Book excerpt:
Nautilus had recently returned from an unsuccessful attempt to get to the North Pole from the Atlantic side. We were back in New London, Connecticut licking our wounds.
Unknown to the crew, Eisenhower had already informed the Captain of his intention to send Nautilus back to the Arctic to find the transpolar opening that had alluded us a few months earlier. A logical question at this point would be "Why go again?" As far as the crew-members knew we didn't have any new technology that would make this second trip any easier. During the first probe, the ice averaged ten to fifteen feet thick and there was always plenty of water between the ice and the ocean floor to maneuver, so what was to be gained by making this dangerous trip one more time? It didn't make sense to do it for the thrill of another harrowing experience!
Something happened a month earlier, and the world has never been the same since. Russia launched the first space satellite "Sputnik". Sputnik was orbiting the earth, going beep, beep, beep and driving President Eisenhower crazy with every revolution it made around our planet. We couldn't shoot it down and we couldn't shut it off. Every time it beeped, it reminded us that we had captured second place in the Russia / USA space race. We were the silver medal winners and in the nineteen fifties, Americans didn't like being number two.
It was obvious that Russia's German scientists were better than our German scientists. We had captured the wrong bunch! We caught Werner Von Braun and his crowd. The Russians had the smart guys and in 1957 it was too late to go back to Munich and capture some more of their rocket engineers. America had lost the race to space! Every time our space people down in Florida fired their Vanguard rocket with its measly three and one half pound payload, both the rocket and the payload either blew up, or ended up soaking wet somewhere in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean. What could we do? America is a competitive society. We don't like being an "also ran." In the eyes of the world we were looking very inept!
A few months later we learned that the technology gap extends to submarines also. In nineteen fifty eight Russia secretly launched a "November" class atomic submarine with twin atomic reactors and a top speed of 30 knots. We weren't sure what that meant, but it sounded ominous.
Eisenhower came up with beauty of an idea to solve our "Number two" problem. Send Nautilus back to the Arctic and this time make sure we get under the North Pole. The Brussels World's Fair was in progress and attracting millions of visitors through out Europe and Asia. Eisenhower planed to announce the accomplishment of our feat at the World's Fair and steal some publicity back from the Russians. It was a great idea, but were we any better prepared to make this second trip than we were in 1957?
Nope! Not as far as the crew could tell.
Had we found some new and reliable method of navigating under the North Pole, where all the lines of Longitude converge making Arctic navigation just about impossible?
Not that we knew of!
This was going to be a voyage for national honor and nothing more complicated than that. Eisenhower had run out of options. The space race was over temporarily, so he turned to his best shot for regaining national prestige. Nuclear power and Nautilus. The plan kicked off when the Captain informed the crew that we would be leaving for the Arctic some time in the fall of 1958 for another probe. This was the start of just a little, "bitsy lie." The fact is we were leaving very soon.
In the nineteen fifties, the New London submarine base was divided into two separate sections. The upper base was open to civilians, dependents, vendors, visitors and anybody with a pass. The lower base was secured like an aircraft flight line and open only to authorized civilian technical personnel and crew members of submarines. In early April of 1958 a portion of the lower base was suddenly evacuated of unnecessary personnel and a heavily guarded, large truck came down to our pier hauling a secret piece of electronic equipment, wrapped up in an opaque protective covering. This was to be the world's first installation of the North American Aviation N6A Inertial Guidance System on board a marine vessel.
Many times engineers are frustrated when working on big projects that, for one reason or another, never become operational. All that time and effort and nothing happens. The Navajo missile was such a project. A lot of time and money was spent on the bird, but it never flew and now here in 1958 its guidance system was going to be used to help us navigate across the top of the earth and under the Arctic ice pack. All that time invested was not to be in vain! The only problem was that the Navajo missile had a design life of only fifteen minutes and we were going to use it for what ever time it took to transverse a body of water five times the size of the Mediterranean. The crew was not very confident of this piece of untried, short life hardware, but maybe the experts would come up with something better by the time we had to go North that coming fall. After all this was the spring of nineteen fifty-eight. They had all summer to work on the project and come up with a sensible solution before we headed into Arctic waters.
The principle behind the Inertial Guidance System was easy to understand. It told you where you're going by remembering where you had been! It would be like driving your automobile and doing all of your navigating by looking out only the rear view mirror. You might ricochet off a lot of trees, buildings and other cars in the process of getting home, but it could be done. If you know where you've been, you can figure out where you're going. Each time we changed speed, direction or depth, this piece of equipment recorded the event and gave us a clear picture of our track under water. That's enough information to go someplace if you have no other method of navigating. It also meant that we could play it backwards and get out of where ever we have been, if we wanted to.
America has always been a very open society. Whenever we send men or women into space we announce their names, tell you all about their background and show the actual launch. Every thing is done in real time; it's never done in secrecy. The problem with this approach is that your failures are as visible as your successes and in nineteen fifty eight Eisenhower didn't want the possibility of another failure like our missile program, paraded in front of the world. He made a critical decision. If our transpolar voyage proved successful he'd tell the world, and if it wasn't successful, nobody will be the wiser! Once he made that decision the problem of how to implement the plan came up. How do you prove Nautilus went under the North Pole when there are no independent witnesses?
The final solution proved to be quite simple.
Nautilus would be sent south to the country of Panama and then through the Panama Canal to the west coast of the United States. This trip would give the antisubmarine forces on the west coast, an opportunity to operate with an atomic submarine, instead of playing war games with only diesel boats. It was almost the same plan we used when we operated with the NATO forces in the fall of nineteen fifty seven. The ensuing publicity would make our presence very visible on the West Coast. The plan was for us to gradually work our way north to the state of Washington while operating with the different antisubmarine forces along the way. After completing these exercises we would surface off the coast of the state of Washington, bid farewell to the local surface forces, dive and then head north to the Aleutians. This final time on the surface would fix the time and position we would need later on to prove we went under the ice pack.
CONTINUED..............