Up Periscope

by Robb White

  Carney’s message read:

  SHARK ACKNOWLEDGES STOP AM ON BASE COURSE DEAD AHEAD STOP ESTIMATED DISTANCE FIVE SIX MILES STOP WILCO STOP.

  Fifty-six miles. Speed on course fifteen miles. Three hours and forty-five minutes. It was now nine o’clock.

  As Ken began encoding the message he wondered what was going to happen.

  As soon as Shelton had gotten the message out and an acknowledgment from Pearl, Ken went up on the bridge to find Carney.

  The bridge was crowded with Pat, Si, Bill Adams, a doubled lookout section, and the talker.

  “Pearl just said ‘a large task force,’” Carney was saying. “So I don’t know what’s in it. Perhaps troop transports going down to attack the Marines on Tarawa. Maybe heavy stuff going down to soften the island up before the attack troops get there. Might be nothing but a fishing fleet.”

  “How’d they get picked up?” Pat asked.

  “Must have been one of our patrol planes out of Midway.”

  “Hope the Japs didn’t spot him and change course,” Si put in. “Were really set for him right here.”

  “Maybe a carrier,” Pat said. “Oh, how I’d love to sink me a carrier.”

  “Whatever it is, we’d better get ready for it,” Carney told them. “If there’re any destroyers we’ll get a working over just as soon as we shoot—maybe sooner. Get everything secured for depth-bombing. Check your emergency lights and CO2 absorbers. And, Frank, get all the loose gear stowed so there won’t be a lot of stuff flying around hitting people. Bill, put three engines on the batteries and bring them up as high as you can. We’ve still got two or three hours to go, so jam it into those batteries. Get all hands fed—good—and let as many men hit the sack as you can spare. Let’s put Chief Milton in the forward torpedo room, Chief Johnston, aft, and let Madden have the wheel when the time comes. Who’s the best soundman?” *

  “It’s a tossup between Swift and Keller,” Pat told him. “Make it Swift. Keller had the mid-watch last night. Now let’s ride the vents and wait for them.”

  Officers and men disappeared from the bridge. Ken stayed and told Carney that the message had been received.

  “Thanks,” Carney said. “Well, it’s a nice night for a fight. In this moonlight we’ve got a chance of seeing him before he sees us.”

  “What’s going to happen?” Ken asked.

  “Not sure. If it turns out to be a real task force they’ll have a screen of destroyers all around. Well have to get inside the screen before we can get a shot at the big boy—whatever it turns out to be.”

  “Then what?”

  Carney chuckled. “Shoot at everything in sight and then run like a homesick angel. Which won’t do much good because the Japs are smart. In the early days we could take everything they had standing on our heads. They used to set their depth charges to explode at two hundred feet, so all we had to do was go down to three hundred and silently steal away. But some blabbermouth newspaperman published a story about it, and within two weeks the Japs were dropping them right down the chimney. They can get rough.”

  “What’s it like to be depth-charged?”

  Carney laughed but he didn’t sound happy. “The waiting is the hardest part, I think. You’re down there in the water and you don’t know what’s going on. Then, without any warning at all, the thing explodes. If it’s a long way off you hear a ‘click,’ if it’s close you don’t—just the biggest noise you ever heard. You’ll go through one tonight, Ken. You’ll see how all hands look to see if water’s coming in or air’s going out. They look hard.” He swung around. “Let’s take a look at the boat. Things should start popping around here pretty soon.”

  Ken followed him down the ladder and on forward to the torpedo room. It was quiet in there, most of the men in bed, the lights dim. Carney talked in a whisper to the chief and Si Mount, and then inspected the tubes.

  As Ken stood in the dim darkness he was still haunted by the fear that he had accomplished nothing on the island; that the pictures were only of someone’s doodling.

  And now, he thought, with this fight coming up, we’ll be submerged, so there won’t be any radio reception. Maybe, he thought, I’ll never know, never find out.

  He shrugged off the idea and followed Carney aft.

