“I think my flicking leg is broke!” DeLucia grated as he hauled himself upright against the ladder. “Watch your God damned bubble, Smalley!”
“Damage reports,” Grilley said to the telephone talker.
“Oil! Big bubbles of oil bearing two nine zero!” The port lookout on Eagle’s bridge raised his voice in a triumphant yell. The Professor and the Fubuki’s commander rushed to the wing of the bridge, their eyes following the lookout’s pointing arm. The oil was clearly visible in the moonlight.
“We’ve hurt him!” the Professor said. He smoothed his goatee. “A very nicely executed attack, sir.” He walked back to the plotting board. “Let’s get a bearing on him as quickly as we can. Then we’ll finish him off!”
“Torpedo! Torpedo!” The wailing cry came from the starboard lookout. “Torpedo passing ahead!”
“From that side?” The Professor stared down at the plot. “Impossible!”
“Contact!” The telephone talker’s voice was high, excited. “Sound Room reports submarine contacts bearing two nine five and zero four zero!”
“Fifteen degrees right rudder, all ahead flank speed!” The Fubuki’s commander snapped out the order and the Eagle’s bow reared and then settled as her powerful screws roared to full speed.
“Two submarines!” The Professor looked at the Fubuki’s commander. Then he bent over the plot, his small bony fingers holding a pencil swiftly traced the Eagle’s change of course and marked in the bearing of both submarines. He laid the pencil down and belted his bathrobe tightly about his waist.
“I will take charge, Isoruku,” he said quietly. “Left full rudder. Drop two charges from the stern racks as we are well into the turn.” He looked down at the plot and then at his former student.
“The second submarine will expect us to attack him so he will go deep, too deep to fire torpedoes. We will not follow his expectations!” He cocked his head as the explosions of the two depth charges roared in the night. “Reduce speed to one-third, please. Get me a bearing on the target, the first target! We will finish him off with this attack and then we will have a second submarine for an encore!”
“First target bears zero one zero, sir,” The telephone talker on Eagle’s bridge spoke up.
“All ahead full,” the Professor said calmly. “Captain, you will signal the dropping pattern, please.” The Fubuki’s commander nodded and raised his right arm. Then he brought it down with a swift motion. The big Y-guns roared and sent their charges tumbling through the air and on the stern of the Fubuki the gunnery ratings began to release the depth charges.
Eelfish was passing 150 feet when the young sonar man reported the attack run had begun on Mako. The sailor’s eyes widened as he listened.
“Explosions all around out there, sir. Worst noise I ever heard, sir!”
“The son of a bitch is a professional,” Mike Brannon said. “He wants his first target! Blow Safety! Blow Negative! Open the outer tube doors at one hundred feet! Stand by to flood Negative, John, I want to show my bridge to that son of a bitch! Maybe that will draw him off of Mako. Come on, get me up! He can’t hear anything out there with all that noise! I want that son of a bitch to see us! Then I’ll take him!”
Mako twisted in the wracking explosions, her hull groaning and creaking. In the After Torpedo Room the lights blew out and the one-inch thick steel holding pins on a torpedo rack holding a 3,000-pound torpedo sheared off and the rack slammed across the room and crushed a reload team member.
The Control Room telephone talker turned to Captain Grilley.
“Maneuvering Room, Chief Hendershot, reports that the starboard propeller shaft started to run wild and he’s shut down that screw, sir! The Chief says we might have lost the wheel, sir!”
DeLucia leaned over from his position at the ladder and tapped the stern planesman on the shoulder.
“You still got stern planes?” The man nodded.
“If we lost a wheel, sir,” DeLucia said, “we’d probably lose the stern planes too. Must have been the shaft, is all.”
“Very well,” Grilley said. “Helm, we’ve only got one screw turning, port side. Compensate for that.” He turned his head toward the Conning Tower hatch as Cohen spoke.
“He’s turned and he’s coming back, Control! He’s coming fast!”
A series of heavy explosions shook Mako. DeLucia fought back the desire to yell with pain as he was knocked to the deck. He held on to the ladder, his right leg sticking out at an odd angle.
“Two hundred feet, sir, five degree up bubble!”
“Keep her coming,” Grilley said.
“After Torpedo Room is flooding!” The telephone talker’s face was white in the light of the emergency lanterns. “After Room reports they’ve got a split in the After Trim bulkhead between the tubes an inch wide! Room is flooding, sir!”
“Order the Maneuvering Room to open the salvage air valves to the After Room,” Grilley snapped.
“Hard to keep her ass up, sir!” The stern planesman had his planes on full rise. Grilley felt the deck under his feet tilt as Mako’s stern sank.
