“Make turns for four knots,” Captain Mealey called. The helmsman moved his annunciators and Mealey heard the click of the response from the Maneuvering Room as Hendershot moved his pointer to match up with the order.
“Making turns for four knots,” the helmsman said.
“Very well,” Mealey said. “Bring me up to sixty-five feet, Control. I will take no more than seven seconds for this look. Begin planing back down to two hundred fifty feet after I’ve been up for seven seconds.”
“Six five feet, sir,” Simms said from his post in the Control Room. “Return to two five zero feet seven seconds after we reach six five feet, aye, aye, sir.”
At 65 feet Mako’s periscope would be 18 inches out of the water. From that height the horizon would be only a little more than a mile and a quarter away. But the battleship, with its lofty superstructure and towering masts, would be visible from a distance of more than 10 miles.
If the target had been traveling at the speed the intelligence report said it would travel; if Mako was not detected as it rose to make the periscope observation; if Captain Mealey could get an accurate range on the target and get the “angle on the bow” so the target’s course could be determined as a check on the sonar bearings; if Mako could get back down to 250 feet, then Captain Mealey and Joe Sirocco would have a set of accurate data on which to base the solution of the torpedo problem.
The telephone talkers passed the word in whispers throughout the ship that the Captain was going up to take a look and there was a dead silence in Mako as the ship planed upward through the water. This was the first of what could be a number of crucial moments. If a patrolling aircraft saw Mako’s long, dark shadow beneath the surface of the clear water, if the white feather of the periscope’s wake attracted the eye of a lookout on a destroyer, the long run to get into position would be wasted and Mako would be the target of a dozen destroyers and no one knew how many aircraft as the target, the battleship, alerted, sped for the safety of Truk Atoll.
“Make turns for two knots,” Captain Mealey said as the depth gauge showed 110 feet. “I’m going to raise the scope at eighty-five feet, Control, watch your angle when I do.” Raising the periscope would create a drag that would tend to tip Mako’s bow upward more than desired.
Mealey squatted down by the periscope well and raised his left palm upward as a signal to Paul Botts to raise the periscope. Botts pushed the button that raised the periscope and stopped it as the periscope handles cleared the deck. Mealey snapped the handles outward and rotated the periscope until the lenses were in line with the last bearing given by Cohen.
“Seven zero feet and holding a half-degree up bubble,” Simms reported from the Control Room.
“Very well,” Mealey said. “Up periscope!” He clung to the handles, his face pressed against the heavy rubber eyepiece, his forehead tight against the rubber bumper above the eyepiece, clinging to the periscope handles as it rose upward.
“Six eight feet! six seven feet!” Simms chanted. “Six five feet, sir, and holding!”
“Mark!” Mealey snapped.
“Bearing — three three eight!” Botts sang out. Captain Mealey was rotating the range finder knob below the right handle of the periscope.
“Range! One three zero zero zero yards! Angle on the bow one five starboard! Down ‘scope! Take me down, Control! Fast! Aircraft on our starboard beam! Two destroyers bearing zero two five! Hard Dive! Hard Dive!”
“Six seconds!” Grilley said, looking up from the stop-watch that hung around his neck on a cord. “That is one damned fast periscope observation!”
“You’re not kidding,” Sirocco grunted. He plotted the position of the target and fiddled with the Is-Was.
“Everything is on the nose, Captain,” he reported. “The target has to run twelve thousand yards to the point of intercept. The target will reach that point in twenty-five minutes!”
“Two five zero feet, Captain,” Simms interrupted. “Making turns for four knots, sir.”
“Give me your recommended speeds, Joe,” Mealey asked.
“We will be at the shooting point in fifteen minutes at this speed, sir,” Sirocco answered. “We’ll have too much time to stooge around. Recommend we run at four knots for eight minutes and then slow to two knots. We should be able to come up at our shooting range of eight hundred yards at that point.”
“Very well,” Captain Mealey said. He turned to Edge.
“Work that out on the TDC.” Sirocco heard the order and his craggy face flushed slightly.
