Keith had seized an ivory-colored celluloid slide rule hanging by a string alongside the TDC, set the scales, read off the answer: “Twelve thousand yards!”
“Twelve thousand looks a little short to me,” said Rich. “One of the escorts is out in front. Right now he bears a degree or so to the right of the bearing I gave you. One is to the left, and one farther to the right. They were all on different courses, so they must be patrolling on station. We’ll soon know if the convoy itself is zigzagging. They’re so close to shore that if they are, their next zig will probably be to their left. Also, I thought I could see another set of small masts astern of the last ship. There might be a fourth escort back in the clean-up spot.”
“If we get a shot at them,” said Keith, “that’s the one we’ll have to worry about.”
“That one, or the left-hand escort,” agreed Rich. “At least our fish are Mark Eighteens, and they won’t leave a wake for him to head for.”
“We still have ten fish aft, Skipper, and ten left forward. Recommend we try for a stern tube shot if we can,” said Keith.
“Right. Matter of fact, we may have to shoot both bow tubes and stern tubes,” said Richardson. “And besides, with these tincans moving around we’d better have a fish or two ready at each end set shallow just in case we need to take a shot at one.”
Keith said, “The torpedo rooms are pretty fast on the reload, if we give them warning. Maybe we’d better have them lay out their gear now, and start reloading as we fire.” Rich nodded. Keith pointed with emphasis at Quin, who had been listening with extreme attention.
Quin picked up his telephone mouthpiece, pressed the button, spoke into it. “Tubes forward and tubes aft,” he said, “the skipper wants you to be ready to make a reload as fast as you can. There’s four destroyers up here and four targets. Start reloading as soon as you have an empty tube. He needs some fish ready for the tincans.”
Richardson shot him an approving look. “Three minutes since the last observation,” said Keith. “If that optical range was any good, they ought to be just under eleven thousand yards right now.”
“We’ll try another radar range,” said Richardson. “Same procedure as before. Everybody ready? . . . Up periscope.” Up came the tube, Richardson squatting like an ancient devotee of an ageless religion in front of it, his knees spread, the tube rising almost between them, his hands waiting. The handles came out of the well. He snapped them down, jammed his forehead against the rubber guard around the eyepiece of the periscope, straightened up rapidly as the periscope continued to rise. The radar wave guide engaged the bottom of the periscope. Snap! went the radar.
“Range!” shouted Rogers.
Richardson had not yet reached the full standing position. He went back down with the periscope, snapped up its handles, backed clear at the last possible moment. Keith was standing on the opposite side of the periscope tube, looking up at the azimuth ring in the overhead. “Zero-zero-four-a-half,” he said.
“Range thirteen thousand five hundred,” sang out Rogers. “Good range, sir.”
“Angle on the bow is still starboard ten. That was a good bearing. There are definitely four cargo ships and four escorts,” said Richardson. “One of the escorts is patrolling astern, one on each flank and one ahead. No zig yet.”
Turning to Rogers, he asked, “How was your radar pip? Do you think we can come down a little?”
“That was a good pip,” said Rogers. “We ought to be able to come down about four feet.”
“Good. Control, make your depth five-six feet!”
Eel nosed down slightly as the depth gauge began gradually to increase, steadied at the new figure. “It’s nine minutes since you took a look around, Captain,” said Keith.
“I’ll do it next time. What’s the state of charge of the torpedoes? Have you got the water injection yet?”
“All fish in the tubes got a freshening charge two days ago, Captain,” said Keith. “We just took the injection temperature. It’s fifty degrees. Buck has already made the temperature correction for torpedo speed on the TDC.”
“Good,” said Rich. “Anything else we’ve forgotten?”
“Well, maybe we’d better rig for silent running and rig for depth charge. Also, it wouldn’t hurt to know the depth of water in case we have to go deep in a hurry.”
“Stafford,” said Richardson, “can you hear the escorts echo-ranging?”
