“Fish is ready and outer doors are open, Captain,” responded Thompson.
“Right full rudder,” ordered the skipper. “What’s that approach course, Casler?”
“Three zero zero, Captain,” said Casler, who’d been working it out on the plotting table.
“That’s fine,” said the skipper, his eyes still at the periscope. “Rudy, come to three zero zero… He’s still coming this way. Down periscope.” In a satisfied voice, “We’ll fire on the next observation. Sound, have you got him?”
“I got him, Captain.”
“Good! Let me know if he changes course or speeds up. This baby has a pennant, too. Well. If we sink him, that Admiral will have to get on one of those destroyers.”
There was snickering audible all through the boat.
“All right,” said Captain Warder briskly. “Let’s have a look. Up periscope.” Pause. “My… what a target! I can’t wait. Stand by… ready, Hank?”
“Ready, sir,” came Hank’s deep voice.
“Fire!” Captain Warder’s order was sharp.
Our last torpedo shot from the Wolf’s bow. I followed it right to the target. It was a perfect hit, but I knew we dare not stick around to see her sink.
“Now,” said Captain Warder dryly, “if we had a few more fish we could have this Admiral riding a canoe. He doesn’t have many more cruisers left here. All right, now. Abandon conning tower. Rig for depth charges. They’ll be coming around again.”
It was 4 p.m. We knew this was going to be a tough one. The Japs—partly in panic, partly in rage—would make us remember this. We were not wrong. Most of us had not had any sleep for nearly thirty-six hours. We had now been under for a long time, and the moment the air-conditioning was turned off we began to feel the heat and closeness. The humidity was very high. We waited for the worst, Captain Warder, wearing only shorts like the rest of us, sitting in his chair outside the sound shack.
The next hours were hell. At the beginning I heard the Jap’s screws coming toward us. I picked the loudest and ignored the others. I stuck to him. After the second hour, the heat, the closeness, the strain, the lack of sleep began to tell. We found it difficult to carry out routine orders. I found myself repeating Captain Warder’s words to myself for fear I would forget the first words by the time I heard the last. It was difficult to concentrate. Our minds worked sluggishly. After the fourth hour, a fog of moisture and humidity settled in the compartments throughout the Wolf. We squinted at each other. Some of the men lay sprawled on their bunks, seeking to conserve their strength. Others slumped on stools, their shirts tied about their waists to keep perspiration from running down their naked bodies.
I was leaning on my elbow on the plate glass of my desk, and once, glancing down, saw that my perspiration had run down the glass and into the blue blotter I had placed under it, soaking the blotter and dripping from it, as from a soggy cloth, onto the linoleum deck, already swimming in perspiration. The sweat was rolling down my elbows in streams. The skin of my hands was pinched and white. I found myself nervously rubbing my palms against my knees, kneading the dirt out.
The stench in the Wolf grew unbearable. It was salty, and acrid, and nauseating, made up of perspiration, oil, staleness, and oven-like heat. Few of us had to answer any call of nature. Fear seemed to constrict our bowels, turn our stomachs into hard knots. Our bodies threw off such quantities of liquid that there was little for our kidneys to do. It was just as well. Our toilet tanks could not be emptied lest the air bubbles give us away on the surface. By 7 p.m. some of the men lay in their bunks near exhaustion. They tried to read, but the words swam before their eyes. The refrigerator had been switched off. Our drinking water was warm. Some of the men drank anyway and became nauseated. Doc Loaiza stumbled through the passageway, groping his way along the bulkheads, passing out saline tablets. They gagged us.
Once, during this time, Captain Warder stuck his head through the door of the sound shack. He whispered. I didn’t get his words. I wondered why he was whispering. He repeated them. Then I understood. How was I doing? I wanted to show him I was at ease.
“I’m fine, Captain,” I said, loudly—but my voice was a whisper, too. The pressure had become so great that your words literally stopped moving the moment they left your lips. They hung in the thick air. When orders came, they had to be squeaked from one man to the next.
Finally Captain Warder ordered the Wolf taken to periscope depth. We had to surface soon. The men needed air. The lights were dim; the batteries had to be recharged, for when they went down completely, we’d have to surface—or die.
“I see a destroyer over there,” came the Skipper’s hoarse voice at the periscope. And after what seemed an age: “He’s waiting, all right. He’s listening for us. Let’s go back down.”
Slowly the Wolf descended. Maley’s face was gaunt as he slumped at my side. His cheeks were beaded with perspiration.
His eyes were red-rimmed. My beard was wet and sodden. It itched horribly. An inch of sweat swirled on the deck under my feet. I sat there, in a half stupor, when suddenly I felt myself tilting back on my stool. An empty can of Maley’s pipe tobacco skidded off its shelf. Hell, we were taking a terrific up-angle… Something was wrong. I jumped up and out into the control room. Everyone there was frozen at his place, eyes glued to the depth gauge. The needle was climbing down… We were going up!
“Jesus, we’re broaching!”
I was numb. After the punishment we’d taken, this was the end of everything. We were surfacing, showing ourselves, and the Japs were up there, waiting…
Captain Warder slid down the control-room ladder. His feet hit the deck.
“Use negative!” he roared.
The crew leaped to positions. On nerve alone they stood and toiled with valves and controls and huge wheels, their sweat-glazed eyes on the depth gauge with its needle swinging lower, lower…
There was a scream of escaping air. Water rushed into the Wolf’s gigantic emergency tank.
But we were still going up—up. I could hardly keep my feet. I grabbed a handle.
“For Christ’s sake,” a high-pitched voice screamed, “the conning tower’s out. They can see us!”
“All ahead, emergency!” Captain Warder’s voice was electrifying. “Bowplanes, sternplanes, hard dive!”
The Wolf’s powerful motors burst into an ear-splitting whine. She drove forward like a catapult. We waited, breathlessly. We had done all we could. If she surfaced now, it was out of our hands.
Slowly the needle began to climb. Slowly the Wolf checked her rise and began her descent. But for the moment we had to forget everything and save our lives again. The Wolf was gathering momentum now, plunging toward the bottom so swiftly she might reach depths so great the water pressure would cave in her sides. We had to stop her plunge downward as swiftly as we had stopped the plunge upward.
“Blow negative!” Captain Warder shouted. Air shrieked into the emergency tank, forcing the water out again. “All back, emergency!” We were reversing our propellers, we were giving ourselves away again to the enemy, sending air bubbles to the surface…
If ever the Seawolf seemed destined to meet her end, this was the moment.
Ba-room! The first depth charge came over. With it the Wolf seemed to split up inside. Before my eyes the bulkheads billowed inward, then returned to their original position. The huge radio and sound gear, 800 pounds of panel and tubes and machinery, swayed like a drunken man. Water swished and churned madly through the superstructure over my head. In the engine room men were swept from their feet. And thrown from side to side, hurled from one bulkhead to the other, with wood and metal crashing and splintering about us, my mind went round and round like a broken record playing over and over again, “Where is he, where is he, there he is, there he is, O God, there he is, there goes another, is that the last, is that the last…?”