Run Silent, Run Deep

by Edward L. Beach

  "Easy, Rich." Blunt's eyes were steady, but his face looked old, troubled. "ComSubPac has orders to keep the Bungo Suido and Kii Suido under surveillance. Maybe the Jap fleet's in there-I don't know. Some day maybe Admiral Nimitz will let us know why. In the meantime, all we can do is put our best boats in there, let them know what they're up against, and try to prepare them the best we know how. Besides, at the time Jim left Stocker was doing fine. We had a message from him only the day before."

  I told him I was sorry for my outburst. "But what can we do?

  I anxiously asked him. "We've got to do something We can't just let Walrus run into that kind of setup without some kind of action to help him!"

  "We're doing all we can." Blunt fumbled in a pile of papers, "Here's what we sent him."

  The message said: URGENT FOR WALRUS X, INDICATIONS EXTREMELY EFFECTIVE ANTISUBMARINE ACTIVITY VICINITY BUNGO SUIDO X, TAKE MAXIMUM PRECAUTIONS THIS IS AN URGENT WARNING FROM COMSUBPAC.

  Silently, I handed it back.

  "The Walrus has been in the area nearly a week already, Rich, and he's sunk three ships. Two the first night, and one several days later. If there's anyone who can handle themselves in there, it's Jim Bledsoe and your old crew. But that's not why I wanted to see you. I think we've got a ship for you. That please you?"

  Would it! In spite of the ominous shadow that lay on my mind, I started up eagerly at the news.

  "The Eel is coming in from Balboa, and they think their skip- per has pneumonia. We'll have to check the whole crew, of course, and may have to transfer some of them if they show signs of having contracted the disease. You can have her as soon as she gets in."

  Eel was a brand-new Portsmouth-built boat, containing all the new and fancy gadgets which we in the old Walrus had wanted for so long, and improvised to get. She had a thicker skin and heavier frames, a narrower silhouette bows on, a larger conning tower with more gear in it and a smaller bridge, and the very latest in radar. In her engine rooms were four of the new ten- cylinder double-crankshaft Fairbanks-Morse diesels, rated at the same horsepower as the earlier nine-cylinder jobs and as the sixteens of the Walrus, but capable of considerably more. On deck she carried the same gun armament as Walrus, except for a new five-inch gun instead of our old S-boat four-incher.

  Altogether she was a wonderful command, a real dreamboat, except for one thing-she had no crew.

  It turned out that the trouble with her skipper was diagnosed as tuberculosis, and every man in her whole complement had to be sent up for observation. The probability of any others having it, the submarine force doctor said, was not too high, but they had been breathing the same air as their skipper for a long time, and in the confined quarters of a submarine, especially when submerged and recirculating the ventilation, the chances for wholesale exchange of germs could not help but be at their highest. The ship was thoroughly fumigated after the crew was taken off, and a crew of medical corpsmen went over her with disinfectant before anyone else was permitted to go aboard. When I got my new ship, that's exactly what I got, a ship. Bare.

  Not that getting a crew assigned was difficult. With the normal rotation system in full swing, there were ample men with the necessary rates and skills to fill out several complete crews.

  And some of the old Walrus crew, who had been left behind when she last departed, had already had enough of the rotation and specially asked to be assigned to the Eel. Among these were Quin and Oregon, both now first-class Petty — Officers with war experience which belied their youth.

  My best piece of luck, however, was in getting Keith assigned also. He was due back anyway from leave in a few days, so I sent a telegram to his leave address asking him if he wanted the job of Executive Officer, and telling him to come back right away if he did. The answer came back next morning, and consisted of only one word: ENROUTE.

  The rest of the officers were taken from the various relief crews which were the usual rotation assignments. I was careful to take only volunteers, however. A thin, nervous-looking Lieutenant named Buckley Williams came as Gunnery and Torpedo Officer, and another Lieutenant, Al Dugan, rather heavy-set and phlegmatic in appearance but already known for his sure touch on the dive, as Engineer and Diving Officer.

