and readiness of our submarine sailors while underway and can be applied to other isolated populations. [45: Luke A. Beardslee, Ben D. Lawson, and David P. Regis, “An Overview of the Unique Field of Submarine Medicine,” Technical Report (Groton, CT: Naval Submarine Medical Research Laboratory, March 10, 2019), 22.] These same concerns have been the subject of other studies by scientists interested in the health of submariners while deployed. Psychological Considerations in Submarine Escape Training: Brief Overview and Future Directions by Charles H. Van Wijk is concerned with both the mental and physical aspects of training to be in a disabled submarine at sea and attempting to escape, something that weighs on the mind of every submariner who goes to sea.[footnoteRef:46] In Changes in Body Composition of Submarine Crew During Prolonged Submarine Deployment, Indian scientists considered weight and body fat percentage change in a submarine crew over a 26-day underway. They found that both weight and body fat percentage changed by half of a percent, which was contrary to a study of American submariners in which more than half the crew lost weight while nearly a third gained.[footnoteRef:47] The authors attribute the difference to more of the crew actively dieting, but a contributing factor they ignored is that the underway period was nearly three times as long for the Americans as for the Indian submarine crew. Submariners as a research subject continue to interest physicians and psychologists and their history of contributing to medicine is important to be considered.[footnoteRef:48] [46: Charles H. Van Wijk, “Psychological Considerations in Submarine Escape Training: Brief Overview and Future Directions,” International Maritime Health 68, no. 3 (September 27, 2017): 168–73, https://doi.org/10.5603/IMH.2017.0030, 168.] [47: Sourabh Bhutani et al., “Changes in Body Composition of Submarine Crew during Prolonged Submarine Deployment,” Journal of Marine Medical Society 17, no. 2 (2015): 101, https://doi.org/10.4103/0975-3605.203695, 103.] [48: Mia Edgar, “COVID-19 on Board a Submarine; a Retrospective Review,” Military Medicine 187, no. 11–12 (October 29, 2022): 325–325, https://doi.org/10.1093/milmed/usac270; Mia Edgar, Michael A Franco, and Hugh M Dainer, “Case Series of Arterial Gas Embolism Incidents in U.S. Navy Pressurized Submarine Escape Training From 2018 to 2019,” Military Medicine 186, no. 5–6 (May 3, 2021): e613–18, https://doi.org/10.1093/milmed/usaa233; Carl Edmonds et al., Diving and Subaquatic Medicine, Fifth edition (Boca Raton: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, 2016); V Lloro et al., “The Incidence of Dental Needs During Isolated Missions Compared to Non-Isolated Missions: A Systematic Review and Implications for Future Prevention Strategies,” Military Medicine 184, no. 3–4 (March 1, 2019): e148–55, https://doi.org/10.1093/milmed/usy364.] CHAPTER 2 SUBMARINE DEVELOPMENT AND COLD WAR BACKGROUND For heroism and devotion to duty while serving on board the U.S. submarine 0-5 at the time of the sinking of that vessel. On the morning of 28 October 1923, the 0-5 collided with the steamship Abangarez and sank in less than a minute. When the collision occurred, Breault was in the torpedo room. Upon reaching the hatch, he saw that the boat was rapidly sinking. Instead of jumping overboard to save his own life, he returned to the torpedo room to the rescue of a shipmate who he knew was trapped in the boat, closing the torpedo room hatch on himself. Breault and Brown remained trapped in this compartment until rescued by the salvage party 31 hours later. - Medal of Honor citation for Torpedoman Second Class Henry Breault[footnoteRef:49] [49: “Medal of Honor Citation” (Congressional Medal of Honor Society, October 28, 1923), https://www.cmohs.org/recipients/henry-breault.] The United States Submarine Force was born on April 11, 1900, with the purchase of USS Holland (SS-1), designed by Irish immigrant John Phillip Holland. Prior to his design, submarines were extremely unreliable, barely submersible, and killed far more of their own crew than the enemy.[footnoteRef:50] Even with his new design, early submarines were tiny, had almost no capability, and were still extremely dangerous. During this era, the only enlisted submariner to earn the Medal of Honor, Torpedoman’s Mate Henry Breault, earned this highest distinction by going back into his ship, the USS O-5 (SS-66), while it was sinking, securing the watertight hatch to the torpedo room, and saving the lives of him and his shipmate who was sleeping in there. They were rescued after thirty-one hours on the bottom of the Panama Canal. Submarines were continually slightly improved over the next decades and adopted by other navies until World War II showed their true capabilities. The biggest improvement during this period was made by the Dutch navy; the snorkel allowed a submarine to run its diesel engine and charge the battery while only exposing a small mast above the surface. Running the diesel meant that they were still easily detectable by SONAR when it was used. When the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor destroyed a large percentage of the Pacific Fleet, it left untouched the submarine fleet. Submarines took to the seas in vengeance and sank over five million tons of Japanese ships, just over half of merchant shipping, and one train, although they took heavy losses to do so. They also performed rescues of ship crews and downed airmen, including future President George H.W. Bush. [50: Lance, Rachel. In the Waves: My Quest to Solve the Mystery of a Civil War Submarine. New York: Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2020. Three notable submarines prior to 1900 were David Bushnell’s Revolutionary War-era Turtle, which failed to sink HMS Eagle; the Civil War-era USS Alligator, which was lost and sank without achieving anything, and the Civil War ship CSS H L Hunley, which lost 20 crew in testing and which was the first submarine to sink an enemy, the USS Housatonic, while again sinking with all five crew lost. ] After World War II, both the Americans, British, French, and Soviets were stealing design advancements made by the Germans in their Type XXI submarines to improve their own ships’ range, speed, and hydrodynamic profiles, despite the Type XXI being overall a mess due to its short development cycle. These include Greater Underwater Propulsion Power Program (GUPPY) ship improvements in three classes of American ships and other influences in three classes of Russian ships.[footnoteRef:51] Before the outbreak of war in the Korean Peninsula, the military was being reduced in size and the services were competing for funding in this new peacetime footing. On the other hand, the Russians were believed to be working to drastically increase the size of their submarine fleet. The biggest prize was the atom bomb, and both the brand-new Air Force and the Navy had deep desires for it. Additionally, designs were being developed for a nuclear power plant and new ships to contain it. Aircraft carriers had proven their use during the war in the Pacific and were a natural choice for a fuel-independent design. Thanks in large part to Commander Robert “Swede” Olsen at Naval Research Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, submarines were also a focus for this new power source. New power and an ability to stay underwater indefinitely also resulted in a design change from resembling surface ships as they had done in the past to the hydrodynamic teardrop shape starting with the research submarine USS Albacore (AGSS-569) which made submarines quieter and faster. These developments made it possible for the USS Nautilus to report “Under way on nuclear power.”