Richardson remembered his conversation of the previous evening with Admiral Small’s driver, He fumbled for the page in his notebook where he had written his name. Lichtmann. “It’s as good as done, Skipper,” said Keith. “I told you they’ll do anything they can for us around here. If we wanted Captain Blunt himself to go out with us next time, I bet he’d come.”
“He is coming!”
“What?”
“We’re going to the Yellow Sea on a three-boat wolfpack, with Blunt as wolfpack commander. This is all confidential, for now, so don’t repeat it around where you can be overheard. We’ll be flagship, so he’ll be riding with us. You and I are going to be his right and left hand, I suspect, to help put this thing together.”
“Oh, hell, Skipper, I was hoping to have another chance to go off by ourselves.”
“Me too, Keith, but that’s the way the ball bounced this time. Anyway, you know Blunt’s an old friend and ex-skipper of mine. It will be great having him along with us.”
The look on Keith’s face showed his doubt. Clearly, Keith shared his skipper’s silent reservations.
The chief problem of coordination between submarines, as all parties to the wolfpack well knew, was that of communication, Submarines patrolling close to an enemy shore spent their days submerged, surfacing to recharge their batteries under cover of darkness. When well away from land they might extend their daylight patrol radius by remaining on the surface, but they had to be ready to dive instantly if in danger of detection.
Once a radio circuit was established between surface ships, transmission and receipt of messages could be virtually assured. Because one never knew when a submarine might be submerged, however, such certainty could never exist between the members of a wolfpack. Very long wave signals from a powerful nearby shore station could be received to a shallow depth with a specially insulated antenna, but the high frequency radio signal of even a nearby submarine could not be heard beneath the surface; nor could a boat transmit while submerged. Furthermore, a receipting system was mandatory, for otherwise there would be no assurance that a particular message of extreme importance had been received by one’s wolfpack mates. A submarine required to make an important transmission, for example an enemy contact report, very likely might have only seconds available before combat or initimate danger. But she could never be sure the message had been received until at least one other boat transmitted a radio receipt signal. She would have to wait, possibly repeat the message, and thus further compromise herself.
The longer the radio message, the greater the chance of its interception by an alert enemy. This could lead to location of the transmitting submarine by a direction-finding station, even to breaking down the code of the message. The result would be a paucity of enemy traffic through the suspect area and a greater likelihood of antisub sweeps. Some wolfpacks had developed special codes to reduce the lengths of their radio transmissions. Keith had been an interested follower of the systems devised, and several times he had stated they did not go far enough. Communications between its members, he said, was the crucial weakness of all wolfpacks. It had been left almost entirely to the communications officers and senior radiomen, whereas clearly it should receive the personal attention of the wolfpack commanders and skippers. Keith’s impassioned presentation easily convinced Richardson, who had long harbored the same thoughts himself. The interview with Blunt ended as Keith and Rich had hoped, with Blunt’s approval of Keith’s ideas. But, beyond giving support to the project in general terms, the prospective wolfpack commander had displayed surprising passivity, almost disinterest.
“You’d think he thinks it’s easy!” burst out Keith, once safely out of earshot.
“He’s just depending on us, especially you, since it’s your idea. He’s paying you a compliment.”
“I don’t read him that way at all. He just doesn’t realize how tough it is to talk to another boat out in the area!”
“Come on, Keith. Neither have we experienced the problem so far. He knows what he’s doing. Anyway, we’ve got his backing. Isn’t that what you wanted?” Richardson’s words were mild enough, but there was a snap of finality to them. His protective instinct regarding Blunt had overreached; he had overdone it. Keith had felt the slight degree of asperity and was giving him a troubled look.
Two days after the new Chicolar had been welcomed from Mare Island, the three skippers and their wolfpack commander met for their first formal conference. Blunt had decided, he said, that the first submarine to detect a convoy would not attack. It would instead trail the enemy and send position reports to help the other two boats to make contact also. The second submarine to make contact would be the first to attack. Then it would fall astern to perform the trailing duties. Not until at least one other sub had attacked and had fallen behind, out of the immediate vicinity of the convoy, was the original “trailer” released to make an attack of her own.
Attacks were to be made on the surface at night as a matter of preference, with due regard for the location of the trailer, who would presumably be keeping station from a sufficiently great distance that no one could mistake her on the radar for a patrolling enemy escort. In addition, narrow sectors directly ahead and directly astern of the convoy center were designated as safe sectors. No submarine could attack another ship in such a sector without positive visual identification. Other larger sectors were designated as unlimited attack zones, where attack on any target was permitted no matter how it might have been detected.
Whenever possible, day or night, Blunt stressed, all submarines should stay on the surface in order to facilitate both communication and positioning for attack.
Richardson found that the ideas of the other two skippers as to how to carry out night attacks in the surfaced condition were quite at variance with his own. Les Hartly of the Chicolar, a rotund and very intense officer, the senior of the three submarine captains, had only one method, to which he held strongly. At the beginning of the war he had commanded an S-boat in the Asiatic Fleet, undeniably an experience to confirm anyone’s latent qualities of self-sufficiency. Lack of a TDC in the S-boats had led to development of more rudimentary approach techniques, based mostly on time-honored concepts of the “seaman’s eye.” Even though Les had later commanded the more modern Porpoise for several patrols, the presence of an early TDC in her control room had not caused him to modify his notions. After three runs in the Porpoise he had been granted leave, to which all Asiatic submariners were clearly entitled, and had then been sent to Mare Island to commission and bring out the new Chicolar.
Hartly by consequence had been more than a year away from the war; but his ideas were nonetheless positive. He spent far more time expounding on their advantages than in listening to those of others. Blunt was the only one who might have commanded his attention, but even the wolfpack commander, with no war patrols to his credit, was at a disadvantage. Only Keith, with eight, topped Hartly’s record of seven war patrols, and Hartly quickly disposed of all suggestions differing from the conclusions he had already fixed on.
The way to handle a convoy, he said many times, was to attack instantly, if possible as soon as contact was made. In this way the risk of counter-measures would be least. He thought of Chicolar as a huge torpedo running on the surface which he would steer at high speed directly for the enemy, continually altering course to keep bows on to the ship he had selected for primary target. Hartly’s attack course was thus always a long sweeping curve. At the last minute he would shoot his torpedoes and then put the rudder over hard in whatever direction looked best.