"You see," said the Admiral to his COS. "You gotta ride herd on these skippers all the time. Otherwise they sit up in their sea cabins working crossword puzzles and everybody else on the ship goes to sleep."
Soon a group of six Banshee interceptors, led by LCDR Curly Cue, was flung off the catapults, joined up quickly in V formation, and disappeared to the east climbing with jets wide open.
"They're going up like homesick angels," observed the chief of staff as they faded from sight.
"Umph," observed Admiral Day. "Cut the controller circuit in on the squawk box so I can listen in on the intercept."
"Vector 090," said the squawk box. "Bogey is at 30,000 closing at 400 knots."
"Rajah," said Cue's voice. "Banshees climbing through 20,000, course 090."
A moment later a jubilant "Tallyho, Tallyho" came out of the squawk box, indicating that Cue had sighted the snooper.
"We are deploying now for a split attack. Two sections whipsaw him from each side. I'll come in high out of the sun."
"Now we'll see," observed the Admiral, "whether Bugler's planes turn around and go home when they're intercepted like he told me they would."
After a brief pause, Cue's voice came in again. "Hold it! Hold it! Lay off, you guys. Cancel attack and rendezvous on me headed west." Then, "Fighter section to Guadalcanal. Bogey is Pan American airliner bound for Tokyo. Am returning to base."
The chief of staff looked at the Admiral and shrugged his shoulders apologetically.
There is no point in recording the Admiral's terse comment in this family journal.
For the next twenty-four hours the radar dishes on the masts went round and round, operators in the CIC's fiddled with their gain and brightness controls and strained their eyes at every little snowflake that appeared on their scopes, the AEW planes orbited at 30,000 feet where their horizon was over 200 miles away and probed the wild blue yonder with their scopes. Nobody saw anything.
At four o'clock that afternoon the COS handed the Admiral another accurate report of position, course, and speed. The Admiral studied it for some time silently, and the COS knew better than to stick his neck out with any comment. Finally the Admiral said, "Get our radar experts and communicators up in staff plot. I want to have a conference with them."
When the experts were assembled with long faces, the Admiral asked, "Anybody got any ideas on what's going on here?"
Nobody did, or at least they weren't going to air any half-baked guesses at this point.
"We've had our radars going ever since we left Frisco," said the Admiral. "We've been talking back and forth to our planes in the air by radio and we've sent several dispatches to CINCPAC and Washington. We've been putting a lot of magnetic energy into the air. Isn't it barely possible he has been getting some kind of direction finder fixes on us? The Pacific Missile Range is in his bailiwick and they've got all sorts of fancy stuff that can track things clear to the moon. Couldn't they be tracking us and getting fixes on us?"
The experts batted that idea back and forth gravely, and their verdict was "improbable, but possible."
"Well, he's tracking us somehow," said the Admiral, "and it isn't by snooper planes. So we've got to start exploring improbable things. I want to shut down every piece of electronic equipment and every radio set in this task group for twenty-four hours. I'll change course and speed again as soon as we do, and then let's see what happens."
So for the next twenty-four hours the task group sailed westward using the same kind of search equipment that John Paul Jones used - the Mark I Eyeball of its lookouts. There wasn't an electron stirred anywhere in the group.
Next afternoon another astonishingly accurate position report was sent from San Francisco to CINCPAC.
Again the experts assembled with even longer faces in flag plot. "Gentlemen," said Admiral Day, "you all look like you're going to bust into tears any minute. I don't like this any better than you do, but... it's just an exercise, after all. I've known Admiral Bates, man and boy, since we were at the Academy together. I'll bet this is the most fun he's had with his clothes on in thirty years... But how in the hell is he doing it?"
One of the communicators stuck up his hand, and said, "Sir, there is about one chance in a million that he has an agent planted in the task group with a short-wave ham radio set."
"Hah!" said Admiral Day, "I wouldn't put it past him. In fact that's just the kind of lowdown underhanded sneaky Stunt he would pull. He never bets on anything except a sure thing, so that's exactly how he doing it. I should of thought of this myself."
"Of course," continued the expert, "this would be a serious breach of Navy regulations and is also a federal offense punishable by fine and imprisonment."
"Neither one of those facts would carry any weight whatever with the Bug... I mean, with Admiral Bates in a case of this kind," said Admiral Day. "Would you be aware of it if any short-wave transmissions went out from the task group?"
"Up to now we wouldn't," admitted the expert, "because we haven't been watching for them. But I'll put special watches on right away. If that's what's happening, we'll spot his next transmission, DF it, and have the culprit up here in flag plot 5 minutes after he goes on the air."
"Okay, I wish you luck," said the Admiral. "If you catch him he'll wish he'd been born before radio was invented by the time I'm through with him."
But they didn't have any luck. When they met next day they were only one day's steaming out of Honolulu, Admiral Bates was still pinpointing them in his report, and they had no idea how.
