“Shoot,” said Richardson. “Down periscope!”
“Fire one!” said Keith.
“Fire one!” shouted Quin into his telephone.
Keith was leaning on the firing button built into the side of Eel’s conning tower, just forward of the TDC. “Number one fired electrically!” announced Quin. Everyone in the conning tower had felt the jolt transmitted to the sturdy fabric of Eel’s hull when the torpedo had been expelled.
Keith released the firing key. “Stand by two,” he said.
Lasche was counting off the seconds. “… Eight… nine… ten.”
“Fire two” sang out Keith.
“Number two fired electrically,” reported Quin.
“… Nine… ten…”
“Fire three!”
The jolt of the torpedo departing. Quin reporting the message from the torpedo room that the third torpedo had been fired electrically. Had this not happened, the chief in the torpedo room would instantly have fired it manually. Larry Lasche, counting out the seconds between torpedoes to ensure they were not fired too closely together.
“All torpedoes running hot, straight, and normal,” announced Stafford, playing his sound head-dial back and forth over a small arc, oblivious to the fact that “hot,” at least, could refer only to the old steam and compressed-air torpedoes.
“Shift targets,” said Richardson. “Up periscope!” He laid the cross hair on the stack of the second ship — a neat-looking but older vessel. “Mark!” he said. Again the train of events was set in motion. He felt Eel jerk three more times, recognized on the one hand the death he had dealt out and on the other the fact that there could be no stopping the process, once it started, neither for himself nor anyone else.
He spun the ’scope around. The stern of the destroyer which had just passed overhead loomed huge in his magnified field of view. It had not been more than sixty seconds since it had gone over. Everything was still calm and peaceful on the surface of the sea. Nothing yet could have happened. “Right full rudder! Down periscope! All ahead full! Give me a course for stern tubes!”
Keith crowded alongside of Buck in front of the TDC, gave Rich the answer. “Recommend course three-four-zero for about a right thirty-degree gyro for tubes aft,” he said.
“Starboard stop! Starboard back two-thirds!” said Rich. This would help increase the speed of the turn and at the same time keep Eel from gaining too much speed through the water at this crucial moment. He watched her swinging around on the dial of the TDC. It took so long for a submerged submarine to turn! She moved so slowly, had so much weight to swing around — not only her own steel structure, but also the water in her ballast tanks. She had such a huge ponderous bulk to push around through the water, so little power with which to do it. Maneuvering on the surface was a totally different thing, even on the battery.
“Approximate bearing of the third ship is twenty degrees left of the second one,” he said to Buck, “and increase his range by five hundred yards.” Buck furiously cranked the dials of the TDC.
“How long before our first spread gets there, Larry?” Rich asked.
“Thirty seconds to go.” He watched the bow of “own ship” on the TDC pass 300, pass 320—it was swinging a little faster now. It passed 330.
“Starboard stop,” he said. “All ahead one-third.” His judgment had been right, Eel’s speed had remained at about two and a half knots, but her swinging had perceptibly increased. Al Dugan was doing a masterful job at depth control with the speed changes, full rudder maneuvers, and six torpedoes fired forward at rapid intervals.
“Steady on three-four-zero!”
“Up periscope!” The deadly ritual again. “Shift targets. Bearing, mark!.. Shoot!”
“Fire seven!.. Fire eight!.. Fire nine!”
“Three torpedoes aft fired electrically.”
He spun the periscope around, saw a huge geyser of water shoot up alongside the leading ship. “A hit!” he announced. A second later the boom came in. He turned to the escort. Still no sign, still stern to. A second geyser rose alongside the forward part of the leading ship. With two torpedoes in her she was gone regardless of whether the third one, spread aft, missed or not. But as Richardson watched, the ship must have slowed down enough from the effects of the two hits to make sure the third hit also. It went off almost in the same place the first one had struck. Even as he watched her, she began to list toward him, still belching smoke and steam from her stacks, her decks boiling with startled, terrorized humanity.
The escort had evidently put his rudder left, was turning around. A cloud of steam, or vapor, burst from the stack of the second ship. The reverberations of the third boom had barely died away in Eel’s conning tower when a geyser of water arose alongside the forward part of the second ship and, seconds later, another in her after section. He swung to the third ship, caught the explosion there. The torpedoes had been spread to allow for variations in the solution for target speed, course, and range. If they ran as intended, one at least of each salvo should have hit each target. Six hits for nine torpedoes, fired with large gyro angles, were more than could normally be expected.
He spun the periscope around once more. A jet of steam came up from the stack of the fourth ship in column. A whistle or siren. She had turned radically to the left, was still swinging. No chance for a shot there. He swung back to the escort. Still in his turn, listing away, undoubtedly coming back to where he would assume the submarine must have been, possibly where a now-chastened sonar watch stander remembered something unusual in his echoes. The aircraft had also turned, was headed back toward the gutted convoy.
“How’s the reload coming forward?” he asked.
A second’s delay. Quin answered. “They got one in. The second one’s going in now. Neither one ready yet.”
“Let me know just as soon as they’re ready to shoot forward.” The destroyer was perhaps five hundred yards away, heeling over to starboard under the impetus of left rudder. It was clearly one of a new class of submarine escorts. No doubt one of the new Mikuras. “Frigates,” they were called in the recognition pamphlet. In describing them to the wolfpack commander he had, without forethought, called up the possibility it might be this same trio which had accounted for Chicolar a few days ago. If Eel could remain at periscope depth, not be driven under, he might have a chance to exact retribution from one of them.
He spun the periscope completely around again. The aircraft might also be a problem, but the opaque Yellow Sea water was on his side. The two-stack passenger freighter was lying flat on her beam ends, stacks toward him. He could see water climbing up her deck, now vertical, which had only so recently been horizontal, pouring through deck openings into her interior. Anybody still below decks was now caught, would be unable to get out, would go down with her in the trap she had become. Her port side lay horizontal above the water. Many men were standing there, outlined against the sky. Lifeboats and life rafts hung crazily from their nests on deck, or from their davits. There had been no time to launch any of them. Her passengers and crew, the troops she carried, would be dependent for survival upon whatever wreckage broke free, of which apparently there was already a goodly amount. Land was three miles distant. They had a good chance of saving themselves if they could get free of the sinking ship, either by swimming to land or through rescue by one of the escorts. Strange. They were soldiers. He should hope they all drowned.
All this, his mind took in with instant comprehension. Number two ship had taken two hits, was down by the stern. Water was already coming up over the main deck aft. Her bow, where the upper part of a jagged hole just forward of the mast could be seen, was rising preparatory to the final plunge to the bottom.