by Jon Stafford
The command quickly passed through the boat. The crew turned the air conditioning off, along with trim pumps and all other electrical devices that the enemy might pick up on their hydrophones.
The sub glided, slowly losing headway. The thum-thum-thum-thum of the gunboat’s propeller, clearly audible through the submarine’s pressure hull, tapered off also as the Chidori slowed even more, until she seemed to hover not far away.
For every man on board Bluefin, the minutes were almost more than they could bear. A powerful enemy was above them, holding them down near an island occupied by thousands of enemy soldiers. One false move, one slip, and the enemy would close in and attack them. Though it was unnecessary, the men whispered and acted as if the enemy were in the next room.
Phelps spoke in a low voice. “We can’t keep her down for long without some speed.”
With that, the boat rose a little, and both of the commanders looked at the diving officer as if to ask, Can you hold her down, hold her level? Fordyce knew exactly what was up, and nodded.
After nearly ten minutes, all on board were relieved when the Chidori’s engines suddenly increased their revolutions. They built quickly: THUM—THUM—THUM—THUM.
Phelps and Harry looked at each other, wondering if the gunboat had finally picked them out against the landmass of Tinian.
Seconds passed as Curic listened carefully. After a long silence, he looked toward Harry and Phelps. “She’s going away.”
“She’s beginning her box search,” Phelps said, in the same low tone.
“Which way, Ned?” Harry asked just as quietly.
The operator listened carefully for a few more seconds. “West.”
Harry smiled. After five more minutes, he was ready with a new order. “All ahead one-third, come to new course 090. That’ll take us out to sea some. How much is under the keel?”
“Ten fathoms.”
Phelps chimed in. “Well, that was close enough. Another fifteen minutes and we could have docked at the place.”
In the next thirty minutes, as the gunboat continued to go west, the submarine came up to full speed. Within fifty minutes, Harry ordered that Bluefin be brought up enough that the deck was barely out of the water. That way, the main induction valve could be opened and the ship could go on diesel power and higher speed.
Harry was ready to take his chances. He ordered, “Surface.”
The sub emerged from the ocean depths, and the diving planes were secured. Harry was on the periscope immediately. On the six-power lens he could see the gunboat, now only a speck, and remarked to Phelps: “I sure hope they don’t have search radar. Rudy, how far are we from Tinian?”
“Twelve miles, sir.”
“All ahead flank speed.”
Looking at Phelps, Harry said, “We are heading directly away from Tinian. They would have to be looking directly at us with a telescope to see us, so let’s see what happens.”
The search for Goby then began in earnest. In an hour, some thirty-two miles off Tinian, the intercom buzzed on the bridge. Harry pressed the button.
“Sir, we’re picking up something on the radar about sixteen thousand yards out, bearing 120.”
“Battle stations,” Harry ordered. “Come to new course 120.”
Men jumped from their bunks and ran through the corridors of the submersible. In less than forty seconds, all the crew were again at their stations, hoping and praying that it was, indeed, the missing sub.
In fifteen minutes, Clemens, the lookout with the keenest eyesight, sang out. “It’s a sub, Harry!”
The vessel gradually became visible to all on the bridge. It was Goby. It had to be her; it was obviously an American sub, and Goby was the only one assigned to that area.
“Tell Chief Osborne to come to the bridge,” Phelps ordered.
In less than a minute, the sixty-year-old chief was standing next to Phelps and Harry. The three men looked toward Goby as Bluefin drew closer and closer.
“Duke,” Phelps said, “I want you to be ready to go aboard and survey the damage with Harry. I’ll hold the fort.”
By now, the trio could see the entire submarine. They looked her over with binoculars. Goby was wallowing in the shallow waves, with about a twenty-degree list to port. Several officers and crew were visible on the bridge, and both of her gun crews were in position.
“Both periscopes look like they were twisted around by a giant,” Osborne said. “No radar or even radio antennae.”
“She’s been hit by a bomb or shell,” Phelps said. “The bridge is all warped, the lookout perches askew.”
The radio man couldn’t raise Goby. Bluefin turned and came abreast of her. Osborne brought up a megaphone and yelled across, oscillating his voice from high to low as best he could: “What . . . hap . . . pened . . . to . . . you?”
An officer on the bridge of Goby picked up a megaphone and yelled back in the same manner. “Plane . . . at . . . tack . . . cap . . . tain . . . ex . . . ec . . . dead, . . . ma . . . ny . . . woun . . . ded.”
Phelps sagged visibly, his mouth open a little. “Billy Estes. Dead. How the hell are his parents and his girl Rosaline going to take it?”
Rocky Fordyce had come up to the bridge during this exchange. He looked across at the stricken sub. “Red, that’s Harold Barton shouting. He was our fullback at the Academy. Everyone calls him ‘Bump.’ He’s a very good man.”
