and pacific on q&a. tv,ext on american history alfred mclaren details his almost 30 year naval career, in which he took part in 20 cold war submarine operations. following his service he remained an active submariner and became the president of the explorers club and is currently the president of the american polar society. he discusses his entire career including his to climate and a nuclear submarine during the cuban missile crisis in several pioneering expeditions under the arctic sea ice. the u.s. war memorial hosted this event which is about 1.5 hours. >> good afternoon and welcome to the navy memorial we are pleased to have you for another of our authors on deck book series. today we're pleased to have

captain scott mclaren here to discover -- discusses new press book. captain mclaren is a graduate of the u.s. naval academy class of 1955 and a veteran of more than 20 cold war commissions and three arctic expeditions. he was awarded the distinguished service medal and two legions of merit, as a cold war submarine commander. he was also president of the polar society and a former president of the explorers club. he's the author of unknown waters. firsthand account of the historic under ice survey by the continental shelf. he joins us today from his home in england colorado. [applause]

>> thank you very much. when going to take you through is a hammered up combination of a variety of things. maybe i had better concentrate on the book, but the very first part is taking you through of the highlights of my first book, the first survey of the entire continental shelf at the height of the cold war. when i finished talking about the book, if there is time i started diving the titanic. i was the first -- part of the first team to make a dive of 16,000 feet to see the bismarck. and until last november i was chief pilot of a high-speed submersible that you could fly like an airplane down to 1500 feet. i think you'll pick up very quickly that my main motto in life is anything to avoid yardwork.

if you stay around the house you get put to work. here you can see the five attack boats that i served on. the diesel boat green fish, the nuclear boat sea dragon, the world's fastest submarine. the skipjack's record for crossing the atlantic has never been broken. to this day, we cannot tell you how fast we went or how the top speed was. i will then finish with the subject of my third book, my four months on the uss greenlee, where we won a u.s. navy accommodation and my two years as exec and four years in command of a nuclear attack submarine queen fish. my whole life was an attack boats. there, you see me and my salad days.

skipper of the queen fish. there is my first book, "unknown waters." .ou can get it on amazon in both of these first two books , i have often been asked, did you go to the navy for permission. >> i always like the advice that if you have to ask a question, the answer is no. was i going to ask people who were in the first or second grade for permission to publish? no. my third book, "on my commander is enough of a classified nature so i have to go the full route. there is a queen fish at the north pole who spent two years taking part in the building of her and later took command of her for four years. here's the subject of the first book. it was unusual. maximumloaded out for a

of 180 days in the first thing we did was pick up the novice 1988 route. we wanted to retrace the routeis''s -- not a lis exactly. this was for global warming purposes in 1970. we came back and that modern digital computer had not been invented yet so i ended up writing the programs and analyzing this for my phd at the university of colorado. checked under the eyes for tectonic activity. it happens we the slowest seek course spreading on earth. this is connected with my holy

grail which is the last operation i want to do before i quit. then, down to this totally uncharted fast siberian continental shelf, in total, probably surveyed 5400 kilometers, totally uncharted waters and had no idea what was there. soviets at the time thought that there was a huge submerged continent. all kinds of strange islands. ice, it turnedck up to be a little thicker and a little shallower than we imagined. it was later considered too hazardous a trip to be repeated. to this day the russians have never done it, nor did the soviets before. i know some do not believe it, but there we photographed him on the ice. he has his eye on you and there is the north pole if there are any doubters. i took all 50 state flags on this voyage. there you see me holding the

hawaiian state flag at the north pole. the u.s. mail at that time was no better than it is now, we left pearl harbor with 32 flags , to loaded in seattle more shots for the trip, and some of you may know the seattle world's fair centers surrounded by 50 state flags. leftazing coincidence we the following monday with the missing 18 flags and they didn't catch us until we got to the arctic. these flags for each presented to state governors on behalf of the submarine force. >> here is the vast siberian shelf. started the island group. that's the last major landmass discovered on earth, 1913. to reach is deep into that see as we possibly could, we hoped

to go south of the new siberian islands, but it was too shallow and too thick. then we crossed this god-awful, thousand mile new siberian sea. it is as ominous as it sounds. very thick ice, often going right to the ground. so we would have to go under the ice and thread our way. it's sort of a kin to flying in the upper part of the subterranean cavern. it was awful and it took a tremendous a lot of time to safely do it. this was the way it actually looks. without a little bit of open water then we started and did most of the survey, entirely under ice running close to the bottom. the siberiansee

all of it covered by thick ice going all the way to the bottom. this is the second worst experience i ever had in my life . be sure to ask me in the question and answer period my first. >> we were three quarters to the siberian sea and getting eric confident. we were cruising along it 20 feet above the bottom and clearing the ice overhead by three but constantly maneuvering. so we are all watching the movie jack polansky is about to get his just desserts when the messenger of the watch comes in grabs me and shakes me, come to the con. picturesalready taking and this is what we are surrounded with. not much further than that door is to port the same way. ice down to the bottom dead ahead and we were hovering between four and six feet above the bottom and the ice was

within 10 feet of us and we were hovering. the first thing i said was don't anybody move. don't go to the head or do anything. we just checked our ballast and phonesgot on the powered and a propeller 17 feet in diameter. have worked who with single screw vessels know that they have the nasty habit when you back of squatting. this was a non-option because we would've been stuck there forever. what we did was keep everybody calm. we got on the powered phones that ie throttle and just ordered them to spin the prop astern. we just gradually eased out. so itmed like maternity was a little over 1.5 hours.

