by Peter Albano
Reginald Williams leaned back against the bulkhead and stared past the oiled tubes of the two periscopes at his assistant attack officer, Charlie Cadenbach, who fidgeted nervously with the plastic “Is-Was” which hung around his neck. An antique instrument dating back to the twenties, the “Is-Was” looked much like a circular slide rule with two concentric discs. It was calibrated so that the assistant attack officer could keep a continuous reading on the target’s course and speed relative to the submarine. In the old submarine navy, Cadenbach would have been called the “yes-man” because his duties included keeping the attack officer current on the developing attack problem, and the readiness condition of the boat and the torpedo battery, and in general, supplying the captain with anything else he wished to know. Staring at the heavy layers of perspiration beading Cadenbach’s forehead, the nervously twitching jaw, Williams was glad he had Ensign Hasse on the TDC, Crog Romero on the Mark IV sonar, Harold Sturgis at the helm and engine room controls, Randy Davidson on the telephone board, and Goroku Kumanao manning the SPS-10 radar console. They were all good men.
Short of breath, Reginald inhaled deeply, but relief was impossible. With sixty-seven men breathing in oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide, the livability of the submarine’s atmosphere decreased by the minute. Worse than Los Angeles smog in July ran through his mind. All of the old fleet boats carried carbon dioxide absorbent, hermetically sealed in metal canisters and oxygen was stored in bottles. However, these were used only in emergencies. Reginald sighed with resignation. It was time for his first observation. His discomfort was suddenly forgotten.
Randy Davidson turned to him. “Technician Matthew Dante wants to know if you want an ESM confirmation, Captain.”
“Negative. We know who they are and I’m going to get my first observation now.” He turned to the TDC. “Stand by your cranks, Mister Hasse.”
“Aye aye, sir. TDC standing by.” The young ensign threw four switches and the little room was filled with the sounds of electric motors coming up to speed. “TDC ready for input, sir.”
“Very well.” The captain shouted down the hatch, “Diving Station!”
Ensign Herbert Battle’s voice came back, “Diving Station aye!”
“Depth?”
“Sixty-seven feet.”
“Bring her up flat to sixty-four feet.” This would give Williams two-and-one-half feet of periscope above the surface.
“Bring her up flat to sixty-four feet,” the diving officer shouted, repeating the command and ordering his planesmen at the same time. The change in depth was almost imperceptible.
“Sixty-four feet, sir,” Battle reported.
“Very well. Up ’scope!”
Cadenbach punched the “pickle” control, and the hoist motor clacked open. Accompanied by the sounds of spinning sheaves and the squeak of steel cables, the periscope slid up from its well like a long-dormant reptile. Wet and oily, the shining steel barrel almost appeared motionless, only the movement of the hoist cables indicating the instrument was rising. Suddenly the periscope yoke appeared, bolted to the ends of the hoist cables. Then the base of the periscope appeared with the eyepiece, range dials, and two handles folded up at its sides. Stooping, Reginald Williams snapped down the handles and rose with the instrument, eyes glued to the rubber-lined eyepiece. Immediately he swung the lens to the west.
“What was that last bearing, Crog?”
“Two-six-zero true, zero-eight-zero relative, sir.”
“God damn it. Where in hell are they?” Williams shouted, working the lens over the reported bearing.
Crog turned his crank and studied his scope, hand over his single earphone. “They should be there, sir. My sonar has them loud and clear.”
“Right!” Williams shouted with undisguised joy. “They were in a squall. We’ve got ’em. A big mother — the Jabal Nafusa, all right, and two cans leading — maybe six-hundred yards off each bow.” And then to Cadenbach, “Check me on this, XO. Length one-thousand fifty, beam one-ten, draft fifty-one, height of roast one-five-zero.”
Cadenbach studied a chart attached to the bulkhead behind the captain’s head. “Correct, sir. Except height of mast one-six-zero.”
“One-six-zero.” Williams made the adjustment by turning a knob on his range finder slightly. “Stand by for first observation,” he said. He squinted, moving the periscope with slight motions of the handles. “Bearing, mark!”