  Bill Adams, who was now Engineering Officer, was standing beside the panel with its yard-long bright metal levers which controlled the electric motors. As Carney came up, Bill tapped the faces of some gauges on the bulkhead.

  Here, too, the light was dim and there weren’t many men on watch.

  “Topping off now,” Bill said. “They’ve got about all they can hold.”

  “Keep pouring it in until the last minute,” Carney told him. “We might need every amp we can get.”

  Then he went on aft to the stem torpedo room. In there a few men were making final adjustments while the rest slept.

  On the way back to the bridge Carney said, “We’re about as ready as we’ll ever be.” Then he turned and smiled at Ken. “This is the first time I’ve ever fought a boat as Skipper.”

  “How does it feel?”

  “Terrible. Being commanding officer sounds good—back in Pearl. Out here—well, if I make a mistake a lot of people get hurt. Good people. I never knew before how lonely the commanding officer is.”

  Carney climbed back to the open bridge. “What’s the word?” he asked Pat.

  “Nothing yet, Skipper.”

  Carney looked at his watch. “Midnight. We’ve got about forty-five more minutes if their speed on the base course is right.”

  “Bridge! Bridge!” The voice was urgent.

  “Bridge, aye, aye,” Carney answered.

  “Something on the screen, but can’t tell what it is.”

  Carney dropped swiftly down the ladder.

  In the darkness Pat said, “This is it, Ken.”

  “You think so?”

  “Bound to be. They’re moving faster along the base course than we thought.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “They’re zigzagging—going right and left of a line which is their base course. Say, they’re making twenty knots through the water and zigging back and forth—that’ll move them along the base course at only sixteen or seventeen knots.”

  “Wonder what it is?”

  “I want a carrier.”

  Carney came back up the ladder. “Lookouts, what do you see?”

  “Nothing yet, sir.”

  “There’s something dead astern of us,” Carney told them.

  “What does it look like, Skipper?” Pat asked.

  “Big. They’re still too far away for the blips to separate, but I’d guess that there are a dozen ships in the group.” He dropped back down the ladder.

  Soon his voice came up the tube. “He’s zigged to the right now. Looks like eight small ships and three big ones.”

  Ken heard the driving diesel speed up and then felt the submarine turning. Looking aft, he could see the white, curving wake as the Shark came around a hundred and eighty degrees.

  “Hold your hat,” Pat said quietly. “Here we go.”

  Nothing happened for almost ten minutes. Then Carney said, “He’s turning to his left. Time of zig ten minutes even. You should see him soon.”

  The driving diesel slowed, but the other three kept on charging the batteries at high speed.

  “Object dead ahead,” a lookout cried.

  Carney came instantly up the ladder. Putting the big night binoculars in the rack of the target-bearing transmitter, he swung it ahead. For a long time he looked, and then straightened up. “See if you can make him out, Pat.”

  Malone stooped to the eyepieces. In a moment Ken heard him draw in a quick, sharp breath. “One destroyer. Another can. A cruiser or a big can. Can’t be sure. That’s a carrier. It’s a carrier, Skipper. Another can. Another. Another cruiser or big can. I’d say cruiser. Another can.” Malone straightened. “That’s the biggest carrier I ever saw.”

  Carney nodd
ed. “Clear the bridge,” he said.

  In a few seconds the Klaxon was sounding. Ken dropped down into the conning tower with the rest and stood back against the wall as the small room filled up with people.

  “Hold her at forty feet,” Carney ordered. “I want a lot of scope going in.”

  “Steady at forty.”

  “Up periscope.”

  As the periscope moved upward, Carney took the handles in both hands and stooped to the eyepieces. On the other side of the scope Pat Malone took his place as range and bearing reader. He put his hands down on top of Carney’s on the handles, which, by turning, Carney could adjust the scope to read off the bearing and distance of the target.

  Carney said, “Bearing … mark!”

  Malone read out the bearing on the ring above him to Frank Doherty, who was running the target data computer.

  Carney said, “Range … mark!”

  Malone read the range from the other dial and Frank entered it into the computer.

