National Affairs: Gloom in the Silent Service

Late last month the sharklike U.S.S. Harder, one of the Navy’s newest fast attack submarines, got under way from Belfast, Ireland and set a westward course for her home base at New London, Conn. One of Harder’s engines was out of commission with a cracked block when the voyage began. About 650 miles west of Belfast, the crankshaft on a second engine broke. Sixteen hours later, Harder’s last engine was partially disabled, and what little power it could generate had to be used to charge the submarine’s ebbing batteries. Last week, 16 days after her departure from Belfast, Harder finally came into New London, trailing ignominiously at the end of a towline from the submarine rescue ship Tringa.

Scratch Three Killers. To the U.S. Navy’s submarine force, the fate of Harder, immobilized at a New London pier, seemed unhappily symbolic of a whole accumulation of woes and ills which has beset the “silent service” since the end of World War II. Harder is one of six new attack submarines equipped with novel lightweight diesel engines which the Navy’s Bureau of Ships adopted over the protest of many submariners. All six ships have had engine problems comparable to Harder’s, and are now being newly designed for an older-type engine. The Bureau of Ships also ignored the submariners’ warnings, when it decided to construct three small, 750-ton “killer” subs. Now the whole killer class, built at a cost of $50 million, has been written off as a failure for lack of adequate speed and cruising range.

Then there was the matter of torpedoes. U.S. submariners will never forget one of the great hushed scandals of the early days of World War II: faulty torpedoes. Time after time, intrepid submarine skippers would maneuver into dangerous Japanese waters, line up a shot, and then watch through periscopes while their torpedoes exploded prematurely, did not explode at all, or headed back at them. The Navy’s Bureau of Ordnance is currently readying a new type of torpedo which will “do everything.” But until it is ready, the newest subs live with a makeshift, inefficient arrangement for firing old-style torpedoes. “To hell with the torpedo which will do everything,” muttered a submariner last week. “Just get us a torpedo that will do anything.”

Add Three Flattops. But the submariners’ most grievous worry is that the Navy has fallen under the control of air-minded admirals. The assistant chief of naval operations for underseas warfare is a naval aviator, Rear Admiral Frank Akers, who has never seen submarine service. Submariners complain that the air-minded high command has virtually shut off funds for submarine construction in order to find money for three new supercarriers.

Next year the Navy plans to build one conventional and one atomic-powered submarine. During the same period, a dozen or more conventional subs will become obsolete and fit only for the scrap heap. Unless the building program is stepped up, submariners will not be able to maintain the force level of 105 active submarines, which the Joint Chiefs of Staff have been counting on in their strategic planning.