Trial by Fire

by P. T. Deutermann

  “Okay,” the exec said. “For right now, take the bridge lookouts and the signalmen. Nobody’s gonna start sending flashing light as long as there are torpedo bombers out there.”

  “Still?” J.R. asked.

  “The formation’s got three picket destroyers trailing us twenty miles back. They shot down a pair of Bettys just after sundown who’d been hugging the deck to avoid radars. This is still Injun Country, even if we are nearly two hundred miles from Japan.”

  At that instant everyone on the bridge froze in place. A ponderous metallic groan was rising from the ship’s hull, almost but not quite subliminal. It sounded like every large piece of steel throughout the ship was straining and complaining, making a terrifying sound that was felt as much as it was heard. And then, to everyone’s absolute horror, Franklin began to capsize to port, slowly at first but then gathering speed, sending everything not tied down on the bridge to the deck in a clatter of coffee mugs, binoculars, and navigation instruments, along with every man who hadn’t been holding on to something when it started. The ship fell over to port to an almost twenty-degree list, before hanging there while everyone stopped breathing, and then slowly, degree by degree, righting herself to about a ten-degree starboard list, by which time some of the younger sailors were screaming in fright. And then she did it again, a gut-grabbing roll to port, where this time she hung there at twenty degrees port, worse than when it had all started, before coming back, but not very much.

  J.R. knew immediately what had happened: the engineers had miscalculated what it would take to reduce the list and pumped too much water to the port side, and by so doing they had actually induced a worse situation in the other direction. The XO was yelling at the hysterical sailors to pipe down, so he, too, must know what had just happened. But knowing what was going on and keeping calm about it were two different things, and he had to admit he’d been scared out of his wits for a moment when the ship began that roll. Three phone-talkers were trying to get the XO’s attention as stations throughout the ship wanted to know if she was going to capsize.

  The captain was standing in the navigation passageway in that big white bathrobe, giving the XO a what-the-hell look, so he knew what was going on, too. J.R. could not imagine the fright belowdecks. They were going to need laundry services much sooner than anyone had anticipated.

  An hour later, J.R. mustered his team of two bridge lookouts from the deck division and two signalmen from OI division. They gathered in the chartroom right behind the bridge, which was under red-light conditions to keep their eyes acclimated to the darkness outside. He’d had to talk them down from their stations for twenty minutes after the ship’s sudden stability scare. If Franklin was going to roll over, they wanted no part of going back inside. It had taken some stern words from the exec himself to budge them.

  “Okay, guys,” he began. “I’m Lieutenant McCauley from the engineering department. You and I have been detailed by the XO to go through the interior of the ship and find shipmates. Preferably live ones.”

  The two deck seamen were not amused. They’d been on watch topside ever since the attack began and had seen the entire disaster unfold right in front of their now-terrified eyes. One of them began shaking his head. “Inside?” he said. “We can’t go inside. Nobody can go inside. It’s all fire.”

  “It certainly was,” J.R. said. “And I’m sure there still is stuff smoldering inside. But all the big stuff—the bombs, the planes, the rockets—has been burned away. Here’s what I know: We can’t go out on the flight deck because of all the holes. We can’t go onto the gallery deck because it was crushed. We can’t go into the hangar deck because it’s still too hot to even walk on it. The entire second deck had to be abandoned because of all the fire and smoke coming down from the hangar deck. So, our first objective is to get down to the third deck. I personally don’t think there are any survivors above the third deck.

  “Now, I’ve been down there. It’s scary. There’s very little light because the explosions broke most of the light bulbs. The battle lantern batteries have mostly given out. The main-hole snipes are getting boilers back on the line when they’re not scaring the shit out of the whole crew. But, the air-supply plenums for the firerooms, which run from the top of the stack all the way down to the main spaces, were torn all to hell. Both ways—air supply for the boiler fires, and the smokestacks for the smoke being produced by the boiler fires. The deeper we go inside, the more you’re going to encounter wind in the passageways, which is going to feel really strange. But it’s not fire—it’s just air being sucked in by the boilers because the stack is busted.”