“Reduce speed to two knots at seven minutes and fifty-five seconds from the time of observation,” Mealey ordered. Grilley looked at Sirocco and grinned. The difference of five seconds was meaningless but it was a continuing rebuke to Sirocco’s suggestion to the Commanding Officer that he go up for a look.
“Mr. Cohen,” Mealey’s voice was crisp. “Try to keep one ear on the target. Advise me at once if he changes his speed or course and continue to give me all you have on the other ships.”
“The ships out ahead of the target are doing what they have been doing, sir,” Cohen said. “Running back and forth across the target’s course. The decibel level is rising steadily, they’re getting closer to us. Main target’s screws are steady.”
Sirocco took a plotting sheet and climbed half way up the Conning Tower ladder, resting his broad back against the rim of the hatch. Mealey turned and squatted to look at the plot.
“Captain,” Sirocco said, “if the ships sweeping ahead of the target peel off and go back toward the target’s stern to sweep there they should be passing over us when we are less than three minutes from our shooting point.”
“We’ll go up then,” Mealey said. His forefinger traced the track on the plotting sheet. “They’ll be making so much noise they won’t be able to hear us coming up or hear the outer tube doors being opened.” He touched the plotting sheet again.
“I don’t think any of the four destroyers out front will go into the atoll. This is the sticky part of the voyage for them. I think they’ll all peel off and circle backward, that’s what I’d order if I were in command of them.” Sirocco looked at the stop-watch that hung around his neck.
“Suggest we reduce speed to two knots, sir. We’re within a thousand yards of our shooting point. We have fourteen minutes to go before we shoot!”
“Make turns for two knots,” Captain Mealey said.
“Two sets of twin screws, one behind the other and coming this way!” Cohen’s voice floated up through the hatch. “This seems to be consistent with the previous maneuvering but now they’re a lot closer to us!”
In the Forward Torpedo Room Ginty cocked his head suddenly and listened.
“Ship movin’ fast out there on the port bow,” he said slowly. “Got to be one of the tin cans guardin’ the wagon. Son of a bitch ain’t too far away, either! Listen, they’s another one!” He moved down the length of the room, his restless hands plucking at the block and tackle that would be used to haul the reload torpedoes into the tubes.
“If those bastards pick us up and start droppin’ shit on us don’t grab at the fuckin’ fish!” he growled at a young sailor from the Engine Rooms who had been picked for the reload crew because he was as strong as a horse. “You got to grab somethin’,” Ginty continued, “grab your cock!”
“You think we’ll get depth charged, Ginch?”
“Fucking ay!” Ginty snorted. “That Old Man back there in the Connin’ Tower ain’t got no blood in his veins! He’s fulla ice water! Ain’t no skipper in this whole fuckin’ Navy got the guts to make an approach like this, bust right underneath twelve tin cans! When he sticks that fuckin’ ‘scope up he’s gonna start shootin’ at that fuckin’ wagon and them destroyer captains is gonna go nuts and they’ll hit us with more shit than you ever heard!”
As the enemy’s screws thudded louder and louder Cohen began to draw his skinny legs together and to sit straight up on his stool. Sirocco noticed that Cohen’s knees were now almost tou
ching and he wondered if the change in Cohen’s position was unconscious, that as danger grew nearer the move to close his legs had been a defensive reflex to protect his genital area. Sirocco shook himself, he had more to think about than wondering about Cohen’s legs. He bent over his plot. Cohen was sending him a stream of bearings now and Sirocco and Grilley plotted rapidly.
“Give me the time to shooting, Plot,” Mealey’s voice seemed detached, without emotion. He stood in the Conning Tower, looking at Bob Edge and Paul Botts and seeing neither man. In his mind’s eye he was seeing the deployment of the ships above and ahead of him, sorting them out from the profusion of bearings that Cohen was feeding to the Plotting party. He was preparing himself for the critical moments that are the acid test of a submarine commander in war, the ability to make accurate judgments of critical distances, speeds and angles. The Executive Officer with his Is-Was and the officer on the TDC would work out the firing problem but it was the information he fed to them as he looked through the periscope that would determine a successful attack or a failure. It was his judgment of the maneuvers the destroyer captains would go through that would determine if Mako carried out the full attack and got away or whether Mako went down, a victim of the destroyers’ attacks.
