Chairs and other loose objects began sliding across the deck in the control center as the angle of tipping increased. “Downward angle now at 15 degrees, Sir,” the helmsman reported. “Depth is 680 feet.”
“Release the Emergency Buoy,” Jacobs ordered.
“Emergency buoy released and on the surface, Sir; beacon is transmitting.” The beacon sent out a radio distress signal identifying the sub and its location. All they could do now was wait and see what happened.
CHAPTER 51
Lieutenant Tiffany Grimes surveyed the damage to the torpedo room. Tubes and pipes were split and broken; water sprayed from multiple directions. Her crew had done all they could do to the torpedo tube door, now it was time to work on stopping the other leaks. Tiffany waded into the cold sea water, ducked under the surface and explored the damaged door with her fingers. Thirty seconds later she came back up.
“The whole door is bent,” she said. “Do you think we can get it to open?”
“Right now we have six small holes in the door,” Caleb Johnson replied. “Opening the door would turn that into a twenty-one inch diameter hole. Sea water would pour right in. How is that going to help?”
“I was just thinking, if we can get close enough to the surface, the pressure would lessen. At some point the air in the torpedo room would compress and counter balance the pressure from the sea. We could remove one of the other tube doors. Once the pressure stabilized, no more water would come into the room. We would have to work under the water, but if we could remove the damaged door, we could replace it with a good door. That would stop the leak, and then we could pump the water out of the room.”
Caleb put his fingers to his lower lip, obviously thinking about what she said. “How deep would the water be?”
“That’s a function of how deep we are,” she replied. “At a hundred feet…”
“We need only fifty pounds per square inch pressure to stop the water,” he finished. He looked at the damaged door. “We could pull the hinge pin right now. The locking ring will hold the door in place. All we’d have to do is turn the locking ring, pull the damaged door, put the new door in place and turn the locking ring back into place. Theoretically, it would work.”
“But we can’t do it against the flow of water through the torpedo tube — we won’t be able to hold the door in place,” she said.
“Right,” he replied. “The pressure has to balance first, and then the flow stops.”
“We can stand, what, two hundred pounds per square inch pressure?” she asked.
“Yeah, maybe a little more,” he replied. “Increasing the pressure isn’t the problem.”
“It’s decompression, I know,” she said. “But two hundred pounds per square inch in here means we can replace the damaged door at anything above four hundred feet.” She climbed the incline back to the water-tight door and pressed the intercom button.
“Con, torpedo room,”
“Go ahead Lieutenant,” Captain Jacobs said.
“Captain, we may have a possible solution, but we’ll have to flood the torpedo room in order to replace the damaged door. We’re going to need to be above 400 feet in order to try it.”
“Understood, Lieutenant,” Jacobs replied. “But flooding the room will cost us all of our buoyancy. We wouldn’t be able to maintain our depth.”
“Then could we route air under pressure into the torpedo room? If we can counterbalance the water pressure we can stop the water from flowing. Once that’s stable, we can replace the inner torpedo tube door.”
“Lieutenant Kent? Are you hearing this?” Jacobs asked.
“Already on it, Sir,” Kent answered.
Tiffany examined the tubes that lined the bulkhead in the torpedo room, noting how each tube was painted a color to identify what it carried. She spotted the light blue tube and read the tag attached to it. “I’ve got a P8-127 pneumatic tube here.” She traced it along the wall. “And a connector that I can get to.”
“Perfect,” Lieutenant Kent replied. “I’m closing the line from here. Go ahead and remove the connector.”
Tiffany picked up a crescent wrench and unscrewed the connector, and then yanked the line away from the bulkhead. “Line is open,” she said. Compressed air loudly hissed into the torpedo room.
“How long do you think this is going to take?” Caleb Johnson asked.
She looked at the double-story front section of the torpedo room, quickly running the numbers through her mind. “Depending on our depth, four to eight hours.”
“Okay, gentlemen,” Caleb Johnson said. “Let’s pull that hinge pin on the damaged door and take the door off tube number four. Move it!”
CHAPTER 52
The Massachusetts continued to tip slowly toward the bow as it drifted closer to the surface. “Down angle is now 35 degrees, Sir,” the helmsman reported. “Still slowly rising, depth is now 440 feet.”
Adams had regained consciousness and was sitting against the forward bulkhead. He had a splitting headache. Probable concussion, the boat medic had told him.
Another two hours passed. “Down angle is now 48 degrees, Sir, depth has stabilized at 320 feet.”
“Why aren’t we still rising?” Jacobs asked.
“Don’t know, Sir, but we aren’t,” the helmsman answered.
Adams struggled to his feet and worked his way around to the now badly tipped control console. He studied the gauges and ran the conditions through his mind. “Sir, I think we have another problem.”
Jacobs turned and looked at him. “Which problem?”
“I think I know why we aren’t rising any more, and if I’m right, we’re in danger of sinking, soon.”
“What?” Jacobs said, the level of anxiety clear in his voice. “What’s happening?”
“The main ballast tanks — they’re all open to the sea at the bottom.”
“Yeah,” Jacobs answered.
“The air is escaping out of the bottom of the ballast tanks, which is now more to the side instead of the bottom. Instead of the air being at the top of the tanks, it has moved to the corners of the tanks. The more the boat tips, the more air we’re going to lose.”
“And if we lose more air from our ballast tanks, we sink and we can’t stop our descent.”
“Exactly, Sir,” Adams replied.
“What if we make the stern heavier?” Jacobs asked.
“We’ll start sinking,” Adams replied. “But if we can stabilize the tilt of the boat, we can put more air back into the main ballast tanks. That might stabilize our depth.”
“Down angle is now 50 degrees,” the Helmsman reported. We’re headed down, Sir, depth now 560 feet and getting deeper.”
“Flood the rear auxiliary tanks,” Jacobs ordered. As the auxiliary tanks took on more water the stern of the sub sank faster than the bow did. “Two-second high pressure blow to main ballast tanks,” Jacobs ordered. The rush of high pressure air echoed through the sub for exactly two seconds.
“Down angle is now 45 degrees, we’re still sinking, Sir, depth is now 840 feet and picking up speed,” the Helmsman said.
“One-second high pressure blow of main ballast,” Jacobs ordered. Again the sound of rushing air filled the stricken sub. The boat shuttered as the air displaced the water in the ballast tanks.