[footnoteRef:52] Submarines were forever changed. [51: Norman Friedman, Submarine Design and Development (Annapolis, Md: Naval Institute Press, 1984), 57.] [52: Parrish, The Submarine, 433-435, 471.] The Threat of Sputnik Starting with the commissioning of the USS George Washington (SSBN-598) and ending with the USS Will Rogers (SSBN-659), the 41 ships of the classes George Washington, Ethan Allen, Lafayette, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin were the United States’ answer to the increasing threat of nuclear annihilation presented by Russia’s Sputnik launch. On October 4th, 1957, the first artificial satellite was launched into space. After the USSR successfully tested an atomic weapon in 1949, Sputnik gave them the capability to detonate that weapon anywhere around the world, and the United States was vulnerable to Soviet missile technology; a perceived “missile gap” had developed between the two superpowers.[footnoteRef:53] In an analysis of the missile gap myth, Dr. Jonathan Renshon noted that President Eisenhower never believed the existence of the missile gap while Kennedy made it a central pillar of his election platform. Only after he was elected did Kennedy have his Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara examine the truth of the missile gap more closely, wherein he determined that it was not true. Neither Eisenhower nor McNamara had actual evidence for their conclusions but were using the best intelligence available to make their determinations.[footnoteRef:54] The existence of the missile gap was based on faulty assumptions of Soviet capability and intent and then the denial of it was based on the feeling that those assumptions were wrong. As the intelligence became more accurate, the missile gap was determined to be nonexistent, and in fact, the United States had the advantage in the missile gap for at least the next few years. [53: “Navy Tells of Grounding Of Submarine Off Scotland,” New York Times, April 6, 1968; “Undersea Threat to US Stressed: Admiral Burke Says Soviet Plans Submarine Missiles and Atom Torpedoes,” New York Times, November 13, 1955.] [54: Jonathan Renshon, “Assessing Capabilities in International Politics: Biased Overestimation and the Case of the Imaginary ‘Missile Gap,’” Journal of Strategic Studies 32, no. 1 (February 2009): 115–47, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390802407475.] One of the earliest defense strategies of the nuclear era was the Assured Vulnerability theory of deterrence which assumed that the superpowers would act rationally and understand that any extreme provocation could result in nuclear retaliation. The two uses of nuclear weapons were as a means of punishment or denial: punishing an enemy for acting or denying him the achievement of his objectives. Most national security theorists subscribe to the Assured Vulnerability (punishment) rather than denial. Assured Vulnerability morphed into Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) during the Kennedy Administration wherein, if the two sides continued to act rationally and predictably, then neither would need to use their nuclear arsenals. This required a nuclear arsenal that was effective, invulnerable, and reliable, something achieved with the advent of submarine-launched ballistic Regulus and then Polaris missiles. This became the third leg of the nuclear deterrence triad, with the other two legs belonging to land-based intercontinental ballistic Minuteman missiles stationed in silos across the Great Plains and intercontinental strategic bombers which remained on alert status ready to launch at a moment’s notice. To respond to the missile gap and improve nuclear capability, then Secretary of the Navy, Thomas S. Gates, put forward a plan to have a nuclear-powered submarine capable of launching a Polaris missile with a range of 1,200 nautical miles at sea by the end of 1960. The Soviets were also believed to be developing ballistic missile submarines.[footnoteRef:55] This was a big step up from the Regulus guided missile program where a missile was mounted to the top of a submarine and could only be launched from the surface, creating a vulnerability to detection and, therefore, destruction. Regulus also established the nuclear deterrent patrol standard, always keeping one missile at sea in each ocean aboard the five ships. [55: “Undersea Threat to US Stressed: Admiral Burke Says Soviet Plans Submarine Missiles and Atom Torpedoes.”] Steel Boats To meet this requirement, a submarine already under construction would have to be reallocated to the new SSBN program. Luckily, there was just such a ship available. The third ship of the Skipjack class, the USS Scorpion, was cut in half and a 130-foot section was added for navigation and missile control equipment, auxiliary machinery, and two rows of eight missile tubes. This hull was renamed and gave the soon-to-be-christened USS George Washington a final length of just over 380 feet and a displacement of 6,700 tons while the name Scorpion would still be used on a ship to be built later which would go on to its own infamy as the last American submarine lost with all hands in 1968.[footnoteRef:56] George Washington departed on her first deterrent patrol on November 15th, 1960 with sixteen missiles, ahead of the schedule put forward by Secretary Gates. It had test-launched two missiles earlier that summer to prove the concept. The message sent by Admiral Raborn, Director of Special Projects at the Bureau of Weapons, upon completion of the test launch, was “POLARIS-FROM OUT OF THE DEEP TO TARGET. PERFECT.”[footnoteRef:57] [56: Norman Polmar and Thomas B. Allen, Rickover (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), 544.] [57: Ibid, 546.] 41 for Freedom At the christening ceremony for USS George Washington, Assistant Secretary of Defense Wilfred J McNeil said of the ship, it “incorporates into a single weapon system most of the great scientific developments which have so revolutionized warfare.”[footnoteRef:58] The race to build enough of these fleet ballistic missile submarines had begun, and their demonstrations advanced their cause so that finally, with the full support of Congress and the administrations of both President Eisenhower and then President Kennedy after him, these boats and their missiles would be the national security priority. [58: Ibid, 546.] Patrick Henry joined George Washington on patrol before the end of 1960. By 1967, all forty-one ballistic submarines had been commissioned and were built with improved characteristics, including deeper operating depths, while the weapons bureau improved the Polaris missile with a longer range, giving the Navy 656 missiles on 41 boats.[footnoteRef:59] Each of the 41 submarines was equipped with 16 Polaris missiles with a warhead yielding hundreds of kilotons which could be launched from underwater with a range of 1,200 nautical miles for the earliest Polaris and a range of 2,500 for the later, upgraded versions. When reporting on the commissioning of the George Washington, reporter Hanson Baldwin told the public that “there is no known defense against a ballistic missile once launched.”