Читать книгу Run Silent, Run Deep - Edward L. Beach - Страница 15
ОглавлениеThree thousand amperes to each of S-16’s two propeller shafts, six thousand total out of the main storage batteries, is a high rate of discharge in any league. For slow speeds the two main storage batteries are normally connected in parallel, and for high speed switched to series—thus doubling the voltage and halving the current for any given power requirement. In neglecting to shift to series Jim was failing to get the maximum speed possible for the discharge rate and, in addition, was to no purpose risking damage to power cables and main motor armatures from the high current and the resulting heat. Our ship’s procedure was specified in the Engineering Orders: shift to series for everything over two thousand amperes per motor, and start with half the current. Vainly I tried to catch his eye. He knew the score as well as I, as did everyone in S-boats for that matter, but somehow, in the stress of the moment he had completely forgotten. What was even harder to understand was the fact that he had, nevertheless, ordered a discharge rate far in excess of the allowable limit. An easy thing to correct, ordinarily, but now, in the midst of his qualification approach, he was unreachable.
Tom Schultz turned solemnly toward me from his position directly behind the two enlisted men stationed at the bow and stern-plane controls. In the after part of the control room First Class Electrician’s Mate John Larto also fixed his eyes in my direction, after a quick look at Jim. No words were necessary. Both men knew that I was not permitted to interfere in any way with the approach, that if I did so because of some emergency I automatically resumed command of the ship.
Imperceptibly the lights began to grow dimmer as S-16 picked up speed. We accelerated slowly—much more slowly than if we had been in series. Larto shot me an agonized look, reached with both hands toward the electric control board at which he was stationed. I shifted my gaze to the three other skippers, found all still deep in their notebooks, went back to Larto, and nodded ever so slightly.
The battery circuit breakers in S-16 were in the forward starboard corner of the control room. To shift them involved pulling all power off, kicking out the parallel breakers, and putting in the series breakers—all to the accompaniment of a snapping symphony of electrical disconnects. But Larto was equal to the occasion.
“Series, aye, aye! Fifteen hundred a side!” He vectored the response directly at Jim. The lights, which had been dim, suddenly grew bright again, and a cackling cacophony of noise arose from the deck plates in our starboard corner. Jim apparently took no notice. All three board members looked up at me quickly. But I was scrutinizing the back of Tom’s head and could offer no enlightenment.
Jim had been deep in consultation with Keith, and now he spoke. “Target looks like a man-of-war,” he stated. “Possibly a small cruiser or large destroyer. Set torpedo depth twelve feet. I’m going to try for a straight bow shot with a port-ninety track.”
Well and good. This was more like it. Getting the target description out of the way and telling your fire-control party what you want to do were both doctrine requirements.
For several more minutes S-16 rocketed along, her superstructure vibrating and her antennas and lifelines singing, her thrashing propellers communicating a drumming note to the body of the ship. On and on we went. Jim, deep in consultation with Keith, seemed perfectly satisfied. One minute passed—then two—then five. Still nothing from Jim.
My anxiety mounted once more. Jim had made only one observation; as a result we had been racing at top submerged speed for several minutes, heading for a mythical point near where the target would be if it, likewise, kept steady on its course. This is the essence of the submerged approach—except that if the target zigged, Jim’s tactic of running blindly would almost certainly put him out in left field. This is exactly what the zigzag system was designed to achieve. The counter to it is to make sufficient periscope observations to detect the zigs, and to govern your approach course and speed accordingly.
But Jim had only seen the target once and as a result of that had been running for it as though no change whatever could take place in the Falcon’s course. True, with such a large initial angle on the bow we had a long distance to cover—and each observation required slowing down to avoid a big periscope feather. The problem is always to outguess the enemy, but the sub skipper has no occult powers to help him guess. He has to compromise with speed, and look at the target every one or two minutes.
But not Jim this day. One would have thought he knew exactly what to expect, judging by his lack of concern, and by the time he made up his mind to take another observation I was nearly beside myself. The Falcon might have zigged sharply just after Jim had last seen her, and the whole distance we had covered since, at the expense of around half of our total battery capacity, might have been in exactly the wrong direction.
I tried to project my thought waves at him, to catch his eye, lift an eyebrow, somehow make him realize he could not keep on blindly, but Jim did not even look in my direction. Nor was Keith any better, huddled with him beside the periscope in the dimmed light of the control room. Minute after minute dragged by. By the time the order came I was sweating—and I noticed that Messrs. Savage, Miller, and Kane were watching gravely.
“All stop! Parallel! The drumming stopped precipitantly, and you could feel the boat slow down.
“Parallel, sir!” from Larto an instant later, as his eyes caught mine. Jim had either never realized that he had failed to shift to series, or was not going to let on.
“All ahead three hundred a side!” He turned to Tom. “Make your depth four-six feet,” he ordered.
Schultz had been keeping the depth gauges rigidly at forty-five feet. Jim’s order would bring the boat down one foot deeper in the water, resulting in one foot less of the periscope sticking out of water when fully raised.
Tom had been handling depth controls for years and he knew his job. He gave a few quiet instructions to the planesmen. After a few moments the depth gauge needles gently moved from the forty-five to the forty-six-foot markers and remained there.
Jim turned to Larto. “Speed through water?”
Larto, expecting the question, had been consulting the ammeters and voltmeters as well as the shaft-revolution indicators. He shot back the answer immediately, “Four-and-a-half, sir.”
Still too fast. Jim waited.
Keith brought up the Is-Was, showed him the relative positions of submarine and target. Propped in a corner was another device, shaped roughly like a banjo, which Keith, at Jim’s indicated request, now picked up. The purpose of the Banjo was to give the firing bearing, or lead angle, for shooting torpedoes. The two discussed for a moment the various solutions which might be arrived at with the problem as it stood.
