Operation Thunderhead (34 page)

But even just watching movies all day couldn't be done by the SEALs during the entire cruise. The submarine was so quiet in its silent operation that the noise of the movie projector was considered enough to get the sub detected. When operating in the silent mode, a crewman would come up to the compartment and tell them to turn off the movie projector.

The concern for silent operation of the boat was a legitimate one—the
Grayback
was passing under one of the largest concentrations of U.S. Navy ships since the Korean War. More than seventy vessels of the fleet's ships were in the waters of the Tonkin Gulf at that time. Only the USS
Long Beach
had anyone on board with the knowledge that an American submarine was operating in the area.

On the surface and in the air above the
Grayback
, Operation Thunderhead was already ongoing. As the submarine crept undetected beneath the Seventh Fleet, HH-3A helicopters were already conducting searches for the escaped POWs. Having decided to take as active a role as possible in the operation, Towers was riding along as an extra set of eyes on some of the helicopter flights.

On Saturday, June 3, the
Grayback
arrived on station at the point where she would launch and wait for the SDVs to return. The crew was excited about the mission taking place. They all knew that it was something big even if they didn't know the details. The specifics didn't matter; they were there to do a job and they would conduct themselves to the best of their considerable abilities.

The
Grayback
settled to the bottom, where she would rest for the extent of the operation. She preferred to stay in at least eighty feet of water to be certain of remaining undetected during the day. The boat was more than three hundred feet in length. In eighty feet of water, she could easily lay with her bow down almost on the bottom and raise her stern to the surface. But for the mission, they were willing to run in slightly shallower water since the Red River tended to make the local waters murky.

Rising only enough to lift her snorkel to the surface and recharge her batteries, Chamberlain got on the radio to the
Long Beach
. The message was a simple one, short as submarine skippers prefer them to be. Panther was on station. She would begin operations that same night.

It was at 2:00 A.M. on June 4 when the first SDV launched from the
Grayback
. It was a nighttime lockout and launch, meaning there was very little light for the men swimming about the submarine's deck to see what they had to do. In the darkness all about them would be the occasional sparks and glows of the phosphorescent marine organisms floating in the water. Concentrating on their work would help keep the men from looking about them into the shifting darkness, and it would keep them from thinking about just where they were.

Crewing the boat were the men from the UDT detachment, Lieutenant (Junior Grade) John Lutz and Petty Officer Tomas Edwards. The SEAL element on board the SDV, and who would be spending the next two days on an enemy-occupied island, was Lieutenant Dry and Warrant Officer Martin. The SEALs were wearing their camouflaged combat uniforms, web gear, and weapons. For his choice, Moki Martin was armed with a Swedish K 9mm submachine gun. Spare magazines, supplies, and other gear were strapped all about him. It was crowded in the SDV at the best of times. With their combat gear, the SEALs were in a particularly tight situation. The hatch covers were drawn shut and there was nothing they could do but ride out the trip.

The trip was turning into a very long one. The launch time for the SDV had been planned by Chamberlain to take advantage of the maximum amount of slack water that would be at the end of the flood tide. The SDV would be going in against the current of a freshwater river emptying into the Gulf of Tonkin. Moving a four-knot-capable SDV against a two-knot current would be difficult in the best of circumstances. The planning of the launch to coincide with slack water would help cut down on some of the current the men would have to fight.

It was a minus tide that passed through the Gulf of Tonkin that night. A minus tide is one where the tide level goes down to a point significantly lower than a normal tide. That meant the current coming from the mouth of the river was greater, which meant trouble for the SDV.

The Six Boats were fitted with all of the most modern systems available for them at the time; those systems, combined with the experience of the men on board, told them the mission was in real trouble.

Prior to launching the SDV, all the normal mission preparations had taken place. The men knew that the transit would cover between three and four thousand yards, for a maximum trip time of two hours. On the return trip, the boat would be running with only the two UDT crewmen on board, so the boat air should last well enough for the mission. But the SDV was churning on without getting anywhere. Lutz, the driver, got on the communications system that allowed the men in the SDV to speak to one another even while underwater. As far as he was concerned, they had not covered very much distance and were bucking a much greater current than expected. They had also made some navigational errors that resulted in the men not being able to sight the island.

Finally, near first light, the batteries of the SDV gave out completely. There was a contingency plan in place to cover this situation. If they had to abandon the SDV, they would scuttle the boat and swim as far out to sea as they could, where the men in the water would activate their radios. The signals from the waterproof radios would bring in the search-and-rescue helicopters hovering nearby. All the men had to do was to tread water and wait for pickup.

The message came in to the
Long Beach
from the
Grayback
that morning. It was a short coded one and contained the words
Briarpatch Tango
. Those two words were enough to send a chill through Towers when he heard them. Thunderhead personnel were in trouble. The fact that the message had come in from Panther meant that it was either the SEALs, the UDT, or the SDV that was in trouble. In this case, it was all three.

While the SAR helicopter was in the air, the radiomen on board the
Long Beach
were tracking the signal coming from the water and the SEALs' radios. The plot from the
Long Beach
put the signal from the SEALs about four miles from the island where they were supposed to have set up. The helicopter was also flying within six miles of the coast of North Vietnam. It was not a comfortable place to be for an aircraft armed with only a pair of M60 machine guns and a single minigun. But the SAR crew had been in much tighter situations before, performing combat rescues while taking enemy fire. They prepared their weapons and kept an eye out on the water. With directions helping to vector them in, they spotted the group of four men in the water and the large black bulk floating nearby.

