“No contacts!” came the report from the lookouts as each completed a search of his own sector.
Keane gave a string of commands into the intercom, setting several dozen men to work in the unseen compartments below. “Commence a low pressure blow on all main ballast tanks. Equalize pressure. Open air inductions and vents. Shift propulsion to the main engines.”
After several minutes of waiting, in which Keane fully expected some bad news from below, the diesels finally sputtered to life. He felt the familiar and somewhat soothing murmur of the engines rumble through the hull. Like a resuscitated beast, the Wolffish had awoken.
“Bridge, maneuvering. Three main engines on line. Ready to answer all bells.”
“Helm, come left to one zero zero,” Keane commanded without hesitation. “All ahead standard.”
As the curling white wake began to form astern, Keane allowed himself to breathe a bit easier. The Wolffish would put some distance between her and the Japanese port of Davao, and then turn toward the open sea, where she could lick her wounds.
It had been a close run thing, perhaps the closest brush with death he had ever experienced. This ship and this crew had struggled to stay alive. They had groped for hours through the unbearable world below, the enemy and the immense pressure determined to crush them, but they had survived. Now they cruised peacefully and quietly across a starlit sea, as if it had all been just a bad dream. They would make all speed for Midway and live to fight another day.
But, even now, Keane could not fully relax. There was no moon tonight, and the sea was as black as a coal pit. The black void of the promontory to the west was the great unknown. Anything could be lurking there. Without the star field backdrop to outline a darkened enemy ship, and with the Wolffish’s radar mast jammed, there was no way to tell. A bad feeling hung over Keane and, try as he might, he could not shake it. It was the same feeling he had often felt in the past, when an escape had been a bit too easy.
Ficarelli’s voice suddenly intoned over the intercom.
“Captain, this is the XO.” He sounded agitated. “Request you search the sector astern.”
The lookouts responded attentively, shifting their focus to the sea behind the submarine. Keane did the same, but after several seconds of searching, in which he saw nothing but blackness as if he had shoved his binoculars under a dark hood, he concluded there was nothing there.
“Can’t see anything behind us, XO,” Keane said into the intercom. “Did you see something through the periscope?”
“Captain, XO. We didn’t see anything down here either.” Ficarelli paused, before adding. “It may be nothing, sir, but we may have picked up a radar contact.”
“Radar?” Keane said with surprise, having understood that the unit was out of commission.
“Yes, sir. I ordered the SJ warmed up to see if we could rotate it, but it’s no good. The mast is still jammed in one position, directly astern. The radar itself, though, seems to work okay. Just as we completed that last turn, Mills was looking at the display, and he swears he saw a blip behind us. Just as our beam swept past two nine zero.”
A cold chill ran down Keane’s spine. Was something there, lying unseen in the darkness astern? It might be a trawler, or an uncharted rock formation.
“Only one way to find out, XO.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Helm, bridge. Right standard rudder, come right to one one zero.”
The rudder had hardly been applied when one of the lookouts above cried out in desperation. “Destroyer! Two thousand yards astern! She’s bow on to us, sir!”
Before the next heartbeat, Keane had spotted it, too, a small sliver of grayness against a black field. He immediately deduced this was the same destroyer that had led the depth charge attack – the same ship he had assumed had gone back to Davao. What was she doing here? She did not appear to be moving. Was she damaged? Had she run aground? Was it mere chance that she was pointing directly at the Wolffish, presenting the narrowest and least detectable aspect? That had to be it. Otherwise…
As much as Keane’s mind rejected what he was seeing, he could not ignore the cold realization that came over him at that moment, that the destroyer’s commanding officer had out-guessed him. The enemy captain had loudly driven his ship around the promontory and then had crept back here to the southern edge of the minefield to watch and wait.
Keane’s suspicions were confirmed when the thunder of naval gunfire rumbled across the open expanse of water and, moments later, two brilliant flares appeared in the sky above the Wolffish, illuminating her patch of ocean like the noonday sun.
The battered Wolffish had risen triumphantly from the deadly depths only to sail directly into a trap.
“All ahead flank!” Keane shouted into the intercom. “Maneuvering, bridge, give me everything you’ve got!”
CHAPTER XI
From the darkened bridge of the Yokaze, Captain Nagata watched the American submarine with grim satisfaction. The enemy sub had surfaced precisely where he had expected it to, and now the star shells lobbed into the air by the Yokaze’s forward twin gun turret illuminated the ocean before the bows like a spotlight on a stage, bathing the enemy’s low hull and box-like conning tower in a white glow. The enemy submarine was turning away, straining her engines to reach maximize speed, but there was nowhere to hide.
“Why does the American run on the surface, sir?” The ensign next to Nagata muttered. “Why does she not dive?”
Nagata ignored him. The impetuous young officer was acting childishly anxious, and should have known better than to ask such a fool-headed question.
“All engines ahead full!” Nagata commanded. “Forward battery, load anti-submarine shells and commence firing!”
