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Dark Waters brings the NR-1 out of the deep

By Robert A. Hamilton   1 November 2002
The DAY Online - New London Connecticut

Dark Waters, a new book by Lee Vyborny and Don Davis, discloses some of the secrets of the Navy's NR-1 submarine.

The Navy's research submarine NR-1 has been in the news repeatedly over the last several years, searching for an Israeli submarine that disappeared under mysterious circumstances, exploring centuries-old shipwrecks, even retrieving pieces of the Space Shuttle Challenger when it blew up after takeoff in 1986.
 

NR1   Built at the height of the Cold War, much of its early history, however, has been shrouded in secrecy. Now "Dark Waters," a new book by Lee Vyborny and Don Davis, discloses some of its earliest secrets " including the fact that the NR-1 was almost lost before it could accomplish any missions.

It was November 1969 and the crew was trying out one of the submarine's unique features, the ability to lower a set of tires and "drive" along the bottom. It took on ballast to settle firmly against the bottom, and was tooling along about 100 miles south of Connecticut, when suddenly the boat took on a steep angle and the crew heard a scraping sound.

The NR-1 had reached the edge of a canyon cliff, and was heading into the depths.

"The weight that had glued us to the bottom now pulled us inexorably into the void, nose first," they write. "The submarine was a half mile deep, nearly a ton too heavy, and falling."

They dared not do an emergency surface for fear of coming up under a ledge in the canyon, and the ship's thrusters barely slowed its descent. They finally crashed into a pile of rocks that crushed the manipulator arm, as the stern sank into the mud, right at the limits of the submarine's operating envelope.

The authors describe the steps that were taken to pull the boat free from the bottom " and a change in the operating procedures. "Henceforth the maximum speed while driving on the bottom would not exceed a half knot, and the pilot would never add more water ballast than the thrusters could lift," they state.

Vyborny was a 22-year-old interior communications specialist on the crew that put the NR-1 into commission, a top student in his basic submarine and nuclear power courses. Davis has written 11 books, three of them New York Times best-sellers.

"Dark Waters" is scheduled to be released Jan. 7, though it can be pre-ordered on some Internet sites. The first book signing is scheduled for 1-3 p.m. Jan. 11 at the Mystic Seaport Museum, a tip of the hat to southeastern Connecticut, where the NR-1 was born (at the Electric Boat shipyard) and has spent its entire life (at the Naval Submarine Base).

Submarine enthusiasts will love the behind-the-scenes look how Adm. Hyman G. Rickover, the father of the nuclear Navy, pulled strings to get funding for the NR-1, how he handpicked the crew that would take it out, and the tyrannical way that he got it built.

In the galley proofs, more than one-third of the book is devoted just to the period leading up to the NR-1's launch, and it does not begin operations until page 114, out of 228 pages, but the genesis of the little submarine is a fascinating part of the tale.

Anyone looking for information on some of the super-secret missions that are whispered about on the waterfront will be disappointed. The writing team does not disclose any military secrets in the book. The chapters on incidents such as its recovery of a Phoenix missile from a downed Navy Tomcat fighter jet, and its work on Navy hydrophone arrays in the Atlantic have long been matters of public record.

But the two men provide a gripping narrative about learning to operate a new kind of craft, far smaller and slower than any other nuclear submarine in the fleet, but able to dive much deeper and do tasks that no big boat could do.

The account of one passage across the North Atlantic, in particular, is more harrowing than many a piece of fiction, in some ways all the more terrible because you realize that Vyborny and his shipmates actually lived through the experience. At one point, the NR-1 was believed lost " and in fact it nearly was " but the men rode out a horrible storm far below the surface, and with some daring brought a malfunctioning reactor back on line.

Even on its good days, however, life aboard the cramped NR-1 was considerably more challenging than on any other ship in the undersea fleet. Limited water meant no showers and rather primitive sanitary conditions; the lack of a true galley meant they subsisted on TV dinners for weeks at a time; and a lack of berths required that you sleep wherever you could find an empty spot.

But Vyborny's recollections also hint at a sort of pride in the shared sufferings, because it brought a sense of camaraderie that cannot be matched in comfortable living conditions, and it forged a clique of individuals who did work that few could do.

"From the start of my working life until today," Vyborny writes, "through many places and jobs, I have always been, and will always be, a submariner."