Family WeeJcly j 'jvlytl, 196S
Through an ironic accident, you are not aboard the day your ship goes down;
How do you feel? What do you do? Here is the poignant personal account
of the sole surviving officer of the ill-fated atomic submarine
Nuclear Subs!
An Officer of
the Thresher says:
By Lieut. RAYMOND A. McCOOLE
as told to Jack Ryan
THE TELEPHONE CALL came Wednesday after
noon, April 10. Capt. Louis Larcombe, commanding
officer of the eubmarlne Dogflmh and chief of casual
ty control of the Portsmouth (N.H.) Naval Shipyard,
was oa the line.
"Lieutenant, get this right the 11 rat time. I can
answer no questions, and I can say this only once.
The Threiher is overdue. Come to the shipyard."
That was the first word I had that my ship, a
nuclear attack submarine with 129 persons aboard,
might be in trouble. I wasn't concerned, though. A
sub deep in the sea often loses radio contact with
surface Teasels, and I knew the Thresher and its
crew well enough to match them against any pos
sible emergency.
My wife Barbara was sitting in bed, the room
darkened to rest her injured eyes. "Some problem
has come up at the base," I told her. "Ill be back in
no time." Barbara had suffered a household accident,
so I needed somebody to watch our fire young boys.
I called my sister-in-law to come over.
By 7 p.m. I was walking into the message center
in the Portsmouth Administration Building. Captain
Larcombe turned to me from a group of men en
circling a telephone. "Not a word," he said. "Just
got a report, however, that they've spotted debris
bout where she dived."
"That's probably stuff left topside when the
Threiher dived," I said. "8he'll be coming up soon."
The voices in the room were more hushed than
usual, heightening the excited clatter of the ma
chines. The ominous feeling made me wonder if my
confidence might be merely the mask of a man who
doesn't wsnt to believe. I joined the vigil at the
radio receiver and waited.
t - - IrTr-' 7Z-Z f - - - ,T-m . . - .-. .. ..
lISMI
lS A kid in Dover, N.H., I helped
.out my mother by working the
fishing boats. I recall looking out to
sea and glimpsing Navy ships coming
in and out of .the Piscataqua River.
Someday, I promised, I'm going to sail
on one of those. Once in a while, when
the sun was low and reflecting on the
sea, I'd catch the low silhouette of a
sub, and if I were feeling optimistic
I'd add another promise: I'm going to
be a submariner.
At 17 I was in Navy boot camp all right, but
as for making; a submariner well, that seemed
remote. We were advised that both the physical
and intelligence tests were particularly rugged;
that even if we were accepted, many would drop
out because they could not adjust to the confined
life aboard a submarine.
More than 100 men were in my boot class; 18
volunteered for submarines. When orders came
through, though, only four names were posted.
Mine was one of them. Only two passed the sub
school and I was lucky again.
I joined the sub Conger in Panama in early
1947 but missed being assigned to one of her
special groups. Instead, I got the lowliest job
chipping paint Even that didn't dim the kid's
dream: I was on a submarine!
As they told me, the first year on a sub is your
real test You learn whether you are a team man;
Sail
whether you can work and live while locked to
gether for weeks, often in semidarkness, beneath
the sea, smelling stale air and oil, and yearning
for such simple things as a fresh-water shower
or an unfamiliar face.
You learn, tooevery valve and switch of your
submarine. A sub is a machine: under the stress
of taking men out of their natural environment,
it possibly can get into serious trouble.
Yet there is nothing you can't cope with if
you know your job and more. "An extra pair
of hands, and extra pair of eyes" is a phrase a
young submariner hears often. It reminds him
that he must be special. He has to put out more
because more depends on him, including the lives
of his shipmates.
By 1958 I was an officer and a disappointed
one, at first As a chief petty officer, I had quali
fied aboard our first nuclear submarine, the
Nautilus, and had been with her twice when she
tried unsuccessfully to cross beneath the polar
ice cap. On the third try she made it and proved
the worth of nuclear subs once and for all. Only
one thing took the edge oft that triumph for me:
two weeks earlier I had been transferred to an
officers' candidate school.
Landlocked in Idaho
My next assignment almost topped the disap
pointment of missing out on submarine history.
I was to be a sailor in landlocked Idaho me,
who'd practically been raised on the sea. Well,
it was only a temporary assignment I was told.
