CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CRASH LANDING
_Kamongo_ was ranged with fourteen other submarines alongside thetender _David_ at the little island base in the southwest Pacific. Thecrossing after the sinking at Wake Island had been uneventful, sincethey had run submerged most of the time during daylight hours. Alwayson the lookout for enemy ships, officers and crew alike had beendisappointed to run into nothing but an American task force, consistingof a carrier, a cruiser, and three destroyers racing north at fullspeed.
March had tried to make out the name of the carrier, and he would havebeen delighted to know it was the _Bunker Hill_ carrying Scoot and hiscompanions from their Truk attack to a small action against anotherJap-held island farther north. But even American subs submerged and randeep and quiet when American ships were near by. The destroyers wouldhave started to toss depth charges like snowflakes if they had sighteda periscope of any kind.
At the sub base, all pigboat Skippers and their seconds were at ameeting aboard the tender. Captain Milbank, the Intelligence Officer,was speaking to them.
“You’ve all heard about the blasting of Truk,” he said. “Now, it’scertain that the Japs will try to reinforce that important post asquickly and as fully as possible. In fact, word has reached us throughthe Chinese that a large convoy has already left Japan for Truk, withtroops, oil and gasoline, ammunition, more antiaircraft guns, food andsupplies, and with almost every deck covered with Zeros. They’ve got toreplace what we knocked out there and, even further, increase theirdefending force. They know we’ll hit it again.”
He looked around the room at the quiet, serious faces of the men wholistened intently.
“You may also know,” he went on, “that we have found ChineseIntelligence to be very reliable. It’s amazing how they get wordthrough the Jap lines so quickly and efficiently. Well—the Chinesereport that there’s something special about this convoy for Truk. Theyweren’t able to learn exactly what it is, but they believe it is in theroute to be followed. The Nips know our submarines are roaming the seasout here and will be on the lookout especially for this convoy. Havingknocked Truk half out, we want to keep it in that condition. It’s youmen—with some help, I must confess, from the air service—who will dothat job.”
There were smiles in the room as the Captain, joking, grudginglyrecognized the usefulness of the flying sailors. Then he continued:
“Our patrol planes are ranging over the ocean on the lookout for theconvoy, of course, but their distances are limited and it’s a mightybig ocean to cover. So, for a while, our submarines must also act asscouts. Later we can get together and sink the ships, but first we haveto act as a team to find them.
“We’re all going to leave here at the same time, and fan out to coverthe main routes from Japan to Truk. And we want to catch them as farfrom Truk as possible. The earlier we can find them, the more subs andplanes we’ll have time to get to the attack so we can wipe the wholething out.”
The Captain turned to a chart behind him on the wall.
“Later I shall go over with you the routes to be followed by eachsubmarine,” he said. “If and when any one of you sights the convoy heis _not_ to radio that information. The Japs would certainly pick upthat broadcast. They’d know we had discovered them and they’d be readyfor us. We want the attack to come by surprise. So we have arrangedcertain spots for each of you to arrive at on certain days and atspecific hours. A patrol plane will visit each of those spots, clearlymarked so that you will not mistake it for an enemy plane. He will landon the water and pick up any information you may have. This sameprocedure is to be followed twenty-four hours later at another spotfurther away.
“If by that time not one of you has found the convoy, you are to goyour own ways, looking for whatever you can find on this patrol. And bythat time, if you find anything like the big convoy, the only thing todo will be to surface and radio us so we can all close in for the kill.We’ll lose the element of surprise but we’ll get them, anyway.”
Next, the Intelligence Officer went over the details of routes andrendezvous spots for each submarine. March saw at once that _Kamongo_was taking a westerly course from their base, then heading northwest.It seemed to him that this should be one of the most likely routes fora convoy to take from Japan to Truk, and he was pleased.
Then Larry Gray asked a question of the Intelligence Officer.
