Run Silent, Run Deep

by Edward L. Beach

  "Range two-five-double-oh!… Torpedo run three thousand!"

  It was then that I realized we had made a serious error. In our anxiety to determine whether this was an enemy ship, and avoid being detected in the meantime, we had neglected to get into a proper firing position. One of the very first rules of submarine approaches, a cardinal principle, something I had known, had had drilled into me for years. When being approached from astern, the target's speed lengthens the distance a torpedo has to travel, and the submarine must consequently fire from closer range than it might otherwise choose.

  Likewise, a longer-than-usual range is possible if the torpedo is fired from well forward of the target's beam, but it is harder to hit by consequence of the sharp angle. The best position, considering the angle of hitting with the torpedo, or "torpedo track angle," is such that the torpedo intersects the target at ninety degrees. In the situation Walrus was in, to get a decent torpedo run of approximately fifteen hundred yards we would have to shoot from a range of about one thousand yards, and the torpedo track angle would be obtuse, in from astern after a stern chase, the least desirable situation of all.

  My mind went through the calculations again. Barring a radical course change to the right, hardly to be expected, there was no hope for improving our firing position. If we turned away now for another attempt a little later, we would only expose our broadside to the enemy and almost certainly cause him to see us. No; we had already cast the die. Poorly situated though we were, we had to go through with the attack on the lines already begun. We were essentially bows on to him, too close to turn, so close that our detection sooner or later was a certainty. AR we could do was to shoot soon enough, get our torpedoes on their way before the Jap lookouts spotted the tell- tale, bow wave and bows-on silhouette on their starboard quarter.

  "What's the range now?"

  "Two-two-double-oh. Torpedo run two-five-double-oh."

  Perhaps we could compromise a little, shoot from fifteen hundred yards and accept a torpedo run of two thousand. This would be better than getting so close, one thousand yards, as to be in danger of being spotted.

  Another minute. "Range!" I called.

  "Two-oh-double-oh," came the answer.

  I had been watching the other ship through my binoculars.

  She was a submarine all right, with that ungainly, broken silhouette which could only spell Japanese. Jim had been right from the beginning. We need not have waited for a reply td our message. Had we only approached close enough we could have identified her by sight. No other ship, but a Jap sub of the, large ocean-cruiser I-class would look like this. She was a big ship, bigger than the Walrus, and not nearly so trim. I was about to ask for another range, it would have been the last one-when I realized she must have seen us. We were already abaft her beam, but even as I watched, her length shortened still further. I found myself looking at her stern.

  "We're all ready below, Captain," from Jim. "Shoot any time, sir!"

  Heavy with disappointment, I had to give him the answer.

  "Don't shoot, Jim. Belay everything. Angle on the bow is now one-eight-zero."

  The enemy submarine was harder to see, end on, just the silhouetted cut-up shape of her conning tower and bridge structure as she mounted the succeeding seas ahead, its reduction almost out of sight as she pitched into the hollows- and then I was looking only at the ocean. The gray-black silhouette had not remounted the next slow swell.

  Hugh Adams noticed it a moment later. "He's gone, Captain! He must have dived!"

  "That's right, Hugh," I said, still looking. Walrus ran on nearly half a minute before I caught on, and my hair lifted along the back of my neck. "Right full rudder!" I shouted into the conning tower. "All ahead flank!"'

  The rudder went over to full right, the diesels roared as the annunciators went all the way up against the stops, and our stern commenced to scud across the undulating Pacific swells.

  Walrus heeled to port, driving the port-side engine mufflers under water. They spluttered and splashed, threw a shower of spray into the air.

  "What's the matter, Captain?" asked Hugh Adams.

  Furious at the trap, I snarled back at him. "Why do you think he dived? He's ready for us now. He hopes we'll keep coming."

  Adams stared, wide-eyed. "You mean…"

  "Precisely!" I spat the word out. "He's looking at us this very minute. He's probably turned around and headed our way. We were almost close enough to shoot, remember, and so is he." I felt myself trembling with the reaction. From being the pursuer we had suddenly been converted into the pursued, and I had blundered right into it. If only we had carried out Jim's original impulse, gotten close enough to attack immediately, we might have carried off a quick surprise.