  But merely having the personnel assigned is a very long way from having a fighting submarine, or a fighting anything else, for that matter. First we had to get things organized, lay out a Watch, Quarter and Station Bill, assign everyone in the crew a locker and a bunk, divide them into watch sections and into the various departments aboard a ship, lay out all their duties in accordance with what needed to be done as determined by the way the ship was built-and then begin the training.

  Fortunately, having had the pick of the relief crews, Eel's new complement was basically all experienced. We were not, at least, required to take aboard a load of trainees in addition to the rest of our training problem. Though it was a back-breaking job, it turned out to be a fruitful one. I was amazed at the amount of progress that could be made in a day. As an Exec, Keith was a natural. In four days we had Eel at sea for her first dive, and in six we were shooting torpedoes. In two weeks I was beginning to wonder what area we would draw for our patrol.

  The last week, our third, was spent merely polishing things up. We practiced the quick snap shot at an enemy submarine, taught all the officers, and the Quartermasters too, how to determine the quickest way to turn, how to line up the shot with sight of eye, what essential inputs the TDC had to have, and how to shoot. And we practiced how to shift instantly from one target to another, how to anticipate the enemy's next zig during the firing and how to correct for it. By the time I reported Eel to Captain Blunt as in all respects ready for a combat assignment, there was no doubt in my mind that this was the case.

  He had to come out with us for a day's operations to see for himself, of course, and his comment before the day was half over was proof of his satisfaction. "You've got a beautiful ship here, Rich," he told me. And he told me where he planned to send us for our first patrol: AREA — TWELVE, the Yellow Sea, between Kyushu and the mainland of China, all the way up to the Gulf of Pohai on the north.

  It took quite a while to put Eel through all her paces, and it was long after dark before we finally put her back alongside the dock in the submarine base. As we came in, the ComSub- Pac Duty Officer and a car were waiting for Captain Blunt.

  There was a whispered consultation. He turned back to me before stepping in: "Rich," he said, "after you get finished with the ship, come on up to my office, will you?" His face was grave. Something was wrong.

  I turned a few details over to Keith, followed Blunt in a few minutes, a cold foreboding clutching at my heart. I knew what it was the moment I opened the door to his office. He was standing alone, looking out the window at the black waters of Pearl Harbor, the pipe in his mouth, hands clenched behind his back.

  He didn't turn when he heard the door open. "That you, Rich?"

  Upon my affirmative, he told me to sit down. Still he didn't turn. just stood there. I stood also, waiting.

  For about a minute he stood there, motionless. I could hear him breathing. His hands were working gently behind his back, massaging his fingers.

  Then, without turning, he commenced to speak softly, almost tenderly. "There are some parts of that ocean out near Japan which are worth more than any material value can ever express.

  They are parts which are consecrated, for they are hallowed by our heroic dead. One day God, in His infinite wisdom, may let us see the reason why some men must die young that others may live to a useless old age-why men like me, who have never heard a shot or seen a torpedo fired in anger, must be the arbiter of life and death for younger and better men."

  He paused, turned to face me. "Every grave on land and in that ocean is a tomb to an ideal. Some of the ideals are wrong, some right. But the graves are never wrong, they are monuments to the heroic men of either side who sleep there. For who has the right to say to the men who bear the brunt of the battle, 'T
his was wrong, this was worthless to die for?' Is not the warrior the purest and most heroic of all, because he dies for his beliefs? It is the men who send the warriors on their quests who must answer to that question."

  He stopped.

  "When did it happen?" I asked quietly.

  "Maybe it hasn't happened!" he turned away again, almost fiercely. "This might just be their propaganda claim!"

  "Jim was not due out till tomorrow, was he? Should we have heard from him?"

