After the Typhoon we pulled in to Guam to offload the JPL scientists. The Island had been hit very hard by the same storm. Damage was extensive and certain things were in short supply, in particular glass. My Chief ASROC (Anti Submarine ROCket) Petty Officer needed a 3-inch diameter circle of glass. Since he was preparing for one of the most important safety/security inspections that the Weapons Department would face I wasn’t going to deny him.

The ASROC system united a standard 13" torpedo or nuclear depth charge with a rocket motor My ship also had triple 13" torpedo tubes on each side of the ship. The same types of torpedoes were used with the ASROC as the conventional launch tubes. This gave us a wide variety of capabilities to deal with the faster, deeper diving submarines of post World War II. ASROC allowed us to get a smart torpedo out near a sub without having to run after it and allowed us to get the nuclear depth charge far enough away to keep us from blowing ourselves up.

The launcher swivels to launch either port or starboard and consists of four pair of two tubes that elevate together. Tube doesn’t quite describe it. Each ASROC unit is on a launch rail mounted along the inside top of a long box that provides services for the rocket and torpedo. As you prepare to launch a fire control system turns the system towards the target and elevates the selected tube pair to put the weapon over the spot the weapon should enter the water. Doors open and the launch rail moves out about a foot. When the ASROC is launched the rocket fires and at a time determined by the fire control system it blows plugs out of the front of the rocket section, neutralizing the thrust and allowing the weapon to separate from the rocket section. A parachute opens and lowers the weapon to the water where its own systems take over.

A few of you may remember a Richard Widmark/ Sidney Poitier movie named The Bedford Incident in which an over zealous Destroyer Captain launched a nuclear depth charge at a Russian submarine. During the cold war many ships did carry what were called Tactical Nuclear Weapons. They are no longer in the fleet as a result of agreements between the Soviets/Russians and the U.S.A. If you think about it makes sense that there was no way to physically prevent such weapons from being launched without permission of the government.

There were, however, a series of both physical and psychological steps that make it so complicated and difficult to launch one that I often wondered how many of these weapons would have been used if they had been authorized for use.

Before reporting as Weapons Officer on the USS Bausell (DD-845) I was sent to a school to learn about these weapons and how to get them from one place to another safely. I was taught how the original bombs were designed and how then current systems were designed (in general terms). Then we were taught the specifics of the particular weapon we would be dealing with. One of the most important things we learned was how to safely destroy the weapon without causing a nuclear reaction. I was taught how to coordinate a minimum of three vehicles, three helicopters, and a minimum of 18 armed marines in order to move one of these weapons from one place to another. Incidentally, it was learned that just moving them in an unmarked truck along regular highways was probably as secure. At any rate, by the time I finished this course, I was certified as a Special Weapons Courier and could be called upon at any time to execute the movement of this specific type of weapons anywhere in the world. Fortunately, I was never called upon to do so.

The first protective measure is the Personnel Reliability Program all people involved with the weapon; its maintenance, control, operation and security must be enrolled in the PRP. This involves psychological and security profiling and an ongoing review of their psychological situation and security risk factors. All of these people must be reviewed regularly for anything that might affect their reliability. That includes lifestyle, which might compromise their ability to stand up to blackmail.

Additionally, there is a two-man rule in effect at all times. No single person ever has access to a weapon by himself or herself. The weapon requires a battery be installed before it becomes armable. The batteries are stored in a locker that requires two keys, one of which is held by the Captain of the ship. Before the keys are released the holders have to be convinced that an authentic message has been received from the proper source. This message will be encrypted both by machine and then manually. Upon receipt by the ship, two officers, specially trained in the procedure, are notified and proceed to a security area where they use a tape with random numbers on it to choose the correct decoding procedure.

Once the use is properly released for use and the battery is installed. If a proper target is acquired and tracked procedure must be followed to launch the weapon. The weapon must be selected by the operators in the SONAR room and confirmed by the operators at the ASROC station. At the moment of launch a mechanism, which requires two hands to activate and a similar one at the firing station must be activated at the same time before the weapon could be fired. In The Bedford Incidence the weapon was launched when a man at the launch station just heard what he thought was a launch order.

All ships that were capable of carrying these weapons had a standard answer when asked if they had such weapons, "We can neither confirm nor deny the presents of weapons". All capable ships maintained a full program of security and training that was the same whether or not they had weapons on board. A complex shell game. The ship I was on was homeported in Yokosuka Japan. This made things a bit more complex since the Japanese have strong feelings about the presence of nuclear weapons for very good reasons. For these reasons we conducted a full training program and ran security as other ships of our type throughout the world. However, to train on the movement of special weapons we did so only outside of Japan. We would only be tested on our skills in satisfactorily handling such weapons outside of Japan. We could neither confirm nor deny the presence of such weapons.

The restrictions placed upon us by being ported in Japan made it more difficult to train and to maintain an acceptable level of skill in all that is required in properly handling a weapon. Our time out of homeport had to be well used. My job, as Weapons Officer, was mainly to insure that the people who would be doing the work were properly trained in spite of the restrictions.