Of course the enemy submarine would not dive. It had been submerged for most of the day, and had undoubtedly suffered damage from the depth charging administered by Yokaze and her consorts. The sub’s battery power would be exhausted, and the crew starving for air. Earlier that afternoon, when the fuel had churned to the surface, Yokaze’s crew had cheered with exultation, fully convinced that the enemy had been destroyed. Nagata himself had dared to hope that the active sonar returns were reflecting off of a broken and lifeless hulk lying on the bottom. But the absence of flotsam and bodies had left him suspicious. Nagata could have dropped his remaining depth charges on the spot, just to be sure, but depth charges were getting harder to come by these days, and he did not wish to waste the few he had left on a hunch. So, he had decided to employ a trick of his own. He had deployed the escorts Kiku and Enoki away to seaward – far enough away to give the enemy captain confidence that his ruse had succeeded. Nagata had then loudly steamed the Yokaze around the headland, as if heading back to port, hoping the American would seize the opportunity to escape to the south, and, in so doing, inadvertently drive straight into the minefield where one of the tethered killers would undoubtedly deliver the death blow. And this is exactly what the enemy sub had done. However, instead of meeting with its destruction in the minefield, it had somehow made it through. Of course, Nagata had not rested all of his hopes on the minefield. He knew there was a shred of a chance of the American would pass through unscathed, and for this eventuality, he had turned the Yokaze about and had brought her back to the southern end of the minefield at a creeping pace, and there she had waited.
Now, the fortune the American submarine had enjoyed for so long was about to run out. She was caught on the surface, and there was no chance of escape.
He looked down at Yokaze’s foredeck and saw the glistening twin barrels of the 12.7-centimeter gun mount rotated to point directly at the submarine. They angled slightly as the final range was calculated, like two cobras preparing to strike. The hull shuddered as the two barrels spat out the first salvo. As the smoke was carried away in the wind, Nagata followed the tracer rounds on their short flight. The flat-nosed, anti-submarine shells were much slower than the standard high explosive ammunition, but as sluggish as they appeared, N
agata knew that in reality they were screaming over the water at several hundred feet per second.
Two columns of water, brilliant white in the artificial light, bracketed the submarine, dwarfing it. The enemy sub reeled from the near misses, and Nagata surged with pride at the superior marksmanship of his gun crews. While American gun crews typically relied on radar and massed salvos to hit their targets, the Japanese practiced mathematical precision and traditional gunnery skills. Although, the reason for this was more out of necessity than preference. The Imperial Navy simply did not have the endless supply of ammunition streaming to the combat theaters as did the U.S. Navy. It could not afford poor marksmanship.
“Right full rudder!” Nagata commanded into the voice tube. “Come right thirty degrees!”
Anticipating the order, the helmsman in the pilot house below responded immediately, and the agile destroyer started to turn. As the bow shifted to the right, the forward gun turret was forced to rotate to keep its twin gun barrels pointed at the submarine. This affected the aim briefly and the next two salvos struck the water much further from the target than had the first. But Nagata had ordered the maneuver to add more of the Yokaze’s arsenal to the fusillade. By placing the enemy just off the port bow, the destroyer’s anti-aircraft guns mounted near her aft smokestack now had a clear line of sight, and they immediately opened up, spewing a storm of twenty-five millimeters shells at two hundred rounds per minute. The sharp staccato reports of the Hotchkiss guns reverberated through the destroyer’s metal skin, the tracer shells reaching out across the water like a swarm of angry fire flies, tearing up the water around the enemy, some skidding off the surface into the blackness beyond. Soon the submarine was hidden in a tempest of geysers and explosions.
“A hit!” one of the lookouts shouted with exultation after one round from the turret appeared to strike the submarine just below the waterline. With no ensuing water spout to indicate a miss, the logical conclusion was that the enemy had been hulled. But Nagata, knew well how the eye played tricks on the mind during night engagements. In the many such battles he had fought during the Solomons campaign, he had seldom known the after action reports of the various captains involved to agree with one another. Oftentimes it seemed as though they were not even documenting the same battle.
But Nagata began to think that perhaps, this time, his eyes had not deceived him, when the ensign next to him announced wildly, “The enemy submarine is diving, Captain!”
Nagata had only taken his eyes away from the enemy long enough to check the Yokaze’s course and speed. He returned the binoculars to his face fully expecting to see that the junior officer was mistaken, and that the submarine was still running at top speed as before. Instead, he was shocked to discover the submarine with decks awash and her exposed conning tower angling sharply downward.
Was she indeed diving? Or had that last shell delivered a fatal blow?
Nagata allowed the Yokaze’s guns to continue firing even well after the submarine had disappeared from view. After he finally ordered the deafening salvos stopped, the bridge speaker intoned with the sonar officer’s voice.
“Captain, sonar holds the enemy submarine, six hundred meters off the port bow, bearing zero eight five!”
“Switch to listening,” Nagata commanded fervently. “Do you hear the hull imploding? Is she breaking up?”
After a long pause, the sonar officer responded. “Nothing yet, Captain. Shall we continue with our active search?”
