Pacific Standoff, page 11
At the same moment the squawk box announced, “Aircraft contact! Aircraft contact!”
Mr. Church hurried to the port side of the bridge and took a single look backwards, then said, “Clear the bridge!” As Tommy and his partner slid down the poles and scurried for the hatch, he pressed the diving alarm button. Ah-oo-gah! Ah-oo-gah! “Dive! Dive!” The quartermaster half-fell down the ladder and waited at the bottom to close the hatch. As the lieutenant left the bridge, the bow of the Manta was already dipping beneath the ice.
“All ahead full, make your depth eighty feet.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Jack’s head appeared in the control-room hatch. He caught Bob’s eye. “Any problem?”
Bob shook his head. “Aircraft. A long-range flying boat, by the looks of it. I doubt he saw us.”
“Eighty feet, sir. Zero bubble.”
“Very well, come right to course 0-5-0.”
“0-5-0, aye, aye.” The helmsman spun the wheel, caught it, and corrected. If the Jap plane had spotted them and followed their wake, he would now be haring off in the wrong direction.
Bob relaxed, convinced that the minor emergency had been taken care of, but then he noticed that the skipper looked concerned. Had he overlooked something? “What’s wrong, Jack?” he asked in an undertone. If there was a problem, he needn’t share it with everyone in the conning tower.
“How thick is the ice up there?”
“I don’t know, three or four inches I suppose. Not enough to be a problem, anyway—the bow goes through it like a hot knife through butter.”
“The bow, yes; but what happens when we try to surface?”
Bob gave him a puzzled glance, then his eyes widened. “My God!” he exclaimed softly. “The periscopes! The radar masts!”
Jack nodded grimly. “They were never meant to take that kind of sideways force. The radar antennas will simply carry away, and as for the scopes, even if they aren’t damaged, the slightest change in the alignment of the bearings will make them useless to us.”
“Christ, what an idiot I am! It never occurred to me.”
“Rest easy. It didn’t occur to me, either, not to mention the staff back at SubPac. The question is, what do we do about it? We’d better get Lou and Charlie in on this, too. One of them may have an idea.”
Five minutes later the senior officers were seated around the wardroom table. The seriousness of the situation was clear to all of them. Unless they found a solution, Manta would be practically blind whether surfaced or submerged. Her usefulness as an offensive weapon would be destroyed, and even her ability to defend herself against enemy attack would be badly harmed.
“How far south would we have to go to find open water?” asked Charlie.
Lou responded. “We started hitting ice about halfway through the morning watch, say, 0600, so three hours at fourteen knots, call it forty miles. Eight hours submerged, give or take a bit.”
“No can do,” said Jack. “We’d just have to turn north again to reach our station, and the next time we’re forced under we have the same problem again. If we have to do it that way, I’ll radio Pearl that we’re scrubbing the mission. I’d hate to get the boat off on the wrong foot like that.”
The others nodded; it would be a terrible blow to morale if Manta had to creep back to Pearl with her tail between her legs. “Suppose we come to a dead stop,” Bob offered, “and surface on ballast tanks alone. That way the periscopes will hit the ice end-on.
They considered that for a few moments, then Lou shook his head. “I don’t think we could keep her trim and level without some way on her, especially while we’re blowing the tanks. If we go up at any angle at all, that’s it for the scopes.”
“Yeah,” added Charlie, “and even if we do it perfectly, we lose the radar.”
Jack seemed abstracted from this discussion. Suddenly he said, “How much up-angle would we need for the bow to surface before the top of the periscope shears?”
They grasped his idea immediately: to use the bow of the submarine to break through the ice and clear a space for the less rugged conning tower. But no one knew the answer to his question. Finally Bob sent for the ship-recognition books and laid a protractor on the profile of a Gato-class submarine. “Fifteen degrees ought to do it,” he reported.
“Good. See if you can work out what depth the gauge will read with a fifteen-degree angle on the boat and the bow just above the surface. If we’re going to try this, we might as well get to it and find out the worst.”