“Those rendezvous spots,” he said. “They appear to be in open sea, butI know there are little atolls all over the place. Are they near suchislands?”
“No, they are not,” the Captain said. “Purposely. The Japs have littlegarrisons on a great many of those tiny islands that look no more thanbumps on the sea. Some of them have radios. If they saw the contact ofan American sub and an American patrol plane so far from our bases,they’d report it. That wouldn’t tell the Japs much, but the less theyknow the better we like it, no matter how unimportant it may seem. No,the meeting places are in open water. The navigators have a little workto do on this patrol.”
Larry glanced at March and smiled. March knew it wasn’t the easiestthing in the world to find one exact spot in the middle of a big oceanby dead reckoning.
After going over all details of the complicated plan thoroughly, theskipper and their execs returned to their own submarines to see thateverything was ready for getting under way. Fuel and supplies andtorpedoes had been loaded into all the pigboats and there remained onlya final check before they could depart.
In the night they slipped away from their tender one by one and,traveling on the surface under the protection of night, they headed outto sea silently, on the alert, eagerly looking forward to the taskahead. The crew of each pigboat felt that _they_ would be the ones tofind the convoy, the first to go in for the attack.
But on the second day not a sign of the convoy had been seen by any ofthe submarines.
“Must be coming more slowly than we thought,” Larry suggested. “We’llcatch up with it before the next patrol stop.”
At the time Larry spoke they were on the surface in the late afternoon,watching the big American flying boat slide down out of the clouds andcircle above them. March had felt a thrill of satisfaction when he sawit, knowing that it meant he had found his particular spot in the widePacific, but Larry just seemed to take it for granted that hisnavigator would have brought them where they were supposed to be, nomatter how difficult the job.
They gave their negative report to the patrol, learned that no otherpigboat contacted had had better luck, then submerged as the flyingboat took off from the choppy waters.
They ran submerged at periscope depth for two hours until darknessbegan to fall, with one of the officers having his eye glued to thelittle rubber piece on the ’scope every minute. Then they surfaced andwent steadily forward on their prescribed course. Two officers andthree lookouts stayed constantly on the bridge, and the sound detectorman below concentrated on his listening as never before. It might wellbe that he could pick up the sound of a convoy’s propellers long beforethe lookouts would sight anything, especially on a moonless night.
But dawn came and found them with nothing to report.
“You’d think there wasn’t even a war going on out here!” McFeecomplained. “Don’t the Nips have _any_ ships in these waters?”
“Not in the waters we’ve been sailing on, anyway,” Stan Bigelowreplied. “I feel cross-eyed from looking so hard for the last fourhours.”
The bright sun sent them under the water again, but only to periscopedepth so that a constant lookout could be maintained. Still—lateafternoon found them filled with discouragement, waiting for the patrolplane. The patrol had found nothing.
“Maybe one of the others—” March suggested, but Larry shook his head.
“I can’t believe it,” he said. “I think we’re in the best spot. We’refurthest west of the whole bunch. That’s certainly the most likelyroute for the convoy, keeping as close to the Philippines, to l
andprotection, as possible. If they were attacked they’d have support fromland-based planes there for quite a while. If anything, I think theymay even be further west than our route.”
March and Larry talked as they stood on the bridge waiting for theirpatrol plane to come out of the west. Suddenly the lookout shouted,“Plane coming out of the sun!”
“Can’t be ours!” Larry shouted. “Rig for dive, March.”
As March barked out the orders to take the ship down, the lookoutreported that the plane was a two-motored flying boat.
“Must be a Jap all right,” Larry said. They all knew that their ownplane was four-motored, one of the longest-ranged flying boats in theworld.
_A Two-Motored Flying Boat Came at Them_]
In two minutes March had slid down the hatch, to be followed by Larry,who dogged the hatch cover tight.
“Take her down to a hundred and fifty,” he said.