  He paused for a moment to let all this soak in. The four young faces staring back at him were clearly still scared to death. He knew that, even after he’d explained what had caused that sudden roll, they were still highly attuned to every move the ship was making. Truth be told, so was he. He knew the counterflooding water should have helped the ship’s tender center-of-buoyancy problem, but it was hard for stability theory to overcome what that first flop had felt like.

  “Normally we wouldn’t conduct a search like this without a fully manned repair party,” he continued. “Everybody dressed out in face masks, OBAs, big-ass fireproof gauntlets, and everybody carrying forced entry tools, fire hose applicators, fresh battle lanterns, extra OBA cannisters, and other stuff like that. We don’t have any of that.

  “The only way we’re gonna be able to do this is because of the plenum chamber damage. The passageways would normally be still full of poisonous gases after a fire like we went through. But—the boilers are actually sucking all that shit out of the interior. Here’s the problem with that. The ship’s supply ventilation is hard-down. That means that any survivors huddled up in compartments belowdecks are gonna start losing their breathing air, because there’s nothing coming in from the vent system. Sooner or later, the boilers are gonna take it all. So that means I’m gonna get us down to the third deck, and then we’re gonna go fast, checking each compartment for the length of the ship, centerline, port, and starboard sides. We’re gonna bang on hatches, open ’em if we can, and let people know it’s safe to come out. Understood?”

  There were reluctant nods all around.

  “Whenever we find a compartment with survivors, one of you will have to lead them back the way we came until they make it to clean air on their own, so pay attention to how we get down there to the third deck. And then we’ll need you to come back to escort the next group. Ready?”

  They stared at him. J.R. began a slow shake of his head from side to side until one of them grinned. “Right,” he admitted. “Neither am I. But right now, we gotta get people out before they all suffocate. We’ve had enough of that, right? So—follow me.”

  39

  Gary was hungry. Everyone was hungry. They’d been condensing steam from a low-pressure drain to get a little drinking water as the space warmed up. The water had been flat, tasting slightly of metal, but wonderful. Then one of the boots had unearthed the fireroom’s coffee supply, and the smell of fresh coffee had made the whole boiler room crew, all three of them, feel much better. Now he was alone in forward auxiliary, babysitting two evaporators and the piteous remains of the space’s crew down there in the bilges while the evaps grumbled reluctantly to life. He needed some more of that coffee.

  He’d felt that sudden motion of the ship’s hull, but it really hadn’t registered that much because he was so far down in the ship. He simply thought it was weather or possibly a turn.

  The sound-powered phone squealed.

  “Cheng here, Gary,” the chief engineer said. “A search party just found a berthing compartment where there were about forty main-hole snipes holed up because of the passageway fires and warped hatches. They’re not in the best shape but they’re coming down to the main spaces to help us get more of the plant up. I need you to try to get into number one fireroom and see what we’ve got. If it’s tenable, I’ll send a light-off team. Be careful going in there—the last re
port we got from One Firehouse was that there was no oxygen left in that space.”

  “There is now,” Gary said. “I had to go in there to get the aux steam cross-connected to these evaps. Had to vent the whole space, but now it should be tenable.”

  “Shit,” Forrest said. “Of course you did. I must be getting tired.”

  “Getting?” Gary said. “I’m way ahead of you on that score, Boss.”

  “Right,” the cheng said. “Okay, if that’s the case, go back in and get me a kettle going. Where’s the evap water heading?”

  “I’ve lined it up to the feed bottoms for Two Firehouse,” Gary said.

  “Perfect,” the cheng said. “See what you can do to get number one back up. I’ll send help as soon as they get down here and I see what we’ve got. They were apparently damn near dead for lack of air.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Gary said. He knew all about that lack-of-air business.