“Blow Number Seven Main Ballast!” Grilley ordered. His mind was sorting out the factors. The After Torpedo Room held almost 140 tons of sea water if it were flooded completely. The Number Seven Main Ballast tank held 39 tons of sea water. If they could get enough air pressure into the After Torpedo Room to hold the water in check before the tonnage of flood water outweighed the water he had blown out of the ballast tank, there was a chance Mako could be kept on an even keel.
“Number Seven is blown dry, sir,” the auxiliaryman said. Mako sagged, her stern down, her bow rising.
“Blow Main Ballast Six Able and Six Baker!” Grilley said. He waited as the high pressure air roared through the manifolds, blowing dry two of the four tanks in the Number Six Main Ballast group. Mako’s stern began to rise slightly.
“We’re gonna broach!” DeLucia yelled. “Forty feet and going up fast! We’re gonna surface, sir!”
The lookout stationed on the port wing of the Eagle saw Mako’s bow burst through the surface of the dark sea. His yell brought a calm response from the Fubuki’s commander.
“Right ten degrees rudder! Gunnery officers — your target is submarine bow! Commence firing!” He watched, not bothering to use his night binoculars, as the shell splashes neared Mako’s bow.
“Submarine! Submarine bearing zero nine zero!” the starboard lookout yelled.
“Blow Main Ballast Six Charlie and Dog!” Grilley ordered. “Let’s see if that won’t get this damned up angle off her! He whirled as a giant hammer blow rang through Mako’s hull.
“What the hell was that? Get me a report!”
Chief Torpedoman’s Mate Arnold Samuel “Ginch” Ginty died as he had lived for the better part of the past sixteen years, standing in front of his torpedo tubes as a five-inch shell from the destroyer burst through the Mako’s hull just aft of the tubes. Four of the reload crew escaped the hail of shrapnel that riddled the Torpedo Room and drowned as the last of Number Six Ballast Tank blew dry and Mako’s bow came down to an almost even keel. The flooded Forward Torpedo Room dragged Mako’s bow downward and the ship began a long slide back down into the sea from which it just burst.
“Can’t raise the Forward Room, sir!” The Control Room talker clutched at the chart table as Mako began her descent.
“Blow Bow Buoyancy!” Grilley snapped.
“Blowing bow buoyancy tank, sir!”
“I don’t have a reading on bow buoyancy vent, sir!” The auxiliary electrician who had taken over Chief DeLucia’s Battle Station at the hydraulic vent manifold rapped his knuckles against the indicator panel that showed with lights whether the vents and flood valves were open or closed.
“I got no light at all, no red and no green on bow buoyance!”
“Keep blowing!” Grilley ordered. “Telephone, try the Forward Battery, see if Thomas can tell us what’s wrong up there!”
The telephone talker hunched ove
r his mouthpiece. Then he raised stricken eyes to Don Grilley.
“Tom says he looked through the bull’s-eye glass in the water-tight door. He says all he can see is water.”
“Passing one hundred feet Captain,” DeLucia said from the deck beside the ladder.
“Blow all tanks! Blow everything!” Grilley snapped.
“Stand by forward!” Mike Brannon ordered. “He’s shooting at our bridge! Son of a bitch has seen us! Turn, you bastard, turn! Mark! Range is one three zero five! ... angle on the bow is thirty port! ... stand by ...
“Fire five! ...
“Fire six! ... Left full rudder ... stand by aft!”
“Torpedoes running hot straight and normal, sir!” The sonar man’s voice was low but intense, charged with the excitement he felt.
Mike Brannon’s eye was glued to the periscope lens as he twisted the periscope around. He saw the Fubuki’s high, knife-like bow plainly in the bright moonlight and then he saw a dull orange flower at the destroyer’s midsection that changed to bright red.
“Hit!” Brannon yelled. “Hit!”
Another bright flash enveloped the side of the Fubuki just below its bridge and Brannon saw the entire bridge rise up in the air as the ship’s boilers exploded.
“Got you, you bastard!” Brannon yelled. “We’ve got him! Now where the hell is Mako?” He swung the periscope savagely, searching the sea.
“Start a sonar search!” He said to the sonar operator.
“Lots of noise out there, sir, have to wait a minute ...”
“To hell with the damned noise! Start the sonar search! That destroyer was firing its guns at something on the far side from us. Had to be the Mako! Stand by to Battle Surface! He jammed his hand down on the klaxon horn button three times and the Eelfish surged upward, its gun crews fighting for balance as they raced to the Control Room and up the ladder to the Conning Tower.
Mike Brannon opened the bridge hatch before the bridge had drained itself of water, fighting his way upward through the solid wall of water that came pouring through the hatch onto him.
“Left ten degrees rudder!” he called down as the gun crews went over the bridge rail and down to the deck. He raised his glasses and began to search the sea beyond the flotsam of the blasted Fubuki.
“Meet you helm right there, all ahead one third, Mr. Olsen, get up here!” He pointed out to port as Olsen stood beside him.