  Now, only failure! The Jap had been more alert than we.

  He had seen us soon enough, at sufficiently long range, turned immediately and dived, thus instantly taking the initiative right out of our hands.

  We steadied Walrus on course northeast, almost directly away from where our attack had gone awry, ran on a good hour before daring to turn again toward the west. I felt sick at heart. It had been my first view of the enemy, and our first brush was hardly a drawn battle.

  And, of course, there was the question of what to tell Com- SubPac.

  Three days later we entered Midway Lagoon. We fueled ship, topping off our fuel tanks once more after the twelve- hundred-mile trip from Pearl Harbor, and we delivered. an even dozen sacks of mail to the eager Midway population.

  When we departed that same day I had also made my first acquaintance with the large, foolish-looking "gooney bird' for which Midway had already become well known. The Lay- san albatross, as the gooney bird is ornithologically called, is a most graceful lovely bird at sea or in the air, but on land it is an ungainly, clumsy creature, the butt of jokes and the product of ninety per cent of the entertainment on Midway. This was the albatross which the Ancient Mariner had shot, I reflected, but it wasn't until we had left Midway over the horizon and one of them came gliding effortlessly in the ocean breezes, swooping and spiraling above us, circling ahead and astern, all without the slightest movement of its wings, that I could really understand the reverence in which the mariners of the old days held them.

  Now began Walrus' first war patrol in earnest. It would take us twelve more days to reach Japan according to Jim's calculations, based upon running most of the distance upon the surface and spending the last few days en route submerged during daylight. We had approximately sixty full days at sea, two months to look forward to.

  We passed through the Nanpo Shoto submerged on the ninth day, within sight of Sofu Gan, or Lot's Wife-a desolate rock rising straight out of the sea-and at approximately noon of the twelfth day the hazy outline of the coast of Kyushu could be seen dead ahead through the periscope, bearing due west.

  We had yet to see an enemy plane, ship, or other kind of enemy activity since the submarine off Oahu. Somehow, I think, we had expected to find AREA SEVEN teeming with ships, crisscrossing, going in all directions, but such was not the case.

  By the time the evening twilight had drawn to a close and it was nearly time to surface for the night, the coast of Japan was plainly in sight, low-lying on the western horizon. I had already come to the conclusion that the Japanese were aware of the possibility of American submarines off their coast, and were holding-their ships in port.

  We began to make preparation for surfacing. We would not, of course, come up until it was dark enough to do so with minimum danger of being seen by any Japanese aviator fisher- man, or other craft which might happen to be in the vicinity.

  At the same time, the sooner we came up the better horizon would there be for Jim to get his evening star sights. It was important to have our position accurate, after having been un- able to, navigate for fifteen hours or so, and it was also impor- tant to get our battery charge started as soon as possible in case it would be needed later. And finally, during a long day submerged, a crew of seventy men and
six officers-seventy-six human machines breathing oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide could greatly reduce the livability of the atmosphere inside the ship. True, we carried carbon dioxide absorbent, hermetically sealed in shiny, metal canisters, and we carried oxygen in bottles for air revitalization, but these were needed for emergencies.

  The resolution of the conflicting requirements was to juggle the various pros and cons and to surface as soon as possible, Today, our first day within, sight of the Japanese coast, we waited a few minutes longer before surfacing, and when — we, finally started up nothing more could be seen through the periscope. I had donned red goggles twenty minutes before and was standing underneath the hatch leading to the bridge as I told Rubinoffski to sound three blasts on the diving alarm.

  The third blast of the klaxon horn had not yet died away when I felt the jolt of high-pressure. air blasting into our ballast tanks, blowing water out. Walrus gave a convulsive shudder, inclined upward by the bow, and in a few moments we could hear the splashing and gurgling of water draining off the bridge.

  Keith Leone was handling the surfacing procedure from the control room and now he commenced to shout depths up to me. "Four-oh feet,"-he sang out. "Three-five feet, three-oh feet."

