Chapter 4
The beginnings of my struggle to become a Diving Officer, A digression, I have my bearings and I’m ready to go
The beginnings of my struggle to become a Diving Officer
I came aboard while the submarine was still in dry dock. Although I immediately took up residence in my stateroom, I still had some sense of freedom. During off duty hours (still vaguely defined), I could walk to the parking area and get my car — explore the sights around Newport News, and go to a restaurant, etc. But most of my time aboard the submarine was taken up with my new job: learning to be a Diving Officer.
I remember that this topic was introduced and briefly covered by our trainer in sub school. The essence was: You will be in charge of the health needs of 140 healthy men during the entire patrol. This will take only a small portion of your day. You will have too much time and the Navy has a firm doctrine that their officers are always kept busy and have to stand watches. They will want to train you and qualify you to be a submarine Diving Officer. Strictly speaking, according to the Geneva Convention, as the vessel’s medical officer, you are prohibited from doing anything that in any way assists a war-related function, even marginally. However, in a practical sense, you will want to cooperate, otherwise you will be entirely shunned. You will not have a happy experience.
As I was not interested in starting a crusade or becoming the focus of a legal test case, I really didn’t mind the idea of training to be a Diving Officer. I thought learning about it should be interesting, and who knows, maybe even fun.
I soon understood that the plan for my training would proceed along 2 lines of instruction — the classroom approach coupled with actual on-the-job training. I would need this training in order to be ‘qualified’ to stand watches without direct supervision. This is what qualified meant in this context.
I was like an infant encountering strange concepts for the first time. Even the term ‘qualified’ puzzled me. I knew it was some sort of certification but the notion had never been part of my education before med school. I didn’t qualify for the Victorian Novel, I passed the course (barely). I ended up putting the qualification concept into terms familiar to me from my boy scout years; it was a Merit Badge I would earn. I thought, I’m game.
Later I would realize that the average sailor’s resume was basically his, or (now) her, listing of earned qualifications.
Since we were in dry dock, the focus was on the classroom and the theory. In order to be qualified as a Diving Officer, you had to have a pretty good understanding of how a submarine worked and operated. I was given a thick spiral bound notebook, the same I noticed carried by many crew members. I don’t remember the formal name on the cover. Today it would be called, “USS Daniel Boone User Manual”. In order to be qualified, I would have to demonstrate an intimate understanding of this manual.
The manual reminded me of our text books of anatomy and physiology from medical school. Instead of the nervous system with diagrams of brain, spinal cord and peripheral nerves, I was given the submarine’s electrical ‘schematic’, which laid out for me the position of the many electrical motors, generators, transformers, batteries, cables, switches and gauges that were scattered throughout the boat. I marveled at the complexity of their incomprehensible hieroglyphics and symbols. Instead of learning about the anatomy and physiology of the circulatory system, I was handed the boat’s ‘fluid systems diagram’ which outlined the submarine’s vital essential hydraulics, which were needed to move the rudder and the planes, lower and raise the periscopes, open the missile hatches over Sherwood Forest, and actuate the vital sea valves that cooled the submarine’s reactor. All of these diagrams showed me the primary system, the secondary backup system, and tertiary backup to the backup system, likewise appearing to me as rubbings from an Egyptian crypt. My last contact with hydraulics was very briefly in an 11th grade high school physics class. The least seasoned sailor aboard the Boone was already at work maintaining the valves and pistons, and was training to take them apart and replace them.
Everything on the submarine was created using redundancy and back ups. The submarine’s main communication system was akin to a small city’s set-up of connected switch boards and land-lines. It required a functioning source of electricity to run. If the boat’s electrical system went out, you could still communicate by employing head sets manned by crew members, relaying orders to the different compartments, using the battery power of the head-sets alone. If that went out, you could still communicate with a system of funnels and hollow tubes that also ran throughout the boat. Those might seem to me no more than tin cans tied together with strings, but they would be easily recognizable and held to high esteem by Admirals Horatio Nelson and Matthew Perry.
The ‘User Manual’ for the Boone described all these systems, all these back-ups, all these redundancies, down to the tiniest meanest detail. For example, even I knew that in order to steer a submarine, you had to move a massive rudder and massive sets of planes in some sort of coordinated way. Even if all power was lost, and all the various systems had crapped out, including the electrical, the hydraulics, (with all their back ups), nonetheless the manual would still outline a plan of action. You would be directed to the rear of some cramped aft engineering space, where with the help of a few crew mates squeezing in together, and working in unison, you could uncover and turn an oversize wheel and thereby move the rudder.
Besides its inscrutable hieroglyphics, the manual confronted me with terms I had never seen before. I had not been exposed to engineering concepts. I had not been interested in cars, nor was I particularly handy. The user manual contained terms I had never seen. They were never explained. I was seemingly already expected to know their meaning.
My job was to learn all this information and be able to convey it to the various officers teaching me. Periodically the EO or one of the other engineering officers would guide me as we explored the Boone from one end to another, manual in hand. Or a nearby crewman was shanghaied to instruct me in the operation of this or that. Most often I would find myself sitting alone in the wardroom or crew mess, trying to puzzle out meanings myself. Yet, during those first couple weeks on the Daniel Boone, I was taken all over the boat. Depending on your point of view, the case could be made that as a raw new quack, I was undergoing submarine instruction or initiation or both.
A digression
I confess that the foregoing description of the early part of my Diving Officer’s training is largely built by my imagination. I really don’t remember the time well. What I retain from this period are primarily images, effervescent, both indistinct and sharp (like a strobe) at the same time. If the narrative of this period that I am describing is like a sheltering circus tent, then these visual images are their tent poles, holding everything up. Here is one of those images, those poles, which also asks a question that lay unanswered (until now) for 50 years.
I am looking at the components and innards of some large metal electrical lockers, side by side, each the size of a man. An electrician mate (EM) is explaining something, but I have trouble focusing, thinking, “What is a ‘bus’ doing in here! I know it’s something electrical, but what! And is it spelled ‘Bus’ or ‘Buss’? (I was seeing it spelled both ways.) That largely visual memory stuck with me for 50 years. I never got an answer to my ‘spelling’ question, (not that I ever had reason to want to answer it). The image I had, was me standing somewhat dumbfounded, as I tried to follow the EM’s explanation, confused by what I was seeing.
However, in preparing to write this narrative, I suddenly had the need to get the correct spelling. And now, with the Internet, I could answer it: How is an electrical B-U-S spelled? I Googled it and read: “… a ‘Bus’ is a component part of the technology that distributes power or a signal, and a ‘Buss’ is the brand name of a fuse.” I had been seeing each component labeled in the locker. Here would be a label, “Bus to XYZ” and there I would see black print on an orange tubular shape, “BUSS”. Would knowing any of this have helped me master the schematic? Hardly. I present this scene merely to illustrate the depth of my ignorance in trying to become qualified as a Diving Officer and its impact on me.
I have my bearings and I’m ready to go
So after coming on board and being passed from one engineering officer to another, I spent a lot of time during my first couple weeks walking through the various compartments and peering into this crevice and that cranny. I think I got a fairly good overview and understanding of the workings of the Daniel Boone.
One morning, I got out of my bunk and I felt an almost imperceptible movement of the deck beneath my feet. Coming off his watch, my stateroom mate confirmed my suspicion. Overnight the dry dock had been flooded and though we were still tied up, we were no longer sitting high and dry on supports. We were floating.