Jim turned back to Larto. “What speed we making now?”
“Three and a half knots, sir!”
Jim motioned the Banjo back into its corner, turned toward the periscope.
Keith ranged himself on its opposite side, facing Jim, reached for the control knob, or “pickle,” hanging on its wire nearby.
There had not been much conversation among the other members of the control party, but now the control room seemed to grow even quieter as men stood stolidly to their stations waiting for the periscope observation.
Larto broke the silence. “Three knots, sir!”
Jim motioned with his thumbs upward, and Keith squeezed the pickle.
The hoist motor brake clacked open again. Accompanied by sounds of spinning sheaves and the squeak of flexible steel cables, the periscope started up from its well.
Jim and Keith stood there motionless. Except for the movement of the hoist cables from out of the well as they brought the periscope up, the shining steel barrel, wet and oily, might as well have been motionless too. Then suddenly the periscope yoke appeared, bolted to the ends of the hoist cables. Immediately below it was the base of the periscope with eye-piece, range dials, and two handles folded up at its sides.
Jim was ready for it, stooping as before. The handles rose into his outstretched hands, were snapped down. He rose up with the periscope, before it was all the way up suddenly motioned to Keith. Keith released the button on pickle and the periscope stopped, not quite fully raised.
Jim was looking through it now, stooped over in an unnatural position, swinging it first one way and then the other.
“Can’t see him,” he muttered. “I’m under now—now I’m up again—” as a wave on the surface of the sea passed over the periscope.
This was good technique: minimum practicable exposure.
“Where should he bear, Keith?”
“We should have been gaining bearing on him,” answered Keith, consulting the Is-Was. “He should be on the starboard beam. Swing more to the right.” So saying, Keith placed his hands over Jim’s on the periscope’s handle, and forcibly turned it until Jim’s stance showed he was looking on our starboard beam.
Jim suddenly pushed the periscope back a trifle the other way. “There he is!” unnaturally loudly, “it’s a zig! Bearing—Mark! Down ’scope!”
“Zero-eight-seven,” answered Keith, as the scope went sliding down. “What’s the angle on the bow, sir?”
“Starboard thirty,” from Jim. “Didn’t get a range, about four thousand.”
Keith was spinning the Is-Was when Jim motioned for the periscope to be raised again. “Stand by for a quick range,” he said. As the periscope broke water he had his hand on the range dial, adjusted the bearing slightly as he turned it.
“Bearing—Mark! Range—Mark! Down ’scope!”
“Zero-nine-zero”—“Three-eight-zero-zero,” answered Keith, shifting his attention rapidly from azimuth ring to range dial.
“Right full rudder! All ahead two thousand a side!”
The ship surged ahead again as Larto twisted his rheostats.
“What’s distance to the track?”
“Nineteen hundred yards!”
Jim seemed to be in complete command of the situation. “Target has zigged to his left. We’ll swing around and get him with a straight bow shot starboard ninety track as he goes by.”
In nonsubmarine parlance this meant that although the target had changed course, thus putting us on his other side, Jim was coming around toward him and and would try to hit him squarely on the new side. As before, he hoped to do it with a torpedo with zero gyro angle—set to run straight ahead. The whole submarine would have to be aimed at an angle ahead of the target in somewhat the same manner as a duck hunter leads his birds.
Jim was doing very well, aside from his initial error in running too fast and too far in one direction before taking a second look through the periscope, and fortunately Falcon’s zig had taken place late enough so as not to be particularly damaging. I was particularly warmed, also, by Keith’s steady behavior as assistant.
Jim spoke again. “What course do I come to for a straight bow shot?”
Keith didn’t answer immediately as he studied the figures on the face of the Is-Was. In a moment he said, “One-three-four,” holding out the Is-Was to Jim as he did so.
Jim consulted it briefly. “Steady on one-three-four,” he directed the helmsman, and the latter called back just past my ear, “Steady on one-three-four, aye, aye!—passing zero-one-zero, sir!”
We had to wait until the boat came around to the new course. I could not help noticing how luck had played into Jim’s hands. He had actually overshot the target, but Falcon’s zig had come so late that he was still in an excellent attack position from the opposite side—a bit long-range, but nice.
Another thirty seconds passed. S-16, like most S-boats, turned on a dime once you got her going, and we were nearly around to the intended firing course.
“All ahead two hundred a side!” Another periscope look coming. At least Jim was not forgetting all he had learned about periscope technique. That is one of the items most closely observed in a submarine officer, and one of those most freely criticized—especially by one’s Qualification Board. Every skipper counts himself an expert and has strong opinions about how the ’scope should be handled.
One thing Jim had not yet done; at no time had he looked all around with the periscope, turned it through a full 360 degrees. Doctrine as well as technique called for this as assurance against being caught unawares by another ship or a screening vessel.
Jim waited for our speed to come off; then directed the periscope to be raised.
As before, he rode it up, with Keith swinging it around to the port bow as the Is-Was had predicted.
“Bearing—Mark!”
“Three-one-seven!” Keith was quick with his answers.
“Range—Mark!”
“Two-three-double-oh!”
“Down periscope!” Jim was still looking through it as Keith squeezed the pickle button and the handles and eye-piece fell away. Eleven seconds the observation had taken. I pursed my lips approvingly, held out my stop watch to Stocker Kane, hoping no one had noticed the failure to look all around.
“Angle on the bow, starboard forty-five!”
“Starboard forty-five,” muttered Keith, spinning his Is-Was. “Distance to the track is sixteen hundred,” he went on, a moment later, anticipating Jim’s next question.
“What’s the firing bearing for this setup?”
