McLaren on the shoulder and whispered that the sub had ground to a standstill. The crew was watching a favorite Western movie, “Shane,” when a messenger touched Dr.
The goal of mapping the bottom contour also sent the Queenfish into the dead end. A result was a navigation chart that bore the kind of squiggly lines found on topographic maps. The sub did so by finding and following depth contours, for instance, by locating the areas of the Arctic Basin where the seabed was 600 feet below the surface. The main mission was to map the seabed and collect oceanographic data in anticipation of the Arctic’s becoming a major theater of military operations. From bow to stern, it had a total of seven acoustic sensors pointing upward to help the crew judge the thickness of ice overhead. As such, it boasted an array of special acoustic gear meant to help it visualize the complex world beneath the pack ice.įor instance, the sub had a special sensor to detect icebergs jutting downward with threatening spikes. It was the first of a large class of submarines specially designed for year-round operations in polar regions. McLaren commanded one of the Navy’s most advanced warships, a jet-black monster the length of a football field. Polmar added that the submarine community nonetheless considered the Arctic “a big deal,” because it had a near monopoly on operations there.ĭr. He said ice dangling from the surface in endless shapes and sizes made the sub’s main eyes sonar beams that bounce sound off the bottom and surrounding objects work poorly. Norman Polmar, an author and analyst on Navy operations, called the polar environment “very very difficult” for subs. The goal was to destroy the Soviet subs if the cold war turned hot, doing so quickly enough to keep them from launching their missiles and nuclear warheads at the United States. McLaren’s mission, the Arctic became a theater of military operations in which the Soviets tried to hide their missile-carrying subs under the fringes of the ice pack while American attack subs tried relentlessly to track them.
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