“Bridge, conn.” This was Stafford’s voice. “Sonar has distant depth charging dead ahead.”
“One more thing, Keith,” as his second-in-command swung on to the ladder leading to the conning tower. “I may hold up the dive for a bit, even if we do see a plane.” The puzzled look on Keith’s face gave way to comprehension as Richardson went on. “If we weren’t down to only two torpedoes, we could end-around ourselves. As it is, the best we can do is try to take some of the heat off of Whitefish.”
Dormant in his brain was the thought that if Eel should be sighted reasonably near the torpedoed ship before a firm sonar contact had been obtained on Whitefish, surface and air escorts, now feverishly looking for the submarine responsible, might assume that Eel was the culprit. If, in the meantime, the direction in which the remainder of the convoy had fled could be determined, there might be a chance to put Whitefish back into contact for a second attack.
“Bridge, radar contact! A little on the port bow!”
Eel had been fully surfaced for some minutes, was now pounding along at nearly full speed, throwing spray from under her bows as she plunged into the freshening sea, spattering a continuous pattern of salt droplets on her main deck. The wind, already strong and very cold, was now screeching over the top of the windscreen with the added component of the submarine’s velocity in the opposite direction. Several minutes ago the lookouts had been called down from their exposed perches on the sides of the periscope shears and directed to huddle together behind the chariot bridge bulwarks. There they still maintained vigil over the same arc of sky and sea, each to his own quadrant. Their function, of course, was to guard against approach of an aircraft. It was upon the elevated periscope, nearly nineteen feet above the uppermost tip of the periscope shears, that Richardson was depending for the first sight of the enemy.
“We have two big ships and two little ships on the PPI ’scope. Looks like they’re on course about southwest. Range is twelve miles. They’re on our starboard bow, Bridge. A couple of miles astern of this outfit and a little nearer — about eleven miles — there’s another ship. It looks like it’s alone. Plot is showing it as stopped, but we can’t be sure yet.” Keith from the conning tower.
“Anything in sight through the periscope?”
“Negative, Bridge — we’re checking the bearing carefully.… Correction! The periscope sees masts a little on the port bow. That’s the single ship!”
Richardson debated the advisability of using one of his last torpedoes to finish off the injured ship, but as Eel approached, she was already being abandoned, her listing sides covered with tiny antlike creatures climbing down the steel plates, sliding down ropes into the water. The sea was black around her with round black dots, each one the head of a man struggling for his life. Only three lifeboats could be seen. Perhaps there were a few more life rafts — not many. The periscope could count only five, overloaded, teeming with people, surrounded by more hanging to their sides. The boats were in little better shape. He fought down the revulsion. This was what he had come for. He could not, would not, help. The men were doomed. The winter sea would be pitiless. Another torpedo was not needed.
Richardson decided to drive between the damaged ship and the convoy, abandoning the damaged one in order to track the fleeing convoy remnant from the east. It was a near certainty that after having put sufficient distance between themselves and the scene of the torpedoing they would again change course to the east. Later, he or Whitey might return to give the coup de grace to the damaged transport, if it had not sunk.
The damaged transport was well in sight through the naked eye from Eel’s bridge, well inside the horizon, the angle of its masts increasing perceptibly from the vertical as the doomed ship listed, when suddenly a column of water sprang up alongside. The leaning masts, jolted by the torpedo hit (for this it must be), slowly straightened up, then continued on past the vertical, to list in the other direction. As he watched, they leaned farther and farther, until they disappeared from sight, to be replaced by the dark red wedge of the underpart of a ship’s bows.
Damn Whitey anyway! The ship was already sinking! Even a single additional torpedo in her was a waste! Not only would that torpedo far better have been saved for one of the other two transports, he was also wasting valuable time remaining submerged in the vicinity. The proper thing for Whitefish to do was to get up on the surface and join Eel in pursuing the two undamaged troopships. Two subs on the surface, widely separated, would make air cover all the more difficult. Working in coordination, they could cover all possible routes the enemy might take. Together, they could make it impossible for them to get away. Soldiers still in the States, soon to land upon Iwo Jima and Okinawa, would die if those two troopships, with their efficient, trained soldiers, were not sent to the bottom!
In the meantime, no aircraft had been sighted in the cloudless sky. Perhaps the plane which had forced Eel to dive early in the morning had reached the limits of its endurance and headed back to base. More likely, it was flying in autisubmarine patrol orbit around the surviving transports. In that event, the second torpedo attack on the damaged ship might cause it to swing in that direction for a closer look, with consequent greater chances of sighting Eel.
“Keep a sharp lookout for aircraft,” growled Richardson. “They’ll come from any direction, but most likely from the starboard bow.” Perhaps it would have been better to have said nothing, for the lookouts were already sufficiently keyed up. Not more than five minutes had passed before the forward starboard lookout suddenly yelled, “Plane!” pointing with his arm at the horizon.
In the distance a tiny silhouette floated in the sky, wings motionless. The lookout, a new man, very young, on his first patrol, held his binoculars a tiny distance from his face so that he could swivel his eyes nervously at Richardson. Obviously he expected a moment later to be climbing down the ladder into the conning tower.
Without taking his binoculars down from his eyes, Richardson spoke in a loud tone, endeavoring at the same time to project a note of calmness. “Where’s the plane?” he said. “I don’t see any.”
“There, sir! Coming right at us!.. Oh.” The lookout, pointing, became visibly deflated as the bird, now obviously much nearer than the horizon, turned lazily and gave a single lusty flap with its wings.
An encouraging word was necessary for sake of the boy’s self-esteem. In a kindly voice Richardson said, “That’s all right. We’d far rather have you call one wrong once in a while than miss one you should see. With visibility like today, we’ll have plenty of time to look it over before diving.” As he spoke, he recognized an unusual pedantic quality to his expression. He had forced the words out almost with a sigh. They had taken an inexpressible effort. He must guard against this. He had been up all night, true, but that was no excuse. The men trusted him, must think him infallible. He was the best surety they had for their own safety.
Far in the distance, well to starboard now and out of sight, was the remainder of the convoy, with two-thirds of the soldiers who had left Tsingtao. Somewhere off to port, now resting on the bottom of the Yellow Sea, her position marked in a general way by a tiny cluster of white lifeboats on the horizon, and an already reduced mass of black dots representing humanity around them, lay the ship just sunk by the Whitefish. Somewhere in that vicinity also must be Whitefish herself, probably still at periscope depth because of the lack of aircraft or surface escorts, possibly close enough to recognize her sister submarine plowing along at flank speed through the gathering sea and the freshening wind. She should be able to hear Eel by sonar even if she could not see her through the periscope, and just possibly her sonar operator would be sufficiently experienced to recognize the high-speed propeller beat and the two-cycle high-speed diesels characteristic of an American submarine. If Whitefish were aware of her wolfpack mate’s urgent passage, she should surface, if for no other reason than emulation.