it's the second worst experience of my life. my wife says i keep reliving it and giving orders in the middle of my sleep. i heard in the middle of the back once because she did not respond quick enough to the owner. that was the first in the worst experience which i will tell you about later. we finally got clear of the ice and that is basically the essence of my first book which goes into that in great detail. the university of alabama press, two doesn't -- 2008. so now my second book, interestingly, with all of the books written on submarines know has used that term, silent and unseen. i started off the year at the regular and rtc at ul -- ucla. and that was one happy year.

fraternity,ootball i was elected social chairman as soon as i became active as a freshman. i managed to get social probation for three years thanks to bringing hard liquor in and i played football, water polo and the track team. as a freshman i placed third in the ucla decathlon, i can only pole vault eight feet. day,'t know why to this pulled altering absolutely defies me. the coaches thought i had great potential but i had to do something about this poll vaulting. eventually they thought i was some kind of retard. if i get a choice in the hereafter of something i always what to do, my first choice is always wanted to pole vault. one of the dumbest things i did with two other freshman football players.

januaryd at the end of so we went down to the french council general in los angeles and signed up for the foreign legion. we were going to go off with the foreign legion when one of my several fraternity brothers ratted on me and my father was down there less than five hours to pick me up and take me home. then after a couple weeks at home i was given a little bit of family -- family counseling to get my head screwed on right. that would have been alternative lifestyle and then returned to ucla and a realized i was out of control. i had just been elected social chairman of this fraternity, so i moved heaven and earth to get into the united states naval academy just so i can learn the self-discipline that i didn't have. to this day i still have mixed emotions, is like

committing myself to sing sing or alcatraz. danny was my roommate the first year. here is my graduation picture. in those days you couldn't go in a submarine until you had been out in the fleet for two years preferably qualifying as officer of the deck. as soon as i could, i applied for submarines but i hedged my bet and applied for the underwater demolition team. i passed the physicals for both and i had about three weeks to a month to agonize over which i would choose. my father was down at the gunfire support school and the ddt teams were under him. he was worried is going to become a beach bum. as you look back over the years this was about 50 years ago. i have to ask myself, what was the matter of becoming a bum on fullbeach

pay? nothing. i may have made the wrong decision. so i went to the submarine school in new london. i think everybody who goes to submarine school for members more than anything else the escape training. in my time we had to make a vertical ascent from 50 feet state up -- straight up through that column of water and you exhaled all the way. i think we could make it in something like 17 seconds. ho, and ifsay ho ho you stuck you would get an embolism. it was also a great way of screening candidates because you and get in this chamber here. they flood the water to hear neck level before you step out and you start seeing eyes getting big and you know who is not going to go through it and we have to stop and let that person out.

in our time, we had to requalify every year. fishrst vote was the green in the me back up, a converted world war ii boat. they changed the bow, removed the deck guns and basically streamlined her for greater underwater speed and put a high-capacity battery on her. and you notice that we had four diesel engines in a very high-capacity battery. we could get close to 20 knots submerged only for half an hour. and theimited range endurance was not more than two days and four knots. she was really a submersible and not a submarine. i show you this purposefully complicated sketch of green fish because that's the way it was. very crowded and close.

it was a world war ii boat that didn't get to world war ii. there are costs a cramming new equipment on their. in a lot of areas in the submarine were impossible to get to. hence, a great breeding ground for cockroaches. they would meet with those when we went to guam, and the philippines. get all kinds of different approaches of various sizes. there's nothing worse than having a cup of copy -- coffee and having a cockroach drop-in. review had a delicious sandwich they would come from different directions. i had been on board for three or four months when i heard a bang in the control room. and all this laughter. six to eight minutes later another tank and laughter. this happened four times. on top of the compass binnacle

in the control room, you remember these clipboards? so many had put five white lines labeled one through six. this thing is sitting on the pinnacle. there are sailors with little boxes standing around. so they were having cockroach races. people would enter the cockroach in the clip would be open, whoever master that and banged on it, he would lower it ever so gently onto the tale of the cockroach. people would place their bets in and they would say go, he would hit it, and those cockroaches still alive would go running winner was thee one whose cockroach went off or ran the furthest. they had a lot of fun with that and i think we went through a lot of cockroaches. after two hours the captain had had enough. but in the months and years following, when i some men

walking around with small boxes i knew that they were up to no good with these poor cockroaches. the p is the conning tower. you have seen that in the movie's. that's really on a diesel boat where all of the action was. and we got a snorkel. here is the pipe for taking in air. we run diesel engines to recharge the battery and here is the exhaust. weren't you at my talk last night? i thought so. a bear for punishment. liked a lot of submarines these boats and we called these guppy eyes, greater underwater propulsion, and these were that were courses of the cold war operations from the mid-50's, to well into the 60's and early 70's.