Keith dropped the Is-Was on its cord, reached swiftly for the Banjo, squatted down on his haunches with it on his knees. “Target speed, sir?” he said.
“Use twelve knots,” returned Jim.
Keith nodded, bent over the instrument and began carefully setting up the computing arms in accordance with the tactical situation. It took a little time—Keith, though he had learned at submarine school how to use it, was not the expert on the Banjo that Jim was. It was Jim’s normal battle station as Assistant Approach Officer for me, and I could sense his impatience to get the answer. The target was moving toward the firing point; there was not much time to go.
Jim watched, irresolute. Then he turned to Tom at the diving station to his left. “Four-six and a half feet!” he rasped.
Tom nodded, obediently began to ease the boat six inches deeper in the water. This also took its quota of time, for the bow and stern planes had less effect at low speeds and he was anxious not to drop below the ordered depth. Since the tip of the periscope when fully extended reached only to forty-seven feet two inches above the keel, it would be very easy for a momentary loss of only a few inches in depth to drag it entirely under and thus blind the approach officer at the instant he might most need to see.
For an appreciable period, during which Jim tensely waited, the depth gauges did not budge. He turned to Keith, still sliding the computing arms on the face of the Banjo, and then back again to Tom—whose depth-gauge needles had not wavered from the forty-six-foot mark.
It had all taken only a dozen seconds or so, but Jim’s temper, already strained to the flash point, steamed over.
“Goddamit!” he shouted at Tom, “I said four-six and a half feet! When are you going to get there?”
Tom’s neck settled imperceptibly into the open collar of his shirt, but he made no reply. In the next instant the gauges quivered and, by the barest perceptible movement, crept down to a point midway between the forty-six- and forty-seven-feet marks.
Jim’s attention swung across the control room to Keith, now patiently recording on a piece of paper the answers he had picked off the curved lines on the face of the Banjo. “I haven’t got all day,” he snarled. “What’s holding you up, Leone?”
Keith looked as if he had been struck, but his voice betrayed no emotion as he answered: “Firing bearings, four fish; three-four-three, three-four-four, three-four-four-a-half, three-four-five-a-half. Set gyros one-and-a-half right, one-half right, one-half left, and one-and-a-half left. Firing bearing for the exercise torpedo, zero gyro angle, three-four-five.”
“Firing order normal order! Set depths twelve feet, speed high! Set gyros one-and-a-half right, one-half right, one-half left, one-and-a-half left!” Jim was all business again. As he gave the order he made a sign of negation to Quin, who functioned as telephone talker during battle stations.
“Torpedo room! Firing order, normal order,” repeated Quin, making not the slightest move toward the telephone mouthpiece mounted on a breastplate attached around his neck. “Set depths twelve feet. Set gyros one-and-a-half right, one-half right, one-half left, and one-and-a-half left.”
A second later Quin spoke again: “Torpedo room has the word, sir! Gyros set! Depth set!” He still made no indication that he had transmitted or received one iota of information or instruction.
Jim now spoke again. “Set depth on the exercise torpedo thirty feet! Set torpedo gyro on zero!” There was a shade of greater urgency in his voice, and he pointed with emphasis at Quin.
This time Quin picked up the mouthpiece, pressed the button on its top, and spoke into it. “Torpedo room,” he said, “set depth on the exercise fish thirty feet. Set gyro on zero.”
The exercise torpedo was the real torpedo, the one on which depended Jim’s qualification. In a moment the answer came back from the torpedo room; was relayed by the yeoman: “Torpedo ready, sir! Depth set thirty feet—gyro set on zero. Gyro spindles are still in, sir!”
“Stand by!” snapped Jim and, seconds later, “Up periscope!”
The ’scope whirred upward, broke surface. I could see the shaft of light from the eye-piece shining out and striking Jim on the face just as he got his eye fixed to it.
“It’s a zig away!” he shouted. “Bearing—Mark!”
“Three-three-eight!”
“Range—Mark!”
“One-five-double-oh!”
“Down periscope!” As the periscope went down into its well, Jim spoke in violent tones of bitter disappointment. “The bastard has zigged away! Right at the firing point, the son-of-a-bitch has zigged away! The angle on the bow is ninety right now!” He raised his clenched fist above his head. “Goddamit!” he swore.
At this Keith broke in rapidly. “That’s no zig, Jim! The angle on the bow should be ninety! He’s right on the firing point! Put up the ’scope and shoot him . . . Look!” And Keith excitedly held out the Is-Was so that Jim could see its face.
“It’s no good, I tell you! He’s zigged away! We can’t get him!”
“Dammit, the hell we can’t! Take another look!” I was surprised at Keith’s vehemence. With his right hand he pressed the pickle to raise the periscope again—unbidden—and with his left he pushed Jim toward it for another observation.
“Out gyro spindles!” shouted Keith, as the ’scope came up. “Stand by!”
“Gyro spindles are out, sir!” Quin’s answer came within a second.
“There he is, sir! Right there!” Keith had pushed the periscope around another few degrees, was intently looking at the azimuth ring and the periscope hairline mark against it.
Almost unwillingly, Jim permitted himself to be pushed into position for another look through the periscope. He grasped the handles, moved them slightly.
“Bearing—Mark!” he said, still unconvinced.
“Three-four-three—simulate fire ONE!” called Keith.
“Fire ONE,” repeated Quin quietly. “ONE’s fired. Standing by TWO!”
“What’s the angle on the bow, now, Jim?” Keith had picked up the Banjo again, spoke insistently in a low but carrying tone.
“Starboard one hundred!” answered Jim, without taking his eyes from the rubber guard around the eye-piece.
“Okay!” said Keith, laying down the Banjo. “Stay on him!”
“I’m on him,” growled Jim.
