Run Silent, Run Deep

by Edward L. Beach

  We glued strips of paper with Polish writing on all our gauges and dials, and we made dive after dive with each of our men instructing his Polish relief. When we turned the boat over to them for their first dive we thought them fairly well indoctrinated, but even so they made my hair literally stand on end.

  There was apparently no preparatory command, no "Clear the Bridge" or its equivalent in Polish; merely two blasts on the diving alarm. Everyone dashed below; all vents were pulled wide open and the motors put ahead full speed. Some- how the bridge hatch was shut. No one paid any attention to the Christmas Tree or bothered to bleed air into the boat to test for tightness. The bow planes were not rigged out until she was thirty feet under and no one paid any attention to the bow and stern plane controls until we passed thirty-five feet on the way down. Our bow went down at an ever-in- creasing angle, steeper than I had ever experienced, and I began to have the sensation of going into an outside loop. We could never complete a loop, of course, but we might ram her nose into the bottom of Long Island Sound with enough force to break something.

  Commander Radwanski shouted in Polish. Nobody moved.

  Dombrowski, in charge of the dive, had yet to utter a word.

  I could see Larto standing by the main power control beside his replacement in the Polish Navy. He looked at me beseechingly, imploring me with his large, expressive Italian eyes.

  I was about to shout "All back emergency" when Radwanski yelled several more Polish words. We were by this time passing ninety feet and the S-16 had assumed a fifteen-degree down angle. The little bench which was the station of the Chief of the Watch began to skid on the slick linoleum deck; a couple of wrenches located by the trim manifold slid from their accustomed location and fell on the deck with a clatter; someone had parked an empty coffee mug in an unnoticed corner and now It burst forth making its presence known with a shattering of crockery.

  The two Polish sailors detailed under the silent Dombrowski's supervision now ran both planes to "full rise." The Polish Chief Electrician's Mate impassively leaned over his rheostats and, to my amazement, increased the speed. Suddenly, alarm- ingly, S-16 swooped out of her dive, reversing her down angle and reaching ten degrees rise. We had climbed back to sixty- five feet before the sweating planesmen could level her off.

  More shouted commands: The Polish Electrician's Mate reduced speed and S-16 settled out into some sort of sub- merged control. Radwanski, standing in the center of the control room and maintaining balance by holding on to one of the periscope hoist wires, leaned his sweaty, whisker-stub- bled jaw toward me and hissed into my ear with a nod toward Dombrowski, who so far as I could see had still not opened his mouth.

  "That-is-al-ways-his-way. Beauti-ful-sub-mer-gence, not- so?" he said.

  From that moment on the S-16 under Polish hands acquired an entirely new personality. I saw her for the first time in a detached, unemotional state of mind, and was even able, with- out a twinge, to watch them paint her new name, Blyskawica, meaning Lightning-Swift, on her stern and replace our numbers on the side of the bridge with a large white B. It was not until we all stood on her deck, seeing the United States ensign hauled down for the last time, that a pang of regret suddenly registered. She had been a good ship, we had made her into one, — and now she was going to war without us. We wished her luck.

  Walrus was already in the water, much nearer to completion than we had had any idea, when we reported to Electric Boat. The yard workers were knocking themselves out, had been ever since Pearl Harbor, — and she would make her first dive within two months. Twenty-four hours a day a veritable army of overalled workmen were in her, on her, and about her.

  The acrid smell of welding, the din of power tools, and the clatter of workmen never ceased. Every day we went down to her and looked her over, trying ineffectually to stay out of the way and yet get some idea of what was going on, and every day something new had been added, some new piece of equipment installed, some additional step taken toward getting her ready.

  In our office on the second floor of a temporary wooden building erected at the head of the dock at which Walrus lay, Jim, Keith, and Tom wrestled with the problems of preparing the ship's organization and orders and making duty assignments for the crew.

