Pacific Standoff, page 22
“They’ve been doing what they can,” Church replied, with more belligerence in his voice than seemed called for. “Their top priority has to be control of the air over the strike area, though, and we’re operating well outside of that.”
“Let them extend it then,” DuToin returned heatedly. “Why should we turn seventy-five men into sitting ducks? It makes no sense at all!”
Jack decided it was time to intervene; both men’s faces were getting red. “Sense or no sense, we have our orders. I don’t have to like them, but I do have to carry them out. That doesn’t mean I have to take unnecessary risks, though. From now on we do it the way Skate did it at Wake: we surface flooded-down, nothing but bridge and bow exposed, and no more than four men topside. If we’d taken those precautions before, I wouldn’t have this busted wing to write home about.”
Later that day he found a moment to speak privately to his cousin. “Bob,” he said bluntly, “I don’t like the friction between you and Church. He’s a damned good submariner and a damned good exec, but the last couple of months he’s been operating at half-throttle. What’s going on?”
“Don’t blame me, Jack, blame yourself.”
“What is that supposed to mean, mister!” Jack blazed.
“Just what it sounded like, sir!” DuToin shot back. “I never asked to be put on periscope during attacks, it was your idea. It might even be a good one, but that’s beside the point. You passed over Church when you did it, and he got pissed off. But he thinks you hung the moon, so he had to lay the blame off on me. Not that we would have got along anyway—I don’t trust a guy who spends his leave in libraries. Was there anything else, sir?”
“Oh, climb down off your high horse,” said Jack tiredly. “Okay, I fumbled the ball that time. I meant to try the new setup with Bob, but I hadn’t gotten to it. Then you popped up and it seemed like the time was ripe. I thought it might put Bob’s nose out of joint, too, but I figured I could handle it. And I could have, if you’d helped out a little instead of throwing oil on the fire. Never mind, it’s my problem-one of the drawbacks of command. You’ll find out soon enough.” He smiled wryly, and after a moment DuToin returned the smile.
“Sorry, Skipper. I’ll try to make it up with him, or at least stay out of his hair. But if I were you, I’d put him on the scope the next time we sight a target. He’ll forget about me soon enough, after that.”
* * * *
Bob Church’s moment came after Manta received orders to transfer her six rescued flyers to a DD in mid-ocean and proceed to a point west of Kwajalein. The fall of Wake and the bombardment of the Gilberts had alerted the Japanese general staff to the threat to their vital bases in the Marshalls. Reinforcements were supposedly pouring in, and the Sub Force was handed the job of stopping them.
The first week on station, Manta’s lookouts saw nothing except occasional smoke from ships that were clearly out of reach. Then an ULTRA message directed them farther north, where a convoy laden with aircraft spare parts was expected to pass. The convoy showed up right on schedule, halfway through the forenoon watch, and Jack called the crew to battle stations. Bob looked surprised when Jack sent him to the periscope, but they had worked that way often enough in training, and he fell right into it.
Five marus made up the convoy, with the most important one, of eight or nine thousand tons, in the center, screened by the smaller freighters as well as a fleet destroyer and two smaller escorts. Once Jack had the formation clearly in mind, he ordered a setup on the big maru. They would have to slip past the lead escort, then wait for a clear shot.
Bob Church’s technique on the scope was flawless, but just as he was raising it for a final observation, Delancey reported that the destroyer’s screws were speeding up. A particularly alert lookout had seen the periscope, and the tin can was coming over to investigate. Not turning a hair, the exec got his shooting bearings, lowered the periscope while the three fish were launched, then raised it again to get the bearing and range of the enemy destroyer that was thundering toward them. Our third down-the-throat shot, Jack thought; I hope three’s a lucky number.
The moment the third torpedo was away, Jack ordered a descent to 150 feet and a series of evasive turns. Even the distant roar of an exploding warhead did not distract him, though the men greeted it with cheers. Then the sound of another explosion reached them. Its timing was consistent with one of the torpedoes aimed at the destroyer. “Periscope depth,” said Jack curtly.
