By CORNELIUS RYAN

On Submarine AGSS569, North Atlantic       I am aboard the world's fastest submarine. Beneath the uneasy surface of the Atlantic, the weird, whalelike hull of the Navy's experimental USS Albacore knifes cleanly through the silksmooth depths. She's fast -- faster than I'm allowed to tell -- faster than the atomic-powered Nautilus.       A short while ago we submerged. There was noise, and -- to me -- pandemonium when we dived. A klaxon horn blared out into the smallness of the compartments, and crewmen rushed to diving stations. Before the roar died away. the intercom loud-speakers crackled with the diving officer's command: "Clear the bridge. Dive, dive, dive." Feet rasped down metal ladders, hatches clanged shut, sea water gurgled eagerly into the Albacore's tanks --and suddenly we were underwater.       The dive and the precise teamwork of the 49-man crew, executing a routine that they knew, was over in seconds. Now everything is quiet. I miss the comforting throb of the great diesel engines. They operate only on the surface: underwater we depend on softly running battery-powered electric motors, but now even these seem bushed and faraway.       There's tension, too. But it's not the usual tenseness you find on a submarine; this feeling is different. There's an atmosphere of eager expectancy and constant alertness, for the Albacore is no ordinary submarine. She's a $20,000,000 underwater laboratory paving the way in hull design and control systems for tomorrow's underseas Navy.       The Albacore is unlike any submarine in the world today. Her speed is so great underwater that it takes airplane-type controls to operate her. Even her control room resembles the cockpit of a jet bomber, and her diving and steering operators wear pilot safety belts, for the Albacore swerves and dives with the sureness of a fighter plane.       Exact performance details are still highly classified, but there's a clue to her underwater speed: she's faster than many of today's ocean liners.       The secret of the Albacore's great speed lies in a revolutionary new hull form which reduces water friction to a minimum. Her appearance startled me when I saw her for the first time at the Portsmouth (New Hampshire) Naval Shipyard. The Albacore was a fish-shaped body, blimplike tail and a single five-bladed propeller (conventional submarines are built with twin screws). The Albacore is so streamlined, so perfectly pared down that it takes only the minimum of power from her motors to propel her it top speed through the water.       Up to now conventional submarines have been designed to spend relatively little time submerged. As a result they have extremely low underwater speed. The Albacore is the first submarine with a truty Submersible hull-short, round and smooth, and designed for underwater performance almost exclusively. Even the bulky conning tower so familiar on conventional submarines is radically changed on the Albacore. A slender, rakish tower like a dorsal fin juts out of her back; hidden in it is a small two-man bridge, retractable periscope, radar and radio antennas. Nothing else mars her streamlined exterior.       Submarine designers have always known, theoretically, what to expect from a submersible such as the Albacore. If they'd had the knowledge when the Nautilus was being designed that they now have, the atomic sub's hull would have resembled the Albacore's.       What are the possibilities of a marriage between the Nautilus' atomic power plant and the Albacore's hull? The experts say it's almost inevitable and the prospect fills even seasoned naval officers with awe. They see submarines capable of 40 or 50 knots underwater -- as compared with the nine knots or so produced below the surface by our best World War II subs.       But right now, even without an atomic power plant, the Albacore is the fastest submarine in the world. I know. For the last four days, with photographer Jerry Yulsman, I've been hanging on during a blistering series of speed, diving , and mineuverability tests, not unlike the acceptance trials of a new plane -- except that the Albacore is two thirds the length of a football field and weighs more thin 1,200 tons. And the tests are not yet over. We're i,,oing deep now for another high-speed run.       Here in the florescent-lighted control room, space is at a premium, although the Albacore is much broader than the average submarine. As I watch, 10 submariners work quietly at their jobs in an area little more than the size of the average bedroom, surrounded on all sides by a jungle of pipes, instruments, wheels, levers and cranks. On the "Bridge" With the Skipper       The Albacore's skipper, thirty-five-year-old Lieutenant Commander Ken C. Gummerson, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is on his "bridge," a slightly raised platform that divides the compartment in the center. The gleaming barrel of the periscope -- the scope itself is retracted into a well at the skipper's feet, for we're much too deep to use it -- is directly before him. From his vantage point, Gummerson can see everything at a glance. To his left are the diving tnd steering stations and the massive instrument panel with its circular, square and oblong dials. like so many geometric molds; on the right the navigation desk, compasses and electrical switchboard crowd one another for space.       Out of the maize of instruments, one now demands particular attention. We're settling lower by the minute and the needle of the depth indicator is swinging slowly over. It registers 150 feet ... 175 ... 200).       