Phelps, still pale with shock, turned to Harry and saluted him, which surprised everyone on the bridge. “Harry, you are to assume command of Goby from this moment.”
Harry saluted back as Phelps continued. “They got guys on the Bofors and the deck gun, so they’ve got some firepower. Let’s get our gun crews up too.”
Harry called into the intercom, “Gun Action!”
Men began to scurry up from below. In minutes, they had manned both weapons.
“Harry,” Phelps said, “Find out if that boat is salvageable, should be scuttled, is towable, whatever. I knew you would want Duke, but take with you whomever else you wish except Rudy. Understood?”
“Yes, sir. I want Botel, Polavita, and Freddie Warren. I’ll swim over now. Duke, you coming? Send Botel with as much medical stuff as the raft will carry. Get Tony and Warren to paddle him over.”
“Good.”
Phelps went to the intercom and ordered Polavita and Warren to the bridge. Harry, and then Osborne, stepped off the deck onto the ballast tanks and dove in.
After several minutes they were pulled aboard Goby’s tanks.
Harry climbed up toward the bridge. Bump Barton awaited, a grim look on his face.
“Sir,” he said, saluting.
“You Barton?” Harry asked. The officer nodded. “I’m Harry Connors. I’ll be in command.”
“Yes, sir! We sure are glad to see you! We’d about given up hope. We’ve been thirty-two hours like this, occasionally seeing smoke in one direction or another, knowing it wasn’t anyone friendly.”
“What happened?”
“It was a bomb, sir. We couldn’t have been unluckier. It was a clear day just like today. The
radar was down one hour! So we had extra lookouts on the bridge. The plane must’ve come right out of the sun. None of them ever saw it. Captain Estes was on the bridge and the executive officer, Steve Franz, had just come up. They and the lookouts were killed, all eight of them.”
“I can see the hole through the side,” Osborne said, coming up beside Harry.
“Must have hit close aboard,” Barton said. “It blew that hole right through into the crew’s mess. Killed another four men outright, and wounded many others. Four of them are barely holding on.”
“We have our pharmacist’s mate coming over on a raft to help with the wounded.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You can’t make speed?” Harry asked.
“No. The electrical circuits have troubles all over the place. We’ve been all of these hours trying to patch them.”
“Who’s chief of the boat?” Harry asked.
“Arnie Krolewitz.”
“Let’s get him up here.”
“Yes, sir.”
Harry edged toward Osborne and whispered in his ear. “You know if this Krolewitz is any good?”
“Harry, he’s good, a real electrical whiz.”
Krolewitz clambered onto deck. He looked visibly worn, but he smiled when he saw Osborne and warmly shook his hand. “Glad to see you, Duke!”
Harry interrupted. “I want a complete report from you two in thirty minutes as to the chance that this boat can get under way. Go! Bump, you will assume the duties of executive officer.”
“Yes, sir.”
In twenty-five minutes, the two chiefs were back on the bridge. Osborne did the talking.
“Harry, we got real trouble!” He shook his head and ran his fingers straight back through his long, graying hair. “It’s hard to find a place to start. I’ve never seen anything this bad.”
He frowned and pointed at the hole in the hull. “First, there’s that thing. You pull the plug on it, and it’s straight to the bottom. Second, she got jolted so hard that some of the battery cells have been ruptured. How many, there’s no way to tell. The chlorine gas is very strong down there, a sure indication that some cells are cracked. We can’t even get in either the fore or aft battery rooms to inspect or add water to the cells unless we get some ventilation.
“Which leads to the third major problem, the engines. Without ventilation from the engines, not only are we sitting ducks, but acid leaking from the batteries will actually eat holes right through the hull, though it might take a couple of days. Without water added in there, and no ventilation down there, the batteries could blow up like a Roman candle and take us with them.
“The good news, if there is any,” Osborne continued, “is that if you give us two hours, we think we can get two of the diesels working and one of the two shafts turning. These are the brand new Fairbanks-Morse diesels, new motors three months ago. That would give us the ventilation we need to get in there and add water to the batteries, and maybe get some kind of a guess as to how many are ruptured. Maybe get you ten to twelve knots too. Besides the boat itself, they got ten men in serious shape, others wounded. If she sinks, which could have been an hour ago, there’d be no way to get them out of the boat before they drowned.
“The radar’s gone, really gone. No possibility for either of the periscopes. You may have salt water in the fuel oil too. The Kleinschmidt evaporators are busted, so no fresh water. There’s maybe 4,500 gallons in the tank, enough for three, four days, even including enough for the batteries—if we could get into those compartments. Maybe we could rig a radio with short-range transmission.”
“Get at it,” Harry said. “Make it an hour.”
The two men went down the hatch into the conning tower.
