A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety (8 page)

A few months later, still in 1949, my submarine went into Mare Island, near San Francisco, for repairs, and I decided with some trepidation to visit Tom Gordy’s former wife, Dorothy. On a Friday afternoon we approached the address from one of her letters, and I left Rosalynn and Jack across the street, not knowing what the reception might be. I knocked on the door, told an older woman who I was, and she exploded into shouts, “Tom’s nephew is here!” It was Dorothy’s mother, Mrs. McDowell, and she embraced me as Dorothy and other family members crowded around. Rosalynn and Jack joined us, and we spent one of the most delightful uninterrupted celebrations I have ever known. A long table was filled with food, dozens of neighbors were invited in from time to time, and none of us went to bed that night. I remember vaguely that everyone was drinking boilermakers (shots of whiskey with beer), many of the men played guitars and sang while the rest of us danced, and we were regaled with descriptions of their experiences with Tom during earlier days. I told them that he was regaining his health, had been steadily promoted as he managed security at naval bases in Florida, had remarried, and owned a tavern in Lake Mary, Florida, which I had visited. We took brief naps the next day, and that night Dorothy and her husband accompanied us to the stage play
A Streetcar Named Desire
.

Tom retired from the navy as a commander and lived long enough to visit us in the governor’s mansion and to help with the early stages of my presidential campaign among his friends in Florida. He liked to remind
me that he outranked me by several grades—but this was before I became commander in chief.

Before returning to Hawaii, our ship was assigned to operate in Puget Sound out of Seattle, and it was here that I found myself in danger again. We were tied up near the seaward end of Pier 61, and I was officer of the deck one night during a heavy fog. The lookout reported that a large ship was approaching quite close, and I went to the stern of the submarine and heard loud voices almost directly over my head. We could not see anything, and the people above me did not acknowledge my shouts as I attempted to let them know of our presence. I quickly realized that they were preparing to drop their huge anchor, believing they were in the middle of the channel. Finally, with the anchor visible just above my head and our ship, I heard the command “Prepare to let go the anchor!” Desperate, I strained my voice to the utmost and was relieved to hear, “Wait, I think there is someone down there.” I was blinded by a spotlight, and the large ship backed its engines. The crisis was over.

We operated with Canadian and British ships between the fresher water of Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, carefully adjusting the “trim” to accommodate our relatively lighter or heavier ship in water with changing salinity. This required experimenting until we achieved neutral buoyancy during our dives. When we concluded our operations in the area and were preparing to return to Hawaii, officers on the British destroyers invited us to join them for our last night in Victoria, British Columbia, and we went there from Seattle on the surface. Our friends entertained us until dawn, utilizing their freedom to serve alcoholic drinks on their ships, and we accepted their hospitality with enthusiasm. None of us ever reached the shore.

The next morning we headed west toward Hawaii, and on the first dive one of our more senior officers, who had been drinking all night, made a terrible mistake in preparation. His job was to be sure that all the main valves were rigged to open at the same time, but he checked only those on the starboard side and was then distracted. When the captain gave the order and electrical signals were sent to the valves, the starboard
ones opened and water poured into those tanks, while those on the port side remained shut. The ship began to roll over to the right as it was driven downward by our planes at the bow and stern, and we approached the point of capsizing. Only the furious blowing of high-pressure air into the tanks prevented the loss of the
Pomfret
and its crew. This was the closest our ship ever came to a total disaster. I realized how fragile was my existence, and how fallible were even the most dedicated and experienced seamen.

Afterward, our return to Hawaii was relatively uneventful, and I spent almost every moment on duty learning as much as possible about my own ship and the submarine force. All my capabilities and energy were focused on this desire to excel in my assignment. I was not motivated by any element of competition, because I was the only officer of my seniority on the ship, but I guess subliminally I realized that I would always be compared with other submariners in my Naval Academy class.

My ship was moved from Hawaii to San Diego when the Korean War began, in June 1950, and we operated along the California coast, expecting to be deployed to the war zone to conduct surveillance along the coast of Korea or to rescue downed aviators. This was a few months after our second son, James Earl Carter III, was born. He was named after me but branded by navy nurses at Tripler General Hospital in Hawaii on his wristband as Chip, a name we have used ever since. This duty in San Diego was to be our most unpleasant assignment. The navy base was overcrowded, and the only housing we could find was in a decrepit and crime-ridden area of the city. All submarines were prohibited from using the scarce docking spaces along the shore and required to tie up alongside large ships called “submarine tenders” that were anchored in the bay. We had the same delays and uncertainty with small boat travel as in Norfolk, and my time with Rosalynn and our boys was restricted. We lived in something like a garage apartment, and the landlady was intrusive and overbearing. She had a key to our quarters and would enter to go through our belongings when we were away. She criticized Rosalynn’s housekeeping habits, and even expressed her displeasure about what she found discarded in our garbage. We did enjoy going to the superb San Diego Zoo, and also making some infrequent trips to nearby Tijuana, Mexico.

Lillian Carter and Earl Carter, 1950, San Diego, California.