“Four minutes, Captain,” Sirocco said. “We can begin to come to periscope depth in one minute if the escort ships leave.”
“Very well,” Mealey said. “I’m going to shoot all six tubes forward as he goes by us and then swing ship and give him the after tubes.”
“He’s just over six hundred feet long, sir.” Sirocco said. “At fifteen knots he’ll pass the first firing point in about twenty-five seconds, sir.”
“Understood,” Captain Mealey said. He cocked his head upward as the thunder of ship’s screws overhead filled Mako’s hull with sound, shaking the ship.
“Three ships have turned this way and are coming over us,” Cohen’s voice was cracking slightly. “Target ship is steady on course, no change in speed, sir.”
Mealey touched the right side of his mustache with his forefinger. He had hoped only two ships would turn toward Mako, leaving the other two destroyers of the van on the far side of the target and temporarily out of the fight.
“Sixty-five feet,” he ordered. “We’ll open the torpedo tube outer doors at one hundred feet! Torpedo Officer to the After Room. Chief of the Boat to the Forward Room!”
Sirocco looked at the depth gauge in front of the bow planesman. It read 175 feet, the long black needle moving. The needle passed 150 feet and then 120, 110.
“Open outer doors on all torpedo tubes!” Captain Mealey ordered, his voice crisp. He looked down into the Control Room from his squatting position beside the periscope well.
In the Forward Torpedo Room, which had no depth gauge, Ginty had been watching a gauge that showed the water pressure outside of Mako’s hull. As the needle of that gauge crept downward Ginty placed the socket of a big Y-wrench over a stud on the end of a shaft that would turn a worm gear and open the outer torpedo tube door and slide back the hull shutter for Number One tube. He nodded at Johnny Paul, who put his own Y-wrench in position on the stud beside Number Two tube.
The pressure needle touched 44.4 pounds and Ginty heaved mightily on the Y-wrench as the telephone talker cried, “Open all outer torpedo tube doors!” Ginty’s broad back seemed to widen as he spun the wrench viciously, felt the door come up against the stops and then he whipped the wrench off and started on the tube below Number One, the Number Three tube. He finished opening that door and dropped down into the bilge in front of Number Five tube and wrestled the big wrench around in a flashing circle. The reload crew listened in awe to Ginty’s mighty gasps for air in the humid heat of the Torpedo Room. Ginty felt Number Five door come up against the stop and glanced upward. Paul was still working on his second outer door, to Number Four tube.
“Shit!” Ginty grunted. He slammed his wrench onto the stud on the bottom tube of Paul’s bank, Number Six.
“Watcha fuckin’ legs,” he snapped as he spun the last tube door open.
“Tell ‘em, fuckhead!” he gasped at the telephone talker. As the talker reported, Ginty hoisted himself up to the deck, his big chest heaving as he fought for air, hearing the talker finish his report with “Green board. Forward, Bridge!”
“After Room?” Ginty gasped.
“Reporting now, we beat ‘em!”
“Fuckin’ ay we beat ‘em! Six tubes to four and we beat ‘em!” He took up a position between the two vertical banks of torpedo tubes, his meaty hand resting lightly on the brass metal guard over the manual firing key of Number One tube.
“Eighty feet!” the telephone talkers whispered. “The periscope’s going up!”
As the periscope rose out of its well Captain Mealey grabbed the handles and rode it upward until he was standing, crouched slightly, staring through the lens as it cut through the water below the surface.
“Watch your depth!” he snapped. “Lens is breaking water! Bring me up to sixty-five feet!” Sirocco heard Captain Mealey’s breath go out in a mighty whoosh.
“Mark!” Mealey snapped.
“Bearing — three five zero!” Botts said to Edge, who cranked the information in to the TDC.
“Range ...” Mealey’s finger found the range knob. “Range to the target is seven zero zero! Angle on the bow is zero nine zero!”
“You can begin shooting in ten seconds, sir,” Edge said.
“My God!” Captain Mealey’s voice held a note of awe. “He fills the whole field of vision! There are men on the foc’sle, anchor detail, I think!”
“Stand by, Forward!” Sirocco said quietly into his telephone.