LCDR Cue attended this meeting, and when the communicators admitted failure to spot any short-wave transmissions, he said, "Admiral, I think it's the Lafayette that's trailing us. You remember she sailed the day before we did. She can keep up with us without any trouble. She could be out there ten miles or so ahead of us, running at periscope depth, and only sticking a scope up occasionally. She has inertial navigators and squirt transmission for her position reports. I'll bet if we quit looking up in the air and put out our antisubmarine planes we'll find him."
"Hmmmmm... maybe you got something there, Curly," said the Admiral. "But, after all, our destroyers have been pinging away on sonar ever since we left. Wouldn't they have picked him up by this time?"
"Not necessarily," said Curly. "We've been running at high speed, which cuts down on the range of the sonars. Our destroyer screen is two miles ahead of us. I doubt if their sonar is good for any more than five miles at this speed. You can see our masts and superstructures through a periscope at ten. So I'll bet he's out there peeking at us about nine of ten miles away."
"Could be. Could be," said the Admiral. "Let's explore that possibility. Get all our ASW planes ready. When we launch them, I'll tell the destroyers to move the screen out another five miles and then we will slow down to creeping speed where their sonars will work best. In the next twelve hours we can comb the ocean around us so that we'll know where every fish bigger than a sardine is. Let's get going."
To make a long story a little bit longer, the destroyers and planes did everything to the ocean around the Guadalcanal except scoop it up in a bucket and strain it. But they didn't find anything.
Naturally, they didn't look under the carrier. Who the hell would think of such a crazy thing as that? Well, one screwball finally thought of it - Willy Wigglesworth - and he suggested it to LCDR Cue. Curly saw merit in it right away and went up to see the Admiral.
"Admiral," said Curly, "there's one possibility we haven't explored."
"What's that?" demanded the Admiral.
"Maybe he's under us."
"What do you mean, under us?"
Curly pointed to the deck and said, "I mean right smack below us a couple of hundred feet and keeping station on us down there."
The Admiral banged his fist on the chart table and snorted, "Well, now that somebody has finally thought of it, that's obviously the only answer to this thing, outside of black magic... Could he stay there with all this maneuvering we been d
oing?"
"Sure. For a nuclear sub - no strain."
"But if he was down there he would have showed up on our fathometer, wouldn't he?"
"Yes. But out in deep water like this they usually don't pay much attention to the fathometer. He could have been there all the time without anybody noticing it."
"Get the navigator down here right away," said the Admiral.
A minute later the navigator popped into flag plot, saluted, and said, "You sent for me, sir."
"Yes," said the Admiral. "How deep is the water around here?"
"Plenty deep, sir," said the navigator. "We got 3000 fathoms for miles around."
"I want you to get me a fathometer reading right away," said the Admiral.
"I'm sorry, sir," said the navigator. "Our fathometer is out of commission."
"What's the matter with it?"
"We don't know, sir. It was working fine when we left San Francisco. But it went haywire when we crossed the 100-fathom curve coming out."
"What do you mean?"
"It just got stuck at 100 fathoms and has been there ever since. We can't seem to find out what's wrong with it."
"Well, I'll be a double-acting left-handed rubber swab handle," said the Admiral. "Do you mean to stand there and tell me your fathometer had read 100 fathoms ever since we left the Bonita Channel?"
"Yessir. Our technicians have been --"
"I'll tell you what's wrong with your cotton-picking fathometer," interrupted the Admiral. "It's the people who are reading the dials."
"How do you mean, sir?"
"For three days," said the Admiral, "your people have been bouncing echoes off a goddamn submarine 600 feet tinder us."
This caught the navigator with his main sheet belayed. "I don't know what you mean, sir," he said.
"I mean just what I said. There's nothing wrong with your fathometer. The USS Lafayette is right underneath us at 100 fathoms. Been there ever since we cleared the Bonita Channel."
"I... I never thought of that, sir," stammered the navigator.
"Well," said the Admiral, "we didn't either until a few minutes ago... and it's a damned good thing for you we didn't; otherwise you might be looking around for a farm to settle down on as soon as we got into port... Get the Captain down here," he said to the COS.
Soon the Captain strode in and saluted. "Good morning, sir. Nice weather we're having," he said briskly.
"Don't look now, Captain," said the Admiral, "but somebody is looking right at your bellybutton."
"How do you mean, sir?" asked the Captain, hastily checking to see if his pants were unzipped.
The Admiral explained.
"Well, I'll be gahdamned," said the Captain.
"You took the words right out of my mouth," said the Admiral. "That's just the way I feel too... Call one of those destroyers in from the screen and have him probe underneath us with his sonar."
Soon a destroyer was reporting, "Solid sonar target at 600 feet directly under Guadalcanal. Target evaluated as sub."
