"Down periscope!" barked Jim, and the scope slid smoothly down. "Angle on the bow-hard to tell-looks like port thirty."
"Port thirty," muttered Keith, spinning two of the concentric celluloid discs carefully with his thumb. As Assistant Approach Officer, or "Yes-Man," Leone was responsible for keeping the picture of the developing problem up to date on his Is-Was, for informing the Approach Officer-Jim-of the progress of the problem, the condition of readiness of the ship and torpedo battery, and in general anything else he wanted to know. Hence term "Yes-Man," as well as the unusual title of the gadget he used to keep track of the relative positions of target and submarine.
"What's the distance to the track?"
This was an easy one. At the instant the target has a thirty- degree angle on the bow-is thirty degrees away from heading right at you, — the distance from the submarine to the target's projected track is equal to half the range. "Three-four-double- oh!" returned Keith, after a moment's pause, — close enough.
Keith was all right.
"Left full rudder!" Jim had taken a little time to make the obvious move, and the three little black notebooks were halfway out of their hiding places before he gave the order.
Crowded against the helmsman, I could feel his right fanny muscle harden as he threw his weight into the wheel.
"All ahead three thousand a side!"
S-16 leaped ahead with the suddenly increased thrust of her propellers, curved to the left in obedience to the helm- and three black notebooks leaped also into the hands of their owners.
2
Three thousand amperes to each of S-16's two propeller shafts, six thousand total out of the main storage batteries, is a high rate. of discharge in any league. For slow speeds the two main storage batteries are normally connected In parallel, and for high speed switched to series-thus doubling the voltage and halving the current for any given power requirement. In neglecting to shift to series Jim was failing to get the maximum speed possible for the discharge rate and, in addition, was to no purpose risking damage to power cables and main motor armatures from the high current and the resulting heat. Our ship's procedure was specified in the Engineering Orders: shift to series for everything over two thousand amperes per motor, and start with half the current.
Vainly I tried to catch his eye. He knew the score as well as I, as did everyone in S-boats for that matter, but somehow, in the stress of the moment he had completely forgotten. What was even harder to understand was the fact that he had, nevertheless, ordered a discharge rate far in excess of the allowable limit. An easy thing to correct, ordinarily, but now, In the midst of his qualification approach, he was unreachable.
Tom Schultz turned solemnly toward me from his position directly behind the two enlisted men stationed at the bow and stern-plane controls. In the after part of the control room First Class Electrician's Mate John Larto also fixed his eyes in my direction, after a quick look at Jim. No words were necessary. Both men knew that I was not permitted to interfere in any way with the approach, that if I did so because of some emergency I automatically resumed command of the ship.
Imperceptibly the lights began to grow dimmer as S-16 picked up speed. We accelerated slowly-much more slowly than if we had been in series. Larto shot me an agonized look, reached with both hands toward the electric control board at which he was stationed. I shifted my gaze to the three other skippers, found all still deep in their notebooks, went back to Larto, and nodded ever so slightly.
The battery circuit breakers in S-16 were in the forward starboard corner of the control room. To shift them involved pulling all power off, kicking out the parallel breakers, and putting in the series breakers, — all to the accompaniment of a snapping symphony of electrical disconnects. But Larto- was equal to the occasion.
"Series, aye, aye! Fifteen hundred a side!" He vectored the response directly at Jim. The lights, which had been dim, suddenly grew bright again, and a cackling cacophony of noise arose from the deck plates in our starboard corner. Jim apparently took no notice. All three board members looked up at me quickly. But I was scrutinizing the back of Tom's head and could offer no enlightenment.
Jim had been deep in consultation with Keith, and now he spoke. "Target looks like a man-of-war," he stated. "Possibly a small cruiser or large destroyer. Set torpedo depth twelve feet. I'm going to try for a straight bow shot with a port- ninety track."
Well and good. This was more like it. Getting the target description out of the way and telling your fire-control party what you want to do were both doctrine requirements.
For several more minutes S-16 rocketed along, her super- structure vibrating and her antennas and lifelines singing, her thrashing propellers communicating a drumming note to the body of the ship. On and on we went. Jim in consultation with Keith, seemed perfectly satisfied. One minute passed — then two-then five. Still nothing from Jim.
My anxiety mounted once more. Jim had made only one observation; as a result we had been racing at top submerged speed for several minutes, heading for, a mythical point near where the target would be if it, likewise, kept steady on its course. This is the essence of the submerged approach-except that if the target zigged, Jim's tactic of running blindly would almost certainly put him out in left field. This is exactly what the zigzag system was designed to achieve. The counter to it is to make sufficient periscope observations to detect the zigs, and to govern your approach course and speed accordingly.
But Jim had only seen the target once and as a result of that had been running for it as though no change whatever could take place in the Falcon's course. True, with such a large initial angle on the bow we had a long distance to cover — and each observation required slowing down to avoid a big periscope feather. The problem is always to outguess the enemy, but the sub skipper has no occult powers to help him guess. He has to compromise with speed, and look at the target every one or two minutes.
But not Jim this day. One would have thought he knew exactly what to expect, judging by his lack of concern, and by the time he made up his mind to take another observation I was nearly beside myself. The Falcon might have zigged sharply just after Jim had last seen her, and the whole distance we had covered since, at the expense of around half of our total battery capacity, might have been in exactly the wrong direction.
I tried to, project my thought waves at him, to catch his eye, lift an eyebrow, somehow make him realize he could not keep on blindly, but Jim did not even look in my direction.
Nor was Keith any better, huddled with him beside the periscope in the dimmed light of the control room. Minute after minute dragged by. By the time the order came I was sweating, and I noticed that Messrs. Savage, Miller, and Kane were watching gravely.
"All stop! Parallel!" The drumming stopped precipitantly, and you could feel the boat slow down.
"Parallel, sir!" from Larto an instant later, as his eyes caught mine. Jim had either never realized that he had failed to shift to series, or was not going to let on.
"All ahead three hundred a side!" He turned to Tom. "Make your depth four-six feet," he ordered.
Schultz had been keeping the depth gauges rigidly at four- five feet. Jim's order would bring the boat down one foot deeper in the Water, resulting in one foot less of the periscope sticking out of water when fully raised.
Tom had been handling depth controls for years and he knew his job. He gave a few quiet instructions to the planes- men. After a few moments the depth gauge needles gently moved from the four-five to the four-six-foot markers and remained there.
Jim turned to Larto. "Speed through water?"
Larto, expecting the question, had been consulting the am- meters and voltmeters as well as the shaft-revolution indicators.