The rescue hoist that was at the starboard side of the helicopter was easily able to raise the men in the water into the bird. Festooned with gear and weapon, with water pouring off of them, the men from the SDV got into the hovering helicopter and considered their next move. The SDV in the ocean below them was still floating, just barely awash. The only item that had been salvaged from the boat was the expensive and critical communications system. All of the rest of the boat was still floating below them. It couldn't be left; a North Vietnamese fisherman or even a naval vessel was sure to find it. And that was if the SDV didn't eventually wash up onshore of its own account.

As the commander of the boat, Lieutenant Lutz made a decision. The SDV would be sunk with gunfire from the helicopter. The first bursts from the minigun ripped into the sea. At the high rate of fire, the spinning barrels of the weapon were kicking out projectiles at a rate of more than sixty a second. For several long seconds the roar of the minigun sounded out and shook the helicopter. The power of the gun's vibration was nothing when compared to the spray kicked up by the dozens and dozens of high-speed projectiles splashing all about the SDV. Raked from bow to stern, the black hull finally started to sink.

Looking at where their SDV had disappeared, the SEAL and UDT operators just stood and dripped saltwater down on the deck. Having made a decision, Towers had the helicopter head out toward where the
Long Beach
was located. They would set down on the ship and keep the men from the submarine there, sequestered so that the crew wouldn't see them and start asking questions about the heavily armed combat dressed commandos who had suddenly appeared on board. In the radio message that was sent out from the helicopter, it was requested that all of the crewmen on the
Long Beach
remain belowdecks while only necessary personnel witnessed the helicopter coming in and unloading.

Both Dry and Lutz could see the logic about where they were going and why when told by Towers over the helmets that had been handed to them. And they emphatically said that they wanted to get back to the
Grayback
as soon as possible. As the helicopter approached the
Long Beach
, there were no crewmen in sight on the decks. Once the bird set down, Earle came out to lead the SEALs and UDT men away. The helicopter lifted off almost immediately to conduct the morning sweep of the search area. Operation Thunderhead was still going forward.

DEADLY WATERS

There was no question that the men from the SDV wanted to get back to the
Grayback
at the earliest opportunity. The submarine was not coming up for long enough messages for the SEALs and UDT operators to explain what had happened on the first infiltration attempt. The
Long Beach
was a safe fifty miles from the coast of North Vietnam. The
Grayback
was well within enemy waters. The vital information the SEALs and UDT operators needed had to be transferred to the submarine before she launched her second SDV.

With an earlier radio message to the
Long Beach
, Chamberlain had been assured of his men's safety. For the moment, he didn't concern himself with them. He still had a mission to perform in support of Thunderhead. An observation post had to be established on the island to cover the mouth of the river, a blind spot blocked from seaward view by the island itself. The second SDV would be launched that night, the same time as the first had been.

The message to the
Long Beach
had included the disposition of the crew and passengers of the first SDV. The submarine would conduct abbreviated ops that night, shining to the north of the
Long Beach
's location. The
Grayback
's human assets needed to be returned by helicopter that evening.

The language used by Chamberlain took some translating by the SEAL and UDT officers in order for those on the
Long Beach
to understand. The meaning wasn't too difficult: The
Grayback
would continue her mission and launch another team in the second SDV. The shining term in the message meant that the submarine would raise its snorkel above the surface and shine an infrared light mounted on top of the mast. The invisible beam of light could be easily seen by night vision devices available to the pilots of the SAR birds. That would allow a helicopter to approach the
Grayback
, and the men would insert from the bird while it was still airborne, conducting what the teams called a “cast.”

The insertion meant the SEALs and UDT operators would jump from the helicopter and just plunge into the water. From the surface, they would swim down to lock into the submarine while it remained submerged. The casting technique seemed more than a little unusual, but the officers assured the staff at the
Long Beach
that it was a technique they trained with and continually employed. As long as the helicopter pilot did what they told him to, everything would be fine.

Warrant Officer Martin would be the jumpmaster for the cast. He had a great deal of experience with the technique as well as more than eight hundred parachute jumps to his credit. The pilots of the helicopter they were jumping from had never conducted such an operation before; the briefing that Martin gave the men was a carefully detailed one to prevent any mistakes.

The one most basic rule of the helicopter casting technique was called the 20/20: the maximum forward speed for a cast was twenty knots, and the maximum altitude was twenty feet. The SEALs were tough, but anyone could get broken. They had learned the 20/20 rule through hard experience and training. The pilot stated that he would try to get as close to that speed and altitude as possible. Martin said that lower and slower were fine, but no higher. He was going to call the cast from the door of the bird. If Martin thought they were either too high or going too fast, he would signal the crew chief, who would then alert the pilot over the intercom. Once the other three men had cast from the bird, he would jump himself.

The winds were high as the men boarded the helicopter and lifted off. The plan was to make the cast at about 11:00 P.M. The sea state was running about one to two; that put waves reaching a maximum height of four feet across the waters speeding by below them. It was also an overcast night, which caused problems for the helicopter pilot. That kept him from seeing the horizon. Not having a solid reference point for his flying, the pilot was depending on his instruments and experience, but he had never flown a cast before.

Arriving at the
Grayback
's last reported position, the helicopter flew a crisscrossing search pattern but failed to see the shine of the infrared beacon. On board the bird with the men from the SDV was Towers. He had decided to accompany the men to their jumping-off point and witness the action. Hooked into the intercom system, only Towers and the crew chief of the bird could speak to each other.

While the men from the
Grayback
prepared to jump, the helicopter was searching frantically for the signal from the submarine. At one point, the pilot had his attention drawn to a bright light through his infrared goggles. But the lights were only the lamps in a North Vietnamese hut. They were passing over North Vietnam itself, having crossed the coast by following the wrong signal.