Sherry Sontag;Christopher Drew by Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story Of American Submarine Espionage Page A
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had ended in mid-1964 when the Navy began basing Polaris subs in the Pacific. With the Regulus era over, no one knew quite what to do with Halibut.
She was a marine oddball, one of the least hydrodynamic of the nuclear fleet and one of the most ridiculous-looking creations ever born in a dry dock. Unlike the flat fish she was named for, Halibut wore a huge hump that might have been appropriate on a gargantuan desert creature except for the fact that it opened up into a large shark's-mouth hatch, part of the original missile hangar. Perhaps in another time, Halibut would have been quietly scrapped. After all, this boat was not only odd, she suffered from what was a near-fatal malady for a submarine: hydromechanical cacophony. Halibut was loud. Submariners heard the din, saw only potential flooding when they gazed upon that hatch, and shuddered when they examined her cumbersome ballast tanks, gaping caverns originally designed to allow her to surface fast, shoot a missile, and submerge even faster.
Craven took one look at the submarine it seemed nobody could love and was transfixed. All he saw were the possibilities, the strange and wonderful things that could be done with all of that excess space. And when he caught a glimpse of that gorgeous gaping mouth, it was enough to send him, like any self-respecting mad scientist, reeling with joy. No other submarine in the fleet boasted a hatch larger than 26 inches. Halibut's hatch was 22 feet.
It was settled: Halibut would be Craven's submarine, his laboratory, his ministry, his pirate ship. He would have $70 million to outfit her with electronic, sonic, photographic, and video gadgets. The Navy put out the word, and in February 1965 Halibut went into Pearl Harbor to be refitted as an oceanographic research vessel.
Less a lie than a huge omission, that was only one of several cover stories Craven would employ. The DSRV program and his other deepsea projects would add more layers, all hiding what Craven had proclaimed to be his "Skunk Works"-a term he borrowed for its drama from Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, the spy-plane manufacturer Craven would soon have working on the design of the DSRVs and also on a Deep Submergence Search Vehicle. The plan was that the DSSV would be able to sit on the ocean floor 20,000 feet deep and pick up objects with a mechanical arm. It was to travel to any recovery area mounted on the top of a submarine.
It would take two years to rebuild and test Halibut, but Craven would have little time to be impatient. From almost the moment the refit began, Craven's mass of cover stories began earning him notice outside the insular realm of Naval Intelligence. Suddenly he was being pulled into other high-profile projects.
Rickover, who had once done everything he could to limit Craven's interest in deep-diving mini-subs, now came to Craven asking him to help build the first nuclear-powered one, though one of steel, not glass. (The admiral would forever remain scathing about glass, to the point of insult.) But Craven was now working with Rickover, and the liaison would prove to be a crucial step in the scientist's education: crucial because it was through Rickover that Craven would learn how to mine the Navy's budget, deal with Congress, and handle the cadre of admirals who ran the submarine program.
It was a Faustian pact. Rickover may have been sixty-four years old, an age at which even less controversial officers have long been retired, but Craven, like just about everyone else in the Navy, could never quite learn to handle him. Rickover liked to begin their conversations in a way that showed just who was in charge: "Craven, my people are more competent than your people, but your shop is bigger, so I'm going to have to work with you." Rickover liked to try to throw men off balance just to see how they would handle themselves.
Rickover personally christened the mini-sub "NR-1." It might as well have been called the USS Rickover, for "NR" was the designation for
She was a marine oddball, one of the least hydrodynamic of the nuclear fleet and one of the most ridiculous-looking creations ever born in a dry dock. Unlike the flat fish she was named for, Halibut wore a huge hump that might have been appropriate on a gargantuan desert creature except for the fact that it opened up into a large shark's-mouth hatch, part of the original missile hangar. Perhaps in another time, Halibut would have been quietly scrapped. After all, this boat was not only odd, she suffered from what was a near-fatal malady for a submarine: hydromechanical cacophony. Halibut was loud. Submariners heard the din, saw only potential flooding when they gazed upon that hatch, and shuddered when they examined her cumbersome ballast tanks, gaping caverns originally designed to allow her to surface fast, shoot a missile, and submerge even faster.
Craven took one look at the submarine it seemed nobody could love and was transfixed. All he saw were the possibilities, the strange and wonderful things that could be done with all of that excess space. And when he caught a glimpse of that gorgeous gaping mouth, it was enough to send him, like any self-respecting mad scientist, reeling with joy. No other submarine in the fleet boasted a hatch larger than 26 inches. Halibut's hatch was 22 feet.
It was settled: Halibut would be Craven's submarine, his laboratory, his ministry, his pirate ship. He would have $70 million to outfit her with electronic, sonic, photographic, and video gadgets. The Navy put out the word, and in February 1965 Halibut went into Pearl Harbor to be refitted as an oceanographic research vessel.
Less a lie than a huge omission, that was only one of several cover stories Craven would employ. The DSRV program and his other deepsea projects would add more layers, all hiding what Craven had proclaimed to be his "Skunk Works"-a term he borrowed for its drama from Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, the spy-plane manufacturer Craven would soon have working on the design of the DSRVs and also on a Deep Submergence Search Vehicle. The plan was that the DSSV would be able to sit on the ocean floor 20,000 feet deep and pick up objects with a mechanical arm. It was to travel to any recovery area mounted on the top of a submarine.
It would take two years to rebuild and test Halibut, but Craven would have little time to be impatient. From almost the moment the refit began, Craven's mass of cover stories began earning him notice outside the insular realm of Naval Intelligence. Suddenly he was being pulled into other high-profile projects.
Rickover, who had once done everything he could to limit Craven's interest in deep-diving mini-subs, now came to Craven asking him to help build the first nuclear-powered one, though one of steel, not glass. (The admiral would forever remain scathing about glass, to the point of insult.) But Craven was now working with Rickover, and the liaison would prove to be a crucial step in the scientist's education: crucial because it was through Rickover that Craven would learn how to mine the Navy's budget, deal with Congress, and handle the cadre of admirals who ran the submarine program.
It was a Faustian pact. Rickover may have been sixty-four years old, an age at which even less controversial officers have long been retired, but Craven, like just about everyone else in the Navy, could never quite learn to handle him. Rickover liked to begin their conversations in a way that showed just who was in charge: "Craven, my people are more competent than your people, but your shop is bigger, so I'm going to have to work with you." Rickover liked to try to throw men off balance just to see how they would handle themselves.
Rickover personally christened the mini-sub "NR-1." It might as well have been called the USS Rickover, for "NR" was the designation for
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