USS Washington, SSN 787, “the Blackfish”
When all hell breaks loose on a submarine, it’s the XO’s job to tame the chaos. That’s what the captain told Knepper during his one-on-one indoc brief with the skipper his first day aboard the Blackfish. With alarms blaring, people screaming, fires burning, and torpedoes exploding, how prescient those words had been. In casualty situations, systematic triage was the key to survival. Prioritize and act.
Never stop thinking, never stop moving.
After picking up Ryan, he turned her by the shoulders and slapped an emergency breathing apparatus (EBA) on her face. He clipped the regulator to her belt and double-checked that her air hose was properly plugged into a manifold. Next, he grabbed the shell-shocked intelligence officer by the sides of her face and shouted, “Look at me, Ryan—do not take this off. To breathe you must be plugged into a manifold or daisy-chained into someone else’s EBA that’s connected to a manifold. Nod if you understand.”
She nodded.
He glanced at the command workstation and saw that the pilot had gotten control of their depth. They had a cushion of three hundred feet until they hit test depth. The boat was slowly ascending now, but their speed was rapidly falling off. On a sub, speed equals lift. If they didn’t get propulsion restored quickly, they would sink again, and if they reached test depth, the CO would be forced to order an emergency blow, forcing high pressure into the main ballast tanks and the submarine emergently to the surface. An emergency blow, while saving the ship from sinking, would potentially kill them another way. The blow would steal their stealth, trap them on the surface, and make the Blackfish a sitting duck for the Belgorod to kill. The direness of the situation was compounded by the fact that the trim pump controller was on fire, and the trim pump was the high-capacity pump used to pump extra ballast overboard and make the ship lighter.
“Conn, Maneuvering, commencing fast reactor start-up,” the EOOW reported on the 7MC.
Knepper checked that mental box.
Good.
“Recommend cross-connecting trim and drain,” Knepper shouted.
“Agreed,” Houston barked and then, grabbing the 7MC handset, said, “Maneuvering, Conn, cross-connect trim and drain.”
“Cross-connect trim and drain systems, Conn, Maneuvering, aye,” came the reply.
Knepper checked mental box two.
“Captain, I’m going to put out this fire. WEPS is your coordinator.”
“Go,” Houston said.
“WEPS, you’re—”
“Got it!” Juggernaut said, her voice tinny through the mouthpiece of her EBA.
Knepper looked back at Ryan and said, “Stay here and do whatever Juggernaut tells you.”
Ryan nodded.
Knepper coughed as smoke began to waft into control. He ducked and sprinted out the back of the conn into the command passageway. He burst into his stateroom and retrieved his self-contained breathing apparatus, or SCBA—a mobile unit with a pressurized tank like the Scott Air-Paks that civilian firefighters used. As the designated scene leader, he needed mobility, so an EBA was his second choice.
Unlike surface Navy ships, submarines did not have a dedicated damage control division. On a submarine, every sailor with dolphins was a firefighter. Similarly, on a submarine there was no dedicated DC Central with gear lockers and status boards. On the Blackfish, the CO’s stateroom became DC Central and the XO was the designated officer in charge of coordinating the effort to fight the fire casualty.
After shrugging on the bottle backpack, he donned the face mask and pulled the flash-guard flame-retardant hood over his neck and shoulders. Then he checked the seal and took his first breath. Good to go, he tuned his MOMCOM to the forward compartment common channel. Before leaving, he glanced at the tactical monitor in his stateroom, which he had set to quad-view, showing four different windows that were repeaters of screens in control. He checked the ship’s speed, three knots, then depth. They were only a hundred and ten feet from test depth, and sinking. The captain had not yet ordered maneuvering to shift to the emergency propulsion motor, which in normal circumstances for such a casualty would be the likely course of action. Battery powered, the EPM was designed to provide limited propulsion—just enough to maintain nominal lift for depth control when the sub was overly heavy from too much ballast or a flooded compartment. But shifting to the EPM and back to main propulsion was time-consuming. The Belgorod had undoubtedly heard the Blackfish’s ADCAPs active sonar. And if not, it could not have missed the explosion. If K-329 fired a third Status-6 with a conventional warhead at the Blackfish and the Blackfish was stuck on the EPM, they were dead. Houston was gambling that the fast recovery start-up of the sub’s nuclear reactor would be complete before they hit test depth and needed to emergency blow.
He shelved the concern and darted out of his stateroom. In the command passageway, he passed LTJG Walker, who moved forward as he moved aft. She was red-faced and holding her breath inside her EBA as she ran toward the CO’s stateroom, where she would coordinate comms and track progress on a status board with markers.
“Power is secured to trim pump motor controller,” reported the A-gang LCPO on the 4MC. Chief Cole Marxen was a man whose voice Knepper would recognize anywhere. “Hose team one is fighting the fire.”
A gray-black layer of smoke had filled the top half of the command passageway, limiting visibility above waist height. Knepper relaxed a little knowing that Marxen had reacted so quickly and already had a hose team on the scene. As the auxiliary division chief, the machinery room was Marxen’s domain and the trim pump was his piece of equipment. This type of casualty was one they trained on and Cole Marxen was a shit-hot chief who didn’t back away from any challenge.
Knepper took the first down ladder he came to and made his way aft to the machinery room. The trim pump and trim pump motor controller were located in the forward starboard outboard section of the space. As he faced aft, the fire was on his left just inside the door—but this was something he could only visualize in his head because visibility was shit. Crouching low, taking care not to step on the hose or knock any of the first responders off balance, he moved forward. His regulator hissed and warbled with each labored breath as he scooted forward, feeling his way.
“XO is on the scene,” he shouted. A beat later he was directly behind the crouching Marxen, who had his hand on the second hoseman’s back.
A water jet from the nozzle disappeared into the haze and steam poured out in the passageway, mixing with the dense smoke.
Chief Marxen used a NIFTI—a Navy infrared thermal imager—to peer through the smoke and see the fire. “XO, the fire is contained to the motor controller,” he shouted.
Knepper called the update to LTJG Walker, who would update control and all stations. “DC Central, XO, the fire is contained.”
“Move your stream down and left,” Marxen barked, guiding the hose team. “Too much . . . Yeah, right there.”
Knepper conducted a mental inventory of the equipment around the trim pump that could also potentially catch fire and the tactical and engineering implications if they did.
“XO, the fire is out,” Chief Marxen shouted.
“Check for hot spots and set the reflash watch,” he shouted back. Then, on his MOMCOM, he reported, “DC Central, XO—the fire is out. Checking for hot spots. The reflash watch is set.”
A split second later a 4 MC announcement was made: “The fire is out in the machinery room.”
The hose team, which had secured their nozzle stream, stayed crouched and ready to reopen the spigot, while Marxen scooted past them into the machinery room to scan with the NIFTI for hot spots in the surrounding area that could reignite the fire. In the case of electrical fires, once the power was secured to the source, the fire was typically quick to put out. But the machinery room was home to the ship’s diesel generator, which burned diesel fuel, adding a significant Bravo Class fire risk if things got out of control. Any lagging or other combustible materials that caught fire needed to be dealt with quickly.
“No hot spots,” Marxen called.
“DC Central, XO, no hot spots in the machinery room,” Knepper reported.
But no sooner had LTJG Walker acknowledged the good news than she came back with a report that made his breath catch in his throat.
“XO, Captain wants you in maneuvering to restore propulsion by any means necessary. We’ve got torpedoes in the water!”