what do i mean by cold war operation? we went to the area's which would have been our forward deployment areas in the war. our missions were several, reconnaissance, early warning and gather as much intelligence and learned much as we could about potential adversaries. we didn't geared the -- dare get detected during this time. the one thing they asked me to take out of the book and i will touch on it, is my second out of operations, we were caught in depth charged by the soviets for 7.5 hours. i will tell you that being depth charged is a unique experience in one's life. it's just like in the movies, the common initiative sounds of the speeding up of the propellers of something coming toward you, it gets closer and then you hear a splash and

another splash and you hold your to wait until whatever the drop goes off. we got away. i cannot tell you how to list probably why it may be take the chapter out. . needless to say, submarine food is the best in the world. an unlimited had food allowance. we ate extremely well. interestingly no but he got fat. left, is guy to the remember him very well because he came to me with a book signing in coronado last september. he used to eat two or three stakes in a sitting. what happened there? let's see if we can get rid of that.

like all submarines, there were number -- never enough bunks are people. but we had a way to solve it called hot debunking. you had these pan bunks that would sometimes be five or six a rope and a soon as one person got out, some of yale's would get in. sometimes you might share that with two other people. we stopped every time to change the sheets. . it was pretty nasty but it was a for aincentive to qualify watcher in summaries of sin as possible. because we did not have much water we were allowed to take a shower every 12 to 14 days whether we needed it or not. here is the birding in the after capito room. you can imagine when they start moving for peters there is a lot of scrambling. you see me with my first beard and it is pretty good-looking.

my wife had me shave that immediately. before every cold war operation we did take a full load of workshops. the one thing which is hard to believe these days, but during that era, the rules of engagement were very simple. often you were in places where even though you were in international waters, you knew that your adversary would not necessarily adhere to the geneva convention. the other thing is that the rules of engagement were very simple when we were on missions. so if you heard an outer door open, on some other submarine and not your own, or a term peto tube flood, you zapped them with a snapshot. we always had a torpedo we could get out as fast as 30 seconds. that was the usual operating way.

some things were always a little bit tense in these operations. here you have the torpedo in the four room they are gearing up to fire a spread of torpedoes. imagine they are very well coordinated and very well-trained. but in those diesel boats one area in the submarine would be hot as hell and the other would be down around freezing. nothing there was really quite balanced. there you see the after torpedo room. that's the area we were interested in. that would've been our forward area.ment and in those days the routine is that you ran submerged during the day and on the surface at night. area. these are the same old controls you had in world war ii. this is a sketch done 12 years

before the end of world war ii. that is exactly the kind of equipment that we had. went to periscope depth, it moved to check if there were any context prior to surfacing so you could make a lot of mileage at night and then get as many lookouts as you could to the bridge. in those days, your own forces were as much of a danger to you as a potential enemy. andget to the far east, anyone who got close my detected with radar or visually, you made an emergency dive. remember was when we had to make six emergency dive sent resurface. -- dives and resurface. that is a lot of hustling. i like this because it reminds me of an upperclassman at the naval academy that denny and i knew very well.

i was horrified to find he was on the green fish when i was on their. he was the very popular, and his last inserted with a j. we were heading over across the pacific to the philippines and he has the night watches and all the way across he is complaining and bleeding -- beating up on the filipino stewart's make because he cannot get a full cup of hot coffee for the bridge. then he is picking on the supply and commissary officer. we get to the philippines and we get this older philippine stewart's may with four gold hashmarks on his sleeve. we are now heading north. in this problem magically goes away. then this friend that we both

know is praising everybody to high heaven, that his leadership, that's the way to do things. i had this question about how this miracle could occur. the stewardsmate made passes to the crew room with a cup of coffee and stop short of the tower, goes up and then he heads going to the bridge. i follow him and he doesn't know it. i see him lean over the cup and his teeth pulled out, he hustles up and releases all that coffee back to the cup. hot cup of coffee, mr. so-and-so. that guy never con on -- caught on. i never asked anybody to get anything for me ever. that was pretty funny. all of this praise and they had him on that. here we are in patrol and we did not have that much periscope up.

this is the actual action shot. it gets pretty crowded. you might have eight to 10 people in their. 1958 aredversaries in the whiskey class diesel submarine soviets. they were patterned after the last german ones, high-speed electrical boat and they ended up building over 100 of these. may beu class we think one of those in the late 50's made a short patrol off the hawaiian islands. and the thing we headed the most were these class destroyers loaded with depth charges to let you make a connection on your own. i will not say anything more, or i will go to prison and that i will blame c-span for that. then, i got the worst job on earth.

supply and commissary officer on a summary. when food is 98% of morale, you can imagine everyone is paying attention and they don't hesitate to criticize what is being cooked. during that time i made the mistake of allowing the auxiliary men, someone who works with the ancillary machinery -- auxiliary machinery, who wanted to be a cook in the worst way. back and the first dish he was allowed to prepare was a cherry cobbler. cooking ended abruptly after the crew complained about the red wine hangover they had. after that he became known as the unwatchable. we did when the award for the best mess of float.

and i was one of the first 50 as was denny to be selected for nuclear power and i got my dolphins in june of 1959 and there you can see a hot running skipper who helped us get away in the adverse situation i mentioned earlier. luck to report aboard the last of the fort skate classes. the sea dragon and look at the difference. plant with power great speeds on the surface and underwater, range and endurance. we didn't think we would have to refuel any sooner than five to 10 years. story, except on sea dragon, we were going to be the first submarine to be transferred from the atlantic to the pacific via the north pole.

