“Number one tube fired by hand. Tube is clear!” The very welcome report is received after a few anxious seconds with a profound sense of relief. Only half-a-dozen seconds have been lost, altogether, and the situation is still good for the remaining fish.
“Resume fire, Clark!” But the exec has not needed that command. Number two torpedo is already on its way, followed a few seconds later by number three. Torpedoes number four, five, and six are held in reserve in case the first salvo misses.
Because these are wakeless electric torpedoes, Jake Fyfe, on the bridge, does not have the pencil-like wakes of steam and air to mark where they have gone. There is a slight disturbance of the surface of the water to show the direction they took, but that is all. Seven pairs of binoculars are glued to the Jap’s low, lumbering silhouette and his odd-shaped bridge.
Down in the conning tower, the radar operator and the exec are staring at their screen, where the blip which is the target is showing up strongly and steadily, showing radar emanations still at the same uninterrupted interval. Suddenly, however, the radar waves become steady, as though the enemy operator had steadied his radar on a just-noticed blip, possibly to investigate it.
“I think he’s detected us, sir!” whispers Radar. “See—it’s steadied on us!”
Sprinkle has also seen. Eyes fixed on the cathode tube face he reaches for the portable mike to tell the skipper about this new development, when he drops it again. Before his eyes the blip has suddenly, astoundingly, grown much larger. It is now nearly twice the size it had been an instant before. Small flashes of light can be seen on the screen, going away from the outsized pip and disappearing. Then, swiftly, the pip reduces in size and disappears entirely. Nothing is left on the scope whatsoever.
At this moment a jubilant shout from the bridge can be heard. “We got him! We got him! He blew up and sank!” Sprinkle mops his brow.
The watchers on Batfish’s bridge had hardly expected anything quite so dramatic as what they saw. One torpedo had evidently reached the target, and must have hit into a magazine or possibly into a tank carrying gasoline. The Nip sub had simply exploded, with a brilliant red-and-yellow flame which shot high into the night sky, furiously outlined against the somber, sober grayness. And as quickly as the flame reached its zenith, it disappeared, as 2,500 tons of broken twisted Japanese steel plunged like a rock to the bottom of the ocean.
There was nothing left for torpedo number three—following a few seconds behind number two—to hit, and it passed over the spot where the enemy ship had been.
Batfish immediately proceeded to the spot where the sub had sunk, hoping to pick up a survivor or two, but the effort was needless. Undoubtedly all hands had been either killed instantly by the terrific explosion, or had been carried down In the ship. There had been absolutely no chance for anyone not already topside to get out. All Jake Fyfe could find was a large oil slick extending more than two miles in all directions from the spot where the enemy had last been seen.
Strangely—delighted and happy though he was over his success in destroying the enemy sub—the American skipper felt a few twinges of a peculiar emotion. This was very much like shooting your own kind, despite the proven viciousness and brutality exhibited by some of the enemy—and but for the superiority of his crew and equipment, the victim might have been Batfish instead of HIJMS I-41.
The final attack on the Jap sub had been made at exactly two minutes after midnight on the morning of February 10. Then, an hour or so after sunset on the 11th, at 1915—
“Captain to the conn!” The skipper is up there in an instant.
The radar operator points to his radar scope. “There’s another Jap sub, Captain!”
Sure enough, there, if you watch closely, is the same tiny disturbance which alerted Batfish two nights ago. This time there is less doubt as to what action to take. The same tactics which were heralded with such signal success on the first occasion are immediately placed into effect. The crew is called to battle stations, the tracking parties manned, and all is made ready for a warm reception. The radar party is cautioned—unnecessary precaution—to keep that piece of gear turned off except when a range and bearing are actually required.
If anything, it is even darker than it was the first night. Having found how ineffective the Jap radar really is—or was it simply that the Jap watch standers were asleep?—Fyfe determines to make the same kind of attack as before.