Two hundred twenty-five, Captain." says Lieutenant James Ferrero, of Rock Springs, Wyoming, the diving officer. "Two hundred fifty ... two seventy-five, sir."       Gummerson looks up. "Level off," he says.       The Albacore rides easily in her deep cocoon of sea water. She's air-conditioned. but suddenly it feels very close in here. You just can't get out of a submarine 275 feet below the sea and walk home.       Over on the captain's left, the three diving and steering operators sit facing forward, casually relaxed in bucket seats; the canvas strips of their unbuckled safety belts dangling by their sides. They won' need the belts until the Albacore goes into a high-speed turn, and when she does, the rest of us will become straphangers. We'll use leather loops, similar to those on subways, which hang above us.       I've never seen similar safety devices or controls on any other submarine, but on the Albacore they're essential. Old fashioned, slow-moving controls were all right for submarines with a top speed underwater of little more than nine knots, but in the Albacore such controls would be as out of place as a huge ship's wheel in a Sabre jet fighter plane. The Albacore is so fast underwater that she can outmaneuver destroyers. She must have sensitive, triggerlike controls ... and she does have them, as I discovered when I tried them myself -- not on board, but earlier in a simulator at the Navy's David Taylor Model-Basin, just outside Washington, D.C., where the Albacore's streamlined shape was scientifically designed.       The instructor at the model basin set the controls to simulate a conventional fleet-type submarine. Then he asked me to dive to 300 feet. I pushed the stick forward and my "submarine" slowly slid down. When I tried to level her out the control stick felt sluggish and tired.       Then he set the controls to simulate the speedy Albacore. Again I pushed the controls forward to reach 300 feet. I went down so fast that when I did pull out I was several hundred feet below the ordered depth. Trying to correct, I shot up to 100 feet in seconds, at which point the instructor shut off the simulator. "You would have either hit the bottom, or popped out through the surface," he told me. Bow and Stern Planesmen at Work       Now as I watch the steering and diving operators I can appreciate their problem. It takes only a touch of the helmsman's wheel to turn the Albacore right or left and she'll rise or dive with porpoise swiftness, guided by a combination wheel-and-stick instrument in front of the crew member known as the bow planesman. The stern planesman, the anchor man of the team, holds the submarine at correct depth in the water with a lever similar to the joy stick in an airplane. The control setup is different from that on conventional submarines, which are guided by large, slow-moving wheels. I       Just now, as the Albacore glides silently at 275 feet, the controls are steady. Over by the captain's bridge, crouched down and nursing a cold cigar, the telephone talker, complete with headset and power phone, speaks laconically into the instrument. He listens and talks, relaying the captain's orders throughout the submarine, and in turn receives the flow of incoming reports from all departments. Now, as he pauses, a new order comes.       "All compartments, check for leaks and report to the control room," Gummerson tells the diving officer.       The talker, acting as a human switchboard, echoes the command into his phone without looking up.       Leaks? I took up, and around the control room. Commander Gummerson is lighting a cigarette. The executive officer, Lieutenant Ted Davis, of Hornell, New York, is making calculations at the navigation desk. Back of the stern planesman, the diving officer and the Chief of the Boat, Chief Petty Officer Charles Simpson, of Monroe, North Carolina, study the instrument panel. Nobody shows any concern.       But I watch with interest a drop of water which zigzags slowly down the barrel of the periscope. To me, that single drop signifies a particularly virulent microbe, the forerunner of a plague.       As I watch it carefully, the telephone talker reports. "All compartments report no leaks, sir."       Quartermaster Lawrence Wagner, of Rockford, Illinois, assistant to the navigator, sees my eyes on the periscope. He grins and says just one word, "Condensation." I manage to grin back. I feel better. .       "All right, Jim," Gummerson nods to the diving officer, "take her down to 350."       Over in front of his myriad dials, the stern planesman leans forward in his bucket seat and pushes his wheel gently. Beneath us the deck tilts slightly and the needle on the depth indicator resumes its slow swing ... 280 ... 290 ... 300.       I have a mental picture of the Albacore's hull as she braces herself against the increasing pressure. Outside, millions of pounds of water press insistently down upon us. Every square inch of the submarine's skin at this depth is bearing a pressure of 132 pounds.       The telephone talker startles me out of my mathematical computations. "Leak forward, sir, in the officers' quarters ... coming in through a grease nipple."       "How big?" asks Gummerson.       "How big's the squirt?" the telephone talker asks into the phone. He listens briefly, then reports. "About half the thickness of a pencil, sir."       This time Wagner doesn't even bother to reassure me. He goes steadily on with his calculations at the navigation desk. I glance at the depth indicator. The needle trembles just over the 325-foot mark.       The telephone talker reports another leak through a grease nipple; this one is in the compartment beneath us.       "Auxiliary man on watch," the captain orders.       