Ten minutes later Jack stood in the control room just behind Paul Wing. Dutch, at the diving manifold, and the two sailors manning the plane wheels had been carefully briefed. Jack took the intercom mike from the wall and pressed the button. “Attention all hands. Attention all hands. Prepare for severe up-angle. I repeat, prepare for severe up-angle. That is all.” He nodded to Paul, who said, “All ahead one-third. Blow bow buoyancy tank. Commence blowing MBT’s one and two. Bow planes, full rise.”
The submarine’s deck started to slant at once, becoming steeper and steeper as the buoyant bow tried to rise while the still-heavy stern started to sink lower. Jack hooked his elbow around a rung of the ladder to the conning tower and reminded himself that he had resolved not to interfere unless it looked like Paul was making a mess of it. So far the kid was doing fine.
“Watch your bubble,” Paul snapped. “Handsomely, now. Commence blowing MBT six—no, belay that! Flood two, and trim for thirty-eight feet.” According to Bob’s calculations the bow of the boat was now protruding above the surface of the ice and cutting a path at three knots. In a matter of moments it would clear a space large enough for the boat to surface without damage. Paul glanced over at Jack for confirmation before saying, “Very well, blow two, six, and seven. Surface!” The diving alarm sounded three times and the deck started to level off.
Jack quickly scaled the ladder to the conning tower. “Crack the hatch,” he told White. “Lookouts to the bridge!” He was followed closely by Pulaski, the radioman, and Deegan, the radar technician, who scrambled up the sides of the periscope shears to inspect their antennas, reported that they looked okay, and went below again to test the equipment. The two periscopes whined as they were raised and lowered gingerly, but they seemed undamaged. Apparently Manta’s first trial as an icebreaker was a success.
As it turned out, that battle with the ice was the only excitement for several days. The submarine cruised east of the Kurile Islands, always on the surface, undisturbed by further Jap planes or patrol boats, or by the enemy battle fleet she had been sent to intercept. Jack was so bored that he wrote in the log an account of a low-level bombing attack on the bridge by a large gull. He wondered as he did it if Admiral Garfield had a good sense of humor.
The officers were in the wardroom at dinner when Pulaski appeared in the hatchway. “This is for you, Skipper,” he said, holding out a message form. “It just came over Fox Schedule.”
Jack took it and saw the prefix ULTRA. Whatever information the message contained, it had been gleaned from the Japs themselves by the top-secret code-breaking operation at Pearl. He hurried to his stateroom, unlocked the safe, and started decoding the five-letter groups. The Japs had called off their plan to oppose the Americans in the Aleutians, he learned; the Grand Fleet had returned to its base in the Inland Sea. Manta was to proceed south to Kobe Zaki to intercept a northbound supply convoy, then continue patrolling toward Hokkaido. Jack let out a whoop that brought the other officers crowding into the narrow passageway.
“Lay a course for Kobe Zaki,” he told Bob, “and bend on four engines. We’re off to find some fat marus!”
Chapter 11
The convoy arrived just when ComSubPac said it would. A rain squall hid it from view, but not from the submarine’s radar. Deegan studied the blips and reported, “Five vessels, skipper, three good-sized and two smaller. Range twenty-five thousand yards.”
“Very well. Station the plotting party.” Bob and his men crowded around the small plot-table at the rear of the conning tower to begin the exacting and essential task of detecting the course and speed of the enemy ships. As Deegan passed on bearings and ranges to them, the tiny penciled X’s gradually took on a recognizable pattern. “Base course 0-3-5,” Bob reported. “They’re zigzagging fifteen degrees to either side of base every fifteen minutes. Speed twelve knots.”
“Good; project that and give me a course to intercept.”
Bob made some additional calculations. “Course 2-8-5 at six knots will put us fifteen hundred yards off the track, skipper.”
“Right. Helm, come right to course 2-8-5.” He leaned over the open hatch to the control room. “Okay, Paul,” he shouted, “pull the plug!” The diving alarm sounded and the deck started to slant even before White had finished sealing the bridge hatch. “Maneuvering, make turns for six knots. Bob, how long until we’re in position?”
“About fourteen minutes.”