so this was the captain george he ruled that no crew would have to hot bunk. with two othernk officers and most of the thomas leapt on three chairs lined up. there you can see sea dragon on the surface, here was our mission. we were to go here to the bay and we got permission to spend one week looking at the underside of icebergs. it was the first and only time that it was ever allowed. then we were to come in and survey for the first time in history the entire classic northwest passage. deep route that the submarine can safely go from the bay to the arctic ocean with no trouble at all.

north pole,he bering strait and pearl harbor. navigator captain, and the scientists we had on board. he had much to do with the development of the sonar we used. you can see the sea dragon in the water and these are some of the first pictures taken under the ice. a picture taken by one of our scuba divers. believe it or not in 1950 or 1960 there were some who thought the ice was perfectly flat underneath. some of you may or may not know about sir hubert wilkins who bought a surplus u.s. world war i submarine for one dollar and in 1931 he had it equipped with a huge sled runner on top of the summary. the idea was to skate along under the flat ice and drill a hole whenever you needed air to

run your engine and charger battery's. they were lucky they never got underway -- underneath and you can imagine that if they got under this that would be the last we would see of them. we went to the aircraft type controls, and this is the picture i took at the bay. that iceberg was 308 feet above the surface. this was not dumped in. that profile with pretty -- with teddy roosevelt was actually there. that wen't go under went underneath another 32 icebergs like this in the disco bay. we did discover some that could theoretically reach above 2000 feet beneath the surface when fully tapped. they were very unstable and could rollover on you.

iceberg underrun 31 and 32. we increase speeds that caused parts of the iceberg to come apart. huge parts that fell directly astern of us. that was the end of the operation. it was deemed too dangerous. off inou see it diving micelle of days. and here is the iceberg. they taught academy us to be one part above and seven parts below. but that week we discovered it rains anywhere from one part above to 24 parts below where it went in all directions. so of course operating anywhere around and iceberg is very dangerous and here you can see the underside turned upside down. turned upside down and is hard blue ice is just as mean and hard as it looks. classic northwest

passage in the big hangup had been the barrel straight. areass a lot of shallow that we did find after six surveys a deep passage that would take us through. we went out and threw it into the arctic ocean. the first scuba divers at the north pole and notice that picture on your right. i was the photographic officer and you can see water at the north pole. there has always been water at the north pole. i will take a sent tell you that i have lectured on six russian nuclear icebreakers. my wife went along on three of them. and in 1989 she swam that 29.5 degree water and in 2003 she out swam all the russians. if you ask her how she did it she said it took four glasses of champagne. something funny happened the following year.

there was a british scientist that went up in 2004. he was all excited. there was first time ever open water in the arctic and he was the first to go swimming in the arctic ocean. but a friend called me and said you went swimming in 1936? i said i wouldn't call that swimming i plunged out and went desperately to get out of the water. so what hit the internet in the papers in response to this british claim was an article entitled hell, my wife to that in her bikini. it blew this guy away. then onscuba diver and the 25th of august, we played the first game of baseball ever played at the north pole. the pitcher standing on our best estimate of the north pole.

we lined up the bases such that if you hit a home run you circumnavigated the globe. if you hit the ball into right field you hit the ball into the ditch and national dateline into tomorrow. the right fielder hit it back into yesterday and sliding took on new meaning. you might think you hit second base safely and you could go another 30 feet beyond. we played this game for 2.5 hours and by the time we finished, to this day cannot tell you what day we enter that game depending on where you were in the time zone. and that's in the baseball hall of fame. so the bering strait and into pearl harbor a number of my this tattooed on their arm, one on his chest and one strangely in the middle of his back. i have no idea what that was about. maybe some of the women might have that -- some insight as to why a man would put a tattoo on his back.

if you do please tell me at the question-and-answer period. back to our usual stomping grounds. the other thing i will say is we had two missions and both of them were very lengthy. one in which we spent a very long time at sea. and at that time god rest his soul, we had a captain who really liked to stay clear of everything. you didn'those days see much of anything, a couple of times i would see something 12 to 14,000 feet away, but that was all day after day went by. very dull. the crew were great at nicknaming people and this particular captain got the nickname, captain thune. chicken of the sea. they could come up with some pretty bad names. denny may remember a classmate

who had the wonderful nautical name of nelson. unfortunately, he acquired the nickname of dog breath nelson. names like that just it together. i saw him sometime in the last couple of years and i almost said how are you doing, dog breath? i don't think his wife would have appreciated that. there are worse things i have some in my book. so we have a little bit more of an advanced adversary, but they don't get anywhere close to any of them. we did have to break for bread a lot before sunrise. the last trip i made as a captain, i was in an area where i had only four hours of daylight. that meant i wore red goggles the rest of the time sleeping, eating watching movies. to this day i hate the color

red. boats whichs diesel we start to see in the cuban missile crisis and much more advanced than any submarine warfare vessels you could throw out hedgehogs and set out patterns away from them. one, the candor class. it roared around the ocean like a demented done asterisk -- rhinoceros. but see the four cruise missiles. the purpose was to kill aircraft carriers. reckoned if,d -- at started that an aircraft might have a lifetime expectancy of two hours. you can see the why i left see dragon. under the same captain we almost reached crush depth. don't want to do that ever again.

you read it in the book but you cannot imagine what the whole sounds like with the squeals and runs. it is not good. then you start getting water leaks. you will see what happens anytime and why i moved heaven and earth under that boat. skipjack.gned to the the world's fastest submarine. it was so fast that in the high-speed turns, we could hit a little over 50 degrees and we had subway straps that you grabbed a hold of to keep your footing. we did set one record and then a second record across the atlantic. but to this day it has been kept quiet. again, greater tonnage.

