The Iceman

by P. T. Deutermann

  Malachi wanted to ask if the damage he’d inflicted on two carriers made up for his disobeying his operational orders, but elected to save that for another day. The commander went forward to Control to begin gathering up logs.

  The tiger team, a thrown-together temporary squad of electricians, structural shipfitters, and torpedo tube experts arrived an hour later. A senior chief electrician was in charge. The first thing he did was to send for a quart of diesel fuel, which he dumped all over the area where the men had been killed. Now the compartment smelled of diesel oil, with which all submariners felt quite comfortable. That afternoon three tugboats showed up from Perth Harbour to rearrange the nest of submarines in order to put Firefish directly alongside the tender. This would allow the tender’s crane to reach the sub’s deck to remove damaged equipment. It also allowed the tender’s diving team to inspect the boat’s propellers, rudders, and outer door assemblies while standing on an underwater platform supported by the crane. One of the admiral’s staff officers came aboard requesting the captain’s personal log. He informed Malachi that the admiral wanted a debrief the following morning at ten aboard the tender. Malachi replied that he could hardly wait, prompting a knowing smile from the staffie.

  He remained onboard until late afternoon, when the tiger-team chief came to see him. He reported that neither the boat’s hull nor the torpedo tubes had been compromised. Everything else in the compartment would have to be ripped out and replaced. That would take at least two weeks, maybe three, if they had to wait for parts. He asked if ship’s company engineers would be able to help, and Malachi said of course.

  He then called in the exec and told him he wanted an all-hands meeting tomorrow morning at 0900. He then got a staff car to take him to the hotel downtown. The moment he stepped out onto the rooftop lounge he was ambushed by four skippers, all wanting to know what had really happened at Truk. His buddy Jay Carney was out on patrol. He didn’t know two of the four skippers pulling up chairs, but after introductions were made and his legendary single beer produced, he told them his story. When he was finished they sat around silently for a minute before one popped the first question, and it went directly to the heart of the matter.

  “Your patrol orders were to lay off Truk and report, but not attack any heavies leaving Truk. They even shorted you on your torpedo load. You expect they’re gonna fang you for that?”

  “Don’t know,” Malachi said. “They did give me an out, namely if a carrier or a battleship showed up. But my mission was to act as a sentinel for the Solomons. We failed at that, I think. On the other hand, I couldn’t help thinking at the time that ComSubPac would ask: You had two Jap carriers coming straight at you, and you didn’t shoot?”

  “You could always say that your orders were to report but not attack any heavies leaving Truk,” his questioner said. “These guys were headed into Truk Lagoon.”

  The others laughed and started making comments about sea lawyers.

  “Our primary mission,” Malachi said, “is to destroy Japanese shipping, military and merchant marine. We didn’t sink either one of those carriers, and I don’t think our Mark fourteen torpedoes could sink a Jap carrier. But neither of them will be available for whatever is happening down in the Solomons. If that’s cause for my relief as skipper, then so be it. I’m satisfied I’ve done my bit. I’m just sad that I lost three guys.”

  “Hell, yes, you have,” another skipper said. “Good God, Malachi, Firefish is famous in SubPac. Cruisers, destroyers, marus, and now two carriers? They wouldn’t fucking dare.”

  Malachi finished his beer. He hadn’t eaten, but suddenly he needed sleep more than food. “I’m medium whupped,” he announced. “We’ll just have to see what happens tomorrow.”

  Up in his room, he’d taken a thirty-minute hot shower and then dropped into what seemed like an enormous feather bed. He was just drifting off to sleep when there was a knock on his door. It was nine o’clock. He groaned, found a bathrobe, and went to the door. It was one of the hotel’s desk clerks. “There’s a doctor asking for you,” he said. “She says you know each other.”

  Malachi was having trouble keeping his eyes open in the doorway. “Tell her this, if you would, please: pretend that I haven’t returned yet. To tell the truth, I’m exhausted. Tell her that, too. Ask her to come back tomorrow night, when I will most definitely want to see her. Can you do that for me?”

