Sherry Sontag;Christopher Drew (11 page)

With the rest of his budget and his new platform, he began to peer into an untouched realm of the deep, working with his group to scribble out ideas: missiles that could he placed miles below the surface on the ocean floor; submarines that could reach down and see through the murky depths, carry cameras into untraveled and alien waters.

Most of the Navy greeted Craven's visions with hardly a yawn. What little study of the deep there had been before had long ago been shoved into a corner, the purview of a small group of oceanographers. Admirals saw operating in deep water as more difficult than the manned outer-space launches that, at that moment, held the nation's attention hostage. The Navy's best submarines could reach down just 1,000 to 1,500 feet or so. Go deeper, and there was certain death by implosion from punishing sea pressures great enough to quickly crush even the mighty Polaris subs.

The miles below the Navy's operational slice garnered about as much respect as the average landfill. The Navy's main design branch, the Bureau of Ships, listed deep submergence as tenth on its list of top ten priorities-giving the deep number ten only because the list wasn't any longer. Even Admiral Rickover, wrapped as he was in the public mantle of Navy innovator, was uninterested in plumbing the depths.

Craven's deep-submergence group was on the fringe, but eager to work. A team of his scientists was asked to help test the USS Thresher (SSN-593), the first of a powerful new class of nuclear attack submarines designed to go somewhat deeper than the other subs of the day. On April 10, 1963, Thresher failed during a test dive to 1,300 feet. As best as anyone could tell, a piping failure and a subsequent loss of propulsion set off a series of events that caused the submarine to sink, killing all 129 men aboard, including four men from Craven's team. Craven got the news as he was sitting with Harry Jackson, an engineering officer who had helped test the sub shortly before her last dive, and who had been present for every other deep dive.

Jackson sat, repeating over and over, "I should have been there." But Craven was relieved that Jackson had missed this, the nation's first loss of a nuclear submarine, along with three of Craven's own men who had been scratched from the test for lack of space.

It was only later that Craven realized that the disaster was about to mark him among the most important players in a new and dramatic chapter in this saga of undersea spying. Craven's opportunity would spring from the almost impossible promises the Navy made in its efforts at damage control.

In the wake of Thresher, the Navy promised a massive effort to learn about the unforgiving ocean depths. There would be a "Sub Safe" program. There would be "Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicles."

This was the Navy's chance to calm the public, a chance to erase tragedy with visions of ocean wonder, a chance to obscure submarine dangers beneath visions of safety innovations. Almost everyone involved recognized that some of the proposals were more science fiction than science, especially the prospect of deep-submergence rescue vehicles (DSRVs) for sunken subs. Anyone who was to be rescued would have to have the good fortune to go down over a continental shelf or atop an undersea mountain, in waters far more shallow than the two, three, or four miles of depth that made up much of the world's oceans. Most submariners knew that a severe casualty at sea almost always meant that they would disappear-no survivors, no rescue, nothing more to say.

Still, Congress okayed these popular proposals and offered up funding that caught the attention of the Office of Naval Intelligence. The Navy might have been promising an era that mirrored Jules Verne, but a few submarine espionage specialists now saw the means to launch a new age of spying that would he much closer to James Bond.

These intelligence officers were already crafting their plans when Craven began directing a massive post-Thresher study. He had also taken charge of the Deep Submergence Systems Project, a program created to design the Navy's promised deep-submergence rescue vehicles and to build an underwater laboratory, a habitat known as "SeaLab," where the Navy could study the physiological effects of deep-sea pressures on divers.

Craven saw opportunity, especially in the DSRV program. Like nearly everyone else with knowledge of the oceans, he knew that the DSRVs were largely fantasy. But he reasoned that maybe the push to build them might give him an edge in pursuing another of his dreams-a fleet of mini-submarines made of glass. Chemically, glass is a liquid, so Craven reasoned that glass submarines would be at their strongest under the most powerful deep-ocean pressures.

