“Come right to two five oh.” Fyfe, who is working the same problem in his head that Sprinkle is solving mechanically in the conning tower, has the situation firmly fixed in his mind. He wants to keep coming around to head for the enemy, and has anticipated by seconds only the latter’s recommendation.
“What is the distance to the track?”
“Two oh double oh, Captain.”
“All ahead one third.” Batfish is closing the target’s projected track too quickly, and the firing range will be too short, or the target might detect her before firing. Fyfe’s brain is now in high gear, and he can feel every part of the problem falling into place. In fact, it is almost as if he could reach out and control the movements of the Japanese skipper also, and his mind wills the enemy to keep on coming, to keep on the course and speed as set up; to come unerringly and steadily on to his doom.
And on and on he comes, totally unaware of the trap set for him, totally unaware that he is springing the trap on himself, that any change whatsoever which he might make would be to his advantage, that the most serious mistake you can make, when it’s submarine against submarine, is to relax—ever. Of course, to give him his due, the Jap doesn’t know he is being shadowed. But he knows very well that he is proceeding through a submarine-infested area — and in this little game no excuses are accepted.
At 1,500 yards the keen eyes on Batfish’s bridge distinguish a blur in the gray murk, and at 1000 yards the sinister outline of a Japanese I class submarine is made out — the first time during the whole evening that the enemy has actually been sighted. He wallows heavily in the slight chop of the sea — low, dark, and ungainly.
At 1000 yards the Jap is broadside to Batfish: Fyfe’s plan has borne fruit, for his own bow is exactly toward the enemy, and he has all the advantage of sighting. Furthermore, the darkest portion of the overcast is behind him.
Sprinkle is beside himself with eagerness. For about thirty seconds he has been imploring his skipper to shoot. He has a perfect solution and doesn’t want to let it get away from him. “We’ve got them cold! Ready to shoot any time, Captain!” He repeats the same formula over and over, a veteran of too many patrols to say what he really means, which would be more on the order of, “Let’s go, Captain! What are we waiting for?”
But Fyfe refuses to be hurried. He’s worked too long for this moment, and he has already missed once, possibly because of a little haste in firing. Carefully he takes a bridge bearing and has it matched into the TDC, swings the TBT and takes another, to make sure there is no transmission lag which might cause an error. Then, for the first time using the word, he says, in a curious flat voice, “Fire torpedoes!”
“Fire one!” Sprinkle’s voice is a split second behind that of his skipper’s.
Almost immediately the telephone talker standing under the conning tower hatch shouts loudly, so that his message is heard in the conning tower as well as on the bridge:
“Number one did not eject! Running hot in the tube!”
Something has gone wrong. The torpedo should have been pushed out of the torpedo tube by the high-pressure air ejection system. Instead, it has stuck in the tube, and the torpedomen forward can hear it running in the tube. This is critical, for it will be armed within a matter of seconds, and then almost anything could set it off. Besides, the motor is overspeeding in the tube, and it could conceivably break up under the strain and vibration — which might itself produce sufficient shock to cause an explosion.
But there isn’t time to think much about possibilities. The skipper’s reaction is instant. “Tubes forward, try again, by hand. Use full ejection pressure!” Full pressure is used only when firing at deep submergence, but this is an emergency.
The next command is for Clark Sprinkle in the conning tower. “Check fire!” Fyfe is not going to let the Jap get away while he waits for the casualty to be straightened out, but neither does he want the faulty torpedo to be ejected at the same time as a good one, and possibly interfere with it. If it does not eject on the second try, he will shoot the remaining tubes, and then return to the balky one.
“Number one tube fired by hand. Tube is clear!” The very welcome report is received after a few anxious seconds with a profound sense of relief. Only half-a-dozen seconds have been lost, altogether, and the situation is still good for the remaining fish.
“Resume fire, Clark!” But the exec has not needed that command. Number two torpedo is already on its way, followed a few seconds later by number three. Torpedoes number four, five, and six are held in reserve in case the first salvo misses.
Because these are wakeless electric torpedoes, Jake Fyfe, on the bridge, does not have the pencil-like wakes of steam and air to mark where they have gone. There is a slight disturbance of the surface of the water to show the direction they took, but that is all. Seven pairs of binoculars are glued to the Jap’s low, lumbering silhouette and his odd-shaped bridge.
Down in the conning tower, the radar operator and the exec are staring at their screen, where the blip which is the target is showing up strongly and steadily, showing radar emanations still at the same uninterrupted interval. Suddenly, however, the radar waves become steady, as though the enemy operator had steadied his radar on a just-noticed blip, possibly to investigate it.
“I think he’s detected us, sir!” whispers Radar. “See — it’s steadied on us!”
Sprinkle has also seen. Eyes fixed on the cathode tube face he reaches for the portable mike to tell the skipper about this new development, when he drops it again. Before his eyes the blip has suddenly, astoundingly, grown much larger. It is now nearly twice the size it had been an instant before. Small flashes of light can be seen on the screen, going away from the outsized pip and disappearing. Then, swiftly, the pip reduces in size and disappears entirely. Nothing is left on the scope whatsoever.
At this moment a jubilant shout from the bridge can be heard. “We got him! We got him! He blew up and sank!” Sprinkle mops his brow.
The watchers on Batfish’s bridge had hardly expected anything quite so dramatic as what they saw. One torpedo had evidently reached the target, and must have hit into a magazine or possibly into a tank carrying gasoline. The Nip sub had simply exploded, with a brilliant red-and-yellow flame which shot high into the night sky, furiously outlined against the somber, sober grayness. And as quickly as the flame reached its zenith, it disappeared, as 2,500 tons of broken twisted Japanese steel plunged like a rock to the bottom of the ocean.
There was nothing left for torpedo number three — following a few seconds behind number two — to hit, and it passed over the spot where the enemy ship had been.
Batfish immediately proceeded to the spot where the sub had sunk, hoping to pick up a survivor or two, but the effort was needless. Undoubtedly all hands had been either killed instantly by the terrific explosion, or had been carried down In the ship. There had been absolutely no chance for anyone not already topside to get out. All Jake Fyfe could find was a large oil slick extending more than two miles in all directions from the spot where the enemy had last been seen.
Strangely — delighted and happy though he was over his success in destroying the enemy sub — the American skipper felt a few twinges of a peculiar emotion. This was very much like shooting your own kind, despite the proven viciousness and brutality exhibited by some of the enemy — and but for the superiority of his crew and equipment, the victim might have been Batfish instead of HIJMS I-41.