“Three-four-four! Simulate fire TWO!” Keith was back at the azimuth ring.
“Fire TWO! TWO’S away!” from Quin.
“Stand by!”
Quin picked up his telephone microphone for the first time in minutes. “Stand by forward,” he said. “Gyro spindle out?” The answer seemed to satisfy him, for his report, rendered almost instantly, was simply, “Standing by forward, sir!”
Keith’s eyes were riveted on the hairline on the forward edge of the periscope barrel, where it went through the azimuth ring. Only Jim could see the vertical cross hair in the periscope field of view, but the thin line etched on the barrel of the instrument indicated the direction he was looking. When that line matched the predetermined firing bearing for the torpedo—three-four-five in this instance, or fifteen degrees on our port bow—the torpedo would be fired. The moment was a tense one. A lot more than most of us realized depended on it; how much, only I could have told.
Jim had lost his temporary disappointment. He now carefully kept trained on the target, slowly rotating the periscope to keep up with it. With the slow, precise movement of a watch, the two marks closed together. You could hear men breathing in the compartment. Keith’s mouth hung partly open. His eyes elevated, right hand holding the pickle, he waited.
“Bearing, three-four-five! FIRE!” Keith let this one out with a bellow, as though he personally could shout the torpedo out the tube.
“FIRE!” shouted Quin into the telephone, a split second behind. There was a rumble from somewhere forward, and a hiss of air. S-16 quivered as her hull took up the jolt. In the immediate stillness I thought I could hear the whine of propellers starting.
All thought of continuing with the fictitious salvo was forgotten as Jim watched the progress of his torpedo through the periscope. I wanted to crowd up to him, take a look myself—decided not to.
Jim suddenly spoke. “He’s seen the torpedo. There goes the flag hoist.”
The instructions for torpedo exercises called for the target to hoist a flag signal upon sighting a torpedo or its wake. This the Falcon had evidently done, thus signifying that she would assume the responsibility for retrieving our fish. The rules, however, did not permit Falcon to deviate from her course or otherwise attempt evasion until after the torpedo had crossed. She would later report her best estimate of where it intersected her track. A perfect shot would be signaled as M.O.T., or Middle of Target.
Jim still stared fascinatedly through the periscope. “Looks good! Looks perfect! I’ll hit him right in the M.O.T.! He’s sunk, as sure as God made little green apples!”
I could sympathize with Jim’s exuberance. I had felt the same way after my qualification approach and in fact still did whenever I had a chance to shoot a torpedo.
“There! It’s crossed the track. It’s a hit! Right under the M.O.T.!” Recollecting himself, Jim barked, “Secure from battle stations! Stand by to surface!”
This was Tom’s cue to swing into action. He gave several low-voiced rapid orders, then turned to Jim and announced: “Ship is ready to surface, sir!”
Jim reached forward to the vicinity of the ladder to the conning tower, grasped the diving alarm handle and jerked it three times. Three raucous blasts resounded through the boat.
“Blow safety!” ordered Tom. Air whistled into the tanks, was shut off at his signal. The bow planesman at Tom’s direction ran his bow plane up to the “full rise” position. S-16 tilted slightly up by the bow and the depth-gauge needles began to drop.
At the first note of the surface alarm Rubinoffski swung his lanky legs up the ladder into the conning tower. Larto turned his rheostats, increased the speed of the motors. An intermittent, low-pitched hiss of air—back aft in the engine room they were turning over the engines, clearing any water out. Jim was going around and around with the periscope, at last.
“Eye-ports awash!” The call came down from Rubinoffski. You could feel the surge toward the surface suddenly stop as S-16 broached. The little glass portholes in the conning tower, other than our periscopes the only means of seeing out of the ship, let a stream of light into the tiny compartment as they popped out of the water. The reflected rays danced in the open hatch and glittered on the steel rungs of the ladder below.
Jim left the periscope, motioning to Keith to lower it, and leaped for the ladder, climbing rapidly up. Surfacing is not quite as critical an evolution as diving, but during the period that the boat is barely awash all hands must stand fast to their stations. Only the skipper and the Quartermaster go to the bridge, and the ship remains ready for instant diving.
“Eighteen feet, sir, holding steady,” Tom Schultz passed the word up the hatch.
“Crack the hatch!” I could hear Jim’s command to Rubinoffski.
The Quartermaster grasped the handle of the hatch, turned it rapidly several times. I heard the familiar whistling sound as the slightly increased air pressure in the submarine commenced to vent out.
“Put the low-pressure pump on the main drain—shut the Kingstons. Line up ballast tanks for pumping!” The routine orders from Tom were a backdrop to the sudden rush of air past me as Jim ordered the bridge hatch flung open. In a moment came the call: “Lookouts to the bridge.”
The two planesmen, no longer needed at the bow and stern planes, had hastily donned submarine jackets upon surfacing, buttoning them over the binoculars which they had also slung about their necks. Now they raced up the ladder to join Jim.
In a little more than a minute the submerged routine had been terminated and surface condition established; S-16 plowed through the choppy waters of the Sound along the track which Jim’s torpedo had taken, and as the engines were started, a frozen blast of air poured into the control room from the now-open passage to the bridge. When Jim sent for Keith to take over the bridge watch, I followed him up, the vague feeling of uneasiness which had grown during the previous hour still permeating me.
The Quartermaster was just receiving the tail end of a semaphore message from Falcon when I arrived topside. “HIT TEN YARDS FORWARD MOT X TORPEDO IN SIGHT BT.”
Jim was delighted. He slapped Keith on the back. “What do you think of that, hey? I knew that was a hit the minute I let her go! That old Falcon out there is sunk colder than hell. I guess that’s all, hey? I guess that showed the Board—turn her around and head for the barn.”
