Washington lost his balance for a moment when he stepped into the passageway and bounced off the port bulkhead. The lid trapped his thumb for a moment. “Ouch! That hurt.”
Shifting his feet apart, he set the canister down and grabbed the handles again. It’d be a real mess if he dropped this. And, he’d be the one having to clean it up.
He went through the control room listening to complaints about the smell, but this was fresh trash. Crocky never allowed old trash to crowd his mess.
He reached the battery room, set the canister down, and opened the hatch. No one was there, which was the way he planned it. There’d be more trash after chow, but he could put off bringing it forward until they dived again. Give Potts and From-ley time to finish their battery checks before he had to pass through their domain. Made him think of the gang turfs in Philadelphia. He’d no more pass beyond Walther Avenue than the man in the moon. But neither did the gangstas, as they call themselves, cross Walther into his domain.
He lifted the canister and stepped inside the forward battery compartment. Most times the compartment was empty, but he knew the electrician mates had a rotation to observe, though he had been lucky the past week, and with the exception of the chow hall had managed to avoid the “Laurel and Hardy” assholes. For a moment he wondered if the sailors even bothered to check the forward battery compartment. If they didn’t and if something went wrong, then Potts and Fromley would be history.
He felt the vibration of the boat as it shifted from battery to diesel power. It also caused the contents to shift, and before Washington could recover, the lid fell off, striking the tops of the nearby batteries. A few sparks flew up as the metal lid rolled across negative and positive poles before bouncing onto the narrow deck between the battery banks.
Washington’s eyes flew wide as his head twisted from side to side, watching the batteries, but other than the sparks, everything seemed back to normal. What Washington failed to realize was that at that moment the boat had shifted from electric power to diesel, so the batteries were in that small space of null time between powering the Squallfish and awaiting their top-off from the diesel.
Washington quickly picked up the lid, put it back on the canister, and hurried into the forward torpedo room.
Each of the Squallfish battery compartments was filled with two massive 126-cell batteries. Each cell had a smaller battery hooked up in sequence to power the electric motors that drove the two shafts of the Squallfish. The cells were what Potts and Fromley were responsible for inspecting to ensure that each cell was functioning properly. It was the cells, called batteries by the crew, that Washington’s lid had serendipitously damaged, causing a cross circuit among four of the cells.
Submarine batteries were designed for high resistance to huge shocks, but those shocks were expected to come through the absorbers upon which the two batteries were mounted. Batteries produced hydrogen gas when they operated. The ventilation of the Squallfish dissipated this gas throughout the ship. It mattered little whether the batteries were charging or powering the electric motors; they were producing hydrogen discharge. As long as the discharge remained at less than 4 percent, there was no danger. Above 4 percent, there was a danger of fire, and when it reached 9 percent, the hydrogen concentration was such that any flame or spark would cause an explosion.
Within a couple of minutes, Washington had sealed the garbage in the burlap bags designed to hold the trash. He set it on top of others near torpedo tube number six, to await when the forward escape hatch was opened. Then he, Santos, and Marcos would return to dump the trash overboard. He hurried, wanting to be back in the crew’s mess before his twin nemeses arrived in the forward battery compartment.
Passing through the battery compartment the second time, he failed to notice the red readings growing on two of the batteries. But then Washington would not have known what he was seeing if he had looked. He was still working his way through the Squallfish qualification standards. He had yet to reach the battery section.
“What the hell!” Shipley cried, sliding rapidly from his seat. He knocked over his coffee as he jumped up and started racing toward the control room. They were on diesel power! What the hell!
He reached the control room at about the same time as the XO, who was already scrambling up the ladder toward the conning tower.
“What the fuck are you doing? What are you thinking?” Arneau was screaming as Shipley climbed into the conning tower.
“What’s going on?” Shipley asked.
Van Ness turned toward Shipley, whose eyes glistened. “I was — I was just helping out Lieutenant Logan. He was—”
“He was what?!” Arneau shouted. “Trying to get us sunk?”
“I haven’t surfaced. You said not to surface.”
“What is our depth?” Shipley asked. What in the hell was Van Ness thinking? It was daylight, and here they were. .
“Fifty feet, sir,” Senior Chief Boohan replied.
“What’s above the waterline?”
“We have both snorkel and periscope, sir,” Van Ness answered.
“Shit,” Shipley said, shaking his head. Logan and his men stood quietly around the search periscope, where the camera had been secured. Shipley took one look and knew the periscope was above the waterline, cutting a wake behind it. “What’s our speed?” he asked quietly.
“Six knots, sir,” Chief Topnotch answered from near the torpedo firing controls. “Numbers one and two diesel are connected to the electric motor. Using numbers three and four to recharge the batteries, sir.”
“Lieutenant Logan, how long to disconnect the camera?”
“We’ve been practicing, sir,” he replied with a grin. “Cross and Brooks are able to disconnect it in thirty seconds,” he said with pride.
“Then disconnect it.”
Logan’s eyebrows wrinkled. “Do you mind if we take a photograph of this merchant before we do it?”
Shipley looked at the chief. “We have a contact?”
“Yes, sir; two screws. Sound got it less than a minute ago.” Shipley looked at Arneau. “I take it, XO, you didn’t know we were changing our depth?”
“No, sir.”
“Get this camera off the periscope.” Shipley turned to Van Ness. “Officer of the deck, how long has sound had the contact?”
“Sir,” Van Ness answered, licking his lips, “we just got it before you entered—”
“Sound,” Shipley interrupted, “what type of ship is it?”
The young sailor slipped his earphones off, letting them hang around his neck. “Not sure yet, Skipper. I have tentatively identified it as a merchant vessel.”
“Lieutenant,” Shipley said to Logan, pointing at the camera.
“Yes, sir.”
The two communications technicians worked hurriedly, the camera coming off the search periscope quickly.
Shipley glanced at the clock on the bulkhead. It showed eight-thirty.
“XO, you have the conn. Prepare for emergency dive to one hundred fifty.”
“This is the XO. I have the conn. Stay on red light. Report.”
“Course one seven five, speed six knots,” the helmsman replied.
“Depth fifty feet,” Chief Topnotch, the chief of the watch, reported.
“Very well,” Arneau replied.
“Camera’s down, Captain,” Logan said as he and the two sailors lugged the gear over to one side, away from the center of the conning tower.
Shipley grabbed the handles and spun the periscope in a 360-degree rotation. “What is the bearing of the contact?” he asked without moving away from the eyepiece.