  Jim was doing his usual good work, but there had been one bad moment. Shortly before the final transfer ceremony of the S-16 he had come up to me with a sheet of official ship's stationery in his hand. I had been going over the spare-parts inventory in our tiny, soon-to-be-relinquished wardroom, preparatory to having a joint inventory with the S-16's Polish skipper, Radwanski. "Captain," Jim said, it was the first time he had thus addressed me since the qualification fiasco, "I have been thinking it over for a long time. I would like a transfer." The paper was an official request from Jim ad- dressed to the Chief of the Bureau of Naval Personnel via the Commanding officer of S-16 and-the Commander, Sub- marine Squadron Two, requesting a change of duty from S-16 to "any other vessel of Squadron Two."

  "What's this for, Jim?" I asked.

  Some of Jim's sulky look had returned, and he fidgeted uncomfortably.

  "How do you think I'd feel going on the Walrus and knowing that I can never get any place in submarines?" he asked petulantly, all in a rush, as though in a hurry to get it out.

  "I've got feelings and ambitions, too. I want to make some- thing out of myself. After what you did to me, putting me up for qualification for command and then bilging me, can't you see I'm all through, shot? With another ship maybe I can qualify to be skipper."

  I had expected that Jim might feel this way, and had my answer ready, or thought I did. Quixotically my mind spun sixty miles to the westward and I found myself wondering what he had told Laura. I had not seen her since that day.

  "Listen, Jim, you've got this all wrong. I've no prejudice against you. I want you in Walrus because I like you and because you're a good Exec. Someday you will be skipper of your own boat.."

  There was a plaintive note in Jim's voice. "That's what I want, too, but I'll never get it with you.

  "That's exactly where you're wrong, Jim. There's a lot more to submarining than running a boat up and down the Thames River. The future of the submarine force is in boats like the Walrus, not in old antiquated ones like this one."

  "But don't you see? I don't want to go with you. I want to stay where I can do some good. Where people respect me."

  "What can you do here that you can't in a fleet sub?"

  "I might be able to take over one of the school boats, if I can get with a skipper who'll recommend me."

  "What about the war. Don't you propose to get in that?"

  Jim looked away. His voice was strained, as though it might he a struggle for him to speak.

  "I'm looking out for Number One, from here on. Nobody else will, not you! To bell with the Walrus and to hell with the war, too!"

  I couldn't tell Jim of my conversation of a few weeks ago with Captain Blunt, but there was another way. Heretofore I had used the friendly approach, had stood for his silence and sullen bad temper. Maybe this was the time to change, though it would give Jim cause to hate me all the more. I stood up from the wardroom table in S-16, picked up his neatly typed request, and held it in my hand. I made my voice emotionless.

  "Listen, Bledsoe, what you've just said is disloyal and disrespectful. The Bureau of Naval Personnel has ordered this whole ship's company to the Walrus. That was your chance to register an objection, but you didn't. I was asked if I wanted you for my Exec, and I said I did. You have already received official orders to that effect. It's too late to change your mind now. Furthermore, I've stood for your bad temper long enough. It's time you stopped acting like a spoiled child. If you deserve command, you'll get it."

  Navy regulations specifically forbade my doing so, but as I finished I ripped the paper in half twice and threw it back on the table. Jim had half-opened his mouth to speak, closed it uncertainly as I tore up his request. For a moment he stood, irresolute, and then, muttering
something under his breath, he turned and stalked away.

  Jim knew the regulations as well as I did but the bluff worked nevertheless. There grew a new wariness about him and we concentrated on our job: organizing Walrus. There was a lot to do, and the burden, of course, fell primarily on Jim. We ate, slept, and breathed the Walrus. We lived in a little world of our own, sometimes not even recognizing the fact that other submarines, some more nearly completed than Walrus and others not so far along, also were going through the same processes alongside us.

  And then one day I realized that Jim's sulkiness had been gone for some time. He was not the same as before, of course, and there was this new contemplative awareness. He did his job as usual, organizing not only the official watch sections and administering responsibilities of the ship but also the extracurricular activities such as baseball teams, bowling leagues, and the like. It was not a complete about-face, but distinctly an improvement. At times I thought he might have finally understood. They were followed by moments when it seemed more probable that he was only submerging what feelings he might have, perhaps awaiting more appropriate expression. Whatever it was, I was too grateful for the improvement in our relations to want to question it even had I been able to do so.

