Run Silent, Run Deep

by Edward L. Beach

  "He's not under way, bridge! Target speed is zero!" Keith was back in charge down below, on the speaker again.

  I pressed the button on my mike, let the insane howl of elements make the acknowledgment for me. We were coming in at standard speed again, with our four engines on the line just in case. As the stern heaved up to a wave I could see the tip ends of four big pipes pouring out their hydrantlike exhaust. Then a smother of angry water would cover everything, and the four mufflers would be drowned, spluttering feebly, sending up little splashes which the wind instantly whipped away. On this course, chosen to bring us in to windward, presumably the skipper of the Q-ship would elect to pick up the boats to leeward-we were coasting downwind. The bow lifted as a huge sea ran under us, dropping our stern precipitantly and then racing on out beyond our bullnose; black water, streaked with white, capped with a boiling, dirty-white crest.

  Our speed, which increased with a downhill sledding effect when the stern lifted, decreased abruptly when it turned into uphill. Al Dugan and I were alternately thrown backward against the periscope supports and forward against the bridge cowling-almost as though we were riding a balky horse in slow motion.

  The bow disappeared in a welter of white foam as the succeeding wave came under and over our after parts. Nothing at all forward of the bridge, now. Nothing aft, either. Just buffeting, angry, noisy ocean. Our bridge was like a disembodied statue, the upper part of a submarine riding on an angry sea-cloud.

  "Two thousand yards, bridge!" I would be able to see him soon. Al helped me wipe off the lens of the TBT binoculars.

  We did a thorough job before I put my eyes to it.

  "Fifteen hundred!" Through the flying spume and blackness I could make out the outline of a ship, a tall, stubby ship.

  He was nearly broadside to and rolling violently in the furious sweep of the wind and sea; occasionally, as we neared, he steadied up for a moment under some vagary of the elements, perhaps a nullifying combination of them. These were the moments in which he would attempt to pick up Bungo and his men. Probably throw them ropes, haul them aboard one at a time. A fantastic attempt, but seamen had done more fantastic things-history is full of the tales. Normally our role would have been that of the helpful bystander, regardless of the nationality of the shipwrecked mariners. Shipwreck at sea has its own code, its own morality-a joined constant fight for life and survival against the implacable ocean, with its pitiless nether- world of death. But we were out of our normal role. There was a war, the basic immorality of which transcended temporarily the more lasting and better motives of peace. It was our job to try to prevent that rescue by sinking the rescuer.

  "Twelve hundred yards!"

  Of course, one did not have to think of it that way. We had the duty of sinking any Japanese ship we ran across, and this one was surely as much a ship-of-war as the biggest battleship, or the fastest aircraft carrier. Furthermore, it was a menace to our side, particularly to my own special segment of our side There never could be any argument, except on purely philosophical grounds, and war is the rejection of philosophy.

  "One thousand yards!" This was the turning point we had decided on. We had to get close to give us the maneuvering room to turn around. They would find it hard to look into the scud upwind; we could reach one thousand yards from that direction with a fair degree of impunity. Even if they did see us, accurate gunfire from that pitching, rolling platform would be impossible. Only a real director system, with a gyroscopically controlled stabilized firing circuit, could handle these conditions.

  Of course, there was always the chance of a lucky shot "Right full rudder! Starboard stop! Starboard back full!" It would be a job even swinging into the wind. Eel started to swing nicely enough, got halfway around before the wind really hit her. I could feel the combined force of the wind and sea as our bow rose and exposed itself freely to the effects of both We stopped dead, as though we had hit a wall of mush. The gyro-compass repeater indicated that we had actually swung back a few degrees.

  "Port ahead emergency!" With both screws racing, she would have greater force to push her around. Now I regretted having reversed the starboard propeller, for doing so had killed our forward progress and removed much of the effect of the rudder. And besides this, our straining engines were having all their exhaust fumes blown right down on the enemy ship. A keen nose would detect the characteristic odor of diesels, might just have the flexibility to do something about it.