Stafford didn’t hear until Scott leaned over his shoulder, made him remove one earphone, and repeated the question.
“Yes, sir,” said Stafford, “distant echo-ranging, bearing south.”
“Quin,” said Rich, “tell control to get a single ping sounding as quick as they can.” He explained, turning to Keith and Buck, “If they’re echo-ranging, they won’t notice a single extra ping, especially at this distance.”
Keith said, “We should get a bathythermograph reading, if there’s time.” He was going over his check-off list. The bathythermograph, which recorded water temperature against depth of submergence, gave indication of the location of temperature layers and was therefore useful for evasion.
“All right. We’ll go deep after the next observation. I’ll save the look around for the next time.”
“Fast periscope technique again,” Richardson said to Scott and Rogers—“Up periscope!”
The ’scope started up. Again Richardson went through the routine. “Range!” shouted Rogers. The ’scope started down.
“Bearing zero-zero-five-a-half,” said Keith.
“Range twelve thousand,” said Rogers.
“Fifteen hundred yards in three minutes gives us a speed of fifteen knots,” said Richardson.
“I make it fourteen and a half by TDC,” said Buck.
“Use fourteen and a half,” said Richardson. “Target has zigged to his left. Angle on the bow of the leading ship is now starboard thirty. There are definitely four escorts. The leading ship is considerably bigger than the other three. It looks like a passenger cargo ship of perhaps ten thousand tons, with two stacks, and goalposts fore and aft over her cargo hatches. The other three ships are somewhat smaller, ordinary freighters. Two masts each, with booms.”
“Distance to the track is six thousand yards,” said Buck.
Richardson had already made the same calculation in his head. If the target continued on its present course with no further zigs, and Eel remained stationary, the convoy’s nearest point of approach would be six thousand yards away, far outside optimum torpedo range. As yet, Eel had not maneuvered. It was still too early to tell how radical a zigzag plan the enemy ships were using, but they were close to the coast of Korea, and the most likely direction of their zigzagging would be toward the center of the Maikotsu Suido. The most probable next zig might even be farther to the target’s left. Clearly, Eel would have to move over to get into position, and to do so it would be necessary to use high speed. Far better to do it now, before the escorts were close enough either to hear the submarine’s propellers or to pick her up by echo-ranging on her broadside as she closed the track.
Assessment of the situation was virtually instantaneous, more a suddenly presented picture than a careful step-by-step evaluation. “Right full rudder! All ahead full! Control, make your depth one hundred feet! What was that sounding?”
“Two hundred beneath the keel,” said Keith. “Two hundred sixty feet depth of water.”
“Very well,” said Richardson. ‘Control, make your depth two hundred feet. Be careful as we near the bottom. Do not use much angle. Our sonar heads are down. If we touch, they’ll be wiped off.”
Six miles to the south, eight Japanese ships were moving steadily toward the same point at which Eel also was aiming. Four of them were targets of war, fated, if Eel could have her way, to find their last port of call on the bottom of the Yellow Sea. The remaining four were professional fighting ships, designed and trained to combat submarines. Perhaps a thousand men in all, about equally divided between the merchant ships and the a
ntisub ships. Four merchant skippers, ever conscious of the possible presence of submarines, huddled unnaturally together for mutual protection, alert for any warning of danger, ready for instant flight should an enemy submarine appear. Four Japanese Navy skippers, eager for the accolade of having sunk the second U.S. sub in two weeks in the Yellow Sea. Four hundred depth charges between them, and about five hundred Japanese Navy men, no less eager than their commanders to sink an American submarine.
