Under the Shadow: The Atomic Bomb and Cold War Narratives

Chapter 9. Whales, Submarines, and The Bedford Incident

whales, submarines, and the bedford incident 147 The action in Level 7 was almost entirely subterranean, the underground bunker suggesting not only refuge but a distancing from real-life consequences. We turn now to a surface narrative. Mark Rascovich’s 1963 novel The Bedford Incident draws on the American tradition of hunt narratives, specifically that of MobyDick , with consequences vastly greater because of the new Cold War context. The commission of the first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, in 1954 radically transformed the conduct of sea warfare and inevitably introduced a new source of East-West tension since the new subs could travel under the surface of the sea for days on end.1 The Bedford Incident deals with a military engagement between an American destroyer and a Soviet submarine in the Denmark Strait between Iceland and Greenland. The USS Bedford has the duty of patrolling that area to find signs of Soviet submarines trying to monitor the microwave emissions of NATO DEW line (Distant Early Warning) stations. This line of radar installations, completed by 1957, stretched across the Arctic from the Aleutian Islands, across Canada’s Northwest Territories, and, by 1961, across Greenland to connect with the Faroe Islands and the Iceland defense system. This was in theory a multinational construction, but in practice the United States played the leading part in its construction and implementation. Thule Air Base in Greenland, positioned strategically midway between New York and Moscow, was one of the largest units within a network of radio, radar, and other installations.2 Adam Piette has noted that “in many ways, the Arctic came to symbolize the Cold War, secret, inaccessible, bitterly cold, hiding within its wastes enormous bases such as Thule in Greenland, incredible surveillance systems and mind-numbingly powerful weaponry.”3 chaPter 9 Whales, Submarines, and The Bedford Incident 148 under the shadow Frank Herbert’s The Dragon in the Sea, probably the first novel to make a nuclear submarine its subject, powerfully conveys the hidden quality of naval strategy by describing the claustrophobic intensity of serving on such a sub. The novel is set in a future where America is locked in a war with the Eastern Powers to find fuel. Atomic submarines have been stealing oil supplies from Eastern Power wells using submarine tugs, but the expeditions have been failing regularly because Eastern Power forces have been guided to the subs through spy-beam transmittersplantedsecretlyonthevessels.Ononedesperateefforttobreakoutof thespiralofsabotage,theFenianRamsetsoutforNovayaZemblacarryingEnsign Ramsey, an electronics expert as well as a psychologist whose brief is to observe the conduct of the crew under pressure. Ramsey is, in both senses, a reader and decoder of signals.4 ThenovelfocusescentrallyonthetensionsandsuspensethatmountastheRam runs the undersea gauntlet near the coasts of Norway, Iceland, and Greenland. As in all submarine narratives, the drama emerges through the crew’s responses to electronic signals of approaching enemy craft. Indeed, the enemy is attenuated to an anonymous threatening “them” who have to be avoided at all costs, and on one level Herbert skillfully captures the fluctuations in the mood of the crew and the technical difficulties of operating a nuclear power source. The novel was originally marketed by Doubleday as a futuristic thriller dealing with attempts at sabotaging the nuclear pile, the betrayal of their position to the enemy (a spy-beam device is discovered on board), and even the suspicious death of a crew member.5 However, thereisadeeper,evenmoreclaustrophobicleveltotheactionthatconcernssecurity andcombatfatigue.ThewarbetweenEastandWesthasbeendraggingonforyears, and the resulting sheer exhaustion could persuade an officer to commit sabotage in his search for mental relief. Security is the major factor, however. The Ram is a miniature security state where every crew member is encouraged to spy on the others. As the crew slides into collective paranoia, one officer even speculates that the enemy is part of each individual without any external existence. Commander Sparrow comes under maximum pressure to execute the mission and also to hold the crew together. As Ramsey observes him at critical points, he exclaims to himself: “He’s like a piece of machinery . . . Great God in heaven, what went into making a man like that?”6 The answer is, of course, the U.S. military machine. And Sparrow rationalizes the tensions in his command by attributing a mythic significance to the submarine, hence Herbert’s title, which is taken from Isaiah27.i:“InthatdaytheLordwithhissoreandgreatandstrongswordshallpunishleviathanthepiercingserpent ,evenleviathanthatcrookedserpent;andheshall slaythedragoninthesea.”ForSparrow,thesubmarineisparadoxicallyanembodi- whales, submarines, and the bedford incident 149 ment of the ungodly that has to be smitten, whereas the...