Word: subs
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...submarine, men stood their watches in the eerie green glow of instrument lights. The prison silence was broken only by the whir of a generator, the purr of a hydraulic pump, the leaky-faucet sound of water trickling down the packing gland of the periscope barrel. The sub broke water, the bridge hatch swung open, the skipper and his lookouts scrambled topside. There they began the countdown required before launching a 1,000-mile Regulus-type missile. The sub rocked quietly, like a metronome. After precisely 15 minutes came the fire command. A light flashed skyward, headed northwest...
...light, in fact, was the small green flare of a Very-pistol shot from the submarine's bridge. And the sub was the U.S.S. Sea Leopard, participating in an eight-hour hunter-killer exercise ordered by a man with one of the most critically important jobs in the U.S. Navy: lean, brown-eyed Rear Admiral John Smith ("Jimmy") Thach, 53, boss of the Navy's new ASW (antisubmarine warfare) Task Group Alfa...
Alfa's beefsteak includes Thach's flagship, the aircraft carrier Valley Forge, eight destroyers, two submarines, a squadron of Valley Forge-based Grumman 52F sub-hunting aircraft, a helicopter squadron, a land-based patrol squadron of P2Vs, blimps, 5,000 men, a vast electronic network of electronic eyes and ears. Its armament is a marvel of the Atomic Age: included are nuclear depth charges, nicknamed Betty and Lulu, each with sufficient explosive force to lift the entire U.S. Navy (901 ships) clear out of the water...
...surface. Instead of the expected salvo of two depth charges, Thach heaves only one from a destroyer. The submarine skipper waits anxiously for the second charge-just as a man in bed, hearing his upstairs neighbor drop one shoe, frets sleepily as he listens for the second. The sub skipper waits and waits. Nothing happens. Curiosity becomes overpowering. At length, the curious skipper decides to take just a little peek. Up goes his periscope-wham-the other shoe...
...remembers earth distance and direction traveled from a known starting point. One of the best systems was developed by North American Aviation, Inc. for the Navaho missile. The Navaho was scrapped, but last February the Navy ordered a Navaho guidance system installed in Nautilus. It was aboard the sub nine weeks later-and it seems likely to change marine navigation forever...