Bob caught the handles of the scope as they rose from the well, snapped them down into position, and rode them up to full height. Almost before the periscope had stopped its upward trip, he started it down again. “The maru is listing heavily to port and down by the stern,” he reported. “The destroyer is not under way, though I didn’t see any damage. One of the smaller escorts is standing by her.”
“Bearing?”
“1-6-5 relative. Range about two thousand yards.”
“Left rudder, all ahead one-third. Come left fifteen degrees. Ready the stern tubes.”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
Jack nodded to Bob, who raised the periscope again. “Targets are stationary and overlapping,” he said dispassionately. “Bearing—Mark!”
“1-7-8,” Ryan said, peering up at the azimuth ring around the periscope.
Bob twirled the stadimeter knob, backed up a little, edged it forward. “Range—Mark!”
“2-1-0-0 yards.”
“Set, Skipper,” said Lou from the TDC. “Solution.”
“Shoot.”
“Fire!” At sixty-second intervals four deadly twenty-one-foot-long fish were blown from the stern of the submarine by compressed air. Alcohol and water mixed, ignited, created steam; the steam struck the blades of a tiny turbine, spinning it at incredible speed; and the turbine, through a train of gears, turned the propeller of the torpedo, which forced it through the water at forty-six knots toward the two Jap warships.
Jack had started his stopwatch at the instant the first torpedo was launched. As the second hand started its second trip around the dial, he again nodded to Bob. The narration started as soon as the periscope head was above water. “The destroyer is still dead in the water; angle on the bow is now thirty starboard. The kaibokan is under way and may dodge the spread. Uh-oh, he’s seen either the wakes or the periscope. He’s coming this way.” Ker-blam! “We just shot the bows off that tin can!” Bob shouted, excitement breaking through his manner for the first time. “He’s settling by the bow! They’re lowering boats! The kaibokan is veering around, he’s going back to take them off!” He turned the periscope to the right, stopped, then continued to make a complete circle. “The maru is no longer visible, only debris. The other kaibokan appears to be rescuing survivors. The other four freighters are hull-down on the horizon.”
As the periscope hissed down into its well, everyone in the conning tower looked at Jack. Manta had just sunk a large cargo ship and a fleet destroyer, and both the remaining escorts were preoccupied with picking up the pieces. If Jack broke off the attack now, the boat would come away scot free with a handsome score. But if he tried to better the score by continuing to attack the kaibokans or by doing an end-around on the fleeing freighters, the cost might be very high.
A new variable took the decision out of Jack’s hands. Suddenly the boat bucked violently upward as something exploded under the stern. Bob was on the scope at once as Paul’s men, in the control room, fought to bring the craft back to its ordered depth and orientation. Another explosion, off to port, as Bob hurriedly lowered the periscope. “It’s a Judy,” he said, referring to the Japs’ Type 2 high-speed reconnaissance plane.
“Deep submergence!” Jack shouted at once. “Take her down fast!” They leveled off at three hundred feet and waited anxiously, but it seemed that the Jap flyer was content with driving them off. When Manta returned to periscope depth, forty-five minutes later, the sea around them was empty.
Chapter 20
Ensign Woody Slone leaned his shoulder against the target bearing transmitter and absentmindedly stroked Halsey, the tabby cat one of the men had adopted during Manta’s most recent refit at Pearl. As the boat’s most junior officer, Woody tended to get all the jobs no one else wanted, from decoding routine radio messages to censoring the men’s letters home. About every other day he took the watch, and on the other patrols he had always looked forward to it. Now he was frankly bored.