you see on the surface greater than 20 knots. i put down here 33 knots but i don't dare tell any of you what our top speed was. much more compact, and a beautiful submarine with one propeller. we still had our torpedoes in the bow of the submarine. there you can see the artist concept of it. see batten, here is the cog or the kindly old gentleman. skipper. this skipjack on the surface, it did not make a lot of sense to try to stay up on the deck when you're running on the surface because you would be in the water. dayshe skipjack, in those because we have a five bladed

uppeller, you could dangle your speed on the surface and actually rise above the water to where you are planning on it. you can see most of the whole -- most of the hull and we would race along at 25 knots. the me backtrack a minute and say, i was a navigator for a year and that i was the chief engineer for two years. during that two years of his chief engineer it was the first of the new reactor. the admiral wanted us to bring out this new core. so we were allowed to go at top speed anywhere that we traveled. we finally enter the charleston naval shipyard. we had not burned out the core and we could still make 22 knots at 17% power. you cannot extrapolate to our

top speed but that was a fantastic machine. i joined the summary in july of 1962. the cuban missile crisis started to develop. we were supposed to get out of the shipyard in december or january. we accelerated and got out in time to be deployed immediately for the cuban missile crisis. equippedow the soviets cuba with long-range ballistic missiles to reach anywhere in the united states. heretablished a barrier and when skipjack with across, every time that we would stop to copy a radio broadcast, we thought that we might be diverted south. skipjack, even though you could run extremely fast -- you could out run a torpedo.

at high-speed you could not hear a thing. you had to slow down to a low that is when he started hearing things passively. the list assay, we had no idea how many submarine say had out there. downery time we would slow we would go to the battle stations. and snapshot would be ready. we were always expecting a slowdown near one of these submarines and getting attacked. it never happened. fourere is one of the foxtrot diesel submarines we know with their at the cuban missile crisis. we now know that each of them was armed with one nuclear torpedo. particular was a depth charged by u.s. forces continually trying to get them to go to the surface. the skipper got closely nervous

breakdown was exasperated. he wanted to use his nuclear or peto against his adversary, but in those days soviets required that the captain and political officer agree. we all owed great debt of gratitude to him. he just had out in recent years that he was the number two or the exec on that submarine. he was also strangely a flotilla commander. would not go along with the launching of that for peto. i've no idea what the rest of his able career was like but it probably was not very good. , we wouldediterranean were chargedand we to intercept anything that came out of the black sea. we were approaching being given

permission to put them under attack. things slow down with the cuban missile crisis and we spent most of the time either in liberty ports or patrolling and looking for any soviets that might have stuck through. us in thecan see mediterranean. that was our forward to climate area. operations.two at that time, the first nuclear attack oats had come out. i was president of the explorers 2000 and in96 to 1997i had a special dinner for the first captains that had been to the north whole in the arctic ocean. i located the first four u.s. and then i tried to find the captain of the soviet november class submarine who went to the

north pole in 1962. and the one who did it in 1963. this was 1997 and i found out to my horror that both had died, believed to be radiation poisoning. now we have a good idea that most of them died because in the these, the none of soviets sacrificed shielding. less weight and more speed. so they got much more of a gamma dosage than they should have. most of those crews are gone as well. then, the first ballistic missile submarines were up there. one golf class. then hotel class, first nuclear ballistic submarine. and infinitely more sophisticated, antisubmarine warfare vessels. the same time we were there,

first icebreaker was up there. it was charging all over the ocean and making lots of noise and crunching up all kinds of ice. no intelligence value but we had fun watching it. then at the end of that i got a special award for reasons i cannot tell you. after some schools, i went on to be the second in command of the first of 37 nuclear submarines. all of whom would have the capability of operating in the arctic and antarctic year-round. we assisted a were built to scientific specifications. so i was with this boat in the time it was just a keel, through the launch. or you can see emerald rickover and the doctor responsible for all of the under ice acoustic equipment that we had.

and this is basically the configuration of the submarines since. the first thing you notice is there are no longer torpedo tubes in the bow. they are moved to the middle of the submarine and you launch the torpedoes out at an angle. that we don't have any of the weapons noise is interfering with sonar. here you can see the queen fish on a single propeller. the top of the sale, top of the rudder, reinforced with h y h steele. through routinely break two meters of ice with no damage to the submarine. i never liked to break through ice because i hate the sound of chock on a blackboard. as you can imagine, that ice going get a steel hull is several thousand times that and it takes you hours to wind down from the scraping and squealing sound.

the conesyou can see of a very narrow high-frequency sonar used to tell where we were in relation to the ice. the most important being the iceberg detector which sweep back and forth. there you see your submerged and there's the 17 foot diameter propeller and look at the height of that rudder. something 37g at to 48 feet from top to bottom. then we took the boat to the arctic and tested it out and i left to the student at the war college and i was the first nuclear trained college to be an instructor. the war college had this for month-long summer vacation. i was pointed toward the command got permission to get myself sent on the green lang.

