I said: “Yes, Captain, I have him now.”
“Very well!” said the Captain. “This is a 5,000- to 7,000-ton freighter, two goal posts, stack amidships, looks like coal-burner, estimated speed nine knots, course, three five zero. The decks are loaded with what looks like invasion barges… The crew is in white uniforms, well disciplined. This is probably a Jap naval reserve ship. We’ll plunk him.”
I gave sound bearings, and in a few minutes the approach party gave him the bearings for firing. “All right, Willie,” he said, “stand by to fire. Ready, Henry?” Bringelman was at the Captain’s right shoulder with his hands on the solenoid controls ready to push the firing buttons.
Henry answered: “All set, Captain.”
Then the order came, “Fire!”
I caught the fish as they left the Wolf, The Captain said, “I can see them. One’s going to hit…!”
I heard the terrific blast.
“There’s no running around,” the Skipper said. “They don’t seem to be panicky. Everybody seems to have a destination. She’s listing to starboard. There’s a group of them forward, trying to clear the invasion barges, trying to save them. They won’t have time. They are going to go too fast. Yes, they have abandoned the idea. These people are cool, calm, and collected. Right now they are throwing everything that will float over the side. There’s no time to launch any lifeboats.”
I interrupted. “Ship coming up the starboard quarter, sir.” Her laboring screws sounded like a minesweeper.
“O.K., Eck, we’ll have a look,” the Captain said. “Hell, it’s those anti-sub vessels again. Converted minesweepers.” He paused. “Is that all they can get out here?” he asked. “That’s an insult to my ship and crew.”
There was a distant boom: the Jap was clumsily dropping depth charges.
We went deep. I could hear the ship breaking up, and finally her boilers exploded.
We stayed down the rest of that day. Everybody was exhausted. The torpedomen, who had been reloading and reloading, were asleep on their feet. Gus Wright had made sandwiches all day long. He was carrying coffee to me every half-hour or so.
We surfaced that night with normal routine. We were still in the Gulf. Again I slept badly. The day’s excitement was too much. I woke about 3 a.m. Swede was on watch in the control room.
“What are you doing up, Eck?” he asked.
“Not sleepy, I guess,” I said, and downed some of his coffee.
“Sleepy, hell,” he said. “What’s worrying you is worrying me and everybody on this boat. We are inside the Gulf, that’s all, and we’ll feel better when we get way outside.” He was right.
It could not have been three minutes later that Franz yelled from the conning tower: “Stand by to dive!”
Swede jumped to his controls. For a huge man, he was as quick as a cat. I took off for the sound room. I couldn’t find a thing.
Ensign Casler was the officer of the deck, and had picked up a smell of smoke. He couldn’t see anything, but didn’t take a chance and ordered a crash dive. Diving and cruising submerged upset our schedule, since we couldn’t make the speed submerged that we could on the surface. We’d hoped to reach the entrance by dawn, then submerge. But it was only an hour until daylight now, and so we continued submerged. About an hour after my morning watch was over, I was back in the engine room, playing my favorite Froggy Bottom record.
Suddenly there was the cry of “Battle Stations.” I grabbed at the machine to stop it and shattered the record. I ran to the sound room ready to kill every Jap in Japan. My favorite record lying in a thousand pieces! I got in the sound shack.
“Another target,” Paul said. “Too damn far away to tell what it is.”
Captain Warder had his periscope up. “Well, boy,” he said, “I rather wish we weren’t on a time schedule. This is like a picnic. I can’t tell yet, but this looks like an old freighter. Might not be worth a fish.”
Then I caught her screws. She was a coal-burning freighter, making slow speed.
A few minutes later Captain Warder caught sight of her. “She’s not so small, at that. About four thousand tons. Loaded to the gunwales. We’ll plunk this baby, too.”
We went in for the kill. I caught the screws of anti-sub vessels again. They were about three to five miles away. We came to the firing point. “Fire!” I heard the dull thud of the first explosion.
“We really cracked her this time, men. I can’t see anything for smoke,” came the Captain’s voice.
We headed out toward the open sea. We moved out of the Gulf and could relax at last.
I grabbed a nap that afternoon. Then I went back in the sound shack working on “Begin the Beguine.” I must have been loud.
Zerk stuck his head out of the after-battery hatch.
“For Christ sake, knock off the goddamn noise, damn it!” he yelled.
I yelled back: “Go on back in your hole, you ant-faced baboon!”
Before I knew it the whole battery was shouting, “Shut up, can it, keep it quiet.” They accused Zerk of making noise. I kept quiet. Zerk explained hotly that he was only telling me to keep quiet. “I wasn’t making the noise, it was Eckberg!” He came out into the passageway. They shouted him down. “Shut up, damn it, Zerk.” He went back mumbling.
I started copying code, and after about half an hour I realized we were headed in an easterly course. It suddenly dawned on me: home was in that direction. I got so excited I left my station for the first time in my navy career and rushed out into the control room. The first man I saw was Lieutenant Deragon.
“Where are we going, Mr. Deragon?” I asked him.
“You’re overdue, Eck,” he said with a grin. “I knew as soon as we changed course you’d be out here. We expect to go home. How’s that?”
That was all right with me. At last we were headed home. We still had Palau to go by, and that was tough, but we were headed home.
The next three days were uneventful. We spotted nothing.
Near dusk of the fourth day, the periscope officer picked up an island. We closed in to run a patrol in front of it. Conditions were in our favor. We had a nice chop, it was a cloudy day, and just enough rain was falling to make our periscope almost invisible to the enemy and yet permit us to look around.
We moved in carefully and spotted a patrol boat. He was too far away to be dangerous. Captain Warder, scanning with the utmost care, picked up the masts of a ship coming in our general direction. The Jap—it turned out to be a destroyer—was making tremendous speed. The Skipper sounded battle stations. But as we maneuvered, we realized that from her speed and the angle on our bow it would be impossible to launch an attack. The weather conditions had turned bad. The rain, which had aided us at first, now poured down in sheets, making our visibility almost nil. We were in the midst of a typical tropical squall. The Captain peered through and saw two more destroyers come charging by.
“Well, we have to let that first baby go by,” he said… “But these two— What in the hell is their hurry? Maybe they are heading for the Gulf, to clean us out of there. I think I’m going to tackle this one.” He studied the sea. “This will be a terrific shot if I can make it,” he said, almost under his breath. “He’s really making speed.” He ordered: “All ahead, full right rudder. We have to go like hell to get this fellow.”
The Wolf quivered with the speed. We veered to our left to get into position. We were on this course for about five minutes, the Skipper taking sweeps with his periscope, when he exclaimed:
“Well, I’ll be goddamned! At my age, too! To think I would fall for a trick like that! Here is an aircraft carrier, and I’m out of position! I’ve been sucked in by this goddamned destroyer, and now it’s impossible to make the attack. Look at that big beautiful bastard! She’s really spinning! Looks new to me. The length of that flight deck looks to be about six hundred feet.” I think he could have bawled.