[footnoteRef:60] The nature of submarines meant that they could launch these missiles from anywhere in any ocean, including the Arctic, after the USS Nautilus (SSN-571) proved it could be navigated in 1958. After watching a missile launch from the USS Andrew Jackson, and mere days before his assassination, President John F. Kennedy said, “It is still incredible to me that a missile can be successfully and accurately fired from beneath the sea. Once one has seen a Polaris firing, the efficacy of this weapons system as a deterrent is not debatable.” [footnoteRef:61] With this new, reliable leg of nuclear deterrence available, the country’s strategic defense was now described by the Nuclear Triad of submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM), land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), and US Air Force nuclear-capable bombers.[footnoteRef:62] The scope of this project can be seen in Table 2.1, with all 41 hulls and their commissioning dates listed. Each of these submarines needed two trained crews, expanding the number of submariners recruited by the Navy, trained to operate these reactors, and approved by Admiral Rickover by a significant amount during peacetime. [59: Ibid, 547.] [60: Hanson W. Baldwin, “A New Era in Sea Power: First US Ballistic Missile Submarine May Revolutionize Strategic Concepts,” New York Times, December 30, 1959.] [61: Polmar and Allen, Rickover, 1982, 533.] [62: Ibid, 547.] Submarine Training Submarine sailors are among some of the most well-trained, best-equipped, best-fed, and psychologically scrutinized in the entire military force. This unique environment and situation caused incredible isolation for the crew and required the ultimate resilience in these men who were on the front lines of the Cold War deterring the Soviet Union from considering nuclear war. Expanding the time spent underwater and on patrol from 72 hours on diesel-electric submarines to indefinite using nuclear power increased the potential for psychological damage and the necessity of increased psychological screening. Despite the advancing technology and more demanding conditions, the one thing that has still never changed for submarines are the men that sail them, men who somehow adapt to the adverse conditions underwater and overcome them. Submarine service is and has always been an all-volunteer force. Every man who dives with the ship chooses to be there, which helps account for their great success through the decades and in each conflict in which they have taken part. Nuke School Nuclear training, as designed by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, was meant to make the best and safest possible power plant operators. Rickover took the cream of the Naval Academy crop, the best Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) graduates, and the smartest enlisted men he could find and sent them through his rigorous nuclear power training so that an inexperienced man never stood watch aboard one of his nuclear submarines, thus preventing any possible accidents. The nuclear navy has operated since Nautilus without an accident, proving Rickover’s methods. To say this training was extensive would be quite an understatement. Nuclear-trained sailors, known as Nucs or Nukes, were trained first at Navy basic training, then at their respective “A” schools to learn the technical aspects of their jobs. Following this, they transferred to Rickover’s nuclear power school, where he wrote all the technical manuals, and the instructors followed his program. In his own words, Rickover described his school as such, “The course at the nuclear power school lasts for six months and consists of approximately 700 hours of classroom instruction. The operational phase of training takes another six months and is conducted at one of the six land-based naval reactor prototypes.”[footnoteRef:63] His method worked. “In the school of the Nuc, there was no questioning of authority, no emphasis on educating the professional man. The nuclear power schools turned out technicians, whether they were officers or enlisted men.”[footnoteRef:64] Their professional development should have come before, for officers, or later, for the enlisted men who would begin quickly climbing the ranks. [63: Ibid, 295.] [64: Ibid, 307.] Rickover personally interviewed his submarine officers before they were allowed to attend nuclear power training, including the only US President to also have been a submarine officer, Jimmy Carter. President Carter recalled that during the interview, he was “saturated with cold sweat” as Rickover proved he knew more about every topic of discussion, which he let Carter choose.[footnoteRef:65] The submarine force would come full circle in 2004 when the USS Jimmy Carter (SSN-23) was commissioned in a ceremony attended by the former President and sponsored by the former First Lady, Rosalynn. For decades, Rickover interviewed candidates, looking for some quality that would determine an acceptable candidate for nuclear training, the exact quality only existing “in his own mind.”[footnoteRef:66] This interview system, despite being completely opaque to anyone else, seems to have worked long past when it made sense anymore. Representative Craig Hosmer said the following at the commissioning of the USS Gato (SSN-615) in 1968, [65: Ibid, 267.] [66: Ibid, 291.] “The ship and her sisters are the finest products of the naval shipbuilding art ever fabricated. The officers and men who run her are the most carefully selected, the best-trained and educated, and the most highly motivated naval seamen the world has ever know [sic]. Crew and ship together represent the furthest advance of naval power in all history.”[footnoteRef:67] [67: Ibid, 351.] Rickover looms large over the nuclear navy to this day, his training, and principles still in place. His legacy as the “Father of the Nuclear Navy” was cemented long ago, and he continues to be honored as such. The first submarine named after him was a Los Angeles-class that served from 1984 to 2006, and the newest submarine at the time of writing, commissioned just last year, is the USS Hyman G. Rickover (SSN-795). Boomer Service Submarine duty, especially onboard these new ballistic missile submarines, affectionately known as “Boomers”, was long, tiring, and isolated from any communication from home.