  He checked the two evaporators one more time, rechecking the valve alignments to make sure the hot distilled water was going to where it was needed first and not being drained off to the ship’s potable water tanks. Then he went back up the ladder to the main engineering passageway, which still reeked of burnt gasoline, seared steel, scorched asbestos insulation, and that inescapable scent of burned flesh.

  He started down the ladder into number one. He thought he could feel passageway air still coming down the ladder. He wondered where it was all going. There were now no lights on in the fireroom, but as he entered, he saw a glow coming from the space’s main switchboard across from the entry hatch on the upper level. The air was warm and smelled of the usual steam, bilge water, and fuel oil. And a new smell that brought him up short: gasoline. He cautiously climbed the ladder from the lower level and followed his flashlight beam over to the switchboard panel.

  Two lights indicated that there was power available to the board. He examined the breakers and saw that the evacuating crew had opened every electrical machine’s breaker before getting out. Now the question was: if I close a breaker and there’s a spark, will this whole space flash into flame? He sniffed the air again. The steam smell came from wet asbestos piping insulation. Lube oil dripped out of some of the larger machines’ bearings. Fuel oil, well—that might be a problem, too, because volatized fuel oil could ignite if the newly refreshed supply of oxygen in the space provided a good enough air–oil mixture, but it wasn’t likely. It was that stink of gasoline that bothered him.

  He swung his flashlight around the space. He was standing on the upper-level deck gratings. The tops of the two boilers were on either side, along with asbestos-clad turbines for auxiliary equipment and the top of the deareating feed tank. Below lay the boiler-fronts and even more pumps and motors.

  He hadn’t smelled avgas the first time he’d been down here. So, what had changed? You do this wrong, he thought, and the last thing you’re gonna see is a big flash of light.

  He sniffed the air again. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t avgas, but just fuel oil. Oh, goody, he thought. Then there is vaporized fuel oil down here.

  That’s better than vaporized avgas, he thought, but, still. His weary brain tried to decide what to do. His initial efforts at getting all the bad stuff out of the space had worked, or so he thought. So where were these new indications of bad stuff coming from? He stood there, his exhausted brain trying to figure out what to do. The last thing the ship needed was for a fireroom to explode. They’d all be dead meat if that happened. He tried to think his way out of this box but simply couldn’t do it. He was too tired and even a little bit weak from lack of food.

  Screw it, he thought. That big rush of air the first time he’d come down here had to have taken the lion’s share of any explosive vapors right out of the space. He scanned the switchboard again by the light of his flashlight. The evacuating electrician had done his job—every service and equipment breaker had been opened. You already know that. The two lights at the top of the board said there was 440 volts available to the switchboard from the ship’s service grid. He realized he was thinking in circles here. He took a deep breath and then closed the board’s main breaker.

  Nothing happened. “That’s a good thing,” he announced out loud to the empty, stinking space.

  Then he scanned the board and found the breaker for main-space lighting. He closed that and the entire fireroom was filled with light. He looked for the ventilation breaker. Here he had to be careful; after his experiences with the ruptured uptake and intake plenums, he needed to be damn sure that supply ventilation wouldn’t immediately take a suction on, say, the hangar deck, and bring seriously dangerous gases back into the space. He found the exhaust blower system and activated that, instead. To his relief, the light in the space began to change, from milky white to the familiar white-yellow glow. He found a sound-powered phone panel and called Main Control.

  “One Firehouse seems to be intact,” he reported. “I’ve got lights and exhaust vents going. I can see standing water just below the lower-level deck grates. I smell some gasoline, but nothing happened when I closed the breakers. Don’t know if the boilers have water in the fireboxes. I need some BTs.”

  “Here they come, then,” the cheng replied. “Good work. Before you light off, make sure the main access hatch is wide open. I still have no idea of where we’re getting combustion air from.”

  Me neither, Gary thought. He waited for a crew to arrive before going down to the lower level of the fireroom. Toxic gases, such as carbon monoxide, tended to lurk in low spaces. He realized he’d been sweating, but now there was a relatively cooling breeze moving through the space. He sat down on the watertender’s stool in front of the boiler-water gauge. Oily water sloshed back and forth beneath his boots.

