Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
AND
UNSEEN
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SILENT
AND
UNSEEN
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9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The USS Greenfish, USS Seadragon, and USS Skipjack insignias on pages 5, 63, and 139
are from the U.S. Navy.
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To the officers and crews with whom I served on attack submarines during
the Cold War and to all my brother submariners who served our great nation,
silently and unseen, during this turbulent era.
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Contents
List of Photos and Illustrations
ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
Part I. USS Greenfish (SS 351): Workhorse of the Pacific
12
23
39
47
53
65
78
88
98
109
114
121
Part III. USS Skipjack (SSN 585): Root of the New Sea Power
141
154
167
vii
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viii Contents
182
189
198
209
Epilogue
217
Notes
221
Index
231
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14
16
40
Lt. Cdr. John A. Davis, Lt. (jg) Alfred S. McLaren, CSC (SS)
Valdo J. Alderson, and Supply and Commissary Department
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56
60
64
72
74
85
87
97
102
103
105
106
107
111
114
140
143
ix
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150
155
190
218
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Acknowledgments
xi
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Introduction
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2 Introduction
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Introduction 3
I served with one captain in peacetime who, no matter what opportunity might present itself, seemed to be totally incapable psychologically of
closing a potential enemy to gather the intelligence that his boat and crew
team were sent out to acquire. He preferred to remain at the outer limit of
visibility and detectability, to the increasing impatience and disgust of his
officers and crew.
Another captain I served with was, by contrast, so brave and charismatic
a leader at sea that his crew would have gone to the ends of the earth for
him. He was, in addition, a truly professional submariner and seaman who
knew every aspect of his business. He never hesitated to close a potential
adversary sufficiently and, when the opportunity presented itself, to gather all
the intelligence possible. He accomplished this while ensuring that our own
boat remained undetected.
My remaining commanding officers fell somewhere in between these
two styles. All were dedicated professionals but leaned more toward a more
cautious and deliberate manner of conducting submarine missions. I
learned from them as well.
A common theme among submarine sailors was stories about their skippers, officers, and crewmembers. God help the commanding officer who
was unskilled, timid, and indecisive, or who was uncomfortable with either
his crew or the mission assigned. Then, as now, this would become the talk
of the waterfront and reach the ears of his peers, superiors, and even the
Commander Submarine Force Atlantic (ComSubLant) or Commander
Submarine Force Pacific (ComSubPac) himself. One poor commanding
officer during my time drew the unfortunate nickname Captain Tuna, the
Chicken of the Sea. That name was to follow him, probably unbeknownst to
him, throughout the remainder of his career.
Although the chief focus of this book is to describe the experiences
that I had under several captains who prepared me to be a submarine
commanding officer one day, I also learned a great deal from my brother
officers and fellow crewmembers.
Silent and Unseen consists of three parts, each devoted to one of the
attack submarines on which I served: USS Greenfish (195859), USS
Seadragon (196062), and USS Skipjack (196265). The remaining two
nuclear attack submarines on which I served, USS Greenling (SSN 614) and
USS Queenfish (SSN 651), I plan to discuss in a subsequent book that will
focus on the immediate preparations for and the entirety of my command of
Queenfish during the period from 1965 to 1973.
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PART I
USS Greenfish (SS 351)
Workhorse of the Pacific
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CH A PTE R 1
t was by pure chance that I was assigned to USS Greenfish (SS 351) during the final days of my training at the U.S. Naval Submarine School in
Groton, Connecticut. The first of five attack submarines on which I was to
serve as a young officer during the Cold War, she was one of 128 Balao-class,
diesel-electric fleet submarines built from 1942 to 1945 to fight the war in
the Pacific.1 Greenfish took her name from a type of fish living in the Pacific
and Southwest Asian waters.
Our entire class, number 105, of some sixty young officers was scheduled
to graduate on 20 December 1957. Each of us had drawn numbers for
submarine and home port selection, and, in early December I found myself
standing behind a good friend, Ens. James Doc W. Blanchard Jr., on
the day we were to make our selection. Docs number was 9 and mine 13.
Neither of us could believe our luck: low numbers essentially guaranteed us
any submarine and base location we wantedfrom New London, Norfolk,
Charleston, or Key West on the Atlantic seaboard, to San Diego and Pearl
Harbor in the Pacific.
Doc and I were Navy juniors, fellow U.S. Naval Academy graduates,
and good friends. Docs father was a famous World War II submarine
commander, mine a naval aviator and, at this time, commanding officer of
the U.S. Naval Gunfire Support School in Coronado, California. Both of us
had traveled a great deal during our upbringing, moving every two years on
average and attending countless schools. We were comfortable with change
and able to adjust quickly no matter where we were ultimately assigned.
