Underneath in the Ethan Allen

Through the icy, grey-green waters of Scotland's Holy Loch, past the Argyll highlands and into the North Atlantic slipped the nuclear-powered SSB (N) 608--more popularly known as the U.S. submarine Ethan Allen. From the wind-whipped surface it nosed silently into the world beneath, a world where time itself hung motionless. Aboard were 16 Polaris missiles--with a total destructive power greater than all the bombs exploded in World War II. The Ethan Allen, on what its captain called "a full wartime footing," was setting out on its regular 60-day patrol.

Of the U.S.'s nine deployed Polaris submarines, the Ethan Allen and five others were on patrol last week. That two-thirds ratio is standard--although during the height of the Cuba crisis, all nine were ordered to sea. The location of the subs on patrol is known only to a small circle of top military and Government leaders. All that most of the crewmen and officers know is that they are somewhere within their missiles' 1,500-mile range of Soviet targets.

Battle Station. Outsiders are not, of course, permitted on the combat patrols. But just before the Ethan Allen departed on its two-month journey, TIME Military Correspondent Louis Kraar did have a rare opportunity to accompany the sub on a week-long shakedown cruise. His report:

Manning the Ethan Allen was its "Blue Crew"; the Polaris submarines two-platoon their crews, and the alternate "Gold Crew" was now at New London, Conn. For Polaris crewmen a patrol starts with a change into a special navy-blue Dacron and cotton coverall. The coverall reduces lint in the closed environment, has no cuffs or belts to get tangled in gear. "But," complains one officer, "it's next to impossible to go to the head in this outfit without dunking part of it."

Amid the maze of machines, the bulkheads covered with cheery green plastic, the shiny steel fittings and the delicate equipment that demands constant attention, there is a private world that turns on four-hour duty watches and countless battle-station drills. It all goes on in the 410-ft. Ethan Allen's six watertight compartments, on four levels and three decks.

The Brains. This is a clean, pure, and endlessly strange world, where night is known only because the interior lights then glow red. Temperature is maintained at 70DEG to 72DEG, with a 50% relative humidity. More than 10,000 gallons of fresh water can be created daily, converted from sea water by distilling it.

The brains of the sub, which must always know its precise location, are banks of digital computers. They are linked to the ship's inertial navigation system (SINS). The three SINS, which check each other, dangle from the stable ceiling platform of the Ethan Allen's navigation center. They contain a secret array of spinning gyroscopes and accelerometers, can measure the most minute variation in the ship's movement due to drift. A computer called NAVDAC (for navigation data assimilation computer) records the position changes detected by SINS.

As the Ethan Allen patrols the North Atlantic, this automatic navigation system constantly feeds position readings into the guidance system of all 16 missiles. At every dip and turn of the sub, its missile brains know the ship's location, local vertical, true North, target location and trajectory to be flown. In this underseas base, the countdown is always on.

Any order to fire the Ethan Allen's holocaustic weapons would come in a coded message on the sub's low-frequency radio. Like all Polaris subs on station, the Ethan Allen receives a constant stream of "familygrams," routine orders and plain "garbage"; the idea is to keep the message traffic at a steady pace, so that an emergency would not increase the flow and thereby warn an enemy.

The Countdown. If a coded war message came through, Captain Paul L. Lacy Jr., a 42-year-old Texan, and his executive officer would open a safe in the presence of still a third officer. The captain and the exec carry different keys, and it requires both keys to open the safe. Inside the safe the officers would find specific orders, keyed to the coded message.

The skipper then takes his place in the control room, opens a lock, to which only he has the combination, on a red "fire" button. This sets off a carefully coordinated sequence in which at least 15 men are vitally involved. At last, Lacy pushes the red button--and holds it down. A console lights up: "Captain's permission to fire." The weapons officer, Lieut. Commander Russell McWey, shouts "Fire One." The ship's fire control supervisor presses his own "fire" button. A five-ton steel hatch opens on deck, and a burst of compressed air ejects a 15-ton, 30-ft. Polaris A-2 missile. Skyward from beneath the sea's surface, the missile hurtles toward its target.

All this has taken just 15 minutes from the receipt and authentication of the coded order. From then on, a missile can be fired every minute for 15 minutes. Those missiles are the Ethan Allen's reason for being. And in the Ethan Allen and 40 other Polaris submarines scheduled to be on station by 1968 rest crucial, free-world hopes.

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