Poopie Suits Series, Book 7

History – US Submarine Force

Date Published: 12-09-2019

Exhilarating true stories from the history of the US Submarine Force. Life
threatening sudden emergencies, fearless rescues, famous skippers,
innovative ingenuity while at sea, a unique baseball game at the North Pole,
a man with an indomitable will to survive in WWII, and a lot more.

Organized by themes, you can read any story alone. An Audio Version has
been narrated by a professional narrator who rode 6 subs himself.  The
nuance, color, and sense of being there clearly comes out in this audio
book. Since its inception, this book has been our Best Seller of our 7 books
with true stories of the US Sub Force.  It has 329 Global Reviews on
Amazon, 88% 4 or 5 Star. If you want to learn something about submarines,
read or hear true stories of men in extremis, and want to know about the men
who volunteered to ride them…This book/audio version is for you.

This book is highly acclaimed by both submarine veterans and civilians for
his readibility, accuracy, and the content.

Ranked in Top 10 by Amazon of books of Cold War Genre.

Ranked in Top 10 in Best Submarine Books of All Time by the Book
Authority

The audio book is convenient for those who drive a lot, have vision
impairment, or just want to sit back and listen while they do other chores.

This book is a winner!

EXCERPT 

The Chopper, named for a bluefish common to the rivers of the Mississippi Valley, was one of the Balao-class submarines built during World War II. Shipyards churned out more than 100 fleet boats in this class between 1942 and 1946, making it the largest US class ever. The Chopper was launched into the Thames River at Electric Boat in February 1945. After sea trials, she was assigned to the Pearl Harbor fleet, but the war with Japan concluded before she could complete any war patrols. She was a big sub for the day – 311 feet long, a bit over 27 feet wide, and weighing in at 2,424 tons submerged.

The career of the Chopper spanned 24 years, based at her home port of Key West, Florida. The Navy kept her accomplishments characteristically close to the vest and there is only scant documentation of the comings and goings of the Chopper in the public domain. We do know that she participated in many anti-submarine warfare (ASW) training exercises over the years.

The Chopper participated in the Naval blockade of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. President John F. Kennedy stopped by unannounced for a short visit to the Chopper the following month. Imagine the officers in the wardroom looking up to see the commander-in-chief casually dropping by for some coffee and conversation! Kennedy inquired about their training missions off the Florida coast. A few years later, during one of those routine ASW outings, an unfortunate incident took place that went on to define the Chopper in the published annals of submarine history. It would be her final underway.

The commanding officer (CO) of the Chopper was LCDR Don Forbes, a 39-year old graduate of the US Naval Academy and a career officer. Forbes, a native of St. Joseph, Missouri, originally had qualified on the USS Redfish (SS-395) in the late 1950s. He then served aboard the USS Pomodon (SS-486) and the USS Raton (SS-270)—the latter as XO—before becoming the CO of the Chopper in 1967. Forbes was known as an unflappable sailor with a true zest for life. He cared for, and was respected by, his crew.

During the summer of 1968, the Chopper traveled to the Southern Hemisphere to take part in multinational training exercises with several South American navies. The trip included a traversal of the Panama Canal (the “Ditch”) and a stopover at the Galapagos Islands. The boat returned to Key West in the fall to resume her usual training schedule.

The morning of 11 February 1969 began like most others. That Tuesday morning, the Chopper departed Key West well before dawn along with a destroyer—the USS Hawkins (DD-873)—for ASW exercises in Guantanamo Bay, a few miles off the Cuban coast. Skimmer and sub were operating under fair skies and in waters about 10,000 feet deep.

At 1340 hours, Chopper was making nine knots at a depth of about 150 feet when the Officer of the Deck (OOD) gave a routine order to increase speed. The boat was in a state of normal trim, meaning that her variable ballast tanks both fore and aft had her leveled out nicely. The trim angle gauge or clinometer, which measured the boat’s up or down angle much like a carpenter’s level, was reading steady with a one-degree “down bubble”.

