Surfacing a submarine at the North Pole

One of my favorite parts of Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans:

Any U.S. Navy sailor who has gone above the Arctic Circle is awarded a certificate as a Blue Nose sailor. But very few even of the limited number of Blue Nose sailors have done the most challenging maneuver of all: breaking through the icepack itself in a submarine and bursting to the surface at the North Pole.

Each U.S. Navy submarine that has performed this feat recognizes the significant danger imposed on the boat by the dangling ice keels, large tongues of ice hanging down from the ice pack itself. Avoiding these is crucial, as is understanding the precise thickness of the ice pack at the proposed point of surfacing.

The entire maneuver is controlled carefully by the submarine’s captain himself and uses a detailed checklist with two-man control over each step of the standard operating procedure or SOP. Sonar— a pinging of sound through the water that measures distance by listening to the reverberation back— is used to find a flat spot, and the delicate controls of the submarine are used to maneuver the boat just below the surface of the ice. Throughout most of the cold war, most of our boats had hardened sails (the towerlike structure on the top of the boat) for this operation, but even given the hardening, it remains imperative to lower all masts and antennae while situating the boat below just the right patch of “clean” and hopefully thin ice. To make a cheap pun, finding the thin ice feels like “walking on thin ice” above— you know that a wrong step could be disastrous.

Once the thinnest ice patch is located and the ship is positioned beneath it, air is then blown into the ballast tanks, creating the reserve buoyancy and the essential upward thrusting energy needed to break through the ice. Like most submerged operations, this one is quiet and nearly silent throughout most of the boat. But in the conning space— the underwater part of the submarine where all maneuvering is conducted while the boat is submerged— and of course in sonar control, the crunching sound of the ice on the hull is discernible— a low, grinding, pulsing sound until the final breaking of the ice layer.

Once the boat has broken through, the crew can ascend the tower and carefully open the clamshells on the sail of the submarine and check the full status of the hull of the boat as it hangs just through the ice on the surface. Sailors wearing special cold weather exposure suits are initially tethered to the boat as the hull above the ice is checked for damage. Eventually, the goal is to get every one of the hundred or so sailors over the side to walk on the ice, snap pictures, and safely avoid polar bears— which amble right up to the hull. There are many places in the

Separately, it seems that not everyone got the global warming memo. The author says that we need to build a lot more icebreakers (the Russians and Chinese are building them!) and we can do this for only $1 billion per ship. At the same time he says that “By 2040 there will be an open passage for essentially twelve months of the year, and another decade later there will no longer be ice over the North Pole.” Given that it takes the U.S. military 10 or 15 years to get a new ship designed and ready, won’t these icebreakers be mothballed just a few years after completion? Until the icebreakers are built, the retired admiral suggests that we cooperate with the Russians… (he didn’t get the memo from Hillary about what a bad idea this is?)

It is worth noting in this regard how fundamental the Arctic is to Russia. Fully 20 percent of Russia’s population lives within the Arctic Circle, as opposed to essentially zero Americans and really only a handful of Canadians. The Russians, by the way, fully self-identify as an Arctic nation in ways that certainly transcend the feelings of any other sovereign state with the possible exception of Canada. They have just launched the largest and most powerful nuclear icebreaker in the world, the Arktika— 567 feet long, 33,000 tons, 80,000 shaft horse power, and capable of breaking through up to ten feet of ice. Strangely, for a region that is essentially devoid of human settlement, the Arctic is today the fastest-growing region in the world— each of the Arctic nations is actively pushing for the opening of settlements, increasing military activity, expanding resource exploitations, and generally staking claims with humans in the High North.

More: read Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans.