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Harvey Warfield. “The lookouts report that men seem to be jumping into the water from the deck forward of the sail.”
    Warfield focused his binoculars. The radio transmission from America had ceased. The dead radioman’s foot was no longer holding down the transmit switch; Warfield didn’t know that, and it really didn’t matter. The silence, however, was ominous. “Give me her course and speed,” he snapped to the watch team.
    â€œLittle over a knot, sir. Coming starboard, heading passing one zero zero.”
    â€œDistance?”
    â€œThirteen hundred yards.”
    He could see people going over the side into the water. Jumping. Three or four jumped as he watched. Two men shoved someone—a body, perhaps—into the water.
    â€œHow many people in the water? OOD, ask the lookouts.”
    That was futile. He could see only the starboard side of the sub … the tug was just now coming into view as the sub turned. The tug was down seriously at the stern.
    â€œMore than a dozen, Captain.”
    â€œGet that Coast Guard cutter to pick them up.”
    â€œShe’s steady at two knots, Captain, probably just enough to keep the rudder effective, heading one two zero.”
    *   *   *
    Aboard America, Kolnikov and Turchak studied the computer displays and controls on the consoles, the analog instruments, all the labels in English.…
    The whole thing—the control room, the computers, the displays, everything—was overwhelming. They had studied all the available information, had run through simulation after simulation, but neither of them was prepared for the reality of America ’s control room. Workstation after station, the sonar control group, the combat systems group, the engineering group—the enormity of the task before them hit them with hammer force. For the first time, Kolnikov was truly frightened.
    Two of the men with them, both Germans, were computer experts. They were seated now at the consoles, taking it all in. Unfortunately, there was little time. A few minutes at most.
    Rothberg, the American, was there, thank God. He was dashing from console to console, setting up displays, checking computerized data, selecting automated operating modes wherever possible.
    â€œHow does it look, Rothberg?” Kolnikov asked.
    â€œNo sweat,” the American said without looking up from the console he was working on.
    America was unique, in Kolnikov’s experience, because the control room did not sit under the sail, but behind it, in a section of the hull that was clear of the machinery necessary to raise and lower the radar, communications, and photonics masts. This positioning was possible because America didn’t have a conventional periscope, which formed the center of every other submarine’s control room. The telescoping masts were housed in the sail, and none penetrated the pressure hull. Aboard America the periscope function was performed by the photonics mast, so-called because it contained sensors and cameras for capturing photons of light and heat, which were converted to digital form, run through the computers, and presented as images on one of these large screens in the control room. The information from these sensors could also be integrated with the data from all the other sensors, such as sonar and radar, to form a complete tactical picture for the control room team and its leader, the commanding officer.
    â€œHow is the reactor functioning?” Kolnikov asked Callahan, the American sailor who was standing with Heydrich near the main tactical display in the center of the control room. This display was horizontal, a high-tech chart on which the boat’s position and the position of all contacts, friendly and hostile, were automatically plotted by the computer in real time. And of course, the display could be advanced to predict positions at any future point in time, which allowed one to instantly see the