Larry Bond - Dangerous Ground

Plugging in his mask, Jerry turned to Bair, who motioned for him to go in. Jerry opened the door. It looked more like a steel foundry than a torpedo room. Flames and sparks were leaping around from the forward part of the room. Silhouetted by the fire, he saw Foster coming toward him, carrying an injured man. It flashed into his mind that Emily Davis had only a few minutes of damage control practice.

After taking a deep breath, Jerry unplugged his EAB, and moved as quickly as he could to the ROV control area. Bair helped Foster with the injured crewman. Smoke was rapidly filling the room, making it hard for Jerry to see where he was going. Feeling his way along the bulkhead, he found Emily huddled behind the control console. She was still tightening the straps on her EAB mask when he reached her. Grabbing her head with both of his hands, he put their two facemasks together. She looked terrified, but there was no time for comforting words. She needed to get out of here — now! Jerry yelled as loud as he could through his mask, “EMILY, YOU NEED TO LEAVE. FOLLOW THE BULKHEAD TO THE DOOR!” Without waiting for her reply, Jerry jerked her to her feet and placed her right hand on the bulkhead. He then grabbed her left hand and put it on her EAB connection. “ON THREE, YOU PULL THE PLUG AND GO! ONE!. TWO!. THREE!” Even though her hands were shaking badly, she managed to unplug her connection and started walking along the bulkhead.

More sparks popped out from the flames, but this time the lights blinked as well. An electrical fire! Jerry moved as fast as he could over to the power distribution panel. He swung the panel door open and started opening the breakers inside. Since he didn’t know exactly what was on fire, he opened all of them in the hope that it would cut out the equipment that was burning. As he stood there, he felt the boat developing an up angle; they were coming shallow. Soon they would be at a depth where they could emergency-ventilate the torpedo room and get rid of the smoke.

Jerry considered grabbing a fire extinguisher and heading toward the fire. But he realized that it was more important for him to report to the XO that he thought they had an electrical fire on their hands, and that he had already opened the breakers. Once again, Jerry took a couple of deep breaths, unplugged his EAB, and started making his way back toward the berthing area. When he reached the ROV control consoles, he stopped to plug into the emergency air supply nearby. As he was feeling around for the EAB manifold, he bumped into somebody — it was Senior Chief Foster. Once Foster realized who it was, he tried to go around Jerry but Jerry held him back. “OUT OF MY WAY! I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR YOU,” snarled Foster. “WE HAVE AN ELECTRICAL FIRE. I HAVE TO. ”

“I ALREADY TOOK CARE OF THE BREAKERS, SENIOR CHIEF,” shouted Jerry angrily as Foster pushed against him.

“WHAT?” Foster seemed shocked by Jerry’s report.

“I SAID, I ALREADY OPENED ALL THE BREAKERS ON THE P-PANEL. I’M GOING TO INFORM THE XO.” Feeling a tad smug, Jerry unplugged himself and continued his search for Bair. Foster just stood there, dumbfounded.

He found the XO right where he expected him to be, leading the fire-fighting team. They were all crouched down, advancing slowly toward the forward part of the torpedo room, under the cover of a low-velocity water fog to keep the heat down. Jerry crawled up to Bair’s side and plugged himself into his EAB fitting. Carefully and deliberately, Jerry reported his observations and corrective actions to his superior. The XO listened, and after Jerry had finished, gave him the thumbs-up sign. Bair then raised the NIFTI back up to his faceplate and motioned for the fire-fighting team to resume their advance and began spraying the burning console with high-velocity fog. Jerry detached himself and backed off. He would only be in the way now. With the power supply to the weapons launching console isolated, the fire was quickly extinguished.

The uncontrolled leak that caused the fire had also died down. Once the muzzle door had been shut, the torpedo tube depressurized rapidly and the dangerous pressure-driven spray quickly diminished to an inoffensive trickle. The danger to the boat was over.

Memphis bobbed around at periscope depth for forty-five minutes while the smoke was cleared from the forward compartment. The atmospheric monitoring equipment indicated that the carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide levels in the boat were once again within safe levels. But Hardy made everyone wait another ten minutes while he had the atmosphere tested manually. Finally, the IMC announced to the crew that they could take off their EABs.

Jerry removed his mask and was immediately greeted by the stench of burnt electrical insulation. The smell was so pungent that he briefly considered putting his mask back on. Throwing his EAB onto the centerline storage rack, he walked over to the starboard tube nest. Boyd and Greer had finished draining tube three, and were examining the inside of the breech door as Jerry approached.

“Any ideas as to what happened?” he asked.

“Not a clue, sir,” answered Boyd frankly. “Oh, it’s obvious that the gasket failed catastrophically, but I can’t tell you how or why.”

“Can we still use the tube?”

“Sure. We can screw in the metal plug and seal the penetration, but we won’t be able to support ROV ops.”

“I see,” Jerry said. It was not going to be a pleasant experience when he’d have to tell Patterson that the tube might no longer be capable of supporting the mission. She might blow a gasket herself. “Well, go ahead and put in the plug. I want this door watertight. And find me some of that gasket, we need to figure out what happened.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” replied Boyd.

Jerry surveyed his damaged room. In the poor light, he couldn’t tell if what he saw was burned equipment and structure or if it was just soot from the fire. Turning his flashlight to the weapons launching console, he was surprised to see that it was largely intact. He half-expected it to be a charred ruin. Jerry had just started walking over to make a closer inspection when the lights came back on. Over at the power distribution panel, he saw Foster and FT3 Larsen, the latter on the sound-powered phones. He was probably talking to maneuvering, Jerry thought, making sure that it was safe to close the breaker for the lighting circuit. With better illumination, the real state of the torpedo room became readily apparent.

The forward part of the room was pretty bad off. The damage to the launching console was worse than he had first thought, and the area between the tubes was badly burnt as well. The rest of the room, however, just looked dirty from all the smoke. Foster left the P-panel and marched down to the console, his feet sloshing in half an inch of cold seawater still on the deck. Jerry watched as the senior chief wiped off part of the control section and surveyed the damage. He looked tired and dismayed.

Slowly, Jerry walked up behind Foster and asked, “How bad?”

“Real bad,” replied Foster as he shook his head ruefully.

“Can it be repaired at sea?”

“Uhh, I don’t know… sir.” Foster closed an access panel and then turned to face Jerry. “And I won’t know for sure until we have stripped this console to parade rest. But I can say this much: I wouldn’t hold out much hope.”

Jerry nodded his acknowledgment and the two of them just stood there, an awkward silence between them. It was a little too much for Jerry.

“How’s Moran?”

“He was badly bruised when he got slammed into the tubes by that jet of water, but Doc says he’ll live,” said Foster wearily.

“You did well getting him out as fast as you did, Senior. Thank you.”