Mako moved into position off the Northeast Entrance to Truk after full dark to wait for the arrival the next morning of the battleship and its destroyer escorts. Captain Mealey had ordered a cruising depth of 250 feet all the previous day, aware that a patrolling aircraft might detect the dark bulk of Mako in the clear water if he ran for extended periods at periscope depth. Four times during the day Captain Mealey had ordered the Mako to 65 feet where he made a quick sweep around the horizon with the periscope and then Mako had been sent down into the depths.
The atmosphere within Mako was calm. The crew went about its duties with no more apparent concern than if Mako were on a practice cruise. Underneath, however, the tension ran high. The appearance of outward calm was deliberate. It was a common belief in submarines that no matter how frightened a man might be he should not give any evidence of that fright lest it trigger an outburst from another man equally frightened.
Ginch Ginty had muted his bull-like roar to a low rumble in the Forward Room when he worked on the torpedoes prior to the arrival at Truk. As he finished each torpedo he had carefully painted a message on each warhead with white paint. “Herohito Special” was his favorite. When Johnny Paul pointed out that he had misspelled “Hirohito” Ginty had glared at Paul and rumbled:
“This son of a bitch hits that ‘wagon ain’t no one gonna know if it was spelled wrong, shithead!”
John Aaron, Radioman Second Class, USNR, read his Bible daily, underlining each verse as he read it with a thin red pencil line. It was a habit of Aaron’s; when he had read through the Bible, underlining in red, he went through the Book again, this time underlining each verse in blue pencil. Then he sent the Book to his wife Samantha and bought another Bible. He had been kidded about his habit when it was first discovered but his farm-developed chest and shoulders and the steady glare of his clear, guileless blue eyes discouraged the kidding and now his habit was not only accepted, it was welcomed by Mako’s crew.
John Barber prowled his engine rooms, searching for evidence of a pending failure of equipment, growling because he could find nothing. Occasionally Lieutenant Simms would go as far aft as the Forward Engine Room to talk with Barber. Hendershot, whenever he saw Lieutenant Simms, would smile warmly at him and Simms would turn away.
In the Wardroom, Officers’ Country as it is known all over the Navy, Captain Mealey spent hours in consultation with Joe Sirocco. Sirocco had joined the U.S.S. Gudgeon months before the attack on Pearl Harbor and in those months Gudgeon had compiled an enviable record in firing practice torpedoes. The Gudgeon’s team of Captain Elton Watters, “Joe” Grenfell and Lieut. Robert Edson “Dusty” Dornin, Gudgeon’s fire-control officer, had “sunk” thirty out of thirty-two target ships they had fired at, a record that no one had ever come close to matching. Yet, in Gudgeon’s first approach against an enemy ship that same team of torpedo firing experts missed their target despite what Captain Grenfell later said had been a virtual text-book problem.
Captain Mealey had never fired a torpedo at an enemy ship and he wanted to know why Joe Grenfell and Dusty Dornin had missed. Joe Sirocco, a trained mechanical engineer with a retentive mind, had been aboard Gudgeon during the pre-war torpedo firing record and during Gudgeon’s first two war patrols. Sirocco tried to explain why the difficulties in hitting an enemy ship existed in terms that wouldn’t offend Captain Mealey’s stiff-necked Academy pride, why the Navy’s peacetime training for submarine torpedo firing had been so wastefully inefficient.
The difficulty, as Sirocco saw it, was rather simple. Basically, seven factors had to be determined to work out the mathematical formula necessary to hit a target ship with a torpedo. The firing ship’s course and speed were known, as was the speed the torpedo would travel. The course of the target ship, its distance from the submarine at the moment of firing, and at the moment the torpedo arrived, and the distance the torpedo would have to run were not known and had to be determined.
The distance of the target ship is not difficult to determine if sufficient time for periscope observation is available. An instrument in the periscope called a stadimeter gives that distance if the height of the target ship’s masts is known. The course of the target ship can be determined by the “angle on the bow (or stern)” that the target ship presents to the officer manning the periscope. The angle on the bow or stern is purely a judgment factor made by the periscope officer. If the target changes its course, if it zigzags or if it varies its speed from time to time then these factors must also be considered and worked into the torpedo problem.
