“Thought that if you didn’t get us back this night, sir,” the Major said pleasantly, “that you’d be here tomorrow night and the next night ad infinitum, no matter what the Jap sent here. Was I wrong?”
“No,” Hinman said slowly. “If you hadn’t come back tonight I’d be here tomorrow night. You have a point, Major.”
The Major sensed his advantage and pressed it.
“Look at it this way, Captain.” He caressed his mustache lovingly. “Every time you sink a bloody Jap ship you paint a little flag on the side of your Conning Tower, don’t you? Plain white flag with a red ball in the center for a merchant ship, Rising Sun flag for a warship? Got two of each up there right now, right?
“Well, we put nine ships down last night. Eight flat on the bottom with their decks just above the water, one over on its bloody side! So by rights you can paint nine flags on your bleedin’ Conning Tower. Bloody coup, that! Nine ships in one action!
“If the bloody bath house blows up you can paint a bath house on the bloody Conning Tower! Be the envy of the whole submarine Navy!” He sat there, his staring blue eyes dancing with delight. “If you’ll do the talking for me, sir, my good cobber and me will go with you up to Japan and we’ll go ashore and knock off a railroad train! Alongside of the bath house you’d be the darlin’ of the bloody Fleet, you would!”
Captain Hinman shook his head and refilled his coffee cup. “What the hell do I tell the Squadron Commander when I get back to port? I’ve got no business staying here.”
“Never tell a senior officer anything,” Major Struthers chuckled. “That’s my secret of success, never tell ‘em a bloody thing. Demand things from them! Keeps them wary of you. First off, send the buggers a bloody message demanding that some artist in port whip you out a stencil of a bath house!”
Hinman looked at the Australian and then he sighed. He reached for the telephone on the bulkhead.
“Bridge? This is the Captain. Remain on station. Dive the ship at zero four thirty.” He turned to the officers who were crowded around the small table.
“I think you’d better pass the word to your people, tell them why we’re sticking around. They deserve to know.” He turned to Chief Maxwell.
“We’ll resume the de-briefing, now. Major, after you had mined the bath house. Start from there.”
At five-fifteen that morning Captain Hinman climbed the ladder into the Conning Tower. Rhodes and Struthers, standing in the Control Room, heard the whine of the electric motor that raised the periscope.
“He s using the search periscope,” Rhodes said to the Major. “That one has a larger lens, you can see more with it.”
At five-twenty Captain Hinman’s voice came down through the hatch.
“Forty feet, Control. Hold her at forty feet.”
Rhodes stared at his wrist watch. Five-thirty-five came and passed and suddenly they heard Captain Hinman’s feet shifting in the Conning Tower as he swung the periscope in short sweeps.
“Damned if they’re not firing those guns again!” Hinman said in a voice loud enough to be heard in the Control Room. The Major turned to Rhodes, his red face beaming.
“I do hope the fat one was washing his balls when the bloody mine went off! Proper way for a man to go is with his cock in his hand! Jap or no Jap!” Captain Hinman came back down the ladder.
“Sixty-five feet,” he ordered. “We’ll leave the area now. Joe, set a course.” He turned to the Major and Dusty Rhodes.
“I could see the guns firing. I guess we’ll paint a bath house on our Conning Tower!”
Struthers grinned.
Chapter 26
Captain Hinman’s message detailing the results of the special mission arrived at a bad time in Brisbane. The Submarine Staff had just gone through a period of celebration over the successful landing of 11,000 U.S. Marines on Guadalcanal and the capture there of the new airport the Japanese had built and a landing on nearby Tulagi Island, where front line reports said heavy resistance to the Marines had developed but was being overcome.
Hard on the heels of the good news had come the reports on the Battle of Savo Island. A Japanese cruiser force, striking boldly from Rabaul, on New Britain Island, had routed an Allied cruiser fleet inflicting terrible losses. Four Allied heavy cruisers had been shot to bits and sunk; H.M.A.S. Canberra and the Vincennes, Astoria and Quincy of the United States Navy. The U.S.S. Chicago had been badly damaged by shell fire and its Captain a suicide. More than 1,500 officers and men of the Allied naval force were dead or missing.
The defeat, the worst in American naval history, hung over the Staff at Brisbane like a pall. It was all too clear that the Japanese admiral had out-maneuvered the American ships and the Japanese gunners had been far more accurate than the famed American gunners. Now, with Japan in control of the Solomon Sea, the U.S. Marines fighting for their lives on Guadalcanal would face even greater odds as the Japanese rushed reinforcements from Rabaul.
When Captain Hinman’s message was read at the staff meeting in the Submarine Command, Southwest Pacific, there was a silence. Lieut. Comdr. Gene Puser broke the silence.
“Well, that’s one piece of good news. Hinman got into the harbor and his people carried out the special mission successfully.”
“If you can believe him!” the Operations Officer said with a frown. He looked down at his copy of Hinman’s dispatch.
“I refuse to give him nine ships sunk! Not in a shallow harbor, not from ten-pound mines! Those ships can be repaired, will be repaired probably in a matter of days. I’ll give him credit for damaging nine ships, no more.
“As for this nonsense about having a staff artist design a stencil of a Japanese bath house, my God! What we should do is to have a stencil made for Mako’s Conning Tower that reads quote Obey your patrol orders unquote! His patrol orders didn’t call for him to tell his demolition squad to go frolicking about on the beach blowing up shower baths or whatever they said they blew up!”
Gene Puser looked up from his note pad.
“Mako has twenty-two fish left, sir. Hinman’s not far from the sea route between Rabaul and Guadalcanal and Tulagi. He might be able to shoot down some of the troop transports they will probably be running down there to reinforce Guadalcanal.”
“I’m aware of that,” his senior officer snapped. “Send him a priority message to cancel his present patrol orders and to patrol off the mouth of Rabaul Harbor until further notice.
“Specify that these orders do not call for beach parties or the ambush of Japanese officers going to the latrine!
“I suppose you had better send him some latitude and longitude coordinates; there are no charts of that area worth a damn. Hell, when Intelligence told us the Japs were building a new airfield on Guadalcanal we couldn’t even find the place on the charts we had!
“While you’re at it, tell Hinman we are giving him credit for possibly damaging nine ships. Those damned Pearl Harbor Captains are all alike; they’re very good at screaming about defective torpedoes and exploders and at claiming sinkings that never happened!”
The message, sent that night, stunned Captain Hinman. He sat in the Wardroom sipping coffee, reading the message over and over while Joe Sirocco worked at his charts to lay out a course for Rabaul Harbor. Major Struthers came in and added to the discomfiture in the Wardroom.
“Been listening to the Jap radio frequency, Captain, courtesy of your radio chappie. Bad news for our side.”