Free The Galloping Ghost by Carl P. LaVO

six months. A series of physical tests weaned the enlistees. First was night-vision certification. Since submarines primarily patrolled on the surface at night to increase speed while avoiding detection, the men had to be able to see the silhouettes of enemy surface vessels in a darkened room built to resemble the bridge of a submarine. The men also gathered in a twenty-foot-long steel chamber, where they were subjected to high atmospheric pressure and hundred-degree temperatures, the type of conditions they might face in a submarine. Anyone who could not endure the tests faced elimination and return to the surface fleet.
    Classroom instruction included diesel mechanics, electrical systems, submarine tactics, torpedo weaponry, and communications. Exhaustinghours were spent understanding the complex web of internal mechanisms of a submarine, one of the most complicated military weapons ever devised. Diesel engines used to propel the vessels on the surface were dismantled and rebuilt. Motors and generators for undersea propulsion were rewound. The men diagrammed all the electrical, pneumatic, and hydraulic systems and practiced using all the controls. They witnessed what would happen if lead-acid batteries in the keel of a submarine were doused in seawater. Deadly chlorine gas roiled up, a vivid reminder of a perennial danger of submarine operations. The men also learned how to use Momsen lungs, self-contained breathing devices that would allow them to escape from a stranded sub. Each lung consisted of a spring-loaded nose clip, mouthpiece, and air-inflated bag from which to breathe. To qualify for submarine duty, each officer and enlisted man had to swim to the surface from the bottom of the escape training tank while breathing through his Momsen lung. They made ascents of a hundred feet straight up the middle of the tank, guided by a line knotted every fifteen to twenty feet. To simulate actual conditions, the bottom end of the line was attached to a platform modeled to resemble a sub’s deck and the top end was attached to a buoy deployed at the surface. The men methodically ascended, one knot at a time, pausing at each to blow and decompress the air in their lungs. As they ascended from the hundred-foot depth the air in their lungs expanded under the reduced pressure and would have ruptured a lung if not exhaled. As a safety measure, experienced divers worked in pairs from air-filled vestibules at various depths in the tank to assist anyone who had problems.
    Twice a week the students boarded the school’s submarines in small groups for hands-on lessons in diving, surfacing, and maneuvering the vessels in the river and Long Island Sound. Under the careful scrutiny of a veteran crew, they experienced for the first time the complexity of submergence, beginning with the explosive “ah-oo-gah” of the Klaxon diving alarm. In unison, crewmen cranked open huge Kingston valves to flood ballast tanks to begin a typical ten-minute dive. Simultaneously the deafening clatter of diesel engines shut down as electrical motors took over, drawing power from the batteries, each the size of a human and lining the keel, making up nearly a third of the submarine’s weight. Simultaneously crewmen sealed all hatches and valves throughout the vessel to keep interior compartments from flooding. Planesmen manned two large, hydraulically powered hand wheels at amidships that controlled stern and bow diving planes, mechanical wings deployed from the craft to maneuver it up and down in the sea. Everything was timed; everyone aboard had to carry out his duty unerringly to perfect the dive. Practice emphasized the critical nature of teamwork: one mistake could cost the lives of every man aboard. SladeCutter, who graduated from sub school just ahead of Fluckey, described the unity of purpose that was needed in a Fleet boat:
    The engineman has to shut off the engines at the diving alarm. The man on the hydraulic manifold in the control