  Still no good. We gained a little, then lost it as the bow came up again.

  "Control!" I thumbed the button for the speaker, spoke into it. "Open bow buoyancy vent!" This would lessen the buoyancy of the bow, reduce the area the wind would have to work on.

  If we could only keep the bow from coming up at all!

  "All Go on down to the control room." I had to cup my mouth and hold it close to his ear to make him get it all.

  "Secure the engines and shut the main induction. Put the battery on propulsion. When I give you the word, open the forward group vents, hold them open for three seconds, and then shut them again!" I gave him a shove toward the hatch.

  On diving, bow buoyancy vent and all the main ballast tank vents are opened and left open until the ship goes under. The main ballast tanks are handled as two groups, a forward group and an after group, with a set of controls for each.

  Opening the forward group of vents for about three seconds would not permit all the air entrapped there to escape, but would vent off a large percentage of it. We would not dive because the after group would be still holding all its air in addition to what had not had a chance to whistle out of the forward group vents.

  But much of our buoyancy forward would be destroyed, and our bow would sink deeper in the water. This would reduce the sail effect of the forward section of the ship-probably eliminate it alto-ether because we would inevitably ride under all the seas instead of only some of them.

  Shutting off the main engines and going to the battery was merely precautionary, so that we could close the main induction valve under the cigarette deck. Otherwise we'd pull tons of water down the huge airpipe when the bridge went under.

  I grabbed the mike. "Keith, raise the night periscope and see if you can make out the target!" One of the scopes had a slightly bigger light path than the other and hence the name "night periscope." If Keith could see the enemy vessel through it, perhaps it would do to take bearing to shoot the torpedoes with, and I could repair below and do it from the relative safety of the conning tower. I waited a few seconds.

  "No luck, skipper. Can't see a thing!" This might be because Watching the dials and instrumentsespecially the radar scope had cost him his night vision. We couldn't wait, however.

  "All right, Keith. Station somebody in the bridge hatch ready to shut it if necessary."

  "Roger."

  "Bridget" Al Dugan, from the control room. "Ready below!"

  There was no more exhaust aft. I had not heard the main induction go shut, but it no doubt had.

  My little microphone went only to the conning tower. I had to press the bridge speaker button firmly and yell into it to reach Al. "Control! Open and shut the forward group vents!"

  Instantly white spray whirred out from between our slotted forward deck, was blown, just as instantly, to nothingness. I counted three to myself. The spray stopped at "four." Nothing happened at first. We heaved up as before to a passing sea, rolling far over to port, losing the few degrees of turn we had managed to accumulate during the past several seconds.

  Then we dropped, far down. The next sea swept across our deck as though there were no deck there, poured over the bridge side bulwarks, inundated the whole place, filled it with foam- topped green water.

  Instinctively I had sought the leeward side, the port side.

  And just as the roar of the approaching wave heralded its closest proximity, boiling up from beneath as well as overwhelming us from on top, I saw the hatch slam shut. Tons of water roared around me. Frantically I gripped the lookout gu
ard rail, felt my feet swept from under me. Sick despair engulfed me. The bitter certainty filled my brain that with the lack of buoyancy forward and the heavy seas rushing at us we had driven completely under. If we did not come up soon I was done for, and Bungo Pete would have won again.

  Somehow, buoyed up by the water, I managed to pull myself up a little higher on the lookout rail-my lungs felt as though they would burst if I couldn't get a breath of air, and then I was out of it. The water had rolled past and part of our bridge reappeared. The after TBT came up, mounted on its tripod legs, just abaft of the periscope shears. My mike was gone, lost, but there was a bridge speaker installed under the TBT. Floundering in the water, I struggled aft to it; standing hip-deep I put my eyes to the binoculars. It was blurred-I wiped it off with my fingers, sucking the salt from them first.

  Still blurred. There was a piece of lens paper in my pocket, somehow only damp, not dripping-wiped it off with that.

  "Captain! Are you all right!"

  The speaker startled me, booming right into my chest. I pushed the button, twice.