  And I realized another thing, too. When I finally saw Laura, there was no longer the warm friendliness I had once felt so strongly. We got up a ship's party as a parting gesture for the S-16. It was almost a command performance for all of us, enlisted and officers, to attend. I wondered whether Jim would bring Laura, and when he was late, for a few uneasy moments it looked as though he might have decided to ignore the party after all.

  When the door to our hall opened and he and Laura stood there, I had the sudden feeling of cold ice on my backbone.

  She was as beautiful as ever, and they made a pleasing picture as Jim, with a solicitous, possessive air, led her through the crowd to the table set aside for us.

  "Here comes Mr. Bledsoe!" Kohler spoke in a loud, carry- ing voice. "Now the party can begin!" Jim turned and waved to him, then acknowledged with a grin Larto's violently gesticulated, white-toothed greeting.

  Somebody let out a low-pitched whistle from the middle of the crowd, and the irrepressible Russo stood up on a chair to get a better look. "When you going to let me bake you that cake, Mr Bledsoe?" he yelled at him. Jim grinned and shook his head slightly.

  Laura's cheeks were flushed and her eyes were dancing as she sat down. She nodded hello to Tom and Cynthia Schultz, greeted Keith warmly, and tossed me a curt, cool hello.

  Throughout the evening she avoided my glance, applied her- self assiduously to gay repartee with the other members of our party, answered my attempts at conversation in monosyllables. I couldn't avoid asking her to dance, and it was as I had feared, like holding a faultless dummy in my arms. Jim claimed her as soon as he decently could.

  The party, as far as I was concerned, was a flop. I had expected some such reaction from Laura, especially after realizing the store she and Jim had set by Jim's qualification for submarine command. Someday, perhaps, after Jim had become a skipper, she might understand why I had had to do it. But it was hopeless to try to explain. The hurt was deep, and I had to let it go in silence.

  The Poles stayed in New London for several weeks after we turned S-16 over to them and then one day, as I was sit- ting in our second-floor office poring over Walrus' fire-control setup, I saw her beading downriver on her final departure from New London. The Blyskawica, or Blinks-a-Wink as we called her, was low in the water and down by the stern, loaded with fuel in her after main ballast tank for the long voyage.

  She looked tiny and bold and a little forlorn, standing bravely down the Thames River with the white ensign of Poland fluttering from her flagstaff. Her crew was at quarters on deck as she passed under the bridges, and as she came by the dock where the Walrus lay I saw them stiffen to attention. The notes of a bugle wafted across the muddy waters of the river.

  I had not known the Poles carried a bugler and I don't think anyone else saw her, but I stood up and returned the salute, bare-headed and indoors at that, feeling all choked up inside and just a little ashamed at the sentimental feelings suddenly evoked. I knew I would never see her again.

  Walrus was half again as long as S-16, and she was at twice as much submarine. She had four huge diesel engines of the latest type, the same as in our latest diesel railroad tractors, in two engine compartments. There were ten torpedo tubes-six in the bow and four in the stern-and of course two torpedo rooms. Her battery was more than twice as large as S-16's, also located in two compartments, one just forward and the other just aft of the control room. Her control room was commodious compared with that of the S-16, and crammed with new equipment. Best of all was the conning tower, consisting of an eight-foot-diameter horizontal cylinder above the control room, — in Walrus a real fire-control station, from which the periscopes could be operated, the ship maneuvered, and torpedoes fired.

  In the after end of the conning tower, curved to fit against its shell, was installed the computing machine by which we would solve for enemy course and speed and automatically send the proper torpedo gyro angles to the torpedoes. Its official, designation was "Torpedo Data Computer," and it was known by its initials as the TDC. I had become acquainted with an earlier version of it in the Octopus and therefore, fortunately, had some understanding of how it could be used.

  The whole ship, for that matter, reminded me greatly of an improved Octopus, and I was soon grateful for my three years service in that vessel.