Cadenbach studied the spot where the vertical cross hair on the periscope barrel matched the bearing circle etched on the overhead around it. “Zero-seven-zero.”
Hasse turned a crank on the TDC. Cadenbach adjusted the “Is-Was.”
Williams fingered the knob of the range finder until the split image of the tanker became a coherent whole. “Range, mark!”
“Seven-seven-seven-zero.”
Hasse turned another crank. Cadenbach fumbled with the “Is-Was.”
“Angle on the bow starboard fifteen.” The target was fifteen degrees from heading directly at the submarine — a terrible firing problem. Ninety degrees was ideal. “Down ’scope!” The barrel slid down. “Give her a course of zero-four-zero.”
Williams turned to Crog. “We’ve made a lot of noise. What’s that can doing in the entrance?”
The soundman cranked the sound head around, listened for a moment. “Still just running his auxiliary engine, sir. His steam is up — I can hear it hissing, but no shafts or screws are turning.”
“Very well.” The captain spoke to the entire attack team. “We’re too far east of Jabal Nafusa’s track. I expected her to approach from one-eight-zero. We’ll have to steam west to get close enough for a decent shot, and the angle on her bow is terrible.” He spoke to Sturgis, “All ahead two-thirds, come right to two-seven-zero.”
Sturgis repeated the commands, pushed the annunciators forward, and brought the helm over. There was the sound of electric motors and the boat surged forward. “Steady on two-seven-zero, speed six, sir.”
“Very well. Sonar, the can in the entrance?”
“No change, sir.”
“The tanker?”
“Holding her course at zero-four-zero.”
“Very well.” Williams shouted down the hatch, “Plot, depth under keel?”
“Forty fathoms, sir,” Imamura answered.
“Forty? What happened to the hundred-fathom line?”
“We’re inside it, Captain, and the chart shows eighty fathoms. But these charts are inaccurate. My fathometer reads forty.”
“Damn!” Williams punched the tube. And then down the hatch again, “Imamura, I want to know when we’ve covered one mile.”
The speed of the response took everyone by surprise. “Seven more minutes.” Obviously, the navigator had already plotted the entire problem on his plotting sheets and was anticipating the captain’s attack scheme.
The seven minutes were interminable. A new, frightening sound crept into the boat. It was the “pinging” sound of the enemy’s destroyers’ sound gear searching from beam to beam. Blackfin’s RAM — US Navy designation “Deflecton Four” — was highly efficient against radar, but it did not give much protection against powerful, well-manned sound gear. As the sounds grew louder, no one could look into another man’s eyes. “Are they ranging us?”
“Negative, Captain,” Romero said.
Finally, Williams shouted “All stop!” Sturgis pulled the annunciators all the way back to the last stop, and silence filled the boat. The atmosphere was so heavy, it felt liquid. Williams spoke to Sturgis, “Let me know when you lose steerageway.” And then down the hatch, “Mister Battle, let me know if you have trouble holding her at sixty-four feet.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Up ’scope. Stand by for second observation.” The tube slid up and Williams peered into the lens. “Bearing mark!”
“Two-seven-five.”
“Range mark!”
“Four-two-zero-zero.”
“Angle on the bow four-five starboard. Down �
��scope.” Hasse cranked his handles furiously. He glanced at his dials and turned to the captain. “Initial range four-one-zero-zero, speed eight, distance to track three-one-zero-zero.”
Williams nodded. They were only three thousand one-hundred yards from the Jabal Nafusa’s projected track. And with her bows pointed dead center into the atoll’s entrance, there was very little chance she would change course. “Hot damn!” he shouted, slamming a big fist into his sweaty palm.
He turned to Crog. “The cans?”
“No change, sir.”
“Very well. All ahead, one-third.” He wanted to fire from within two thousand yards, but with such an enormous target, he could fire at a longer range.
Again, silence for a few minutes. Then Williams shouted the fateful words at Randy Davidson. “Flood tubes one through six.” And then to Cadenbach, “Up ’scope. This will be a shooting observation!”
