“Standby to dive.” The uncustomary order pealed through the ship’s announcing system. The crew stood to their stations, fingering the controls with which, in a moment, they would send her below. I was glad to see they were a little keyed up.
Ed Campbell, engineer and diving officer, looked inquiringly at me. As I nodded to him, he held up his hand, motioning as though opening a valve. High-pressure air whistled into the control room. A moment — he clenched his fist. The whistle cut off abruptly, as the auxilaryman behind us whirled shut the stop valve. Ed and I inspected the barometer; it held steady, showing about half an inch more atmospheric pressure than before.
I climbed a few rungs of the ladder to the conning tower, far enough to speak to George Street at the periscope. He was already using it, though the ship was still on the surface. The conning tower hatch was shut tightly, I knew, because the ship had held air, and its “Christmas Tree” light was green. “Pressure in the boat. Green aboard. All set below, Captain.”
George took his eyes from the ’scope and grinned at me. “Take her down, then,” he said. “We can’t learn any younger.”
I reached over my head, grasped the conning tower diving alarm, and swung the arm twice through its short arc. Stiff with newness, it did not return to the off position of its own accord, and I had to push it back each time. As the familiar reverberations died away — they, at least, sounded exactly as they had in Trigger—I seized the general announcing microphone. “Dive, dive,” I called.
The vents popped as D. W. Remley, Chief Torpedoman and Chief of the Boat, pulled their hydraulic control handles toward him one after another. We could hear the rush of air escaping from the ballast tanks. The helmsman clicked his two annunciators over to Ahead Standard, and centered his rudder amidships. Tirante’s gently heaving deck seemed to change its motion; tilt ever so slightly down by the bow. Beneath me in the control room I could hear Ed quietly coaching his planesmen as they leaned into their big nickel-steel wheels. I could feel Tirante start to break surface and her down inclination become greater as I steadied myself against the side of the conning tower and made a note to have the diving alarm worked over.
George was going around and around with his periscope, alternately watching bow and stern. After a moment he spoke. “Bow’s under.” Then, in a few seconds, “Stern’s gone.” The sloshing sound of the water in the superstructure was replaced by the noise of the sea climbing swiftly around the bridge coaming and up the periscope supports. I thought I could feel the angle of inclination decrease imperceptibly.
“All ahead two thirds.” That was Ed’s gentle voice calling up from the control room. The helmsman clicked the annunciators, got an answering click as the electricians in the maneuvering room responded. Tirante’s bow began to lift.
“Flood forward trim from sea.” Ed again. She was coming up a bit too fast to suit him. “Secure flooding.” The faintly heard rumbling of water flowing stopped. The deck continued to return to normal. “All ahead one third.” It is submarine custom for the diving officer to control the speed until he is satisfied with the submerged trim.
Ed was calling up the hatchway again: “Final trim, sir. Depth, six-oh feet, one third speed.” There was a barely perceptible tone in his voice. To hit the final compensation so closely on the very first dive of a new ship smacked of the miraculous. On Triggers first dive it had taken us an hour and a half of pumping and flooding before we were satisfied.
My new skipper was not one to pass by the moment, either; that was one of the first things I had begun to like about him. In a few well-chosen words shouted down the hatch, he let Ed know that he was without doubt the world’s finest diving officer, and that we were extraordinarily fortunate to have him aboard.
Tirante’s character developed rapidly, even before the training period was complete. Her radar was the most powerful I had ever encountered; her engines ran best when loaded to more than full rated power; she made 21 knots with ease whereas other subs of the same design struggled to reach 19. She carried four more fish than Trigger, and her torpedoes had been modified to eliminate the frustrations of the earlier war years. Many of Tirante’s crew were already veterans of the Pacific, some of them from Trigger herself. We built upon the virtues and mistakes of those from whom we had learned the business.
The prologue of Tirante’s first war patrol states laconically: “Ship completed on November 23, 1944, and commenced training in fog, storms, and freezing weather off Portsmouth. Tirante’s builders did a wonderful job.” Somehow, starting with that first dive, everything seemed to work right the first time for us. After two and a half years fighting a ship which had gradually had more and more things wrong with her — whether the result of enemy action or just plain misadventure-despite which she had performed magnificently, it was an unprecedented delight to me to have everything go right.
During our two-week training period at New London prior to departure for the Pacific we worked out our fire control, our damage control, and all the other phases of submarine technique. Tirelessly, Ensign Bill Ledford, onetime chief torpedoman of Trigger, now assistant torpedo officer of Tirante, tinkered with his fish, and every torpedo we fired in practice hit the target. By the time we were ready to leave, Tirante had become a perfectionist, and we had no doubt of being able to pass any readiness inspection Admiral Lockwood cared to toss at us.
Then the day before setting out for Balboa and the Pacific our preparations were interrupted by an unexpected summons for the skipper. When he returned, he motioned Lieutenant Endicott (Chub) Peabody II and me into his stateroom.
“It was the Force Gunnery Officer,” he said without preamble. “He’s got a hot potato on his hands and wants us to take it over.”
“What is it, Captain?”
George chuckled. “It seems that the employees of the Westinghouse Corporation plant at Sharon, Pennsylvania, which makes electric torpedoes, got together and donated one special torpedo for the war effort. It’s up in the torpedo shop now, tested and ready to go, and they want somebody to take it out with them.”
“We’ve already loaded all our fish, sir,” said Chub. “We’d have to take one back out…”
The skipper’s grin widened. “Wait till I tell you the rest. This torpedo is painted up like a highway billboard sign so nobody can possibly mistake it. It’s been photographed at least a dozen times, at least once at every stage of its construction and trials. Two admirals have publicly told Sharon that the fish will be delivered to the enemy with their compliments, and now — somebody has got to make good on all the bragging.”
“You mean,” I interjected, “they want us to take this particular fish out and plant it in the bottom of some Jap battleship? Don’t they know battleships don’t grow on trees and that even with a perfectly aimed salvo some of the fish are bound to miss?”
“Oh, they’re not unreasonable. They’ll settle for any decent-sized maru.”
Chub said, “We’d sure look foolish if we took it out and then had to report we hadn’t hit anything with it, wouldn’t we?”
This didn’t faze George. “You’re right,” he said, “and that’s why taking it along is purely voluntary. A couple of ships have already declined the honor for that very reason. So the Force Gunnery Officer is getting right anxious to get rid of it, and I told him we’d see that it reached the desired destination.”