[footnoteRef:68] SSBNs have two separate crews, designated the Blue Crew and the Gold Crew, after the Naval Academy’s colors. Each crew would typically take the boat for a three-week refit in port where anything that broke under the previous crew could be fixed and more extensive maintenance could be completed before embarking on patrol, which was typically around 70 days. For that entire patrol, the ship would remain submerged and alone unless an emergency forced them to surface. In addition, to maintain stealth, the ship would not transmit communications on any frequency, receiving only those communications from the supervising command that were necessary. Due to the necessity of keeping the fleet ballistic missile submarines on patrol as much as possible, some were forward deployed closer to the areas of interest. On the Pacific side, they were home-ported in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and forward deployed out of Guam; the Atlantic Fleet was home-ported up and down the coast in Connecticut, Virginia, South Carolina, and eventually Georgia, with some ships forward deployed out of Rota, Spain or Holy Loch, Scotland. [68: A quick note here about submarine designators. In the abbreviation SSBN, the SS stands for subsurface ship, B is for ballistic missile, and N is for nuclear-powered, and the ship’s hull number follows that designation. Before nuclear power, submarines were simply SS, and SSNs are nuclear-powered fast-attack submarines. USS Triton was a unique radar picket submarine designated SSRN. Submarine tenders are designated AS, for Auxiliary ship, Submarines. Ballistic missile submarines and newer guided missile submarines carry missiles for land attack while fast attack submarines are the hunter-killers who are meant for combat against other submarines or surface ships, known to submariners as “targets.” Russian submarine classes receive a NATO phonetic alphabet designation which is how we know them, even though the Russians have their own class naming or numbering system.] The first group of ballistic missile submarines commissioned between 1960 and 1967 was known as the “41 for Freedom” and became the blueprint for the fleet ballistic missile submarines to follow. These ships were spread between five classes with slight differences between them. Each class, as with all ship classes in the US Navy, was named after the lead ship of the class, and each ship was named after a notable person or people from US history. Lt. Carl Pilj served as the communications officer onboard the USS George Bancroft, named after the Secretary of the Navy during the James K. Polk administration, whom another of the 41 was named after.[footnoteRef:69] Before Bancroft’s appointment, the US Navy officer corps was not formally educated like they are today, a development that Bancroft was responsible for. Congress at the time was against establishing any sort of formal Naval Academy, a proposal for which had been denied more than twenty times in forty-five years, a program which Bancroft thought necessary to attaining the discipline, professionalism, and academic standards required of the officer’s corps of the navy of a world power. It sounds ludicrous now, but various Congressmen throughout the early 1800s believed that a Naval Academy could have no educational value for a career as a naval officer, that the United States would never have to fight another war, that it would give the President too much additional power, and their dislike of West Point as a military educational institution made them against the idea of a Naval Academy.[footnoteRef:70] Bancroft found an abandoned army post, established his school there with funding just enough to last a semester, and ordered his midshipmen there as they returned to port. His school was so successful in this one semester that he was able to convince Congress to establish a formal Naval Academy. Bancroft is at least as well-known as a historian thanks to his 10-volume History of the United States and as an Ambassador to Germany wherein he worked at obtaining a path to American citizenship for German immigrants as he is the founder of the Naval Academy.[footnoteRef:71] [69: Carl Pilj, Interview with the Author, March 16, 2023.] [70: FM Brown, “A Half Century of Frustration: A Study of the Failure of Naval Academy Legislation Between 1800 and 1845,” Proceedings 80, no. 6 (June 1954).] [71: Rickover, Eminent Americans: Namesakes of Polaris Submarine Fleet, 259-260.] Nuclear Power Nuclear power is, at the same time, both extremely simple and extremely complicated and dangerous. Radioactive materials create heat, which turns water into steam, which turns turbine generators for movement and electricity. Simple, right? But lessons learned from nuclear disasters such as Chornobyl and Three-Mile Island make it clear to the operators and nearby populace that nuclear power plants require the utmost safety, professionalism, and training for their operators. For this reason, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was established and maintained responsibility for the safe operation of all nuclear reactors. As nuclear power plants were being installed aboard ships, the AEC created a requirement that one of their personnel must be aboard each ship while underway to maintain safe control of the power plant and even have the authority to override the Captain on matters of nuclear power. This requirement was, naturally, unacceptable to Admiral Rickover, who made the following deal with the AEC and the Navy: he would personally be held responsible for any nuclear power accidents, and, in exchange, he would also have final authorization over selection, training, and assignment of nuclear officers.[footnoteRef:72] This explains why he was so strict in his training system and why he required the freedom to personally interview every officer who served on submarines. As officers, Captain France and Lt Ferguson had personal interviews with the Admiral as part of their commissioning to nuclear officers, something required of all submarine officers with the sole exception of the Supply Officer, affectionately known as the Chop. Lt Pilj joined after the Admiral had retired and so avoided that ordeal. [72: Summitt, Tales of a Cold War Submariner, 189.] Rickover, as usually described, was a hard man to work with. His interviews as mentioned earlier were notoriously legendary in their hostility and difficulty. He had a habit of yelling at anyone who crossed his path, whether they were above or below him in the chain of command. On one occasion, he “picked up the phone and proceeded to chew out the service’s senior civilian official [the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO)] up one side and down the other, just on general principle.”[footnoteRef:73] But when it came to being a leader, he was unmatched. Upon learning of the death of the wife of one of the earliest nuclear submariners of cancer, Commander Dan Summit typed up a condolence letter for the Admiral to sign and send to the widower. Rickover refused, later handing him a handwritten letter and envelope, saying, “A letter of condolence should have a more personal touch than a typewritten letter.”[footnoteRef:74] [73: Ibid, 191.] [74: Ibid, 198.] Petty Officer Armbrust had the unusual experience of having Rickover sit in on one of his prototype classes. He was disappointed by the Admiral, the “living legend” whose reputation was chewing up other Admirals but was barely over five feet tall. He was, on the other hand, impressed by the entourage of brass that followed the Admiral in his suit. The Admiral was a genius who began a physics conversation with the instructor that nobody but the two of them could follow. Armbrust was later stationed on the USS L. Y. Spear (AS-36) submarine tender where Admiral Rickover had a designated stateroom with a flowered bedspread.