Run Silent, Run Deep

by Edward L. Beach

  "We'll shoot one mark-eighteen electric fish," I decided.

  "He'll probably not even hear it, and if it doesn't work we'll try another."

  "He's approaching the firing bearing, Captain!" Keith's voice.

  I was still on the periscope, now staring at Akikaze, now the Q-ship, now making a sweep all around just in case Bungo might have other ships in his convoy.

  "Shoot when he's on, Keith!" One advantage of firing with a ninety track as we were doing was that the range in that precise situation drops out of the problem. No matter how far the target is, or how close, your torpedo will hit, if aimed properly and if it runs long enough.

  "Fire one," said Keith. The Eel jerked under me.

  "One fired electrically," said Quin's familiar voice.

  "Torpedo is running!" said Stafford. I could hear it, a high whine, not as loud as the old steam fish.

  "How much longer, Keith!"

  "Thirty-three seconds!"

  I spun the scope around. "How long now?"

  "-fifteen seconds-ten-five-Now!"

  Nothing. You could hear the ticking of the stop watch in Keith's hand. Then-BOOM! A loud roar filled the conning tower. I looked on the bearing, helped by Keith's hands on the periscope handles. A froth of white water, an angry spume Rung into the air, followed by a mushroom of white. Nothing else.

  Stafford was yelping. "He's sinking!" His voice raced excitedly on, much like a football-game announcer's: "Listen to the water pour in! Somewhere they've got a watertight door shut — there's another one slamming — his screws are slowing down — listen to the water pour in! I can hear things falling inside him! He must be standing right on end, straight up and down!"

  We could all hear the grim cascade, the torrent of suddenly released black water smashing through thin bulkheads, filling compartments with shocking speed, compressing the air with the frenzied pressure of the sea. Then another noise, crunching, rending. "He's hit bottom," announced Stafford.

  "Any chance for them, Keith?" Williams turned serious eyes at the Exec.

  "To escape from the sunken sub?" Keith snorted. "Not at the depth he's at, even though it feels pretty shallow when they're after you with depth charges. Besides, I don't think Jap subs carry escape gear."

  "Right full rudder!" I called out. "All ahead standard! Keith, what was the enemy sub's course?"

  "One-five-oh, Captain!"

  "Steady on one-five-oh!"

  I waited for Scott, the helmsman, to echo my commands be- fore explaining. "Keith, what would you do if you were Bungo and you heard an explosion in the general vicinity of a submarine you were responsible for?"

  "I'd go over and take a look!"

  "And what would you expect to see?"

  "Well, if I got too close to the submerged sub, he'd probably broach to show me where he is so that I'd not run over him- only this time torpedoes will come instead!" Keith's grim smile of anticipation was oddly reminiscent of Jim's.

  "Very good. Only, it's not Bungo who's coming!"

  "What do you mean?"

  "The tincan just signaled with a small searchlight to the Q-ship, and he's started to turn around instead. So, as soon as we get turned around and squared away on the Jap course, we'll broach for the Q-ship. It's so dark that I can barely see him, and if we give him our bow while he's still fairly distant he'll not be able to tell it from the Jap sub's.

  "Bungo will be watching, too. He'll see us broadside."

  "Yes, but he's farther away, and we're about the same color as the Jap sub was. Besides, we want him to come our way, though we'd rather it be unsuspectingly, damn this periscope!

  It's fogging up. Give me some lens paper!"

  A wad of paper was stuffed into my hand. Shutting my eyes, I swabbed at the glass, felt somebody wiping off my streaming face with a towel at the same time.

  "Thanks!" I put my eyes back into the eye-guard.

  "Skipper, how could the Japs figure on seeing OK at night when you can hardly make them out?"

  "Their optical industry is excellent, Keith. I understand all their submarines have a very large and fine night scope."

  "Steady on one-five-oh!" Scott brought us back to the problem at hand.

  "Tell Al to blow bow buoyancy and stick our bow out," I told Keith. "Then flood negative and get us back down quick!

  We don't want to get the whole boat on the surface!"

