Over the intercom, Captain Warder’s even voice: “She’s a Jap, all right. Akasaki class. Big destroyer. Guns mounted fore and aft. Multiple torpedo tubes midships. Depth charge racks. Estimated course, zero seven zero. Estimated speed, fifteen knots. Range, 3,000 yards. Seems to be patrolling outside a cove.” Pause. “Down periscope.” Then, in a satisfied tone: “We’ll wait a couple of minutes. Then we’ll make another check.”
Zero seven zero meant the enemy was on a course 70 degrees from true north. Zero zero one, for example, would mean one degree; three five nine would mean 359 degrees. Thus we could plot our approach, having the enemy’s course from a fixed point on the horizon.
The crew of the Wolf waited, silent. Slowly we slipped into position. The sea was rough now; we rolled and pitched. I had the Jap propellers in my earphones: whish—sh… whish-sh… whish-sh… and now and then a suddenly weakened fluff… fluff… whish… sh! The enemy destroyer was pitching so heavily that every few seconds his propellers cleared the water altogether and churned the air.
“Ah!” Captain Warder’s voice was eager. “She’s heading directly for us. Probably en route to the homeland. We won’t attack until we get in a more favorable position.” Then a change in his voice: “Wait a minute, wait a minute!… If the Japs have a destroyer out here, they must have something inside that cove.” Silence. Then, as though debating with himself: “Sea conditions are against me. Fish might broach. On the other hand, this is a man-of-war. He’s enemy shipping. I’m ordered out here to destroy him. But if I attack, successful or not, they’ll know I’m here, and then they’ll pull whatever they have inside that cove away from here.”
The Wolf marked time. Captain Warder was thinking it through. Was it to be this Jap destroyer, sitting before us, a fat, inviting target, or was it wiser to ignore him and set our sights for bigger prizes inside the cove? Two full minutes dragged by. No one spoke. I heard men coughing, clearing their throats, shuffling, making the small noises men make under pressure. Deeper in the boat, men stood and watched the loud speakers, waiting. I heard the Jap’s screws over sound. I spun my dials, kept him clear, and gave the Captain his bearings:
“Screws bearing zero two zero, Captain.”
“Very well, Eckberg.” Still preoccupied.
“Target seems to be drawing aft, Captain.”
“Yes—ss, that’s right. He’s staying on the same course. Let me know if the pattern changes.” Then, with sudden finality:
“Secure battle stations. We will not attack. We’re going to look inside that cove.”
The whole crew relaxed. But the tension was gone only momentarily. The Wolf was going into that cove and make the Japs like it, too. We’d see action quickly enough. Kelly’s Pool Room became crowded with men off duty drinking coffee and talking things over. Captain Warder and Lieutenant Deragon pored over their charts in the control room: slim men both, one big, the other small, both in khaki shorts and sandals, their bodies glistening with perspiration under the subdued light. Circumspection was the word now.
All that day we patrolled carefully, waiting for cover of darkness. With nightfall, the seas grew mountainous. We drew away from the bay: Captain Warder wanted his men to catch some sleep during the night.
A few of us tried to doze off, but we were too tense. Some of the boys were seasick. Most of us stayed at our stations, checking and rechecking our gear. Langford and his torpedo crew toiled over their fish. It takes six strong men to move a torpedo on its rollers and bring it out for inspection. At Squeaky’s command, the men seized a heavy line and tugged. The great, twenty-foot torpedo slid out on its tiny rollers from the loading rack. They went over it as a diamond cutter goes over his diamond, then slowly they slid it noiselessly back into place.
We submerged at dawn and started into the cove. The approach was a delicate matter. We spent four hours negotiating the short distance, making periscope observations every few minutes. The order would come, “Up periscope.” The glistening metal pillar—for all the world like a huge, shining perpendicular piston—would glide up with a soft drone, up out of its well until the periscope lens was above the surface of the water, far overhead. Captain Warder would place both arms over the two crossbars protruding more than a foot from either side of the periscope base, and, half-hanging on them, his forehead pressed against the sponge-rubber eyepiece, he would rotate with it like some strange acrobat in slow motion. I knew what it was like to look through that eyepiece: the sense of shock you had when you saw the brightness of daylight, the sun sparkling on the blue waters of the sea. Looking through a periscope is like looking through a high-powered binoculars: almost under your nose the sea heaves and tosses, so near that you almost pull back from the spray. The droplets of water roll down with amazing speed from the elliptical object glass, and the image is framed and clear. If the sun were too bright, a twist of the wrist—and a green filter fell into place. I knew that with a flick of his right hand Captain Warder could reduce his magnification to 75 percent of normal—this if he found himself so near a target that it occupied the entire field of vision and a lesser magnification would give him a more complete picture of target and surroundings. With another flick of his hand he could sweep the sea from horizon to sky; a glance downward at the periscope base, and he knew almost instantly how far away, in yards, the target stood; and all these infinite calibrations could, with a single press of his right thumb, be transferred into the very torpedoes themselves so that, once fired, they became all but human flashing toward their victim at such a rate of speed, with such a change in direction, set to explode precisely at contact.
Slowly we crept up on our still-unseen prey. In the silence, above the steady whine of the Wolf’s motors, we could hear overhead the gurgle and splash of the sea itself. The Skipper gave way, after a little while, to Lieutenant Holden, and with each “Up periscope” Holden took his navigation fixes, using points of land for reference. Stationed at sound, I heard the rough sea. The water noises were deafening, a roaring, snapping, crackling bedlam blaring through my phones like static in a terrific electrical storm. To hear the beating of a ship’s screws above this scratching inferno of sound meant listening with such intensity that often you mistook the pulsations of your own blood for the enemy.
Suddenly Holden’s deep voice rang out: “Call the Captain!”
The Skipper raced up the ladder. “What have you got, Mr. Holden?”
“I don’t know, sir. I saw the mast of a ship.”
“Can you make him out at all?”
“No, sir.”
The Captain took over the periscope. He studied the sea for a full minute, then pulled the periscope down again. “There’s a ship in there, all right. Looks like a big baby. Hmmmm.” Silence. “Mr. Mercer”—he was turning to Ensign Mercer, standing over his charts on a tiny desk less than three feet away—“how’s the depth of that water?”
“We can’t go in far, sir,” said Mercer. His voice had a different timbre. “It’s pretty shallow. But I think we can get within firing range.”
“Good!” said the Captain. “Up periscope.” A moment later: “Jap seaplane tender at anchor. Looks about 12,000 tons…”