So, Nagata thought, it was not a certain thing – at least, not yet. Chances were fairly good that the enemy’s pressure hull had been breached, and at this very moment, thousands of tons of seawater were pouring into that breach. The submarine was probably hurtling into the abyss, a lifeless tube of pockmarked steel. But there was also a slim chance the American submarine was not nearly as damaged as they believed, that she had dived intentionally, and was now using every last Joule of energy left in her batteries to attempt an escape.
There was only one way to be certain.
“Come left twenty degrees!” Nagata ordered. “Commence sonar search. Prepare to drop a full pattern of depth charges, maximum depth setting!”
The Yokaze quickly turned back to drive directly toward the spot of ocean where the battered submarine had disappeared. As the reports came that the racks and throwers were ready, Nagata waited for an update on the enemy’s position, but it never came.
“Sonar, report!” Nagata snapped. “Where is the enemy submarine?”
“We…we cannot find her, Captain,” the officer’s voice sounded uncertain over the speaker as if he were having a hard time believing what he was seeing on the sonar oscilloscope.
“Change the frequency!” Nagata ordered. “Check the unit!”
“We have checked it, Captain. The sonar is functioning properly, but we have lost all contact with the enemy. Perhaps the submarine broke up as it exceeded its crush depth.”
Nagata considered that possibility for a split second, but he felt certain the sonar would still detect something. A three-hundred-foot long submarine, whether in one piece or three, should still return some kind of an echo.
“Give me a range to the submarine’s last known position,” Nagata demanded.
“We will be passing over the spot in thirty seconds, Captain.”
Nagata was about to give the command to release depth charges when the sailor beside him wearing the phone set got his attention. “Captain, the radio officer wishes to speak with you urgently. He asks that you please pick up the bridge phone without delay.”
Nagata reached for the phone more to dismiss the radio officer who should not have bothered him at such a moment. But the officer on the other end of the line was speaking before he could say a word.
“Captain, we have received a high priority message from the naval office at Davao! We are ordered to break off any attacks at once and to expend no more depth charges. We are to return to base immediately. The order to conserve depth charges is repeated, sir.”
As the sonar officer’s voice counted down over the bridge speaker the last few seconds before the Yokaze reached the drop point, Nagata half-considered ignoring the order and dropping his charges anyway. But, the order was a curious one, and left him wondering. Why were his ship and his depth charges so direly needed at Davao? There had to be a good reason for it.
“Stand down,” he finally commanded, disheartening all on the bridge who had been anticipating an attack. “Secure all racks and throwers. Stand down from battlestations, but keep the gun crews near their mounts in the event we catch any more subs on the surface. Navigator, plot a course for Davao.”
As the Yokaze’s crestfallen crew silently complied with his orders, Nagata leaned on the rail and looked down into the dark swirling sea far below, pondering the fate of the enemy submarine. Was her crew, at this moment, suffering a hell-on-earth experience as the last watertight compartments bubbled and split open? Or were they laughing, as they silently slipped away?
CHAPTER XII
The Yokaze and her flotilla arrived at Davao shortly after sunrise, gliding through the anchored ships under gray skies to return to the same moorings they had left only the day before. The destroyer had hardly shifted her colors when a junior officer stepped aboard bearing an abrupt instruction from the local naval commandant. Nagata was to report ashore without delay.
Desiring an explanation for the urgency of his recall, Nagata wasted no time in responding to the summons. Turning over Yokaze’s port routine to the first officer, Nagata donned his sword and dress blue uniform and rode ashore on the same launch that had conveyed the messenger. But upon reaching the naval office, his search for answers was met with disappointment. The commandant, a beached captain who was always in a petulant mood, and who seemed to resent any officer fortunate enough to command a ship at sea, greeted him curtly, rising from his desk only for the brief time it took to return Nagata’s bow.
“You are to meet with the Baron,” the commandant
said succinctly, glancing once at Nagata over the rim of his glasses and then casually gesturing out the open window to the building down the street, where the local army garrison kept its headquarters offices. “He is waiting for you. He is quite insistent, another one of his endless demands.”
“Do I understand correctly, sir, that the army commander was responsible for my return to port?” Nagata asked incredulously. “And you allowed this, sir, while my destroyer was engaging an enemy submarine?”
The commandant did not respond. Either he had not heard the question, or he did not feel obligated to answer it. He appeared distracted by one of the many reports scattered across his desk.
“Are you not coming, sir?” Nagata finally asked, after waiting a respectful interval.
“No.” The commandant did not take his eyes from the report in front of him, but his tone was laced with bitterness. “The Baron wishes to speak with you, Nagata, not I. He wishes to speak with you alone. I do not know why. Always so demanding, that old bastard. He issues orders to me as if I should snap to like one of his company commanders. Who does he think he is, Nagata?”
“I do not know, sir.”
“He is the senior officer here in Davao! That’s who he is!” The commandant slapped his hand on the desk, as if the fact annoyed him immensely. “I do as I am told – and so do you. Now be gone, before I get a call asking why you are not there yet!” As Nagata bowed and turned to leave the office, the commandant called after him scornfully. “Oh, Nagata. Please give my regards to the Baron, and politely inform His Lordship, the next time he wishes to consult with one of my officers, I would be obliged if he would allow me to be present!”
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