  Eel's hull shivered as the lifting strain of the bow tank came on. Al must have at the same time put full rise on the stern planes to hold the stern down, and we took a large angle up by the bow. I saw our bullnose come out, stay for a long instant, go back down in a smother of externally vented air. There was venting and blowing inside, too, as negative was first vented to flood it, then blown dry, then vented again to take the pressure off.

  This evidently satisfied the Jap, for he turned away again, and in a few minutes went off at an angle from his original course.

  "They're beginning the zigzag plan," I told Keith. "We'll watch our chance and nail Bungo as soon as we can!"

  For two hours Eel plodded along in the steadily worsening weather with the two Japanese vessels weaving back and forth in front of us. Several chances presented themselves to shoot at the Q-ship, but that would have given the whole show away, and with the already seriously depleted condition of our battery we couldn't stand the all-out search and attack which would have then ensued. Bungo's role was to be a lackadaisical escort vessel, to stay too far from the ship he was supposed to be protecting, thus to invite attack from the U. S. submarine, for whom the trap had been laid, us.

  We could hear him echo-ranging in the distance, patrolling station back and forth first on one flank, then on the other. If we left our sanctuary astern of the bait and were picked up on his sonar, he'd attack us anyway, and we'd be right where we didn't want to be.

  "Keith," I muttered, wiping my face while Oregon cleaned off the periscope eye-piece for the umpteenth time, "this isn't any good. Bungo is never coming close enough for us to shoot him, and we sure can't keep this up all night!"

  "Maybe we'd better do like the Arab and silently steal away, Captain. At least, we know there's no Jap submarine around to worry about. The only one Bungo would allow would be the one whose place we're taking."

  So it was decided, and shortly before midnight, several miles astern of Bungo and his baited trap-now short one important character-the Eel crept to the surface.

  The instant we got on the surface it was evident that the storm was rapidly becoming worse. The barometer had fallen markedly, the wind was still from the east, and it was blowing hard. The sea Oregon estimated at force five on the Beaufort scale, which is a sailor's way of saying that it was a baby gale already. Not yet fully surfaced, the ship wallowed in the waves, every one of which rolled up on our water-level deck and splashed in great showers of spume and spray on the bridge.

  Several huge combers rolled black water right over the bulwarks.

  Keith and I, wearing hooded oilskins, were nevertheless instantly drenched, and we had to hang on firmly to the railing to keep our footing under the drunken rolling of the ship.

  The wind shrieked around our ears, tore at our clothing, blew words right out of our mouths. We crouched under the forward overhang of the bridge to converse or give orders; I did not dare permit the lookouts to come up yet, nor to open the main induction, which would be the signal for the engines to begin pumping the vital electricity back into our battery.

  Opening the main induction at this point-the cigarette deck above it was in a sea of white froth and black water-would have flooded our main induction line all the way back to the engine-room valves. First we had to wait for the turbo-blowers to lift the ship into a condition of buoyancy sufficient to ride the waves. I couldn't hear them, but I could see the results of their work; and when I finally gave the order, four main engines burst out almost simultaneously.

  We were frantic for battery power, so three of them went immediately to recharging the batte
ry, leaving the fourth for propulsion. Rapidly the life-giving amperes flowed back into the "can," and with every ten minutes of recharge, especially at this early stage, when the battery, being nearly flat, was most receptive, we could count on an hour's submerged running.

  The surfaced routine safely under way, Keith and I were able to hold a council of war and take stock of the situation. The SJ radar, a newer and more efficient model than the one we had been used to in Walrus, still held contact with the two Japanese ships. If we could keep contact until our battery was at least partially recharged, we decided, we might be able to return to the offensive.

  I seized the chance to go through the ship, talk to the men at their stations, and tell them how matters stood. We had found out Bungo's secret, I told them, and now we were after Bungo Pete himself.

  After three hours we were about as ready as we would ever be, Keith and I figured. It was a lot rougher, too. A full-fledged storm was upon us, with seas fifteen to twenty feet in height, perhaps fifty feet across. We had gone back to battle stations, were heading toward the enemy, when Keith called up from the conning tower. The bridge speaker blared something unintelligible in the noise of the sea, and I had to make him repeat it: "Bridge! Bungo's gone over and joined the Q-ship! I think they've both reversed course!"

