Around the World Submerged: The Voyage of the Triton

14

From the Log, Wednesday, 6 April 1960:

There is one bit of good news to report today. Using substitute materials exclusively and manufacturing all the special tools needed, Herbert Hardman has rewound the control-air-compressor motor. It became, in fact, a special project, dubbed “practical instructions for electricians.” Under Hardman’s tutelage, George Bloomingdale, Jessie Vail and Herbert Zeller, all Electrician’s Mates First Class, have really turned-to in their off-watch hours, and all four deserve much credit. It was a mean job, the motor being a 10 horsepower 3-phase type. Merely digging out all the ruined windings and cleaning up the stator took over a week. When assembled, the motor ran perfectly the first time it was tried.

During the past several weeks our urgent need for a fathometer has been somewhat allayed because of the very fine performance of the active ranging sonar equipment; so the complete lack of success of our intensive efforts to devise a new fathometer is philosophically accepted. At this point, my biggest regret is the disappointment the failure must be causing to Simpson, Docker and Blaede, who have put so many hours into the project. When we get back to New London, we’ll give their sound head a thorough evaluation, just for the experience of seeing it work.

2339 As we make this observation, our sense of well-being is shattered again: the active sonar is reported out of commission; cause not yet determined. It is the report I have been dreading most. We still have thousands of miles to travel through not-too-well-sounded waters. Without a fathometer, it is essential that we keep our active sonar in commission.

Thursday, 7 April 1960 0050 A thorough check of the active sonar has revealed that a tube has failed from long continuous usage. With a new tube installed, the equipment is functioning as well as ever, and Will Adams, Bob Bulmer and I are greatly relieved. Bob, having officially relieved Will as Navigator when we left Lombok behind, finally feels light hearted enough to accuse his mentor of having deliberately caused the sonar failure to take place at this precise moment. Will grins. “Of course I did,” he says. At which point I don’t know whether to believe these clowns or not.

Sunday, 10 April 1960 0000 Ventilation secured after a thorough sweep-out of the atmosphere of the ship. One of the requirements of the cruise is to conduct a sealed-ship test under controlled conditions for observation of certain phenomena. Our time with a sealed atmosphere will not approach that of Seawolf in 1958, mainly because of the expense of all that oxygen, nor does it need to, so far as this test is concerned. But since we are a brand-new ship, this is one of the things we need to accomplish merely to develop our own techniques and limiting factors.

Until now, except for short periods for testing of our equipment, it had been our practice to come to periscope depth every night for about an hour, and run up the ventilation pipe for a sweep-out of the bad air and replacement with fresh sea air. Life under these conditions had its rigorous aspects. Little by little, during the day, the oxygen content of our atmosphere was reduced as the 183 men on board Triton slowly consumed it. Toward the end of the day, it usually had become oppressively low.

We were not concerned about the accumulation of carbon dioxide, for one or more of the carbon-dioxide-removal apparatuses was run continuously and we had no difficulty in keeping the carbon-dioxide content under control. The average consumption of oxygen by active persons, however, is just under a cubic foot of oxygen per man per hour, and a very close correlation was immediately found to exist between our oxygen consumption and the days of the week. On Sundays, when there was very little going on beyond normal ship cruising routine, the oxygen consumption per man approximated seven-tenths of a cubic foot per hour. Friday was Field Day, with all hands up and turning to, and the average consumption this day was always about one cubic foot per hour. As a consequence, one of the disadvantages of our Friday Field Days was the labored breathing which afflicted all hands the last few hours prior to running up the snorkel pipe.

We discovered other phenomena, too. For example, increasing the pressure of the ship’s internal atmosphere had no effect upon the percentage of oxygen it contained, but it did have an effect upon the total amount of oxygen in each cubic foot of atmosphere. Thus, deliberately increasing the air pressure in the ship by a pound or so per square inch greatly improved the ability of our laboring lungs to draw in oxygen, and consequently everyone felt better. The difficulty with this scheme was that as soon as we began ventilating to the atmosphere, the pressure would reduce to normal. If we luxuriated in hyper-pressure atmosphere for too long a period, some of us might temporarily be exposed to an atmosphere below the minimum allowed oxygen content before our ventilation blowers had managed to sweep out the bad air.

