“Commodore, Les was away from the war too long. Things changed a great deal while he was in Mare Island getting the Chicolar ready. In a different way, the same thing is the problem with Whitey. Hardly anybody has figured everything out on his first patrol in command. Even you, sir. This is your first war patrol. You get to have a feel for the enemy after you’ve been fighting them. You can’t get it by reading patrol reports. Keith and I are the experienced ones. This is the sixth war patrol for me and the ninth for Keith. We know what we can do, and we know what the enemy can do. ComSubPac has some experienced skippers on his staff. He knows, too. He is practically ordering us to go into the shallow water after them, and he’s right.”
The squadron commander said nothing. His eyes flickered twice as he listened. Richardson realized he had carried the day. In a very real sense, command of the wolfpack had now passed to him. The patrol had already cost something in terms of mutual respect and friendship — this would merely add a little more to the price — but the way was clear for him to put his scheme into execution.
Shortly before dawn, having run at maximum speed to the east all night, Eel slipped between two of the islands at the southern edge of the western side of the Maikotsu Suido. Immediately she felt the current set to the north. Relentlessly Rich drove her toward the coast of Korea, intending to get as near as possible before it became necessary to dive. Perhaps all the aircraft patrols were far to the west into the Yellow Sea. Morning twilight was well advanced before the need to remain undetected caused him reluctantly to submerge.
By ten o’clock Eel was patrolling 2,000 yards off a point of land around which any ships heading up or down the coast would have to pass. It was an ideal spot for submarine patrol, provided one was acclimated to shallow water. There was no way traffic hugging the coast could avoid a submarine stationing herself here. Shortly after noon a single freighter, unescorted, chugged slowly up the coast, zigzagging perfunctorily, puffing a cloud of black smoke from obviously ancient boilers, secure in the information that ships had been passing daily, that no submarines were close in to shore. The approach was almost like a dance, simple in its execution, flawless in its performance, strenuous only in some of the details. With a slight stretch of the imagination, the maneuvers, the periscope work, the macabre ritual before the sacrifice, could be compared to the high leaps and entrechats of a dancer acting out the denouement of a tragic ballet. Shortly before Eel achieved the firing position, more smoke appeared to the south. The situation was exactly as Rich had hoped it might be. One last pirouette, a rising crescendo of music, a final leap before the graceful submission to the inevitable outcome — only the ending was barbaric because it was real, not fanciful, its artistry shattered in the thunderous roar of two torpedoes striking ten seconds apart, a cloud of smoke, debris, and steam rising from the vitals of the doomed ship — this too was real — and it was death, and murder, and war, and no longer artistic, but only dreadful.
And then the ship was gone, leaving wreckage floating about on the water, a matted slick of coal dust, junk and life rafts, and a single damaged lifeboat into which a dozen men climbed. More men were on the life raft, and more clung to pieces of wreckage. But some of them clung to nothing, merely floated motionless, scalded to death in the engine room or boiler rooms, broken by the shock of the earthquake which had overwhelmed them, converted suddenly from living sensate beings into the pitiless flotsam of war.
Far to the south, three columns of smoke turned sharply westward. They would move well out into the Maikotsu Suido before heading north again, knowing that the submarine so catastrophically revealed in their path could not possibly follow submerged. An aircraft would soon appear, did appear, circling the area of devastation off the little point of land. Richardson watched it all through the tiny tip of the attack periscope, barely exposed above the placid surface.
Four hours later Stafford reported distant explosions to the northward. Some of them, he said, sounded like torpedoes, but this must have been his imagination willfully embroidering upon the situation. No one at that distance could tell a torpedo from a depth charge.
He had, however, counted twenty-five or more explosions. Six of them, or perhaps as many as ten, judging by their timing, could certainly have been torpedoes. Whitefish must have got into action.
ATTACKED THREE SHIP CONVOY POSITION MIKE XRAY FORTY TWO X SANK ONE FREIGHTER X DEPTH CHARGED X TEN TORPEDOES REMAINING ALL TUBES LOADED X CLEARING AREA TO INSPECT FOR DAMAGE X. The message was sent in the wolfpack code and therefore required no identification as to addressee or sender.
“He fired six fish and probably missed with his second salvo,” commented Blunt. “At least he equalized his expenditure of torpedoes and has six forward and four aft ready to go. That was good planning.”
It was, of course, exactly what every submarine skipper should endeavor to do. Although considerable design effort had been expended, no workable scheme had ever been developed to permit torpedoes to be transferred from one end of a submarine to the other without taking them out of the ship. Even though dismantled into its three main components — air flask, warhead, and afterbody — the air flask was too long to be maneuvered around the bends in the congested fore-and-aft passageway, even if there were equipment to do it with. Obviously, a prudent submarine captain would do his best to equalize torpedo expenditures between the forward and after torpedo rooms so that the undesirable condition of having a surplus of torpedoes in one end and empty tubes in the other would not occur.
“Commodore,” said Rich, “I think we’d better follow Whitey and clear the area too. We’ve raised so much hell here in the Maikotsu Suido that they’ll have all of their available ASW forces out looking for us. By now they’ve got to know for sure that there are two submarines involved.”
“What do you suggest, Rich?” asked Blunt. There was a querulous note in his voice.
“This is the first time any submarine has gone into the Maikotsu Suido since the Trigger, more than a year ago. Before her it was the Wahoo, but they were the only two. Both were topnotch subs, with top skippers, and both reported this area as being difficult for submarines because of the high current and confined waters. No subs have come here since the Trigger, and the Japanese have had a clear run through here. No doubt they figured for some reason we simply were not up to sending any more boats here. Now, all of a sudden, they have lost six ships in the Maikotsu, and two more just beyond its borders. They’ve already saturated the area with antisub air patrols. They’ve got to know, now, there are two submarines here. They’ve got to stop all traffic, at least in this vicinity, until they find them.”
Blunt seemed to accept this analysis.
“So, all we’re going to find around here for the next few days are air and surface patrols. We have about a week left in the area, and I think we ought to try to get rid of at least some of those ten fish Whitey has remaining. If we move right away and catch a convoy running along the Chinese coast, the Japs might even think there are four subs in the Yellow Sea. That will likely make them shut down all their traffic for a while, and that alone will hurt them.”