He pulled down the handles and rose eagerly with the eyepiece of the attack periscope glued to his eye. A quick look at the escorts. The closest was crossing their bows only about two thousand yards ahead. The other was far off the tanker’s port bow at least three miles distant. He turned the lens to the tanker. He felt a near sexual thrill as the enormous target plodded into his view. This would be like shooting a pregnant cow. “Bearing mark!”
“Three-one-zero.”
“Range mark!”
“Two-four-five-zero.”
“Angle on the bow zero-six-zero. Down ’scope. Open outer doors tubes one through six.” He turned to Hasse. “TDC?”
“Range three-six-five-zero, speed eight, distance to track two-two-zero-zero.”
Williams said to Hasse, “Set depth of fish for twenty-feet, speed fast, we’ll give him six fish on a ninety track or as close to it as we can.”
“Twenty-feet, speed forty-six-knots, ninety track, six-fish spread,” Hasse echoed. The spread would aim one torpedo at the bow, four spaced evenly amidships, and one at the stern. With such a huge target, they should score at least three hits — unless a destroyer detected them.
The captain spoke to Crog, “Turn on the speaker.” The soundman flipped a switch, and a small speaker immediately filled the tiny room with the sounds of pinging and the cavitations of small screws and the one big “chunk chunk” of the single huge screw of the Jabal Nafusa. Both destroyers were conducting standard beam-to-beam searches. They were still undetected.
Everyone stared at Hasse. Now the success or failure of their attack, their very lives, depended on this young man and his machine. The ensign’s eyes were glued on the TDC, waiting for the red glow of the “F” indicating a solution to appear on the grid face of the elliptical distance-to-track indicator.
‘Sir,” came up from the control room. “The bottom’s shoaled to twenty fathoms.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Shit!” They had only one hundred twenty feet of water under them. They would catch hell if they sank the tanker. But there would be no hesitation. The training, the lives of every man on board had been directed and dedicated to this one, supreme moment. This was why Blackfin existed. They were part of her, part of her destiny, and they could be part of her death.
Hasse’s voice electrified every man in the attack team. “I have a solution light. You can fire anytime, Captain.”
“Shoot!” the captain shouted, snapping the periscope handles up as a signal for the periscope to be lowered.
Cadenbach reached up to the firing panel, where six windows glowed red. He turned the switch of Number One torpedo tube to on.
“Fire!” Hasse shouted.
Cadenbach pushed the firing key with the palm of his hand. Compressed air blasted, jolting the boat, and the whine of the 3500-pound torpedo leaving the boat could be heard dearly on the sonar loudspeaker.
“One fired electrically,” Davidson reported.
Hasse made an adjustment to the angle solver with his right hand while staring at a stopwatch held in his left hand. Six seconds later he shouted, “Fire two!”
Cadenbach palmed the firing key and the boat shook again. Four more times the command was given until all of the forward tubes had been fired. The sounds of the torpedoes’ tiny high-speed propellers hummed through the speaker like a swarm of departing mosquitoes.
Williams stared at Hasse. “Torpedo run?”
“Two-one-zero-zero.”
“About a minute and twenty seconds,” Williams said to himself. Then more commands: “Left full rudder, all ahead emergency. Steady up on one-eight-zero.” They needed the open sea, where they would have more water under their keel.
“All fish running hot, straight and normal,” Crog reported. Then he shouted in alarm, “Sir! The can in the entrance is getting under way, and the closest of the other two is turning hard this way.”
“Up ’scope!” At nine knots, water splashed up and over the periscope head, running down the lens. But Reginald felt a stab of horror as he saw one destroyer turning away from the tanker and accelerating to flank speed toward him while the other in the entrance was digging her stern into the sea, coming up to speed.
At that instant, a flash like a nuclear detonation filled the lens. Then another and another as the Jabal Nafusa was blown to pieces by torpedoes and her own explosive cargo. Great booming sounds filled the boat, and the hull plates vibrated like a tuning fork. Cheers filled the boat. It was impossible to tell how many torpedoes hit, and it was unnecessary. Tank after tank exploded, burning high-test gasoline spreading in vast pools around the burning ship. Burning crewmen could be seen jumping into the hellfire around them. No one would ever escape the holocaust.
