ICEX 86 Stories by ST1(SS) John Jones

BTW, ICEX '86 - we left in late February, (26 or 27th) surfaced at the pole on May 6 (not October as the page says), hit Holy Loch on June 4, and got home around June 24th. We were balls to the wall on the way home from Portsmouth, England (liberty stop) with an SOA of 20 kts heading back to Charleston. About a day out, maneuvering reported a hi-temp in one of the mains. After some tests, they found babbit in the Lube-oil sump, meaning that we had eaten a bearing. We were now on the EPM, doing 3 kts against a 4 kt current. The nukes managed to get us going to where we could maintain about 10-12 kts, but Stevie Ray didn't want to stop or slow down for nothing. We didn't even dump trash. The slowdown delayed our return to Charleston by almost a week, the longest week that I had aboard Ray. SUBLANT had radioed to see if we had our towing gear onboard (they had one of the ASR's ready to come get us). TMCM Waddell, the ship's 1st Lt., asked me if we had the appropriate gear (I had been relieved of my 1 yr. stint as Deck LPO just prior to getting underway for ICEX). Imagine his look when I told him that we had been ordered to leave some of the primary gear back in port. I remember ol Stevie Ray being real happy about having to

report to the Admiral that we didn't have the stuff on board.

More ICEX '86

I'd like to add on to Dennis Parker's Stories, since many of them I was directyl involved in.

1. TM1 Wetzel's (Santa) first name is Raymond.

2. We had 2 helicopter visits.

3. There were 6 surfaces during ICEX 86:

1. 2 surfaces in Baffin Bay - the first was to ventilate due to high levels of R12 detected by cams (over 100 mtor's as I remember). The second was to ventilate again, and toss all orange compressed R12 tanks over the side ( we didn't blow it over the side. I remember this very well - I got stuck opening the bridge hatch and clamshells, then stayed there while we rigged lines to haul the bottles up the bridge trunk. I left a nice pile of orange R12 bottles on the ice that day). 2 other things of note happened on this surface. One, when we started our ascent, we drifted from thin ice to really thick ice. We broke through, but our angle was too steep and we punched a hole in our forward BQS-14 under-ice sonar window. Two, the impact to the bridge clamshells was so great from the thickness of the ice that the clamshells were jammed. It took about an hour and a half to get them open, using the weapons-loading hatch chainfall to help pull them loose. The stress was strong enough to actually BEND the metal tabs holding the clamshells in place. I forget how we re-stowed them. I also was priveleged to be the only crewmember to get to climb down the outside sail ladder to the ice pack - I was ordered by the CO to inspect the sonar window, since the under ice sonar was one of my primary responsibilities on that mission. We also flattened our H2 - CO2 overboard fairing, and some topside under ice sonar fairings as well. They loved us in Holy Loch for that.

4. The first visit from other humans (and third surfacing - there were 6 total during ICEX-86) served several purposes. As I remember, these guys were from APLIS (Applied Physics Laboratory Ice Station)

a. A command briefing by several scientists and other personnel associated with the mission objective.

b. To drop off some fresh food (fruit, veggies, etc. - we didn't get the ice cream until a later surfacing near the second ice camp.

c. We also repaired the forward under-ice sonar window, which was cracked during the second surfacing. This is the light-brown discoloration patch that is seen on the North Pole pictures on the front of the boat. All we had to fix it with were fiberglass repair kits (tough to cure in arctic weather - we tried everything! Got a good sea story about that also.)

JOHN R. V. JONE
SSTS1(SS)
USS RAY