The telephone talker translates: "Get that leak fixer up here." '       I wait impatiently for the arrival of the "leak fixer," and in a few minutes a slim seaman, armed with a wrench, enters the control room and walks unhurriedly across it and out toward the officers' quarters, humming as he goes. I follow him. Inside the compartment he finds the leak easily enough. A thin, silvery stream of water has already soaked an upper bunk with the force and thoroughness of a fireman's hose. Another seaman has a can under the leak, and now the auxiliary man gets to work. He fixes the wrench on the nipple and starts to tighten it. "Sh-Boom," he hums. In seconds he has the leak stopped. Then he turns and goes out. I linger a moment, and touch the upper bunk. The sea water has made it icy cold.,       Back in the control room. the leak fixer clambers, down through a hatch in front of the navigation desk in search of leak number two. A few minutes later he reappears. "That's it," he reports to no one in particular, and disappears aft.       I go over and stand by Wagner at the navigation desk. "What about those leaks?" I ask him.       "They were Just dribbles," he tells me. "Every submarine leaks, but this is the most watertight sub I've ever been on,"       Wagner should know. He's been a submariner for 15 years and during the war he served aboard the submarine Haddock. Once, under depth-charge attack, the Haddock was forced to dive so deeply that her conning tower buckled.       I see by the depth indicator that we are maintaining depth at 350 feet. For the time being everything is quiet.       Commander Gummerson steps down from his bridge and tells the diving officer: "Station a section watch and maintain present course at one-third speed. I'll inform the escort vessel."       He looks over at me. "Did you ever see an underwater telephone?" he asks. "No? Well, let's go into the sonar room." Finding the Sub's Underwater "Eyes"       I follow the captain into the next compartment. For the first time since we submerged, that strange incessant high-pitched noise which has been assailing my ears finally registers; the sharp beek ... aah ... bak ... beek ... aah ... bak is the sonar or sound-ranging set -- the sub's underwater "eyes."       Banks of gray cases containing electronic gear line the bulkheads; there are radar sets and several types of sonar equipment, most of it still on the secret list. The echoing sound is coming from a loudspeaker near a circular radar-typwe screen which is illumined with a greenish glow. As each sound wave sighs out from the transmitter, plosion is painted in the center of the screen; thin white line races out from the center of the screen; a thin white line races out from the explosion and stops at a white speck off to the right of the screen's center. Gummerson points to this white speck. That's our our escort on the surface," he exlains. He turns to Sonar Operator Harold Scott, of Sherman, Texas. "How far is she from us now, Scotty?"       "About one thousand yards off our bow, sir."       Scott flicks a switch and hands Gummerson a phone. "Speedy calling Slowpoke," he says. Suddenly I hear I along the hull.       "That's the low frequency sound waves traveling through the water," Scott says. "We can't use radio underwater, so this comes in handy."       The underwater telephone loudspeaker suddenly comes to life.       "This is Slowpoke," a voice from the escort says "You are coming in loud and clear ... over."       The loud-speaker's background noise sounds like the comforting hiss of a steam radiator, but the voice from the escort vessel is perfectly clear.       Gummerson answers: "This is Speedy. We're level at 350 feet. We'll begin speed run shortly. Over."       "Roger. Out," comes the reply.       Gummerson hands the phone back to Scott and stands for a minute watching the sound explosions on the sonar set. The captain is a trim, compact man with crisp black hair. He wears command well. Before he came on the Albacore, he commanded the submarine Cobia, and during World War II served aboard destroyers in the Pacific. Commander Gummerson was hand-picked for this job and he has an immense pride in the Albacore.       That pride is well founded. Before I came aboard I spent several weeks learning all I could about this strange new submarine. Her story began in 1948 when Rear Admiral C. B. Momsen, then Assistant Chief of Naval Operations for Undersea Warfare, conceived of a submarine that would operate 99 per cent of the time underwater. Momsen's plan was to subordinate surface performance. He asked for a perfectly designed hull form, which would permit the utmost in submerged speed but require a minimum of power.       "I felt," said Admiral Momsen, "that we had in the past been so restricted in design studies . . . that it was almost impossible to produce the best submarine. It was like stuffing a turkey. First a hull was designed and then everybody in the Navy Department began to stuff it from both ends."       In 1949, a special committee on naval development, under the chairmanship of Dr. K. S. M. Davidson, director of the Experimental Towing Tank at Stevens Institute of Technology at Hoboken, New Jersey, approved the plan and, working with the Navy's Bureau of Ships scientists, began experimental studies.       An investigation was made into all experiments the Navy had ever made with airships and blimps, if they offered any clues to streamlining. this data a series of models varying in size from seven to 25 feet were built. These were tested in wind tunnels and towed underwater in experimental tanks. In all, some 25 models were produced before the Albacore emerged.       