The wave hit the Viperfish head-on and consumed her bow. Crashing high over the outstretched bow planes, it foamed across the top of the bat-cave hump and finally roared across the deck toward the sail. Just as Davidson turned to reach for his shipmate, the decking around him shuddered from the wave's impact. Water flooded over the top of the sail and into the cockpit sixty-five feet above the ocean, drenched the four men, and then roared down the long ladder. It almost washed Davidson back out the door.
A solid column of seawater crashed through the open hatch of the control room, flooded the decking, and soaked everybody in the area of the diving station. On the deck outside the sail, Mathews held his breath as the wall of water crashed into him. Burying him beneath its violence, the wave forced him away from the door and broke his grip on the sail's handrail. It slammed him against the deck and finally accelerated him toward the stern. Frantically, he reached toward his belt to grasp the chain that strained with the weight of his body dragging the clamp along the steel rail.
The clamp suddenly broke free from the rail. As the rush of water carried Mathews into the ocean, he struck the deck with a final glancing blow and disappeared toward the churning screws of the Viperfish.
Davidson, scrambling around inside the sail, tried to stand up again. He grabbed the hinges of the door and looked out into the night for Mathews. His broken flashlight washed out the door with the water clearing from the sail. His fingers clutched the inside railing as he leaned outside the door to search behind the Viperfish for any signs of a light.
"Paul!" he hollered at the top of his lungs, his eyes moving to the foaming sea that roared past the sides of the boat. He called the chief's name again, but he knew there would be no answer. He took one last desperate look before finally backing into the sail, his mind numb with the shock of losing his shipmate.
"Man overboard, starboard side!" he screamed up to the four men at the top of the sail. "The chief is gone!"
"Man overboard! Man overboard!" Young's urgent voice bellowed down into the control room loudspeakers as the captain and the lookouts shined their lights toward the foaming white water beyond the stern of the boat.
Inside the control room, Young's voice immediately hollered over the loudspeaker, "All back emergency!" to the helmsmen. "Right full rudder!"
We had performed drills like this a hundred times. Remembering the routine, I raced to the starboard corner of the control room to grab the man-overboard bag, a large white duffel bag filled with life vests and other floatation equipment. I dragged it across the deck to the base of the ladder and dropped it into the water pooling in front of the periscope station. It was obvious that the bag would be of no help to anybody.
In the engine room, Billy Elstner spun the ahead throttles shut and rapidly opened the reverse throttles that rotated the screws in the opposite direction.
"Who went over?" a voice called from the other side of the control room.
"Jesus Christ!" Commander Ryack exploded furiously, his voice filled with rage. "It doesn't matter who went overboard, goddamn it! It is one of our shipmates and that's all that counts!"
"Are we answering the back emergency bell?" Young's voice from the cockpit filled the control room.
"Yes, sir!" O'Dell hollered into the microphone, "Answering back emergency."
The lights throughout the boat briefly dimmed as the men in the engine room drained steam energy from the nuclear reactor in their effort to halt the Viperfish. Sloshing in the water I moved away from the ladder in the control center and felt useless. The life vests inside the bag couldn't even be delivered to the ocean, much less to the man in the water, and he was already wearing a life vest. Further, the flashlights in the bag would be immediately lost in the thrashing sea even if we could toss them out.
While Commander Ryack spun the starboard periscope around to search into the night, the four men at the top of the sail, two on each side, leaned over the edge of the cockpit as they scrutinized the waters behind the boat. There was no sign of Mathews or his light in the surrounding darkness.
"I can't see anything out there," the OOD said with frustration.
"He's out there," the captain said. "We'll go ahead with the 'Y' and we'll find him."
"Control, bridge!" Young hollered into his microphone under the steel lip of the sail. "Chief Mathews is in the water behind us! Can you see him through the 'scopes?"
"Negative!" Ryack shot back. "Nothing!"
The rudder orders came, and we started to make a "Y" turn, a procedure well known to the men at the top of the sail. The object was to back the boat in a tight, rotating movement while keeping the man overboard in full view. Our biggest problem was that nobody had seen the chief since the wave had washed him away. Also, now that we were turning in the sea, the waves began hammering at us from directly abeam, steeply rolling the boat from the lateral forces.
A larger wave, fifteen to twenty feet high, slammed into us and and hit directly broadside. Roaring through the open sail door, it drenched Davidson with more freezing water. He considered closing the hatch but then decided to leave it open in the hope that he would see the chief as the boat continued to rotate. About that time, however, he realized that Chief Mathews might not be conscious.
"We're tracking the area," Young called down to the control room as the rolls became more prominent. Both lookouts cursed as they scanned the ocean behind the Viperfish for any sign of a light in the sea.
"Answering full back emergency!" from the engine room, as we felt the pulsating power of the screws stopping our forward motion.
"Turn on the running lights and set the fire-control watch!" the captain hollered, ordering the men in the control center to man the dead reckoning tracer (DRT).
Another wave slammed broadside against us and rushed through the open door of the sail. Again, a column of seawater roared down the control room hatch and flooded the control center.
"Close the fucking hatch!" the executive officer hollered from the periscope station. One of the enlisted men pulled down on the halyard and slammed the hatch shut. He then activated his microphone to tell the men in the sail that they were sealed outside the Viperfish.
"Bridge, control!" he called out. "We've taken water in control! The control room hatch is closed!"
The loudspeakers responded a quick acknowledgment.
At that moment, I was sure that Chief Mathews was lost forever. There was no way we could recover anybody we couldn't see or reach, a man under the pounding waves, probably a mile or more away from us, a man now freezing in the waters of the Soviet sector. Sloshing through the ankle-deep water, I dragged the man-overboard bag away from the base of the ladder. Small waves moved across the flooded decking of the control room with the movements of the boat, and I looked for a bucket to help clear the water.
"Grab some sponges and move the water out!" Chief O'Dell hollered, as we rolled another 30 degrees and salt water splashed onto the fire-control panels. The technicians responsible for the electronics systems raced up and down the passageway to turn off everything in danger of salt water contamination.
I grabbed a fistful of sponges and tried to soak up the water. The boat continued rolling, now more violently as we moved across the "Y" and lateral to the seas. More waves of water splashed against the electronic systems. O'Dell and Ryack, each manning a periscope, rotated them back and forth as they scanned the ocean behind the Viperfish for any signs of Mathew's light. Staring through the lenses into darkness, they saw nothing but the black of a violent, empty night.