Officer X describes how the navigation officer, convinced the worst had happened, began rallying crew members toward launching nuclear weapons. The captain posted armed guards at the small arms locker as tensions escalated. Only the calm intervention of the executive officer and a risky decision to deploy an antenna near the surface restored contact with the outside world. The fault turned out to be a shorted trailing wire combined with a Scottish transmitter station going offline.
The interview ends abruptly when Officer X receives a phone call during a break and announces he must leave immediately. Art suspects he was contacted and told to stop talking. The episode also previews a controversial upcoming interview with a self-proclaimed satanic witch named Harlot.
Key Moments
Libya crisis: USS Ulysses S. Grant loses comms for six hours at DEFCON 3: Officer X describes the precipitating event: during the Reagan-era buildup to the Libya airstrike against Gaddafi, the SSBN Ulysses S. Grant cut its trailing-wire antenna in a sudden evasive turn, the backup buoy malfunctioned, and a replacement wire could not reacquire signal lock - leaving the boat deaf for hours at DEFCON 3 with a hostile Russian surface contact above.
Navigation officer agitates the crew toward launching nuclear weapons: With no signal and a Russian ship overhead, the embittered navigation officer began telling the crew that war had broken out and life as they knew it was over, building a movement toward retaliatory launch. The captain posted an armed guard at the small-arms locker because the weapons officer had a key.
Captain breaks doctrine and surfaces antenna to defuse the crew: The bookish executive officer calmly counseled the captain, who chose to risk going shallow enough to deploy an HF antenna - contrary to standard rules of engagement at DEFCON 3 with a Russian surface contact - because internal pressure was about to boil over. About 45-60 seconds after breaking the surface, encrypted teletypes locked back up.
Root cause: shorted antenna and Thurso, Scotland transmitter offline: The post-incident finding: the trailing-wire antenna had a short whose self-test circuit also failed, so it read normal but did not function - and simultaneously the Thurso, Scotland LF transmitter, which should never have been off the air at DEFCON 3, was knocked off for about 12 hours. Either failure alone would have been survivable; together they produced the blackout.
Do you believe in the mission of the nuclear Navy?: In the post-incident debrief, the executive officer told Officer X that the navigator had been prepared to do his duty out of conviction, while X had been motivated by fear, then asked him point-blank whether he believed in the mission of the nuclear Navy. Officer X said yes; he says here that the truth was no - and that exchange is why he eventually left the service.