It is remarkable how much stability the human body requires within the wide range of the possible conditions of nature. Ideally, man should be in a temperature of around 70°; by various stratagems, he is able to exist over a temperature range of perhaps 120°, centered on the 70° midpoint. But temperatures in nature can go down to a minus 459° F—which it does in outer space—or up into the thousands of degrees.

Man is acclimated to twenty-one percent of oxygen in the air at normal pressure. He suffers acutely if the oxygen percentage drops only a few points, to seventeen percent, for example, or rises much above twenty-one percent. At the time that we in Triton began to feel distressed, we would have consumed only one-sixth of the available oxygen in the atmosphere of the ship. Were the oxygen percentage to rise above the norm of twenty-one, we should probably experience most of the effects of ordinary intoxication.

There was really nothing unusual in these “discoveries” which we were making; submariners have known and applied the principles for years. But there is no substitute for experience, which opens many new avenues of inquiry.

For example, there was the question whether gradual oxygen reduction each day for a prolonged period would have any damaging consequences on us. The effects of depriving the human body of oxygen all at once to an excessive degree are well known. But what about minor deprivation for many days? No observable deleterious effects have been noted, but many highly qualified medical people have recently been devoting considerable research to this question. The problem ranges from the physical to the psychological, from an environment of oxygen deficiency to one in which the entire atmosphere is mechanically controlled and stabilized at some optimum point.

From the Log:

The Medical Research Laboratory in New London has been pursuing this particular project for a long time, the first announced test being Operation Hideout in the mothballed submarine Haddock in 1953. Doctors Ben Weybrew and Jim Stark have been discussing the sealed-atmosphere test for several days, and finally have proposed a procedure. We will remain sealed for approximately 2 weeks, running various physical and psychological tests among selected volunteers from the crew. Somewhere during the mid-point of this period we will put out the smoking lamp for an extended time. Careful checking of all factors will continue for several more days before terminating the study.

The purpose of the no-smoking test was partly psychological, but there was a question of atmospheric research, too. Smoking, nuclear submariners had discovered, was their only source of carbon monoxide. In a completely sealed atmosphere, accumulation of carbon monoxide could not be permitted because of its deadly brain-damaging tendency. Expensive equipment had been devised and installed to convert it into carbon dioxide, so that it might be “scrubbed” from our atmosphere along with the carbon dioxide exhaled from our lungs.

One of the questions raised was whether or not this equipment was worth the cost; or whether it would be better to prohibit smoking in a completely sealed atmosphere, instead of going to the added expense and trouble of installing the carbon-monoxide removal apparatus purely because of the psychological satisfaction that some men got out of smoking. All this, of course, has a direct bearing on the endurance of submarines at sea—their ability to cope with the various problems they would undoubtedly encounter, and the efficiency with which they might be expected to operate under various severe conditions. The data that we were helping to gather would become available to our first space pioneers also.

Everyone on board was determined to go through with the test in good heart and spirit, but as the dread day for putting out the smoking lamp approached, various reactions were noticeable among crew members. The nonsmokers were lording it over the others, describing with great relish how the test would have no effect whatsoever on them, and there was an aura of apprehension among the habitual smokers. Even before we put the smoking lamp out, the witticisms had an edge to them, and some of the protestations that “smoking don’t mean that much to me” developed a noticeably defensive tinge.

One saving feature in the eyes of many was the fact that both doctors on board, Commander Jim Stark, who dabbled in psychology, and Dr. Ben Weybrew, professional psychologist attached to the Medical Research Laboratory, were themselves inveterate smokers. Weybrew created quite a stir, therefore, the evening before the test was scheduled to begin, when he casually tossed his pipe into the garbage ejection chute. He, at least, was ready to make his sacrifice for science, and it was said that he whistled happily as he prepared the charts and the graphs he would draw as a result of our sufferings.