it was the thresher class in lung gated whole. so i went for four months on and the cold war operation basically requalified and everything so i was prepared to command and then we came back and it was such a successful mission that we got the unit commendation. you can guess for the area it was. i will not say anything about that. finished the war college tour, i was lucky enough to be assigned to command the same boat. i knew it like the back of my head. you can see the control room of the queen fish. the usual patrol area in the pacific. i want say anything about that. but my very first mission six months after command, we got a navy unit commendation. there you see me on the periscope up on the bridge

taking it into japan. we were never popular with the japanese coming in their. and in the late 70's i got one of the few very high awards that you could get as a cold war submarine captain which was the distinguished service medal. i think five or six of us have got that since world war ii. the one thing great about it is it entitles me to be buried at arlington cemetery in tech. the company of marines, i can be hauled on top of a case on hold by mules and horses. i predeceasee if her go for it. in a genuine taps not played on recording. we were coming back following my and the change of

command picture, think you can tell i was dead tired. forere continuously at sea four years. this was earlier when we were allowed to wear beards. the division commander flew out to guam and said, the admiral would be very happy if you would come back to your change of command without a beard. that may be so angry that i got my change of command picture taken with a beard and i came back and of a set of thing to me and i kept that until i'm supposed to go to the east coast. the east coast is very conservative and i knew that they were all up in arms and would counsel me to remove the beard. so then i reported into the celebrating -- summary development group and i shaved it off. nobody could think of anything to say. they set up appointments at all of them counsel me to take off my beard and the could not think of anything else to discuss. i had a short day.

things that ruinous submariner's day. sailors and officers and counting this woman on deck who said what is a lovely thing like you doing on a submarine like this, and her answer is, i am commanding you. , i willwe have time briefly show you the highlights from the titanic or bismarck. you call it. >> i will quickly show you some highlights of the dives on titanic bismarck. you all know about the titanic, when she collided and went to brokettom of the ice, she into all kinds of pieces. she is 882 feet long and only 220 of it of the bow was intact. away hundredters

20 feet of her sternum she is a horrible mess with debris fields everywhere. youything on the bottom could conceivably think of to take to seat with you. this is what we made the dives on. andput three grown adults two a spear that is six feet in diameter and two meters. there are no facilities in there about 12 to 14 hours long. i made six of these dives with various things. to to the titanic. i used to call them to add ville dives and you don't dare get seasick. but they go down about 18,500 feet. it's a picture i took with the bow of the titanic in july 7, 2003 and notice that she is covered with all kinds of stuff. i compare that to the pictures i

goes from99 and she 75% to 80% covered with this symbiotic relationship of 24 microorganisms and two fungi. to being fully covered. not only that, in 2003 she is infinitely more fragile. people thought i was nuts because i also noticed there was lots of organic material raining down. was deteriorating very rapidly, even though it had been down there since 1912. that's a picture i took of the officers kevin in 1999. same kevin in 2003. what on earth has happened. what has happened is the overfishing in the grand banks, the paddock, the pod and the pollock were not consuming the fight oh and sue plankton.

raining down into this common re-energizing these huge globs that are consuming at a rate of 1000 pounds of steel per day. people said that i was crazy. finally people came around and started agreeing with me and bob ballard mentioned me in his book. i had a blessing there and the thing that interested me is nobody has taken it from there. it is a good example of changing the environment and the conditions in the ocean dramatically. in this case the reduction of marine populations. with the correspondent change in other things. there are lots of other dangerous wrecks alter the world not including the thresher. and it's time to start thinking how could global warming

increase acidity how will that affect base and there will be releases of other things in the ocean? look at that. that is a captain's bathtub. you can see there is still water in it. does anybody want to take a closer look? >> i gave this talk in a rotary club and i had a standup to see if there are still water in it to 13,000 feet beneath the sea. bismarck, when she went to see in 1941 was the most powerful ship in the world. her job was to go not only sink convoys, but she was powerful enough to sink all the escorting warships as well. shealy lived 19 days. but on the 24th of may she sank with pride and joy of the royal

navy who had been running around since the 1920's. it was equally armed but had one fatal flaw that they never got around to correcting. her deck armor was not more than an inch thick. so when the germans encounter the hood, they loved several salvos and the third one it was weighing on the 2000 thousand went into the magazine and blow up into pieces with only three survivors. or with to think aircraft strikes but they did not succeed in sinking her but they did make a 1.5 million shot back into the rudder, causing her starboard rudder to jam into the starboard propeller. she was stuck. then during the melee at about 10:00 the captain ordered to scuttle the ship.

the british had stopped firing. shecrew scuttle her and headed for the bottom. time, all the men on the main deck were killed, because the british in their anxiety to get in their close were flying flat. so everybody on the top side was killed but in the engineering spaces, you had close to 1000 young women who survived. they all went into the water. there you can see the bismarck essentially intact and in wonderful shape. there is a picture i took of the bow. , our after our, -- hour after hour, she looked so formidable, but beautiful.

