Flanagan held a position found only in submarines. He was the “Chief of the Boat,” a classification that put him above the rest of the enlisted men and just below the officers of the Wardroom. As an enlisted man he was required to give rank its due honor. In actual practice the Chief of the Boat reported directly to the Captain and the Executive Officer.
The leading petty officers were almost all Regulars. Steve Petreshock, TM 1/c, a stocky, usually soft-spoken career man, ran the Forward Torpedo Room with quiet efficiency and a dedication to detail. In the After Torpedo Room Fred Nelson, TM 1/c, hawk-nosed, a big man who stood well over six feet, ran his torpedo room with the same efficiency. But where Petreshock was quietly insistent, Nelson was more often noisily firm.
Chief Ed Morris, a dour, pipe-smoking Chief Electrician’s Mate, drove his crew of electricians with a heavy hand to keep the electrical end of the Eelfish’s diesel-electric propulsion system in perfect operating condition. In the galley Elmo “Scotty” Rudolph, like Chief Morris a veteran of more than a dozen years of submarine duty, turned out three meals a day and a midnight snack for the crew of 72 men on only four large hot plates and two small ovens.
When Lieutenant Commander Mike Brannon, USN, had reported to New London to take command of the Eelfish he was a veteran of three war patrols aboard the U.S.S. Mako. Two days after he had reported for duty he sat with his wife Gloria in the sparsely furnished quarters the Navy had provided, holding his small daughter in his lap.
“I can’t believe it,” he said, easing his heavy, six-foot frame in a creaking wicker chair that was the only seat in the small living room other than a threadbare sofa. “I’ve got one Academy man in the Wardroom, John Olsen, the Executive Officer. I’m lucky, he’s a hell of a good man. He was on the S-Thirty-Seven when the war broke out. They fought their way out of Manila and down to Australia. But he’s never been on a big Fleet submarine. John’s got his hands full learning the ship and making sure the Regulars in the crew teach the Reservists port from starboard.
“The rest of my Wardroom are Reserves. My Gunnery and Torpedo Officer is Bob Lee, Robert E. Lee if you please, a Lieutenant, Junior Grade. He’s a lawyer. My Engineering Officer is another J.G., Jerry Gold and he’s a dentist, for God’s sake! That is, he graduated from dental school but he didn’t get a chance to take his exams or whatever they have to take to go into his own practice.”
“Why isn’t he in the Medical Corps if he’s a dentist?” his wife asked.
“Don’t ask me, Gloria,” Brannon said. “The Navy apparently found out that Jerry has a lot of mechanical aptitude so they made him a line officer and sent him to Sub School. His number one man, the Assistant Engineering Officer, is an architect named Perry Arbuckle.” He shook his head.
“They’re good men?” Gloria Brannon asked.
“Oh, heck, they’re wonderful. Bright as hell. But not one of them has ever been to sea. Lee is so smart that he scares me. He’s not very big, sort of skinny, but he’s all brain. Jerry Gold is a big man, I think a pretty tough dude if you crossed him, but he’s very willing and he’s damned bright to boot. Arbuckle is a cagey sort. He’s bright as hell but he gives me the impression that he’d never blow his stack in a crisis. We’ll have to have them over pretty soon. I know, this place isn’t big enough for the three of us let alone entertaining anyone. We’ll do it at the O-Club. Maybe early next week.”
“What about your other officers?” his wife asked.
“What others? That’s all I’ve got! I get one more man, not the two or three I could use, but not till we get to Australia. That means that Olsen and I will have to stand four on and four off on the bridge at sea until the other officers are qualified to stand a sea watch.” He eased his small daughter off his lap and got out of the creaking chair with care and began to pace the living room, his heavy shoulders hunched.
“The trouble is we need submarines so damned badly in the war zone. We don’t have any surface fleet to speak of, outside of a few carriers. And we’re building submarines almost faster than we can find crews for them. Half of my crew are Reservists who have never been to sea.”
“You had some Reserves aboard the Mako,” his wife said.
“Sure,” he answered. “But we had time to train them. I don’t have the time now, honey. In four weeks they’re going to hold sea trials and the Navy will accept the ship from the builders. Then we’ll have a week, one week, to shake down the ship and the crew.
“Then we leave.” His big Irish face softened. “I thought when I lucked out and got new construction we’d have about a year together, the three of us. It comes down to five, maybe six weeks or so.”
She nodded, her eyes bright with unspilled tears. “It doesn’t seem fair,” she said. “It isn’t fair, damn it!” She blinked and smiled, but a tear ran down her cheek.
Lying in his bunk in his tiny stateroom in the Forward Battery Compartment of the Eelfish Mike Brannon woke as he sensed the slight shift upward of the ship’s bow. He heard the whine of the motors raising the periscope and the voice of the Chief of the Watch in the Control Room advising Lieutenant Lee in the Conning Tower that the ship was at periscope depth. He rolled over and closed his eyes, listening to the soft murmur of water against the submarine’s submerged hull and drifted back to sleep.
“Periscope observation at sixteen hundred hours,” Lieutenant Lee said. “No shipping in sight. No aircraft in sight. Sea is calm. Down periscope. Control, go back to one hundred and twenty-five feet.”
Bill Brosmer, Quartermaster 1/c, entered Lee’s observations in the ship’s log in his neat, crabbed handwriting. He reached into the hip pocket of his khaki shorts for a comb and pulled it carefully through his thick, curly red beard.
“Same damned report we’ve been making every hour for the last week,” he growled. “Ain’t seen one damned ship. This patrol area is dead, Mr. Lee.”
“The people in Fremantle seemed to think we’d see some good targets here,” Lee said. He shrugged his thin shoulders. “It should be a good area. There are a lot of troops up around Tacloban and there’s two big airfields up there. With lots of troops and airfields there should be supply ships coming and going.”
“But there isn’t,” Brosmer said.
“Have to be patient, Bill,” Lee said. He lounged against the edge of a shelf that held the sonar gear.
“We can’t complain, you know. This is our first war patrol and we got those two big Jap destroyers when they were sinking Mako. A lot of submarines have never had a chance to fire torpedoes at even one destroyer. The Old Man is a good shot.”
“How’s he taking the loss of the Mako?” Brosmer’s eyes were half shut, his face noncommittal, his voice carefully casual.
“Pretty hard,” Lee said. “He put the Mako in commission just before the war broke out. He made three war patrols on her as the Exec under Captain Hinman. From what John Olsen has told me Hinman was the closest friend our Old Man had.” He turned his head and looked at the gyro repeater to see if the helmsman was on course.
“If we hadn’t been twenty miles away when the Mako told us they were going after a convoy and invited us to come over and help them, maybe the Old Man could have sunk those two Jap destroyers before they blasted Mako. He talks about that quite a bit, the Old Man does. About getting there sooner.” He looked at Brosmer, his brown eyes guileless.