One thing we did notice as soon as we sealed up the ship: maintaining our atmosphere at a common standard level of oxygen content was a far more comfortable way to exist. Among other things, the air conditioners had less work to do; once the humidity was brought to the optimum level, it was easy to maintain. Previously, and by contrast, the fresh air drawn in from just a foot or two above the surface of the tropical seas was extremely humid and salty, dampening the entire ship for a few hours until the air-conditioning machinery had caught up with it again. To illustrate a second advantage: perhaps I personally had become accustomed to the daily deprivation of oxygen, or perhaps I had simply been unaware of my reduced efficiency. At any rate, I found myself more alert, more alive, and less tired when breathing the artificial atmosphere than when we were taking daily snorts of fresh air.

Everyone on board, I believe, had a somewhat similar reaction. We settled down quickly to the pleasantest period of the entire trip and, deeply submerged, crossed the Indian Ocean without physical contact with the outside in any way.

The Indian Ocean, by the way, is to the US sailor one of the least-known oceans. Yet it was one of the better-known waters of Renaissance days. According to the chart, it is uniformly deep, its bottom scarred by relatively few of the peaks and valleys familiar to the Atlantic and Pacific. In color, the water seems somewhat bluer, more transparent, with less marine life and less natural or artificial flotsam and jetsam.

During the war, the southern part of the Indian Ocean was especially active with German surface raiders and the British task forces set out to intercept them; and there were German, Japanese, British, and Dutch submarines on patrol in the area as well. So far as America is concerned, however, it is one of the oceans we still have to discover. Now that knowledge of the sea is of greater importance to our country than ever before, it is probably time we learned some of the intimate details of this great and unexplored body of water.

Monday, 11 April 1960 A message from ComSubPac relays information from ComSubLant announcing prospective promotion of Chief Petty Officers Bennett, Blair, Hampson, Hardman and Loveland to the rank of Ensign, and of the following First-Class Petty Officers to the rate of Chief Petty Officer: Hoke, Meaders, Lehman, Mather, Pion, Stott, Bloomingdale, Flasco, Fickel and Tambling. There is jubilation among the lucky advancement winners and good sportsmanship among the others. But this can’t be the entire promotion list, since examinations for all rates down to Third Class were held before departure. More information should be forthcoming soon. Five Ensigns and ten Chief Petty Officers is a tremendous haul for any single ship, particularly one with a crew of only 159 enlisted men. It is a tribute to the overall capability of our crew, and to the hard effort of the men themselves. The fact that their tests were taken during an extremely heavy watch-standing schedule, to which was added strenuous overtime preparation for an unusual cruise, adds to the accomplishment.

The opportunity for hazing some of the lucky ones is too good to be missed. One by one they are called before me to be asked, in a grave voice, “What have you done to cause ComSubLant to send a message to us about your actions?” The look of incredulity on the faces of the first ones to arrive was real enough, but all ships have a sort of extra-sensory communication among the crew, and I doubt if the last few were particularly perturbed by my feigned severity.

Tuesday, 12 April 1960 Seventh babygram—sixth girl, 9 1bs., born 8 April; father, Bruce F. Gaudet, IC3. Both mother and baby fine. Poor Gaudet had been getting a little worried, but he feels fine now.

Six days a week all during our cruise, the Triton Eagle had faithfully come out in the early morning hours, composed directly on the duplicating machine paper by editor in chief Harold J. Marley and laboriously run off on the printing machine, with the ship’s office swept up afterward, by Audley R. Wilson, Radarman First Class, who comprised the entire staff of the paper outside of the editor. Except for one memorable day when Editor Marley took all his news from a three-year-old edition of the New York Times (detected by very few people, surprisingly), we had managed to get up-to-date news. Every day or so I managed to come up with a column of some kind for the paper—either “The Skipper’s Corner” or another, which I fondly hoped was a humor column, supposedly written by an unidentified person named Buck. Buck was an unregenerated sailor, butt of all jokes, apt only in hiding from work and the “OM” (myself, the “Old Man”). Theoretically, nobody knew that Buck was the “OM” himself.

