Stories of a Submariner 2

As I left off in my last blog, we had just been called to battle stations and I was moving quickly to my station as stern planes man. Many of us, I'm sure were thinking of all the other boats that had been depth charged in this same area.

The boat had just come up from 400 feet and when we broke through the colder water layer we found ourselves in the middle of the Russian Fleet as it left Petropavlovsk, it's home port in the Pacific. We were now at battle stations, rigged for ultra quiet and at periscope depth. The skipper was taking pictures through the periscope that were so good that I heard one of our officers say you could identify the senior officers on the Russian ships.
The spooks were also busy getting intelligence data from radio signals and sonar. Eventually the captain figured we were stretching our luck so we turned toward deeper water and went to 400 feet. We all let out a sigh of relief that we had gotten away with a very valuable intelligence gathering mission. The rest of our patrol was routine and we eventually got relieved and headed home to Pearl Harbor. We had to stay undetected all the way back to Pearl but that was no problem.

We arrived back off the coast of Oahu in the early morning, just before daylight. The picket destroyer that guards the entrance to the channel finally spotted us and came roaring in on us. We had no hull numbers and
no flag flying so they decided we needed a good looking over. As the sent a flashing light challenge I noticed that there forward 5" gun mount swung out pointing at our bridge, and reported same to the OOD. The Quartermaster of the watch came to the bridge and return the proper code letters to answer the challenge as well as other information. The destroyer swung away from us and we entered port at 8AM. We were met on the way in by the Admiral and our Squadron Commander.

Later that afternoon I received orders to my next school, Nuclear Power School. I was disappointed in a way as Tangs next trip would be to WestPac and I really wanted to make that trip. Since I had two weeks leave coming I called my fiance and we decided to get married as soon as I arrived.