For almost three weeks Manta had been cruising in the vicinity of Guam and Saipan. Every day brought flawless blue skies, moderate winds, and calm seas. All of the complex mechanical systems in the submarine were working like a hundred-dollar watch. The new assistant cook who had been rotated aboard made wonderful pies and cakes. Mr. Church had received the Silver Star after their last patrol and seemed to be on much better terms with Mr. DuToin, which made the wardroom a more comfortable place to be. All in all, nothing could be finer. Except—
Where the hell were the Japs? Anyone with a map could figure out that Admiral Nimitz’s Central Pacific sweep was going to hit the Marianas as soon as the Marshall and Gilbert Islands were secured. The briefing the skipper had passed along at the start of the patrol made it clear that the enemy was beefing up his positions on Saipan and Guam as fast as he could. The waters between here and Japan must be thick with convoys, but for all her luck so far, Manta might as well be patrolling on the far side of the moon. The only ship contact they had made had turned out to be Needlefish, en route to the waters off Luzon. An exchange of greetings by signal lamp, and soon the ocean was as empty as before.
Just before 1600 Lou appeared to take the watch, and Woody went below to catch up on checking routine maintenance reports, taking Halsey with him. Lou set his coffee mug down next to the compass repeater and raised his binoculars for an initial sweep. Nothing perturbed the ruler-straight horizon. If the past few days were anything to go by, Lou thought, the most exciting moment of the watch would come at 1780 when he brought the boat about onto an easterly course.
He was right. When Bob Church relieved him at 1800, all Lou had to report was Manta’s course and speed. Bob in turn reported that there was ham steak with pineapple for dinner, and Lou went to investigate the report at first hand.
One of the men who came on watch with Bob was Yeoman Mike Gold. He enjoyed pulling lookout duty, though he was glad this was a dog watch and he wouldn’t have to do it for more than two hours. Some wag in the mess room claimed that the Bausch and Lomb seven-by-fifty glasses they used weighed 3.4 pounds, but that after two hours the decimal point dropped out.
As he scanned the ocean and sky, Mike found himself composing a description of the tropical sunset. That color to the east, would violet describe it? And how far above the horizon did the sun start to grow huge and spread itself out? What happened to the colors of the waves? Details were everything.
The sun went down surprisingly fast, and just as it vanished, the sky flashed green. Mike had never seen that before, and he burned into his memory the exact sequence. Then he realized that he had seen more than a green flash. “Sir,” he said urgently, then stopped, suddenly confused.
“What is it?” The exec was standing just below him.
“I don’t know, sir. Just as the sun set, there was a green flash, and I thought I saw ships. But they’re not there now, sir.”
“What bearing, Gold?”
“Off the starboard quarter, sir. But I must have imagined it. Sorry, sir.”
Bob raised his glasses and confirmed what his naked eye had told him. There were no ships in that direction—or any other, for that matter. But as he turned back to the bridge, passages from his wide reading in naval history came back to him, odd, troubling incidents in which ships and islands were seen and identified while still well below the horizon. The Flying Dutchman legend was supposed to have started in the South Atlantic, off the Cape of Good Hope, where sailors often sighted a distant ship that seemed to sail through the sky and vanish. An optical illusion produced by a local atmospheric condition, some authors suggested, though they obviously didn’t know what sort of atmospheric condition or how the illusion was produced.
“Gold,” he said, “tell me again what you saw. Never mind if it doesn’t seem to make sense.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” The yeoman pondered for a moment. “Just as the sun disappeared, the sky turned green. Then there was a moment when the sea looked like it stretched right on into the sky, like a tabletop. The convoy was on that part of the sea, if you catch my meaning. I blinked, and everything was back to normal—no extra sea, no convoy.”
“You said ships before, and now you’re calling it a convoy.”
“Yes, sir. There were five or six of them, bunched together. But—”
“Well, what is it?”
“I don’t know, sir. It was like I was looking at them from an airplane. The ones on the far side were higher than the ones closer to us. Does that make any sense?”
“It just might,” the exec said thoughtfully. “Do you have an impression of their course?”
“South, sir,” Gold replied promptly; “no question.” Bob tugged at the tip of his nose as he walked forward to the bridge. For him Gold’s remark about perspective had clinched the matter: if the yeoman had been imagining things, he wasn’t likely to have imagined that particular detail. But the log of a British sloop exploring the Sandwich Islands had contained just such a description of seeing an atoll as if from a great height. Now to convince the skipper of his conclusion.