Opposed to these, eighty persons in Eel, probably better trained, certainly in a more complex ship than any of theirs. But both of Eel’s advantages—surprise and invisibility—stemmed from her ability to submerge. Submergence alone made it possible for eighty men to challenge a thousand, and to gain this capability the submarine had given up the ability to sustain damage. To submerge, she must be in exactly neutral buoyancy. Reserve buoyancy, which permits a surface ship to view the prospect of hull damage with some degree of equanimity, does not exist for a submerged submarine. Even a small hole in Eel’s pressure hull—made by a sharp enemy bow, a flailing propeller, an explosive shell from a gun, or the crushing water hammer from a near depth charge—could start a flood of water equivalent to fifty fire hydrants. A ton of water taken in—only a few hundred gallons—would be enough to send her to the bottom. If, somehow, all her ballast tanks survived whatever had caused the damage to the pressure hull (hardly likely, since they surrounded it), and if no more than one compartment had been flooded, she might, by blowing all of them dry, stagger to the surface, there to be smashed pitilessly down again by the knife-sharp bows and waiting guns of her assailants.
In the immediate future were not one contest but two, both unequal. Unequal, first, in that Eel would have one clear, unopposed shot at her antagonists (provided that some egregious error in approach technique, such as permitting one’s periscope to be sighted, was not committed, or bad luck—sonar detection—encountered).
But once the submarine’s presence became known, which it must ultimately and inevitably be by the crashing roar of her torpedoes, the inequalities would shift abruptly, and the second battle begin. From this point on, it was the submarine that would be on the defensive: slow moving, her machinery silenced save for the motors turning the propellers at minimum speed (for to run faster would make more noise), her torpedo tubes empty (reloading them would make noise), running at deep submergence, listening, always listening, for the pings of enemy sonar, for the sound of the searching propellers. Blindly twisting at excruciatingly slow speed in the desperate effort to avoid the high-speed rush of the enemy destroyer bringing the killing depth charges.
Four ships against one. Five hundred men against eighty. An alerted enemy, in their home waters, free to move swiftly in any direction, free, even, to seek help in emergency. Free to see, as well as listen. Free to make noise, to have no care for the making of noise. Free of the fear of the black water transforming itself into white at the instantaneous moment of ingress. Free of imagining, and awaiting, that tortured last view of a closely circumscribed steel world while light and power from the batteries yet remained. Free of the terror of the everlasting darkness and pressure at the bottom of the sea.
So must it have been during those last terrible moments in Chicolar, when awareness of the sacrifice to be exacted was replaced by the cataclysmic inrush of water which compressed the air with an ear-bursting blow, increased the temperature to unbearable height, and swept all before it into extinction.
“The normal approach course is two-seven-five,” said Buck.
“Steady on course two-five-oh,” snapped Richardson. He crowded over alongside Buck and Keith, looked at the TDC. “We don’t have to go all the way over to the normal approach course,” he said. “The range is still well open. How long will we have to run to get to two thousand yards on this course?”
“That’s about a two-mile run—a little more. Let’s see, at full speed, eight knots—that’s two hundred-sixty-six yards a minute—it’ll take us about fifteen minutes.”
“Too long,” said Richardson. “I’ve got to get a look before then. Keith, are they getting a bathythermograph reading?”
“Yep. There’s a new card in the gadget.”
“Okay. Tell them to take another single ping sounding when we get down to two hundred feet. We’ll run about eight minutes at this speed and then come back up.”
“That’ll put us just about four thousand yards off the track, Skipper, a little farther maybe,” said Buck.
“Fine,” said Rich. “Keith, we might as well go ahead and rig for depth charge and silent running now. Get everything buttoned down tight.”
“Okay, sir, but can we leave the hatch open and ventilation on for a while more? Besides, we might want better communication with Al. . . .”
The connng tower had only a supply ventilator. The return was through the hatch. Closing the hatch would not only isolate him from direct communication with Al Dugan—forcing reliance on telephones—it would stop the flow of air as effectively as shutting off the supply. Rigging for maximum security this far ahead of need was only a precaution. Keith’s suggestion would mean a great deal for the comfort and efficiency of the fourteen men jammed into the conning tower, as well as the rest of the crew. “All right. We can hold off on the ventilation for a while.”