  We had only a short time, two months, to get the Walrus ready to go to sea, and only four weeks after that to prepare for our voyage to the war. The emergency of the war had affected the shipyard workers, planners, and supervisors alike; they did their jobs with certitude and speed as though every welding bead they ran, every bolt they tightened down, were a personal attack on the enemy. We had our hands full keeping up with them, so that we would be ready for our new ship when it was delivered to us. All the new boats at Electric Boat had the same problem.

  Most of the crew of S-16 had volunteered to come along to the Walrus. Kohler, Chief of the Boat and now additionally in charge of two torpedo rooms instead of only one, was in his element. He had long envied the fortunate submariners serving in the new "gold-platers," as he termed the fleet boats, and his pleasure in ours was good to behold. Larto, First Class Electrician's Mate in S-16, was notified of his appointment to Chief at the same time he was assigned to the electrical control station or "Maneuvering room" of Walrus. Quin happily took charge of a "really commodious"-as he termed it, little office all his own about four feet by three feet by five and a half feet high. It was, indeed, much bigger than the part-time corner he had been assigned before. Rubinoffski took over the conning tower, the bridge above, and a whole series of chart drawers located in the wardroom. Our cook on S-16, Russo, couldn't spend enough time in his new galley.

  He had never seen anything so beautiful, he said, watching with delight as two new electric stoves were lowered into his new domain.

  Jim, Keith, and Tom as a matter of course kept their original assignments as Exec, Gunnery-and-Torpedo, and Engineer. In addition we were informed that two more officers, junior to Keith, might be expected before the ship went into commission. They would become our Communications Officer and Assistant Engineer, we decided.

  Getting a new ship organized and supervising her construction is in many respects a time-consuming and seemingly thankless chore. The prospective skipper and crew never quite see eye to eye with the, builder regarding just how the ship is to be built, just where each incidental piece of equipment is to be installed. Likewise, personnel requirements regarding the assignment of the crew and officers are bound to create problems needing solution. There is plenty to do from the beginning, especially when you start with only two months to go; and then gradually, as the commissioning date nears, you find that those, were the easy days. Long hours become ordinary, late nights the rule rather
than the exception.

  A Watch Quarter and Station Bill has to be worked up. The men have to be given battle stations, cleaning stations, watch stations. The crew must be divided into three sections, approximately equally spaced as to ranks and abilities, and given such training ashore as is possible. Certain men had to be sent away to school to acquire basic knowledge about some of our new equipment. We all, at Tom's insistence, attended diving drill on the diving trainer at the submarine school-with the equipment set up to simulate fleet-boat conditions, and Jim arranged for special time in the Attack Teacher's crowded schedule so that our embryonic fire-control party would have a few opportunities to work together as a team before we went to sea.

  It was late in March, during this preparatory phase prior to getting Walrus to sea, that Jim sought me out. Something was bothering him and he hemmed and hawed before beginning.

  "Skipper," he finally said, "the others thought I should bring this to you right away It's bad news."

  "What?" I asked.

  "It's about the Octopus. She's gone."

  I stood up, feeling a peculiar distress in the front of my head. "Gone?" I repeated stupidly.

  "Yes, sir, the announcement came in by dispatch about an hour ago. We just got it."

  "Let me see it."

  Jim silently handed me a pink sheet of tissue paper.

  THE NAVY DEPARTMENT REGRETS TO ANNOUNCE THAT THE USS OCTOPUS IS OVERDUE FROM PATROL STATION AND PRESUMED LOST DUE TO ENEMY ACTION. X THE OCTOPUS ASSIGNED TO THE PACIFIC FLEET WAS FIRST COMMISSIONED AT NEW LONDON IN 1936. X HER COMMANDING OFFICER WAS COMMANDER GERALD M WATSON OF CHICAGO. X THERE ARE NO OTHER DETAILS AVAILABLE. X It had had to come, of course; losses in war had to be expected, but who could have foretold that when I departed to take command of S-16, then in the back channel at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, I was saying good-by to my ship- mates for the last time; that my orders to that "old, broken- down tub" would spell the difference between life and death between me and my old friends. I read the dispatch over several times. When I looked up Jim was gone.