Voyage of the Devilfish

The headquarters building of Commander Submarines U.S. Atlantic Fleet, COMSUBLANT was a massive brick building in an old northwest section of Norfolk, Virginia. The building looked drab and squat, a ghetto gymnasium that seemed half swallowed by the earth. The complex was surrounded by two high chain-link fences with spiral wound razor wire on top. A guard house was perched at the only entrance, manned by two armed Marines. Inside the building a stainless steel-walled elevator descended to the Flag Plot room sixty feet below the basement level. Inside the elevator was Air Force Brigadier General Herman Xavier Tyler, who wore a blue uniform with an orange tag clipped to his pocket, black block letters proclaiming “VISITOR.” Tyler’s general stars were brand new from his recent promotion from Offut Air Force Base’s Strategic Air Command Headquarters. Tyler’s youthful looks tended to rob him of an air of authority, in spite of his steady frown and whitewall haircut, the hair clipped tight to his head. Tyler was enroute to a briefing on the submarine force, a necessary level of knowledge for his future staff duty when he would be shoulder-to-shoulder with Navy officers. The elevator stopped and the doors opened slowly, revealing a hall with framed photographs on the painted cinderblock walls. Two Marines with M-16’s guarded a large steel door at the end of the hall. The door slowly swung open and the Marines came to attention as a naval officer in khakis stepped out. General Tyler noticed that the steel door was solid and almost a foot thick, with an elaborate spring and counterbalance system to help open it. Several latches showed on the door, each latch over two inches thick. It was a blast door, the general thought. The Flag Plot room must be hardened against all but a direct hit from a nuclear weapon. The naval officer stepped closer, stretching out his hand. He had the same silver oak leaves that a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force would wear on his collars. For a moment the Air Force general tried to recall what the Navy called that rank. As the officer got closer the general saw pilot’s wings over his left pocket. The officer was slim, in his early forties, with most of his head bald. His only hair, once dark but now mostly gray, was tightly trimmed above his ears. The officer walked with a swagger, as if he was carrying a ceremonial officer’s sword at a parade. When he reached the general he flashed a wide smile of unnaturally white straight teeth and held out his hand.

“General Tyler? I’m Commander Dick Donchez, COMSUBLANT Intelligence. Welcome to Flag Plot. The admiral sends his regrets but asked me to show you the operation here.” General Tyler took a moment to look at the gold pilot’s wings on Donchez’s chest, and noticed they weren’t wings at all, but two strange scaly fish facing an old fashioned Uboat-type conning tower. Submarine dolphins, he remembered. Odd to show dolphins as scaly. The two men started walking down the narrow hall toward the blast door when Donchez stopped short at a framed picture of a submarine running on the surface, the cylindrical cigar-shaped hull plowing through a white wake, a fin-shaped conning tower atop the cigar with horizontal fins sticking out of it.

“Before we go in, sir,” Donchez said, “it might help to explain a few things. Have you ever worked with the submarine force before?”

“I was on a staff with a few submarine guys at SAC Headquarters in Omaha, the strategic targeting team, but I really never knew them,” Tyler said, looking at the submarine picture.

“Well, let’s start with this, then. Newspapers call these boats hunter/killer subs. We call them fast attack submarines. We have about fifty of them, all nuclear, all incredibly quiet and all very fast. None carries nuclear weapons.” The general looked surprised. Every modern submarine he had visualized had a bellyful of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Donchez took him to a photograph further down the hall. This picture also depicted a submarine on the surface, but this one had a long flat back behind the conning tower and looked bigger.