Benitez choked up, amazed that this group of burned and wounded could still find concern for the men freezing out on deck, could use that concern to ease their own suffering. He wanted to get therm home, all of them.
It looked as though most of the wounded would make it. Save for Wright, they were showing signs of improvement. The seas were even beginning to abate a hit. Benitez kept talking to his men, encouraging them, asking them to just hang on. The CO was calling upon every moment he had spent in the war, when he had crouched silently among another crew as their sub was depth-charged. If he was showing his aristocracy now, it was the aristocracy of sheer valor, and lie was impressing even the hulking, red-headed Celt who stood at his side.
Benitez still believed he could win his battle against sub and sea when another explosion hit shortly after midnight on Friday, August 26. The boat shook violently, and the fire spread into the second engine room, moving closer to the torpedo room where Wright and the others were. There was no longer any choice. Those men had to come topside. One by one, fifteen men climbed out the back hatch and made their way forward. Still, Wright and one of the other injured men could not be moved, and Doc Eason wasn't going to leave them. He told Benitez they could hold out.
Meanwhile, the captain knew he had to try to transfer the rest of the crew over to Tusk. In the nighttime haze, Austin did not want to take a chance that Tusk's men would no longer see the signal flags. So he picked up a battle lantern and using its toggle switch spelled out in Morse code, "A-n-o-t-h-e-r e-x-p-l-o-s-i-o-n. C–I-o-s-e m-e."
That done, Benitez turned his attention back to getting those last three men topside. The sound-powered phones had finally gone out. There was no way to communicate. A volunteer offered to run back to the hatch. The seas were still washing over the deck, but there was a better chance now that the man could make it. Benitez gave the okay-he wanted those men topside. Still, from everything he'd been told about Wright's condition, he had little hope the exec would make it out of the sub.
Benitez made a silent declaration, "Okay, if lie doesn't come out, I'm going to go down into the after-torpedo room and go down with him." The sense of clarity was almost overwhelming. A deep calm washed over him. It was the same feeling he'd had during the war when he was on the submarine Dace as it was being pummeled by Japanese destroyers, when he had believed there could be no escape. He had been lucky that time.
Now he thought, "Well, I'm gonna die. This is it."
He fretted for a moment that he'd be swept off the deck on his way aft-or worse, be swept off and rescued, leaving Wright to die alone. But he shook away the thought. His calm gave way to a sense of peace, a peace that seemed to pass all understanding, reaching beyond feeling to prayer.
Meanwhile, Tusk prepared to move closer. First, her crew fired off the warshot torpedoes loaded in her bow tubes, ensuring that there would be no explosions if the two subs crashed or if Tusk was too close when there was another violent explosion on Cochino. Then Tusk maneuvered alongside. Back on Cochino, members of the crew prepared to go back aft and carry Wright out, but as they looked back, they saw him follow another man climbing out of the aftertorpedo room. He had somehow managed to claw his way off the bunk, stagger to the ladder below the hatch, and force himself to lift one foot high enough to reach the first rung. The pain was excruciating. He had to stop, and as he stood there he was aware of Doc Eason behind him, aware of the water sloshing across the compartment floor. The sub was flooding now.
Later, Wright would swear that he had no idea how he began climbing again, would swear that it felt almost as if an invisible hand-maybe it was Eason's-had grabbed him by the seat of his pants and pushed him up the ladder and onto the deck. As Benitez watched, he noticed Wright's hands in front of him, heavily bandaged. Other crewmen were watching too as Wright started moving forward. There were no cheers, no shouts. Some of the men ran to help, but there was almost no place to grab onto Wright without causing him more agony. In silence they watched him take one labored step after another.
Men on both subs were already working to secure a narrow plank between them. Nobody was left below now. Everyone was on deck. Most were near the plank, a twenty-foot-long swaying teeter-totter that reached from the side of one sub to the side of the other, with barely an inch to spare on either end. Some men grabbed lines, holding the plank in place. But as the ships rolled in the violent surf, the plank would drop from its perch, and have to he hoisted back in place. If that plank dropped while a man was making his way over, it was clear that he'd be smashed between steel hulls that were crashing together where the subs were widest, just beneath the water line. It was one of the least-inviting escape routes ever designed at sea.
Wright was the first man to walk toward the plank, the men parting before him in stunned silence. One measured, agonized step at a time, he reached the makeshift bridge and then kept going, across the plank, across to Tusk.
That was it. That was all the rest of the crew needed. If Wright could make it in his condition, they could too. One by one, they skittered across, the wounded first. They timed it, waiting as one boat was picked up by the waves, then the other, waiting for that short moment when the boats were level. Nobody cued them. They didn't need masterminding from the bridge now. Each man picked his own moment to rush across.
No more than two or three men would get over before the plank would drop and again need to he pulled in place. Miraculously, no one had fallen. When about one-third of the crew had made it to the Tusk, the waves pulled the subs apart so far that several of the lines between them parted. Tusk made her way hack, but it was clear the remaining lines would not last long. It seemed that the rest of the men made their way across the narrow plank in a matter of seconds-all except Benitez, who still stood on Cochino's deck.
Benson called across to Benitez. "Are you abandoning ship?"
"Hell no," Benitez yelled back, "I'm not abandoning ship." He wanted Tusk to stand by and take him in tow. He believed he could still save his boat. It was about 1:45 A.M. on Friday. Cochino was listing to starboard. The rear torpedo-room hatch was underwater. And the sub began to take an up angle, leaning hack toward the sea.
As the angle became more pronounced, Benitez watched tensely, waiting to see whether the sub would stabilize again. A few more degrees and she would be lost.
"Now!" men shouted to him from Tusk's deck. "Now!" they called out again. They saw it before he did, saw that he had no choice.
Benitez stood there, as Cochino's stern slipped down, as the sea encroached further and further onto the deck. "Well, this is it," he said to himself. Then he called over to Benson, called out the worst words any captain had to speak: "Abandoning ship."
He made it across the plank bare seconds before the wood shattered.
Worthington was already calling out the orders that would take Tusk clear of the sinking sub as Benitez began urging his men below. Then he went to the bridge to watch Cochino's final dive.
His sub was listing about 15 degrees to starboard. Water was now past her sail. She stood, almost straight up in the air, as if taking one last look at the sky before leaning back and slipping gently below the waves.
Cochino sank in 950 feet of water about 100 nautical miles off the coast of Norway. It was fifteen hours since the fire began. Benitez watched until she was gone. He didn't say a word, not then, not for nearly an hour after. It was only when he began to speak that Benson and Worthington told him that Philo and six Tusk crewmen were dead, their bodies lost.
Six hours later, Tusk pulled into Hammerfest. Some of the men were taken to the hospital. The others were given a choice. They could fly home to New London, Connecticut, or they could ride back, the rescued and the rescuers, both crews crowded aboard Tusk. Every man who could travel went home on Tusk.