"How the hell do we flush him out of there now?" asked the Admiral. "Even in wartime we couldn't drop depth charges on him without blowing ourselves up. This is a hell of a situation."
"Why not have the destroyer call him on the underwater telephone and just tell him to come on up - all is forgiven," suggested Curly.
"Good idea," said the Admiral. "Let's try it."
Meantime, down at 600 the Lafayette had been enjoying life immensely.
All the task group's changes of formation showed up on her scopes and it was easy enough for the alert submariners to figure out what was going on above them and why. As soon as the destroyer screen fanned out to double distance and the task group slowed down, the skipper said, "I think they've finally begun to suspect that we are shadowing them, but they still don't know they're right on top of us."
However, when a destroyer fell back from the screen and took station astern of the Guadalcanal, it soon became obvious from its deliberate pinging that the cat was out of the bag... had its paw in the goldfish bowl, for that matter. The hydrophone man said, "He's holding his sonar beam right on us, sir; I think they spotted us."
"Well, it's about time," said the skipper. "It was fun while it lasted, anyway."
Then the red light on the underwater phone lit up and word came out of the squawk box, "Destroyer calling Lafayette. Over."
"Don't answer the phone. Let it ring," said the skipper. "We'll keep 'em wondering a little longer."
Back in flag plot on the Guadalcanal, the word came in from the destroyer: "They won't answer us. But we have a good solid echo on our scope now, and we're sure it's Lafayette. She's at 600 feet."
"I know how we can get her out of there, sir," said Willy Wigglesworth.
"How?" demanded the Admiral.
"Let go our anchor," said Willy.
"Well, now, I must admit that would get rid of her all right," said the Admiral. "But Polaris submarines cost the taxpayer a lot of money. Some nosy congressman might object if we dropped our anchor on one. This young man believes in direct action, doesn't he?" said the Admiral to Curly.
"Indeed he does," said Curly, thinking of the Twentieth Century Limited.
"I don't mean drop it all the way, sir," said Willy; "but let him think you are going to. You could tell him on the underwater phone we're going to let it go - but then only drop about twenty fathom of chain. That will make an awful racket in the water and with all his sensitive listening gear, it may make him nervous enough to get out from under us."
"No harm in trying," said the Admiral. "Call the bridge and tell them to drop the anchor to thirty fathoms. Have the destroyer tell him we're letting go 120 fathom of chain."
Down below in the Lafayette when the word came in on the underwater phone, "We're going to let go an anchor," everyone did a double-take and looked at the skipper.
"Hah," he snorted, "it's a bluff. They wouldn't dare."
A minute later a din reverberated through the hull of the sub that sounded like a ton of bricks showering down on a tin roof. "The crazy son of a bitch - he did!" yelled the skipper. "Right full rudder. Let's get the hell out of here."
The Lafayette banked into a tight turn and slid out from under the Guadalcanal. "Send up a parachute flare," barked the skipper. "I'm not going to fool around with these silly bastards any more. Stand by to surface."
A minute later the long black hull of the Lafayette broke surface half a mile abeam of the carrier, white water pouring off her sides. The conning tower hatch popped open and the skipper appeared. Admiral Day, watching through his binoculars, said to his flag lieutenant:
"Send an official message:
From Commander Task Group
To USS Lafayette
Well done, you sneaky bastard."
Captain Hanks read this message to his crew on the loudspeakers, and had it published in the next Plan of the Day. The ship's carpenter made a fancy frame for it and it has hung in the wardroom of the Lafayette ever since.
That night Admiral Day stuck his Army-Navy game tickets in an air-mail envelope and dropped them in the box addressed to the Bugler with a note saying, "I'm praying for freezing rain that day so you'll catch pneumonia."
Chapter Eight
MORE DEEP STUFF
The day after the Guadalcanal arrived in Pearl Harbor, Commander Hanks of the Lafayette came aboard to pay his respects to Admiral Day.
"Pleased to meetcha," said the Admiral as Hanks was ushered into the cabin. "Siddown, young man. I sort of feel as if we already know each other."
"Would it be proper to say I served under, or at least operated under, your command for the past four days, sir?" asked the Commander.
"Hah!" snorted the Admiral. "It would be improper, flippant, and disrespectful to say it... but I know damned well you're going to say it in every officers' club around here whether I like it or not."
"Yessir," said the Commander. "We learned a great deal working with your fine task group last week."<
br />
"Hunh," grunted the Admiral, "You're not the only ones who learned something. I meant that well done signal I sent you. Every word of it."
"Aw, you probably say that to everybody, sir," said Commander Hanks modestly, who knew very well that this wasn't true. The Admiral was notorious throughout the fleet for deflating eager beaver young skippers who tried too obviously to make an impression on him - by simply sending them a public signal saying "Fairly well done."
"You should know better than that," declared the Admiral.
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