But then dismay gripped him, for Blunt, his hand still on the range stadimeter wheel, began turning it back and forth, moving the pointer over a range variation exceeding a thousand yards!
Time, which had been passing so slowly for the final minutes of the approach, now was moving with frantic speed. “Angle on the bow!” hissed Rich imperatively. “Are you on in bearing?”
“Starboard ninety. I’m on his stack.… What’s wrong with this damn periscope?…”
No one had noticed anything. Keith was watching the angle solver section of the TDC, his right hand hovering over the firing key. Buck, beside him, was poised to set in the slightest change in the final bearing of the target. The proper thing to do was to push Blunt aside and take the firing ranges himself, but on a ninety track, range made no difference. The resulting bustle would only add confusion. “Mark the bearing,” Rich said loudly. “One-seven-two!” he read off the azimuth ring.
“Right on! Set!” Buck had not had to touch the TDC.
“Shoot,” muttered Rich into Blunt’s ear. “It’s perfect! Shoot now!”
Blunt’s hand was still on the range wheel, still twisting it. He said nothing. In the split rangefinder view, the target’s masthead must be moving from his deck to an equal distance below the waterline and back.
“Shoot!” barked Richardson. Keith leaned on the firing key. Larry Lasche began to count. In the after torpedo room there was the snap of the firing valve, the air-and-water roar as the impulse bottle emptied into the torpedo tube, the starting whine of the torpedo motor, the tiny jolt — less than it would have been from a forward tube — as the suddenly started torpedo was ejected. Then the additional slap as the poppet valve opened to swallow the air before it escaped, and the burbling snore as water, flooding into the now empty tube, jammed the air back into the tube and through the now opened poppet line into the torpedo room. A heavy splash as a cascade of water followed the air and landed in the bilges.
The chief torpedoman had not needed to follow through with the hand firing key. “Number seven tube fired electrically,” the torpedoman wearing the phones reported, pushing the button on his mouthpiece.
“Number seven tube fired electrically,” said Quin in the conning tower.
Three fish would be enough, had been already decided upon. “Eight fired electrically… nine fired electrically,” reported Quin as the sequential reports arrived in his earphones.
“Shoot!” said Blunt, still looking through the periscope. Keith looked back, startled, inquiring. Richardson made a motion of negation.
“Down periscope!” said Rich. Gently he pushed Blunt back, folded up the handles so they would not strike the edge of the well as the ’scope dropped into it.
“How long until the first fish gets there?” asked Rich.
“Twenty-five seconds more,” responded Lasche.
“Let me know at ten seconds,” said Blunt.
Again there was silence in the conning tower. The deed had been done. His face bubbling with sweat, Blunt stood in the pose so characteristic of him, hands on hips, waiting. Richardson, equally covered with perspiration, trickles of moisture running down inside his shirt, recalled his own habit of so many years before, in Octopus’ conning tower. He picked up the Is-Was which had been hanging forgotten on its string around his neck, began setting it up for a collision course between the torpedoes and the target.
“Ten seconds to go.”
“Up periscope,” said Blunt. “She’s a beautiful ship. Take a range — mark!”
“One-oh-five-oh,” read Richardson.
“Angle on the bow is port ninety. She’s got a single tall stack, a large deckhouse, cargo wells forward and aft. Not more than six inches of her waterline is showing — probably loaded with cargo for the Kwantung Army.” Blunt had hardly finished saying the words when suddenly a thunderous roar shook the conning tower. “It’s a hit,” he shouted. “A beautiful hit! Right under the stack! Smoke and junk is blown sky high! Oh, it’s beautiful! He’s a goner for sure! He’s already listing over toward us! His back is broken!” Mesmerized, Blunt was staring at the damage. Again he had changed. The catatonic reflex had disappeared.
“What happened to the second torpedo?” he asked. Then he answered his own question. “She slowed down so suddenly with the first hit that the second fish must have missed ahead.”
A second explosion. Cheers from the men in the conning tower. On the other side of the now closed control room hatch, throughout the submarine, more cheers.
“Another hit aft!” shouted Blunt. “That was our third torpedo! Our first fish slowed him down so much that the third torpedo came in and hit him halfway between the stack and the stern! He’s broken in half! The deckhouse is already half under water, the bow is high in the air. It’s bent backward as though it might fall over on top of the stack! The stern is blown nearly off! Boy, those guys never knew what hit them!”
“What’s the escort doing, Captain?” asked Richardson. His eagerness to see the target had vanished. There was death on the sea. The grave of a tired old ship that had never had a chance. A few survivors swimming. Chunks of debris and great globules of coal dust on the sea to mark the place where she had been.
“He’s way out ahead and well clear,” responded Blunt.
“How about a look around and see if you can spot that aircraft, Skipper.”
“Oh, all right, Rich. You sure have a fixation on that airplane!” So saying, Captain Blunt began to turn the periscope in a clockwise direction, the elbow of his right arm hooked over the right handle, his left hand pushing the other. Suddenly he stopped. “By God, Rich, you’re right. I never figured he could get here this fast!”
“Bearing two-zero-two,” snapped Richardson from the azimuth circle overhead. Keith would take the hint and translate it to true bearing.
“True bearing is two-five-one,” announced Keith, reading it off the dials of the TDC.
“Well, he’s sure got something to look at this time,” chuckled Blunt, “but I guess we’d better not stick around with the periscope up.” He snapped up the handles of the periscope, motioned down with his thumbs. Its base sank swiftly out of sight. “Make your depth one-eight-oh feet,” he ordered. “What’s the best course to get out of this place?” He was wiping his sweaty hands on the hip pockets of his uniform trousers in the characteristic gesture Rich remembered so well. “That plane was a good two miles away, maybe more. There’s nothing he can do about us now. What’s the bearing of the PC-boat?”
“Escort is bearing due west, shifted back to long-scale pinging and closing the target,” responded Stafford. “Sinking ship is at two-two-four.”
“Right full rudder,” ordered Blunt. “Make your new course one-five-oh. All ahead two-thirds.… Rich,” he said, clapping him on the shoulder, “what do you say we secure from battle stations and send for two cups of coffee, one for you and one for me? These guys can’t lay a finger on us, and I’m just in the mood for a cup of that good java your boys make up forward.”
Rich forced a smile back at him. “You’re giving the orders,” he said. “Right now you’re still running this boat. That was the most beautifully executed approach I’ve ever seen!” It sounded pompous, even patronizing. He himself would have resented the word “beautiful” in a similar circumstance. But these thoughts barely touched the fringes of his mind. A deep despair had settled upon him. He would have to talk with Keith soon. Keith alone of all the persons in the conning tower had noticed something. He had a head on him. The burden was too big, anyway, for Rich to bear alone. Keith would have some good ideas.
-9-
“We have only four torpedoes left, Commodore, but Whitefish has sixteen. We know where the enemy is sending his ships now, but only Whitefish is fully effective. What we need to do now is to position her in the middle of the most likely place, and then do everything we can to make the enemy come by.”