Our new wives, on the other hand, would probably not be, since neither
had traveled much out of her hometown, except for their years in college.
My wife, Mary Eisenhower, for instance, had never been farther west than
7
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War missions. Not only did the United States need to stay abreast, but it also
had to develop effective means of countering new developments, whether
in equipment or complete sensor and weapons systems on their ships and
submarines, in order to maintain the tactical and strategic advantage that we
held over all three of these countries at the time.
The original Greenfish was authorized in April 1942 and her keel laid
on 29 June 1944. On 21 December 1945 she would be the 101st submarine
to be launched at Electric Boat Company in Groton since 1933.2 Her
commissioning on 7 June 1946 was too late for her to join her famed sisters
in the Pacific during World War II, but she was to play an important role in
the coming Cold War.
Following commissioning and a shakedown cruise to the Caribbean and
South America, plus numerous exercises with the fleet in the Atlantic and
Caribbean, Greenfish sank the infamous German war prize, U-234, with live
torpedoes, during a practice exercise in late 1947. After surrendering to the
Allies off Newfoundland on 15 May 1945, U-234 was discovered to be carrying special Japanese and German personnel and a unique high-technology
cargo destined for Japan that included 560 kilograms of uranium oxide.3
In early January 1948 Greenfish entered the Electric Boat Company
yards for a major GUPPY IIA conversion, which included changing her
basic exterior hull configuration to enhance submerged speed and hydrodynamic efficiency.4 The most significant of her modifications were removing the deck gun and streamlining her deck and superstructure; enclosing
the conning tower compartment, bridge, periscope shears, and other mast
supports within a one-piece faired sail made of welded aluminum; installing snorkeling equipment, which enabled her to run her diesel engines and
charge her batteries while submerged; and increasing her batteries from two
to four, for a total of 504 cells, to increase both her submerged speed and the
length of time she could remain submerged.5 Finally, Greenfishs four highspeed electric motors were replaced with two low-speed direct-drive electric
motors, to enhance sound quieting.6
The most significant modification within the submarine, or below
decks, was to provide the capability to shift electrical connections among the
four main lead-zinc batteries from a normal parallel to connection in series.
This shift, used during maximum or flank speed operations only, provided
sufficient electrical current, or amperage, to the two direct-drive electrical
motors such that they could drive both propeller shafts at a sufficiently high
RPM to attain underwater speeds in excess of twenty knots, providing the
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hull was free of the marine growth that normally accretes from long periods
in port. Such high speeds provided a boat, when under attack, with at least
one good opportunity to break free of enemy active sonar contact and escape
from an antisubmarine warfare (ASW) surface vessel.
Upon completion of the conversion in August 1948, Greenfish was
assigned to the Pacific Fleet and departed for her new home port, the U.S.
naval submarine base in Pearl Harbor. With the exception of ASW and
harbor-defense exercises in the Puget Sound area in early 1950, and an
overhaul in Mare Island, she spent most of her time operating out of Pearl
Harbor on local exercises through 1951.
The Korean War broke out in June of 1950, and in late 1951 Greenfish
departed for the U.S. naval base and repair facility at Yokosuka, Japan, for
duty in the area. From 31 January to 1 March 1952 she was on her first and
only war patrol since commissioning. Following Seventh Fleet exercises off
Okinawa, she returned to Pearl Harbor where local and Cold War missions
kept her busy until late 1954. Noteworthy during this period was a joint
operation conducted with USS Redfish (SS 395) during the summer of 1952
in the sea icecovered Beaufort Sea. It was during this operation, headed
by Waldo K. Lyon, PhD, director of what was to become the famous Arctic
Submarine Laboratory in San Diego, that Redfish proved that a suitably
configured diesel electric submarine could polynya hop from the Chukchi
Sea north of the Bering Strait to the Canadian Arctic Islands and return.7
Greenfish entered the Pearl Harbor shipyard for another modernization
overhaul in 1955, whereupon she departed for a six-month deployment to
the Western Pacific (WestPac) with the Seventh Fleet. During this time she
conducted several Cold War missions and embarked on a tour of Southeast
Asia, visiting ports in Hong Kong, Manila, and Singapore. She was the first
U.S. submarine ever to visit Rangoon, Burma.
Returning to the submarine base in Pearl Harbor in March 1956,
Greenfish conducted local operationsexercises along the North American
coastand a number of Cold War reconnaissance missions in the Northern
Pacific, the last of which was completed a few months prior to my reporting
on board in late January 1958, when my seagoing submarine career began
in earnest.
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