Keith gave the necessary instructions. Suddenly Richardson had nothing to do. Eel tore on through the water at an unaccustomed rate. He could feel the hull trembling with the water passage. There were some small vibrations topside. A little unnecessary noise, a drumming of some portion of the bridge structure. Perhaps it was the lookouts’ new platform and rails. These would have to be inspected carefully next time they had a chance, he thought.
“How much time?” he asked.
“We’ve been running four minutes, Skipper,” said Buck. “Four minutes to wait.”
Rich could feel his blood pressure gradually mounting, his pulse increasing. Below he could hear the watertight doors being closed, various men moving about. With the doors closed and dogged it was forbidden to change from one part of the ship to another except in emergency, so anticipated moves were being made now.
“How long we been running?”
“Five minutes, Captain; three minutes more to run.”
His palms were itching. He had forgotten about the pain in his knees and thigh muscles. Now the aches were evident again. He waited an interminable length of time, moved over behind Buck and Keith to watch the slowly moving dials of the face of the TDC.
“We’ve been running seven minutes, Captain,” said Keith.
“All ahead one-third,” Rich called out. “Control, make your depth five-eight feet.”
The annunciators clinked in the forward part of the conning tower as Cornelli executed the order. Gently Eel’s deck inclined upward. The drumming of the superstructure stopped.
“You get the BT card?” asked Richardson. “And what was the depth of water?”
“We got a seventy-five-foot reading at two hundred feet, Captain,” said Keith, answering the last question first. “They’re putting the BT card in the fixer now. We’ll have it up here in a minute.”
There was someone coming up the ladder from the control room. Blunt. Behind him, gesticulating helplessly, the lanky pharmacist’s mate took two steps up the ladder and stopped, head framed in the opening, silently signaling his failure. Now Rich cursed the weakness which had allowed him to accede to Keith’s request regarding the hatch and ventilation. Better to be sweltering in peace than cope with an erratic superior, especially during an approach! That solution was now irrevocably gone. No time to toady to the squadron commander’s unpredictable states of mind. No time to consider, or evaluate, the sudden dismay communicating itself to the area just below his own diaphragm. Play the game out. Pretend his appearance had not been greeted with hastily concealed startlement. Hearty greeting. “How are you feeling, Commodore?” No sign of the deep unease awakened by his sudden appearance.
“Fin
e, Rich, I never slept so well in my life, but what was the pharmacist’s mate doing? Why didn’t you call me? He tried to keep me from turning out. Did you send him?”
“Well, frankly”—calm tone, get over this part quickly—“I told him to see what he could do for you. You’ve been looking a little peaked lately.”
Blunt was about to say something, but Richardson went on, a little hurriedly, as if he had not noticed. “We’ve got a convoy of four ships up there, Commodore, with four escorts. I’m hoping to shoot bow and stern tubes. Also, we’re going to be in for a depth charging, sir. It’ll be pretty uncomfortable up here in the conning tower after we shut off the ventilation, so I recommend you move back to the control room when that time comes. . . .” Handling the ship in combat was Richardson’s sole responsibility. Best signal his intent to exercise it.
“All right, Rich,” said Blunt, “just give me a minute to get down the hatch when you give the word.” There was a degree of truculence in his manner. Perhaps he felt he should have been informed as soon as the enemy ships were sighted. Surely in his state of extreme drowsiness the previous night, he had not suspected the sleeping potion which had finally enabled his body’s craving for sleep to be satisfied. Probably he did not yet realize that, in contravention to his last expressed wishes, while he had been sleeping the Eel had entered the Maikotsu Suido, nor that coordination instructions had been sent to the Whitefish in his name. Hopefully, his long sleep might have restored some of his oldtime equilibrium. But of this Richardson could not yet judge. There was no time to make an evaluation. The ship was about to go into mortal danger, would be under determined attack by four fully aroused escorts in half an hour. There would be one chance, only a single quick opportunity, to fire torpedoes at the convoy. Even this would exist only if prior detection could be avoided.
Dust on the Sea Page 24