_Kamongo_ turned her nose down and slid forward. As they leveled off ata hundred and fifty they heard the roar and felt the jar of a depthcharge explosion. But it was not close and it went off far above them.Then came another, a little closer but still threatening no danger tothe sub.
“Not full-size charges,” Larry said. “We’re all right at a hundred andfifty. We’ll just wait him out. He can’t be carrying very many depthcharges in that job of his. But hold on—he’ll probably get a littlecloser.”
They all held on, but nothing happened. Not another charge went off.March looked questioningly at Larry.
“Don’t know,” Larry said. “Maybe he’s gone on. More likely he’s playingpossum, hoping we’ll think he’s gone and will come up for a look.That’s when he’d get us.”
“Better stay down for a while,” March said.
“Yes, he can’t fly around up there in a circle forever,” Larry said.“We’ll go up in an hour.”
“What about meeting our patrol plane?” March asked.
“I’m afraid we’ll miss him,” Larry said. “Can’t take a chance on goingup now. He might hang around for a while, of course, if the Jap hasgone.”
“He could take care of that Jap in a minute,” McFee said.
“Say, maybe that’s what happened,” March suggested.
“Perhaps,” said Larry. “Maybe our plane came and drove off the Jap. Butwe can’t be sure. I’m not going to risk a sub and sixty men just tofind out.”
Then the sound man turned excitedly.
“I hear something, sir,” he said. “Something in Morse—sounds like ahammer tapping against metal. I’ll have it in a minute.”
They waited impatiently as the sound man took down the message. Then hehanded it to Larry.
“_Kamongo_,” it said. “Jap went home. Come on up.”
Larry grinned. “It’s okay,” he said. “The Jap wouldn’t have known wewere _Kamongo_. It’s our plane. Take her up.”
When the ship surfaced and Larry scrambled through the hatch on to thebridge he saw the big American flying boat resting on the water not aquarter of a mile away. It taxied over beside the submarine as Marchand Mac joined Larry on the bridge.
“I thought you’d get that hammer-on-the-hull message,” the plane’spilot called with a smile. “Nippo just took one look at me coming anddecided he had a date west of here in a big hurry.”
Larry passed on his report of not having sighted the big Jap convoy andlearned that no other submarine had found it either.
“Well, you’re on your own now,” the pilot said. “Go get ’em and goodluck.”
They waved as the plane turned and roared over the water, lifted in theair and circled to the east with a last dip of its wings.
“Now where do we go from here?” March asked.
“We’ll head west,” Larry said. “After that Jap plane. Let’s get going.I’m going to find that convoy!”
Meanwhile, the Jap plane heading west had sighted something else. Itspilot was angry at having been driven away from an American submarinejust when it was about to blow the hated pigboat to its ancestors. Andthere ahead of him—to make up for that loss—was a lone American fighterplane. He grinned happily.
“American plane,” he said to his co-pilot. “We get him.”
The co-pilot looked worried. “American fighter too fast for slow flyingboat. Maybe he get us!”
But the pilot was angry and not to be argued with. “No, we get Americanfighter!”
It was obvious that the American had seen them, but the plane did notput on a sudden burst of speed, did not maneuver quickly to get intoposition for the attack.
The co-pilot grinned. “American plane damaged,” he said. “Americanplane cannot fly fast!”
“Now will you question what I say?” demanded the pilot. “I said we getAmerican plane. Our gods damage plane so we _can_ get it.”
Scoot Bailey looked at the approaching Jap bomber and frowned. Here wasa quick decision to be made. He had been out with the other fightersand bombers from _Bunker Hill_ attacking the Jap garrison on a smallisland to the north. A lucky shot from one of the few defending JapZeros—before it went down—clipped Scoot’s oil line. There was a leak,though not a big one, and the engine was heating up badly. So Scoot hadbeen separated from the others and now was limping home to his carrier,trying to get the best speed he could without overheating the enginetoo much. It had not been an easy job to nurse it along that way, forthe oil was dripping away drop by drop. Still, he thought he might makeit, for he had only about forty more miles to go.
