Red Ice

I hoped to get fairly close to the Siberian coast in order to lock the raiding party out of the submarine. A lockout was a procedure in which divers exited a submerged submarine. It was a ticklish maneuver that required a rehearsal of both the frogmen and the submarine’s crew. Underwater, the submarine’s propellers generated a furious suction. Any error could suck a drifting frogman into the whirling propeller and certain death. The sub’s captain had agreed to a rehearsal and scheduled it for the next day.

The rehearsal centered around the submarine’s forward escape trunk, a compartment about the size of two telephone booths. At the top of the trunk lay a hatch that led to the outer deck of the submarine. At the bottom of the compartment was another hatch, which opened into the sub’s working spaces. When the trunk was completely flooded, a small lip around the outer edge of the top hatch trapped a donut of air several inches in depth. In an emergency, a diver could just barely thrust his head into the donut-shaped bubble for breathable air.

The lockout procedure was hazardous, yet simple in principle. By operating the controls within the trunk or the dual controls in the lower passageway, we could gradually flood the trunk with water from the sub’s reserve tanks. Once the pressure inside the trunk was slightly greater than the pressure outside the sub’s hull, the top hatch, which was already undogged and only held shut by the outside pressure, would pop open and the divers in the trunk could swim out. From there they would glide along a safety line, which stretched from the top hatch to the periscope. The line kept the divers from drifting back into the sub’s screws.

I would have preferred to use oxygen rebreathers—Draegers—which left no telltale bubbles. However, a diver breathing pure oxygen under pressure stood a good chance of blacking out at depths exceeding thirty feet. The distance between this submarine’s hatch and the surface, running at periscope depth, came uncomfortably close to that depth. Draegers were therefore out, open-circuit scuba was the rig of the week.

The lockout was one way of deploying raiders in enemy waters undetected. It placed great demands on divers, especially in waters as cold as the Okhotsk, but it allowed the submarine to stay below the surface. Submariners dreaded the detectability and vulnerability of surface running.

The next evening we assembled the men for the drill. Every man wore a bulky bubble dry suit. These suits were warmer, but more cumbersome than the old-fashioned dry suits we had worn for Kunashiri.

The first diver pair, Puckins and Lutjens, climbed up into the trunk and secured the lower hatch. As the assigned safety divers, they wore single-hose regulators with octopus extensions. Puckins operated the controls inside the trunk. Dravit, his ankle cast propped on the lower knife edge of the hatchway, stood by the series of valves and pipes that duplicated Puckins’s controls within the trunk. Puckins announced over the waterproof intercom each adjustment as he made it.

“Flooding.”

I could hear the pumps forcing water into the trunk. Dravit repeated each message back to Puckins.

I could imagine the rising water level, first knee high, then waist high, then chest high…

“Tell him to have Lutjens put his mouthpiece in and test it below water level.” It was a routine command. The divers had, of course, made a cursory regulator check when they had strapped on their tanks.

“Lutjens… is having… trouble.”

The resonance of Puckins’s words had changed as water poured into the trunk. I could hear coughing in the background over the hum of the pumps. Puckins vented the trunk.

“Try yours… he may have to buddy-breathe off your octopus rig.”

More coughing and gagging.

“Something wrong”—cough—“getting water through the”—cough—“regulator…. Water’s real high… nearly to the hatch lip.”

“Get up into the bubble. Don’t touch any of the controls.”

“Captain Dravit, take over, using your controls. Abort the lockout. Flood down the trunk. Whatever we do, we can’t lose the bubble. Chief, we are aborting the drill.”

The bubble was now their only source of air. If Dravit manipulated the controls in the wrong order, the bubble would slip out the wrong pipe and the divers would drown, trapped in a dark round coffin of steel.

“Flooding down.”

The pumps reversed flow. I realized I was in a cold sweat.

When the trunk had finally emptied, Lutjens opened the lower hatch, and the two shaken divers climbed out. Wickersham grabbed their regulators and pried them open with a screwdriver.

“Mr. Frazer, take a look at these.” Wickersham held out the two regulators.

“No mushroom valves.”