“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.
I was becoming confused. “So she’s a slow-attack submersible ship, nuclear-”
“Called the Viperfish… even the name is strange for an attack submarine. What the hell is a viperfish?”
We looked up the creature in the dictionary and found nothing. An encyclopedia also did not consider the animal worth mentioning, so we finally turned to a dusty fish book with faded color photographs of sea life.
“Here it is!” Jim said, pointing at a picture of a thick black fish with a huge mouth. “It’s a deep-ocean fish with a hinged jaw and photophores that create a beacon of light…”
“It eats dead fish, grabbing them whole as they sink to the depths below,” I added, studying the picture showing a single blue eye located above a glowing red streak.
“Viperfish. Couldn’t they come up with a better name?”
“Ugly fish, ugly submarine, eats dead debris.”
“With a huge glowing mouth. What are we getting ourselves into?”
No matter how we tried to embellish the Viperfish, it did not look like a submarine that would ever do anything impressive. She was slow and ugly, and she had a strange name. We trudged back to our barracks and listened in silence to the other men talking excitedly about their assignments on board such vessels as the Dragonfish, Nautilus, and Scorpion.
A couple of days later, McGinn and I left New London to spend time with our families before the final trip to Hawaii. When my friends in California asked about my submarine assignment, I could not avoid telling them. “Although the details are currently top secret,” I said, with the secretive air of someone having insider classified information, “the Viperfish is one of those SSN fast-attack nuclear submarines equipped with state-of-the-art firing power. Furthermore, it is jammed with unique experimental military firepower, the only one of her class in the world.
“No further information can be revealed at this time,” I added in the hushed voice of somebody describing a CIA operation and left the rest to each person’s imagination. In other words: “Don’t ask any more questions, because nothing more can be revealed-it is all secret.”
The conversations always ended with just the right amount of admiration and respect. For a twenty-one-year-old man ready to travel around the world in a submarine that was already an enigma, I could not have asked for more.
I flew to Hawaii on a civilian airliner contracted to the military at Travis Air Force Base in Northern California. The aircraft was packed with soldiers en route to Vietnam, and the atmosphere was filled with their gloom. The conflict in Southeast Asia was undergoing a rapid escalation at that time, and the depressed mood of the soldiers left little doubt about the fate they perceived at the end of their flight. The burly master sergeant sitting next to me looked miserable and said almost nothing throughout the entire trip.
When the plane landed at Honolulu, the sergeant just stared out the window at the clusters of vacationing tourists disembarking from nearby aircraft. As the plane doors opened, the sound of Hawaiian music entered the cabin, the fragrance of Plumeria blossoms floated through the air, and the lucky few of us assigned to Hawaii could not get off the plane fast enough. Jim arrived in Hawaii on a different day, but his flight carried a similar sad group of men. The memory of the unfortunate soldiers on that flight stayed with me during the tough times of the Viperfish’s submerged operations and somehow made my work seem easier by comparison.
I called Pearl Harbor from the airport and was quickly connected to the Viperfish.
“USS Viperfish, Petty Officer Kanen speaking,” the young voice fired out. “May I help you, sir?”
Thirty minutes later, a chief petty officer from the Viperfish jumped out of a car, asked my name, and firmly pumped my hand.
“Welcome to Hawaii, Dunham, I’m Paul Mathews, from the Viperfish-you’re one of the new nukes, aren’t you?” He was in his middle thirties, I guessed, a strong-looking man of average height and weight, and full of enthusiasm when I told him that I was a reactor operator ready to report on board.
“Throw your seabag in the back of the car,” he said with a smile, “and we’re on our way to Pearl. I’ll give you a ride even though you are a goddamn nuke.”
As we drove down Kamehameha Highway under the blue sky and brilliant tropical sunlight, Chief Mathews told me more about the Viperfish. He confirmed that the submarine had been designed to launch Regulus missiles, each equipped with a large nuclear warhead and fired from a rail launching system on the topside deck of the Viperfish. He told me that, during the past few