  "Rich, we had him reporting weather every three days from his area. Our task forces need to know that weather data. It moves from west to east, you know. Three days ago he sent a message, giving the weather and telling us that his total bag for the patrol so far was then six ships. He had only four torpedoes left, all aft. Ordinarily we would have had him come back, but we have to keep a watch on the Bungo, and we have to have those weather reports. So we told him to stay till tomorrow, which is the day the Tuna is scheduled to move in there to relieve him. Bun, — o Pete claims to have sunk him the same night he sent his message. Another one was due this morning, but he made no transmission."

  "Maybe he's only been damaged and his antenna or his radio are out of commission."

  "Maybe so. Anyway, we can't send any more boats into SEVEN. You were right, it is suicide. I've already sent a message to the Tuna to stay clear, and the Admiral has an appointment with CinCPac in the morning to tell him the same. If only there were a way of eliminating that bastard Nakame! Until we do, I'm afraid we'll have to give up on this much of our assigned mission. The trouble is, of course, that once he realizes we're not going into the area around Bungo any more, he'll simply shift his own operating ground."

  "Let me go into SEVEN! I can get him!" I spoke with a surge of confidence and rage. "I've been practicing for just this type of thing all during the past months at the Attack Trainer. Give us just a couple of days to get ready." I argued a long time, finally got down to pleading with the old man.

  At first he wouldn't hear of it, but the thought of the Explanations, the Admiral would have to make finally swung the tide in my favor. I was determined, reckless, in a mad fury. Bungo Pete had to got Walrus had outwitted him twice before, with a little luck. Now Eel would not only outwit him, but sink him, and we'd not need luck!

  We got the base ordnance shop to give us a little high-priority emergency assistance: we designed some waterproof demolition charges which we could put into the garbage which would go off when the package was opened. We carried along a lot of old Walrus stationery and got some papers made up with rubber stamps and other markings, just as we had improvised for the Octopus, only using the name Walrus.

  And we put aboard a full load of brand-new electric torpedoes, the wakeless kind.

  When we finally shoved off, somehow it looked as though word of our mission might have leaked out. A great crowd of submariners gathered silently on the dock to see us off, and I could feel the cumulative force of their unspoken thought.

  The Admiral was there, of course, and so was Captain Blunt, and as we backed clear the band struck up "Sink Em All" which, by this time, had become a sort of submarine hymn.

  Under the circumstances, it had a special meaning for us.

  They kept playing the same tune over and over until we had headed up beyond ten-ten dock, and the submarine piers had drifted beyond our sight.

  13

  The trip west made no conscious impression on my mind.

  We topped off fuel at Midway, got on our way again the same day, kept on going. The only thing I could think of was Bungo Pete, or to use his proper name, Captain Tateo Nakame, Imperial Japanese Navy. He was no doubt a Jap hero because of the number of U. S. subs he claimed to have destroyed. To Keith and me he was a devil, and needed to be destroyed in his turn.

  War rarely generates personal animosities between members of the opposing forces, for it is too big for that. The hate is there, but it is a larger hatred, a hatred for everything the enemy stands for, for all of his professed ideals, for his very way of life. Individuals stand for nothing in this mammoth hate, and that is why friends, even members of the same family, can at times be on opposite sides, and why, after the fighting is over, it is possible to respect and even like the man who lately wished to kill you. Bungo, however, had done us personal in- jury, really many-fold times personal injury, and had thereby lost his anonymity. We had learned to know him by his works and by his name; it didn't seem in the least strange to Keith and me that this time, this once, we should be consumed with bitter personal enmity toward a certain personality among the enemy. That this individual was only doing his duty as he saw it, as he had a right to see it, made not the slightest difference.

  And it was not entirely one-sided. For Nakame knew the Walrus by name too, and was doubtless gloating in his own turn over the fact that he had at last squared accounts with the submarine which had dared to outwit him twice, even though accidentally, and had sunk one of the destroyers working under him, even if that also had been a fluke. He might know my own name, just as I knew his, it could not have been too hard to discover.

  It was with this thought in mind that Keith, Quin, and I worked out one of our ideas for the campaign against Bungo.

