Barracuda: Final Bearing

“OWN SHIP IS USS GREENVILLE, SUBMERGED OPERATIONS, EIGHTY NAUTICAL MILES SOUTHWEST OF TOKYO BAY. IN THIS SCENARIO, HOSTILITIES HAVE BROKEN OUT BETWEEN THE U.S. AND JAPAN. OWN SHIP’S MISSION IS TO SINK OUTBOUND DESTINY NUCLEAR ATTACK SUBMARINE COMING OUT OF TOKYO BAY ENROUTE TO THE PACIFIC. BEGIN SIMULATION.”

Admiral Pacino looked around. Something seemed wrong.

He sensed it the moment he walked into the darkened control room. He tried to identify the source of his uneasiness but his thoughts were interrupted by the voice of the officer of the deck announcing, “The admiral is in the control room.”

“Carry on,” Pacino said, looking up to the periscope stand where Comdr. Bruce Phillips presided over his battlestations crew. “Captain Phillips, please go ahead.” “Aye, Admiral,” Phillips said, turning away from Pacino to look at the control-room displays below him.

The room was completely dark, rigged for black, lit only by the backwash of light from the firecontrol console screens and the instrument faces mounted on the ship-control console, the periscope stand and at various points in the overhead. As Pacino’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could make out the watchstanders crammed into a room the size of a small den. Three were in the ship-control station up forward, the seats and console arrangement looking like it had been transplanted from a 747 cockpit, except that instead of windows there were rows of instruments monitoring the nuclear submarine’s course, speed, depth, angle, engine speed and control surface positions. Two men sat in leather seats on either side of a central console crammed with rows of switches and knobs, each man holding a control yoke exactly like that of an airplane. Behind the console an older heavier man leaned forward, supervising the first two. To the left was a large wraparound panel where another crewman sat facing rows of dials and switches, two large monitor screens set in the panel dimly flashing system-status displays with diagrams of pipes and tanks.

Behind the cockpit setup was the elevated periscope stand, the platform rising eighteen inches off the surrounding deck with polished stainless-steel railing enclosing it. The stand was called “the conn,” since the officer of the deck controlled the ship from the platform.

The two stainless steel poles penetrating the stand were the periscopes, both useless since the sub was too deep to see anything but darkness. On the conn Captain Phillips and his officer of the deck, a young lieutenant, stood side by side, the lieutenant unconsciously mimicking the older captain’s stance and square-jawed squint at the room below.

On the starboard side of the conn was a long row of consoles, each with a television monitor screen. The row was the attack center, where the machines figured out where the enemy submarine was and programmed weapons to take him out. When Pacino had commanded a submarine the consoles were called the firecontrol system, before the separate ship’s computers were linked and integrated, the row now part of a combatcontrol suite.

Pacino looked at the displays on the console screens, surprisingly empty.

Aft of the periscope pedestal were two plotting tables, one used for navigation, the chart showing Tokyo Roads, the small islands and the main traffic approach channel into Tokyo Bay. The ship’s position was marked with a glowing dot off the island of Inamba-Jima, barely over the hundred-fathom curve, very shallow water for a deepdraft submarine. The second table was crowded with two officers and an enlisted plotter, staring at a blank white sheet of tracing paper since there was no enemy to track.

On the port side of the periscope stand were rows of navigation equipment. Set into the overhead were radio control panels, television screens, chronometer indicators, cables and valves. One of the television monitors between the ship control area and the attack center was dark, since it played the view out of the periscope. The second was above the middle firecontrol console display and was lit in red and lined with what looked like vertical scratches — the sonar display repeater. Pacino looked at the screen, which showed that the sea around them was empty.

The crew seemed aware of him, yet was ignoring him, which gave him an odd feeling of being almost invisible.

Pacino glanced around the room again, beginning to feel plugged into the tactical situation, at one with the sea and the ship, the warm feeling he had once felt in his own control room on the Seawolf, but the warmth stopped as he realized that never again would he command a nuclear submarine, a job now reserved for the young. He looked at the captain, Comdr. Bruce Phillips, and envied him.

In stark contrast to Pacino, Phillips was short, with crewcut blond hair and a muscular build. The crewcut Pacino understood, since it was plain even in the dim light of the room that Phillips’ hair had been receding.