Keith seemed as happy over the successful shot as Jim, but at the latter’s last words I could sense his question. It was hard to tell whether Jim meant it as a command or was merely expressing his feelings.
“Easy, old man,” I said. “The rules don’t let you go back to port until Falcon picks up your fish.”
“Ah, hell, skipper,” Jim grinned unabashed, “they’re practically alongside of it already. Let’s at least start back.”
It was true. The Falcon had turned as soon as the torpedo passed under her and had followed its wake. S-16, not having changed course since firing, had been proceeding all this time in the same direction, gradually increasing her speed as her ballast tanks went dry. Up ahead the Falcon still had the two flag hoists signifying “torpedo in sight” at her yardarm, and several ship lengths ahead of her we could see the splashes as the torpedo, its exercise head having blown dry, expended its last few ounces of fuel and air before coming to a stop.
I knew what Keith was thinking. Our squadron orders required that the Torpedo Officer of the firing submarine see the torpedo out of the water before departing the area. Later, after our return to New London, Keith would likewise have to inspect the torpedo with the Falcon’s Torpedo Officer and sign the torpedo record book.
“We’d better stick around just a bit longer, Jim,” I said easily. “Might as well do it right, you know. Besides, don’t forget the Board down there is watching everything you do. They might not agree with your shoving off so soon.”
Jim shot me a startled look for a split second, then relaxed with a short laugh.
“Guess you’re right at that.” Then he turned to Keith. “Close on in to the Falcon until you can see them hoist the fish out of the water.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” answered Keith, taking the measure of the Falcon through his binoculars.
Strangely enough, I had begun to notice that not once on this day’s operations had Jim called me “Captain” or used the word “Sir” in our conversations. A little friendly colloquialism is not unexpected in submarines, and it was not anything definite that one could lay a finger on. It was, however, almost always customary to call one’s skipper, “Sir” or “Captain.” Nobody else in the ship used titles in normal address, nor was it customary for the skipper to do so in speaking to officers or crew. It was noticeable also that apparently by tacit understanding both Keith and Tom had on this day, contrary to their normal habit, used the word “Sir” in official conversation with Jim. Perhaps I was imagining things, but I could not quite decide whether Jim’s omission had any significance.
It was now nearing noon. We had been under way since shortly after eight o’clock. The day, instead of warming with the sun, had turned even more chilly during our short submergence. I buttoned the top button on my coat and turned the collar up to protect my ears. A few moments ago I had been too hot and had been perspiring. Now I was shivering. Jim and Keith, too, had already buttoned themselves up. They had put their hands in their pockets and were shielding themselves as well as they could from the biting wind whistling over the bridge. Occasionally severe health problems resulted from the rapid changes of temperature and pressure experienced by submariners, but they certainly made for a maximum of discomfort all the time, I reflected, as I sought the leeward side of the periscope standards.
Falcon now slowed down and we gained on her rapidly. We could see the torpedo, its yellow head bobbing in the water a few yards on her port beam. Keith gave the order to decrease our speed.
Men were leaning over Falcon’s rail with pieces of line in their hands, one man in particular with a grapnel or hook on the end of a pole. Her long hoisting boom on the afterdeck was swung over to the port side, and you could see that hooking the torpedo would be a mighty tricky business, even with the relatively small sea that was running. With no way on, Falcon rolled mightily; every time she rolled to port the end of the boom splashed in the water. In calmer days they would have put a man on the boom, or even lowered him to pass a line through the ring on the nose of the torpedo. Today it would have been suicide.
With the Falcon rolling violently and the torpedo bobbing up and down, they had their work cut out for them. As I watched, the man with the grapnel leaned way out over the rail, made a stab—and was drenched from head to foot with solid green water which suddenly rose up under Falcon’s counter just as he was reaching. For a moment I thought he must have gone overboard, but the wave receded and he was still there, doubled over the bulwark and clutching it with both hands, a heretofore unnoticed line leading from his waist inboard. There was no sign of his pole, and I thought it gone until I noticed another man hauling in on another line trailing astern, and in a moment he had returned the first man’s equipment.
He made several more stabs, each ineffectual, until Jim directed Keith to bring us close aboard on the other side of the torpedo so as to make a lee for it. For fear of drifting down upon it, the Falcon had had to come up to leeward of the torpedo, leaving it to windward and thus making it most difficult to lasso. The interposition of the lower-lying and slower-drifting S-16 to windward created a lee of comparatively smooth water and made the difference. Within minutes after we had moved up we saw the torpedo in the air being hoisted onto Falcon’s capacious afterdeck.
“Good thing we waited, hey, Keith,” said Jim.
Keith had no opportunity for reply, for at this moment a voice beneath us spoke up.
“Permission to come on the bridge?” It was Roy Savage.
“Permission granted,” rejoined Jim, with a glance at me.
It had been crowded before on S-16’s cramped little bridge, bundled as we all were against the cold, and the addition of a seventh person made it a very tight squeeze indeed.
“How’d the torpedo look?” asked Savage.
“Fine, sir,” replied Jim. “Hit ten yards forward of the M.O.T.”
“I mean the torpedo itself, when they picked it up,” insisted Savage.
Keith, who had been inspecting the Falcon through his binoculars, spoke up. “It looked all right, Captain. No dents that we could see. Propellers and rudders looked okay. They got it aboard without hitting the side.”
“Good,” rejoined Savage. Then he turned to Jim. “Signal the Falcon to return to base.”
Rubinoffski, being not more than two feet away, had heard also. Jim nodded to him and the Quartermaster leaped lightly on top of the periscope supports, bracing himself with one foot on the bridge rail against the wind, as he unfurled his semaphore flags.