“We’ll go to battle stations now.” Ryan sounded the doorbell chimes of “general quarters” and said into the mike, “Battle stations submerged. Battle stations submerged.” For a few moments they could hear bustle below then Ryan said, “The boat is at battle stations, sir.”
Jack looked around the conning tower. The eight-by-sixteen-foot space was jammed with men intent on their jobs, but he noticed an oversight. He beckoned to the man on messenger watch and said, “Find Gold and tell him to get up here with his pad.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” The sailor vanished down the hatch and returned a minute later, followed by Yeoman Second Class Mike Gold.
“Yeo,” said Jack, “I want you to take notes throughout the attack. Do you have a battle station?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, you do now. Just try to stay out of the way.” He reached for the “pickle” that controlled the periscope hoist. “Slow to three knots!”
“Three knots, aye, aye.”
The moment the boat slowed down, he raised the attack scope, caught the handles, and pressed his face to the rubber eyepiece. He turned to the left and stopped. “I have the convoy in view,” he announced. “A tanker of four thousand tons, two marus of twenty-five hundred tons, two kaibokan-type escorts positioned ahead and to starboard. Angle on the bow is seventy-five degrees starboard. Bearing—Mark! Range—Mark!” He lowered the periscope and turned to Bob. “What about that angle on the bow? Are we going to be caught out in right field?”
If Bob was worried, he wasn’t letting it show. “They’re due to zig right in less than a minute. That’ll bring them directly down our alley.”
“Check.” He raised his voice so that everyone in the conning tower, including the yeoman in the corner with his shorthand pad, could hear him. “We will attack as follows: We will launch three-torpedo spreads at the tanker, then the starboard freighter, then swap ends and launch three fish from the stern tubes at the other maru. As soon as the stern fish are launched, we will go deep.” He pointed his forefinger at Ryan, who repeated his words into the sound-powered phones, to be relayed to the men in the other compartments of the boat. “Rig the boat for depth charge.”
A series of bangs as the quarter-ton watertight doors were slammed shut and dogged tight, then Ryan said, “Rigged for depth charge, sir.”
Jack glanced at his watch and raised the periscope again. He noticed that his palms were damp; it had been a long time since he last conducted an attack. Had he lost his touch? It did happen, he knew of a couple of cases. He caught the periscope yoke, almost dreading what he might see, the Jap convoy sailing by out of reach. “It’s a zig right!” he said excitedly. “Angle on the bow forty-five starboard. Bearing—Mark! Range—Mark!”
Lou fed the new readings into the TDC and studied the dials. “We’ll be at our launch point in two minutes, Skipper. Recommend course 2-6-5 for a zero-gyro shot, distance to track sixteen hundred.”
“Make it so,” Jack told the helmsman, who twitched the wheel to the left and studied the gyrocompass as it started to revolve, then brought the rudder back to amidships.
“Open the outer doors forward.” He raised the periscope again. The Jap convoy was still coming on, unaware of the destruction that awaited it. “This is a shooting observation,” said Jack coolly, fixing the hairline squarely on the center of the tanker. “Bearing—Mark!”
“Set,” Lou said, then, a moment later, “Solution light!”
“Shoot.”
Bob slipped up the switch marked #1 and pushed down the big brass firing handle. “Fire one!” Ten seconds later, “Fire two!… Fire three!”
“Three torpedoes fired electrically, sir!”
“Check fire. Shifting targets.” Ignoring the three lines of bubbles that had suddenly appeared in front of him, he shifted the periscope slightly to the left and lined it up on the nearer of the two freighters. “New target, bearing—Mark!”
“Set. Solution light.”
“Shoot.”
“Fire four!… Fire five!…
“Sir,” Ryan shouted, “five’s running hot in the tube!”
“Check firing!” This was bad news indeed. The torpedo in tube number five had not left the tube, but its motor had started running. Without the cooling or the resistance of the water, the motor would run wild, perhaps tearing itself to pieces or even welding the torpedo to the inside of the tube. But that was not the worst: the warhead, six hundred pounds of high explosive, was designed to arm itself after the motor had completed a certain number of revolutions. Once it was armed, anything might set if off, a wave striking the bow, the vibrations of the boat’s structure, even the attempts to dislodge it. And if it went off, it would certainly sink the boat. “Bleed maximum pressure into number five and fire manually!” Jack ordered.
