Captain Warder peered through the periscope. Nothing. No ships in sight. We scanned the sea endlessly all that day and found no trace of the Japs. Later we learned that they failed to make that landing on Bali that day and the Wolf was credited with having repelled it. We patrolled for two days in and out of the straits. We heard the Japanese version of what we’d done off Bali the second night when we tuned in Radio Tokyo. The English voice was contemptuous:
“Our fleet has again shown its superiority over the Allied submarines.” (Snickers from us.) “In a recent landing on the Island of Bali”—(More snickers)—“our forces ran into a nest of Allied submarines. The advantages went to our fleet forces. We destroyed—”
“By Christ,” exclaimed Sousa, “we’re a whole nest of them, you know that?”
“—several of the enemy and not one of his submarines was able to accomplish a successful attack. This type of warfare is becoming more and more successful. It will not be long until we have eliminated the last Allied submarine from Pacific waters.”
Zerk commented, “Well, probably they have sunk a lot of our boats we don’t know about.”
Sousa glared at him. Lieutenant Deragon said, “You see the kind of fairy tales they’re putting out? How are they going to win the war by putting out stuff like that for home consumption?”
John Street, with his score card, just grinned.
After that depth charging, the crew of the Wolf seemed more closely knit together than before. Maley and I particularly seemed to hit it off well. Even though one of the sound shafts was out of commission, neither of us felt at ease in action after that unless we both were in the shack.
Now we patrolled constantly. We had several uneventful days. We remained submerged during the daylight hours, surfaced at night, recharged batteries, then waited for dawn, hoping each day would bring us a target. One night a message came for us to keep out of the straits from dusk until dawn. A Dutch raiding party of cruisers and destroyers was coming through. The following night, lying off the straits in the position assigned to us, we had a box seat for the show. Frank Franz, bridge lookout at the time, told me later that he saw flashes of gunfire and the flare of bursting shells. Apparently our Dutch friends met a Jap raiding party in the middle of the night and sank four or five Jap ships.
A little later another urgent dispatch: a Jap convoy had been sighted, was on such and such a course.
When the convoy struck the center of the straits we were there, waiting. Captain Warder again determined the point where he thought the Japs would attempt to land. We waited for the false dawn, when a submarine commander has good visibility, but it is difficult to detect his periscope a few inches above the water.
The Wolf dove at 4:30 a.m. We hadn’t sighted the convoy yet. It was a moonless night. As soon as we got down and leveled off, however, I heard the familiar ping!… ping!… ping! There they were! On the alert.
Now Captain Warder exhibited the most skillful maneuvering I’ve ever seen. By sound we were able to determine that eight ships were coming toward us, four in single file and two each on either side as escorts. Obviously, the four in single file were troop transports; their screws labored through the water. The other four were destroyers. Their screws beat with a cleaner, quicker beat. By sound alone Captain Warder maneuvered the Wolf to a point he sought between the two leading transports. In that position he could fire all of our torpedoes in rapid succession and with maximum damage to the enemy. It was as clear-cut as a problem in geometry.
“Yes, here they are!” Captain Warder announced at the periscope. “This is a real landing force. They’ve probably got them packed in there like sardines… Are the tubes ready?”
The word came back: “All tubes ready, sir.”
The Wolf waited.
“Stand by… Fire!”
Now, in order, the Wolf sent torpedoes crashing into the two leading transports. Without waiting for the result, the Skipper swung his periscope around, got the first destroyer in the cross-hairs of the object glass, and barked: “Fire!”
A series of explosions shook the Wolf as our fish crashed into the three ships. I heard screws.
“We hit all three,” came Captain Warder’s jubilant voice.
“Here come the others. Those other three destroyers are making a beeline for us. Down periscope. Take her down! Rig for depth-charge attack!… Dammit ..” His voice trailed away. “I’d have liked to see those three babies sink!”
We went down. We wondered how bad this would be. Then the screws began pounding in my ears. Here was one set of high-speed screws, and then another, and then a third. Now I had too many to keep track of: they were coming and going in all directions. Although we were shaken up by their depth charges, no great harm was done. But they were persistent. We were depth charged intermittently, and not until noon did we hear the last of them. We waited. The heat began to increase again. When we’d been submerged for hours, the Skipper upped periscope for a swift glance about.
The nearest ship was 8,000 yards away. Captain Warder raised approximately six inches of periscope above the water—and damned if the Jap didn’t see it, from that distance of more than four miles!
“Down periscope! He’s started to head this way,” exclaimed the Skipper. “I don’t know if he saw us or not. I don’t see how he could have from that range. I’ll take another look to be sure.”
The periscope slid up again. Captain Warder had it above surface less than five seconds.
“Down periscope! He has seen us!”
The Skipper turned around. His voice was louder. “Do you know,” he said, “I saw men all over that ship. They were hanging on the masts and on every piece of superstructure, and every man had a pair of binoculars!” He added, “I’m taking no more chances with the periscope. Sound, what’s he doing?”
I could hear the Jap clearly. “I have a bearing, Captain. He’s bearing one nine zero, steady bearing.”
“Good! Keep track of him. Let me know everything.”
The Jap screws grew louder. They were drawing dead astern. My heart was in my mouth.
“Captain!” I yelled. “He’s coming and he’s coming fast, and he’s going to come right over us!”
The Wolf was as still as a grave. Now every man in the ship, standing at his post, his heart beating fast, listening with all his might, heard the propellers of the destroyer reach a roar, fill all space with sound, pass over—and then go on.
There was not much water between the stool upon which I sat tense and the keel of the Japanese destroyer. And not a depth charge was dropped. Later Captain Warder analyzed what must have happened. A Jap lookout sighted our periscope, but reported it simply as an “object”—not a periscope. The destroyer sped over to investigate. His course was so true that he passed directly over us.
The heat was beginning to tell now. In the maneuvering space it had reached 140 degrees. The air was foul with the odor of human bodies. We dripped with perspiration. Captain Warder ordered saline tablets distributed, and Doc Loaiza, whose beard now made him look more like a Turk than a Puerto Rican, for it framed his mouth in a perfect black oval, passed them out.
When he came by, his feet squelched in perspiration, almost half an inch thick on the deck. A messboy brought in a gallon jug of water. I lifted the jug to my lips, drank, and spit it out. It had become brackish. It had a coppery taste from the lining of the water tank. Repeated tossing about had stirred up the sediment. It wasn’t fit to drink. Maley sat beside me, naked to the waist, mopping his body with a soaked undershirt. The pressure in the boat was high from the compressed air we’d sucked back each time we fired a fish. The air-conditioning had been off so long the heat had reached a terrific point.