The situation develops exactly as it did before, except that this submarine is heading southeast instead of northeast. At 1,800 yards he is sighted from the bridge of the American submarine. He is making only 7 knots, somewhat slower than the other, and it takes him a little longer to reach the firing bearing. Finally everything is just about set. Sprinkle has made the “ready to shoot” report, and Fyfe will let them go in a moment, as soon as the track improves a bit and the range decreases to the optimum. About one minute to go—it won’t be long now, chappy.
“Hello, he’s dived! He dived right on the fire bearing!” Where there had been an enemy submarine, there now only the rolling undulation of the sea. Nothing to do now but get out of there. Batfish must have waited too long and been detected. The Jap was keeping a slightly better watch than Fyfe had given him credit for, and now Batfish is being hunted. Just as quickly as that the whole situation has changed. With an enemy submarine known to be submerged within half a mile of you, there is only one of two things to do. Dive yourself, or beat it.
If you dive, you more or less give up the problem, and concentrate on hiding, which many skippers probably would have done. If you run away on the surface, however, there is a slight chance that he’ll come back up, and you’ll have another shot at him. Jake Fyfe is a stubborn man, and he doesn’t give up easily: he discards the idea of diving. “Left full rudder!” he orders instead. His first object is to get away; and his second is to stay in action. Maybe the Jap will assume that he has continued running—which is precisely what Jake hopes he will do.
“All ahead flank!”
The Jap was on a southeasterly course before he dived. Knowing that his periscope must be up and watching his every move, Fyfe orders a northerly course, and Batfish roars away from the spot, steadying on a course slightly west of north. Three miles Fyfe lets her run, until he is reasonably sure to be beyond sonar as well as visual range. Then he alters course to the left, and within a short time arrives at a position southwest of the position at which the Jap sub dived.
In the conning tower, at the plotting station, and on the bridge there is some rapid and careful figuring going on. “Give the son of a bitch four knots,” mutters Sprinkle to himself. “That puts him on this circle. Give him six knots, and he’s here. Give him eight knots—oh, t’ hell with 8 knots!” Clark Sprinkle’s exasperation is almost comical as he grips his pencil in sweaty stubby fingers and tries to decide what he’d do if he were a Jap.
The point is that Batfish wants to arrive at some point where she will be assured of getting a moderately long-range radar contact the instant the Nip surfaces, in a position to be able to do something about it. But don’t let her spot us through the periscope, or wind up near enough for her to torpedo us while still submerged. This is where the stuff you learned in school really pays off, brother.
Naturally, Batfish cannot afford to remain overly long in the vicinity. Every extra minute she spends there increases by that much the diameter of the circle upon which the enemy may be; and even at that very moment he may be making a periscope approach—while she hangs around and makes it easy for him. But Fyfe has no intentions of making it any easier than he can help. Once he has put his ship in what he has calculated to be a logical spot to await developments, he slows down to one third speed—about 4 knots. Then he orders the sound heads rigged out. With his stem toward the direction from which the enemy submarine would have to come, were he making an attack, and making 4 knots away from there, Batfish is forcing the Jap to make high submerged speed in order to catch her; she is banking on detec
ting him by sound before he can get close enough to shoot, or on detecting the torpedo itself if a long-range shot is fired.
Twenty minutes pass. Fyfe cannot guess how long the Nip sub will stay down, but his game is to outwit him. If his initial gambit of running away to the northward has fooled him, he’ll probably show within an hour after diving. The soundmen listen with silent intensity, their headphones glued to their heads. The radar operator scrutinizes his scope with equal urgency. It would not do to miss any indication.
Suddenly, both sound operators look up at the same time. The senior one speaks for both. “Mr. Sprinkle! There’s a noise, bearing zero one five!”
Clark is there in an instant. “What’s it like?” He flips on the loud-speaker switch.