  "Crack the hatch," I said to Rubinoffski.

  The Quartermaster leaped two steps up the bridge ladder, rapidly undogged the hatch hand wheel. Air commenced to blow out through the slightly open hatch rim and a few drops of water splattered in.

  "Pressure one-half inch," came up from Keith, This meant that our barometer indicated one-half inch more pressure inside the ship than had been the case on diving. Barring great atmospheric fluctuation "topside," this would be approximately the pressure differential existing now.

  "Two-six feet, sir. Holding steady," from Keith again.

  "Open the hatch." I was right behind Rubinoffski as he completed undogging the hatch and snapped open the safety latch. The heavy bronze hatch cover, counterbalanced by a large coil spring, flung itself open with a huge rush of air as Rubinoffski released the latch, banging the side of the bridge and latching itself open with a loud bell-like thud. The two of us, carrying binoculars, were on the bridge less than a second later. By prearrangement Rubinoffski ran aft to survey the after one hundred and eighty degrees sector, while I concentrated on the forward half of the ocean.

  Slowly, intently, I scanned the horizon; then the water between us and the rapidly fading demarcation between sea and sky; then the sky above, where a few stars glittered stonily from between the clouds. I heard Rubinoffski report, "All clear aft."

  "All clear forward," I muttered, half to myself, then raising my voice, "Open the main induction; lookouts to the bridge. Start the low-pressure blow." The main-induction valve, just below the cigarette deck, opened with a thump.

  Four lookouts, all previously prepared with adequate clothing to stand watch up in the wind-and-rain-swept periscope shears, and having become at least partially night adapted by wearing red goggles for some time beforehand, came dashing up on the bridge and took their places. Immediately behind them came Keith, similarly attired, and then Oregon, who, as Quartermaster of the Watch, went back aft to relieve Rubinoffski.

  "Ready to relieve you, Captain," said Keith after a few minutes, making a hand motion that might have passed for a salute.

  I gave him the customary turnover: course, speed, and the various other details of the watch. As I did so an, almost human screech came from below decks. One would have said that a wild animal was being tortured and was in mortal pain; its cry of agony, an undulating, wavering, high-pitched scream, piercing through the bowels of the ship. "There goes the turbo blow," I said. "Run it for five minutes. That will be plenty."

  Walrus rode sluggishly on the nearly smooth sea. Her decks were almost awash and little ripples of water splashed in her superstructure above her pressure hull. Now as the turbo blow commenced to force large quantities of air into the ballast tanks, at just sufficient pressure to expel the water, thus saving our precious high-pressure air, Walrus slowly began to lift herself to a more seaworthy altitude. To bring the ship to the fully surfaced condition would require approximately fifteen minutes. Five minutes would get her high enough for the slow patrolling we proposed.

  "Permission to come on the bridge." This was Jim. Keith had not yet relieved me so I still had the deck.

  "Come on up," I said. Jim moved aft to our bulwarkless cigarette deck, joined Rubinoffski in whispered consultation.

  The latter pointed skyward in several directions, and in a moment Jim was shooting the stars with the sextant he had brought with him.

  "Permission to start a battery charge." This was relayed up the conning tower hatch by the messenger stationed there.

  "Permission granted," I called back. This also was part of our surfacing routine. A main engine snorted and then another, and I could hear them loaded down as the life-giving amperes began to be forced back from their generators into our battery.

  "Permission to dump garbage?"

  "Granted," I said again. Up came Russo and two mess cooks, lugging three large gunny sacks containing the days accumulation of trash and garbage, each one of them weighted with crushed tin cans, broken or discarded tools, even a stone or two from the supply Russo had brought aboard. The sacks were unceremoniously pitched over into the water, floated aft as they slowly became waterlogged.

  "Well proceed in toward the coast at slow speed, Keith," I said, "until Jim gets his fix. Be alert for aircraft or Jap vessels."

  Keith nodded. "I relieve you, sir," he said. I moved back to the after part of the cigarette deck, leaned thoughtfully against the wire cable which had replaced our bulwarks. We had achieved our destination. We had come over eight thou- sand miles to war and a few miles ahead of us lay one of the main islands of Japan, southernmost Kyushu.