[footnoteRef:75] [75: Andy Armbrust, Interview with the Author, January 4, 2024.] Submarine Life Cycle Ballistic Missile submarines needed a lot of repair work after a certain number of patrols, eventually requiring a dry dock overhaul to improve the technology onboard to keep up with advances made in missiles, torpedoes, SONAR, the nuclear reactor, or any other systems. These repairs and improvements could be extensive, sometimes lasting years. Because these submarines stayed on patrol as much as possible, boomer boat reactors were operated critically much more than fast attack submarines. In addition to this, these earlier reactors consumed their fuel more quickly than present-day reactors. This meant that their nuclear cores had to be renewed more often than they do today, requiring a dry-docking overhaul to refuel. Petty Officer Mike Gorham served on the USS Sunfish (SSN-649) when it entered the shipyard just for one of these overhauls.[footnoteRef:76] On the USS Hammerhead (SSN-663), Petty Officer Andy Armbrust took the ship into the shipyard for a refueling overhaul while Petty Officer Marlin Helms brought the ship back out of the shipyard. The original core for the Hammerhead was only good for 7 years, but the new core lasted 15 years.[footnoteRef:77] Both sailors were Engineering Laboratory Technicians (ELT) whose job onboard was to test the nuclear reactor for radiation, among other things, giving them an intimate understanding of the nature of such operations. Understanding that American nuclear power technology is classified, some information regarding their core lifespans has become available. Early versions of the reactor used in the 41 for Freedom had a core life of around 5,500 equivalent full power hours (EFPH) with advances allowing for refueled reactors to last 10,000 or 18,000 EFPH.[footnoteRef:78] The new Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines are expected to have a nuclear reactor core that lasts their full 40-year life. [76: Mike Gorham, Interview with the Author, February 8, 2024.] [77: Marlin Helms, Interview with the Author, January 5, 2024.] [78: John Pike, “S5W Advanced Submarine Fleet Reactor (ASFR),” accessed February 13, 2024, https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/systems/s5w.htm#:~:text=The%20early%20S5W%20reactor%20on,life%20of%20about%2018%2C000%20EFPH.] SALT and Other Nonproliferation Agreements At the same time as nuclear policy evolved from an overwhelming response to a secure second strike and more controlled response, the nuclear nonproliferation movement began to become more focused and vocal. Grassroots antinuclear organizations made their voices heard and the popular movement to ban the bomb gained steam. Additionally, Cold War standoffs over Berlin and the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to its closest danger of the use of nuclear weapons since the start of the conflict, causing the US and USSR to begin to recognize the need to reduce nuclear stockpiles and avert the danger of nuclear weapons’ use. Arms control became a new priority of both superpowers. They also realized that continued nuclear proliferation had the potential to spread to countries thus far without the bomb, creating a threat of new nuclear powers, some of which might be unstable. This included countries such as India, Israel, and China, nations which could destabilize the delicate peace. This new nonproliferation strategy required difficult negotiations between the two superpowers, who remained enemies in conflict around the world. In 1972, the countries signed a treaty with a mouthful of a name: the Interim Agreement Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on Certain Measures with Respect to the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (SALT I). This treaty had many stipulations, among them that the current levels of SLBMs and ballistic missile submarines would be maintained at 710 launchers spread among 44 submarines. The Soviet Union was allowed to maintain 950 launchers spread among 62 submarines.[footnoteRef:79] Even with these limitations, the two countries were able to continue making technological advances, improving through three generations of the Polaris missile to the Poseidon to the Trident missile, which would lend its name to the new Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine that replaced the 41 for Freedom starting in 1981. [79: “INTERIM AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS ON CERTAIN MEASURES WITH RESPECT TO THE LIMITATION OF STRATEGIC OFFENSIVE ARMS (SALT I)” (Center for Nonproliferation Studies, May 26, 1972).] SALT I was followed by SALT II in 1979 which was never ratified due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In 1991, an agreement was reached by the United States and the Soviet Union called Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START) which was followed in 1993 by START II which was again never ratified. Finally, New START was ratified in 2011 and set new limits for the nuclear powers. This resulted in the reduction of all three sides of the nuclear triad: fewer nuclear-capable bombers, missile silos, and fewer tubes on each of the ballistic submarines. It also requires inspection of weapons and facilities and communication between the powers regarding the production of new weapons.[footnoteRef:80] Even though the Cold War is over, nuclear deterrence remains a vital component of international relations and the ultimate reduction of the number of nuclear weapons remains the goal. [80: “TREATY BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION ON MEASURES FOR THE FURTHER REDUCTION AND LIMITATION OF STRATEGIC OFFENSIVE ARMS” (State Department, February 5, 2011).] CHAPTER 3 SUBMARINERS IN THEIR OWN WORDS For distinguished gallantry and valor above and beyond the call of duty as commanding officer of the U.S.S. Growler during her Fourth War Patrol in the Southwest Pacific from 10 January to 7 February 1943. Boldly striking at the enemy in spite of continuous hostile air and antisubmarine patrols, Comdr. Gilmore sank one Japanese freighter and damaged another by torpedo fire, successfully evading severe depth charges following each attack. In the darkness of night on 7 February, an enemy gunboat closed range and prepared to ram the Growler. Comdr. Gilmore daringly maneuvered to avoid the crash and rammed the attacker instead, ripping into her port side at 11 knots and bursting wide her plates. In the terrific fire of the sinking gunboat's heavy machine guns, Comdr. Gilmore calmly gave the order to clear the bridge, and refusing safety for himself, remained on deck while his men preceded him below. Struck down by the fusillade of bullets and having done his utmost against the enemy, in his final living moments, Comdr. Gilmore gave his last order to the officer of the deck, "Take her down". The Growler dived; seriously damaged but under control, she was brought safely to port by her well-trained crew inspired by the courageous fighting spirit of their dead captain. -Medal of Honor citation for Commander Howard W. Gilmore[footnoteRef:81] [81: “Medal of Honor Citation” (Congressional Medal of Honor Society, July 13, 1943), https://www.cmohs.org/recipients/howard-w-gilmore.] A New Era of Submarines Crash dives were common in the diesel-electric submarine era when they spotted enemies in the distance due to spending much of their time on the surface. However, this maneuver became much less common with the advent of nuclear power where submarines could stay underwater indefinitely. The only time a submarine might have to crash dive in the nuclear era was in the rare event that they were on the surface and spotted a possible enemy they needed to avoid quickly. Just this rare combination of events happened one day to Lieutenant Carl Pilj when he was on the bridge of the USS George Bancroft (SSBN-643). The boat had just surfaced and was approaching home port in Charleston, South Carolina when the frantic order came from the control room that the ship needed to submerge again. Lt. Pilj acknowledged the order and, like Commander Gilmore, sent the more junior sailors ahead of him to safety inside the boat. Lt. Pilj ensured the diving officer of the watch understood the words “crash dive,” which he did, and then gave the order to dive the boat, leaving him just enough time to shut and seal the hatch behind him. When he made his way into the control room, he learned that a Russian Victor-class submarine had been detected and they had been ordered to obtain a sound signature, a recording of the unique sound of that submarine that could be used in the future to help identify and track it.