“And now this clumsy boat of the Japs has to show up!” he shouted tohimself angrily. “I could take him in a minute if I was okay, but withthis leaky oil line—what’ll I do? If I give her the gun and reallyswoop down on this bird, I’ll force out most of the oil that I’ve gotleft, heat up the engine so much it’ll burn out. But if I don’t, thenI’m just like a clay pigeon, sitting here waiting to be taken.”
Scoot smiled. “Doesn’t take long to make up your mind in a case likethat. I’ll get that baby who thinks I’m crippled and can’t fight back.And then I’ll just be setting myself down on the sea somewhere andhoping to be picked up, though there’s not much hope for that here.”
He let the Jap patrol plane come on, continued to act as if he couldn’tmaneuver the plane. He wiggled the wings as if he were trying to makehis craft do something it wouldn’t do. He succeeded in filling the Jappilot with such confidence that the man was happily off guard.
Then, at the last minute, he gave his Hellcat the gun and she almostjumped out from under him. Up he rose, then did a wing-over and swoopeddown on the Jap plane from above and behind. Big splashes of oil werecovering his windshield, forced from the leaky line by the sudden rushof power in the engine. The Jap plane was just a blur when Scootpressed the gun button and heard the pounding of bullets from hismachine guns.
Then he pulled up and to the right, looking out the side. Yes, he haddone it. The Jap bomber was afire, but trying to turn to the left. ThenScoot saw what he was aiming for—a tiny reef with a few palm trees afew miles to the south. Suddenly the Jap plane blew up in the air witha roar. Scoot felt the shock of the blast and watched the pieces offlaming plane plummet to the sea below, where a steaming smoke arosefrom the water.
Scoot’s smile was frozen by a hard hammering knock from his engine.
“That did it!” he exclaimed. “She’s conking out, and right about now.Maybe I can make that little island even if the Jap couldn’t.”
He edged the plane around with the last gasps from the engine and puther into a glide toward the little spot of land. Then it occurred tohim that there might be Japs on the island, tiny as it was, and withone hand he checked his service revolver to be sure that he might takea few with him before he went himself, if the worst should happen.
“And all that depends on whether I make it in this glide or not,” Scootsaid. “But it looks okay.”
The plane was slipping down the sky fast, approaching the island. Aboutten feet above the water, Scoot leveled her off and pancaked
into thewater, trying to get his tail to act as a brake. The controls flew fromhis hands and his head hit the top of his cockpit. But he didn’t loseconsciousness from the blow, even though he was badly stunned.
He saw the rocky shore of the island rushing toward him as the planeseemed to skim over the water. Then he struck the rocks, was thrownforward, and heard a ripping, tearing sound as the bottom of hisfuselage was crushed and mangled on the rocks.
He felt a throb in his forehead and realized that he was looking at theslightly twisted floor of his cockpit.
“Must have been knocked out for a minute,” Scoot told himself.
He lifted his head and looked around. His plane was entirely on dryland. It had skidded over the rocks, leaving the water. Right in frontof him was the smooth slanting trunk of a palm tree. He saw no movementanywhere.
“Well, if there were Japs here they’d have been on top of me longbefore this.”
Scoot unfastened his safety belt and crawled from his seat, feeling hisbruised arms and legs to make sure they were whole. In another momenthe stood on the rocky shore surveying sadly his crumpled and twistedship.
“My beautiful Hellcat!” he said, patting her side. “Look what I’ve doneto you!”
Then he turned and looked the island over. It was, he could easily see,not more than two hundred yards long and fifty feet wide, and it curvedin a gentle arc. There were rocks, a few palm trees, some low bushesand nothing else.
“Well, I might as well like it,” Scoot said. “It may be my home for theduration!”
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March Anson and Scoot Bailey of the U.S. Navy Page 15