There was a moment of concern early in the game when I realized that Lawrence W. Beckhaus might equate Triton’s Buck column with a similar one in Salamonie’s Bunker Gazette, but a sharp sally from Buck, in which Larry was admonished to keep his mouth shut, had, I supposed, the desired result.

Had one never experienced it before, the large share of our daily lives occupied by this little two-page newspaper might have appeared surprising. To me it was not, for I had seen the same thing before on long, uninterrupted cruises. The moment the ship gets to port, however, there is no further interest, and the ship’s newspaper may as well cease publication until you are once again at sea.

The highest point of the Triton Eagle’s journalistic achievement was probably reached during our traverse of the Indian Ocean, when it published daily reports on an extended controversy involving a mythical “two-gauge goose gun.” Tom Thamm and Chief Petty Officers Loveland and Blair were arraigned on opposite sides of the argument, which ran for several issues, and everyone had a lot of fun with it.

From the Log:

Friday, 15 April 1960 0000 Out goes the smoking lamp, eliciting many unfavorable comments from the smokers, a great air of superiority from the nonsmokers.

All hands have been carefully briefed for some time as to the purpose of the test and how it is supposed to be run, but we have avoided giving any indication as to the intended length, stating only that the operation order prescribes it shall not exceed 10 days. Ben Weybrew tells me privately that it will not have to be nearly that long, but that he wishes to avoid any complications from anticipation of an early “relight.” In preparation for it LCDR Bob Fisher (SC) USN, [the only supply corps officer attached to and serving on board a submarine] has laid in a stock of candy and chewing gum. It is shortly discovered that some of the men had apparently also brought along a supply of chewing tobacco, which introduces an unforeseen variable into the experiment. Some of the volunteer subjects had neglected to mention their intention to chew tobacco in place of smoking during this period. It was noted, too, that cigars are at a premium since they can be cut into short lengths and chewed also.

Saturday, 16 April 1960 The smoking lamp is still out and the psychological reaction building up is surprising. Although I had not felt repressed by the atmosphere in any way previously, there is to me an indefinable but definite improvement to it. It feels cleaner, somehow better, and so do I. Will Adams agrees, being also a nonsmoker, but nobody else does. Tom Thamm announces that the limits of human endurance had been reached in the first 3 hours, so far as the smokers of the ship were concerned, and the remaining time of the test is purely a sadistic torture invented by Weybrew, Stark and myself.

Thamm is a tall very blond type whose meticulous and precise approach to everything conceals a highly developed artistic nature. He is Auxiliary Division Officer and, as such, works for Don Fears, our Engineer. Tom is in charge of most of the auxiliary systems and appliances throughout the ship, such as hydraulics, air conditioning, carbon-dioxide removal equipment, auxiliary diesel engine, main vent mechanisms and the like.

We have nearly crossed the Indian Ocean. Tomorrow, we expect to arrive at the Cape of Good Hope. It has been a pleasant trip, unmarred by submerged peaks or other alarms. The water is as uniformly deep as anywhere we have seen, not too cold, but cool and beautiful through the periscope. It is one of the least known oceans, bounded on the north by the subcontinent of India, on the west by Africa and on the east by the Malay Archipelago and Australia. Its southern boundary is Antarctica. One of its noticeable characteristics, at least so far as we have observed, is a consistently heavy sea condition, and in this it resembles the Atlantic. Every time we are at periscope depth for observations, it appears that a state 3 to 4 sea is running [corresponding to wave heights from 5 to 10 feet], enough to make surface ships uncomfortable.

A matter of note: LCDR Adams, now relieved from navigational chores, is concentrating full time on administrative matters, with intent of having desk cleared for the avalanche of paper work we expect upon arrival in the United States. There has been a steady flow coming out of his desk anyway, but since Lombok Strait it has tripled. And all of us dread the blizzard of paper awaiting us in New London.

