Unknown Waters: A First-Hand Account of the Historic Under-ice Survey of the Siberian Continental Shelf by USS Queenfish is a story of the first (in-depth?) exploration of the shallow waters off the then-USSR’s coast of Siberia. Can I call it groundbreaking, or icebreaking? Okay, I’ve made enough bad puns at the expense of this engrossing, exciting story about a group of brave, determined men.
An exploration such as this is a test of many sorts. Think of the worst, the roughest final exam you’ve ever had to undergo. Then let me ask you this: Did your life depend on the successful outcome? The lives of every member of this crew did, in several ways. What would have happened if one of the crew had made the slightest miscalculation? The USS Queenfish may have been locked in the ice still. What would have happened if the submarine had been detected by the Soviets? Do you think any of them would have survived to tell the story? Doubtful, at best. Or what if the crew had erred in the depth that deep-draft sea ice penetrated underwater? The entire submarine could have been ripped open. At least then the crew wouldn’t have had long to suffer. They would all have been dead within two minutes.
One of the reasons that many people go into the military is to test themselves under the harshest of circumstances. Do I have it, whatever it is? Am I strong enough? Am I fast enough? Will I be able to undergo 20-hour days for six weeks straight? Is my brain, and my psyche, strong enough to withstand nonstop scolding and humiliation for those same six weeks? And after all this, will I still be smart enough, will my mind be agile enough, to complete the mission? Thirty percent of those who go in say "No." This is the story of some of those other 70% who stick it out, and who are called upon to continue to test themselves day after day.
This mission could not have been completed by a standard diesel sub for a number of reasons. When the USS Nautilus, for example, steamed into the Electric Boat Company’s yard in 1957 to refuel her reactor core with a few pounds of uranium, she had traveled 62,562 miles, more than half of that distance submerged. For that same distance in a conventionally powered diesel sub, more than two million gallons of fuel would have been needed.
Now add some size and geography to this mission. The Arctic Ocean is the smallest in the world, but it’s still six times the size of the Mediterranean Sea. Until this mission, it was also the least explored and consequently the least understood. Then consider that ocean waters are in constant motion, even those waters of the Arctic, where a good part of the water is ice. The ice is constantly breaking up and reforming, it’s often stacking one chunk on top of the other, forcing the bottom chunk deeper below the surface. As the author says, the only predictable thing about sea ice is its unpredictability.
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