He wasn't the only one trying to sell the Navy on the idea of some kind of mini-submarine. Reynolds Aluminum Company was building its own boat, hoping to gain a lucrative contract. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, with the Office of Naval Research, was designing the Alvin, a three-man submersible that could go down 6,000 feet. At this point, the only deep-submersible the Navy had inhouse was the Trieste If, a mini-dirigible that had to be carried or towed to dive sites. It had only limited maneuverability, but it could bring a crew of three down to 20,000 feet. The first Trieste had been lowered nearly 7 miles in 1960 to the deepest spot in the world-the Challenger Deep in the Marianas Trench, about 200 miles from Guam. Both Trieste I and II explored Thresher's wreckage.

It was just as Craven began to work out the mechanics of self-propelled, independent, deep-sea mini-subs that he was approached by a Naval Intelligence officer, one of the men who helped coordinate the submarine surveillance operations off the Soviet coasts. By now, those operations had been expanded to provide a year-round presence. Operating under the code name "Binnacle"-later "Ilolystone"-the Navy's growing fleet of nuclear subs and diesels were keeping constant watch on the Soviets as they aimed test launches of missiles from land silos and ships into the oceans. U.S. subs were also tracking the rapidly expanding fleet of Soviet nuclear subs as they finally began to venture out into the Atlantic and the Pacific. The Soviet Navy was beginning to enact its long-threatened plan to become a blue-water force.

With all this going on, the U.S. Navy nearly always had at least one surveillance sub in the Barents and two off the Soviets' Pacific ports, where they still had to dodge occasional Soviet depth charges. Even some of the early nuclear subs, like the USS Scamp (SSN-588), got chased with small depth charges, and more diesel subs, such as the USS Ronquil (SS-396) and the USS Trumpetfish (SS-425), got held down Gudgeon-style in the early 1960s. In addition to these operations off the Soviet coast, some diesel subs carried Russian emigres back to the Soviet Union to spy for the United States, and other diesel subs were landing commandos in places like Borneo, Indonesia, and the Middle East to track the expanding Soviet influence.'`
Submarine spying had become so important that the chief of Naval Operations in Washington had taken charge of coordinating all operations, and a special undersea warfare office had been set up within the Office of Naval Intelligence to plan them.

Intelligence officials were so anxious to learn the latest about new Soviet subs and missiles that submarine spooks were under orders to flash off messages with mission highlights on the transit home. The Russian-language experts among them began transcribing tapes of stolen communications as soon as they left Soviet waters. Couriers met returning submarines at the dock, ready to whisk the intelligence directly to NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. The spooks themselves were so valuable that the Navy ordered them to travel to and from ports by train rather than on commercial plane. The Navy wasn't willing to risk even a slim chance that they might be hijacked to Cuba.

Now the Naval Intelligence officer had come to Craven, asking him to help with a grander effort than any that had been tried before. The officer handed Craven a top-secret document, actually a very long wish list that Naval Intelligence had been amassing for several years, a document that had been touched by barely a dozen people before him.

Stamped across the front page were the words "Operation Sand Dollar." From there the list went on for pages. These were the splashdown points for Soviet ballistic missiles painstakingly monitored and noted by Navy surface ships and Air Force radar and underwater hydrophones, as well as the locations of planes and other Soviet military hardware glimpsed or heard plunging through the waves. Only a few miles away, three at most, lay the Soviets' most sensitive defense secrets: the best in Soviet missile guidance systems, metallurgy, and electronics-all of it tantalizing trash and all of it out of reach. No wonder the Soviet Union didn't even try to guard the cache. Nobody could have imagined an undersea raid through stars of luminescent plankton to the utter blackness of the deep.

But why not, intelligence officers reasoned, use the comforting notion of deep-submergence rescue vehicles to mask an effort to reach the items cataloged in Sand Dollar? Why not use the budgets of rescue gadgets that would hardly ever be used to create some tools that might just give the United States the definitive edge?

The Thresher tragedy would be the excuse, the new safety programs the stuff of a complicated cover story. And all of it was dependent on Craven's answer to one question. Could he manage a deep-water treasure hunt?

