The code name of this special mission was Operation Hammerclaw.
There was no way for me to know that the nuclear submarine Viperfish was a spy ship when I received my orders to report for sea duty.
The terse sentences on the order sheet arrived on a miserable day, a New London kind of day. Freezing winter winds blasted across the Connecticut submarine base, and the driving rain brought torture to anyone who dared to go outside. The drab buildings of the civilian city across the gray Thames River looked like dirty blocks of clay stacked along the water's edge. They seemed to fit perfectly with the dismal weather and the depressing area that must have been filled with people wanting to escape somewhere-anywhere. As a native Southern Californian who had just completed three years of submarine and nuclear reactor training, I not only craved a warmer world but I was also eager to begin the real work of running a reactor on a submarine at sea.
I had turned in my "dream sheet" weeks before. Created to give direction to the complex process of assigning personnel to duty stations, the dream sheet at least gives the illusion that the Navy tries to match each sailor's desired location with the available slots throughout the world. I had "wished" for the USS Kamehameha, a Polaris submarine based in Guam and skippered by someone I had known before joining the Navy. The island of Guam appealed to me because of its warm water and proximity to Hawaii, in addition to the fact that it was as far away as I could get from the submarine base at New London.
I paced back and forth within the protective interior of the musty barracks and studied the printed sheet of orders before me. The words were tiny, and I found it remarkable that such small words contained information that defined my future for the next three years: "You will report to the commanding officer of the USS Viperfish SSN 655 at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii."
"The Viperfish?" I asked into the empty barracks. "What kind of a ship is the Viperfish?"
Studying the orders, I searched for any kind of clue to define the vessel. She was a fast-attack nuclear submarine; the SSN (submersible ship, nuclear) before her hull number 655 left no doubt about that. Clearly, however, the Polaris option was out. The Viperfish was in Hawaii, the land of beautiful women and the aloha spirit, the land of warmth and excellent surf, the land that-compared with New London-was close to heaven. I scanned the order sheet again for clues about the future mission of the submarine.
To my delight, my bespectacled machinist mate friend in submarine school, Jim McGinn, was also assigned to the Viperfish. Looking more like a scientist than a sailor with his wispy red hair and round glasses, Jim projected a deservedly scholarly image. He excitedly popped through the barracks door that afternoon, as he waved his orders, and asked me if I knew anything about this thing called the Viperfish.
"I heard we're the only guys from our class to get this boat[1].
It must be some kind of a fast-attack," I said, offering my best educated guess. We had just completed hundreds of lectures in submarine school, and we knew there were two primary types of nuclear submarines. The majority were the SSNs, the sleek, high-performance fast-attack submarines that engaged in war games of seeking and tracking enemy submarines on the high seas. The others were the "boomers," big, slow submarines, such as the Kamehameha, that functioned as submergible strategic ballistic missile launching platforms. Because the Viperfish did not carry the SSBN designation of a boomer, she had to be one of the Navy's hot fast-attack submarines.
"But why doesn't anybody know anything about the boat?" Jim asked. "They know about all the other fast-attacks. I've asked everybody… The Viperfish is like some kind of a mystery submarine."
"Probably because she's one of the newer ones," I said, "and her home port is at Pearl Harbor, on the other side of the world."
Jim smiled and looked at the cold world outside the barracks window. "Thank God for that, in warm and beautiful Hawaii."
Cursing the bone-chilling wind and rain, we crossed the base to the military library and pulled out the most recent edition of Jane's Fighting Ships and searched for the Viperfish. We first discovered that she used to be designated a guided Regulus missile-firing submarine. The range of the Regulus I missiles was five hundred miles, far below the thousand-plus range of the more modern Polaris missiles, although this range would be improved by the larger Regulus II missiles to one thousand miles. Each Regulus missile had stubby wings on either side of a fuselage carrying a jet engine that powered it to the target. When properly prepared in a time of war, its 3,000-pound nuclear warhead would then detonate at the appropriate time.
Jim continued to study Jane's information and search for more clues about our submarine. "What class is the Viperfish?" he asked, referring to the general class that often identifies the mission of a naval vessel. When we found she was in the Viperfish class, we began to feel depressed.
We both looked at the picture of the submarine and scanned the story. The Viperfish was definitely not a sleek vessel by any standard. She was commissioned in 1960 at Mare Island Naval Shipyard, with strange bulges and an unusual stretched-out segment in the front half of the hull, presumably to provide a stable launching platform for the five guided missiles previously stored in a hangar compartment within her bow. She was clearly not designed for speed, with a maximum submerged velocity of only twenty-five knots (compared with the forty-plus knots of most fast-attack submarines). Her superstructure was flanked with long rows of ugly-looking holes (limber holes or flood ports) along both sides, designed to allow seawater to enter the external shell of her superstructure during submerging operations.
McGinn continued to read the description. "The Viperfish was originally intended to be a diesel submarine," he said, "but at the last minute, they changed their mind."
"So they thought it might run better on nukie power," I said, "not having to run to the surface to pull in air for charging the batteries or running the diesel engine. Since I am a reactor operator, it is good that she has a nuclear reactor. Now what does she do?"
We hunched over the book. "Nothing else here," Jim said. "Whatever she does, the Viperfish is a regular SSN, sort of. When they took off the missiles, they got rid of the G designation previously signifying that she carried guided missiles."
I looked back at my orders. A tiny box at the corner of the sheet was labeled: "Purpose of Transfer." Within the box were the cryptic words, "For duty (sea)."
What we did not know at the time was that the Viperfish had been further redesignated as an oceanographic research vessel during the SALT (Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty) talks. The fact that she carried a substantial firepower of live torpedoes did not change the benign research vessel designation; therefore, she escaped being counted as a nuclear fast-attack warship for the purposes of the treaty. At that moment, however, she appeared to be some kind of a weird fast-attack submarine that carried no missiles.
1
The term "boat" is generally used to denote a small vessel that can be hoisted on board a ship. Early submarines were small enough to fulfill this definition. The camaraderie of the first "boat sailors" and their pride in serving on board such unique vessels resulted in this term remaining in common use among submariners. The official U.S. Navy definition of a submarine is a ship, but submarine sailors, in accordance with tradition, continue to call their vessel a boat.