Silence for a moment, then Captain Warder’s voice again: “We dove at this point, didn’t we? We’ve been making one-third. That means we should be in here somewhere.”
“That’s right, sir,” came Mercer’s voice.
“Up periscope,” said the Captain. “Dammit… dammit if I don’t think I’m lost. I can’t spot Nusa Besar. I see some land over there, but I don’t know where it is on the chart. Do you suppose this current has thrown us off again?… Hmmmmm… Well, we’re bound to run into them if we continue up the straits. We certainly can’t miss them. There’s too many.”
We moved on slowly, hour after hour. We were moving north in the straits, but we did not know our exact position. The Skipper took frequent periscope observations.
“Aha,” he said, some minutes later. “I see the masts of several big ships. They’re close to the beach. They’re probably where we thought they were, over near that Bali airfield. They look as if they’re at anchor. Now, Jim… if that’s the airfield, mark my bearing.” He estimated the distance. “Range, 16,000 yards.” Then: “Now we ought to get an idea where we are. Don’t sound battle stations yet. I want to get this navigational problem fixed up before I attack. I’ve got to make sure of what I’m getting into here, and I’ve got to find a way out.”
Minutes passed. The Skipper and Mercer were working at the plotting table. This was a damn important operation for the Wolf. If we could stop the Japs from landing on Bali, we could throw them off their timetable and delay their entire East Indies invasion. At this very moment the United Nations were pouring troops and munitions into the vital ports of Moresby and Darwin, building them up as supply bases. Every hour counted.
“All right!” Captain Warder sounded satisfied. “We’ll get on the course to close with them. Tell the crew to stand easy. It’ll be quite a while yet before we get in to where I’m going to fire.”
We maneuvered slowly. We knew we were in treacherous waters and going into still more dangerous ones. Over my phones I heard the roar of shallow water eddying and swirling around the high coral shoals. The Wolf was weaving her way with infinite care through a subterranean maze of jagged, razor-sharp reefs, any one of which could rip her hull from stern to stern. The slightest error in navigation would be fatal for all of us. My watch showed a few minutes after 7 a.m. Gus Wright, battle telephones on his ears, was in the after-battery compartment, ready to pass on all orders from the conning tower. We were ready to leap into action. We glided forward smoothly. Suddenly the Wolf lurched. The lights flickered. I was thrown off my stool. There was a grinding, grating noise.
“We’re aground!” someone shouted.
It echoed thinly through the ship.
Captain Warder’s voice said: “All back emergency!”
The Wolf shuddered. We heard the grating noise again forward on the keel. Suddenly we were free. Down below we began breathing again.
“Well, Jim,” said Captain Warder conversationally, “I guess we just won’t go in that way. We’ll have to find some other way in here.”
We reversed our course. We inched backward. Suddenly, another lurch, a jar, and the Wolf was stuck again, this time at periscope depth. Ten full minutes the Skipper made use of all the tactics he knew for such an emergency. No one did much talking. We were in a hell of a spot. We were trapped, we were lost, and above us prowled Jap warships loaded with depth charges.
Captain Warder, at the control-room periscope, scanned the sea. The sun was shining, the day was bright. He could see the ships he wanted to attack, and he couldn’t get at them. “I can’t keep this up,” he said. “I’ll hurt her. She’s going to get damaged. There are ships in there, and I’ve got to get them.” He stepped back from the periscope. “Surface!” he snapped, and shinnied up the control-room ladder like a monkey.
Sitting in the sound shack, I felt my stomach turn over. I went ice cold. For the first time in my life I think I knew absolute, craven fear. Here it was bright daylight, and Captain Warder was bringing us up in the middle of a Jap task force that could blow us to bits with a single salvo.
The Wolf broke water. The hatch sprang open. The Captain raced to the bridge. I waited instinctively for the first shells to scream over.
Captain Warder’s voice came down evenly: “Put two main engines on propulsion. Put two on quick battery charge.” Then: “Send raincoats to the bridge.”
Nothing made sense any more, and then all at once it did. As we surfaced, a tropical squall had struck us, as though in the Wolf’s extremity someone had cast a huge gray blanket over us, shielding us from the Japs. “An act of God,” Captain Warder called it later. Dangerous as the surfacing appeared to us below, the Skipper was correct in his analysis of what had to be done. If we continued underwater, we might be caught on the coral reefs. Far better to risk getting out of these dangerous waters, with the chance of fighting it out on the surface, than to be set up like a sitting duck on a rock for the Japs.
We ran toward deeper water on the two engines, full speed, for about half an hour, and then we dove. It was our eleventh night out of Surabaya. As soon as we leveled off, I began searching for ships. Something was wrong. The familiar background of water noises was missing. The number two projector was dead. It must have snapped off the end of the second sound shaft when we ran aground. Now the Wolf was crippled in sound, badly crippled. There was nothing we could do to fix it. Now sound had only one projector with which to search and find the enemy, look out for other ships, and trace the trail of our torpedoes. I reported it to the Captain.
“Carry on the best you can, Eckberg,” he said.
We moved in toward the beach. It was now 11 a.m. Captain Warder upped periscope. He saw three big transports jammed with Jap troops. He kept up a running report: “A destroyer over there… That bastard is firing… He’s firing his main batteries. There they go—I can see the burst and flame and smoke…. Is he firing at me? He’s firing in this direction, all right…. Hell, he can’t see this periscope!… Ohhhh. They’re firing their anti-aircraft! There’s something up there…. Well, that’s fine!” He chuckled. “That takes the pressure right off us. Now we can really sneak in.” Pause. “There’s some Jap Zeros there, too, dammit.”
We closed with the transports. We reached a point where the water was so shallow we could go no farther at periscope depth. Captain Warder ordered the Wolf swung about so that he could fire from the stern tubes and be headed out at the same time for a swift escape.
“Stand by!” came from the conning tower. Captain Warder coached Rudy at the helm. “Right a little… Left a little… Steady… steady… steady… steady…” This was a long-range shot. It had to be right. “Fire six!” A pause. “Fire seven!” A pause. “Fire eight!”
I picked up the torpedoes as they went.
“They’re running hot, Captain,” I reported. “I can hear them—”
“Yes, they’re running straight, too, Eckberg,” came Captain Warder’s soft voice. “I’m watching them.”
A minute later: “Oh, hell! Down periscope. Rig for depth-charge attack!”
This was the first time the Skipper had uttered those words.
My first reaction was simple curiosity. My pulses were beating at my temples, but through my mind ran the thought, Here they come. I’m really going to get it this time. I wonder how I’m going to act. Am I going to be the screaming, raving type? Or am I going to be just another guy getting depth-charged? Was I—