“Down ’scope!” Williams knew he should send the coded message reporting the successful attack, but with two destroyers bearing down on him, there was no time. He shouted down the hatch, “Emergency! Take her down to one hundred feet and rig for depth charge.” There was a whoosh of released air up the hatch from the control room as the diving team flooded the “Down Express” negative tank with hundreds of tons of water. Williams could hear the sounds of slamming watertight doors and bulkhead ventilating valves throughout the submarine. Crawling slowly, the bubble of the inclinometer, which was mounted beneath the depth gauge, moved until it showed a down angle of 15 degrees.
The speaker was transmitting a cacophony of sounds, most deadly: the “ping” of sonar gear dopplering up as the two destroyers closed in; the whirling, thrashing sounds of the Gearings’ speeding propellers; the hissing of steam and the whine of high-speed turbines; the wrenching, screeching sounds of tortured metal as bulkheads gave way in the sinking tanker.
“Depth under keel?”
“Forty fathoms, sir.”
“Good! Take her down to two hundred feet.”
The sounds of the destroyers filled the boat. They were going to cross at right angles above Blackfin; one, perhaps, a half-mile before the other, so that the second would be well clear of the depth charges of the first. The first set of propeller beats suddenly dropped in frequency. Crog glanced overhead. “‘Down Doppler.’ He’s passed overhead,” he reported. Then he stiffened and hunched forward. “Depth charges in the water,” he said calmly, sliding the earphone from his ear.
“Turn off the speaker!”
Every man looked up as one set of screws faded and the other grew. They were going to be caught in a hailstorm of six-hundred-pound charges. Then the click of a hydrostatic detonator collapsing in the hollow core of a depth charge could be heard clearly. A stupefying blast shattered the depths, and every man grabbed his ears. Dust rose, and bits of cork packing rained. There was a hissing, swishing sound of thousands of bubbles as if someone were sweeping down the the hull with a stiff-bristled broom. Then three clicks and three more charges exploded almost simultaneously. The boat swayed and rolled, hull plates bending and groaning with the strain. Men held their heads, rocked, and made deep, frightened sounds. It was like being inside an empty oil drum and having a giant trying to beat his w
ay through with a sledge hammer.
Another blast, much closer than the others, struck Blackfin like a battering ram. Jarred and whipped by the concussion, the boat lurched thirty degrees to port. There were shouts of panic and confusion. Cadenbach was thrown to the deck. The CRT of the radar set burst, showering Goroku Kumanao with razor-sharp slivers of glass. He screamed, grabbed his face, and fell on top of Cadenbach, blood streaming through his fingers.
Williams shouted down the hatch, “Take her down to the bottom.”
“It’s coral.”
“I don’t give a shit. Take her down.”
Williams turned to Randy Davidson, “Get a medical orderly up here!”
“My lines are dead.”
At that moment, the second set of screws passed over. Everyone looked up, as if searching for his executioner. Four more tremendous blasts hammered down the stem and forced the bow up. Two more explosions beneath the bow flung the boat up almost vertically. Bedlam. Screams of pain and horror as every man in the conning tower was hurled into the aft convex end. Williams tried to hang onto the periscope shaft, but his hands slipped on the oiled surface. He fell on top of Crog and Hasse just as the lights went out.
“Emergency lights!” he shouted.
One man in the heap managed to reach the switch of the waterproof emergency lights. A feeble red glow filled the compartment. Then something horrible struck the bow, rolled, and clattered down the deck. A charge was actually rolling down the deck plates toward the bridge. It slid along the side of the bridge, and every man held his breath. A cataclysmic burst hit just between the conning tower and the pressure hull. Bodies were hurled up and then back down again. Water jetted in like a Niagara, the small compartment almost blown from the pressure hull. Davidson and Sturgis crashed down on top of Williams. The big black thrashed, tried to scream. But he could only gag as his lungs filled with water.
Two more charges blew the cover from the main induction valve and hundreds of tons of water poured through ruptured plates, driving Blackfin into the black depths. Those who were killed immediately were fortunate, the survivors of the explosions writhing and drowning in their own blood as the pressure soared in the flooding compartments and the air superheated, roasting lungs.