Around the World Submerged: The Voyage of the Triton

Some time in February our first reactor received its load of precious nuclear fuel. As “Officer-in-Charge,” I signed the inspection report and somewhat nervously acknowledged responsibility for a reactor core worth several million dollars. As soon as it was received, the uranium fuel was stored beneath a headplate weighing twenty tons, and, though it has been partially used up, I am very sure it is still there.

Every man in the ship was anxious to be free of the building yard when the construction work and test program were finally finished. Triton’s hatches were then shut, the gangways connecting our ship to the docks were removed, and we warped her bodily out into the slip between our dock and the next. In this position we spent the next four days, secured tightly by seven heavy cables to the docks on either side, yet to all intents and purposes at sea.

We called this long drill period a “fast cruise,” and it deserved its name in more ways than one. We were fast to the dock, but the series of drills that were performed during those ninety-six hours were also fast—and very serious. Our day started at about 6:00 A.M. and ended roughly at 0200 the following morning. We stood watches around the clock as though actually under way—and an inherent submarine advantage immediately became apparent. The only time we consciously realized that we were still alongside the dock was when we held periscope drill.

I planned one of these drills to coincide with the moment the Patrick Henry, second of our Polaris-type submarines, slid down the ways into the Thames River. Her skipper, Commander (now Captain) H. E. Shear, USN, had been executive officer in Trigger II years ago, and this moment, when his great new ship was launched, was one I wanted to share with him. Patrick Henry hit the water two hundred yards forward of our bow, and I watched it all through the periscope.

The “fast cruise” over, a day to catch our breath and to load a few provisions aboard, and then the day of Triton’s first under-way test, scheduled for Sunday, the twenty-sixth of September, 1959, was at hand.

Both Electric Boat Division and the Office of the Chief of Information, Navy Department, were anxious to get photographs. Someone, somewhere, had apparently decided that a blimp might be a better platform for photographs than the helicopters and airplanes usually used. I paid no attention; this was someone else’s affair. My job was to run the ship, and if proper authority wanted a blimp to join Triton at sea and photograph us as we put our ship through her paces, that was all right with me. But it was at this point and over this issue, at about eleven o’clock the night before we were to get under way, that it seemed for a time the trials would be delayed.

It had been a long, hard day, starting about 0500 when I had been called from my bunk in Triton. We had attempted to cover so much territory with our drills during the “fast cruise” that no one had had adequate sleep. Completing the “cruise” and making preparation for the next day’s excursion, we had been fighting our way through detail on detail. Hundreds of problems, apparently, still remained to be taken care of. I finally got home about 10:00 P.M., and was slowly unwinding before getting a restful sleep in anticipation of the morrow’s crucial trials. We were scheduled to get under way at 0630, which meant no more than six hours sleep; so my reaction to the telephone call that night was not a happy one.

On the other end of the wire an instantly recognized, irate voice demanded to know why I was having a blimp join Sunday’s operation. Vainly I protested that I knew nothing about the blimp, that my only interest was in carrying out the tests successfully. Admiral Rickover held that the blimp might crash at sea and that in this case we would waste valuable time fishing half-drowned sailors out of the water instead of carrying out the necessary trials. My arguments, that the safety record of the Navy’s lighter-than-air arm was better than that of aircraft, got nowhere. Although I wasn’t even sure who had ordered it, the discussion, if such it might be called, ended with my promise to cancel operations for the blimp—somehow.

Several phone calls later, this was successfully accomplished; no one seemed upset at the sudden change, except me—and possibly the people who had already journeyed to Lakehurst to board the airship. But the tension of the days and weeks just past suddenly gripped me. The last-minute “flap” over, I tossed and turned in my bed for hours, unable to sleep, unable to quiet my whirling brain, thinking out every detail, previewing every move I was to make with Triton in the morning.

A few months later, the very blimp that had been assigned to photograph us crashed at sea while searching for a lost sailboat, losing seventeen out of a crew of twenty.