So far as the no-smoking test is concerned, Weybrew and Stark contend that they have enough now to fulfill the requirement laid upon them by Medical Research Laboratory. It is also apparent, according to them, and I must confess having noticed something of the same myself, that the test has gone on just about long enough. Overt feelings of hostility are coming to the fore, expressed in a number of small ways, and there have been instances of increasing irritability. Deprived of a normal intake of mild stimulant, there obviously have been mild withdrawal symptoms among the heavier smokers in the crew.

The same is evident in the officers. Most noticeable, to me, are signs of forced gaiety, frequently with a sharp edge to it. Jim Stark, himself a heavy smoker, enjoys egging his wardroom buddies on—and this, in my opinion, is his compensation.

One night during this period, I recall asking the cause of a large red welt across the top of Jim’s baldish head. The explanation, given with suppressed mirth by his wardroom mates, was that an hour before he had been demonstrating his complete freedom from any reaction to the enforced abstinence from smoking by showing that his physical co-ordination had been unimpaired. The test he chose, hopping on one leg, might have been a good one had he taken the trouble to check his surroundings first. Without thinking, he hopped through the wardroom doorway and attempted to ram his head through the heavy aluminum beam which forms the top of the door frame.

From the Log:

These were expected manifestations of adjustment and are cause for no particular notice, but there are also one or two cases where evidence of heightened nervous reaction is accompanied by relatively poor adjustment. In a ship’s company of 183 people, something of this sort is bound to turn up. But answering my question as to what the ultimate results might be in the most severe cases, if the smoking lamp could not be relighted, the savants spread their hands expressively, “Who knows?” they say. “Most likely, if the man recognizes that it is impossible to smoke, he will psychologically adjust to it with relative ease. Symptoms will disappear or maladjustments will work themselves out.”

The point is that here in Triton the only reason for prohibiting smoking is for a test. Everyone knows it requires but one word, and the smoking lamp will be lighted. Were we in a dangerous situation where safety of the ship or life of personnel were involved, as for example in an explosive atmosphere, the entire situation would be different.

Easter Sunday, 17 April 1960 We are approaching the Cape of Good Hope. Many people will be surprised to learn that the Cape of Good Hope is not actually at the southernmost tip of Africa at all. This honor is reserved for Agulhas Point, a little more to the south. Agulhas is not, however, a prominent landmark like the Cape of Good Hope. The story goes that when a storm blew Bartholomew Diaz around the southern end of Africa, he saw nothing and actually went quite some distance northward on the east side of that continent. On his return voyage, he bestowed the name “Stormy Cape” on the most distinctive point of land in the area; it was King John of Portugal who thought of “Cape of Good Hope.”

Between Cape of Good Hope and the southern tip of Africa is a bay called “False Bay,” possibly so-named for some early maritime mishap, and a few miles to the east and south is Agulhas Point. The chart also indicates another reason why no ship is anxious to make landfall on Agulhas Point. Agulhas Bank, immediately to the south, is shallow and extends a good many miles to sea. There is also a strong prevailing current setting the sailor in toward land. In the old days, anyone sighting Agulhas Point was already in trouble, much as in the case of Cape Horn.

0600 Periscope depth to fix position with regard to Cape of Good Hope. The sky is overcast and weather not too favorable for the photo reconnaissance which we had planned. Went deep and continued running.

1136 At periscope depth with contact on Hangklip Point, South Africa. Resumed base course and speed heading for Cape of Good Hope. As we enter the Atlantic Ocean again, we observe a noticeable drop in the water temperature. At the same time, we are most anxious to notice whether there is any definable current. Charts and Sailing Directions indicate that this is the case, probably setting us to the northeast. Without a fathometer, we are staying well clear of possible shoal water in anticipation of this effect.

1330 Held Easter Sunday services. Pat McDonald brings new life to the Easter Story. The little mess-hall chapel is nearly full.

1400 At periscope depth. Cape of Good Hope is in sight through the periscope, bearing 348° true about 10½ miles. It was named thus to be a good omen for men, and we take it as such.