Two thousand feet above the water the pilot of a VAL dive bomber banked his aircraft slightly to get a better look at the battleship. His eyes widened as he saw the dark shape of Mako ahead of him. He tipped his plane over in a shallow dive and then he saw the tiny feather of white foam midway down the dark shape and identified it for what it was, the periscope of a submarine. He yelled into his throat microphone and tipped his VAL over in a nearly vertical dive, centering the cross hairs on the plastic windshield on the tiny feather of foam beneath him.
Chapter 18
“Fire one!” Captain Mealey barked.
Ensign Botts pressed the firing key in the Conning Tower and repeated Mealey’s order into the telephone that hung around his neck. Ginty jammed two thick fingers down on the manual firing key a split second after the impulse firing air roared into the flooded torpedo tube at 600 pounds pressure to the square inch, kicking the torpedo forward, tripping the torpedo’s firing latch and starting the torpedo’s steam engine into screaming life.
“Number One fired electrically!” Ginty bellowed at his telephone talker. “Standing by Number Two!” He reached up and back with a long arm and yanked open the poppet valve lever for Number One tube. The sea water rushing into the empty torpedo tube pushed the impulse firing air backward and down through the poppet valve vent line into the bilge, thus avoiding any telltale bubble of air outside the ship that could betray its position.
“Fire two!” Captain Mealey was counting to himself, allowing six seconds between each shot.
“My God, he’s a big one!” Mealey said. “Stand by Three!”
“Number Two fired electrically!” Ginty yelled and moved out from between the torpedo tubes as Johnny Paul ducked in to take his place. A frenzied ballet of strength, agility and cooperation had begun in the Forward Torpedo Room.
Once a torpedo has been fired and the firing air has been gulped back into the ship through the poppet valves, those valves must be closed and the outer tube door closed. Then a series of drain valves must be opened, air pressure put on the tube and the sea water that filled the torpedo tube after firing blown down into a special holding tank called the WRT, the Water ‘Round Torpedo tank. Then the air has to be shut off, the valves closed, the tube vented of all pressure and the inner door opened so that the torpedo tube can be reloade
d. The torpedo is pulled into the tube with a block and tackle (the “tagle”) positioned precisely in the tube, the inner door closed and locked and if the torpedo is to be made ready for firing again valves must be opened, air pressure put on the WRT tank and the tube vented and water blown up around the torpedo and the impulse air tank which fires the torpedo out of the tube charged. After which the outer door must be opened and the gyro spindle engaged through the side of the torpedo tube into the torpedo.
To do all of this precisely and swiftly requires long and arduous training. To do it under battle conditions, to fire all six torpedo tubes and start a reload before the last tube has been fired requires a degree of cooperation, exquisite timing and enormous physical strength from a group of men that is seldom seen anywhere outside of the submarine service.
“Number Three fired electrically!” Johnny Paul yelled.
The VAL dive bomber’s two bombs, released a fraction of a second too late, missed Mako’s periscope and landed just above the Forward Torpedo Room with a booming crash, driving Ginty to his knees and throwing the reload crew around the room like rag dolls. Ginty hauled himself upright, his big hand reaching for the poppet valve lever of Number Three tube.
Dusty Rhodes had wrestled the inner door open on Number One tube. He turned to yell at the reload crew.
“Unstrap that fish and get it moving, you bastards!”
“We’re being depth charged!” a man yelled. He turned and started for the closed water-tight door at the end of the Torpedo Room. Rhodes was on him in three long strides, catching the man’s shoulders in his powerful hands, his mouth close to the man’s ear.
“Don’t panic!” he half-whispered. “It’s all right! A little noise! The Old Man’s still shooting! He’s depending on us! Just keep your eyes open, your ears open, watch me, listen to me!” He released the man and spun back to his position, noticing that Ginty was closing the outer door to Number Two tube with one hand, spinning the big Y-wrench as if it were a toy. The torpedo was sliding into the Number One tube and as its screws passed the set of rollers on a heavy stand in back of the tube, Rhodes raised his hand to stop the reload crew heaving on the tagle. He took the tagle off the torpedo.
Final Harbor (The Silent War Book 1) Page 19