Admiral Momsen, now commander of Joint Task Force Seven in the Pacific, sees the Albacore as a forerunner of the submarine of the future. He Says: "Driven by nuclear power plants and properly designed like the Albacore, tomorrow's submarine can be faster than any surface ships. A school of these deadly killers could drive all surface ships to cover -- either to port or to the bottom of the sea."       With all the past preparation that's gone into the making of the Albacore and with so much depending on future trials such as these, it's not hard to see why Gummerson takes such pride in the submarine, but I ask him anyway.       "Well, I guess we're making a little history," he tells me. "We're doing things that have never been done in a sub before." Gummerson steps up onto the bridge, smiles at me and says, "Hang on."       It is very still.       Cuddy looks back to the talker. "Pass the word."       Tbe telephone talker bends over his phone. "All hands. . ." he intones, "secure all movable objects."       The diving and steering operators pull their safety straps tight, settle back in their bucket seats. Behind them, Cuddy makes a final check, then confers briefly with Chief Simpson. The Lieutenant Who Watches the Dials       At the navigation desk, Lieutenant Ferrero fastens a pad of graph paper to a clip board, ready to jot down the mathematical story of the test from the Albacore's dials. All over the control room men reach automatically for straps or brace themselves against heavy equipment.       "All gear secured, sir," says the telephone talker.       Gummerson nods. "Increase speed to fifteen knots," be says.       There's no vibration, no pulsating beat from the motors, but the needle on the speed indicator begins to move ... 10 ... 12 ... 15.       "Increase speed to twenty knots," Gummerson orders. He keeps his eyes on the dials.       A stop watch suspended from a stand over the navigation desk hangs still, like the pendulum of a stopped clock. There's still no vibration, but the electric motors are getting loud.       The needle on the indicator slides over ... 17 ... 18 ... 19. The motors are humming louder. Irrelevantly, I remember a beautifully engraved placard which hangs in the engine room over the controls. It reads. "Sit back and relax. (signed) Your safe, careful operator --- R. C. Seeley, Electrician's Mate."       Gummerson increases the speed again, and again. The motors turn faster, in a steadily increasing tempo. On the dial of the speed indicator, the needle eats up the knots . . . hits 20 ... passes 2O ... and finally reaches a speed which, for reasons of security, cannot be revealed.       We're shooting through the water, faster now than any submarine has ever gone before. Nobody speaks. There is tension. Figures are jotted down, charts are filled in.       Under the speed, the Albacore trembles. The steering and diving operators, strapped in their seats, hold their controls and watch the dials before them fixedly. They look frozen in a tableau of intense concentration. At this speed a wrong move of the diving controls might shoot the Albacore up and down like some enormous game fish.       "Left full rudder," snaps Gummerson. As he speaks, he steps down from his bridge and wedges himself in a corner. Caught away from a leather strap, I brace myself between the navigator's desk and the electrical switchboard. We bank almost before Gummerson finishes speaking. There's a sharp jar as the Albacore heels over. Everybody rolls and sways with the sudden violence of the turn. I bend almost double over the navigation desk. There's a clatter as loose objects begin to slide in their racks. On the navigation desk a pencil rolls; before it stops we level out again. The pencil hesitates, wobbles, and comes to rest.       "Right full rudder!" orders Gummerson.       We grab for support again. Those on the leather straps hang on even more tightly, but again in the turn everybody swings out. I'm pressed back against the switchboard. There's no time to talk; no time to do anything but-hang on. Again everything slides crazily. A heavy naval manual falls and careers madly across the deck. An ash tray joins the pencil in muddled flight, then tilts and clatters to rest as the Albacore straightens again.       We walk back into the control room. I notice three new faces. Lieutenant Tom Cuddy, of North Brookfield, Massachusetts, the Albacore's engineering officer, has taken over from the diving officer. With him is Warrant Officer Howard Hawkins, of Eliot, Maine, the shipyard superintendent for the Albacore. He has come to "see" the high-speed run through the eyes of the control room's dials.       Down here, no whizzing glimpses of landscape help to gauge our speed, yet I am conscious of the thrusting power of the submarine. There's a feeling of exhilaration, like flying underwater.       But the flight is over. Gummerson issues orders, the needles on the dials lag slowly back, the noise of the engines recedes.       A short time later, we surface and bead for home. We sight Portsmouth just after dark. A pilot comes aboard to guide us in. Down in the control room, the charts are filled with final computations. Tbey'll be needed for the interrogations that will take place when we berth, for from the Albacore's trials Navy experts learn more each day. What they learn will lay the groundwork for tomorrow's high-speed submersibles.       I gather my notes and equipment and say goodby to Commander Gummerson, glad to be back. As I walk down the gangplank, one of the officers stops me.       "It's late," he says, "why don't you stay aboard until morning?"       I wave good-by. My trials are over.