A tense silence fell, lasting until Ryan said, “Five’s away, skipper!” Only then did Jack realize he had been holding his breath. He turned back to the periscope as Bob raised his stopwatch to shoulder height.
Thwomp! A distant explosion shook the boat, setting the light bulbs swinging and knocking a forgotten coffee cup off a ledge. “We got the tanker, knocked her bow off!” Thwomp! “Another, middle of target! There goes her cargo! There’s a fireball two hundred feet high!” He swept the periscope to right and left. “Uh-oh, here comes the kaibokan, and does he look mad! We’ll give him number six as a going-away present. Bearing—Mark!”
“Set.”
“Shoot!” Bob pressed the handle for the sixth time. The moment the torpedo left the tube, Jack ordered the boat to dive to three hundred feet and rig for silent running. The sudden absence of noise was shocking. Every motor, every system, every activity that might reveal their location to the listeners on the Jap subchaser stopped. The electric motors turned the two bronze propellers just fast enough to make the rudder and diving planes effective. In the conning tower the temperature and humidity started climbing at once. All eyes turned toward Josh Delancey, the sonar operator or “ping jockey,” who was now their only source of information about what was happening above, on the surface.
“High-speed screws bearing 3-5-4,” Delancey chanted. “Pinging. He hasn’t found us yet. Bearing changing, 3-5-0, 3-4-5, 3-3-5 … he’s swerved aside, Skipper!”
“Must have spotted our fish,” Bob muttered. “Too bad we didn’t have a spread of them for him.”
“Come right,” Jack ordered. “Helm, take your course from the sonar; try to keep him on a 1-8-0 bearing.” By pointing the sub’s stern at the Jap ship, they offered the smallest possible target for his sonar.
As Delancey continued to sing out the bearings of the kaibokan, his listeners formed a picture of an increasingly frustrated Jap captain ranging back and forth, quartering the area, sending his ultra-high-frequency sounds in every direction in search of the enemy submarine that he knew was in the area. But he never even came close. After almost three quarters of an hour of this deadly game the Manta shook again at a series of closely spaced but distant explosions. Delancey jumped up and tore the earphones from his head in pain. He had not turned down the volume control in time.
Gold, the yeoman, grabbed the earphones and listened intently. “Screws retreating, sir! He’s breaking off the attack!”
Jack strode over to the sonar console and listened through the spare headphones. No doubt about it, the kaibokan was going back to the remains of his convoy. “Secure from depth charge, secure from silent running,” Jack ordered. “Make your depth sixty feet.” Grins broke out in the conning tower as the ventilation system was turned back on. Jack mopped his face and said, “He must have dropped half a dozen depth charges at random, just to save face.”
“But why wasn’t he able to find us?” asked Lou. “He must have passed right over us three or four times.”
“We must have lucked onto a thermocline,” Jack replied. “When you have layers of water at different temperatures and densities, sometimes the boundary between them bounces the sonar impulses back as if it were solid, so it effectively hides anything underneath it. Us, for instance. There’s a gizmo now for detecting them, but from what I hear, it’s so delicate that, by the time you find out what you want to know, you’re already eating depth charges.”
From the control room came the word, “Sixty feet.” Jack grabbed the pickle and raised the night periscope, larger and more powerful than the attack scope he had used before. He made a quick complete circle, then another, more slowly. “Out of sight. Surface!”
The moment the conning tower was out of the water, Jack was leaning over Deegan’s shoulder, watching the pattern of orange and green blips on the radar screen. Making sense of them was a difficult job, for which Deegan had been highly trained, and Jack waited for him to tell him what he was seeing.
“Here we got two good-sized ships and a smaller one,” the technician said, pointing. “Range twenty thousand yards, and this is another small fellow at ten thousand yards. That must be the guy who was after us, Skipper. He’s really burning up the road.”
