David E. Meadows
Final Run
Foreword
This story is about 1956, a year of transition for the U.S. Navy. It was a year when the Soviet Union was pursuing the age-old dream of an oceangoing Navy capable of operating across the globe. It was a year when World War II veterans of the United States still existed on active duty, patrolling the sea lanes against the Soviet dream, and reliving the combat missions of the war in the thin fabric of peacetime between the Soviet Union and the Western nations.
America had launched the first nuclear-powered submarine, Nautilus, on January 17, 1955. Nautilus, SSN 571, can be seen at the Submarine Force Museum, on the Thames River in Groton, Connecticut.
With the exception of the Nautilus, diesel submarines made up the world’s Navies in 1956. Junior officers of World War II were now commanders and captains. Commanders and captains of that Great Patriotic War — as the Soviets called it — wore the broad gold stripes of admirals.
The Soviet Union was thought to be chasing the same dream of a submarine whose submerged limitations were only of a human and mechanical nature. Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover had taken over the U.S. Navy program to build the nuclear submarine and within two years had convinced the Navy it was time to shelve the diesels and bring into naval warfare a nuclear-powered submarine force that would change the nature of modern warfare.
The Nautilus started the underseas arms race of two nuclear Navies that would become one of the three arms of the mutual assured destruction doctrine (MADD) that kept the Cold War from going hot. Its veterans still held positions of leadership within the Soviet Navy, and its entire submarine force was diesel. Pursuit of atomic-powered submarines for the Soviet Navy was a point of national honor as well as national survival.
Two submarine captains; two different Navies; similar patriotic love of country; and a challenge for America to keep its nuclear edge, and a chase by the Soviets to meet or surpass every naval technology of the West. And throughout this race to be the global supreme naval power were the spooks-spies-cryptologists-intelligence gurus of both nations, doing their best to report with certainty what the other was doing.
This story starts eleven years and a few months after World War II ended in Europe on May 7, 1945. The conflict had changed the geopol itical landscape of the world. Winston Churchill at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, on March 5, 1946, warned the world, "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent."
The United States led the West. The Soviet Union was the common enemy. The world was catapulted into the Cold War.
This book is a fictionalized account of the first subsurface mission in search of an assessment of where the Soviets were in developing a nuclear-powered submarine force. It is told through the eyes and emotions of the characters involved. From this point until the Soviet Union dissolved itself, the subsurface war between these great nations will only be known as history marches forward and classified documents become available. To take a page from Las Vegas, “what goes on beneath the sea stays beneath the sea.” It will be decades before the world truly knows the war that occurred beneath the oceantops during the Cold War.
Some literary flexibility is taken in the story. For example, throughout the book, Greenwich Mean Time is used for both Navies, though the Soviet Union always used Moscow time for its fleet. Trying to coordinate two different time zones was too confusing for the writer to keep track. The Western world refers to World War II as World War II. The Soviet Union referred to this conflict as the Great Patriotic War. Naval ranks for the most part are the same in both the U.S. Navy and the Soviet Navy. Why? Because the history of both our Navies is tied to the two hundred years of British naval power, and it was from that influence that many of the traditions of both were derived. I have tried to use the Russian names for Navy ranks and ships with the exception of the Whale, which is the name given the K-2 project of the Soviet Union. I used knots for speed for both Navies, but tried to keep to the metric system for the Soviet Navy and the English measurements for ours.
There is one thing I would like the reader to take away from this book other than enjoying the story: it is that regardless of the Navy, sailors who man their nation’s fleets are cut from the same jib. They love the sea. They love the work. And they love their country. Another thing to remember is that this is an action adventure novel and is not based on true events.
Cheers, David E. Meadows
ONE
“Dive! Dive!” Commander Chad Shipley shouted. He stood aside on the bridge. The familiar “oogle-oogle” of the horn filled the air and the interior of the submarine. The noise of the horn drowned out the sound of shoes hitting the deck as the men rushed to clear the topside of the Squallfish. Belowdecks, Shipley knew sailors and officers were rushing to their diving stations.
Shipley was bumped twice as the men topside scurried through the small hatch leading to the conning room below. He glanced up, holding his binoculars close to his chest. Shipley stood aside as the topside watches jumped through the hatch. They grabbed the steps inside as their bodies propelled through, boondockers riding the outside rails much like firemen down their brass pole. Shipley flinched, expecting to hear the sound of breaking bones, if they missed the conning tower and hiccupped another deck to the control room.
“You now, COB!”
“Aye, sir.” Chief of the boat, Torpedoman Senior Chief Cory “Wad” Boohan, answered with a salute. The older man turned and slid smoothly through the small hatch, bending his left shoulder slightly to get his broad shoulders through the hatch.
Shipley clicked his stopwatch as Boohan’s head disappeared.
Shipley did a quick check of the watch positions to make sure everyone but he was below, then he stepped to the hatch. The cries of seagulls flying overhead drew his attention for a second. He looked southeast, where clouds marked the beginning of landfall. The slight smell of fish whiffed through the air coming from the Scottish fish factories that dotted the coastline of the Western Isles just out of sight over the horizon.
Water washed over the bow, quickly covering the forward part of the submarine. He looked aft. Water was inching its way across the aft deck. The aft portion of a submarine in a normal dive would disappear within seconds of the forward half. Looking forward again, Shipley took notice of where during World War II a deck gun would have been. The loss of the deck gun meant a smoother, quieter ride. The modern submarine in the new Cold War would never fight a gun battle, they said. It would either sink the opponent with a torpedo or escape. No one mentioned the third alternative.
Shipley did not enjoy being the last man down — never had— but he was the skipper, and the men and the boat were his responsibility. Every submarine on which he had served had seen the “old man” the last to leave the bridge. It set an example of what was expected of a good submarine commander. It also ensured that the skipper was sure no one was left topside when he gave the order to dive.
He turned quickly, stepped into the hatch, and a couple of seconds later stood aside in the conning tower as a sailor rushed up the ladder to check the watertight integrity of the hatch Shipley had closed behind him. Everything about a submarine depended on keeping the water out and the air in. A successful submarine cruise was an equal number of surfacing to the number of submerges.