"Heil, Fuhrer! I took a good look and there's not a scratch on me, so can I have permission to go ashore?"
Jim was obviously trying a little, but the absurdity of his salutation could not help but make me chuckle. "Sure," I said. "After today I think I'll do the same." He strutted down the passageway between the bunks, teetering from one side to another. When I got back he was already dressed and gone.
Along with several other boats, S-16 had gone out into Long Island Sound for the so-called "graduation approach" of a group of Ensign students then nearing the end of their, accelerated three months' course at the submarine school.
Five torpedoes had been loaded aboard, each one made ready by the Ensign who was to fire it. While he was doing so, the other four members of the party would take over the supporting assignments: Assistant Approach Officer, Banjo Officer, Diving Officer, and in nominal charge at the tubes. Our own crew, of course, would be standing by at the remaining stations necessary to operate the ship, and I, as skipper, held the responsibility of "Safety Officer."
Approximately fifty per cent of the glade the trainee would receive for the course depended upon the proper functioning of his torpedo, his conduct of the submerged approach leading up to firing it, and, most importantly, where that torpedo passed with relation to the target. It was a crucial test for each trainee and it was important to the S-16, too, since it was to be our first "shoot" for the school. Jim and Keith had labored most of the previous day and far into the night with our torpedo gang, checking our tubes and associated equipment.
As far as the first four fish were concerned, we need not have worried. Two of them passed under the target and the other two, though wide misses, were the results of poor approach technique. When our fifth and last approach began, however, it was late in the clay. Considerable time had been lost with both of the bad shots, since each had to be pursued and hauled aboard the converted motor launch acting as retriever before the approach following could begin. And it one could judge by the length of time required to locate them, Roy Savage in S-48, with whom we shared the target's services, must have had one or two bad ones himself.
Our target was the old four-stack destroyer Semmes, and her job was simple; merely run back and forth between two submarines five miles apart, and help chase the torpedoes at each end. Since Roy was senior, the odd-numbered runs were his, and, of course, he had chosen for his initial point the one nearer the entrance of the Thames River channel.
When the Semmes squared away for the tenth and last run, our fifth, S-48 was already well on her way back to port and every minute she ran for us carried her double that time directly away from her own comfortable dock in the sub- marine base. I think we all expected the target to crank up the maximum speed permitted and to make the run as short as she could. Everyone, that is, except the tensely anxious officer student waiting to shoot his torpedo.
His approach was doctrinaire; he looked through the periscope every three minutes regardless of when the target's zigs took place, and we ran first one way and then the other, and succeeded in remaining practically stationary near the spot at which we had originally dived. Even so, it looked as though he might attain a favorable firing position no matter what he did, for Semmes was coming right down the initial bearing line, zigzagging regularly an equal amount to either side. It would be difficult not to get in a shot, in fact, and this was doubtless what the skipper of the Semmes had in mind.
The school instructor, a Lieutenant named Hansen who had recently come from being Exec of the Barracuda in Coco Solo, looked my way and shrugged. He pointed with a grin to the sweat-streaming face of the toiling student, made as if to wipe off his own, looked at his wrist watch, shrugged again.
We were all anxious to get it over with, for it was hot in the control room. All of us were perspiring freely, moving about in a fetid atmosphere which reminded me of nothing so much as the fogged interior of the glass jar in which as a child I had once sealed a half-dozen inoffensive bugs.
The periscope rose out of its well reached the top of its travel, and stopped. Standing bolt upright before it, the Approach Officer reached for the handles, folded them down in to operating position, then gingerly applied his eye to the guard.
"Bearing-Mark," he said.
The acting Assistant Approach Officer red it for him, then turned back to fiddling with the Is-Was.
The Approach Officer jiggled the periscope back and forth with little taps with the heel of his left hand, his right hand cranking the range crank back and forth. "Range-Mark," he finally said.
"Two-four-double-oh!" read the yes-man, breaking away from the Is-Was and searching the range dial with his finger.
The Approach Officer was named Blockman, and so far as I could tell the name suited him. Rivulets of sweat running down his face and into the open neck of his sodden uniform shirt, he put up the handles of the scope and turned away.
The yes-man fumbled for the pickle button hanging nearby on its wire, pressed it, started the periscope back into its well.
It had been up nearly a full minute.
Hansen and I exchanged glances. Nearly at the firing point, the supposed enemy hardly more than a mile way, the surface of the sea smooth and calm, — and the periscope up in full view for a minute! On the other side of the control room Jim winked as I looked at him.
"Angle on the bow is zero." The words cut across the compartment, perhaps from Blockman or his apparently equally stolid assistant. All three of them were now huddled with the Banjo operator in an oblivious group.
Even assuming a fairly large range error, there should be several minutes before he would be upon us. Fifteen knots equaled five hundred yards a minute. Divide that into the range for the time, — nearly five minutes. Nevertheless I had not made an observation myself for some while, and there was just enough of uncertainty in the air, something which did not quite fall easily into place as it should have, which impelled me to do so now.
"I'll take a look," I said. I gave the order to the yes-man: "Up periscope"
The scope whirred up. I stooped by force of habit, captured its handles as they came out of the well, folded them down-and as I did so a suddenly cold feeling gripped me in the middle of the belly. The right handle, the one governing the magnification power of the periscopes optical system, was in low power instead of high!
This meant that the range, instead of being twenty-four hundred yards at the last observation, had been roughly one fourth of that, six hundred yards. Some time had passed since, the Semmes was running right at us, and the range might have been inaccurate at that! I flipped the handle to high power, rose with my eye to the eye-piece. Lightning thoughts flooded into my brain.
"Jim!"
"Right here, Captain!" Jim's voice was close. He might have noticed the hand motion with which I discovered the position of the control handle, had in any event come over to the periscope in case I needed him.
Perhaps Blockman had for some reason turned the — handle to the low power position after his last observation, actually had accomplished the range-finding operation in high power after all. In this case everything was all right…
The periscope popped out of water, stopped its upward travel with a familiar jolt. And there it was. Catastrophe. I took it all in. Solid. My head nearly burst with the shock of it. Chill all over my body. Prickling sensation at the ends of my fingers. "Take her down!" I shouted. It was nearly a scream. "Take her down emergency! Series! Two thousand a side! Sound the collision alarm!" Hastily I flipped the handle to low power and back to high power again.