The Submarine Review is a quarterly publication
with an international audience: submariners,
other armed forces personnel, participants
in the wider governmental defense and intelligence
communities, military contractors, and people
who care about national security policy and
problems. It is a forum for the discussion
of submarine matters, past, present, and future.
The Submarine Review is published by the Naval
Submarine League.
Its Editorial Review Committee
consists of retired U.S. Navy submariner captains
and admirals. The Naval Submarine League is
a professional association for submariners
and submarine supporters. It is a non-profit
organization headquartered in Annandale, Virginia.
Membership is permitted to the general public,
and includes a subscription to the Review.
Every year, the Naval Submarine League conducts
separate classified-level and open Symposia,
both of which are well attended events important
to the undersea warfare community.
Joe Buff is a professional writer on national security and defense preparedness. He is also a novelist of tales of near-future warfare featuring nuclear submariners and Navy SEALs in action at their bravest and best. Two of Joe's non-fiction articles on future submarine technology and tactics, which appeared in The Submarine Review, received literary awards from the Naval Submarine League. His latest novel now out in paperback, Crush Depth, made the Military Book Club's Top 20 Bestseller List after being selected as a Featured Alternate of the Club in late 2002. His most recent work, Tidal Rip, was released from Wm. Morrow in hardcover in November, 2003, and quickly made the Amazon.com Top 100 General Thrillers Bestseller List. Joe's next novel, Straits of Power, is scheduled for hardcover release in autumn, 2004.
Joe is a Life Member of the following organizations: U.S. Naval Institute, the Navy League of the United States, the Fellows of the Naval War College, CEC/Seabees Historical Foundation, and the Naval Submarine League. Joe's father was an enlisted man in the Navy (Seabees in the Pacific Theater) from 1948 through 1953, and his uncle was a merchant mariner on the North Atlantic convoys late in World War II, before being drafted into the U.S. Army to serve in the Occupation of Nazi Germany.
Few Americans get to see the inner workings and hidden mechanisms
of one of their modern Attack Submarines, and that is most unfortunate
because each one is so important to our national security. They are
hard to get a look at because they are usually busy in distant waters
or undergoing fairly intense refit and replenishment while in port
at a secured naval base. They are also expensive and it would be great
if more of the public had a firsthand chance to balance the worth
with that cost. Fortunately, Joe Buff, with the novelist's knack of
observation and explanation, did have a most unusual opportunity to
participate in a short cruise which was not a classified operation,
and he has provided an excellent layman's look at a magnificent machine
and the outstanding men who live in it and make it work.
Joe's experience was aided by his previous work in thinking about
and writing of the world of submarining. All of that was without benefit
of instruction and training by the professionals. His source of information
was in the public arena and it was his interest, ingenuity and common
sense which has made him a knowledgeable commentator on issues of
undersea science, strategy and operations. He has done that not only
in his several novels but in the pages of THE SUBMARINE REVIEW,
a professional magazine for the submarine community. As Editor of
that magazine I have asked Joe to write about some subjects and his
own initiative has led him to investigate and comment on other substantive
issues. Our readership has responded positively to those efforts.
It is particularly appropriate that those interested in general military
matters have the benefit of Joe Buff's insights.
Captain James C. Hay, USN (Ret.)
Editor, THE SUBMARINE REVIEW
Introduction and Purpose
Here is the second part of a two-part essay. Military.com site visitors
who haven't read Part 1 can do so by clicking here.
Before the Global War on Terror broke out, I was very privileged to join a Tiger Cruise aboard the USS MIAMI, SSN 755, from the Naval Submarine Base New London to Halifax, Canada. Commander (now Captain) Jim Ransom was the MIAMI's CO. MIAMI departed Groton, CT, on a Friday at 1000, and I debarked from the ship in Halifax the following Monday at 1400. This is a very personal reminiscence of that voyage.
Waking Up Submerged
My first real "Navy shower" on Saturday morning was an additional learning experience. The use of squeegees and sponges to constantly wipe down damp surfaces in the heads, to prevent the possible spread of germs, was yet another indication of how mutually interdependent and collectively self-reliant any submarine's crew really are. I liked the idea of this sponging for cleanliness so much that I adopted it in my kitchen and bathrooms at home after the cruise!