Clearly, a rushing sound can be heard, a sort of powerful swishing sound. It changes somewhat in intensity and tone, then suddenly stops. Like a flash the exec grabs the portable mike. “Captain,” he bellows to the bridge. “He’s blown his tanks, bearing zero one five. He’ll be up directly!”
The blast from the bridge speaker nearly blows everyone off the bridge, for Sprinkle has a powerful voice. All binoculars are immediately turned to the bearing given. But the black night conceals its secrets well. Nothing can be seen.
The bridge speaker blares again. “Radar contact, zero one eight. That’s him all right!”
Apparently convinced that all is clear, the Japanese submarine has surfaced, and is evidently going to continue on his way. Batfish is to get another chance. Whether the target saw them, or thought he saw them; heard them or thought he did; detected them on radar, or simply made a routine night dive, will never be known. One thing Jake is definite on, however: he will get no chance to detect Batfish this time.
Once again Batfish goes through all the intricate details of the night surface approach—with one big difference. The skipper is not going to go in on the surface. The Jap detected him the last time. He’s got more strings to his bow than that.
The Jap has speeded up and changed course slightly. Batfish again seeks a position in front of him, and when the range and distance to the track are to Fyfe’s liking, Batfish dives—but not entirely. Since the radar antennae are normally on top of the highest fixed structure of the ship, it follows that they are the last things to go under when a submarine dives. All Fyfe had done was dive his ship so that these vital antennae were still out of water, although nearly all the rest of the submarine is beneath the surface. This is a good trick; that Batfish had been able to do it so neatly is a tribute to the state of training and competence of her crew. With her radar antennae dry and out of water, they still function as well as when she was fully surfaced, and the dope continues to feed into the fire-control gear, even though not a thing can be seen through the periscope.
And of course the Jap, probably alerted and nervous—maybe he has heard of the failure of one of his brother subs to get through this same area two nights ago—has no target to see or detect by radar, unless you consider a few little odd-shaped pieces of pipe a target.
So on he comes, making 12 knots now, fairly confident that he has managed to avoid the sub which had stalked him a couple of hours ago. He doesn’t even notice or pay any attention to the curious structure in the water a few hundred yards off his starboard beam—for Jake Fyfe has resolved to get as close as possible—and four deadly fish streak his way out of the dark night.
Mercifully, most of the Nip crew probably never knew what hit them. The first torpedo detonated amidships with a thunderous explosion, virtually blowing the ill-fated ship apart. As the two halves each upended and commenced to sink swiftly amid horrible gurgles of water and foaming of released air and fuel oil, the second and third torpedoes also struck home. Their explosions were slightly muffled, however, as though they might have struck some stray piece of metal and gone off mostly in water; but they served to in crease the probability that none of the enemy crew had survived the initial attack.
Three minutes later Fyfe logged two more blasts from deep beneath his ship, evidently some kind of internal explosions in the broken hulk of the sinking submarine. Eight minutes later one terrifically loud explosion rocked Batfish. First thought to be an aircraft bomb, the explosion was finally put down to part of the swan song of the Nipponese sub. All during this period, and for some time later, Sound heard the usual noises of a sinking submarine—mainly small internal explosions and escaping air.
This time Jake Fyfe was prevented from trying to rescue any of the possible survivors of the catastrophe by the presence of a plane, which was detected just as Batfish was getting ready to surface. It is highly doubtful, however, that there could have been any survivors, in view of the triple-barreled blow the submarine had received.
Shortly after midnight, some twenty-four hours later, one of the more irrepressible members of Batfish’s crew was heard to mutter, “What, again? Ho hum; here we lose another night’s sleep playing tag with these slant-eyed submarines!”—as Captain Jake Fyfe rushed past en route to the conning tower.
For the third time in four days the radar operator has called his skipper—unfortunately the patrol reports of our submarines do not usually list the names of the crew, nor their stations—it would be interesting to know whether the same man spotted the enemy each time. From the times of the three contacts, however, 2210, 1915, and 0155, it would appear that one contact was made by each of the three watch sections, and that therefore the three men standing the radar watches each can lay claim to one Nip sub.