  We had previously prepared for it by bringing along stationery and other material originally belonging to the Walrus. All the way out to Kyushu, Quin worked an hour or two a day on the papers. We made certain that the name Eel would nowhere appear in our garbage sacks, but that the name Walrus would with normal frequency. And I wrote my own name in several normal places, as though on papers which had been spoiled or discarded for one reason or another and thrown away. In this way the Walrus would once again have escaped him. Keith and I were agreed that our personal revenge would take the form of robbing Bungo Pete of that satisfaction before destroying him.

  And after his curiosity had been aroused by discovery that the Walrus had returned to make depredations in the home waters of Japan, after he had had plenty of evidence and would be searching for the answer to the riddle, then we would put the demolition charges in the garbage sacks.

  The explosives might not get him, probably would not, for he would have subordinates dig through the sodden sacks of putrefying garbage. But they would amount to a message he could not ignore.

  Eel was a new submarine, with a new crew. This would ordinarily have been a disadvantage for the fight in which she was about to engage, but not in this instance. For every man in that crew was a veteran of submarine warfare, and she had come all this distance with one single mission. We worked her guts out all the way over. When she passed through the Bonins, or the Nanpo Shoto, Eel was superbly trained, better than she had been when Captain Blunt gave her his approval, better than Walrus had ever been. And her torpedoes, of course, had the latest modifications, our new exploder. Something Walrus had never had while I knew her.

  It was with a sort of defiance our first night in AREA SEVEN, that I directed the cook to bring garbage topside and dump it.

  Twice before Keith and I had been here, but this time it was something special. We were beginning our mission of vengeance. Walrus had come back to haunt Bungo Pete and kill him if she could.

  First it would be necessary to alert him, to cause him to come out after us. We wasted no time getting down to the southern and eastern portion of our area, near Toi Mistaki, where ships rounding Kyushu would have to make their course change to the north. Two nights and a day with nothing sighted, only the ubiquitous fishing boats, then a small tanker came by in the blackest part of the night. Our powerful radar picked him up two hours before we saw him. I held the new model TBT on his middle, thumbed the button in the handle of the built-in pressure-proof binoculars, felt two torpedoes start his way.

  He was not a large ship, not worth more than two torpedoes.

  Both of them hit and both exploded, and when the spray-and- water column came back down, he was no longer there. Our first calling card.

  But he had had no time to radi
o in the warning, could not have accomplished what we wanted. We waited a few days longer, found another ship, a little larger. Freighter, also new.

  Submerged periscope approach this time, two more torpedoes.

  It took him about fifteen minutes to go down.

  That night, having first dropped our garbage near where the freighter had been sunk and near where analysis of non- arrival of the tanker might show it, too, had gone down, we put everything on the line and headed for the other end Of AREA SEVEN, off the coast of Shikoku, between the Bungo and Kii Suidos.

  Two days more, again with only fishing boats in sight, during which we were careful that trash and garbage was dumped in a specially weighted sack which sank immediately. We were sub- merged, close in to the coast, when we sighted masts. Two ships, hugging the coast. Then there was a third mast, a tincan, patrolling to seaward. Not Bungo, however. Smaller destroyer- type, probably sent out as a protective gesture now that another submarine was known to have entered the area. Eel maneuvered between the escort and his convoy. Four stern tubes at the tincan, close quarters, but there was time to get them off.

  He joined his ancestors in a cloud of mingled flame, smoke, and spray. Then for the two ships. Three at the leader-just as he was turning. One hit, enough. He sagged down by the bow, water coming over his forward cargo well.

  In the meantime the second ship in the convoy, an old rusty freighter, had put his rudder hard over. There was only one way for him to go, however; back where he came from. He had. to go toward the shoreline and back out again around a point of land, if he wanted to stay in shallow water. That was his mistake, one Bungo would never have let him make. He was not very fast. We didn't even have to pull much out of the battery to get across the mouth of the little bay in time.

  Eel was waiting for him quietly when he came out.

  That night we made sure our garbage would not sink and threw over a couple of extra bags of it for good measure.