[footnoteRef:82] [82: Pilj, Interview with the Author.] Diesel Boats Forever Some submariners serve only on boomers, like Lt. Pilj did. Others, like me, serve only on fast attack submarines. Those who serve longer are likely to serve on both types throughout their careers. With the advent of nuclear power, those who served only on the diesel-electric boats proclaimed their service to be “diesel boats forever.” One of these sailors was Lt. Eugene Masters who joined through the ROTC program at Notre Dame as a surface officer. His first command was the USS Paul Revere (APA-248), an attack transport ship full of landing craft and the Marines who operated them. After a short period of time with little to do onboard, and with the Cold War heating up causing the President to extend all service members’ terms of service, he volunteered for submarines, something in which he had always been interested. This got him sent to Groton, Connecticut for Officer Submarine School where he graduated 75th out of 76 because he enjoyed his off time in town too much to concentrate sufficiently on his studies. This also meant he would stay in Groton for his command, something he very much favored because it also meant he was likely to get a Mediterranean cruise. His submarine time helped him learn more practical engineering than he had learned in college or sub school. Lt. Masters also served at a time when nuclear submarines were very new and he served instead on USS Angler (SS-240), a World War II Gato-class submarine with 6 battle stars and 3 ships sunk during the conflict, and which was one of the last diesel boats in the fleet. He had no interest in serving aboard a nuclear-powered submarine or with the interview with Rickover which would be required, so he got out at the earliest opportunity after serving his time.[footnoteRef:83] During training, he had the privilege of riding the USS Nautilus and using the Skipjack trainer, both of which were incredibly more advanced than the ship he ended up on. [83: Masters, Interview with the Author. Ship assignments were made by class rank and Groton was an unpopular duty station, so being at the bottom of the class worked out well for him.] Months of Boredom Punctuated by Moments of Extreme Terror[footnoteRef:84] [84: “New York Times Current History; a Monthly Magazine,” New York Times, 1914. One of the earliest recorded versions of this saying comes from early in the First World War in a monthly magazine compiled and published as a book by the New York Times. On page 979, a story recounted what an anonymous cavalry soldier wrote in his diary; “The best definition I have heard of modern warfare is, ‘Months of boredom punctuated by moments of extreme terror.’” There is a chance that versions of this saying extend even further back in time. Thanks to USAF Major Jordan Bolster for the background work on this quote and footnote.] Despite the danger involved with submarining during the Cold War, most times at sea were boring, and that is how the sailors preferred it. Long months at sea staying hidden needed to be occupied with productive activities, even while standing watch.[footnoteRef:85] Ronald Gibson Strickland, enlisted reactor operator on the USS Stonewall Jackson (SSBN-634) during the Vietnam era, shared some of his stories with the Library of Congress Veterans History Project the ways in which he stayed busy on watch. One way he stayed busy as a machinist was to take a spare copper-nickel bolt and machine it down by hand into a ring, one each for himself and his wife. He also shared about how he improved his ship’s sound silencing by removing the paint that shipyard workers carelessly applied to pipe-holding rubber-insulated grommets which caused sound shorts, or connections between vibrating equipment and the hull.[footnoteRef:86] Every bit of sound silencing mattered when it came to staying quieter than the Russians. [85: Until recently, submarines operated on an 18-hour day. With only a couple crewmember exceptions, such as the cooks or the XO, submarine watches were 6 hours, followed by 6 hours of off time in which a sailor studied for qualifications, cleaned, or conducted maintenance, or when senior enough, watched movies. The final six hours was his time to sleep. The submarine force transitioned to 8-hour watches beginning in 2014, which has been a massive success.] [86: Ronald Gibson Strickland, Ronald Gibson Strickland Collection, interview by Lawrence Merrill, 1968, AFC/2001/001/76210, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/afc2001001.76210/. Vibrating equipment on submarines, including pipes, are not mounted directly to the hull to prevent vibrations from leaving the ship and giving away its position. Instead, they have rubber insulation as a vibration dampener between the equipment and the hull which is rendered useless when it is painted.] Many submariners had near contact with the Russian submarines that also prowled the depths of the ocean throughout the decades of the Cold War. Ronald Gibson Strickland had a Russian submarine drive directly over the top of his submarine with no apparent clue he and the rest of his crew were right there in the depths below.[footnoteRef:87] Following the crash dive story told earlier, Lt. Pilj and the Bancroft followed the Victor-class submarine undetected, although he did not know if they succeeded in obtaining the sound signature, and probably could not have told me even if he did know.[footnoteRef:88] Onboard the USS Will Rogers, Interior Communications Technician (IC) Petty Officer Kenneth Keegler explained he was not involved with navigating the ship so he had no idea where the boat was. The most specific he could be in his story was to tell the interviewer that they patrolled in the North Atlantic.[footnoteRef:89] [87: Ibid.] [88: Pilj, Interview with the Author.] [89: Kenneth R. Keegler, Kenneth R. Keegler Collection, interview by Paul Roselli, 1965, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/afc2001001.21114/.] The two different types of submarines have completely different missions. As described by Petty Officer Helms, a boomer’s job was to run away from any danger and stay hidden while a fast attack submarine goes toward danger also while staying hidden.[footnoteRef:90] A world event that easily illustrates the difference between the types is the Iran Hostage Crisis in 1979. Radioman Petty Officer Keehan was getting ready for deployment in San Diego on the USS Flasher when the crisis happened. Deployment was moved up and the crew did three weeks’ worth of work in ten days so they could leave earlier. The ship went straight to the Middle East with little news of the progress of the crisis, one page of news for the entire world every three or four days. Once Flasher arrived in the area, they spent 98 straight days underwater waiting in support of the crisis.