When the OOD ordered the helmsman to ring up Full Speed Ahead, the helmsman twisted the knob on his engine room telegraph, transmitting the order to the Maneuvering Room (“Maneuvering”), a small compartment near the stern between the After Engine Room and the After Torpedo Room. The controllerman standing watch in Maneuvering acknowledged the bell, and the Chopper began to accelerate slowly as the DC battery fed more amperage to the main propulsion motors spinning the propeller shafts. All systems were normal until 1342, when the two motor-generator sets that converted DC current from the battery to AC current suddenly tripped offline, cutting off AC power.

No one is happy when the power goes out at home. An ill-timed power outage while you’re trying to watch the final thrilling minutes of the fourth quarter might be highly annoying, but it is not dangerous (unless perhaps you’ve bet on the game with “Big Louie”…) Power loss on a submarine, though, can be catastrophic. On the Chopper, the lights, sonar systems, internal communications, radios, and, critically, panel indicators—everything powered by AC current—went dead. Compounding the immediate hazards created by the interruption of electricity (and for reasons that were never determined), the loss of AC power also caused the stern planes to suddenly pivot to “full dive”. Within 15 seconds, the bow of the submarine had tilted down 10 °, then 45 °, and quickly to an incredible 75 ° in less than a minute.

A boat that had been in complete control mere moments before had suddenly gone rogue, and the bulkheads became the decks. With the boat’s angle dipping towards near-vertical, crew members were forced to hold on to something—anything—for dear life. They all knew that a Balao-class boat had a test depth of only 400 feet. Within a minute of the AC failure, the bow was nearly 1,000 feet down, and the stern trailed at almost 700 feet. Sea pressure was squeezing Chopper like a vice, and even a pinhole leak might become a shattering torrent in a split second that could smash in electrical panels or cut a man in half.

CO Forbes had been quietly eating lunch in the wardroom when the boat suddenly lurched downwards. Forbes scrambled aft to take his command position in the conning tower, but the short trip became an acrobatic challenge for the skipper as the incline of the deck became ever steeper. By the time he reached the conning tower, it was easier to walk on the bulkheads than the deck.

In the Forward Torpedo Room, the torpedomen stood in front of the racks holding the stored torpedoes, but they quickly realized the futility of trying to stop the one-ton weapons from moving as the bow canted steeply downward. By then, loose objects were raining into the Torpedo Room from compartments further aft – coffee cups, tools, manuals and anything else not secured. Heavy steel deck plates inside the Torpedo Room were not bolted down; they broke loose and added to the multitude of dangers.

Further aft, a crew member managed to close the door between the Torpedo Room and the Forward Battery. Just after he did so, a quartermaster who had been resting in berthing tried to enter the Forward Battery and lost his balance. He crashed into the forward bulkhead, breaking his arm. In the Radio Shack, a large publication locker fell on the radioman. Flying dishes and cups shattered against the bulkhead in the galley. In the crew’s mess, a cabinet holding food condiments burst open, discharging ketchup and steak sauce. Hot coffee splashed to the deck.

The OOD, still in the topsy-turvy conning tower, knew he had to stop the descent before Chopper reached collapse depth. While desperately clinging to anything sturdy to avoid falling into the forward bulkhead, he ordered a speed of All Ahead 1/3rd. In the absence of AC power, he instructed the helmsman use the sound-powered XJA phone system to convey the order to Maneuvering. An ahead bell of any kind would seem counterintuitive under the circumstances, but most likely the OOD failed to realize the true depth or the precipitous angle that the boat had assumed. Much of the instrumentation had been taken offline when the AC bus tripped.

Murphy’s Law reared its ugly head at that moment. The OOD’s order was not acknowledged or even heard in Maneuvering, because the selector switch in the conning tower had been set to the wrong position by accident. Meanwhile, seawater began pouring into the conning tower from the seals for the periscope masts as the hull groaned under the increasing hydrostatic pressure.

The OOD then ordered the Chief of the Watch (COW), standing at the Main Hydraulic Control Station immediately below him in the Control Room, to blow the forward ballast tanks and the bow buoyancy tank. His intent was to arrest the dive by replacing the heavy seawater in those tanks with compressed air, thereby flipping buoyancy from negative to positive and thus lightening the boat.

