Playing Fair and Being Kind

Here is an impromptu post. That is to say I am writing this cold with just the thought to drive it along and also just from memory of events that happened in 1963, March/April to be exact.

Most of you know that I served on submarines during the cold war and that I did this for about ten years. I served on three submarines in a row from 1958 to 1968. The second submarine was Sam Houston a Polaris missile intercontinental beast that could end the world in a flash. Quite literally. She was a major addition to the scare factor against the Soviet Union in those days. Maintain peace by threatening to blow up the world sort of deterrence.

Back to the story. This is about finding fun in work and the crew of the Houston found a way to add an element of “gotcha” to the British when we successfully entered the Mediterranean Sea through the Strait of Gibraltar without their knowledge. Captain Willard P. Willis was our skipper. He was the best of all the commanding officers I ever worked for. This patrol was a very special one in that we broke from the usual patrol area of  the North Atlantic to supply a ballistic missile submarine for NATO, North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO was promised this type of submarine by president JFK and that the submarine would be in the Mediterranean Sea by Easter of 1963.

Captain Willis decided to add an element of heroics by not only showing up unannounced but also secretly with no fanfare. He was going to sneak in without detection by the Brit’s and their sound equipment which tracked everything entering and leaving through the strait. We got underway from Holy Loch as usual and we even packed all of our clothes for a northern patrol. But when we got underway and dove the boat north of the Hebrides we turned and went around Ireland south toward the open Atlantic. We got to the southern coast of Portugal and Spain. This is where we waited for a merchant ship to arrive from the Atlantic to enter the Mediterranean. Along came a noisy freighter and Captain Willis tucked Sam Houston up under the merchant and inside the noisy envelope of sound. We kept the Houston there for as long as it took to get through the strait and past the Rock of Gibraltar. Once past the zone where we could be detected by the sound equipment of the Brit’s we got out from under the merchant and continued our patrol. This was late March.

We continued our regular routine of patrol moving from the western end of the Med to the eastern part. We squeaked through between Sicily and Tunisia, got past Malta and back into open water south of Crete. During this period of time we received a message that a US submarine had been lost in the North Atlantic off the coast of Maine. This was the Thresher.

The Thresher was lost off the coast of Portsmouth, New Hampshire a week before Easter 1963. Sam Houston broke patrol and ran full speed through the Greek Islands from Crete all the way to the harbor entrance of Izmir, Turkey. Our appearance was dramatic for obvious reasons; the loss of Thresher and the surprise that we were in the Med with no one’s knowledge.

So there you have it. That’s the story of the first Mediterranean patrol by a FBM submarine and what it took to keep it secret until we showed up in the eastern Med. My brother-in-law Richard Larson was on a Navy ship that was at anchor in that same harbor. He saw us coming into the harbor from seaward and took a few pictures. He later learned it was the Sam Houston and knew then that I was on board. He caught a liberty launch and got a ride over. The topside watch called down to tell me that I had a visitor topside. Surprise!