  “Down periscope.”

  Carney straightened. “Here’s the picture. He’s in a rectangular formation. Two destroyers are out front, two on each flank, and one or two—I can’t be sure—astern. Inside the destroyer screen there are two cruisers. One is a little ahead of and to port of the carrier, the other to starboard and a little astern. The carrier is a whopper.”

  The soundman said, “Target turning.”

  “Right on time. Pat, give me a course to get him broadside »

  on.

  Pat spun the dials of the Is-Was and read off a course. “I’m going to slip in between the lead destroyers and the flanking ones and shoot before they pick us up. The carrier is the main target, then the cruisers. Are we set?”

  “Set, Skipper,” Doherty said.

  “Up periscope!”

  Chapter 7

  Now the Shark was the hunter, the killer. In a little while, defenseless, she would become the hunted.

  As the hunter she was ready. In the conning tower Carney had his eyes to the periscope sights. On the other side of the oily tube Pat Malone, with the Is-Was hanging by a string around his neck, moved as Carney moved—it was almost a dance. The helmsman stood solidly, feet apart, both hands on the brass spokes of the wheel. The radarman had his face down close to the long black cone at the bottom of which glowed the greenish dial of the radar. The soundman sat hunched over listening through the headphones. Hanging to a hook on his table was another set of headphones. Frank Doherty stood beside the target data computer. The correct solution light—a red F—glowed brightly. Standing out of the way was the telephone talker with the rubber-padded earphones and a little curved bucket-like thing around the mouthpiece so that he could talk into it without disturbing the others in conn. A young sailor, still too young to shave, stood by as messenger.

  Down in the control room two men, both stripped to their shorts, sat facing the wheels and holding two great bronze wheels. One of these controlled the bow planes, the other the stem planes. In front of each man was a bubble level. The Chief of the Boat stood in front of the control panel, with its levers and wheels. Above him the “Christmas tree” —a panel of lights which showed whether every opening in the hull of the Shark was closed or open—glowed green— the green board—except for one red light down in the comer. Thus all openings in the hull were closed. Along the bulkheads across from the planesmen more men stood ready at banks of wheels which opened and closed vents and valves, controlled high- and low-pressure air, and made it possible for the boat to become heavier than water, or lighter. Back in the engine room the four great diesels were still and silent, the heat from them hanging heavy in the room. Now the electric motors were turning over with the high-pitched whine. Controlling these with the rheostats feeding more or less power from the rows of batteries which lay below the deck for almost the entire length of the boat were the electricians under Bill Adams.

  In the torpedo room forward the ready lights glowed on the six bronze-capped tubes.

  All hands in the boat were silent. There was no kidding, no horsing around. No talking at all.

  Now everything—the target, the killer, the sea—had become a problem in simple arithmetic. The target was traveling at high speed on a straight line. The submarine was approaching that line at right angles. Now the problem was to get the torpedo to a place on the target’s path at exactly the same instant the target got there.

  Since the torpedoes were, compared to bullets, exceedingly slow—traveling about thirty miles an hour—it would take them a minute to go half a mile, a thousand yards. Therefore you couldn’t hit the target by shooting straight at it but, with arithmetic, you could find the course to put the torpedoes on so that, while they ran along their path, the target would run along its path, and, if your arithmetic was right, torpedo and target would come together at a point in the open sea.

  The torpedoes, powered by electric motors and steered by small gyroscopes which held them rigidly on whatever course they had been set to, were designed to explode either upon hitting a ship or, if they missed, to explode magnetically as they went under a ship.

  A problem in arithmetic.

  Through the periscope Carney could now see, outlined by the moonlight, the carrier. Planes, their wings folded upward, crowded the immense flight deck. Ahead of the carrier was one cruiser; astern, the other.

  Swinging the scope around—Carney and Malone doing their weird, slow dance—he saw the lead destroyers far ahead.

  The two flank destroyers filled the field of the scope and were coming straight at him, their bow waves smooth white slices in the water.