“That’s where the destroyer was when we hit her,” he said. “She was heading, oh, her bow was pointed right at about where we are now and she was firing to port. So Mako must have been out there, somewhere. She must have come up to help us and then went back down when the destroyer opened fire.”
“Contact!”
“Give me a bearing, Sonar!”
“Contact bears zero one zero, sir.”
“Get on the sending key!” Brannon yelled. “Tell Mako to come on up, the party’s over!”
The pulsing beam of the sonar from Eelfish rang against Mako’s hull. Aaron, standing at the bathythermograph, listened intently.
“Code, sir,” he said to Don Grilley. He listened to the long and short sounds hitting Mako’s hull.
“He says to come up, the party is over. Signed Eelfish.” Grilley looked at the depth gauge. It read 150 feet. Mako was slowly, inexorably, sinking.
“Aaron,” Grilley said, “Get up there beside Mr. Cohen and get on the sending key. Tell Eelfish we have both torpedo rooms flooded, one screw out of commission and sign my name.”
“Tell him to blow everything! Blow every damned thing he’s got!” Brannon called down the hatch after Eelfish had received Mako’s message. Brannon waited.
“He says he’s tried that, sir,” the sonar man called up. “He can’t blow his fuel oil tanks, the vents must be wide open and he can’t close them. He’s at two hundred feet and sinking slowly!”
“Oh Jesus!” Brannon said. “Tell him I want to talk to Captain Hinman, son.”
Brannon and Olsen heard the sonar man as he repeated the Mako’s message to the quartermaster of the watch in the Conning Tower. “Captain Hinman and Pete Simms and all topside party lost in deck gun fire from freighter.... Lieutenant Grilley has assumed command ... Mako is at four hundred feet.”
“Oh, God!” Brannon said. “What the hell can we do?”
“Not much,” his Executive Officer said slowly. “Not much except pray!”
There was a strange, eerie calm within Mako as the ship slowly sank downward. Chief Mike DeLucia looked at his twisted leg and half-smiled. “You won’t hurt for very damned long,” he said softly. “That’s for damned sure!”
In the Forward Battery Compartment Chief Officers’ Cook Thomas T. Thompson drew a cup of coffee from the urn in his tiny serving galley and took it into the Wardroom and sat down and began to-sip slowly from the cup.
In the Conning Tower Aaron, sitting beside Nate Cohen, prayed, his voice soft in the quiet Conning Tower. When he had finished his prayer Nat Cohen began to chant softly in Yiddish.
Mako continued to sink.
“She’s at five hundred feet, sir!” the sonar man reported to Captain Brannon. “Five hundred feet and sinking slowly!”
Mike Brannon wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Tell them,” his voice broke, “tell them we are praying for them. Tell them that!” He turned away, sobbing.
He waited, the tears streaming down his cheeks, listening to the measured pulses of Mako’s response. The sonar man in the Conning Tower called out each word to the quartermaster and on the bridge, Captain Mike Brannon and John Olsen heard each word:
“The Lord is my Shepherd ... I shall not want ... He maketh me to lie down in green pastures … He leadeth me beside the still waters ...”
There was silence.
“Sir,” the sonar man’s voice was small, hardly audible. “Sir, transmission stopped and I heard a big crunching noise!”
Brannon looked at his Executive Officer, his eyes streaming. “My God, John, the water is six miles deep here!”
John Olsen nodded and in a soft voice finished the words of the Twenty-Third Psalm.
Epilogue
The story of the life and death of the U.S.S. Mako, Fleet Submarine, is fiction.
Here is fact: A very small group of submarines waged a bitter war against Japan, sinking more than 1,000 Japanese merchant vessels and a considerable portion of the Imperial Japanese Navy, including one battleship, eight aircraft carriers, three heavy and eight light cruisers, many destroyers and a large number of Naval auxiliary ships.
The stunning impact of this war within a war led a great many experts to express the postwar view that the U.S. Submarine blockade against Japan had been so effective that the invasions of the Philippine Islands, Iwo Jima, Palau, and Okinawa, the dropping of the atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, were unnecessary. The submarine war had already drawn the noose so tightly around Japan’s neck that it could not survive as a nation.
The price the American submarine force paid for waging this war was expensive. Twenty-two percent of the 16,000 men who went to war in U.S. submarines died in action. In terms of the percentages engaged that was the highest death toll of any branch of the U.S. Armed Forces. Some of those deaths, perhaps many of them, could be laid at the door of the U.S. Navy itself. The Navy’s prewar training for submarine captains was poorly conceived and ineffective. It sent submarines to sea with defective torpedoes, defective torpedo exploders and diesel engines that would not run properly.
For all those who went to sea in submarines and never came back:
Requiescant in pace.
THE END
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Final Harbor (The Silent War Book 1) Page 40