Savage was talking to Jim: “We want to go through a few emergency drills before returning to port. After you get the message off to Falcon get clear of her and dive. We’ll spring the emergencies on you after you get her down.
“Aye, aye, sir,” answered Jim, and Roy Savage disappeared below again. As he did so, Jim turned to me, his face contorted, “Good God! What more can they want? They saw me hit with the torpedo, didn’t they? And they’ve worked me over for three days besides—”
The feeling of uneasiness with which I had come on the bridge, and which had remained and intensified during the minutes prior to the recovery of the torpedo, became stronger yet. I beckoned to Jim—crowded over with him in the after corner of the bridge.
“Jim, old man,” I said in a low tone. “That wasn’t a very good approach.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look, Jim, you were just plain lucky. You ran for over five minutes at high speed without making a single observation. If the Falcon had zigged during that time instead of at the end, you would never have got close enough to shoot.”
“Nothing so lucky about that: when she flashed the light she was on one course, and when I finally got a look at her through the periscope she was on another one. So I knew she had already zigged and wouldn’t zig again for a while!”
“Well, okay,” I said, “though that’s not a very realistic way of doing it. Another thing: not once during the entire approach did you look around with the periscope. If there had been another ship in the area, or if the target had been escorted, you might have got us in serious trouble.”
“But there weren’t any other ships anywhere around! I knew that. I took a good look all around before we dived.”
“That’s not the point, Jim. There are plenty of unrealities in the whole thing, among them that the target flashes a light at us and runs toward us. What if the Falcon had gone the other way—headed out through the Race toward Montauk Point? Then you’d not have had an approach at all. But the worst thing was that at the very end of the approach, at the firing point, you obviously lost the picture. Keith saved the approach for you—”
Jim’s face became a mottled red. “The hell he did!” he almost shouted. “Who put the ship in firing position? Who aimed the torpedo? He was my assistant, wasn’t he—it’s his job to back me up!”
I still spoke in a placating tone. “I know you did, Jim, but remember when you said he had zigged away? Keith knew he had not zigged. You announced the angle on the bow as ninety, which is about what it should have been. Frequently when the target passes at close range just at the time of firing, it looks like a zig, and you fell for it. You wouldn’t have fired at all if Keith hadn’t made you.”
Jim’s jaw muscles bulged. “What are you telling me all this for? Don’t you want me to be qualified? Are you for me or against me?”
“I want you to be qualified just as much as you do, Jim,” I said steadily, “but what I am trying to say is that the Qualification Board has probably picked up these same points I’m telling you about.”
Jim muttered an obscenity. “Damn this whole thing, anyway,” he mumbled.
We would have talked further but there came a voice from the conning tower.
“Commander Savage wants Mr. Bledsoe in the control room!”
Jim swung away abruptly without another word and went below.
The Falcon, with our torpedo secured on deck, had already started on her way back to port. Keith in the meantime had turned the ship around and was heading back toward the point where we had previously dived. He looked at me inquiringly, bowing his head against the stiff breeze which on this new course whipped straight across our bridge. There was nothing I could tell him about what had just gone on.
“Keith,” I said, “you know what you’re supposed to do. As soon as Jim passes up the word, go ahead and dive.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” answered Keith. “We’re still rigged for dive, but the hatch has not been checked yet.”
“Hasn’t it?” I asked, surprised.
“No, sir. We were crowded up here, and Jim said not to bother because we weren’t going to dive again.” Our ship’s orders required that the bridge hatch be inspected while rigging the ship for dive, and again after every surfacing. This involved closing it, and if we were under way the skipper’s assent was therefore required. “I’ll ask Jim for permission to check it as soon as you get below,” said Keith. Ordinarily, of course, I would have given the authority, but today was Jim’s show. Even with Jim and Roy Savage below, however, there was hardly any room to spare on the bridge, and Keith evidently wanted to spare me the contortions necessary to allow him room to shut it.
“Very well,” I answered, and dropped down the hatch into what passed for a conning tower in an S-boat, hardly more than an enlargement of the hatch trunk down to the control room. It contained a built-in desk, used by Jim and the Quartermaster for some of their navigational work, and some signaling equipment. It was not like a fleet boat’s conning tower, however, nor really a “conning tower” at all, in the strict sense, for the ship could by no means be conned from there.
Set into the steel walls on either side were two tiny round windows, or eye-ports made of thick glass. Occasionally some member of the crew would watch a dive from there or seek some of the mysteries of the undersea from this vantage point.
In the floor was a hatch identical to the bridge hatch, thus permitting complete isolation of the compartment should it become necessary. Like the bridge hatch, its weight was counterbalanced by a large coil spring—too much so, as a matter of fact, and now that it had become “worn in” a bit the hatch, during the last few days, had developed an unpleasant tendency to resist being closed or to fling itself open when undogged.
As I reached for the hand rail preparatory to continuing below, Jim appeared, standing on the control-room deck, framed in the open hatchway.
“Bridge!” he shouted.
“Bridge, aye, aye!” answered Keith from above.
“Take her down!” Jim shouted. “Course two-seven-oh!”
Looking upward, I could see Keith’s face as he leaned over the hatch opening, cupped his left hand to his mouth. “Permission to check the hatch first, sir!” he answered.
The light from the hatchway was in Jim’s face and I knew he could not see me. Keith already had hold of the hatch, had swung it part-way shut. “It’ll just take a minute, Jim,” he yelled, “—okay?”
The past four days had been hell for Jim, and I could most strongly sympathize with his feelings at this point. Even so, his next action was unwarranted.
He shook his head in an impatient negative. Hands gripping the ladder rails and head thrown back, he shouted imperatively up the opening, “Take her down, I said!”