i viewed her like an entity. it wasn't until it started to register that icing hundreds of black boots. about 951,000 young men and women went into the water after it was over. i have pictures of the hour-long talk i gave her there lined up row after row waiting to be picked up in the british olympic to 115 and the rest of these young men in their early 20's all volunteers left to drown. so the bottom around the bismarck's limit is littered with foul weather jackets like little black tombstones. in 2003, i have the opportunity to test fly graham hawkes new submersible, the super aviator. it flew like an aviator down to 1500 feet. i did the test for it and i'm

still the old one formally certified to fly this. i have many hundreds of hours. i was so excited about test flying, i came home until my wife i would not marry her, i would marry this. that was a dumb idea. as you can see, she is extremely quiet and you can make bursts of 11 knots with 12 horsepower thrusters. this just these light finger pressure controls. the longest time i have been on there is about 7.5 hours. you really freak out sharks with this thing. she is quiet, she does not alarm anybody. this is what i want to be my swansong. . wife named the organ sub i have half the money raised to build want to go down to 6000 meters. before i quit, i want to survey a good section under the arctic

ice and prove that there are ecosystems living around those warm water jets living on chemo synthesis. there is life along that c4 spreading area because that will increase the probability of discovering the same thing on the moon or jupiter. or possibly tighten or the moon of saturn. i did mention this in a lecture on national geographic. a couple years ago there was a woman who got excited when i said all i have to do now is with 130 or 140 and i will make that dive. i still have not stopped hearing from her. i am getting all of this dietary information and videos. none of it is good. no prime rib or steak. i might say that he for a got into diving the titanic, there was a long period of time before i was ready to go to see and

this still holds true. i have had all the male bonding that i need for 100,000 years. i do not need those close quarters. that is my last slide. now, there is no such thing as a stupid question, but there are dumb questions. i am looking for a dumb one that will exceed one i heard this last summer. we were in the zodiac, the zodiac -- cruising around some icebergs and this lady to my right says, how far are we above sea level? just about that far. any questions? i got out when i can still do things for myself. [inaudible]

today the russians are very emerging as a major power in the arctic again. they say it is because of resources like oil and mineral resources. in your scientific surveys, is that correct? think we were in at the same time, denny? i was one of seven. i was the last to be interviewed. i walked into the admiral's office and it is eery. he is a tiny man and his blue eyes are right in front of you. welcomingparticularly in the first thing he said to me was, what are you, a wrestler?

back in those days i was a little thinner my ears more predominant, and i said sir -- he said, you have cauliflower ears. as a teenager i was pretty sensitive and in the naval academy -- probably as much. he did a wonderful thing getting my adrenaline up. the next thing he did was my people have examined you, your stupid lazy, and we cannot use you. i was dismissed. however, i refused to go. i argued that it are wasn't stupid, or wasn't lazy. i cannot render which i argued. i took one. i would not leave until i had my say. the secretary tried to get out of there and watch done the hall and number two was captain dunford who said hate mac, come in here. he had been listening in and said that was quite a performance. i said, sir? he said out of the seven from pearl harbor, you stood at the

very top or the very bottom. i asked him what he meant and he said, that's all i can tell you. it got back to the ambassador that the rest were all trekking and yukking it up and i found out within five minutes i had been accepted. you had to stand your ground with him. i sat in on about 18 of his interviews. i ever saw was when he asked a confident young man, do you think you can make me angry? the admiral desk is like all senior people covered with desks, papers, half-empty coffee cups. the admiral said, do you think you can make me angry? the first thing he said. the kid thing for a few seconds and said yes or. yes sir. the kid gets up and with his right arm sweeps everything off of the floor. the admiral is jumping up and down and having a hemorrhage.

they say get this get out of here and a hurry. but 10 minutes later he was accepted for nuclear power. the second part of your question was a little complicated and i have forgotten some of it. today, the russians are increasing their efforts and there worked in the arctic, and they claim it is because of the oil and mineral resources. >> they have several things going. that for reports now the second time they are selling the idea that there continental shelf is similar to what is further out all the way to the north pole, including this ridge. betterobably have a chance of selling at this time. that is quite a bit of territory. already know,y the sea treaty, the u.s. has yet to sign it, much less ratify it.

we have no place at the table. icebreakers nuclear all over the arctic ocean year-round. we don't have any. ando have more experience many more arctic capable submarines than they do but part of it is showing yourself on the surface at sea. there is petroleum up there. they sent to see a titanium hold nuclear submarine which was supposedly had the capability to drill for oil, not very far, but still capable of searching for these resources. in this department their way ahead of us. we are back to another form of cold war again. >> what is on the hangup with the classification. the russians know all about it. there have been a dozen books in

the newspaper since the 90's. i don't understand why we are not talking about it. we are writing about some of these wonderful experiences. >> you get people there who were in kindergarten and grade school and making these operations. they don't even know where the reports are. what is the easiest thing to say is no. that's the easy way to dismiss them. it really made me mad as hell. it has been 57 years since there were depth charged that is not declassified? i will pursue that in hopes that in a second edition i can get it in. there are lots of things like that cannot only other submariners should know but the general public to see just how we are doing. >> there are many stories all locked up. >> that is exactly right. that is how i lost all my hair. >> it was really enjoyable. >> my question follows on from

that little bit. my name is barry and i am in the process of updating the u.s. navy to include some of that. >> it sounds like you are british. >> yes, i am. >> basically, with regard to some of the work i'm doing at the moment of updating what we have got i'm finding the issue of how classified the information remains to be quite a challenge as well. i guess i was just going to ask you. i know it's a question but whether you can think of one or two things that you are allowed to talk about regarding under rice expiration techniques or sonar or tactics that developed. >> my first book really tells you everything. that was an excruciating detail. my reviews of that book have called it everywhere from fantastic and sensational to what some but he said was