  I "That did it! We're coming around! I'll steady up on course zero-eight-zero and slow down-all we need is the bearings, skipper!"

  The last words were engulfed in another deluge of water.

  This time I relaxed, twining my arms and legs into the TBT stanchions, waited for it to pass. Twice more the ocean buried me, welling up from beneath the deck and hurtling over the side at the same time, before the welcome voice of my Exec announced that the ship had reached the desired heading.

  There was now some protection from the bridge bulwarks and periscope supports behind me, as well from the fact that the seas in sweeping in from dead ahead could not pick up quite so much of solid substance through the submerged forepart of the ship.

  I wiped off the TBT lenses again, squeezing water from the precious piece of lens paper to do it, sighted through. "Ready'

  Keith! Single shots! Don't shoot unless I'm holding down the button!" This was to take care of the possibility that I might be temporarily unable to aim. I turned the TBT slowly from side to side, centered the cross hair in the middle of the Q-ship's wildly tossing stack.

  "Range, nine hundred! Can you see our stern, Captain?

  Give us a bearing of the stern light!"

  I sighted on to the stern light, which Keith and I had long ago designated as the bore-sight target for the after TBT, just as the center of the bullnose was for the forward one. It was a good precaution in case the seas had done some sudden unsuspected violence to the precious instrument, took only a second.

  When you get there, take your time! I pushed the button on top of the right handle twice.

  "OK! Give us the target for the first fish!" Another deluge of water, not so long, this time. I hardly felt it, got the TBT on as soon as my head came out, blurred or not, held the button down.

  "One's away!" I let go the button. We'd watch to see where the fish would go, we had decided. Wipe off the lenses again.

  BLAM! A stunning flash of light, followed by a solid explosion! Amazingly, I heard it, and almost immediately!

  "Hit, skipper!" The speaker-how could Keith have heard, with the ship battened down as it was? Then the obvious explanation: the phenomenon had been noticed before; the sound had traveled four times as fast through the water as it could through air. Occasionally one torpedo would thus produce the sound of two explosions, if fired under conditions permitting the noise to be heard through both air and water.

  The hit had been forward of the stack. I put the TBT cross-hair midway between the stack and the stern, thumbed the button again.

  "Two's away!" This time I was under when the explosion came in. It shocked my eardrums. They were ringing when I came out again, just in time to see the column of water sub- siding, falling on the ridiculous foreshortened stern.

  One forward and one aft. Not bad. I aimed the third one at the stack once more.

  "Three's away!" The wait again. This was getting to be the payoff. To be reasonably sure of the destruction of the Q-ship, we had to hit her with a lot of torpedoes-three anyway, prefer- ably all four. A quick, secret flash of orange-gunfire! He had unlimbered one of his broadside guns, was shooting in our general direction I didn't even hear the passage of the shell, wouldn't have cared if I had. This was the payoff, this the moment of revenge. This was getting even for the Walrus, and for Jim, Hugh, Dave, and the rest. And it was making it up also for Stocker Kane, who never would have any children to speak proudly of the father who gave his life for his country, and for Hurry Kane, and Laura, and the rest of the people whose lives had been shattered by this fool war. Roy Savage and Needlefish, too, gone these long years, rusting their bones, somewhere not far from where we were at this very moment…

  WHRRUMP! Number Three went home, right under the stack. The explosion flash of the shallow-running torpedo momentarily obliterated him from sight. The water spout came up, I thought the motion of the stack looked a little strange, different from the crazily tossing masts of the rest of the ship, when the white water deluged down, the smokestack was leaning drunkenly, slowly toppled forward. And there was some- thing a bit different in the way he rolled, too. Slower, farther over each time a sea tossed him.

  The fourth fish. Same place-where the stack had been. Hold the button down: "Four's away, skipper!"

  Maybe we could have saved that one. The masts had not come back from the last roll, were still leaning toward me. thought I could see part of the deck, grayer than the black hull.