  Kyushu is separated from the islands to the north and east, Honshu and Shikoku, by the Japanese Inland Sea. From the Pacific side there are two entrances to this confined body of water: the Bungo Suido between Kyushu and Shikoku and the Kii Suido between Shikoku and Honshu. Since the earliest times Japan's Inland Sea has been one of the island empire's main traffic arteries between the home islands and, of course, during the war it constituted a huge sheltered harbor in which their whole battle fleet could hold maneuvers if desired.

  AREA SEVEN included the eastern coast of Kyushu, beginning with the Bungo Suido on the north and extending down, almost to the southern tip of the island. Our instructions were to examine the area; determine what, if anything, were the Japanese traffic patterns; estimate how often the Bungo Suido was used, whether naval units were in the habit of using that entrance. And our mission was also to sink any and all Japanese vessels we might encounter, and avoid being detected, attacked, or sunk ourselves.

  We were still headed west. Up ahead, no longer in sight, was Kyushu. I stared unseeingly in that direction, then took my binoculars and made a slow sweep all the way around the horizon. It felt good to be topside, to draw in clean, whole- some air instead of the torpid atmosphere we had been breathing. My greedy senses drank in the freedom of the ocean.

  There was a musty tinge to the air, an odor of wet, burned sandalwood, of unwashed foreign bodies. A seaman, near shore, can always smell the shore-it is the smell landsmen identify as the "smell of the sea." But it is not noticeable at sea, only close to shore, and it pervaded my consciousness this night. All night long we cruised, aimlessly about, seeing nothing, never losing the smell of Japan. By morning we had approached close enough to Kyushu to take up a patrol station about ten miles offshore where we hoped some unwary vessel might blunder into our path, and where the first of a series of observation posts on the Bungo Suido could logically be set up.

  Jim and I had studied the chart. Inshore lay a bank of mod- erately shallow water, hardly deep enough to shelter us in the event of a counterattack. Jim had argued for going in closer, saying that coastwise Japanese shipping would rim in as shallow water as possible. I d
emurred, pointing out that we had the dual responsibility of watching the Bungo as well, and that we could always go closer inshore after a merchant vessel if necessary. The spot we finally selected was intended to satisfy both objectives, though Jim never did express final satisfaction.

  We were finishing an austere lunch when the control room messenger appeared. "Captain," he said, "you're wanted in the conning tower. Mr. Adams says there's smoke." I dashed down the passageway, hearing the last words of his hastily muttered message over my shoulder as I ran. In a moment Hugh turned over the periscope to me. Sure enough, a thin column of smoke could be seen close inshore northwestward.

  I watched it carefully to see which way it was going, finally accepted the fact that it was heading away. The smoke gradually became less distinct, faded out in the distance.

  Twice more we sighted smoke that day, once more to the northwest and once to the southwest. In all three cases the ships were going away, not toward; and it would have been fruitless to have pursued them.

  "Do you think they are slipping by us close inshore?" Jim asked me. I shrugged. There was no way of telling. "Maybe if we went in closer, close enough to see the coast distinctly.

  "Too shallow," I said, but the eagerness I had noted during, the fruitless attempt on the Jap submarine was now dancing in Jim's eyes, showing through the considered awareness I had become accustomed to.

  "Look, skipper, why don't we go in here?" He indicated a spot on the coast where the extent of shallow water was much less than elsewhere. "They couldn't get by without our seeing them if we went in here."

  To fall in with his suggestion would have meant giving up our watch position on the Bungo Suido. The position we had chosen permitted us to cover one segment of the probable traffic lines from there. Several days in this position and several days in each of three others would, we had figured, give us some idea of traffic patterns.

  "Jim, we've, only been here one day. Keep your shirt on," I said in small exasperation. "We've got twenty-nine days more in the area." But Jim persisted, pointing out eagerly the con- figuration of the coastline and the depths of water here and there to bolster his argument. On our area chart he had drawn the approximate location of the three ships we had sighted.