“Control, bridge. Ask Mr. Leone to take a look at that contact.”
Keith’s voice came back almost immediately through the speaker. “Bridge, control. Al, I’m here on the set. Just got here. It looks like two radars to me, both on the same frequency and both of them are cutting in and out rather rapidly.”
“Control, bridge,” said Dugan into the speaker, “does it look like they’re on another contact?”
“That’s what it looks like, Al,” said Keith from below, his voice distinctly recognizable despite the bridge speaker’s less than optimum reproduction quality. “But so far as we know, we’re the only thing out here. Better stay on your toes up there. Maybe they’re playing games with us.”
“Double-sharp lookout, all hands!” shouted Dugan, carefully wiping up his binocular lenses again and swinging a careful search through the entire forward section of the horizon. The two forward lookouts would be doing the same, he knew, as would Cornelli and the two after lookouts in the other direction.
“Bridge, control,” Keith again. “Definitely two radars. Both patrolling, but they’re getting fainter now. APR strength one-half.”
Dugan pushed the speaker button twice in relief and at the same time mild disappointment. If they had only steadied up for a while, he thought, we could be submerging where it’s warm and comfortable. As he let go of the button the second time he realized he had momentarily cut off another transmission from Keith.
“… maybe up to their regular stunt, Al. They’ve already spotted us six times out here. They must know where to look for us.”
Dugan was about to reach for the speaker button to make another acknowledgment, had been leaning on the bridge windbreak with his binoculars over the edge, staring dead ahead at the horizon, when suddenly he noticed something. A tiny discontinuity, a thin dark line seemingly on the horizon, which suddenly disappeared. Instantly he knew what it was. “Clear the bridge!” he bellowed. He reached for the diving alarm, pressed it twice with his entire mittened hand, heard the reassuring sound of the diving alarm reproduced over the ship’s general announcing system. “Dive! Dive!” he shouted into the bridge speaker.
He stood aside to permit the heavily bundled lookouts and quartermaster to get down the hatch. As they did so, he heard Cornelli screaming, “Aircraft! Coming in from astern!”
Two planes! One ahead and one astern. They had been working a game! They had been coordinating their attacks! One coming in from ahead, and now one coming in from astern. Both flying low to the water. How far away were they? How quick could the submarine dive? The lookouts were clear. Cornelli, waiting, jumped into the yawning hatch. His bulky, heavily clothed figure completely filled the hole.
Dugan had not heard the vents opening or the diesel engine shut off, but he was aware of the main induction slamming home behind him. A sea traveled up over Eel’s bow, broke over the forward forty-millimeter platform, boiled up over the windscreen. She wasn’t diving yet — couldn’t be — but she was half-submerged anyway with this sea coming aboard. Water was pouring down the hatch all over Cornelli, who had less than a second before found the ladder and was descending as rapidly as he could. No time to waste. Dugan simply leaped onto Cornelli’s back, knocking him down the ladder, falling down himself, grabbing the braided copper hatch lanyard in his hand as he descended. The wire rope slipped through his hands, but he expected this, felt the toggle slam into his wrist. His feet touched only a single rung of the ladder as his weight on the lanyard pulled the hatch down with him. A deluge of water was pouring into the ship through the hatch. It stopped sharply as the hatch slammed home. He held down hard on the lanyard, almost in a sitting position, while Cornelli picked himself up, crowded past him, scrambled partway up the rungs of the ladder, and spun the dogging hand wheel shut.
“Hatch secured!” shouted Cornelli, through chattering lips.
There was half an inch of cold water sloshing around on the conning tower deck plates. No matter, it would quickly drain through into the bilges. “Take her down fast!” shouted Dugan. “Two aircraft making a run on us!” He released the lanyard, took two quick steps to the control room hatch, was gladdened to see Keith standing beneath him. The executive officer had evidently moved over from the radar detector and was now superintending the diving operation. He had himself grabbed the bow plane control wheel and was holding it on full dive. The lookout who would normally have taken the bow plane was standing beside him hastily pulling off his wet parka. Another lookout had the stern planes, was moving them to full dive as Dugan watched.
Dugan scrambled down the ladder to the control room, whispered hoarsely to Keith, “Two planes coming in, one ahead and one dead astern. They’re right on the water and coming in fast. Get her down as fast as you can!”
“Right,” said Keith. “I’ll take the dive for now. You rig for depth charge. Get the watertight doors shut!”
Without answering, Dugan reached for the announcing system microphone, “All hands rig ship for depth charge!” he said into it urgently. “Shut all watertight doors! Two planes coming in for attack!” Approximately twenty seconds had passed since the diving alarm had sounded.
Richardson had joined the tense group in the control room, had heard the last few words of the colloquy between Leone and Dugan. “How far away would you say they were, Al?” he asked.
“Two or three miles, maybe a little more for the one I saw,” responded Dugan. “I didn’t see the other one, but I guess it was about the same. Cornelli saw it just as I sounded the diving alarm. They were making a coordinated attack on us.”
“Down on the deck like that they probably aren’t going more than a hundred eighty knots That’s three miles a minute,” said Richardson. “About half a minute more before they get here.”
Dugan was feverishly divesting himself of his foul-weather gear, pulled the parka over his head, threw it on the chart table over the gyro compass in the center of the control room. A river of water ran from it over the linoleum top of the table, dripped to the deck beneath.
“What’s the depth of water here, Keith?” asked Richardson.
“No more than two hundred fifty feet, Skipper,” answered Keith, not taking his eyes away from the diving control panel. “We’re under now. Depth five-oh feet.”
“Go on over to a fifteen-degree down angle, Keith. We’ve got to get as deep as we can as quick as we can. Al, see that the sound heads are rigged in. We may hit bottom with this steep angle.”
“Aye!” said Dugan as he reached again for the announcing microphone. “Rig in the sound heads,” he ordered. “Forward torpedo room, bear a hand! Rig in the sound heads immediately. We may hit bottom. Report by telephone when they are rigged in.”
Instead of easing off on the stern planes to level the ship after her initial dive, as was the ordinary procedure, the stern planesman under Keith’s direction grimly held the stern planes in the “full dive” position. Eel’s deck continued to tilt down even more.
“All ahead emergency!” barked Richardson, vectoring his voice up the hatch to the conning tower. They could feel the increased bite of the electric motors as the electrician’s mates opened their rheostats wide.
“We’ll lose the bubble in the small-angle indicators, Captain,” said Dugan. “It goes out at ten degrees.”
“Let it,” said Rich. “Shift to the large-angle indicators. Pass the word to all hands to rig ship for steep angle. The planes will figure to catch us within a few seconds after we’ve completely submerged, and they’ll expect that we won’t be very deep by that time. We’ve got to get just as deep as we can — left full rudder!” He explained the order tersely. “Got to get off the track. Coming in from ahead and astern that way means they’re geared to drop their eggs right on line and ahead of our diving point. Can’t help it if it slows up our dive a little.”