[footnoteRef:91] After they were relieved, the crew finally got a well-deserved reward of a port call. They pulled into Guam the day after the Miracle on Ice when the United States beat the USSR in Olympic hockey. Later they got to go to The Philippines, Yokosuka, Japan, and Busan, South Korea in between conducting another mission vital to national security, the details of which are still classified. [90: Helms, Interview with the Author.] [91: Jim Keehan, Interview with the Author, February 6, 2024.] Going Deep Even the most boring and routine operations onboard a submarine sound exciting to those who have never been underway. One common evolution after returning to sea after a period in port is what is known as a deep dive. To recertify any work that the shipyard or tender has done on a hull opening, the ship must dive to its test depth and each hull opening that was worked on would be inspected for any sort of leakage. This opening could be anywhere from a quarter-inch pipe to a hatch or torpedo tube breach door.[footnoteRef:92] As it goes deeper, the ship changes shape, something that helps to maintain depth. To see this, sailors would tie a string across a compartment while surfaced so that it was tight across a level from one side of the hull to the other. When the ship dives deep, the hull compresses, which increases its relative density and helps with depth keeping, and this would cause the string to loosen, giving easy visual evidence of the fact.[footnoteRef:93] [92: Torpedo tubes have a muzzle door on the sea end and a breech door on the torpedo room end. Modern torpedo tubes are twenty-one inches in diameter.] [93: Robert Michael Arsenault, Robert Michael Arsenault Collection, interview by Lynn Corbeil and Paula Hinger, 1967, AFC/2001/001/97804, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/afc2001001.97804.] Petty Officer Jim Keehan went through one of these deep dives to recertify a system that most people probably would not think about when considering submarines, but which has an incredibly important function in keeping seawater out of the ship while underway. The shaft seals are a system of gaskets and seals that prevent seawater from leaking into the boat where the shaft, which is connected to the rotating propeller, transits from inside the boat to the outside.[footnoteRef:94] A portion of the seal system also includes pumping water through the moving surface toward the outside to combat the pressure of the seawater trying to come into the boat. During a maintenance period, the USS Flasher (SSN-613) had its shaft seals replaced and they had to be recertified on the following underway. This required a full 24 hours at test depth, a classified depth which is the deepest a submarine dives, to recertify, knowing that the seals could fail at any time and cause flooding.[footnoteRef:95] [94: A light hazing that may or may not occur on submarines is to send a newly reported submariner to the engine room to “feed the shaft seals.” ] [95: Keehan, Interview with the Author.] Ups and Downs of Submarines Drydock maintenance periods were a common occurrence for submariners and continue to be one of the important parts of a submarine’s life cycle. Drydocks are a concrete basin that can be flooded to allow a ship in, then the water is pumped out, allowing maintenance access to areas of the ship normally under the waterline and allowing holes to be cut into the hull for replacing equipment without sinking the ship. There are also floating drydocks that work similarly. They flood and allow the ship in, then pump out the water, leaving the ship dry. Their floating nature allows them to sometimes go to the ship rather than having to bring the ship to the dry dock. Captain Tim France served on five submarines and reached Commanding Officer of USS Francis Scott Key (SSBN-657). In just one example of the uniqueness of his career, each of the ships he served on went through a drydock overhaul while he was aboard; most were in drydock when he arrived which gave him the repeated experience of taking a ship out of drydock. After his second time bringing a ship out of the shipyard, Captain France threatened to leave the Navy if he was sent to the shipyard again. His next command was the USS Memphis (SSN-691), which was pre-commissioning in the shipyard. He was convinced to stay in because a pre-commissioning drydock was different from an overhaul, which it was, and his threat turned out to be empty.[footnoteRef:96] [96: Tim France, Interview with the Author, February 6, 2024.] Technology advances constantly and submarines are not exempt from the progress of time, requiring their equipment to be constantly updated. Quartermaster Robert Marple discussed one of these such improvements on the USS Will Rogers, “all the missile tubes came out; new missile tubes were put in. Everything was upgraded. It was a fairly large overhaul. So, that was about 15 months.”[footnoteRef:97] Captain France, when he was still a junior officer, reported to his first command, the USS Haddo (SSN-604), which was only four years old when he reported onboard. At the time, the SUBSAFE (Submarine Safety) program was new, only being in operation for about five years as a result of the loss of the USS Thresher (SSN-593). The program was meant to assure the safety of submarines in any system involved in hull integrity, flooding, or control surfaces.[footnoteRef:98] Ships that were new construction or already commissioned at the time had to be retrofitted to be in compliance with SUBSAFE so that they could operate to their full capacity. One of those such ships was the Haddo, which was limited in depth to half of test depth before the overhaul was completed. The overhaul to upgrade Haddo to be in compliance with SUBSAFE took 18 months. The last American submarine lost with all hands was the USS Scorpion (SSN-589) which never received the SUBSAFE overhaul. Coming out of overhaul required a shakedown cruise to verify the seaworthiness of the many systems that had to be torn apart and rebuilt. Captain France participated in a shakedown on every ship he was attached to. Part of the shakedown cruise for a boomer was to test launch a missile, something Captain France got to do twice. His wife also got to see it from a surface observation ship.[footnoteRef:99] The last of the 41 for Freedom, USS Will Rogers (SSBN-659), test-launched a Polaris A-3 which had a range of 2,500 nautical miles from under the surface, a major milestone in second strike deterrent capability, to bookend the missile launch of the George Washington 7 years previously.