Another Rivet Gives Up The Ghost

By the time I reported onboard the U.S.S. Skate (SSN-578) as Engineer Officer in 1984 it was an old ship. She was no longer suitable for the special operations conducted in opposition to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. I wanted a front-line attack submarine, so she wasn't my first choice, but she had two criteria that were absolutely essential. She was operational (no shipyard duty!) and she was home-ported in the Mecca, the Shangri-la, the Utopia for any Minnesota-raised young man: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

In 1984 the Cold War was still going strong, at least for the submarine force. The Navy was really fighting it on two fronts. The first was the tussle against the Soviet Union, whose submarine force outnumbered the United States by about 5 to 1, and whose submarines were getting increasingly sophisticated. The second was the constant struggle to try to get money out of the U.S. Congress. The submarine force, with only 7% of the Navy's officers but 40% of the admirals, was extremely good at this. One of the strategies was to give short rides to dignitaries who may later find themselves in position to benefit the Navy's effort to raise funds. One problem, though, was that the submarine force did not want to tie up their front-line assets in this manner. On the other hand, they were often dealing with towering political egos, who were quick to take offense over real or perceived slights. In this way the Skate was the nearly perfect solution. She was, arguably, the most famous submarine in operation at the time and so any silver-tongued admiral worth his salt could convince even the most egotistical guest that they were getting special treatment in going out for a dive off the waters of the Oahu coast onboard the Skate.

One problem, though, was the Skate sailors and officers themselves. While they could absolutely be counted on in the skirmish with the Soviet Union, they were a great deal less enthusiastic in the battle with Congress. Most submarine sailors out of Pearl Harbor had only two things they were interested in doing; going on WestPac (the deployments to Asia or Australia), or being on the beach in Oahu. Since babysitting politicians didn't fall into either of those categories, the pleasure of a one-day cruise was distinctly one-sided.

There was also a long-standing, cultural dislike among the submarine rank and file towards politicians in general. This normally took the form of a kind of benign contempt. After all, we were still in the Navy, so if we were ordered to take a guest out for a day of diving and "angles and dangles" there was really no sense in making a big fuss. It was also well understood that it was best to deliver the guest back in one piece (the paperwork being too difficult otherwise). The emotional well-being of the guest, however, was a little more of a gray area and offered some enticing wiggle-room.

So imagine that you are a high-ranking guest in the Control Room where the Captain, several officers and crew members are diving the ship. In fact, there are so many people in the Control Room that, for non-submariners, it is uncomfortably crowded. Just before the submarine dives the last of the hatches is shut and the submarine becomes dramatically quieter as the large fan which draws in vast quantities of air from outside is turned off. You hear a series of loud splooshes as the ballast tank vents are opened, and perhaps the Captain lets you look through the periscope to see the plumes of water shooting fifteen or twenty feet into the air as the submarine gradually loses buoyancy. Then, as the submarine sinks deeper and deeper, the air in the Control Room begins to feel somehow closer and denser. You get the vague sensation that the submarine is shrinking. This is just your mind playing tricks on you, you tell yourself, but the sensation only gets worse. The submarine is, in fact, shrinking as the water pressure on the hull increases. This, in turn, squeezes the air and raises the pressure slightly. No one bothers to tell you this.

The Diving Officer is calling out depths periodically. One hundred feet...one hundred fifty feet...two hundred feet. Suddenly you hear a loud, metallic bang. You jump involuntarily. The following dialogue takes place:

Captain: "What was that noise?"

Officer of the Deck: "I don't know, sir."

Captain: "Send someone to find out." "Aye, aye, Captain." The Officer of the Deck sends the Auxilliary Man of the Watch to investigate. The submarine continues to dive deeper. A few moments later and another loud bang.

Captain (while shining a flashlight into the dark maze of pipes in the overhead): "Dammit! That's a hull rivet! Navigator! Did you check the hull rivets before we got underway?"

Navigator: "No sir. It was the Engineer's turn."

Captain (picking up the microphone for the ship's announcing system): "Engineer, report to Control."

Engineer (me) walking into the Control Room: "Yes, Captain."

Captain: "Did you check the hull rivets before we got underway?"

Engineer: "No, sir. It was the Navigator's turn."

Navigator: "Was not."

Engineer: "Was to."

Navigator: "Was not."

Captain: "Be quiet both of you!" The ship continues to sink slowly, apparently unnoticed by the bickering officers. Another bang.

Captain: "Dammit! Another rivet! I can't believe no one bothered to check them!"

Navigator: "It's the Engineer's fault!"

Engineer: "Is not!"

Navigator: "Is to!"

You are now convinced, beyond any doubt, that you are going to die. Water will pour into the hull as it unzips, rivet by rivet. Who is going to save you? Certainly not the three witless officers in front of you or the other sailors in the Control Room who seem, somehow, indifferent to the whole drama.

Bizaarly, this all stops abruptly. The Captain, Engineer and Navigator, vehement just a moment ago, suddenly seem to lose interest. The loud bangs stop. The hull appears to no longer be shrinking. The Diving Officer announces "Steady at four hundred feet." The Engineer Officer heads back to the engineering bowels of the submarine. This all has such an Alice-down-the-rabbit-hole feel to it that you are not absolutely sure it happened. The Captain turns to you pleasantly and says that lunch will be in an hour in the Wardroom. He goes to his Stateroom. You are free to wander the ship (except for the enginerooms).

If you use your hour before lunch wisely you will spend time with the crew. You will learn that this most closed-mouthed of communities will talk to you if you show a little interest, respect and friendship. You may learn about the complexities of the jobs that even the youngest and least experienced of them have learned to master. You may learn about the brotherhood that they feel for each other. If you are very perceptive and patient you may have a glimmer into why these men do what they do, in the most inhospitable and unforgiving of environments.

You may learn all of these things if you make an effort. You will, then, also learn that there are no hull rivets on a modern submarine and that the bangs are the perfectly normal result of the hull changing shape slightly in response to the water pressure. If you didn't make the effort then that last, small bit of enlightenment will have to be bestowed upon you by some desk-jockey admiral upon your return to shore, who, after all, has to have something useful to occupy his day.

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