  This could only mean that Captain Nakame had decided it was too rough to keep up the game, and was going to return to port. No doubt he was signaling for the submarine to surface.

  Getting no answer, there was an excellent chance he would realize that something was amiss.

  "Keep watching them, Keith," I yelled in reply. "Try to keep oriented as to which one is Bungo!"

  We built up to standard speed, fourteen knots. Eel smashed and bucked into the seas, quivering in every solid frame as the big ones came over the bow and crashed on the bridge. It was absolutely black. Blacker than I had ever seen it, a musty, smelly black, dirty and clank and malevolent. I could see per. haps five hundred yards, hardly more. The wind tore at my bin. oculars, ballooned out the back of my rain hood, beat at my face with the salt particles it whipped out of the ocean.

  I couldn't use both hands to hold the binoculars, had to keep one free to hang on with. The deck heaved and pounded under me, the water rising and draining away through the wooden slats.

  "Bridge! Range to Bungo, four thousand! To the other five thousand! They're milling around, Bungo is dead the other on our starboard bow!"

  "Bridge, aye, aye!" I answered him. "Let me know the range every five hundred yards!" We couldn't attack quite yet; not before the enemy settled down to a definite course. "All ahead one third," I ordered. This was easier. Eel's motion still resembled a bent corkscrew, but fewer seas came on the bridge.

  "Bridge! We've got the sonar gear down, and he's calling on, sonar!"

  No need to wonder what this was for, or to whom addressed.

  "Let him call!" I answered.

  "He's hove to, bridge! Range, three-five-double-oh!"

  This might be our chance. With Bungo concentrating on trying to raise his several hours' dead consort, his lookouts might just happen to be less alert than they should, especially in the storm. "All ahead standard What's the course to head for him!"

  "Zero-zero-eight!"

  "Steer zero-zero-eight!" I yelled to Scott through the hatch.

  Again the pounding, battering. Our bow would rise to one sea, smash down on the next, and go completely under water, allowing the wave to roll aft, unimpeded, till it broke in fury over the bridge. Cascades of cold ocean rolled off me. The lookouts were likewise drenched and miserable. I sent my binoculars below-they were soaked and useless anyway-and used the built-in pressure-proof TBT binoculars. Mounted on gimbals and fitted with handles, they also gave me some measure of support, though because of their stiffness it was a bit awkward to use them for ordinary purposes.

  "Range, three thousands The starboard lookout lurched against me. His binoculars were in worse shape than mine had been, I saw, and he was giving full time merely to hanging on anyway. In the shape he was in, he was more hazard than benefit.

  "Lookouts below!" I said. That left Al Dugan and me the only ones on the bridge, and I called him up forward from the station he had been occupying on the after part.

  "Range, two-five-double-oh! Still hove to, and we can still hear him pinging!"

  There was a new note to the wind. A higher shriek; louder, too. Three seas in succession came over the bridge front, left us gasping. "Range, two thousand No change-we're opening outer doors!"

  "What speed we making?" I yelled into the bridge mike.

  "Ten knots!"

  Ten knots. It should be fourteen under ordinary conditions.

  About right for firing torpedoes in this kind of sea, however.

  "How does he bear now!"

  "Dead ahead-still dead in the water!"

  Less than a mile away. I couldn't see a thing. Nervously, I rubbed the front lens of the binoculars with lens paper. Al silently handed me a fresh sheet when I threw my sodden one away.

  "Fifteen hundred yards! Shall I shoot on radar bearings?"

  "No!" A subconscious need to see him. "Wait!" Work like hell to get into position, then take your time! Don't waste time, but don't throw your one chance away, either! First Blunt and later poor Jerry Watson, long gone with the old Octopus, had sung the same song to me. And I had repeated the same words to Jim Bledsoe in my turn.

  Fiercely I searched the horizon. "Range one-three-five-oh!" came on the speaker, and that was just the moment I saw him at last. It was an Akikaze-class destroyer, all right, broadside on.