horribly boring and he kept falling asleep. but you will find most of the detail in that. there is not much more to say about the arctic operations. i did find out although nobody ever officially told me. the technical director told me that first book of mine was required reading for all submarine captains going to the arctic. it would have been nice if he had written me a letter and said what a great job that you did. then increase my retired pay. [laughter] but you want me to give you a nugget? >> if i could take one thing to put in my exhibit as a kind of case study of what these subs are capable of. >> if you get a hold of my book "unknown waters," i think that is far and away the best. i really explained the sturgeon

class submarine. it was really the best. it was a workhorse in the cold war and is capable of going into the cold water. i made two vietnam patrols. they were wonderfully maneuverable. they were built to a higher standard than anything i had served on previously. i think you will find, then i will give you my card, and you can contact me with anything else. i think you will find that will answer a lot of questions. let me say something about women in submarines and the education level. during my time, over half of my crew had bachelor's degrees. some of them had masters degrees. all my officers had masters degrees. but in spite of all that education, the humor in the submarine is truck driver stuff,

blue-collar humor at the lowest. you have to have a sense of humor. , but a think fine it is better the come aboard in groups of six or eight where they are tough and can hand it back just as quickly as they get it. because, submarine crews are always testing you. denny, you remember this. someone who is super aggressive, short tempered, or don't have a sense of humor, the crew is after them all the time. they basically don't make it with the crew. so all the time you have to fit within this team. did we go through all kinds of psychological testing? yeah. remember those ink blot tests? and to submarine school most of us figured out that

whether it looked to us like that are not what they expected was over 50% had to be sex. you had direct your brains to make sex out of some of these shapes. then why percent had to be god and country. those are the essential things if we were normal. then you did what you wanted with the rest of what you saw. so much for psychological testing. ,> with all of your travels , have youxplorer code ever spoken to a russian that was in one of these subs you are chasing? >> who said i was chasing? [laughter] >> my word, not yours. this was about my

fourth lecture, and at that time the kgb's videotaping every lecture that i give. naturally the team is headed by a man named igor. i get nice notes, anonymous. good lecture, you should have said more about this. i am given three or four lectures and we get to the north: and this particular icebreaker -- north pole, and this particular icebreaker had a bow just about at the north pole. avery and i are walking up there and there happened to be a group of men there. they just open up and whisked us in. they were all former soviet submariners. the tall man said i am the one who wrote you the notes. it turns out he was a russian ballistic missile submarine captain on the off crew period. deciding to take a trip to the north pole.

he commanded a delta for class ballistic missile submarine -- ballistic class missile summary and said guess were we did our last patrol? i said the arctic? he said, no, the caribbean. we had no idea. we used all meat we would have fun and drink. we would always stay ahead of the kgb because someone would say here comes igor and we would all scatter. they didn't want us to get together. they were just like us. essentially just like us. anything else? thank you, very much. [applause] >> what is your worst experience? >> the worst experience, i still have dreams about this, cold war mission.

we're just entered and got in fairly close, passed through some very dense water, great temperature change and just got to periscope depth. i am whipping around and two torpedoes are running straight towards me, screaming away. one of my crew is white-faced. choices, oneuple eating to blow to the surface and hope they pass -- one being to blow away to the surface and hope they pass but if you. but from what i saw, that was not an option. in a fraction of a second i detected a little bit of right airing drift. -- right bearing drift. we started moving directly to the left. we had to keep bow at a cross-section to whoever it might be firing. they went screaming down the starboard side, the nearest to

more than three to four meters away and the other about twice. very exciting. it turns out we had wandered where oneercise submarine was firing practiced repeaters at another. we wandered into the middle of it. would that have been dangerous to us? yes, the plastic heads on plastic -- on practiced repeaters were 600 pounds. better to hit a rotor -- but if it had hit a runner or rotor, we would have been screwed. >> on behalf of everyone here, thank you for sharing your wonderful stories. a little something to keep on your desk and hopefully not be swept up into a pile. sign?have any books to >> we have the books available in the ship store. you can take a seat there and we will be happy to have you sign them and maybe answer more questions. >> let me encourage you to buy

this wonderful book. [laughter] >> thank you for joining us. [applause] hello, this is hillary clinton. i want to thank you for letting me speak to you about an issue central to our children's future and critical and our fight to restore the nation's economy. solving our nation's health care crisis. >> there is no prescription, role model or cookbook for being first lady. >> the future is created every day. it is not something out there waiting to happen to us. the future is something that we make. >> i have said, and i believe there is a good possibility that sometime in the next 20 years, we will have a woman president. experienceclinton many firsts in her role as first lady. she and her husband, bill clinton, have been political partner since law school. she has entered several scandals

including his impeachment. as she considers her run for the white house her story is still being written. this sunday on "first ladies: influence and image." examining the public and private lives of the women who filled the position of first lady and their influence on the presidency, from martha washington to michelle obama. on american history tv on c-span3. ♪ c-span presents, "landmark cases," the book. "landmark cases" series which explores 12 supreme court decisions including marbury versus madison, versus the united states, brown versus the board of education, aranda ursus arizona am a and -- arizona, and roe v wade.

, anden by tony mauro published by c-span in cooperation with cq press. formark cases is available eight dollars sunday five cents, plus shipping. $8.95, plus shipping. this year, c-span is touring cities across the country. you're watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. the eureka knell -- the erie canal is really part of an artificial river created to attach the great lakes to the atlantic ocean. so they built a canal from buffalo to