  Take five, he thought. Let’s make sure this place is all according to Hoyle. Sure, his exhausted brain replied. Just close your eyes for a minute. Maybe two.

  40

  George finished tallying the muster reports from throughout the ship. They painted a bleak picture. Franklin had joined Task Group 58.1 with a total of 3,600 men on board, including the approximately 900 men of the embarked air group. His first attempt at a muster had yielded a total of 516 total personnel left on board, including officers, chiefs, and enlisted. Of that number, he estimated that he had slightly over 300 men who could be considered “effectives” to run a 36,000-ton aircraft carrier. That also meant that he had 200-some men in various states of disrepair to attend to. The ship’s sick bay had been destroyed in the original bomb attack. The ship’s senior doctor had bravely stayed behind to tend to the wounded and had succumbed to suffocation along with his patients. There were no doctors on board. The air group’s doctor had tried his best to remain on board during the height of the cataclysm on the flight deck, but he’d been ordered to evacuate to the Santa Fe by the air group’s commander, who’d probably been convinced that Franklin was about to go down. Hard to fault the man for that, George thought.

  The sun was finally up and the skies were painted with the usual spectacular colors of an Asian sunrise. There were light whitecaps lining up in endless ranks as Franklin steamed southeast toward the sanctuary of Ulithi Atoll. The relative wind was from ahead, for which everyone on the bridge was grateful, given the mounds of human debris out on the flight deck. George got on the 1MC again and called for two working parties to muster on the flight deck forward to begin removing wreckage. The supply officer and some of his storekeepers had taken shelter in a storeroom on the third deck to wait out the fires. He called the bridge after the XO’s announcement and said he could probably activate one galley. The total loss of power plus the ambient heat belowdecks had spoiled most of the ship’s provisions, but since the freezer compartments were kept at zero degrees, there was enough frozen meat to feed the crew steak, of all things, for the next three days. Some of the ship’s cooks had taken refuge in the cold stores section; they would be the ones bringing a galley on line. George told him that he’d only be feeding approximately 500
instead of 3,600, at least until they got some of the crew back on board. Which reminded him of the captain’s feeling about everyone who’d “jumped” ship, many literally. With a heavy heart, he took the personnel tallies over to the captain.

  “That’s it?” the captain asked, in total disbelief. “We can’t sustain this ship with only three hundred men. And another two hundred wounded? Ask our destroyers if any of them have doctors on board, or even a chief hospital corpsman.”

  “I did that earlier, Captain,” George replied. “There are two doctors among the escorts. Each ship will also send a corpsman. I’m going to designate what’s left of the forward messdecks as a temporary sick bay. I’ll get them alongside as soon as we can rig a highline.”

  “Yes, good,” the captain said. Then a familiar look came over his face. “Now—I believe there are hundreds of our people on Santa Fe. I want to get them back. Correction: I want some of them back.”

  George was at a loss for words. The captain saw his discomfort.

  “Look,” he said. “All those guys back on the fantail, running from the fires and the bombs going off? They had no choice. Same for anyone who was in the hangar deck. But far too many able-bodied men crawled over to the Santa Fe from the forward flight deck when they saw their chance. Those are the people I’m going to hold accountable. They’re Goddamned deserters.”

  George shook his head. “Captain,” he argued. “Deserters are men who jump ship in port, ditch their uniforms and their ID cards, and go back home to Mommy or to their girlfriends. All that flying ordnance coming up the flight deck was killing people who had nowhere else to go. Besides—if you declare all those people who fled the fires as deserters, we’re not going to have a crew.”

  “Just as well,” the captain growled. “As far as I’m concerned, they deserted their posts. Even if those ships somehow do get them back to Ulithi, or even Pearl, I won’t take them back. And I’m going to court-martial the lot of them.”