The water which had recently fallen upon the control room deck had mixed with the carefully applied wax of a previous, less strenuous period. The linoleum deck had become slippery. The fifteen-degree dive angle, relatively shallow when drawn on a sheet of paper, assumed a strenuous, perceptibly out-of-horizontal attitude. Al Dugan braced himself against the corner of the table, still trying to peel off his outer clothing. Keith and Rich gripped the steep steel ladder, now leaning well past the perpendicular, which led from the control room to the conning tower. At its top the watertight hatch had been closed in response to the order to rig for depth charge. The two tool benches with padded tops, normally located on the deck just before the diving panel to provide seats for the men operating the bow and stern planes, had begun to slide on the deck. One of the lookouts, not immediately occupied, ranged himself forward of them, one hand gripping the side of the control room table, braced the other against the forward-most bench, kept them from slipping farther. Keith cast him a grateful glance.
“Seven-oh feet,” said Keith. “Fifteen degrees down bubble. Forty-five seconds since we dived.” The lookout whose place he had taken had by now removed his parka and foul-weather jacket, moved silently into position on the bow planes. Keith stepped back a foot.
“Fifty seconds,” he said. “She’s going down fast now.”
“Make your depth two hundred feet, Keith,” said Rich. “Hold your angle for a while, though, until passing about one hundred fifty feet.”
All watched the depth gauges as, with excruciating slowness, they moved onward to the safe haven of the depths.
Richardson was doing some rapid mental calculations. “At fifteen degrees down bubble, the stern of the boat is about seventy-five feet higher than the bow, or roughly fifty feet higher than the control room, where the depth gauge is. That means our stern has only been out of sight for about ten seconds. We put the rudder over just about the right moment — there won’t have been time for any noticeable change of course to be noted by the attacking aircraft. Since then we’ve changed course about thirty degrees to the left, which means we’re about one hundred yards off the track already, except that the stern is probably only about fifty yards off the track.”
There was a metallic thud followed by a clatter of loose objects from somewhere below. Muffled oaths came up through the hatch grating in the control room deck. A toolbox had slipped its moorings and had fallen to the deck in the pump room, no doubt bursting open and strewing its contents all about. Rich could imagine the cooks in their galley, one compartment aft, bracing themselves to hold dinner on the stoves. In the torpedo rooms, at least, the four torpedoes remaining were secured in the torpedo tubes, with tail buffers up tight. There was consequently no chance that a torpedo, poorly secured in a rack, perhaps with a faulty securing strap (a number had broken just in normal use), might get loose. He found himself thinking that the initial kick of the rudder would of course have been to starboard, and the propeller wash, no doubt visible on the surface, would probably have first indicated an apparent change of course to the right. A trained naval pilot, however, would not have been fooled. The propeller wash must still be coming to the surface. Sixty seconds had passed. The depth bombs must have been released into the water.
“Passing one-five-zero feet,” said Keith.
“Take the angle off the boat, Keith. Zero bubble.”
“Stern planes on full rise,” ordered Keith. Obediently the stern planesman, still swathed in his heavy rainclothes and submarine jacket, his face now covered with large globules of sweat, reversed the direction in which he was holding his control wheel.
“Ease the rudder,” ordered Rich. “Rudder amidships!” Eel was now some forty-five degrees away from her initial heading, and with her rudder amidships and her unusual down-by-the-nose attitude coming off rapidly, her speed went up another notch, to nearly nine knots. Nine knots to outrun an airplane coming twenty times as fast!
“Sixty-five seconds,” someone said. If they were dropping, they had already done so. Sonar, which might have heard the charges hitting the water, was of course blind, because the retractable heads below the keel had been housed. At this speed they could hear nothing anyhow. The acoustic frequency head mounted topside had been manned when the submarine dived, but its operator could hear only the wild roar of water through which the submarine was tearing at maximum submerged speed. It would not be long — it could not be long — they must have dropped.…
WHAM! A tremendous, side-splitting, careening blow! The fifteen-degree down angle which Eel had assumed had already perceptibly lessened, and it was no longer necessary to hold on to the steel ladder which they had previously been holding so tightly. Rich and Keith were, however, still gripping it, and they could feel it buckle within their grasp and then spring back to its original shape. The full shock of the depth charge seemed thus to have been communicated directly into their own bodies. Al Dugan, less securely braced, had perhaps felt the shock less but was nevertheless thrown to the floor. Something had gone wrong in the pump room. The sound of an electric motor increasing rapidly in speed, the normally inconspicuous whir of its running rising violently in pitch until it nearly resembled a police siren. This could be disastrous. Through the cloud of dust raised by the explosion and the confusion occasioned by the shock of its nearness, Rich was conscious of Keith and the planesmen standing steadily to their posts, rocked though they were, yet desperately fighting to maintain control of their leaping, quivering equipment. Throughout the ship the men on watch must be going through the same thing, silently and desperately, pitting their wits and their training against the blow of the enemy.
WHAM! A second explosion, louder even than the first. Then, almost coming on top of each other, WHAM! WHAM! Two more, slightly less loud.
“Stern planes jammed on full rise!” The stern planesman’s desperate shout instantly brought Keith and Richardson to his side.
“All stop!” shouted Richardson. This would at least eliminate the wash of the emergency ahead propellers against the stern planes immediately behind them, would reduce their upward thrust, which would otherwise have Eel on the surface within seconds.
“Shift to hand power!” snapped Keith. Releasing his control wheel, the stern planesman grabbed the shift lever, tried to pull it out of its socket in order to place it in the hand-power position. It would not move. Keith and Richardson placed their hands over his on the handle, braced their feet on the diving panel, pulled with the combined strength of three men. It snapped loose, and together the three shoved it into the hand-power position. Swiftly Keith reached for the folded-in cranking handle on the periphery of the four-foot-diameter stern plane wheel, pulled it out against its spring, set it into its socket. He and the stern planesman each placed both hands upon it, leaned their entire weight into the wheel, began laboriously, wordlessly, and with frantic speed, to crank it against heavy resistance toward the zero position.
Al Dugan, having picked himself up from the floor, joined Richardson. Keith and the stern planesman were cranking furiously. The stern plane angle indicator was moving, though very much more slowly than under hydraulic power.
WHAM! Another depth charge, and a few seconds later, WHAM! A sixth. No one paid any attention. The emergency was in the stern planes. They must be leveled before the boat took the up angle which could spell disaster. Already the fifteen-degree down angle had been reduced to zero. Now it was going the other way. Rich noticed with approval that the bow planesman, very much aware of the desperate struggle taking place immediately to his left and watching it with an intent look of dismay, had instinctively and without orders turned his bow plane wheel to “dive” to counteract the effect of the stern planes. At least, he still had control in hydraulic power, and since the propellers had been stopped, the immense effect of the stern planes upon the attitude of the submarine would be lessened. Normally, the submerged maneuvering convention was that bow planes control the depth of the submarine and stern planes its angle. Richardson put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Good work, Smitty,” he said. Under the stress of the moment, unhabitual use of the man’s nickname came naturally. He turned his attention back to the stern plane wheel. The indicator was now nearing zero, indicating that the vital control surface had been restored to its neutral position.