Keith had no further choice. “Clear the bridge!” he called in answer. A moment later came the two blasts of the diving alarm.
I stepped clear of the lower hatch, drew back into the recess of the conning tower near the eye-ports. Watching through them as our narrow slotted deck went under and the sea rose up to meet us had always been irresistibly fascinating to me, and I was never tired of an excuse to do so.
With the diving alarm still reverberating, one lookout and then the other appeared, scurrying down the ladder. Both continued straight on through the lower hatch to the control room below. Next came Rubinoffski, and then Keith. In the meantime from the control room there were sounds of air escaping as the vents went open.
The first intimation of something wrong was the noise made by the hatch as Keith pulled it to. Instead of the satisfying thud of the latch snapping home and the gasket seating on the rim, there was a peculiar, arresting clank to it.
Keith’s face went dead-white. I leaped to his side as he struggled with the hatch dogging mechanism. A glance disclosed the trouble. Somehow the dogs had not been fully retracted when the hatch had been opened the last time, and now, by the narrowest fraction of an inch, one of them was caught between the hatch and its seat!
Nor was this all. The latch, having enough slack in it to latch easily, had entered its slot and engaged. Try as we could, Keith and I could not push it free, nor could we budge the dogging mechanism. The hatch was locked in its present position, with daylight showing all around the edge by a matter of an inch or so. Jammed as it was, the only way of clearing it was with a maul and a heavy screw-driver or chisel.
I could sense, rather than feel, S-16 settling beneath us as my mind encompassed the significance of our situation. There was no maul to be had in the conning tower, nor any time to work on the hatch if there were. Our only hope lay in stopping the boat from diving.
“Stop the dive!” I yelled down the hatch at my feet. “Hatch jammed!”—in an effort to let the control room know what was wrong. Our “hull openings” indicator, or “Christmas Tree,” might still be showing red for the bridge hatch, though there was a strong possibility that since the hatch was nearly shut, it might have gone green.
In answer there came a whistling noise from below, and air commenced to escape through the partly open hatch. With a groan I realized the control room had not heard my order and was carrying out standard diving procedure—admitting high pressure air into the boat as a test for tightness. If the barometer went up and then held steady after the air was shut off, it indicated that the hull was airtight, hence watertight. A good test under leisurely circumstances—but worse than useless in this instance because the boat was not watertight, and it was already diving. Not until the control room shut the air valve in order to check the barometer would the ship’s inability to hold air become evident. In addition, until then the noise made its personnel unable to hear anything we might shout down the hatch from the conning tower above.
In the meantime I could feel S-16 tilting her nose down. It was still only about twenty seconds since the diving alarm had been sounded, but we had only about the same number of seconds left.
“Leone,” I snapped. “Get below and surface the boat.”
Keith gave me a scared look and bolted below.
Undecided as to my next move, I stood there, feeling far from heroic, half standing on the ladder and hanging on to the hatch wheel with both hands. I looked it over carefully. The latch, the immediate cause of the jamming, was partly home under the rim of the hatch seat. Made of a piece of steel about a quarter of an inch in thickness, it offered only a relatively sharp edge to push or hammer on. Attached by a linkage to the latch, so that it would retract when the latch engaged, was a short bolt supposed to intersect the spokes of the hatch hand wheel when the hatch was fully open to keep the hand wheel from turning. The bolt was retracted, all right, as it should be, but the hand wheel still would not turn in either direction. Three of the four hatch dogs had slipped past the inside edge of the hatch seat, but one was clearly caught on top, jammed between the seat and the hatch itself. With one dog jammed one way and three the other, the hand wheel was effectively prevented from any movement whatsoever.
The only way to clear the jam was to push back the latch, open the hatch, reverse the hand wheel so as to take up the lost motion, retract the dogs, and haul it shut again. Standing on the second rung of the ladder to reach it, bracing myself and wrapping my left arm around the rail, I pushed on the latch with all my might with my right hand. Nothing happened. I tried hammering it with my clenched fist, bruising the fleshy part of the hand in the process. Still no luck, though my hand ached.
Suddenly the noise of air blowing stopped from the control room, though air still hissed out the open ring around the hatch. In a second I heard the noise of the main vents shutting and more air blowing, a different note, as high-pressure air whistled into the main ballast tanks. Keith had gotten through and surfacing procedures had been started.
But there could be no stopping the downward momentum of a thousand tons of steel. Suddenly I heard a gurgling sound. A quick look through the nearest eye-port was rewarded with a splash of sudsy foam; then another and then suddenly there was green water and the daylight in the conning tower grew dimmer.
Air continued to hiss out above me, as the slightly increased pressure in the reservoir of S-16’s hull equalized to atmosphere. I could hear water climbing quickly up the watertight structure. Obviously the boat would not stop before the open hatch went under. There was no telling, in fact, how far she might go down, and maybe the sudden inrush of tons of water into the ship would overbalance the slight amount of positive buoyancy we were gaining by the air going into her tanks.
At this point I don’t remember any further conscious thought about it. Once the hatch went under, water would rush into the control room, sweeping people away from their stations, shorting the electrical equipment—generally making a mess of things and possibly knocking out the bow and stern planes, the main motor control, and the high-pressure air manifold on which our safety now depended. If the control room were flooded, nothing could keep the ship from sinking to the bottom of Long Island Sound. Perhaps some of the crew would be able to shut watertight doors leading forward or aft, but men trapped in the control room would certainly be drowned, while those who managed to save themselves from that fate would be faced with the prospect of slow suffocation if for any reason the rescue bell or the Momsen lung device could not be used.
It is said that a drowning man sees his whole life flash before him. Perhaps my sensation at that moment was somewhat the same. Certainly it could have taken me no more than a second to race through all these possibilities.
