Misadventures on a Nuclear Submarine: A Swollen Knee, a Gush of Water, and a Man Overboard

When you’re serving on a Navy submarine with dozens of torpedoes and nuclear-tipped missiles, the best days are the boring ones. Boring on a submarine is good. Boring means everything is working like it should and everyone is doing what they are supposed to do.

But, like with so many aspects of military life, there are a million and one things that can go wrong. And when they do, the crew must lean on its training and respond within seconds—or everyone dies.

In October 1988, I faced such a day when a humanitarian transfer in rough seas led to a man overboard in frigid waters.

In the 1980s, finding and retaining enough qualified submariners to meet the character, physical, and aptitude requirements to serve beneath the ocean’s surface was a constant challenge. So deployments were often completed using crew borrowed from other subs or bringing people out to sea who didn’t quite meet minimum standards.

That explains the fix we were in when interior communications electrician Mike Kent injured his knee 48 hours before the USS Nevada SSBN 733 had to depart for a 78-day patrol. The injury was severe enough that under normal circumstances, he would have been replaced and left behind. But in this case, Mike was the only person trained and qualified on the oxygen generators, the machines that allowed us to remain submerged for months at a time. There wasn’t enough time to find a replacement, and we couldn’t leave port without his expertise. So even though he could barely walk up and down ladders, Mike joined the rest of the crew when we departed Bangor Base, Washington.

A few days into patrol, Mike’s knee started to swell until it reached the size of a softball. The corpsman worked to drain his knee and get him back to work, but not long after, Mike’s knee became infected and started to swell up even more. His mobility became so limited he was confined to the crew’s lounge, and if the injury was left untreated, there was a risk that Mike might lose his leg or even his life.

We didn’t have the medical facilities on board to handle an amputation or properly deal with such an infection. At this point in the story—in just about any other part of the military—Mike would have been evacuated and given proper medical care. But we were in our designated and classified “patrol box” and on “alert”—meaning we were on standby to launch Trident missiles at a moment’s notice. This was during the Cold War, and we were not allowed to break radio silence or surface as it might reveal our position in the Gulf of Alaska and compromise national security.

We had brought Mike on patrol because of his skills, but now he was not only useless, he had become a liability. The crew’s morale sank as we all fretted about his declining state and the command’s inability to do anything about it.

Miraculously for Mike, he was given a reprieve. Another shipmate had a death in the family and the family contacted the Red Cross. We couldn’t break radio silence to inform headquarters about Mike, so ComSubPac had no idea of the opportunity it gave us when authorities directed the Nevada to leave the patrol area so the grieving crew member could transfer off via helicopter. We took advantage of this window to include Mike in the transfer.

We left the patrol area and signaled our proximity once we were within helicopter range. It was a cold October day, the seas were rough and the water was 34 degrees Fahrenheit. The transfer was delayed for a few hours while we waited for a break in the weather. A Trident submarine displaces 18,700 tons while submerged. Normally when we would surface, we would blow 2,000 tons of water out of the ballast tanks so we could sit higher in the water. But since we were only intending to surface for a few minutes, we drove to the surface with the ballast tanks full, causing us to sit low in the water. An ominous decision.

My role as ship’s photographer was to document the transfer for the patrol report. The plan was for me to climb into the bridge where I could safely take photos from an optimal vantage point. But once we surfaced, officers went up to the bridge first for some sightseeing while I waited at the bottom of the ladder since there was no more room. Nobody wanted to leave the bridge so the officer of the deck eventually ordered me to head back to the missile compartment hatch and take photos from there.

I walked 80 yards to the hatch, and by the time I arrived I heard, “Helicopter inbound, send photographer topside ASAP!” I didn’t have a safety harness or life jacket on so I said, “I can’t safely go topside yet.” The response: “Petty Officer Chetlain, this is an order—you will go topside NOW to take photos!”

So here we were in the Gulf of Alaska wallowing with 20 degree rolls, sitting low in the water, and I’m being ordered into harm’s way for pictures. I was pondering what to do when Brian Friends stepped up.

Brian was already properly suited and worked as one of my assistant photographers. I gave him the camera and he climbed up out of the hatch behind Mike and the grieving shipmate.

Suddenly an ocean swell came over the sub and pushed it down into the ocean while the hatch was open. I was standing at the bottom of the hatch when a solid wall of icy green water suddenly poured into the boat. We were underwater and sinking with a 30-inch hole to the ocean above us! For a second everyone stood paralyzed. Then Petty Officer Phil Dornes plunged into the breach and grabbed the cable lanyard that hung on the bottom of every lower hatch and muscled it closed. Authorities estimated that we took on over 30,000 pounds of water in just a few seconds. Water made it all the way to the mess decks hundreds of feet away.

While we were shutting the lower hatch, the upper hatch slammed down on Petty Officer Randy Taylor’s leg—pinning him in the hatch and dragging him underwater.

That’s when we heard, “Man overboard port side!”

It was Brian. He later recalled snapping a few photos before strapping Mike into the litter for transport. “We had just given the signal to hoist Mike up when I saw his eyes get as big as saucers. The next thing I knew, I was in the ocean. I was wearing a lifejacket, but in my haste I had forgotten to clip my harness into the safety track.”

The swell washed him into the sea. The submarine was moving at a fast clip to weather the rough seas, and Brian’s first thought was to start swimming as fast as he could to avoid getting chopped up in the propeller. His next thought was, “Holy crap it’s cold,” as his muscles started to freeze up. Then he blacked out.

Fortunately, the helicopter pilot saw this unfold and left the sub to follow Brian’s track and pulled him to safety. The Helo crew revived Brian and told him he had been in the water for about two and a half minutes. The pilot was ready to take all three crew members back to shore when he was ordered to drop Brian back on board, which he did.

Brian and Randy made it below decks and both had to be treated for hypothermia. Randy’s leg wasn’t broken by the hatch, but he had a nasty bruise for a few weeks. Mike made it to an ER in Alaska; he was given some painkillers and then flown back to Bangor where he spent the following week in the Navy hospital recuperating under doctor’s supervision. Mike and his leg both made it home intact. He met us on the Delta Pier when we returned home in December.

In the end, everyone survived, and that’s more than I can say for the camera I handed Brian and the mailbag, which are still sitting on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. In typical submarine gallows humor, Brian was immediately given the nickname “Splash.”

I spent nearly six years assigned to submarines. In that time, I experienced fires, flooding, a collision at sea, loss of depth control, countless reactor scrams, and multiple losses of life. In each situation, the training and readiness of the crew kept bad situations from becoming catastrophic ones. That’s what happened here with crew members closing the hatch and the pilot rescuing Brian. Our sub could have never reached him in time.

It’s not a stretch to believe that Brian saved my life that day by taking the camera from me and going topside with it. Had I been washed overboard without a life jacket, odds are I would not have survived in the frigid waters. And that’s why when anyone asks for stories about my time on a submarine, eagerly awaiting tales of adventure, I tell them about the comfort of the boring days. For Brian’s intervention that day I will be eternally grateful. Thanks, shipmate! But I’m still calling you Splash!

This War Horse reflection was written by David Chetlain, edited by Kim Vo, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Kim Vo wrote the headline.

Editors Note: This article first appeared on The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit news organization educating the public on military service. Subscribe to their newsletter

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