I then learned a "pointed" lesson in exactly how crowded a submarine can get, while flossing my teeth. My elbows almost poked in the face the men on either side of me. This garnered some justified dirty looks, and I immediately grew more careful.
I ate a hearty breakfast along with the off-coming watchstanders. I was impressed by the variety of entrees available even at breakfast -- on Sunday morning, for instance, steak and eggs were one menu item. The coffee was strong and very good: exactly what I needed to get ready for my long and interesting first full day on the ship. The camaraderie among the crew as they dined was impressive, and gratifying. Again I felt very welcome, almost as if I were one of them for the duration of my visit.
The skill and dedication of the mess management specialists was just one of many things on the MIAMI that positively amazed me. These men provided extremely good service to their "customers." In fact, at one point when Reuben sandwiches were being served for lunch, I casually mentioned that I followed a low-carbohydrate diet and would have to select something else. The mess management chief overheard, and at once offered to grill me a plate of corned beef with sauerkraut and melted cheese. Outstanding! And thus, the "breadless Reuben" was born, a small but important moment in Silent Service culinary history. The Navy definitely takes good care of its people.
To Be the Hunted
Saturday afternoon, as we made our transit north toward Halifax, the MIAMI did some cost effective double-duty by serving as a training target for P-3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft crews. We went to periscope depth to establish radio contact while an Orion was still at a distance, and then submerged so it could practice trying to find us using sonobuoys.
For most of this exercise, I returned to the sonar compartment and donned spare headphones and watched the console screens again. I could see and hear the sharp "plops" as each air-dropped sonobuoy hit the water. Sometimes the Orion would overfly the MIAMI, and the aircraft's noise signature would streak diagonally across the broadband waterfalls like a comet. Talk about your high-bearing-rate contact!
For a little while, I pretended those Orions were enemy aircraft, hunting the MIAMI in anger during war. I came to understand more vividly the importance of stealth and secrecy. Knowing those aircraft might have been carrying anti-submarine torpedoes, and in a real combat scenario -- had they been hostile -- could have launched a full-scale attack, drove home to me two issues: the power an SSN or SSBN (or SSGN) possesses when it can shrewdly hide in the depths of the all-concealing ocean, and the extent to which everyone in the crew was so fully dependent on each other's courage, and calm, and focused skill. In fact, in that moment of "make believe," I came to most completely experience how we were all truly living and working inside a warfighting machine. Each of us aboard, and every thing we did or didn't do, were analogous to components, or functions, of that all-surrounding and all-demanding machine that was also our home.
The supreme importance of good naval intelligence, of diligent counter-espionage, and of keeping classified information classified, could not have been more dramatically demonstrated than for me to be -- if only in my imagination -- sitting in the "hot seat" during an enemy attack in hostile waters.
The Tigers (guests) were allowed to witness a casualty drill, a simulated fire in the ship's galley. The expression of concern and urgency on one crewman's face as he dashed right past me to grab a fire extinguisher showed that the MIAMI's crew trained the same way they would fight. Believing the "make-believe" in drills and simulations, clearly, was essential to survivability of the men and their ship.
"Helm, ahead flank."
Dramatic and exciting in a different way was to be permitted to man the helm "under instruction." I did this while the ship was submerged at a few hundred feet. I was very closely supervised, and there were known to be no collision hazards anywhere in the area.
Steering the ship wasn't, at first, as easy as it looked. The officer at the conn began barking out helm orders in rapid succession and I became hopelessly confused. At one point I turned the rudder the wrong way, and we went so far off course that the sonar compartment called the control room to inquire if there had been a course change they weren't told about! But I was allowed to learn from my mistakes -- to the credit of my instructors, as this is the best way to learn -- and soon enough I was acknowledging and executing helm orders with some confidence. The highlight was when the OOD ordered flank speed. To steer such a mighty and sophisticated undersea capital ship, while her nuclear reactor and whole propulsion plant were working very hard, called for total concentration, and yet was immensely satisfying.