  Two fairly short stacks, medium close together, small bridge but rather high for its length, turtle-back forecastle with a gun on it, and a deep well between forecastle and bridge. He was making heavy weather of it, I instantly saw. The canvas over, the well deck had been blown away, and part of the bridge canopy also. Water was streaming in sheets off his decks, pouring in great torrents off the forecastle down into the well deck. I was taking all this in as I shouted into the bridge mike: "Target! Starboard ninety! TBT bearing!" I pressed the marker plunger down with my right thumb.

  "Set!"

  "Shoot!" The way the command "Fire!" came out almost before I finished saying "Shoot!" was the measure of the crew I had with me. Keith was holding the bridge speaker button down on purpose.

  Four times more the command "Fire!" came on the speaker, and all five torpedoes we had remaining forward went on their way. I couldn't see their wakes, for they were electric, nor could I feel the familiar jerk to the hull of the ship because of. the motion and noise already going on. But I did see one torpedo broach the surface momentarily, then dive back under- and continue on its way, with a flick of instantly extinguished. spray. It had come up exactly on a line between me and the destroyer's bridge.

  But this was not the time to play the spectator. "Left full rudder!" I yelled down the hatch. Akikaze's lookouts would see us in a moment, if they had not already, and Bungo would certainly get some kind of a salvo off at us. That we could depend on. Heedless, too, I gave the order I had held back all this time because of the weather: "All ahead flank!"

  Before the Eel could feel the effect of the increased power, and before she had turned more than a few degrees, there was a flash from Bungo, and the brief scream of a shell overhead, immediately swallowed up in the storm. Then another flash- no scream this time. You certainly had to hand it to him, under the circumstances, for even getting the guns going at all.

  But those were all the shots he got a chance to pump out at us, for about this time the torpedoes got there. Two certainly hit; maybe more, but two were enough. I saw the spout of water forward, and Akikaze's bow disappeared, broken short right at the well. The other hit under the stacks, breaking his back, lifting the center of the ship for a moment and then dropping it, like a broken toy.

  We really began to take it over the bridge then, but neither Al nor I would have cared if the waves had been periscope high.
We slowed after a few minutes of it upon Keith's report that the Q-ship, the only one left by now on the radar, was not chasing us, but had instead gone over to the spot where Akikaze had last registered an echo on our radar scope, and hove to.

  The radar had also some other pips, three tiny ones, which came in and out on the scope and which clustered around the Q-ship when it got there. Lifeboats, without question.

  It would take a feat of seamanship for Bungo's consort to pick them up, though probably no more than Bungo himself had showed in getting them launched in the first place. I didn't doubt that he could do it, all right. A wave of hopelessness swept over me when I realized that barring his own demise, hardly to be planned on, Bungo would return to port, get another Akikaze, and go blithely back to the same old business as though nothing had happened.

  If we could sink the Q-ship, but how? We had four torpedoes, all aft. None at all left forward. And he was loaded with cellulose or something else equally floatable.

  I don't remember making any conscious decision about it.

  There didn't seem to be any decision to make. A red haze flooded my mind, and I ordered Scott to put the rudder over once more.

  "Keith," I gritted, "come on up here I"

  For several minutes we talked out our tactics of how to get the stern tubes to bear. The wind was howling and the sea were pounding and the water poured in buckets off us, streamed off Keith's face, off his nose, into his mouth every time he opened it. The same with me, but neither of us took any heed.

  We ducked those we could, turned our backs to those we saw coming, ignored the rest.

  We decided the Q-ship would not expect us to come back.

  Doubtless he would realize that making a reload was virtually an impossibility unless we dived for it, which would take extra time, and he would hardly expect us to come back otherwise, He would think, at least, that he had time, and his attentions would be entirely taken up with the problem of getting Bungo, aboard. If we could hit him with all four fish, fairly high up on his side, the weather might well finish for us what we had started.

  "Three thousand yards!" said Quin's voice on the conning- tower speaker. Keith swung his dripping form to the ladder, slipped for an instant on the slick hand rail, caught himself, and disappeared.