The difficulty, as Sirocco saw it, was that the Navy had used its own destroyers for submarine targets. The submarines fired torpedoes equipped with “exercise” warheads, dummy warheads that were filled with water that was blown out of the head when the torpedo run was completed so the torpedo would float, head upward. A smoke pot in the exercise head aided in the recovery of the torpedo.
Submarine officers knew the height of the destroyer masts to the inch so estimating range was simple. They knew the outline of the destroyers so well that estimating the target ship’s course by its angle on the bow or stern was routine.
There was no information on the height of Japanese masts on merchant vessels. Japanese warships periodically lowered or raised the overall height of their masts to confuse a submarine captain. The unfamiliar silhouettes of Japanese ships, the often oddly shaped bow and stern lines of those ships were also confusing and often made the determination of the vital angle on the bow or stern a matter of wild guesswork.
To further complicate the difficulty it was widely believed that in firing an “angle shot,” a shot in which the torpedo is fired out of the torpedo tube and then changes course, by means of a pre-set gyroscope within the torpedo, that if the torpedo was fired in the direction of the Earth’s spin, i.e., to the west from a ship facing roughly north or south, the torpedo would skid farther in making its turn than if it were fired in the opposite direction.
“As I see it, sir,” Sirocco summed up his arguments the afternoon before the Japanese battleship was due to arrive at Truk. “As I see it, making an approach on a friendly destroyer in peacetime and doing the same thing out here on an unfamiliar target is two different kettles of fish.”
“Granted,” Mealey said. “If Joe Grenfell and Dusty Dornin had trouble then all of us who aren’t as good as that pair at firing torpedoes are going to have a great deal of trouble. The way it looks to me is if the target is valuable enough you go in to point-blank range, eight hundred yards or less! Preferably from a place abeam of the target so we don’t get confused by the angle on the bow of a type of ship we’ve never seen before.” He reached for his coffee cup and took a swallow.
“According to the intelligence report the battleship and its escorts should show up before dawn tomorrow, just before dawn. We should be able to get a fix on them with the periscope before we dive and then we can track them on sonar. We’ll go deep, two hundred and fifty feet and hug the reef. There’s a shelf there on the chart that shows about four hundred feet of water and then it drops off to over a thousand fathoms. If we stay on top of the shelf until we’re ready to commit ourselves they shouldn’t be able to pick us up on sonar.
“When we’ve got the problem down pat with sonar bearings we’ll come up, confirm the problem factors and start shooting!”
Sirocco rubbed his craggy face with a big hand. “Armor plating,” he said. “That battleship is armor plated way below its water line. Our exploders are modified for contact hits. You’ll have to set them to run deep, hit her below the plating.”
“Armor plating usually goes down twenty feet below the water line,” Mealey said. “I’ll set the torpedoes for twenty-two feet. If they’re running deeper than the depth set as everyone complains they do, we should nail her down near her keel. The book says she draws thirty-five feet.”
“Our book’s old,” Sirocco said.
“The battleship isn’t new. No matter how they’ve modernized her she’ll draw th
e same amount of water or more. When I start the sonar plot, the preliminary plot, I want you and Grilley to work on that at the gyro table in the Control Room where we can talk to each other. I’m going to have Edge and Botts with me in the Conning Tower. Edge can handle the TDC. He’s bright and quick. Botts can handle the periscope motors and read off the bearings to Edge. That’s about all the old man is good for. I’m thinking seriously of recommending he be given shore duty after this run.”
“The destroyer escorts, sir. How do you think they’ll deploy the twelve destroyers?”
“I’ve tried to put myself in the place of the commander of that destroyer squadron,” Mealey said slowly. “I served as Executive Officer on a destroyer once. I’ve tried to think as he would think. If I were in his shoes I’d put at least two, probably four destroyers out ahead of the battleship to make close in and distant sweeps, to clear out any submarine that might be lying in wait. I’d put two more ships aft for the same purpose. I think I’d put the remaining ships on either side of the battleship. But who the hell ever heard of using twelve destroyers to escort one battleship!”