Another problem cropped up: the air manifold operator was struggling in vain to open the hammer valves that controlled the flow of compressed air. Normally, this action merely required a vigorous turn of a crank for each air bank, but because of the boat’s steep orientation, the operator was unable to muster the strength to necessary to complete the task while trying to keep his feet. He only had one free hand at the time—his other was gripping part of the panel to avoid falling into the bulkhead below him. At least three other men standing watch in Control were also dangling by their arms from various handholds.

Fortunately, a giant of a man from Montana by the name of Jim Butler stepped in. He had left his post in Engineering and scurried forward to Control as soon as the crisis began. Butler managed to pull his considerable physique alongside the air manifold operator and, using his free hand, managed to open the valves. Butler’s heroic deed was the first of two crucial actions that almost certainly spelled the difference between life and death.

The crisis was still less than a minute old. The bow was pointing steeply down, the ship was still maintaining an “Ahead” bell, and despite the emergency blow, the situation was not correcting itself. Although blowing the ballast tanks had slowed the boat’s descent, the depth was still increasing. Men looked at each other in disbelief, muttered prayers and goodbyes to one another, and held on for what seemed like the inevitable as the hull plates loudly protested the increasing pressure.

Just when things seemed hopeless, two of the men standing watch in Maneuvering decided to take matters into their own hands. There was no time for discussion. Without an order from the Conn, Chief Petty Officer (CPO) Ken Taylor instructed the senior controllerman, Jay Arterberry to shift the motors to All Back Full. All experienced submariners know that propellers become more efficient in deeper waters; sure enough, the twin propeller shafts quickly came to a stop and then bit into the water, slowing and finally stopping the boat’s descent. The depth at the bow was estimated to be 1,100 feet. If anyone had done the math, they would have gulped to learn that Chopper was withstanding 36 tons of sea pressure per square foot!

The submarine started back towards the surface, but the roller-coaster ride was not over yet. Between 60 and 70 seconds after the power loss, the bow of the Chopper began to execute a U-turn. The boat swung wildly like a teeter-totter from bow-down to bow-up. With the forward ballast tanks blown, the bow rose to an astonishing up-angle of 83°. Some 90 seconds after the initial power loss, the Chopper was now rocketing toward the ocean surface, completely out of control. They could only hope that the Hawkins was nowhere nearby.

The sound of metal against metal was deafening. Loose objects that had gone flying through the air toward the bow just seconds before were now heading toward the stern. The steep up-angle put the men in the engineering spaces and the After Torpedo Room at the greatest risk for injury. Crewmen who had just picked themselves up from the forward bulkheads were now clinging to them. One of the stewards was struck in the head by a projectile, causing an unsightly gash but no serious injury.

In the Engine Room, Rolan Cook chose to act decisively to shut off a valve to a ruptured water line in the bilge area below him. During the moments when the boat was momentarily level, Cook scrambled to the portal leading down to the bilges. He quickly wiped debris off the hatch and opened it; in doing so, he was struck in the chest by a huge stream of water from below. Undeterred, he climbed down the ladder into the bilges and before the submarine began its dramatic upward swing, he was able to close the valve and stop the flooding. Cook’s courageous action to stem the flooding in bilges was later recognized as another key factor in the recovery of the Chopper from her dire straits.

Despite the order by the Diving Officer of the Watch (DOOW) to “get the rise off the planes”—in other words, to try to tame the nearly vertical nature of the ascent—the Chopper was fast approaching the surface and was nearly perpendicular to it. At approximately 1344, approximately two minutes after the incident had begun, the USS Chopper broke the surface at an up-angle of greater than 80° and a speed of more than 40 knots. The entire forward half of the boat had cleared the surface before the ship crashed back down, stern first.

Even then the ride was not done, for Newton’s third law of motion took over: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Momentum carried the Chopper back below the surface, down to a depth of 200 feet before control was finally regained. She resurfaced a few moments later at a pitch of “only” 40°. At 1345, she came to rest on the surface, dead in the water but still alive. Only three minutes had elapsed since the loss of the AC bus, but to the crew of the Chopper it felt like a lot longer. Hatches were opened, and shaken sailors climbed up the ladders to greet the bright Caribbean sunshine. Somehow, they had defied all odds and come back from what appeared to be certain death.

