“Operation Hideout” was an episode of the CBS television series Navy Log, originally airing on February 20, 1957. (The series was touted as a military drama based on true naval stories.) This episode was produced and directed by Samuel Gallu and starred Ward Costello, Crahan Denton, and Paul Richards. Made in an era before submariners made trips around the world underwater without surfacing, “Operation Hideout” may seem a bit silly to the modern viewer. However in the 1950s the question of whether men could remain aboard a submarine at depth, for weeks or even months at a time, was the subject of great debate.
The episode opens at the US Navy’s submarine base in New London, Connecticut. At mark 00:45, the camera pans across a scale model of the USS Nautilus (SSN-571), the world’s first operational nuclear-powered submarine. The dramatization starts at mark 01:30 as two officers discuss what this switch to nuclear power will mean for the Navy. “And what about the human element?,” he asks. “Are we going to have to invent a whole new type of human to man it?” A possible answer comes near mark 03:00 as the men discuss “Operation Hideout,” a 60-day controlled experiment mimicking conditions onboard Nautilus. Volunteers are shown given physical exams before the scene switches at mark 03:55 as a sailor and his wife discuss their future (and the wife laments how she “can’t stand women who tell men what to do”) — but still expresses concern over her husband being part of the experiment.
Onboard the submarine USS Haddock (SS-231), the sailors listen as a medical officer discusses what the future holds beginning at mark 09:45, and how “our job is to stand as much as we possibly can and keep alive.” The episode continues as the men continue to be questioned and tested while under confinement. A bizarre craving for cottage cheese at mark 14:00 leads one of the medical officers to realize that the product, rich in calcium, may mean a change in the men’s mineral balance. While the narrator explains there is no apparent physical concerns, a physiatrist reminds one of the men that “human emotions are nothing to be ashamed of” and that many fear responses are developed before we are born — news that hits one sailor hard as his wife is pregnant and undoubtedly worried about him.
Tensions build on the vessels, and at mark 18:54 some of the sailors begin to panic about carbon dioxide levels (hence the craving for more calcium) and what it is doing to their bones before an officer informs them that “a little misinformation goes a long way,” and that a calcium deficiency “is bunk.” He then lectures them on the importance of courage in situations like this. “But it’s always nicer to look back upon these things than to live them,” he says. With the experiment over at mark 21:53, the men who tested their own endurance are seen emerging from the sub’s hatch and are reunited with their families.
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