  “Absolutely, sir. No worries.”

  Malachi went back to bed. A few minutes later he thought he heard the door opening, but he wasn’t sure he was awake or dreaming. After a minute, a warm female presence was sliding into bed with him. She smelled suspiciously of medical alcohol. She put her arms around him and snuggled close. He tried to say something, but she put her fingers on his lips.

  “Shush,” she said. “I’m as tired as you are. Go to sleep. I will, too. Glad you’re back in one piece.”

  If she was expecting a reply, she was disappointed. He was down at 250 feet and sleeping like a baby. She smiled in the darkness and wrapped herself around him for the night.

  TWENTY

  Malachi’s meeting with the admiral started right on time. Present were the admiral, the chief of staff, Malachi’s squadron commander, some engineering staff officers, and a warrant officer from the tender. The warrant, who was the ship’s superintendent for the tender’s Firefish tiger team, led off with a preliminary damage report summary plus his best estimate of how long it would take to get Firefish ready for sea.

  “Everything that could burn did burn,” he said. “Bedding, paperwork, technical manuals, cork insulation, gauge glasses, power tools, unarmored cabling, and maintenance supplies for the torpedoes. The hull, the loading hatch and the compartment hatch, armored cabling, steel piping, deck plates, and the tubes themselves are scorched but serviceable.”

  He offered to go into more detail, but the admiral asked him to just leave his report and thanked him. The warrant left the conference room.

  “Now, then,” the admiral said. He had three folders in front of him. “I’ve read the captain’s log, Firefish’s patrol orders, and the intel reports from Pearl on damage inflicted on the carriers Shokaku and Otaka.” He tapped each folder in turn as he named them.

  “Let’s get one thing straight right away. Firefish’s orders were to report Jap fleet movement, especially heavies, and not to attack and thereby reveal his presence. These reports were to be a part of surveillance network protecting Navy forces at Guadalcanal. The patrol orders were quite specific, with no exceptions mentioned in regard to making any attacks. I’d like to hear your reasoning, Captain, for disobeying the patrol orders.”

  Everyone else at the table seemed to go still. No more fiddling with notepads, coffee cups, or cigarettes, and no one making eye contact with Malachi except the admiral, whose gaze could only be described as flinty.

  “There was one exception,” he began. “Carriers or battleships.”

  The admiral picked up his message board and reread the patrol orders. He grunted when he saw the line about carriers and battleships. “Go ahead,” he said.

  “In the middle of our fire emergency,” Malachi continued, “Sound reported a Jap formation, including at least one heavy, coming straight at us, steady bearing, rising Doppler. A quick radar sweep gave us a range of twenty thousand yards, plus the information that there were two heavies, plus escorts. We were, as you might expect, busy with the fire, so I had a scratch team in the conning tower start a plot and crank up the TDC. We were already at periscope depth in case the fire forced us to surface and abandon. I used the radar one more time to get a rough course and speed. They were not zigzagging. Coming right at us at twenty-five knots. The shot of a lifetime. The two heavies in a column; escorts out front in a bent-line formation. Like I said, it was the shot of a lifetime, and I instinctively believed that everyone in my chain of command would have crucified me if I didn’t take the shot. So I fired every torpedo we had up front directly at that column. Down the throat, no s
pread. I waited for the plot to indicate a range, with a closing rate of about seventy miles an hour between my fish and the carriers, where the heavies could not avoid the fish. Then I went back to dealing with the fire we had going aft.”

  The admiral was silent for a moment. Then he lifted his head. “I’m Old Navy, Captain. In my view, you should have avoided the formation, got your fire under control, and then remained on station to carry out your mission and your entirely specific orders—not to attack, but to report the presence of Shokaku and Otaka, where perhaps one of our carrier task forces might have found them and put them down for good.”

