Then he sensed that something was wrong. As he got his bearings, he noticed that the deck was still tilted downward. A chill immediately shot through his spine as he realized that Mackerel was still diving. Not only was she diving but the deck was angling down more and more with each passing second. The men in the conning tower groped for something to hold onto as the angle approached thirty degrees and books started to launch from their shelves.
Tremain flashed his lantern on the depth gauge by the helmsman who had one foot firmly planted against the bulkhead in front of him to keep him from falling into it.
The gauge read four hundred seventy feet, and it was still descending.
“Dive, take the angle off her!” Tremain shouted as he dangled from periscope shears.
“We’re trying, sir!” Olander’s voice came up from the control room. There was finally panic in his voice. “Stern planes are jammed on hard dive!”
“All stop! All back emergency!” Tremain ordered. He had to get Mackerel’s headway off before she drove herself beyond the point of no return. With the stern planes jammed on dive it would not take long.
Motioning for Cazanavette to take over in the conning tower, Tremain managed to climb down the angled ladder to the control room. There Olander stood behind the two planesmen intently watching their every move. The man controlling the stern planes leaned into his control wheel with his whole weight, desperately trying to level the planes. The bow planesman neglected his own planes to reach over and help him, but the extra weight yielded no results.
“No response, sir,” the stern planesman grimaced.
“Shift to emergency hydraulics,” Olander said.
The planesman switched a lever on the panel in front of him and tried the wheel once more. The stern planes still did not move.
Tremain checked the gauge on the diving control panel. It read four hundred and ninety feet. The reduced speed was slowing their rate of descent, but they were still going down too quickly. The hull began to shudder and pop under the immense pressure, and several of the men turned pale and began to shake at the terrifying sound.
“We’ll have to take local control!” Olander shouted above a gut-wrenching whine, which came from the ship’s steel girders.
Tremain nodded. Olander had voiced Tremain’s exact thought, although they both knew that the effort would be in vain. Several valves would have to be manipulated back in the aft torpedo room in order to shift control of the planes to the local station. The hull would crack for sure before they could get through even half of the valve line-up.
Then, before any order went out, Tremain heard a report coming from the blackness on the opposite side of the control room. One of the men wearing a sound-powered phone headset was in contact with the aft torpedo room.
“The aft torpedo room reports local stern planes control station is manned and ready, sir,” the man announced.
“Order them to place full rise on the stern planes!” Olander shouted after a moment’s hesitation. He was obviously somewhat perplexed at the report.
The man on the phone set repeated the order into his mouthpiece and within seconds the stern planes indictor on the diving control panel showed the planes rotating to the level position, and then to full rise. Everyone in the room held his breath as the ship’s angle slowly but surely leveled out.
Tremain grinned wildly after the realization set in that they might actually survive this. He assumed that the men in the aft torpedo room had anticipated the need for the local stern planes’ controls and had already manned the control station before the order was given. The few precious minutes they had saved by doing so had made the difference between life and death.
“Go to ahead one third, XO,” Tremain called up to the conning tower. He needed to maintain some headway on the ship. The water moving over the stern planes was the only thing providing Mackerel with the lifting force necessary to keep her from sinking out.
As Mackerel established a steady speed of three knots, the depth gauge showed the descent rate slow to almost nothing. The hull still creaked and popped due to the extreme depth, but much less than it had before.
“I’m going to need to pump some water off, Captain,” Olander announced. “We’re heavy.”
Tremain nodded. “Use air. I’d rather have that escort hear one short air burst than the trim pump. No sense in giving him a good steady pump noise to track.”
“Aye, sir.” Olander gave a few orders and a small hissing noise could be heard as high pressure air from the ship’s air banks pushed several thousand pounds of water from the variable ballast tanks.
Mackerel finally stabilized at five hundred and eighteen feet. The hull moaned as it adjusted to the constant pressure, but eventually the unsettling noise ceased. The hull was holding.
Every man’s face displayed utter astonishment. None of them had ever been this deep before, none ever wanted to be this deep again. They each silently thanked the shipbuilders at the Electric Boat Company for doing their jobs so well.
Tremain wiped the sweat from his brow and breathed a deep sigh as the lights flickered back to life. He looked up to see a visibly exhausted Tee squeezing his muscular frame through the aft door with Chief Freund in tow.
“Power has been restored, sir,” Tee reported. “The servo valve controlling the stern planes was damaged by those last depth charges. We’ll have to stay in local control until it’s repaired.”
“Very well, Mr. Turner. Someone was on the ball back there. If the aft room had waited for our order to begin their valve line-up we would have never made it. Who was in charge back there?”
“Well, sir… uh… it was…” Tee stuttered.
“It was the young ensign, believe it or not, sir,” Chief Freund interrupted with a sweaty grin.
“Young Wright?” Tremain smiled and shook his head. “Unbelievable.”
“Yes, sir,” Freund continued, “Chief Konhausen was up in the forward room when the stern planes got stuck, and Mister Turner and I were in number one engine room. Kil-cran, the leading petty officer who was in charge in the aft room, got himself knocked out by a valve handle during that last barrage. According to the boys in the aft room the ensign just up and took over. He ordered them to man the local control station for the stern planes when the ship started to angle down like she did. Pretty quick thinking for a youngster, Captain.”
Tremain had a hard time picturing Wright in charge in the aft torpedo room; the young officer was still brighteyed and bushy-tailed in his eyes. Still, the ensign had to be doing his homework to know how to take manual control of the stern planes after only being on board for a few weeks. Tremain considered himself to be a hot runner when he himself was an ensign, but he had to admit that what Wright had done was indeed impressive.
Tremain dismissed Tee and Freund and headed back up to the conning tower. Everyone in the conning tower stared at Salisbury on the sound gear. His face plainly displayed the dire knowledge that the escort was still out there.
“Where is she?” Tremain asked.
“She bears zero four five, sir,” Salisbury whispered. “Her screw noise is increasing.”
Tremain closed his eyes. He did not think Mackerel could hold up to another pounding, especially not at this depth. The ship’s backbone was ready to break, and it would only take another depth charging like the last one to deliver the lethal blow. There was nothing to do but wait. To come any shallower would be suicide. They could only wait and pray.
The “whooshing” of the escort’s screws once again became audible through the hull. Then the pinging started. It grew louder and louder every minute.