Before I reported back to the Viperfish, Keiko and I took an afternoon trip to the north shore of Oahu, where we could have a final picnic and I could do a little surfing. We had both become tense, the upcoming departure of the Viperfish continuously in our minds, and her burden had just been increased because her brother had received orders from the U.S. Army to report to Vietnam.
We spread our blanket on the coarse sand near the water, and she waited for me as I dragged my board into the ocean and paddled out to ride the waves. The surf was considerably bigger than usual because of a large swell pushing down from Alaska, and I moved far out to sea to reach the optimal point for takeoff. The vigorous exercise would be therapeutic, I had decided, and I felt that the greater amount of energy I expended, the easier the next two months under the ocean would be.
When I finally returned to shore, the sun had descended low on the horizon. Sunset Beach was beginning to move into darkness, and Keiko was no longer waiting on our blanket. I found her a couple of hundred yards away, standing at the water's edge, looking out into the ocean, and crying with the almost certain knowledge that I had drowned in the heavy surf.
Her look of relief at my appearance was quickly replaced by worry and anger.
"You're going out to sea in two days, and here I am thinking you have already drowned before even closing the hatch of that thing!" she said. Tears rolled down her face, her look of anguish reflecting the turmoil and fear inside. "It's not fair," she added in a small voice, the tears flowing freely.
I put my arm around her, and we gathered our belongings and drove back to our apartment. We talked late into the evening as I tried to explain why I had to leave, why it was so important, especially after what we had gone through so far. I talked and I talked, and when I finally ran out of steam, she looked at me and said, "But why are you going? Why don't they send someone else?"
I let her question hang in the air while my mind struggled for an answer. Looking at the whole matter objectively, she was right. Why would anybody in his right mind leave such a woman and such happiness and climb into a screaming engine room for two continuous months under the ocean?
The reason that I was going, I knew, was not just because I had been ordered to do so, although the military imperative certainly carried some weight. It was not to help discover whatever was out there because nobody would tell us what it was. I wasn't longing for glory-there certainly would be none-and I wasn't planning on receiving any thanks from my country because the American public no longer seemed to believe that military accomplishments were of any value.
"We are going," I finally said into the tropical night air, "because our mission has to be completed, and I trust the captain to get us there and back."
I could barely hear the soft words of her response, but she mentioned her brother in Vietnam, the men on the Scorpion, and the fact that trust might not be enough.
The next day, Chief Gary Linaweaver met us at a table near the row of submarines lining the pier at the Pearl Harbor submarine base. He talked solemnly to Keiko, his voice calm and comforting.
"Just remember," he said, "the Viperfish is nothing like the Scorpion. The Scorpion was a sleek fast-attack boat. She traveled fast and dove deep, she did the maneuvers those kinds of submarines do."
He smiled reassuringly. "The Viperfish is big and slow," he continued. "She doesn't move fast and she doesn't go deep. She just cruises along, staying pretty shallow, ready to surface immediately if there are any problems." He held his hands out, obviously without a worry in the world. "Your husband could not be on a safer ship!"
I was not sure how reassured Keiko was after that discussion, but she accepted his comments without question. She had not been told about the activities of our previous cruises. The mystery of the mission, coupled with the essence of submarine operations, gave all of the wives a burden that cannot be easily relieved, an ordeal that is shared by all who watch loved ones drive their submarines out to sea.
The separation of going to sea in this manner was more painful and more absolute than sheer time and distance could justify. The nature of the process itself, the submergence of the submarine, was an important factor in the loneliness of those left behind. For the wives on shore, watching their men disappear into the hatches, riveting their eyes on the silhouette of black steel as the boat moves to sea, and finally seeing the submarine vanish even before reaching the horizon can deliver a chilling fear into the heart of even the strongest person. This disappearance of the submarine, more than the departure, followed by a total absence of communications for weeks or months at a time, along with the secrecy of the mission and uncertainty of the submarine's location, render a daily torture for the women left behind.
Keiko drove me to the pier next to the Viperfish at midnight the night before we left. After sharing the greatest kiss of my entire life, I waved a final good-bye and climbed down the long ladder leading into the Viperfish engine room to prepare the submarine's nuclear reactor for the start-up.
Bringing a reactor to a power-producing state is a painfully exact procedure. With voltmeter and technical manuals at my side, I began testing all of the safety systems controlling the reactor. Start-up was planned for 0600 the next morning, which would allow Captain Harris to cast off the lines at exactly 0800.
Coffee became my salvation as the early hours of the morning slowly passed and daylight approached. Whenever I left the engine room to fill my cup in the crew's dining area, another crewman was coming on board. Each man appeared tired and anxious, as he sought a few hours' sleep before we were to push away from the submarine base.
"How's the start-up going, Dunham?" each man asked, and I said, "Perfect! The reactor comes on line at six and we're outa here by eight."
"Way to go, bruddah."
By 0300, the sleeping quarters were filled with the crew and the coffeepot was nearly empty. By 0400, I confirmed that the fission process would be safe; by 0500, I established that we would be able to conduct safe emergency shutdowns during the next two months if anything went wrong while the reactor was running.
By 0530, I had one final system to check before starting the reactor. Three large and powerful high-voltage circuit breakers had to be tested-one at a time. They had been previously tested and retested, so it was just a formality that I close the breakers one final time. The first two worked perfectly, but I quickly discovered that the third breaker was seriously damaged, its innards making the strange tinkling sound of pieces of metal falling apart. I looked at the clock-thirty minutes before start-up-and then glared at the breaker. The matter was simple enough: Without the breaker, we couldn't start the reactor; without the reactor, we couldn't go to sea.
Moving as quickly as possible, I turned off all electrical power to the system and tore the circuit breaker apart. I found a small strip of metal, no more than a half inch wide and two inches long, in three pieces instead of one.
There was no way to find a replacement part, not at 0530 or at 1000 that morning and probably not within the next week. The piece was uniquely Viperfish, and locating such parts sometimes took weeks and even months.
I looked around the engine room and tried to figure out what to do next.
Several minutes later, after I had broken every possible regulation that applied to the engine rooms of nuclear submarines, the circuit breaker worked perfectly. A Coca-Cola can, minus an identical metal strip a half inch wide and two inches long, landed in the dumpster at the side of the pier. At exactly 0600, the engine room filled with men as the reactor start-up neared completion. By 0800, the topside crew cast off our lines and we were on our way.