  He paused, ostensibly to light a cigarette, but also to let his words sink in. “Lucky for you,” he said, finally, “after I had sent a message to ComSubPac outlining my thoughts and concerns on this episode, Admiral English came back and reported that Admiral Nimitz himself thought that your attack on those two carriers was in the highest traditions of the submarine service, and the fact that you managed that while dealing with a dangerous fire onboard was positively amazing. He also pointed out that his orders to the Pacific Fleet submarine force state that the destruction of the Japanese fleet’s heavy units, especially aircraft carriers, would always supersede any subordinate’s orders to the contrary if the opportunity ever presented itself.”

  Malachi exhaled, but then realized there might be another shoe about to drop.

  “Personally, I think this sets a dangerous precedent, in that the commanders of naval forces around Guadalcanal were counting on you to follow your orders. The decision by an individual commanding officer to depart from his orders can, and has in the past, put lots of other people in harm’s way. That said, the fleet commander is reminding us all that our overarching mission is the destruction of the enemy’s fleet, especially at a time when we are the principal means of doing so.” He looked straight at Malachi. “You, sir, have dodged a bullet.”

  Malachi tried to think of a smart retort, but sense prevailed.

  “Now, if you would be so kind, please tell us about fighting that fire and getting your boat back under control after an excursion to over one hundred feet below test depth.”

  That took almost an hour, with the other attendees seeming to be genuinely interested in the technical details of how Firefish had been saved. Malachi managed to resist every impulse to embellish the stark technical details with some clever riposte to the admiral’s unwavering criticism of him as a skipper. He sensed that his squadron commander was aware of this, and approved. “Pick your battles” was the commodore’s subliminal advice.

  After the meeting, the commodore suggested they have lunch in the tender’s wardroom. Over lunch the commodore asked about Malachi’s prior service, and then told him about his own career. When they finished, they went up to the commodore’s stateroom for coffee. And privacy, Malachi assumed.

  “How’s your COB?” the commodore asked.

  “Steady Eddy,” Malachi replied. “Solid, calm, the crew respects him. He and I talk often.”

  “And your exec?”

  Malachi paused. “Marty’s a good guy,” he began. “Meticulous, high standards, fair. And apparently fearless, too. He was the key man during the fire.”

  The commodore sensed Malachi’s hesitation. “But?”

  “I’m not sure how to put this, but he’s always reluctant to really push a tactical situation. It’s not that he questions my authority or anything like that. But he’ll try to talk me out of it if I want to do something really dangerous.”

  “You’re saying he lacks the killer instinct, then,” the commodore said.

  “Well, yes, that’s one way to put it, I guess.”

  “You don’t appear to have that problem.”

  Malachi stared down at the table for a few seconds. “No, sir, I definitely do not have that problem,” he said softly.

  “I’ve never made a war patrol,” VanBuren said. “I was a fresh-caught captain when Pearl happened, having just turned over my S-boat to Dave Chandler in San Diego. I was stashed on the SubPac staff while the whole world was still reeling from the attack. I’d served with Admiral English before, so he eventually sent me out here as a squad dog after three months at New London learning about the new fleet boats. Spent some time in Brisbane learning the southwest Pacific ropes and how we were supposed to work with MacArthur and his entourage. Have to admit, it feels a little funny to be the squadron commander when I’ve never done what you guys have been doing.”

  “Trade you,” Malachi quipped. VanBuren laughed out loud. But then his face sobered.

  “This admiral doesn’t like you much,” he said. “As I’m sure you’re aware.”

  Malachi nodded.

  “You’re not the only one he doesn’t like. Jay Carney made his shit list, as has Ray Calhoun, in Scorpionfish. Calls you guys young upstarts. In command before you were properly seasoned. Much too young. You all bear watching, et cetera.”

  “I guess I haven’t been too smart about how I handle myself around him,” Malachi admitted. “Jay advised me to smile, agree with everything he says, and then do whatever the hell I wanted once at sea.”

  “He’s half-right,” VanBuren said. “But the admiral does have a point—we can’t have a bunch of totally independent operators running around the southwest Pacific theater, going wherever and doing whatever, if only because one day one of you will torpedo an American boat.”