“Let me continue to be the Devil’s Advocate, sir,” Sirocco said. “What happens to that sort of destroyer formation when the battleship nears the Northeast Entrance? We don’t know anything at all about that entrance but there’s bound to be some strong currents running through the reef, maybe even a strong tide. We don’t have tide tables, either. How will the destroyer commander use his ships? Will those ships out from sweeping go into the atoll itself?”
“I don’t think so,” Mealey said. “There’s no danger inside. The danger, if there is any and there is — we’re here — the danger will be outside. So I think his destroyers in the van will peel off the circle until the Big Boy is well inside. Then they’ll go in to the anchorage. “That’s when I intend to go under the destroyer screen, when they’re maneuvering and getting out of the way of the Big Boy so her Captain can take her in through the reef. There’ll be enough screws pounding away that they won’t be able to hear us.”
“Aircraft?”
“There will be air cover from that big airfield on that one island,” Mealey said. “But our own peacetime experience has shown us that fliers don’t usually pick up a periscope. And the Japs have weak eyes, we know that.”
“One last point, if you don’t mind,” Sirocco said.
“1 don’t mind, I welcome it, Joe.”
“If they’re on time we should pick them up when they’re an hour or more away from attack point. If he has destroyers out in the van, sweeping, what will we be doing during that time?”
“The chart shows a shelf along the sea side of the reef,” Mealey said. “You pointed it out to me yesterday. The water there is what — four, five hundred feet deep? It falls off down the side of that submerged mountain to a thousand or more fathoms. I intend to slide along at two hundred and fifty feet so the aircraft patrols can’t pick up our shadow, on top of that shelf. When we move in to the attack we’ll bore right in, come up to periscope depth, verify the sonar plot and begin shooting!
“I intend to begin shooting at eight hundred yards. That’s point-blank range! As point-blank as you can get. We’re here, a good ten to twelve hours ahead of the ETA the intelligence report gave us. If it shows up on time, if it isn’t already inside the atoll, there is simply no way I can explain a failure to get into position and shoot. My whole Naval career is riding on this one action! If I miss this opportunity I’ll be commanding a desk in some recruiting station for the rest of my career.” He got up and went through the door and into the Control Room.
Sirocco turned to Don Grilley, who had been sitting at the far end of the Wardroom table during the discussion.
“It’s a matter of priorities, Don,” Sirocco said in a half-whisper. “The importance of the target is relative to the factor it plays in your promotion. How are the torpedoes?”
“As good as we can make them,” Grilley said. “Rhodes wore a path from the Forward Room to the After Room when they were routining them. All the air flasks are topped off to three thousand pounds to the square inch and the rudder throws have been adjusted to a gnat’s ass, to quote one Ginch Ginty. The gyroscopes were taken out, spun with air and oiled and put back in. Rhodes and Ginty did that job themselves.”
“They use sperm oil to lubricate the gyros, don’t they?”
Grilley nodded. “It has no acid to corrode anything. Put it in with a hypodermic needle. I’m sure we’ll get a hot, straight normal run out of each fish. If we fire at eight hundred yards and the wake of the torpedo shows up two hundred yards aft of where the fish is, how long does that give the target ship to get out of the way? Torpedo runs at forty-five knots.”
Sirocco fiddled with his slide rule. “A little over twenty-one seconds. Not enough time to get a ship out of the way. If he gets in close and makes good periscope observations, he’s going to get hits. It’s what happens after he unloads all the tubes that concerns me.”
“Maybe he’s thinking that if he sinks a battleship, a posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor will be worth it!” Grilley said with a sad smile.
“Doesn’t help us feather merchants,” Sirocco said. He stood up and stretched, the muscles in his heavy shoulders cracking. “I’d better get to work and figure out a course along that reef. What I’d like to do is get some sleep.”
“Who wouldn’t?” Grilley answered.
Captain Mealey climbed into the Conning Tower where Pete Simms was standing by the periscope.
“Full dark came down an hour ago, sir,” Simms said. “We’ll need five hours and thirty minutes for a full battery charge.”
“Very well,” Mealey said. “We’ll go up in a few minutes. I want to check something with Joe.” He went down the ladder to the Control Room and saw Aaron with his Bible in his hand.