  There they go-back up again, slowly, however-no, just a wave rolling past. Down came the two masts, lower than ever to- ward the black, eager water, the deck now clearly visible as a gray slash at the top of the black outline.

  Our fourth torpedo smashed squarely into it, right into the black spot in the center of the gray where the stack and central deckhouse had been.

  Supplicatingly, as if tired of conflict and travail, the masts lay on the water. The hull separated into two parts, and I saw the outline of the bottoms of both, intermittently, as the seas raced upon them.

  "Radar shows he's sinking, skipper! We're blowing up now!"

  The Eel's forward half-rose quickly; they were using high pressure air instead of the low-pressure blowers. In a moment it seemed, we were fully surfaced, and Keith and Al joined me.

  I pointed silently astern. There was the thump of the main induction beneath my feet.

  "I ordered it opened, skipper," said Keith. "We'll be putting the engines on in a minute." We were all three looking a when four exhaust plumes shot out, and the roar of our engines came faintly upwind to us. Al handed me a clean piece of lens paper, helped me do a thorough job on the TBT binoculars.

  We could barely make out the low-lying hulks of the two halves of our antagonist, more by their dark red color than by their shapes. Every succeeding wave which tore down upon them buried them, and finally there came a time when we could see only one.

  "What's the range, conn?" I called into the after speaker.

  "Eight hundred yards, sir!" We had been drifting backward during the whole time of our attack. "We still have four pips on the radar, bridge!"

  At this moment the second red blob failed to rematerialize.

  A long instant we watched for it to rise into sight, finally knew it too had gone. "One pip's gone, bridge! Three left, coming in and out!"

  "He doesn't know what he's talking about!" muttered Al.

  "No, he's right. Those are the lifeboats!" Keith's voice was matter of fact.

  Of course, the lifeboats. And Bungo was just the man to weather the storm in them, too. Less than fifty miles from shore, he'd be back in business with his crew of sonar and depth-charge experts within a week!

  "Go below, both of you!" I spoke roughly, an unaccustomed dryness in my mouth.

  "Why, what's the matter…?" one look and Keith shut up- I waved him impatiently to the hatch.

  "Right full rudder! All ahead flank!" This time there was no trou
ble turning, with the wind helping. And then it was pushing us, blowing at my back, the seas alternately lifting first stern, then bow, as they steam-rollered on by. Every time our bullnose lifted clear of the water it must have heaved twenty feet into the air, before the sea caught up with it.

  I pushed the forward speaker button. "Radar! What's the bearing and distance to the nearest pip?"

  "Three-zero-zero, one thousand!"

  "Keep the ranges coming!" I shouted. Then to the helmsman: "Steer three-zero-zero!"

  We came right a little. After a little I could see it, a little boat with oars out, tossed up against the sky. It was not so hard to see; dawn was breaking, I realized. A little to starboard.

  "Steer three-zero-five!" That put it right ahead. On we came.

  Now they saw us, lay on their oars, looking. A row of faces staring out of hunched-over bodies, heads sunk between their shoulders. They had had a rough night, and a rougher morning. I gritted my teeth. "Steer three-zero-four!"

  They suddenly realized their danger. Oars moved jerkily, frantically, not in unison. They had been in the "no-quarter" business too. They knew what was coming. We were right on them, towered above them, our huge bow raised high on a wave, poised in deadly, smashing promise, pitiless; the row of freeing ports at the base of bow buoyancy must have looked like foaming dragon's teeth. I looked the steersman right in the eye as he stood at his oar, dead ahead and far below-the wave passed. Our bow dropped like a guillotine.

  The boat never even came up. One black round head swam by, looking up with horror-filled eyes, arms and fists raised out of the water, skidded down our rounded belly, vanished aft spinning in our wake. I steeled myself. This was how they had looked in Walrus when the unexpected fatal torpedo explosion had hit them. This was the look Jim had given to Rubinoffski, that Knobby Robertson had exchanged with Dave.

  Push the button again. Go on with it! This is what you came out here to dot You have to kill Bungo and all of his crew!