The athlete rounded the corner and, racing past the engineering student, disappeared up an alley as the deputy sheriff reached the area. The student adjusted his load of books and quickly glanced at his watch-he would be late if he didn't hurry. The only warning of danger was the brief sound of gasping before the nightstick struck the side of the young man's head. His books scattered and blood immediately rushed down his neck onto his clean shirt. He fell to his knees and heard the gasping sound of heavy breathing again as the baton, striking a second time, produced more pain and blood.
The outrage and obscenities screamed by the students looking down from the windows of Freeborn Hall were ignored by the officer and unheard by the injured student. He finally collapsed on the asphalt and slipped into a coma.
At this same time, in the waters of the base at Vladivostok, a special class of Soviet submarines loaded 9,000-pound N-3 Shaddock cruise missiles into their launching systems. These winged projectiles, tucked down inside the submarine hull, were designed to be carried away from the vessel by two booster rockets that were quickly jettisoned after the launch. The Shaddock was propelled by a powerful ramjet engine to a speed as high as Mach 2 (twice the speed of sound); the direction to its target was guided and corrected by the submarine's radar system, referred to as Front Piece and Front Door.
The submarine class that carried this missile was known in the Western world as the Echo I fleet submarine. Built by the Soviet Navy to follow the November class developed in 1958 and using an identical nuclear propulsion system, the Echo I was designed with a longer hull that supported three pairs of missile-launching systems. An enlarged version of this submarine, called the Echo II, was built between 1961 and 1967; she was able to launch four pairs of missiles.
During this time, an advanced SS-N-12 missile, weighing 11,000 pounds, was developed with an improved range of nearly three hundred miles. Programmed to follow a supersonic trajectory that hugged the ocean, this lethal missile never reached an altitude of more than 2,200 feet. It was guided by precision radar and satellite missile-targeting systems. All SS-N-12 devices could be launched from the Echo II boats within twenty minutes of their surfacing and could deliver to their targets a deadly barrage of high explosives or nuclear warheads.
RANDY NICHOLSON BROUGHT THE Viperfish nuclear reactor on line early that morning in 1967. By 0800, we had stationed the maneuvering watch and were progressing down the Napa River in the direction of San Pablo and San Francisco Bay. We passed the distant campanile tower at the University of California, Berkeley, on our port bow before we finally turned right and plowed through the whitecaps toward the Golden Gate Bridge. Jim McGinn and I sat in the back of the engine room and held the throttle wheels while we listened to the loudspeaker commands from Lieutenant Katz, who was standing watch as the OOD at the top of our sail. It was a gloomy day topside, wet and cold, and nobody ventured up to catch the freezing wind and watch the fog pass by.
After traversing the waters below the Golden Gate Bridge and continuing into the Pacific Ocean, it came as almost a blessing for us finally to clear the bridge and submerge, down and away from the miserable day above. The men standing watch in the control center established the usual down-angle as the Viperfish descended several hundred feet into the silent water, leveled her off, and set a course for the Hawaiian Islands, three thousand miles away.
About this time, Bruce Rossi began to intensify the pressure on me to become qualified on the nuclear control systems. Several of the nuclear-trained men, in addition to my mentor, Randy Nicholson, would be leaving the Navy shortly after we reached Pearl Harbor, and the training of their replacements was essential for the continued operation of the Viperfish.
"Are you working on your engine-room qualifications?" Rossi asked me that first afternoon out, shortly after I left my watch station at the throttles.
I pulled out my qualifications card and handed it to him. "In two or three more days, I'll be finished with the sanitary tanks and the…"
His jaw muscles pulsating vigorously, he glared at my card, mottled with coffee spots, greasy fingerprints, and blotches of oil from various systems. "You're doing fine with the ship's qualifications, but we need you in the engine room. Finish the sanitary tanks today, along with these other auxiliary systems awaiting final signature, and get to work on the nuclear systems."
"But what about all these other systems?"
"You'll have time for them later, Dunham," he said. "We need you qualified in the engine room, or Nicholson will have to start goddamn port-and-starboard watches."
He thrust the card back at me and, with a look like he was getting ready to shoot somebody, huffed away in the direction of the engine room. It was a challenge to be enclosed in the submarine with somebody like Rossi storming back and forth, tightening the screws, pushing and pushing. There would be no escape from his twenty-four-hour surveillance. He would be watching me, asking me, occasionally encouraging me, but always pushing. The mandate was clear: get qualified on the reactor systems, and do it before the Viperfish runs short of qualified watchstanders. Avoid the goddamn port-and-starboard watches for anybody.
Everybody was feeling the pressure, now that we had almost finished the trial runs to test the crew and equipment. The evaluation of our Special Project was now rapidly looming, but the scientists on board would be able to do little with their Fish without an adequate number of qualified nukes. I stared at my card, one whole side of it without signatures next to such items as the nuclear reactor, the primary and secondary nuclear shielding systems, the steam generator systems, the condensers, the feed pumps, the primary coolant pumps, and all the associated electronics that allowed for the safe operation of the equipment. I looked down the passageway at Bruce, his thick arms vigorously gesturing while he talked to Richard Daniels, and I got to work.
Two hours later, I knew everything any reasonable man could ask about the sanitary tanks. I even knew how to blow them, if necessary, and a couple of the forward crew signed off the requirement. I then gathered every technical manual I could find relating to nuclear reactor operations and found a quiet corner in the engine room to begin the process of learning everything I could about how power was generated on the Viperfish
It was becoming clear that before I would finish all the qualifications on board the boat and actually start standing reactor operator watches-contributing something back to the Navy — I would have been in the service almost four years. The process of training seemed to last forever.
The complexity of nuclear power operations, especially on board an operational submarine such as the Viperfish, mandated a long training program. Although it might seem that a college degree would be necessary for any man to be considered for the nuclear power program, I discovered early in my Navy career that this was not the case. To the contrary, one of the most remarkable things about the men of the nuclear program was how many had flunked out of college before joining the Navy. I would have found this even more amazing except for the fact that, before joining the Navy, I too had been asked not to enroll for the semester following my first year of college.
I came into the Navy lost and impressionable.