Standing next to Barton, Harry was in deep thought. We have to either abandon ship or be prepared to fight it out, he pondered. If we fight it out, we could lose both boats and all 160 men. On the other hand, if we scuttle the boat, sounds like four or five men will die in the transit over to Bluefin. Four or five men! I just don’t know. I just can’t think! I have to decide right now if we should begin evacuating. It’ll take an hour for sure, which we may be lucky to get. The plane that bombed Goby might come back with his pals.
With a little luck, he thought, we could haul off to the east, elude the enemy, and get everyone back. If one plane attacks, we got plenty of firepower from the two Bofors. I only wish those five-inch guns could be raised enough to down attacking planes.
In an hour, by a miraculous effort, just as the two chiefs had hoped, the crew had restored power to one of the two shafts. Two of the four diesel motors came on line. Harry nudged Barton and told him to pick up the megaphone and yell across to Bluefin.
“Can . . . not . . . sub . . . merge . . . On . . . one . . . shaft . . . now . . . Cov . . . er . . . us . . . to . . . the . . . east!”
Phelps took the megaphone and raised and lowered it several times, signaling his agreement. Bluefin informed Pearl of the emergency, and that the two subs would attempt to make Midway Island, some 1,850 miles to the northeast.
Soon Goby was able to make ten knots, then thirteen. Ventilation was restored, and crewmen were able to brave the chlorine fumes and inspect the fore and aft batteries.
All seemed to be going well until Clemens, the same Bluefin lookout who had originally spotted Goby, sang out. “Smoke, bearing 311.”
Phelps came around to the rear of the bridge. “Yes,” he said, “I see it, probably beyond the scope of the radar. Must be . . . twenty thousand yards.”
Phelps turned toward Goby and saw Harry raising and lowering the megaphone. Obviously they also had seen the smoke.
The mystery vessel continued to close. The two subs also closed, this time to one hundred feet. Phelps yelled across to Goby: “If . . . a . . . crui . . . ser . . . or . . . des . . . troy . . . er . . . scut . . . tle . . . your . . . boat . . . We . . . will . . . pick . . . you . . . up . . . if . . . can!”
On Goby’s bridge, Harry winced as he realized his terrible mistake. If the approaching vessel was a cruiser or destroyer, the two sub deck guns would be no defense at all against such firepower and Goby would be doomed. The entire crew could be captured by the Japanese and subject to beatings and execution, especially those who were even slightly wounded. Survivors would face the doom of imprisonment in some place like the Ashio copper mine north of Tokyo that all submariners had heard of. Bump Barton noticed the look on Harry’s face, but he said nothing.
How could I have been so stupid? Harry wondered. He prayed that it was just some small patrol boat.
The enemy ship came on quickly, despite the subs moving directly away. Once it came on the radar, its speed could be judged: twenty-five knots. It soon became obvious what it was. It’s the Chidori! Harry thought.
Two lookouts confirmed what he already knew. That captain figured we scooted off his tail to the east, so he backtracked, Harry thought. This guy’s no second-teamer. He got nothing on the box pattern, probably came up the east coast for a while, and then came out to sea. Pretty smart.
Phelps was shouting something baffling on the megaphone. “Come . . . to . . . two . . . five . . . ze . . . ro.”
Harry mashed the button on the intercom.
“Sir?” Barton answered.
“Bump, take on a slow turn to starboard, finally taking up the new heading of 250. Where does that take us?”
“Sir, that takes us south, almost in the direction of Guam.”
Harry was nearly dumbfounded. Back toward the enemy! Was Phelps luring the Chidori into an ambush with maybe Terrapin, three subs against the gunboat? That would certainly be a lot of firepower, and maybe the Chidori would back off. But wasn’t Terrapin on the other side of Guam, too far away?
Tension immediately built in his head. Turning away from the others on the bridge, he muttered, “This is all my doing.”
Then, before he could dwell on his mistake, an idea flashed into his brain. He looked at his watch. It’s nearly 1720 hours, he realized. Red is maneuvering the enemy so that in an hour or so the sun will be going down in their eyes, and a target the size of a sub running directly away from them would be a difficult one to hit!
Foolishly, the Chidori slowly made the arc with the submarines instead of cutting the distance. In ten minutes, all three had taken up the new course.
Harry thought to himself: That’s the first mistake he’s made. He called down to Barton again. “Look up a Chidori on Jane’s. Doesn’t it have one forward firing gun?”
Just as he spoke, the enemy vessel opened fire at about nine miles’ range, with the shell hitting more than five hundred yards to the port of Bluefin.
The intercom buzzed. It was Barton. “Sir, we looked at Jane’s, but we also have an update from Fleet. Just like you thought, one 4.7-incher firing forward, one amidships, and one firing off the stern.”
Harry saw some movement on Bluefin out of the corner of his eye. A sailor appeared on the deck and began sending a message with semaphore flags as another shell landed far off to port.
Well, at least they’re rotten shots, Harry thought, as he read the message:
