The intensity of protests increased as religious representatives and students across the country, from San Francisco to Harvard University in Massachusetts, staged demonstrations and made speeches against the war. During this time, the United States began launching artillery attacks on targets in North Vietnam, while simultaneously mining rivers north of the DMZ.
On 16 March 1967, President Johnson signed a bill authorizing $4.5 billion in supplemental funds for the war. Soon thereafter, Director of Selective Service Lt. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara announced a new lottery draft system for calling up men into military service, abolished the previously established deferments of graduate students, and changed the rules so as to draft nineteen-year-olds first.
U.S. government sources announced on 30 March that a record 274 Americans had been killed in Vietnam during the week of 19 March. This raised total combat fatalities to more than 8,560.
On 10 May, the United States and the Soviet Union sent vigorous protests and counterprotests to each other after a "brush-by" (near-collision) incident between the Soviet destroyer Besslednyi and the U.S. destroyer Walker during antisubmarine maneuvers in the Sea of Japan, 375 miles east of the Soviet port of Vladivostok. Accusing the USSR of harassment, the U.S. Defense Department charged that the Soviet destroyer had engaged in a "dangerous performance" in violation of the international rules of the sea.
By the time the Viperfish reached the mid-Pacific, we had managed to survive fires, floodings, reactor shutdowns, loss of electrical power, and every other condition that Captain Gillon could create to test our response capabilities. Within a kaleidoscope of activity, our lives cycled from quiet sleep in the stillness of our strange, peaceful world of seemingly motionless suspension to sudden jumping and running as loudspeakers blasted out the next disaster. What we rookies did not know, we learned through repetition and painful experience, mixed with a continuous barrage of instructions from the qualified men telling us what to do if flooding or fires should threaten our underwater existence.
The process of creating drills required considerable ingenuity by the veteran chiefs. A proper drill had to carry maximum mental impact and demand the most rapid action in the shortest period of time. This was usually accomplished by generating a mind-numbing pattern of flooding water, billowing smoke, or destructive noises. Other effects, such as men hollering, lights going out, turbines screeching to a halt, and loudspeakers blaring calls for emergency surfacing, all added to the perceived success of the drill.
One of the most frightening drills, besides those that made us think we were going to sink or blow up, was the steam-leak drill. Steam was necessary to drive the turbines, which, in turn, generated electricity and propulsion power. Extremely hot, high-pressure steam was called "live steam," widely considered to be unbelievably nasty stuff if it ever came into contact with human skin.
Our first steam-leak drill was, of course, impressively realistic, complete with loudspeakers announcing, "Steam leak! Steam leak in the engine room!" and lights going out as various turbines suddenly shut down. I had been studying our ship's SINS (ship's inertial navigation system) in the midships section when the "leak" started. By the time I had raced through the tunnel into the engine room, everybody was hollering directions and the air was filled with steam. More lights went out and then rapidly flashed on again, as the electricians tried to maintain electrical power with falling steam pressure. Our hospital corpsman, a tall black man named Baldridge, whom we called "Doc," stood in the middle of the misty surrealistic scene with a steam suit in hand.
Since reporting on board, I had worried about Doc Baldridge. We all trusted him, but we were concerned about the potential for serious medical problems, such as a surgical emergency, and what he might do to us while waiting for backup. He had placed a big operating room light over one of our dining room tables in readiness for cutting, and I had thanked God a thousand times that my appendix had been removed when I was a child. Theoretically, if any major surgical problems did occur, we would surface and a helicopter or surface craft would provide quick access to medical doctors and a more comprehensive health care system than we had on the Viperfish. We all knew, however, that we probably would be unable to surface during the operation of our secret mission.
"This is the steam suit, Dunham," Doc Baldridge hollered. "Put it on, and you can find the leak."
The thing looked like thermal underwear, several inches thick, with a reflective aluminum-type exterior coating and a tiny plastic viewing port. I struggled my way into the suit and tried to see out the viewing port, but it was opaque from the steam of my body. Although I heard the whooshing sound of air being pumped into the suit from somewhere, I felt like I would probably have a heat stroke before I could find any steam leak. With the hood of the suit pulled down tightly over my head, I could hear the faraway muffled voice of Doc Baldridge yelling, "Find the steam leak!"
A gigantic "Michelin-Man," with my thick arms sticking out at thirty-degree angles, I grunted and hobbled down the upper-level engine-room corridor. Feeling like I was suffocating, I slowly rotated my body to the left and right. I looked for the source of steam but could see nothing more than the clouded inside of the visor.
"I can't see anything!" I hollered. My voice, trapped within the suit, echoed off the layers of insulation surrounding me.
"I can't see anything!" I shrieked again and wondered what would happen to my face if I took off the hood in an area of live steam. I turned and looked back up the passageway for Doc Baldridge. As I tried to hold my breath to minimize the fogging, I felt a rising sensation of claustrophobia and suffocation.
Cursing the steam, I finally ripped the hood from my head. I fully expected my face to fry in a blast of searing live steam. Instead, I saw a peaceful, business-as-usual engine room, everything humming along, with no steam or other unnatural disasters.
The loudspeaker blared, "Now, secure from steam-leak drill." I climbed out of the steam suit and tracked down Doc Baldridge.
"Any questions about the steam suit?" he asked, grinning his delight at the sight of my hair matted with sweat and steam moisture.
"How am I supposed to save anybody when I can't see anything?" I asked.
His grin faded. "You couldn't see through the viewing port?"
"Fogged over."
"But we were pumping compressed air into the suit."
"It didn't work, Doc. I couldn't have saved myself, much less anybody else. Do you want to try it?"
A half hour later, Doc had replaced the broken connector at the back of the suit. Our ability to save lives in the event of a real steam leak was now considerably enhanced. Of more practical significance for that moment, however, was that another signature appeared on my qualifications card and I had moved another increment closer to receiving my dolphins.
The drills finally diminished in frequency, and I began to settle into the routine of being at sea. Every twelve hours, I climbed through the tunnel and stood my engine-room watch in front of the large propulsion throttle wheels. After each watch, I was busy with further sessions of studying schematics or reviewing systems with qualified crew members. A couple of times each day, I attempted to take a quick nap before another drill dropped on us. It was physically impossible to sleep for more than three or four hours at a time. During those days, I learned the true value of strong, black Navy coffee.
Among the crew, I discovered numerous subsets of men scattered throughout the boat. Depending on qualification status; time on board; type of work performed; and whether officer, enlisted man, or civilian, each man, of course, was unique. The Viperfish contained a menagerie of men with a pecking order defined by military protocol — Captain Gillon at the top and the rookies (non-qual pukes) at the bottom. The civilian scientists, always busy with their project in the hangar compartment, were located somewhere in the middle, I guessed at the time, possibly closer to the top than the bottom.