“All missed aft.” Then, a moment later, “Missed completely. Take her down.”
His words silenced the entire ship.
I could sit at sound no longer. “I’m going to grab some coffee, Paul,” I told Maley.
In the control room some of the crew were talking to Dishman, who was leaning on the sternplanes control. He looked like a mad bull.
Hershey was telling Dishman: “That’s the whole answer to it—that observer. That dodo bird we got on board. Hell, nine torpedoes and not a hit! The Seawolf never missed that many in her life!”
There was silence. Zerk said dryly: “What the hell, he didn’t push the target away, did he?”
“He wasn’t here last time, was he?” demanded Hershey. “No. So what happened? We didn’t have any misses. We made a score. This run is different. There’s a stranger aboard, and the Wolf doesn’t like it.”
I went through to the galley and drew some coffee. Gus Wright was leaning on a shelf of the tiny alcove, working on the menu for the next day.
“Tough luck,” I said.
“Plenty tough,” he said. “I don’t know why the hell I’m worrying about food. I’m not hungry now.”
I swallowed the scalding black coffee and went back to my vigil on sound.
Word from the conning tower the next morning was that we were heading for the north. We moved on. For days we recharged at night and dove at dawn. Then near the Celebes, a message came through:
“Patrol for convoy headed toward position Y.”
No use crying over spilled milk now. We raced on and took a patrol position at the northeast entrance of Macassar Straits.
Now we found ourselves in a strange and dangerous company. The area was crowded with sampans, some of them carrying big 20-mm. guns. Every time the Skipper upped his periscope he ran into a group of them. We were under constant strain. A sampan with a radio could easily give away our position to corvettes or planes. We scared hell out of some of them when our long black periscope popped up in front of them. They scattered like a flock of wild ducks and headed for shore. We didn’t like that either. It might rouse the Jap command.
At one point the Captain, at the periscope, spoke up: “Here’s something coming along… A converted raider… Well, well! She has a plane aft. Let’s get her.”
He maneuvered the Wolf like a wizard in an attempt to get into proper firing position. If we sank one ship—just one—it would make new men of us. Once or twice it looked as if we were slipping into position, but dammit, no. She was just too fast, and there wasn’t anything in the world that a submarine can do against a fast ship out of position.
It was no use. She disappeared over the horizon.
Slowly we moved north. We poked our nose into every cove and inlet, but they were deserted. Finally one night we entered a narrow, shallow channel and surfaced. Suddenly one of the lookouts sang out: “Object on port bow.”
We crash dived. My sound gear picked up the flutter of screws—a destroyer, I thought. Now, thinking over that night, a cold sweat still breaks out on me.
The men sat on their stools; they lay in their bunks waiting. I could trace the enemy’s course. He was taking his time, searching every inch of that passage. My heart was in my throat. Both Maley and I had our earphones pressed to our ears.
We really were in a very bad spot. Now the Jap was overhead, his screws beating like a train clattering over a bridge. We knew he was using his sound gear, and that, coupled with the knowledge that we were practically trapped in this shallow, narrow channel, gave us one of the worst moments of our lives. We were afraid. We were damn afraid. We waited. His screws came nearer, then they were above us, right above our heads, thundering like doom—and then the thunder and clatter grew less and less, and he was on his way to parts unknown. Not until hours later, when we were certain he was well on his way south, did we straighten out and head north again.
We surfaced at midnight, cruised slowly, and dove before dawn the next morning.
Captain Warder upped his periscope. He gave a low whistle. “This place is heavy with guns,” he said. “Let’s see… yes, batteries over here… over here… over here… Big shore batteries on three sides of us. Well,” he said, “I’d hate to be a surface ship right now… Wait a minute, wait a minute! Here’s something. Jap freighter… He’s a little baby… riding high and dry. Probably empty. He’s probably heading for the Indies to pick up loot. We have a nice chop up here. Oh, oh! I can see two men on the bridge. They’re looking this way, too. Can they see this little bit of stick I’ve raised? I’d sure like to catch the fellow who said the Nips can’t see well. Those babies have been picking us up right along.” Pause. “Oh, well, there she goes. We couldn’t have attacked her anyway. Well, let’s take a look around this way. We won’t go too far in—just far enough to see if there’s anything worth our trouble.”
We poked around inside the bay entrance. We found nothing. After an hour of almost constant observation, we headed out again and kept going until we reached the spot we wanted.
The place was literally swarming with Jap airplanes, and we dove long before dawn. We had a bad time of it, submerged. The sea was rough, we had trouble with our depth control, and we were constantly afraid that at any moment something might go wrong and we’d pop out on the surface. After darkness came, we surfaced. We began to charge batteries. The Captain was on the bridge with his usual deck crew.
Snyder, on sound, suddenly spoke up. “I’ve got a set of screws here on the port bow,” he said.
I jumped. The alarm went like fire to the bridge. It was pitch black up there. We shouted the word up. Still we didn’t dive. I took over sound. There were screws! A destroyer! Why weren’t we diving? I was about to shout, “Captain, he’s damn close—” when there was a shout from the bridge. The diving alarm jangled.
There was a scramble and rush of feet, bodies virtually tumbling down the ladder, a bang as the conning tower hatch slammed shut, and we crash dived. The air hissed through the ship like something alive. The depth-gauge needle twisted in a frenzy. Our incline was so sharp I had to cling to my desk. We plummeted downward.
The Jap ship came beating over us, dropping her depth charges. We expected her back, but she went on past us. Perhaps she was afraid, too.
Not until everything quieted down and the beat of her screws had faded away did we head out from the beach. Then I turned the sound gear back to Snyder and looked up Franz, who’d been on the bridge. I wanted to find out what had happened up there. Why had we dived so late?
Franz was huddled over a hot cup of coffee in the mess hall. He looked as though he’d been through a battle.
“You can say that again,” he said. “We had ourselves one hell of a time up there. Those goddamn seas were as high as your neck, that wind was whistling around your ears, I tell you, it was so damn noisy we didn’t get the word fast enough. They were yelling to us from the conning tower about this Jap, but we didn’t hear them. There we are minding our own business, and suddenly up comes the Captain and starts really looking. I guess he had the word from below. He couldn’t have been up on the bridge more than a minute when, bingo! we find ourselves looking at each other. Jesus Christ, that Jap had got his searchlights trained square on us, and we were pinned there like flies on a wall.
“Well,” went on Franz, shaking his head, “we sure scrammed for the hatch. I rode Loaiza’s shoulders down. But get this, Eck—the Captain is still up there worrying whether everybody is down O.K. We suddenly see he’s alone, and then—did he travel! This Jap had us lit like day, and the old man didn’t wait for nothing. He smacked the diving alarm as he came down the hatch. After the boat was down and leveled out, I noticed the Skipper leaning against the control-room ladder and laughing until he almost bawled.