Structural damage was extensive, but Chopper made it back to port under her own power. Once in dry dock, inspectors recorded a list of wrecked components, including the #3 and #4 motor-generator sets, the #3 torpedo tube, the starboard main circulating water pump, the #2 auxiliary tank, the passive sonar hydrophones, and many other pieces of equipment, all rendered useless. The battery compartment sustained major damage. Much of the electrical infrastructure was ruined by the flooding. The Forward Torpedo Room hatch could not be sealed because the bulkhead had distorted. The experts who evaluated the hull estimated that it had contracted and expanded several inches during the excursion.

The good news outweighed the bad, however, as no one had perished during the improbable ride. The most serious injury occurred to the chief who had broken his arm while falling into the Forward Battery. Another man in the Forward Torpedo Room managed to escape serious harm by ducking just as a section of deck grating whizzed past his head. Everyone’s nerves were shaken, so much so that when men were interviewed in the wake of the incident, many could not recall the precise events that had transpired during those hellish 180 seconds. Several of the crew chose to resign from submarine duty.

Navy investigators determined that the loss of AC power had occurred because of several factors: A relatively low battery charge, the propulsion order for Full Speed Ahead, and the unintended “auxiliary voltage fluctuations” resulting from this convergence of conditions. In the wake of the Chopper incident, the Electrical Operator in Maneuvering was given specific instructions to observe current patterns carefully and to allow surges to properly decay before answering a bell. The deck plates were bolted down to keep them from turning into projectiles. And those relying on the XJA sound-powered phones for communication between Control and Maneuvering were reminded to ensure that the phone settings were properly returned to the default setting after every use.

The unanswered question was: how did a loss of AC power lead cause the after planes to pivot to “hard dive”? No one knows for sure. The planes were controllable by both electrical and hydraulic means, so the loss of AC power alone shouldn’t have rendered them inoperable. However, the indicator gauges that showed the actual angles of the planes went dead when the AC bus failed, meaning that the planesman had no way of determining their actual angle. Did the sailor manning the stern planes overcorrect or miscalculate? Investigators could not say for sure.

Regardless, the take-away was that quick thinking by the crew, especially key personnel in both Control and Maneuvering, saved the ship. Had they not acted independently during the crisis to take decisive action, the Chopper would almost certainly continued descending to her collapse depth.

Ken Taylor, the engineer who had stopped the dive by reversing the propellers, was singled out for his heroism. Jay Arterberry, the senior controllerman working alongside him, received a commendation letter for his service file. Engineer Jim Butler also received a commendation letter for his quick action to help open the air banks in Control, as did Engineer Rolan Cook for his daring trip to the bilges to secure a leaking water valve. In all cases, these sailors did what had to be done for survival. Cook summed up the response succinctly: “Recovery was a result of the entire crew reacting to their training. That is why qualifying for and receiving your dolphins is so important and rewarding.”

The details of this story remained obscure for many years. The initial Navy press release by stated that the Chopper had gone into “an uncontrolled dive” off the Cuban coast but had regained control with no loss of life. Given the chaotic pace of national news on other topics in 1969, the story received little media attention. Meanwhile, an examination of the Chopper in dry dock confirmed the bad news: the extraordinary sea pressure exerted on the submarine had done irreparable damage. She was declared unfit for service, and the USS Chopper was quietly decommissioned several months later on 15 September 1969.

The Chopper was reclassified with hull number AGSS-342. She was towed to New Orleans from Key West, where she was initially utilized as a dockside training platform for the Naval Reserve until that program ended in 1971. Later, the old submarine found her final calling as a practice target for ASW exercises conducted by the USS Spadefish (SSN-668). On 21 July 1976, during such exercises off the North Carolina coast, the Chopper unexpectedly sank after her supporting pontoons took on water, ignominiously ending her noteworthy and lengthy period of service to the United States Navy.

About the Author

Charles Hood is the principal author, aided by his submarine veteran
brother Frank. Charles is a physician who started helping Frank write his
story (Poopie Suits and Cowboy Boots) and then became so enamored of all
things submarine, he has dedicated 7 years of his life to collecting,
editing, and publishing these fabulous stories so that they are not lost to
time.  These stories of the bravery, the mettle, the endurance of the
men (and families) who volunteer to serve aboard a submarine will make you
go “Wow”.

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