Water, which had been gurgling up the sides of the conning tower, now reached the hatch—there, meeting the gush of air still streaming out, it blew idiotically backward, and only a few drops fell inside.
From my position on the ladder I could see into the control room through the still-open lower hatch. I leaned toward it and roared, “Shut the hatch!” Just below it stood Tom Schultz, and I caught a glimpse of his twisted face as, without a word, he reached up, grabbed the hand wheel, and tried to pull it down. It was awkward for him and the spring resisted movement. He had the hatch almost closed when it swung partly open again. I sprang off the ladder and landed on the top of the hatch, holding it shut with my weight while Tom spun the hand wheel between my feet from below, sealing it tight.
Instantly a deluge of cold sea water hit me in the back, knocking me to my hands and knees. I struggled to my feet in a veritable Niagara of angry ocean pouring into the conning tower. I still remember a moment of wonder at the tremendous amount of water that came in despite the fact that the hatch was actually ninety per cent closed. It rose rapidly in the tiny compartment, and I could feel the pressure on my ears as the air was compressed. Ultimately, of course, a condition of equilibrium would be reached and the air would commence to bubble out through the hole at the top. Frantically I searched the overhead for some high protected corner where I might be able to find a few gulps of precious air when the compartment became entirely flooded.
S-16 now commenced to right herself, her bow slowly coming up. With the flooding confined to the conning tower, there was no doubt that she would get back to the surface all right. The question was whether I could manage to avoid drowning until someone was able to come out through another hatch and rescue me. With that weight of water in the conning tower there would be no hope of pushing open the lower hatch and draining it through there. Besides, with the difficulties they were facing below they might not even think of me for a few minutes.
I climbed up on the tiny chart desk, bumping my head against the overhead, but the water had reached my waist and was rising rapidly when it stopped coming in as though a hydrant had been shut off. I can remember the instantaneous relief. The ship was safe, and so, in a few moments, would I be.
It was several minutes in fact before anything else happened. I found out later that, unable to open the lower conning-tower hatch, Keith and Kohler had come up through the forward torpedo room, rushed over the slippery deck, and climbed up on the bridge. With a large open-end wrench which Keith had snatched up, they began battering at the latching mechanism from above. I shouted to them to stop for fear of breaking it, had them slide the wrench through the opening to me down below. Sloshing backward away from the hatch I measured the distance, swung gently and fair, and tapped the latch free on the first blow. The hatch instantly swung open under the combined heave of the two anxious men above.
After dogging the hatch properly from topside, the three of us made our way forward and below via the torpedo-room hatch. Jim was waiting at the foot of the ladder.
“You fool,” he hissed at Keith. “Do you realize what you almost did?” His face was livid with emotion and his lips quivered with the fury of his voice. I could see Keith wilt.
“That will be all for you, Leone,” Jim raged, “this will be your last day in submarines. You ought to be court-martialed!”
I was amazed at Jim’s outburst. Kohler and three or four other members of the crew who happened to be in the forward torpedo room stared their shocked surprise.
“Cut it out,” I told Jim. “It wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t Keith’s fault.” Then I tried to relieve the tension a little. “So what if I did get a little soaking? I needed a bath anyway!” The joke fell flat. I motioned Keith up ahead of me through the watertight door into the forward battery compartment and followed him, dripping a trail behind.
A difficult decision confronted me, and I had to make it immediately. Roy Savage, Carl Miller, and Stocker Kane might—just possibly—still qualify Jim, particularly if I made excuses for him and pressed his case. Captain Blunt would of course take their word for it. The question which weighted me, as I sloshed my way aft to change clothes, was the same one with which I had got Jim—and myself—into the present impasse.
Except that the last four days had been an eye-opener. I knew, now, that I could never turn the S-16 over to Jim, at least not until he had amassed considerably more experience and steadiness under stress. And I also knew that the whole situation had really been my own fault. I might have been blind, might have temporarily been tempted, but I could never face myself if anything later happened to S-16 under Jim’s command. Everything he had done these last several days, every thought he had had, every word he had said, clearly demonstrated his unreadiness for that type of added responsibility. And yet, there was no denying that he was a fine submariner, all-in-all an asset to the Navy, and that he would not be in this situation had I not, for my own advantage, put him in it.
No matter how I argued it, it all came back to the same thing. I had to choose between sacrificing the S-16 or Jim. In either case, I was really the one to blame and there was not a thing in the world that anyone could do about that. As our sorry little procession wound its way between the bunks in the forward end of the battery compartment toward the wardroom and Jim’s and my stateroom, I went over and over the situation in my mind. There was only one thing to do, and it was up to me.
When we reached the curtain in the doorway I turned to Jim. “Come in a minute, will you, Jim?” I said. The others, sensing their dismissal, went on. Jim stepped with me into our little room, automatically reached for a cigarette. He avoided my eyes as he offered me one. I ignored it. This was going to be tough.
“Jim,” I said, “I’m more sorry than I can possibly tell you. I’ll take over. I want you to start us back for New London. I’ll explain to the board.”
Jim had just taken a deep drag. With his lungs full of tobacco smoke he at first seemed not to hear, and then as it sank home he choked. “Why, you—you—” he gobbled for a moment, unable to speak. He threw the cigarette on the floor, stamped it furiously, opened and shut his mouth twice without a word. When he finally found his voice, his words were in direct contradiction of every naval tradition, everything he had learned, all the indoctrination the Navy had exposed him to. He spoke in a manner which no self-respecting person could forgive or forget, no commander of a United States man-of-war could condone. And yet I couldn’t do any more to him after what I had already done. I had to take it, had to let him get away with it, had to swallow the sudden sick indignation.
“You Goddammed son-of-a-bitch,” he said.
