DEFENSE: Polaris Goes to Work

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"Have you plenty of cigars, Jim?" asked Rear Admiral Kenmore McManes, commandant of the Sixth Naval District. Replied Commander James B. Osborn, between puffs on his stogie: "I've got 15 boxes. Admiral.'' Moments later, as a Navy band whomped up a rousing Sousa march on a closely guarded pier at the Charleston (S.C.) Navy Yard dock. Osborn, 42, stepped aboard the nuclear Polaris submarine George Washington, in whose vast holds huge quantities of provisions—from missile-shaped cigars to cigar-shaped missiles—had been stored. Then Skipper Osborn bellowed a time-honored order: "Cast off all lines!" Soon the sub pointed her bulbous nose down the Cooper River and headed for sea to inaugurate a new era in the arcane cold-war art of keeping the peace.

Hidden from enemy eyes, safe from enemy attack, her nuclear-tipped priority cargo of 16 Polaris missiles constantly at the ready, George Washington was bound on history's first underwater missile patrol. Skipper Osborn's orders were secret, but best guesses were that he would take station beneath the subarctic waters of the Norwegian and Barents seas. Cruising within 1,200-mile range of Soviet targets from Moscow to Omsk (see map), George Washington will be joined by her sister ship, Patrick Henry, within two months. With their total of 32 missiles, the two ships will of themselves fill any known present-day missile gap—a pair of mobile weapons adding devastating power to U.S. defensive force.

Nurses in the Forest. Each submarine will remain submerged for 60 days at a time (George Washington will spend Christmas and New Year's at sea), and effectiveness will depend on precise maintenance. In order to launch missiles on target with accuracy, the ship must know its exact location. The complicated celestial-periscope system has 80,000 components and must be kept working to perfection. The periscope runs a constant double check on the Cadillac-sized SINS (ship's inertial navigation system), which tracks the sub's underwater course with pinpoint accuracy. The missiles are housed gently in their tubes in the compartment that the submen call "Sherwood Forest." They must be wet-nursed hour by hour, their computers prepared to receive fire-control data, their gyros kept warmed and ready, their switches checked and rechecked so that they can be fired on 15 minutes' notice. The main atomic power plants must be tended by technicians with a highly specialized training that was never needed at sea before the age of nuclear ships.

Despite the unending technical and mechanical complications, Polaris subs are built to stay at sea up to three years. They are untethered by the standard submarine's fuel and oxygen limitations. They can manufacture their own atmosphere without surfacing. Only the limitations of human endurance will require that they make port every two months. In home port for Washington and Henry will be the Polaris sub tender Proteus, stationed at Holy Loch, an anchorage in Scotland's River Clyde. Each ship will have a second, fully trained crew waiting to take her back to sea. With fresh "Blue'' and "Gold" crews alternating on duty, Polaris subs will be able to stay on station almost twice as long as their World War II predecessors.