By now I had married my home-town girl, and
Barbara had accepted the lot of a submariner's
wife the anxieties, the long periods away from
home, the times we couldn't even write.
That wasn't the case - in Idaho, of course,
where I came home most evenings like a suburban
businessman. Barbara liked that change, and our
kids got to know the stranger in the blue uniform.
Maybe I can describe how I felt this way: 72
miles from our home in Idaho is a nuclear sub
marine engineering compartment parked in the
middle of desert The Navy put it there for
training, and when I first saw it I thought it
was pretty comic But as my temporary assign
ment was extended six months, then another six
months, I looked at it with different eyes. It was
a beautiful if incongruous sight
After two "temporary" years in Idaho, I was
so despondent I drove out to see my submarine
one evening. The sound, smell, and roll of the
sea were missing, but somehow I felt a little like
that kid 15 years before who had seen a sub and
vowed to sail aboard one. I made that vow again,
went home, and began writing letters to Wash
ington. When that didn't work, I took to the
telephone. Lieut Lou Pence, deskbound himself,
took an interest and, after my third year in
Idaho, called me: "Ray, your orders are on the
way it's, back to sea!"
I sold the house, and Barbara packed our
things. But orders never, came. Another year
passed before Pence called again: "This time is
really it I don't know the ship, but you're to
report to the East Coast"
He was right By August 1962, 1 was with the
Thresher, then undergoing an overhaul at Ports
mouth. I had come home in many ways to
Dover, the sea, old friends. The Thresher was
heavily complemented with former shipmates,
and many of the crew had been my students at
the nuclear power training unit in Idaho. The
skipper under whom I would eventually serve,
Lt. Cmdr. John W. Harvey, had been on the
Nautilus, and I knew he had a gifted way with
men and ships. One of my friends, Lieut John
Smarz, had been aboard the Thresher since she
was commissioned and gave me a run down:
"There's no ship in the world like this one
faster, goes deeper than anything we've known.
We're lucky just wait till we take her out."
Raring to Oat Thrasher to Saa
By January I was sharing John's excitement
and, like everyone else, raring to get the Thresher
back to sea. I was electrical and reactor-control
officer and had five chief petty officers and an
engineering crew which was the best I'd ever
encountered. But every time we seemed ready,
some new modification or experimental equip
ment would be installed, and we'd be delayed.
By spring the Thresher's wardroom was rest
less, and the old expression, "Just wait till we
take her out" had a bitter tag line "If we
ever take her out!" My "E" division reflected
the impatience, and my toughest job was to keep '
them keyed up through the tedium of yard life.
I was more eager than most I suppose. I still
wore the submariner's silver dolphin on my uni
form, meaning I'd qualified on nuclear subs as
an enlisted man only. I was aiming for the offi
cer's golden dolphin, and this had been an extra
long wait for me.
In April we got orders for a test run. I said
good-bye to Barbara and the boys and brought
my gear aboard the Thresher. Everybody aboard
seemed fresh and new, as if they'd just awakened
from a limbolike sleep. They moved quicker,
joked easier for a few hours. But then the
Thresher was being towed ignominiously back
to berth by a cussed little tug. Some more minor
adjusting and waiting.
The following Monday, though, I sensed we
would really get out this time, then I got a tele
phone call from Barbara. "I can't see," she said.
"Come home. I can't see." She had had a stiff
shoulder and had bought some rubbing com
pound. As she opened the bottle, the fluid splashed
into her eyes. Now, with five children, she was
helpless. I got permission to leave ship. I took
Barbara to a hospital,, got my sister-in-law to
help her at home, and by 2 p.m. was back on the
Thresher ready to sail the following morning.
Then I got a call to see the executive officer, Lt
Cmdr. Pat Garner:
'The captain says you're not going with us.
You should be with your family."
I explained I had taken care of everything
and hadn't requested leave, but the 'exec' had his
orders, so I got permission to see the captain.
"I waited four years in Idaho and eight months
here," I explained. "I want to qualify as a watch
officer. It seems 111 never get the chance."
But Captain Harvey was adamant "There'll
be plenty of chance for you to qualify. Your wife
needs you at home."
Cmdr. John Lyman and I drove home together
that night. I guess he knew how disappointed I
( Continued on page 6)