Naturally, the particular peculiarity in the appearance of the radar scope which had first served to alert Batfish had been carefully explained to all radar watchers, and they all knew what to look for. In this case, as in the last, the operator simply pointed to his scope and stated flatly, “There’s another one of those Jap subs, Captain!”
One look at the screen, and Jake Fyfe raps out the command to sound the general alarm.
This time Fyfe himself gets on the ship’s interior announcing system. “It looks like another Nip submarine, boys,” he says. “We ought to be written right into their operation orders by this time. Let’s see if we can’t help him along the same road as the other two!”
Fyfe and his tracking party are pretty fine hands by this time, and it only takes a short while before the Jap is picked up for sure on the radar; and his course and speed are known. The United States submariners are fairly certain he will either be on the northerly course of the first sub, or the southeasterly one of the second. It proves to be the latter—course one two zero, speed 7. Batfish heads to intercept, playing it cagily, as always, but a little more self-confident this time. Somehow these Japs don’t seem to have as good equipment as our own—we can thank the home front for that—and they surely are not using what they have to the best advantage—for which we can thank them. And we will—in our own unique fashion.
But with the range still quite long, and before Batfish is able to get into attack position, the Japanese sub dives. Just why he does, no one knows. Possibly he detected an aircraft, or thought he did—although Batfish sees no planes on her radar—or perhaps he got a momentary contact on Batfish through some unexplained vagary of his radar equipment. The most probable explanation is that he has heard of the failure of two other boats to get through this particular stretch, and is attempting to make pursuit more difficult by diving occasionally.
But Jake Fyfe has the answer for this one cold. Last night qualified him in its implementation. He heads, despite this new development, to the spot originally selected for attack position. Then, instead of diving, he proceeds down the track at 4 knots, sound gear rigged out, radar sweeping steadily and deliberately, lookouts alerted and tensely watching.
Half an hour after the Jap dived, Batfish’s radar once again picks up the faint, shimmering emanations of the Nip radar. He’s back up again, though this time no blowing of tanks has been heard. Fyfe, Sprinkle, and the tracking party start the same old approach game.
The first thing to d
o is to get actual radar contact; this wobble in the scope is no good for tracking, even though it does give a vague indication of the enemy’s bearing. So Batfish heads for the source of what her radar operators now term the “wobbly,” expecting to get contact momentarily. Several thousand yards are covered in this manner, with no result, except that the wobbly is getting stronger. Fyfe and his exec become worried over this development. They know the Jap is surfaced—or can he have thought of the same dodge they themselves used only last night? Suppose the Jap is even then in the process of making the same type of approach on Batfish! An unpleasant thought to entertain. The lookouts redouble their vigilance, especially directing their search at the water surface within half a mile around them. At the skipper’s order everything else in the ship is subordinated to the sound watch. Fans and blowers are secured. Unnecessary gear throughout the ship is turned off. Most important, the diesel engines are secured and propulsion shifted to the battery. Silently, eerily, Batfish glides through the water, peering and listening for the telltale swoosh of a torpedo coming at her. If the Jap is very smart indeed, he will silence also, and will get so close before shooting that Batfish will not have a chance of avoiding the torpedoes, even though she might actually hear them on the way.
The lapping of the water alongside is excruciatingly loud in the unnatural stillness. The very air seems stifling and oppressive on the bridge, as it most certainly is down below, with all blowers turned off. Your breath seems to stop, and your heart beats with a muffled thump. The tiny blower motor in the radar gear whines insistently in the conning tower; impossible to shut it down because it keeps the radar tubes from overheating. Sprinkle makes a mental note to have it pulled out and overhauled at the first opportunity.
Down below everyone talks in whispers, not that whispering could do any good, but in tacit recognition of the deadly desperateness of the situation. The Jap sub, submerged, possibly making an approach, and themselves still on the surface!
Submarine! Page 25