1408 Sighted a ship bearing 308° true about 8 miles away. Stationed the tracking party. The ship is a 6,000 to 8,000 ton tanker with a nice clipper bow, but her counter stern, tall stack and large rabbit-ear ventilators belong to a vessel of older vintage. She may pass close enough for us to obtain periscope photographs, provided she remains on her present track. Joe Roberts is standing by, itching to get a picture, and I am beginning to worry over the fact that the ship, evidently making for the Indian Ocean, may change course toward us in rounding the Cape. We will embarrass him if he sees our periscope near his intended track. In such a case, it is quite possible he might precipitantly turn in such a way as to endanger himself or us. We must remain doubly alert where probability of a course change exists, to detect the change and go deep in good time.

I always worry through all these difficult possibilities almost by reflex; and in the meantime, as the ship passes safely by, Joe Roberts has an ideal opportunity to get a picture. The ship has a black hull, clipper bow, counter stern, a white stripe below the gunwale. [The third ship we have sighted this voyage with this distinctive feature.] Her superstructure and upper works are white with black and red trim. Her foremast is painted all white and her mainmast is white for the lower one-third and black above, where her stack smoke would blacken it anyway. Both masts are stick masts. We are almost, but not quite, able to read the name on the stern.

She has no colors visible and therefore we have no knowledge as to her nationality, but she is obviously not an American, for American ships rarely present this good an appearance.

1540 Weather conditions near the Cape are going to prevent our photo reconnaissance from being as successful as we would like, but we shall close in a bit and get what we can. Mt. Vasco de Gama on the Cape of Good Hope reminds me of Diamond Head, having somewhat the same shape and dimensions, though not quite the same rugged characteristics. Possibly Good Hope is a considerably older formation. Little foliage or natural growth is visible, something of a surprise for this temperate latitude [33°S].

1618 Periscope depth once more for photographic reconnaissance. There seems to be a haze in the distance and we are unable to focus clearly upon the Cape of Good Hope. After a careful sweep panorama, we call it a day.

1721 With Cape of Good Hope bearing 117° true, distance 8 miles, took departure for St. Peter and St. Paul’s Rocks in the mid-Atlantic. We will arrive there on the 25th of April.

Monday, 18 April 1960 0000 Smoking lamp is relighted. Maybe I am a bit sadistic: no one was expecting it; so instead of directing that the word be passed to relight the smoking lamp, I strolled about the ship smoking a cigar, blowing smoke in the faces of various people and inquiring in a pleasant conversational tone, “Don’t you wish you could do this?” It took some 37 seconds for the word to get around.

As in any group, there were probably a few of our people who secretly welcomed the no-smoking edict as a crutch to help them make the break from the habit. By far the majority had no intention of stopping; and it is noticeable that few, if any, have continued their abstinence after the smoking lamp was once lighted. An exception is Tom Thamm, who had entered into a no-swearing pact with his two friends, Chiefs Loveland and Blair. Terms were that the first man to breach the rules would continue to abstain for another day after the smoking lamp was relighted. There may have been some collusion in this case, for, shortly after the terms had been agreed upon, Jim Stark appeared on the scene and yanked a yellow hair out of the middle of the Thamm chest while the others distracted his attention.

Thamm’s yelping malediction toward the good Doctor was witnessed with glee by all three plotters; and now Thamm sits grimly in the wardroom inhaling second-hand smoke, mumbling at the faithlessness of all shipmates, vowing that he will carry out his part of the wager, come what may, and swearing by the few remaining hairs on his chest that Messrs. Stark, Blair and Loveland will regret the episode.

1105 We are passing near a charted seamount and sure enough, the echo-ranging sonar detects it. We are becoming expert at this operation and it is a reassuring one.

Wednesday, 20 April 1960 0100 Crossed from east to west longitude.

Today is my birthday and also Lt. Sawyer’s. After dinner I repaired to my cabin to work on this report.