  “Area assignments are not the problem, Commodore,” Malachi said.

  The commodore frowned, almost as if he knew what was coming. “Okay,” he said. “Shoot.”

  “First, the torpedoes are unreliable. Second, the admiral’s blind faith in the Mark fourteen’s magnetic exploder, backed up by BuOrd’s refusal to admit there’s any problem with the Mark fourteen, invites disobedience. None of us much likes being at the starting point of a dud torpedo wake in the presence of Jap destroyers.”

  “But for the past year,” the commodore argued, “there are apparently innumerable instances of skippers making questionable tactical decisions, boats abusing the torpedoes by not doing their required maintenance, skippers being too timid to take the war to the enemy or, even more disturbing, breaking down physically or emotionally under the strain.”

  “Are we now talking about the problem which cannot be named?” Malachi asked.

  The commodore seemed taken aback for a moment, but then nodded. “I guess we are,” he admitted. “The problem of age.”

  “We’d better stop right there, Commodore. It’s not my place to discuss that issue, especially being eight years younger than the guy I replaced.”

  The commodore nodded again. “Okay, you’re right. Now, one more thing. There’s another Navy Cross coming for the carrier attack. The admiral is not enthusiastic, but I get the impression that this is coming from ComSubPac, probably in response to Nimitz’s little reminder about why we’re really out here.”

  “If I may, Commodore, I’ve got a better idea. My XO, Marty Brandquist, did some truly heroic things during that fire. Without him none of us would be here today. The Navy Cross is supposed to be about heroism, not simply sinking ships. How’s about recommending that the medal coming to me be given to him, instead. I can write the nomination up and have it back here this afternoon.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” the commodore said. “If Admiral English nominates someone for a Navy Cross, I don’t think any of us chickens out here in the boondocks gets a vote.”

  “We might if he knows the idea was mine in the first place.”

  The commodore snorted. “The admiral was right—you youngsters do bear watching. All right, write it up and I’ll carry the water.”

  “Glad to be working for you, Commodore,” Malachi said. “We skippers need a friend in court out here.”

  The commodore raised his index finger. “It’s not us against the admiral, Captain. We’re all in this together, and command is command, with all its authority—and ultimate responsibility. Don’t forget that.”
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  “Yes, sir. Absolutely.”

  Back aboard Firefish, the tiger team chief gave Malachi an update. Rip-out was complete. Tomorrow they’d begin by sandblasting the space, which would be followed by an alcohol spray to disinfect everything remaining. Then they’d rebuild it.

  “Chief, we used HP air to blow all the water out the after torpedo room. We drilled a hole in the bulkhead and rammed a nozzle through it to introduce the pressurized air.”

  “Yes, sir, I saw the hole. Wondered what that was about.”

  “Any chance that hole can be repaired with a proper HP air-transit fitting? In case we ever had to do that again?”

  “No, sir. That would be a ShipAlt, and only BuShips can authorize those.”

  “Okay. Worth a try.”

  “However,” the chief said. “I may accidentally leave behind such a fitting, which, of course, you and your best welder can do with as you please, Captain.”

  In other words, Malachi thought: on your head be it if you do that. Unauthorized ship alterations undertaken in the fleet always carried some career risk. He thanked the chief and then went to his cabin to write up Marty’s nomination for the Navy Cross. It took an hour to get all the details in order, and then he had the ship’s yeoman type it up and get it over to the commodore’s office. Then he cut a note to the exec, asking him to write up some awards for the fire-fighting team, and especially the man who’d gone into the burning space with him.

  He yawned, not used to doing so much for lunch. The sub was relatively quiet, with at least half of the crew ashore and only small maintenance jobs going on out in the passageway. The tiger team was laying out spraying equipment aft but would wait until night, when most of the crew would be ashore, to actually do the spraying. He pulled the curtain and lay down on his bunk to check for light-leaks in his eyelids. Happily, there were none.