Five minutes later he was saying heatedly, “Yes, dammit, I am telling you that Gold saw a convoy that is below the horizon and beyond radar range. I don’t know how, but I do know things like that have happened before.”
Jack had taken to wearing a baseball cap on deck. Now he lifted it and scratched his head. It all sounded pretty nutty to him, but after nineteen days without a sighting, he was ready to grab for straws. “If they are there, how far away are they?”
“I don’t know! A few times mariners have seen coastal mountains from well over a hundred miles away.”
“Sure,” Jack said, guffawing, “and a few times they’ve seen mermaids from a few feet away!”
“I am not kidding, Jack.” Bob’s face was dangerously red.
“Okay, okay. Now look, Bob: I am not chasing a will o’ the wisp across a couple of hundred miles of ocean. But—” The exec looked up hopefully. “If you want to alter our patrol pattern and head southwest, you have my okay provided we do not leave our station. Who has first watch?”
“Paul.”
“You’ll explain the situation when he relieves you. And call me if your wild goose turns up.”
“Aye, aye, sir!” Bob immediately ordered a course change to 230 degrees and full speed ahead, then jotted down all the poop about the sightings. He could refine Manta’s course in twenty minutes or so, when Wing took over the conn.
Two hours later Bob was pacing the bridge, staring into the tropical night, and wondering if he was making a complete ass of himself. He had questioned the yeoman twice more about what he had seen, and the second time Gold seemed to be becoming unsure that he had seen anything at all. In another half hour the boat would be on the fringe of its assigned area. They would have to turn back then; captain’s orders.
One reason Church had stayed on the bridge was that he did not want to have to explain to DuToin what he was doing. As soon as he realized that the tension between them was affecting his performance and the efficiency of the boat, he had gone out of his way to ease off, but the reasons for the tension were still there. He knew he was twice the seaman DuToin was, and probably better educated in many ways, but the other man was an Ivy Leaguer. He had a manner that automatically got him the best table in nightclubs and the most attractive girl at parties. Because he was so sure of himself socially, he tended to assume that he was right about most things, including the conduct of submarine warfare, and his manner carried others along with him. Bob, on the other hand, knew what he knew, but had to fight to win his points. And now he had staked more than he could afford on Gold’s momentary impression and his own recollection of legends and tall tales.
“Bridge!”
Bob hurried over as Paul responded, “Bridge, aye, aye.”
“Radar contact bearing 1-1-5 relative, extreme range.”
“Roger. Any identification on that contact?”
“No, sir. It’s right on the edge and fading in and out.”
Paul looked over at Bob for guidance. Bob chewed his upper lip. Could this be the convoy? If so it had turned eastward at some point. He visualized the tracks and relative positions of Manta and the hypothetical Jap ships, then, with mounting excitement, superimposed them on his memory of the chart for these waters. If the Japs were routing their ships to Guam well to the west, then approaching from the southwest, it all made sense. It even explained why Manta had not sighted a single ship in almost three weeks—she was simply in the wrong place.
“Let’s go after it,” he said quietly.
Fifteen minutes later he knew he had guessed right. The vague dot on the radar screen had differentiated into four large and two small blips heading east-northeast at twelve knots—a Jap convoy bound for Guam or Saipan. He went in search of Jack, to tell him that the wild goose had been found.
* * * *
Mike Gold’s assignment during battle stations was to huddle in an out-of-the-way corner of the conning tower and take detailed notes on the action. His orders were to write down everything that happened, for later transfer to the log, but while he was creating this dry, factual record, his novelist’s mind was also storing away the words and emotions and tiny details that might someday bring the scene to life.
2240. Visual contact, range 15,000. Targets 2 tankers, 7,500 and 6,000 tons, 2 marus 5,000 tons, 2 Fubuki or Asahio-class DD’s.
(The skipper left the radar console to stand beneath the bridge hatch. “Bob,” he shouted, “I make the tin cans to be ahead and to port of the convoy—do you confirm?” Gold did not hear the exec’s reply, but the skipper nodded and looked satisfied.)