All members of the submarine force were informed that the navy was building its first ship of any kind since the end of the Second World War. It would be a new type of submersible, with snorkel air intake and designed to operate with extreme quiet so that it could remain undetected and attack enemy (Soviet) submarines while submerged. One officer would be assigned to Electric Boat Company (later General Dynamics Corporation) in New London to represent the government during the final months of construction. The sub would be called “Killer 1,” or more properly USS
K-1
.

I submitted my application for this coveted assignment, and later that year, while my parents were visiting us in San Diego, I received orders to report to New London. I was the only officer on the detail and spent the next few months with two major tasks: helping to monitor the final building and testing of the innovative craft and devising all its future procedures for operating and conducting clandestine warfare, plus incidentals like the inventory of tools, linens, dishes, silverware, and food items. Captain Frank Andrews was chosen as our commanding officer, and he designated me as engineering officer when the other officers and men were assigned to the ship. Collectively, we quickly utilized and improved the voluminous documents I had prepared.

Our new snorkel system would permit the submarine, with the hull and conning tower a few feet under the surface, to pipe air down into the ship to be burned in the diesel engines and breathed by the crew. A valve on top of the pipe would snap shut whenever a wave washed over it, and still-running engines would use up the contained air and create an uncomfortable temporary vacuum in the ship. The unique visual feature of the
K-1
was a huge bulbous sonar array mounted forward on the main deck, which was capable of detecting the slightest sounds from distant sources in the sea. This meant that our own ship and people within it had to remain as quiet as possible. Every piece of equipment was isolated from the hull by special flexible mounts to minimize noise transmitted through the water. Our total crew was about forty men, compared to seventy-five
on the
Pomfret,
and our ship was about two-fifths as large as a fleet-type submarine. Bunk sizes and food were about the same, but we had an extremely limited supply of fresh water from a small distillery. Other than for cooking and drinking, our individual allotment when at sea for long periods was only a quart per day, and we showered with salt water.

It was exciting duty because of the new technology and because we were preparing for potential conflict during those Cold War years with Soviet submarines. We could go deep, stop propulsion, turn off all unnecessary equipment, and at these times of silence all of us removed our shoes and walked around—only when necessary—in stocking feet. We learned to hover at a desired depth by changing very slightly the seawater we displaced. When we reached a final trim, we would just elevate or lower our periscope a foot or two, which would cause our boat very slowly to rise or sink. In this condition, our huge listening device could detect ocean sounds from far away, more distant when temperature gradients were perfect and wave action was minimal. I became fascinated with the underwater character of the ocean, and read all the books on the ship about the subject. These factors were important to our survival in combat with other ships, and even during normal peacetime operations. I remember one day when we were cruising at periscope depth east of Newfoundland, in the relatively warm waters of the Gulf Stream. Suddenly, the bow of our submarine entered the much colder (and more dense) Arctic waters, and we were propelled to the surface by the strong upward force. The cold and warm waters had not mixed, even within a distance of less than two hundred feet.

We officers would sit in with the sonar specialists to become more familiar with the equipment and to monitor the more interesting sounds. In addition to distinctive propeller noises of different ships, we were interested in listening to shrimp and other creatures, especially the remarkable calls of whales. At the same time, we knew that our primary duty was to detect potential enemies before they ever realized that we were present and monitoring their movements. I wrote a poem about this contrast of peace and war.

Life on a Killer Submarine

I had a warm, sequestered feeling

deep beneath the sea,

moving silently, assessing

what we could hear from far away

because we ran so quietly ourselves,

walking always in our stocking feet.

We’d listen to the wild sea sounds,

the scratch of shrimp, the bowhead’s moan,

the tantalizing songs of humpback whales.

We strained to hear all other things,

letting ocean lenses bring to us

the steady throbbing beat of screws,

the murmurs of most distant ships,

or submarines that might be hunting us.

One time we heard, with perfect clarity,

a vessel’s pulse four hundred miles away

and remembered that, in spite of everything

we did to keep our sounds suppressed,

the gradient sea could focus, too, our muffled noise,

could let the other listeners know

where their torpedoes might be aimed.

We wanted them to understand

that we could always hear them first

and, knowing, be inclined to share

our love of solitude, our fear

that one move, threatening or wrong,

could cost the peace we yearned to keep,

and kill our hopes that they were thrilled, like us,

to hear the same whale’s song.

I had qualified as a submariner quite early when serving on the
Pomfret,
but now I was senior enough to meet the requirements to command a ship. I had already mastered the necessary knowledge about and capabilities for submarine construction and operation, but an original thesis was also required. I reviewed my studies of differential and integral calculus and devised a system for determining the distance to another ship by the beat of its propellers and the rate of change of its direction from us. I was qualified to command when my plan worked in practice.

The
K-1
operated mostly in the Atlantic-Caribbean area and spent as much time at sea as possible. One interesting cruise was in the vicinity of Nassau, in the Bahamas, when we were instructed to remain continually submerged for at least thirty days. Unfortunately, after about twenty days underwater one of my electrician’s mates was afflicted with increasingly severe attacks of claustrophobia. Trying not to violate our orders, Captain Andrews directed that the sailor be strapped to a bunk in the officers’ quarters. But it quickly became apparent that this confinement only exacerbated the sailor’s problem, as he began to thrash violently and foam at the mouth. We had to surface and have him taken to shore by helicopter.