March Anson and Scoot Bailey of the U.S. Navy
Page 19
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
DEPTH CHARGES
Three hundred feet was just about the limit for them. Pressure wasterrific at that level, they all knew. But they wanted to get as faraway from the depth charges to come as they could.
_Kamongo’s_ motors whined at high pitch as they sent the boat anglingdown toward the bottom. As they went down March got the report thatfive torpedoes had hit the carrier and all four had ploughed into thetroopship.
“It was hard to concentrate,” said McFee, “but I know I’m right. And,brother, that’s good shooting.”
“Wish we could know just how much damage we did,” March said.
“But you don’t want to know badly enough to surface and find out, doyou?” asked Mac with a grin. “The planes will find out when they comealong in a few minutes. They’ll tell us—later, just what we did. Anywaythe sound man reports that the ships are scattering in so manydirections he can’t keep track of them.”
Then March heard something else from the sound man. “Sounds as ifthere’s solid rock below us—at about two hundred eighty feet.”
“Wonderful!” cried March. “Settle down to it and we’ll just lie thereand rest. Shut off all motors. Then let them try to find us.”
“Destroyers coming in up above, sir,” the sound man said.
“Pretty slow, weren’t they?” Mac commented.
March picked up the phone from the orderly and spoke to the ship.“They’ll be coming any minute now. Hold fast. And we’ll be snug on thebottom.”
The first depth charge came far above them, and the shock from it wasvery slight. But then the submarine bumped slightly as its keel settledgently against the bottom. Motors were shut off and _Kamongo_ tilted alittle to one side as it lay down on the sloping shelf of rock at thebottom of the sea.
There came the metallic click and then the monstrous b-b-r-r-rrooom ofa depth charge to the right and above them. Then one to the left. Thenone beyond the bow. Then one beyond the stern.
“Laying a nice pattern,” McFee called, as he held fast to the littlerailing at the periscope well.
“That would get us if we were higher,” March said. “They probablyfigured we’re at about two hundred feet.”
“They don’t dare go any lower in their subs, usually,” McFee said, ashe braced himself for the next series of charges which shook him.
March looked around the control room. Everyone was holding fast, butlooking very calm. He phoned forward to the torpedo room to ask howeverything was up there.
“All fine, sir,” reported Pete Kalinsky. “And nice shootin’, sir.”
Room after room reported everything all right. “Just a light filamentbusted from that last one in here,” said the machinist’s mate from theengine room.
March saw that one of the men at the controls was steadying anotherwhile he lighted a cigarette. He smiled, and then looked up sharply asa figure appeared in the door at the forward bulkhead. It was Scoot,hanging on groggily and looking angry.
“What’s goin’ on here, anyway?” he demanded loudly. “Can’t a guy sleepin peace?”
March ran to him, but a depth charge—the closest yet—sent him sprawlingto the floor. McFee picked him up, holding fast to the bulkhead whiledoing so. Then, between explosions, they got Scoot back to his bunk,where they strapped him in place. The young flier went to sleep againpeacefully.
On the way back to the control room March and McFee stopped to look atthe Skipper. Sallini was with him, and he smiled.
“Temperature went down—just about the time you hit that carrier, sir,”he reported. “He’s coming through all right, though they’ll have totake those slugs out of him pretty soon.”
_Scoot Appeared in the Doorway_]
“We’ll get him to a hospital,” March said, and then grabbed the doorhard as he heard the click and then the hardest explosion of all.
“They can’t hear anything,” he said to McFee. “Do you suppose theyfigure we’re lying quiet down here and are going to send them deeperand deeper?”
“Might be,” Mac said. March knew that if such were the case it would bebetter to try to zigzag away. The next explosion was so close that itknocked over two men in the control room who thought they were holdingon fast. The next one knocked out the lights, and March shouted for theemergency system. In a moment there was light again but March wasworried, trying to make up his mind what to do. Suddenly he felt thathe just could not make any more decisions. He wasn’t supposed to be asubmarine Skipper yet, anyway. Why decide?
“Well,” he said to himself, “if the next one’s any closer I’ll trymoving away from here.”
He waited tensely. The next explosion would decide the matter for him.He still waited. It didn’t come. He looked at the sound man, puzzled.
“Destroyers moving away, sir,” the sound man reported.
Then they heard another explosion. But this was different. It was nearthe surface, far away, and it was not like a depth charge. Then cameanother and another.
“What can that be?” March said, turning to Mac.
“Darned if I know,” the veteran said.
And then it came to March. He knew. With a smile he picked up the phoneand announced to everybody, “It’s all over, folks. Those things youhear are bombs from airplanes—our airplanes chasing the destroyers awayfrom us and blasting the daylights out of the convoy we’ve scattered.”
The cheer that went up was tired but came from the heart. All over, menrelaxed their grips, lit cigarettes, strolled for a cup of coffee.
“We’ll just stay right here where it’s safe for quite a while longer,”March said. “Then we’ll move on slowly—toward home.”
* * * * *
_Kamongo_ was limping when it came into port and tied up alongside thetender _David_. It had run submerged so long that its batteries werealmost dead. But as they pulled into the little harbor the Skipper cameto, first saying “Take her down! Take her down!” and then opening hiseyes and looking around in a daze. He found plenty of story-tellerseager to tell him what he had slept through.
“It’s just as well,” he smiled weakly, when he had heard. “I never didlike depth charge attacks.”
Scoot was up and about now, his arm in a sling. He would not believethat he had complained about the noise that disturbed his sleep duringthe depth-charge attack.
No one was completely happy, though, until they had full reports of theconvoy battle from the Intelligence Officer at the tender. It was withpride that March Anson carried the complete news to Skipper Larry Grayas he lay in the small sick bay aboard the tender.
“We got the troopship ourselves,” March said. “The carrier was on fireand listing badly when the planes came and finished her off. Not aplane got off her. Of the rest, thirty-eight ships are at the bottom ofthe sea. Not one ship reached Truk!”
Larry looked at March silently and then a slow smile spread over hisface. “Skipper,” he said, “you did a swell job.”
That was all the commendation March wanted or needed, though he wasn’tdismayed later when he got the Navy Cross and his promotion to fulllieutenant.
As for Scoot Bailey, he was flown to Australia to get over his brokenarm before resuming his flying from _Bunker Hill_. The same award andpromotion had come to him for his part in breaking up the Jap convoy,and he was very happy. But his last words to March were on the oldargument between them.
“I won’t say another word against pigboats,” he said. “But I still wantto get back to a plane. As I said once before, they make a great team,don’t they?”