[footnoteRef:100] [97: Robert A. Marple, Robert A. Marple Collection, interview by Dudley Dudley and Carol Shea-Porter, 1964, afc2001001.96214, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/afc2001001.96214.] [98: “Joint Fleet Maintenance Manual (JFMM) COMUSFLTFORCOMINST 4790.3” (Department of the Navy SUBMEPP, n.d.).] [99: France, Interview with the Author.] [100: Hanson W. Baldwin, “Nuclear Submarine Missile Program Shows Gains: Fired Below Surface Submerged Patrols Building New Silos Advantage of Mobility Evaluation and Decision,” New York Times, August 6, 1967; Hanson W. Baldwin, “A Perfect Polaris Shot Ends a Missile Chapter: Rocket Is Fired by Submarine on 1,500-Mile Test Flight Craft Is Last of 41 Slated to Hold 16 Ballistic Weapons,” New York Times, August 1, 1967.] A Unique Way of Life Keeping the 41 for Freedom forward deployed created some unique situations for the crews. Commander Dan Summit took command of the USS Alexander Hamilton (SSBN-617) Blue Crew while the boat was at sea and his crew was at home in Charleston, South Carolina. He was the commander of a Polaris missile submarine without ever having laid eyes on one.[footnoteRef:101] He took the time in port to get to know the crew and the material issues he might have to contend with when he made it to the ship. To get to the ship for crew changeover, the entire Blue Crew with their luggage were loaded on a plane in Charleston and flown to Scotland to meet the boat in Holy Loch. Commander Summit seemed to recall mostly the size of things as he was introduced to his new command. The Alexander Hamilton was nearly 150 feet longer than his previous ship, and each of the sixteen missiles was thirty-five feet long and seven feet across, “monsters!” in his words.[footnoteRef:102] Commander Summit spent five days turning over the boat from the Gold Crew, learning his way around the boat, and learning his way around Holy Loch and the nearby towns while getting to know the locals. A simple deck log entry notes the occasion on January 27th, 1965: “Commanding Officer, USS Alexander Hamilton Blue, and crew relieved Commanding Officer, USS Alexander Hamilton Gold and crew in whole.”[footnoteRef:103] [101: Summitt, Tales of a Cold War Submariner, 203.] [102: Ibid, 206.] [103: “Deck Log Book of the USS Alexander Hamilton (SSBN-617)” (USN, November 1965), 79786460.] Ronald Strickland described Scotland, “[it] was a very rainy place, it’s very green. I don’t ever remember being in Scotland for a full day without it raining.”[footnoteRef:104] This was lucky for the crew of the USS James K. Polk (SSBN-645) and the tender they were moored to, the USS Canopus (AS-34), when a fire broke out on Canopus Thanksgiving weekend. According to the Polk’s deck logs, the fire was reported just 15 minutes before midnight on Saturday, November 28th, 1970. The ship’s crew who were aboard assisted Canopus in fighting the fire while more of the crew stationed the maneuvering watch in preparation to get underway to get away from the fire. During the fire, the ship lost the shore power that would have been run through Canopus and was forced to snorkel, which is to run its emergency diesel generator. The fire was put out after a little more than six hours with 3 men aboard the Canopus unfortunately lost.[footnoteRef:105] [104: Strickland, Ronald Gibson Strickland Collection.] [105: “Deck Log Book of the USS James K Polk (SSBN-645)” (USN, November 1966), 215842558.] Learning on the Job The Alexander Hamilton was far more advanced than Commander Summit’s previous command, the USS Seadragon. Alexander Hamilton was part of the earliest classes of nuclear-powered submarines, was built more cheaply than the USS Nautilus, and required some new technology solely because of its larger size. One example of this technology that was new to Commander Summit was the outboard. The outboard is located at the aft, or back, of the boat and down low on one side of the ship. Normally, it is hidden inside the free flood area of the ship, an area within the submarine but outside the pressure hull where the people stay dry, and when needed, it could be hydraulically lowered into place. The outboard could be turned in any direction and started and stopped at will. This gave the ship greater maneuverability in close quarters, especially when docking, where fine adjustments were needed.[footnoteRef:106] [106: Summitt, Tales of a Cold War Submariner, 210.] Another new evolution that Commander Summit was introduced to when he took command of a nuclear-powered ship was the fast cruise. A fast cruise allows a submarine to be run as if underway while still tied to the pier. The reactor is critical, the equipment is run, and watches are stood as if underway, but the ship goes nowhere. Following this first fast cruise, Commander Summit took his new command underway for the first time, in a raging storm. “The night could not have been any darker. The wind was whistling down Holy Loch from the northwest, funneled between the mountainous hills on either side, blowing very close to hurricane force. It was raining hard. The raindrops stung your face.”[footnoteRef:107] Discussing the small Russian surface ship that was stationed off the coast to track submarine comings and goings; on this occasion, Commander Summit said, “I felt a little sorry for him, knowing he would have to ride out this storm for its duration, while I would soon be submerged and free from its fury.”[footnoteRef:108] That same kind of terrible weather might have contributed to the Theodore Roosevelt grounding off Holy Loch in March of 1968. Luckily, no crewmembers were injured, although the bow was slightly damaged and the ship had to return to Groton, Connecticut for repairs.[footnoteRef:109] [107: Ibid, 215.] [108: Ibid, 216.] [109: “Navy Tells of Grounding Of Submarine Off Scotland,” New York Times, April 6, 1968.] Like during fast cruise, occasionally testing equipment was required to ensure proper operation, including the missile launch systems. One occasion of such a test was related to Commander Summit from a friend of his who was the Executive Officer on an unnamed SSBN shortly after they were first commissioned. On the day of the missile launching system test, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the senior civilian officials of each military service, were visiting to see how this awesome new weapons system worked. While there was no missile in the tube to be launched, the tube was full of 35,000 pounds of water, known as a sabot [say-boh] round. The Joint Chiefs were stationed up the pier from the ship but ventured closer, over the objections of the Marine sentry who tried to keep them at a safe distance. Too late they realized their mistake, as a swimming pool’s worth of water was launched from the missile tube and dumped on their heads, soaking them through. The group of Admirals and Generals got to spend an exciting couple of hours onboard while they waited for their uniforms to dry.[footnoteRef:110] [110: Summitt, Tales of a Cold War Submariner, 221.] Lt. Pilj served toward the end of the Cold War, in the late 1980s. He was fortunate that the technology of his day allowed some very small amount of the outside world into the boat while underway. They could, at times, receive radio broadcasts from BBC while underway. The downside was that the radio receiver could not play the sound through the rest of the boat but only in the Radio Room, where all transmissions are sent and received and where some of the most classified work happens on board a submarine. Because of the classified nature of the room, it was of limited size, and only the people with the highest security clearances could be in there, so not many people got the benefit of listening to these news broadcasts. In addition, any printed news also came through the Radio Room and was censored both before being sent to the ship and before