  “All ahead flank! Pour it on ’em, Bill,” Carney ordered. Then he spoke to the people in conn. “Two of the cans are barreling right at us. Don’t know whether they’ve spotted us or not, but we want them to pass astern.”

  The soundman plugged in the loud-speaker so that they could all hear the noise of the target propellers. The carrier and the cruisers made a deep-throated chug chug chug while the destroyers came through with a high-speed thrum thrum thrum.

  “Bearing … Mark.”

  “Range … Mark.”

  “Down periscope. What’s the distance to the track?”

  “Two thousand, Skipper”

  “Torpedo run?”

  “Two six six oh.”

  “Are we ready to shoot, Frank?”

  “Outer doors still closed, Captain.”

  “Up periscope.”

  Carney swung the scope all the way around, a full three hundred and sixty degrees—Malone in the solemn dance. Then he signaled for the scope to go down by flipping up the handles. “Were inside the screen. The two cans haven’t changed course, so they must not have spotted us. Let’s take the sea pressure off and get the doors open, Frank. All ahead one third.”

  In a moment the talker reported that the outer doors of all torpedo tubes were open.

  “All ahead full. Give the lead cruiser one fish and one for the stem cruiser. Then put a four-fish spread into the carrier. Set depth twelve feet. Set speed high.”

  In seconds Doherty was giving the talker the gyro angles to be set on the torpedoes.

  In only seconds more the talker reported depth, speed, and gyro angles set on the six torpedoes forward.

  Carney said quietly, “This is a shooting observation. Up periscope. Bearing … mark … range … mark. Shoot!” He snapped the handles up as Frank flipped a switch on the number one torpedo tube board to ON. “FIRE I” he shouted. The talker leaned on the firing key.

  The Shark lurched as three thousand pounds of torpedo were rammed out of her by compressed air.

  Frank made a swift adjustment on the angle solver and then, watching the flicking hand of his stop watch, cried, “Fire two I”

  The Shark lurched.

  Down in control men jumped to valves and levers, letting more water into the tanks to balance the air which, after firing the torpedoes, was sucked back into the boat, so that there would be no impulse bubble risi
ng to the surface to mark their position.

  “Fire three!”

  “… four!”

  “… five!”

  “… six!”

  Over the sonar loud-speaker they could hear the torpedoes leave the tubes, making a noise almost like a cry of sorrow. Carney put the scope up for a second, brought it down. Doherty in a monotonous, toneless voice—as though nothing was happening—read off the seconds of the first torpedo’s run.“…nineteen…eighteen…seventeen…”

  Pat Malone looked at Carney’s face, waiting for the next decision. What, he wondered, was Carney going to do? Was he going to turn hard right and try to run under the stern escort of destroyers, hoping, in the confusion (if there was any) not to be heard going under? Or was he going to swing all the way around and try to escape the way he had come?

  Carney’s face told him nothing. It was calm, studious, waiting, as Doherty counted the seconds.

  Doherty said, with no emotion whatever, “Missed the lead cruiser. Here’s number two.” He began to count again. “… four … three … two …”

  WHRANNG

  The sound went all through the boat as though someone had suddenly pounded on it with an immense hammer.

  “A hit,” Doherty said calmly. “This is number three. Four

  … three … two … one … one … two … three … Must have gone under him …”

  WHRANNG Four and five missed.

  Six hit the trailing cruiser.

  “Up periscope!”

  Carney and Pat danced.

  Then orders began to snap from Carney. “Down periscope! Take her down—deep! Rig for silent running.”

  Then he turned to Frank and grinned. “Beautiful shooting, Frank. One cruiser is dead in the water. The carrier is a bonfire.”

  “Can t see how we missed that first cruiser,” Doherty complained.

  “He had dropped back and was sheltered by the carrier. We might get another shot at him later.”

  The soundman said, “Sonar sounds, very mixed, sir.”

  Carney put on the other set of headphones and listened intently. “Either the cruiser or the carrier is breaking up. Neither is moving.” He took the phones off. “At least one destroyer sounds like he’s found us.”