“I hope you’re reading that, son,” Mealey said. “Pray for our success tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll do that, sir,” Aaron said. “But I think there’s something you should know about prayers, sir.”
“What?” Captain Mealey said sharply.
“ ‘No’ is also an answer, sir, to a prayer for help.”
Mealey nodded shortly and consulted with Sirocco briefly at the chart table and then went back up to the Conning Tower.
“Sixty-five feet, Control,” he ordered. Mako crept upward in the dark sea until her periscope broke water. Mealey made two full sweeps with the periscope and then snapped the handles closed.
“Stand by to surface!” he ordered. “Let’s go up. Surface! Surface! Surface!”
Mako shuddered as compressed air blasted into her ballast tanks and she rose, buoyant, her periscope shears breaking the skin of the water, and then the Conning Tower burst through the surface, the sea water streaming in silvery cascades down the camouflaged sides. Mako wallowed on the surface and with a giant snort the four main diesel exhaust stacks cleared the residual water from the outboard exhaust lines and then the engines settled down into a steady rumble, one engine on propulsion and the other three charging the two giant storage batteries that powered Mako submerged. Overhead a thick cloud pattern hid the stars. The starboard lookout raised his binoculars and sang out.
“Lights! White lights bearing zero eight zero, Bridge! Very small white lights.”
Standing on the cigaret deck Captain Mealey raised his binoculars and studied the lights. Shoreside lights, he concluded, shoreside lights on one of the islands within the atoll. The starboard lookout cleared his throat.
“I see surf, Bridge, looks like a reef bearing all along the starboard side. Can’t tell how far away it is.”
Mealey nodded to himself. The reef should be a mile to starboard. Sirocco’s navigation was excellent for a Reservist, he reflected. The man was extremely capable. Mealey thought a moment; not only was Sirocco capable but he apparently had very powerful friends. His assignment to Mako had come directly from Washington. It was unheard of to put a Reserve aboard a submarin
e as an Executive Officer. He wondered, as he had wondered many times before, if Sirocco was Naval Intelligence put aboard to find out about the defective Mark Six exploders. It was possible; Commander Rudd had mentioned that Captain Hinman was going to tell the President about the exploder problem.
“Permission to come topside and dump trash and garbage?” Mealey heard the voice of the mess cook and walked to the Bridge.
“Permission denied!” he snapped. “Stow the trash and garbage in the freezer locker until further orders.”
Standing at the bottom of the ladder that led to the Conning Tower, Andy “Grabby” Grabnas, Seaman First and a mess cook, shrugged his shoulders. Behind him there were eight burlap bags of garbage, each sewn tightly closed, each with a heavy stone in the bottom of the bag that had been taken from a stock of stones carried expressly to weight down the garbage bags so they would sink.
“Should have known better, Grabby,” Chief Rhodes said with a grin. “Captain isn’t going to dump garbage this close to an enemy base.”
“That wagon won’t show up,” Grabnas said. “You think I believe that stuff? I worked on my uncle’s shrimp boat down in the Florida Keys and he was the best seaman I ever saw and he couldn’t tell you within two days when he’d get us into port.” He went aft, his shoulders sagging under the weight of two bags of garbage.
At three in the morning Joe Sirocco drew a cup of strong black coffee and wolfed down two fresh doughnuts, then went to the Conning Tower and reported that he was standing by to make periscope observations to search for the target. Captain Mealey, standing on the cigaret deck, nodded approvingly as he saw the long, wide lens of the search periscope turn first toward Truk Atoll and make a long search there before turning to look toward the open sea.
An hour went by with negative reports at five-minute intervals from Sirocco. Another half hour went by with the same negative report, no masts visible. Standing on the cigaret deck Captain Mealey could see a horizon that was four and a half miles distant. The searching lens of the periscope above him could reach out to a horizon a little more than eight miles away. Given the fact that the masts of the lead destroyers would be at least as high above the sea as the periscope lens, the tops of those masts should come into view when the destroyers were still sixteen miles distant, their superstructures and hulls below the horizon. It was not likely that any lookout on the destroyers would pick up Mako. The positioning worked out by Sirocco put Mako in a line between the approaching flotilla and the dark bulk of the large island of Truk.
Final Harbor (The Silent War Book 1) Page 17