1900 Chief of the Ship Fitzjarrald came knocking on my door saying, “Something is wrong down in the mess hall, Captain; we need you down there right away.” This is a strange message for the skipper of a ship to receive.

“What’s the matter, is there a fight?” I asked, starting up from my desk. It was only a jump down the ladder to the lower deck and forward one compartment into the crew’s mess hall, where I was greeted by popping flash bulbs, a raucous rendition of “Happy Birthday to You” and a tremendous birthday cake. The cake, prepared by Ramon D. Baney, CS2(SS), was about 2 feet square and 2 inches thick, with great extravagant gobs of frosting all over it. Ray Meadows, Joe Roberts and William R. Hadley were there too, of course, with cameras en echelon.

Earlier that afternoon there had been a cake and coffee ceremony for George Sawyer in the wardroom; I was, quite candidly, looking forward to another cake at dinner, and was caught completely by surprise. It has been a very pleasant day with much good cake eaten by all.

A third birthday for which April 20th used to be remembered in certain quarters went unnoticed: one Adolf Hitler, now deceased.

Friday, 22 April 1960 Our 8th babygram arrived today for Gerald W. Gallagher, IC1(SS), who has an 8 1b. boy born on the 20th. Gallagher, all smiles, informs me delightedly that the child, if a boy, was to have been named Timothy Edward. With Edward in his name and April 20th for his birth certificate, this lad will go far, and in testimony thereof, this calls for a cigar in reverse. Timothy Edward Gallagher’s Old Man gets the cigar.

Saturday, 23 April 1960 Tonight we are advised by a message that twenty-five more of our ship’s company have successfully passed the examinations for advancement in rate and are soon to be promoted. The news causes excited congratulations throughout the ship. Our statisticians are immediately busy and come up with the following rather remarkable set of figures: excluding the 5 Chief Petty Officers who are designated for commissioned rank, but including the First Class promoted to Chief Petty Officer and the 25 just named, a total of 60% of our men who took the exam have made the next higher rate. Counting only those listed in tonight’s dispatch, the percentage is 69%; and if one adds in the 5 new Ensigns, a total of 40 men, or 25% of the crew of 159, are to be promoted. Few ships in the US Navy will equal this performance.

Sunday, 24 April 1960 0436 Completed sealed-ship test, having run sealed for exactly two weeks. Remaining sealed is considerably less strenuous than ventilating once a day, and we are sorry to go back to the earlier routine. When you ventilate, you are attempting to conserve oxygen and at the same time trying to minimize time at periscope depth. It naturally develops that just before you ventilate the ship, her internal atmosphere is at its lowest in oxygen, its highest in carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. At this time cigarettes are difficult to light, a little exertion sets one to panting, and generally one does not feel in the best of form. On the other hand, with the ship sealed, you maintain a steady atmosphere and set your equipment to keep it that way.

During the sealed-ship test we had replenished our oxygen in two ways. First, there were the oxygen banks—great steel cylinders in which pure oxygen was stored under high pressure. Located external to Triton’s pressure hull, in the ballast tanks, they were piped to manifolds forward and aft where we could automatically control the rate of revitalization as the pressure in the banks dwindled.

Our second revitalization system made use of a device borrowed from miners, who had for years employed “oxygen candles” as an emergency oxygen source. Our “candles” were much larger than the miners’, but they were made of the same materials and were handled in a very similar manner. Under average conditions, we burned them in a specially designed oxygen furnace at the rate of two per hour, though as previously mentioned, this rate had to be increased on Fridays. Each “candle,” when exhausted, produced a large, heavy iron klinker, which in due course found its way to the garbage ejector.

The greatest problem in sealed operations, however, did not lie in maintaining the requisite oxygen content in our ship’s internal atmosphere. It was a matter of retaining the atmosphere itself, and this was a problem that remained with us the whole cruise.

