THE IRON COFFIN'S SENTINEL

In July 1898, a small boat fell beneath the waves in New York Harbor, off Staten Island. The event caused great celebration. For the boat was called the Holland, and she was designed to sink. And she did this so well that on April 11, 1900, Holland was bought by the U.S. Navy and thus was the world's first successful submarine service born. Holland’s first dive was only to 12 feet, and it lasted for just 11 minutes. These days, submarines easily go deeper than 1,000 feet, travel to the farthest reaches of the planet's oceans, sidle up close against enemy shores and often stay submerged for months at a time.

 

John Lowe, the first submariner and the man at the helm during Holland's first dive, had much in common with the nearly quarter of a million men who have served on the submarines over the last 106 years, men who proudly call themselves "bubbleheads'' and who, for the most part, believe that they are all a little bit nuts. Why else would anyone purposely sign up to serve on a ship knowing he was going to risk not just enemy torpedoes and depth charges, but also asphyxiation, drowning or implosion under crushing ocean pressures. Submariners have always been a completely volunteer force, a group of men struck with a brand of patriotism that outweighs their own sense of survival. They go because they've asked themselves the question, "What else?" 

 

The tragic loss of any submarine around the world has a special kind of impact on the nations operating these technological marvels. A special kind of sadness erupts around the globe, mixed with universal admiration for the men who choose this type of work. One can not mention the submarine and its gallant crew without observing in the same breath how utterly final and alone the end is when a boat dies at the bottom of the sea and what a remarkable specimen of man it must be who accepts such a risk. Most of us might be moved to conclude, too, that a tragedy of this kind would have a damaging effect on the morale of the other men in the submarine service and tend to discourage future enlistment. Actually, there is not evidence that this is so. What is it then that lures men to careers in which they spend so much of their time in cramped quarters, under great psychological stress, with danger lurking all about them?

 
 Togetherness is an overworked term, but in no other branch of our military service is it given such full meaning as in the so called "Silent Service". In a Submarine, each man is totally dependent upon the skill of every other man in the crew, not only for top performance but for actual survival. Each knows that his very life depends on the others and because this is so, there is a bond among them that both challenges and comforts them. All of this gives the submariner a special feeling of pride, because he is indeed a member of an elite corps. The risks, then, are an inspiration rather than a deterrent. The challenge of masculinity is another factor which attracts men to serve on submarines. It certainly is a test of a man's prowess and power to know he can qualify for this highly selective service. However, it should be emphasized that this desire to prove masculinity is not pathological, as it might be in certain dare-devil pursuits, such as driving a motorcycle through a flaming hoop. 

There is nothing dare devilish about motivations of the man who decides to dedicate his life to the submarine service. He does, indeed, take pride in demonstrating that he is quite a man, but he does not do so to practice a form of foolhardy brinkmanship, to see how close he can get to failure and still snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. On the contrary, the aim in the submarine service is to battle the danger, to minimize the risk, to take every measure to make certain that safety rather danger, is maintained at all times. Are the men in the submarine service braver than those in other pursuits where the possibility of sudden tragedy is constant? The glib answer would be to say they are. It is more accurate, from a psychological point of view, to say they are not necessarily braver, but that they are men who have a little more insight into themselves and their capabilities. They know themselves a little better than the next man. This has to be so with men who have a healthy reason to volunteer for a risk. They are generally a cut healthier emotionally than others of the similar age and background because of their willingness to push themselves a little bit farther and not settle for an easier kind of existence. We all have tremendous capabilities but are rarely straining at the upper level of what we can do, these men are. The country can be proud and grateful that so many of its sound, young, eager men care enough about their own stature in life and the welfare of their country to pool their skills and match them collectively against the power of the sea.

 
 In the early days of the Submarines, John Lowe was convinced that only submarines - a fleet of 50 at least - could protect the nation's shores should an enemy do what he was certain any enemy would. The idea of subs as the ultimate coastal picket, guarding against all enemies who may venture near, lasted until World War I - when German U-boats demonstrated in a lethal campaign against merchant shipping that submarines could be very effective as a blue-water force. Submarines were equally deadly during World War II - and it wasn't just Hitler's Navy that posed the threat. U.S. submarines crippled the Japanese Navy and destroyed Tokyo's merchant fleet, mounting their first successful attacks within days of Pearl Harbor. Along the way, the United States lost 52 submarines and 3,500 men.

After the war, submarines fell out of the spotlight, but the calculated insanity that sent men out beneath the waves never diminished - nor did the question, "What else?" If anything, both reached new intensity during the Cold War, in missions that were just as much a question of life and death as they had been during the years when depth charges routinely blew holes in the Pacific.

These new missions were so deeply cloaked in secrecy that thousands of men went out - often for months at a time - never telling anyone where they were going, or why. They didn't tell their wives, their children, their parents, their best friends. And for good reason. The mission had moved beyond one of mere stealth to one of utmost secrecy. And submariners had become more than hunters. They had become spies. It was their job to venture to the shores of the enemies, sometimes straight into the enemy’s harbors. It was their job to trail,
a push of a button away from sinking, the enemy submarines.

To do this, submariners suffer from confinement and from the dangers of the ocean depths. Submariners stood by as many submarines were lost with all hands - and they watched as many of their own families fell apart from the imposed distance of time and silence. Their own families think that they are involved in mere exercises, perhaps in a few "cat-and-mouse games". The public is generally told that the submarines themselves are technological marvels almost able to drive themselves. What is left out is that these marvels often are held together with shoestring, spit and the creativity of the men who ride in them.

Submariners have always made up their own rules, their limits are often drawn on the spot by victory and disaster. There is no other way. They are always attempting feats that had never been considered possible, moving as quickly as their technology and the technology of their adversaries and allow - dreaming it up as they go along.

Amidst all the controversies, the Silent Service has managed time and again to reinvent itself - and has been proving that submarines can play a crucial role in the kind of high-tech wars that will be fought in the 21st century. Today, spy satellites scour the surface of the globe, but still can't effectively peer under- water. Submarines remain the best of the nation's stealth weapons. This is far from the world that John Lowe could have imagined when he guided Holland into New York Harbor a century ago. But it is a world that the Silent Service is well-equipped to dominate well into its second century. It's the modern answer to the old question: "What else?''

Happy Birthday.

(Courtesy:- Internet Research)