"Surface the ship."
Later in the cruise, on Sunday night, we surfaced for the long approach to our destination. Halifax was a vital assembly point for convoys during World War II, and is a historic seaport dating back to British colonial times. It remains today one of the busiest harbors in the world.
That night, the sea was engulfed in pea-soup fog. When permitted to observe through one of the periscopes, I could see a murky intermittent glow around relative bearing 180 -- the MIAMI's blinking rudder light was illuminating the fog.
That last night, like many aboard, I never went to sleep. Hence I was able to share yet another submariner experience: "channel fever," the adrenaline surge that comes with knowing you'll soon be making a port call on leave. At 0100, I offered to man the helm under instruction again. I was curious to see what it was like to steer the ship on the surface, as opposed to while submerged. From 0100 to 0300, I manned the helm. The bridge was also manned, with extra lookouts because of the fog. The radar was going constantly, of course. So was the ship's fog horn. Now, as submariners reading this article will know, while the bridge is manned the sail trunk hatches are always kept open as a safety measure for the men topside. At the helm, I was seated almost immediately below the bottom of the sail trunk. Every two minutes, a crewman on the bridge would shout down the trunk, "Blow the ship's whistle." This, I quickly learned, was done to warn control room personnel that all conversation was about to become impossible for several seconds. Then, the whistle (fog horn) would be blown. It was truly deafening! Yet the steady rhythm of it, blowing for some ten seconds every two minutes for the entire two hours I steered the ship, was also uplifting and soothing. My concentration on the ship control station instruments and control wheel was total. The gentle, smooth pitching and yawing as we cut through moderate cross-seas added to this almost transcendental clarity of mind. The fresh air coming down the sail trunk was delightful. My being felt purified in a manner I never imagined possible.
Because of the need for extra lookouts, the midnight watchstanders were working slightly short-handed. I hoped that by manning the helm for two hours during this period, I was doing some useful small thing to help out, to give back in return for the lifelong memories this voyage was giving to me.
In the morning, that Monday, come full daylight I was permitted onto the bridge again for a short while. There was a heavy mist and no horizon was visible. I quickly became drenched, but the experience was quite "atmospheric."
Back below, I was able to observe all hands in the control room and sonar compartment working intently together. To enter such busy shipping lanes in such poor visibility was perhaps one of the most dangerous but necessary evolutions a submarine can perform in peacetime. The bow sphere's active sonar probed continually for contacts. The surface-search radar rotated and rotated; its display screen glowed at a station beside the fire controlmen's consoles. When in range, the MIAMI also maintained unbroken radio contact with the Halifax harbor-traffic approach coordination center. All these on-board and remote sensors and communication links were tightly integrated to produce an accurate plot of MIAMI's position: relative to land or other potential hazards to navigation, and relative to all other vessels in the area and their projected tracks.
Arrival
Visibility improved sometime after sunrise. As we entered the roads to the harbor, even though running on the surface, both periscopes were put into heavy use. Bearings were taken off different landmarks constantly, to plot the ship's position in the channel using visual data. The steady, purposeful ballet of the men at the periscope eyepieces, and the practiced speed and precision of other men marking the chart on the plotting table, bespoke an intensity of teamwork rarely seen in civilian life.
In late morning, in driving rain, the USS MIAMI docked safely in Halifax.
Conclusion
I returned to New York by commercial airline from Halifax. I quickly noticed a pattern to the questions about my voyage that friends and relations would ask:
1. Was I nervous? As already addressed above and in Part 1, I explained to them that I never felt safer during my entire adult life. The taxi ride home from LaGuardia Airport was probably vastly more dangerous.
2. Why do we still need submarines? I would explain the many essential missions performed by SSNs even in "peacetime," such as stealthy forward presence and deterrence, intelligence gathering, Special Warfare operations, accompanying carrier strike groups, and indications, surveillance, and warnings. I would tell people how our SSN fleet had been virtually cut in half at the end of the Cold War, and new construction rates were inadequate for anticipated needs. After 9/11/01, things changed. People no longer asked me why we still needed submarines. Instead they asked what America was doing to make sure we always had enough.