It was a matter of top national security, Craven was told. Left unsaid was that it was also a matter of pride, political standing, and turf. The intelligence arm of the Navy was in a desperate game of catch-up with that of the Air Force, which had just launched a new generation of spy satellites. With their growing coverage of the Soviet Union, these new "eyes in the sky" were sending back images of sites where the Soviets were digging silos for powerful landbased missiles and dry docks where the Soviets were preparing to create their own generation of Polaris-like submarines. The Polaris program had managed to prevent Air Force bombers and rockets from monopolizing the business of nuclear deterrence. Now maybe Navy spies could compete with the satellites, diving not for mere pictures but for actual Soviet arms and craft.

This was the opportunity Craven had been looking for, a chance to tap into his most fantastic plans. There was only one thing stopping him. He had no idea how to accomplish what the intelligence officer was asking for. Even Trieste II couldn't manage much of a secret undersea raid-it was too small, and the surface ship needed to carry the submersible out to mid-ocean would be a dead giveaway.

"Basically, we are developing the technology, but not the assets," Craven said, calling upon his best Navy-speak. Silence. Two beats, maybe three. No matter how officiously he said it, he was still admitting he had no way to do what he was being asked.

Then, Craven had a flash of inspiration. "Hey, look, we don't have anything that could do your operation because that requires things be clandestine." One more quick inhale and he came out with the kicker. "So it's really not worth doing Sand Dollar unless you do it from a submarine."

There it was, blurted out in desperation, the idea for what would become the Navy's most daring venture yet. A full-sized submarine, big enough to navigate the high seas, would be outfitted to hover in place in the upper reaches of the ocean and dangle cameras miles down, deep enough to scout the ocean bottom for Soviet treasures. It was inspired. Make the effort from below the surface, find a way to be nearly undetectable. Never let the Soviets know the Americans were anywhere near.

Actually all Craven was doing was rehashing his long-held belief that operating from the ocean surface was its own kind of hell. He had already included the concept in his self-scripted "Ten Commandments of Deep-Ocean Engineering." The way he said it was: "Remember that the free surface is neither ocean nor air and that man cannot walk upon it nor will equipments remain stable in its presence. So design your equipments that they tarry not long and that they need neither servicing nor repair at this unseemly interface."

Now, suddenly, he had not only the means to put that commandment to the test, he also had his chance to fulfill his favorite part of his lineage and plunder buried treasure. His pulpit secure, his corsair's blood aboil, all Craven needed was a submarine.

There were twenty nuclear attack subs in the fleet now, and more being built. But Navy admirals weren't about to give up a first-rate boat so that it could sit out in mid-ocean trolling with cameras. If Craven wanted a sub, he would have to take one of the Navy's two nuclear clunkers, the two failed experiments whose designs were never replicated. There was the USS Seawolf, a confused boat with the v-shaped bow of a destroyer and the top of a sub built to house a touchy reactor run with liquid sodium-a reactor that had been replaced early on. Then there was the USS Halibut, a boat with a grander, but short-lived, past. Halibut (SSGN-587) had been the only nuclear sub to carry the Regulus guided missiles, making seven missions off the Soviet coast. But that program had ended in mid-1964 when the Navy began basing Polaris subs in the Pacific. With the Regulus era over, no one knew quite what to do with Halibut.

She was a marine oddball, one of the least hydrodynamic of the nuclear fleet and one of the most ridiculous-looking creations ever born in a dry dock. Unlike the flat fish she was named for, Halibut wore a huge hump that might have been appropriate on a gargantuan desert creature except for the fact that it opened up into a large shark's-mouth hatch, part of the original missile hangar. Perhaps in another time, Halibut would have been quietly scrapped. After all, this boat was not only odd, she suffered from what was a near-fatal malady for a submarine: hydromechanical cacophony. Halibut was loud. Submariners heard the din, saw only potential flooding when they gazed upon that hatch, and shuddered when they examined her cumbersome ballast tanks, gaping caverns originally designed to allow her to surface fast, shoot a missile, and submerge even faster.