Essentially there were three overlapping teams of men. The operational group that would be involved in the launch of the weapon. The security group that insures that no one who is not authorized to be near a weapon has access The handling group that is charged with physically moving the weapon onto the ship, storing it, loading it or unloading it from the launcher.

Physically I was involved in the first two teams more than the handling group. My Anti Submarine Division Officer was the official handling officer and ran the entire ASW (Anti Submarine Warfare) operation from the SONAR to the ASROC. Essentially I just had to run spot checks to insure they were operating according to the book.

So why was I concerned with a 3-inch circle of glass after a hurricane had smashed glass all over a small island in the Pacific? The Chief Petty Officer (CPO) in charge of the ASROC said he needed it. A CPO is a senior enlisted man who specializes in one particular area. He generally has worked with a particular type of equipment for between 10 and 30 years. These are the people who really get things done. Although I had been trained in all aspects of the Weapons department and my ASW officer had been trained in all aspects of the anti submarine operations this man had worked with the equipment for years and had gone through inspections that neither I nor my ASW officer had experienced. When he said we needed this piece of glass, we knew we needed it. All that was needed was a piece of glass to replace one that covered an indicator gauge in the ASROC control shed. Normally the ships on board supply system would have one, but this time they came up short. Routine procedure would be to place it on order through the supply system and when they restocked their supply they would issue one to the ASW Division. The Chief, however, knew that this would be noted as a shortcoming in our up coming inspection. So the Supply officer and I went on search for this small piece of glass. Destruction on Guam had been extensive and all of the glass shops were busy restoring windows and doors to provide security to various homes and businesses throughout the island. Of course, being the Military, the glass could not just be any piece of glass; it had to meet certain standards. We actually spent a couple of hours running around the island before we were able to find an acceptable piece of glass. Only later would we find out how much our efforts had been worth.

While in port in Guam our handling team went through another practice because we were heading home to Japan for a while before we headed for Korea and a full NTPI. That is the most rigorous inspection of the ship’s entire nuclear weapons system.

On the way home we started to see a change in the ASW office’s demeanor. Something wasn’t quite right with him. After talking things over with him it turned out he was just concerned with the upcoming inspection. We talked about the team and how well it was doing and no, there wasn’t anything he could point to as being a problem. It just worried him. After we got home and things didn’t get better we had more and more conversations. In the mean time we continued to exercise the security team in responding to various situations. The problem with the ASW officer continued to worsen and his performance deteriorated. The chief expressed his concern to me and I was soon having talks with the Captain. It was decided that the risks were too high. We had to remove the ASW officer from his job.

That meant that I would have to become the Handling Officer. I had been trained, in school, to do the job, but that was a long way from being a full functioning member of a team. The number of days until the inspection was dwindling. The decision was made to leave Japan early and arrive in Korea early enough to run through the required operations twice while at anchor before the inspection.

Fortunately, the Korean port had an anchorage available. There was no problem with my other duties, others would cover them while I studied and learned to work with the handling team. On the way to Korea we got together as a team and talked through all of the procedures, step by step. There was no way we could practice while enroute; the seas were just too big.

We arrived in early afternoon and ran through transferring a weapon from storage to launcher. Things seemed to go well. The team knew what they were doing and all I really had to do was read the checklist and insure that each step was done completely and safely. The Chief ASROC gunnersmate had done an excellent job. The ASW officer had done his job well in coordinating his men and keeping me informed as to the progress of the training. He was just too worried to handle the pressure. I knew that the rest of the ship was ready for the inspection. Now if I could just get ready we would have no problem. We had the whole next day to go over everything.

We spent most of the next time going through everything from receipt to launch to transfer off the ship and even destruction. It was a long day but at the end the Chief reassured me that we were ready.

The next three days the inspection would cover everything from paperwork to witnessing everything except an actual launch.

Upon arrival the team was subjected to the requisite security checks and escorted to the wardroom for the initial briefing. The Captain, all the concerned officers, the Chief ASROC Gunnersmate and the ships Sergeant at Arms, who happened to be my other Chief Gunnersmate, were all present. When the meeting broke up the inspectors were escorted to the site they needed to inspect.

The first day seemed to go well. The second day was my day as Handling Officer and the only question was about why the Weapons Officer was doing the job. They were satisfied with the answer and the PRP documentation was there that showed the proper withdrawal of the ASW Officer from the job.

The third day was only a partial day of finishing up the inspection. Then the inspectors meet with each other in the wardroom to prepare the report. The meeting went on and on with messages being sent and received from the team to the Commander of the Pacific Fleet. We could not figure out what had gone wrong. None of us had noticed anything improper. Why was the report taking so long to prepare?

Finally we were called in for the report of the inspection team. There had been NO MISTAKES. They had found nothing wrong in any area. This was such an unusual situation that they had communicated with headquarters to see if there was something they had overlooked.

Had the Supply Officer and I not spent the time and effort to find the right piece of glass to replace the one with the crack in it we would not have had a perfect NTPI. Had the Chief not been so meticulous, had the team not adjusted to the loss of their team leader we could have failed miserably. The dedication and efforts of every member of the crew all contributed to this very rewarding report and I thank them all for it.