To understand this, it must first be appreciated that many of a submarine’s mechanisms are operated by compressed air. After it is used, the air simply passes into the interior of the ship, where it becomes part of the ship’s internal atmosphere. During the first weeks of the cruise, therefore, the pressure built up slowly during the day and was suddenly vented off every night, when we extended our ventilation pipe to the surface and opened its cap. We discovered immediately that running all the air compressors at maximum capacity during the time we were renewing our atmosphere from outside was not enough to recharge as much air into our air banks as had been used. We were, in effect, slowly losing air. To combat this, we resorted to starting the air compressors well before raising our snorkel pipe, thus pumping the precious air back into the high-pressure air banks instead of belching it out when we opened the snorkel-head valve. This had the incidental disadvantage of increasing our “low-oxygen” symptoms and increasing the time we suffered from oxygen deficiency, but, worse, we still were not able to recharge as much air as we had used during the day.

Every night a check of the air banks showed that the maximum air-bank pressure we reached on charge was slightly less than it had been the previous night. Without compressed air a submarine cannot operate, a fact which had lain in my consciousness ever since depth charges had so damaged both of Trigger’s air compressors that it looked as if neither could be made to run again.

In Triton’s case, barring a breakdown of our compressors, we could solve the problem by merely leaving the snorkel up longer and waiting until the compressors had been able to retrieve their position. But to do so would require a sacrifice of speed of advance, since neither periscope nor snorkel tube could withstand cruising speed. And even if we in this manner recovered the air lost, it seemed to me that this would be an admission of our inability to operate our ship properly.

Our real problem lay in the fact that not all the compressed air used during the day was being discharged back into the ship’s interior volume. Some of it, somehow, was escaping to the sea. Even after “pumping down” to atmospheric pressure, there was every day slightly less air in the air banks. Obviously, this had to be resolved before beginning the sealed-ship tests.

If there is no leak in an external air line, the most logical place to lose air in a submarine is in blowing sanitary tanks, and this was where, it turned out, we were losing ours. Sanitary tanks, as their name implies, are the collecting tanks for all the waste products from the ship, human and otherwise. Periodically they must be emptied, which is done with compressed air. Considerable pressure of air is required to overcome the pressure of the sea at depth, and when the blowing is finished, all this air must be vented—released—back into the ship. Despite large canisters of activated carbon filters in the vent line, the odor this air brings back with it is pungently distinguishable and fermentedly corrupt. A “good blow” scours the tank, and carries more of the noxious vapor out with the water, and investigation developed the possibility that a little too much “scouring” was costing us a lot of valuable compressed air—not to mention the betraying bubbles thereby sent to the surface.

During the war, we all preferred a little temporary stink to enemy bombs, and sanitary tanks were therefore never blown completely dry when submerged in enemy waters. In our new and modern submarine, this same old smelly lesson had to be learned again, though for an admittedly different reason. In structions were issued to the tank blowers to keep a sizable water seal in all sanitary tanks at all times and to the rest of the crew to put clothespins on their noses if they were too uncomfortable during the venting periods.

The program was a success. Our air compressors began to gain on the air banks, and every night the final pressure stood a little higher instead of a little lower. And we suffered gamely whenever a sanitary tank was blown.

The man I felt sorriest for was Frank McConnell, the Electric Boat Guarantee Engineer. Good shipmate that he was, Frank never voiced a complaint, but more than once I saw him distractedly jump out of his bunk in the “attic” above the wardroom, unable to stay there longer. It may have been accidental—naturally the sanitary tank vent discharge had to go somewhere—but Will Adams said the vent piping was positively diabolical in its perfect aim at the head of Frank’s bunk.

As we ended the sealed-ship period, our air problems were behind us, but the memory remained. I found myself thinking that our first space travelers would have to solve this same problem in even more rigorous measure. Should they, through maloperation or misfortune, be unable to conserve their air supply, there would be no ready replenishment from an inexhaustible source only a few hundred feet away.

From the Log:

We have learned a lot about Triton during these two weeks of sealed-ship operations and are extremely gratified with the results. Among other things, we have had no difficulty at all in retaining our precious air inside the ship. But it was a good thing that we recognized the problem, or we might have.