A few times a day the Yankee went to communications depth, presumably to receive radio messages, and every night, at the stroke of midnight, she rose to periscope depth to ventilate. Between ten and sixteen times a day she turned completely around to clear her baffles, listening to see whether anyone was following. Each time the Yankee turned, Lapon turned with her, trying to stay behind, just off to one side, shielded in the backwash of the Yankee's own noise. (U.S. submariners also clear their baffles regularly when they are out on operations, only never according to schedule. The delicate question of timing those maneuvers was left to a pair of dice kept in the Lapon's control room for just that purpose.)
Once a day the Yankee kicked out with a wild, high-speed move that Lapon's crew called the "Yankee doodle" because it resembled the twisted designs on someone's desktop notepad. The Yankee would curl about, usually in a figure eight or some version of that, ending up facing 180 degrees from where she had started. Shifting to port, she would then make a 180-degree turn, then a second 180-degree turn, then a 90-degree turn, then a 270-degree turn, and end with two more 90-degree turns.
The first set of turns seemed designed to catch an intruder following close in, and the second set to catch another submarine following from farther away. All this was usually done at high speed, sometimes twice, back to back. The entire process took about an hour.
Had the Yankee's sonar been any better, the maneuver might have been effective. But the Soviets seemed to have made one key miscalculation. Lapon could hear the turns and get out of the way long before the Soviets could hear Lapon. In fact, Lapon sonar techs realized that their sonar seemed to have more than twice the range of Soviet sonar. In good conditions, Lapon could spot a surface ship from 20,000 yards away. But the Yankee would pass within 10,000 yards of the same ship before showing any reaction.
As Lapon's trail fell into a routine, Mack was finally able to give up his standing catnaps. He actually went to his stateroom to lie down and sleep, though never longer than 90 minutes. He never missed a course change or a Yankee doodle. It was during one of his naps, however, that Mack made the biggest mistake of the mission, perhaps the biggest mistake of his career. The mess cook awakened Mack on the advice of a junior officer who decided Mack would rather give up sleep than his nightly order of blueberry muffins. Startled, Mack let out a roar, the cook went running and the muffins and coffee went flying. In that one moment, Mack had destroyed possibly the best perk ever offered a submarine captain: his beloved fresh blueberry muffins, split and drenched with butter. Nobody would again dare delivery, not then, not as the third week of the trail gave way to a fourth, and then an unheard-of fifth week.
By that time, Lapon's three rotating officers of the deck realized they had each fallen into sync with their Soviet counterparts. Indeed, each American could identify his Soviet "partner" by slight stylistic differences in the Yankee doodles and other course changes. They named these Soviets-"Terrible Terence" and "Wild Willy" were the two most memorable-and they began to take bets on how well they could predict the Yankee's next move. Tindal won most often. The sonar crew also got into the act, interpreting the sounds they picked up from inside the Yankee. Sounds of drilling, pumps running, and other noise led to some crude jokes, mostly bathroom humor. A quick clank was automatically recorded as a toilet lid being slammed, and every time Lapon sonarmen heard the rushing of air over their headsets that could have been sanitary tanks being blown, they reported, quite formally, "Conn. Sonar. We just got shit on."
Every man in the crew, down to the youngest seaman and the lowliest mess cook, was getting into the act. Mack let each of them take a turn at manually plotting the unfolding course. It was heady stuff for the young crewmen. Here they were on a trail longer than any other, trailing one of the most crucial pieces of hardware the Soviets had put to sea, and they were integrally involved in the process. The excitement was extending from sub to shore. Mack had gotten to know the Yankee captain's habits well enough to be able to predict when the Soviets would go deep, and he used those moments to bring Lapon to periscope depth and flash a quick message to the P-3 Orions that were flying high over the Yankee's patrol area.
All continued to go well until one of the Orions almost ended the entire effort. The pilot must have come lower than he should have, because when the Yankee came to periscope depth, her crew spotted the plane and made an immediate dive. The Orion sped away. The men on Lapon listened to the entire drama, their sub undetected. They realized that, although the Orion had been spotted, the Soviets didn't seem to know that they were being trailed through water as well as air. That seemed true, in fact, until someone back in Washington made a big mistake.
Rumors in the sub force say it was an admiral in naval aviation who leaked information to a newspaper that could threaten the mission. The leak didn't specify that Lapon was out following a Yankee, and it didn't even say that a Soviet ballistic missile submarine was, at that very moment, wandering 1,500 to 2,000 nautical miles off the United States. But on October 9, 1969, the New York Times ran a front-page story headlined "New Soviet Subs Noisier Than Expected."
Whoever leaked the story was either unaware of Lapon's findings or distorted them, because what the Times reported was far more reassuring than the truth. As Mack had found out, the Yankees were by far the quietest subs the Soviets had put to sea-although U.S. subs were still quieter.
Word of the story must have made it back to the Soviet Navy and to the Yankee's captain. Either that, or he had become suddenly psychic. Within hours of the story's publication, moments after the Yankee made its midnight trip to communications depth, she broke all of her patterns. In fact, she went wild. The Yankee made a sudden 180degree turn and came roaring back down her former path full-out at 20 knots, heading almost straight for Lapon. This did not at all resemble the calculated set of turns that made up the Yankee doodle. Nor did it have the calm routine of the Yankee's usual slow turns, those baffle-clearing maneuvers.
This was a desperation ploy, an all-out search by the Soviets to see if they were being followed. This was the ultimate game of chicken. This was what the U.S. sub force called a "Crazy Ivan."
The Yankee came flying through the water, her image filling the screens in Lapon's control room and the noise of her flight screaming through sonarmen's headsets. It sounded like a freight train running through a tunneclass="underline" "Kerchutka, Kerchutka, Kerchutka… "
"That bastard is coming down," someone in the control room blurted out. The men tensed, although they knew Lapon was still 300 feet below the Yankee as she blindly passed to starboard. Nobody missed the irony, that the Yankee, in her noisy high-speed flight, had missed her chance to detect Lapon. The Yankee continued to search, moving in circles for hours, but Mack countered with his own evasive maneuvers enacted by a crew who had been standing at battle stations throughout the drama. Mack refused to break off the chase. Instead, he waited for the Yankee to calm down. Then he continued the mission.
On October 13, nearly a month after the trail began, Admiral Schade sent a top-secret message to the Lapon: "ADMIRAL MOORER STATES THAT SECDEF AND ALL IN WASHINGTON WATCHING OPERATION WITH SPECIAL INTEREST AND NOTES WITH GREAT PLEASURE AND PRIDE SUPERB PERFORMANCE OF ALL PARTICIPANTS. I SHARE HIS THOUGHTS."
Lapon continued on, through the rest of the Yankee's patrol and then some as the Soviets took an almost straight track back home. There were no more Yankee doodles, no more Crazy Ivans. The Yankee beat a path to the GIUK gap, where Lapon left her on November 9.
Lapon had followed the Yankee for an amazing forty-seven days.