Crash Dive: a novel of the Pacific War

by Craig DiLouie

  Hirohito’s finest had given Frankie a real beating. The damage she’d taken might require Kane to abort the mission and return to Brisbane for tender work. Frankie could be out of the war for days, weeks, maybe even months.

  As far as combat patrols went, this one was turning into a real dud.

  “I’d like to clean up that cut on your head, if you don’t mind,” he said.

  “Get lost,” Reynolds said. “There’s plenty other work for you.”

  Somehow, he didn’t think the exec would respond to the same tough love that Rusty had given him about his own cuts.

  “Aye, aye,” he said and thought, Getting lost, aye, sir.

  Marsh told him the radio message had gotten out, but the boat wasn’t receiving. As a result, the radioman couldn’t confirm receipt of the message or answer base calls.

  An emergency repair party stopped up the holes in the conning tower with plugs and were now reinforcing them with wood planks. Charlie and Marsh climbed past the men to the bridge to have a look at the radio receiver.

  Frankie lay hove-to. Bits and pieces of the exploded depth charges floated on the sea. Shrapnel littered the bridge. Sailors dumped trash cans of garbage and filthy water into the drink. A growing oil slick bloomed astern, the result of the pumps working hard to empty the bilges out to sea.

  Booms to the south. Flashes along the horizon. The lookouts pointed.

  The Japanese raiding party had opened up with their six- and eight-inch guns at the Marines on Guadalcanal. The Marines were catching hell.

  “I hope Perth relayed the message to warn those guys,” Marsh said.

  “If they sent their planes after them, they don’t seem to be having much of an effect.”

  The radioman looked pale in the weak moonlight. “Mr. Harrison?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “What if those ships return the same way they came?”

  Charlie smiled. “We’d better hurry up with these repairs.” He added, “If the destroyers come back, we’ll hightail it, and they’ll see all this garbage and think they sank us.”

  Though, he doubted the Japanese would come back this way now that they knew a submarine was operating in the area.

  They completed their work and returned to the control room. Reynolds told him to have a look at the number one periscope. The exec had tested it, and it had stuck in train.

  “Aye, aye.”

  Radio music began playing over the loudspeakers. Charlie got to work on the periscope. He found a shard of metal caught in the barrel and removed it. How it got in there was a mystery. The forces unleashed during a depth charge attack tested his knowledge of physics.

  “Try it now,” Charlie told Reynolds.

  The periscope worked, a small victory in the battle to repair the boat.

  The song ended. Tokyo Rose began speaking. Her voice was mechanical but also incredibly sultry to the female-starved crew of the S-boat. A Japanese Greta Garbo.

  “I have just received the tragic news that an American submarine has been sunk near Guadalcanal.”

  The men in the control room perked up at that. They stopped their work to listen.

  “No better than pirates, they preyed on innocent merchants in defiance of civilized rules of war and international treaties. But the loss of such fine men is a tragedy. Think of those poor grieving mothers and widows. Now think of yourself, sailor. Probably you too will never return to your wife or sweetheart. For what? Why are you so far from your sweet home? It’s time to give up. You have fought well, but your war of aggression is futile. Surrender is honorable.”

  “I’ll surrender if you will, baby,” one of the manifoldmen breathed. The man had a crush on the propagandist’s husky voice that couldn’t be reasoned with.

  “Silence,” Reynolds snarled. “They sank one of our boats. Who the hell was it?”

  Both the S-37 and the S-41 were also operating in the Solomons.

  “To the poor departed sailors of the S-55 sunk near Guadalcanal, I will dedicate this next song, which might be appropriate.”

  The loudspeakers began playing, “Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep.”

  Across the boat, the men laughed.

  Charlie remembered his own spirit ration in his pocket and raised his bottle.

  “To the 55,” he said and drank.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE EMERGENCY

  Charlie awoke with a start.

  He’d been awake for nearly thirty hours. Asleep for what felt like minutes.

  “—the LTJG!”

  “What?” he asked in pure confusion. His heart pounded against his ribs. “What?”

  “The boat’s still trimmed heavy. I was told to blow the LTJG.”

  “What? Is that you, Billy?”

  “Yes, Mr. Harrison. Please hurry, sir. I was told you know where the LTJG is.”

  Charlie frowned. LTJG was shorthand for “lieutenant, junior-grade.”

  Another prank on the two greenhorns.

  “Who told you that?”

  “Machinist’s Mate John Braddock. He said to give you his compliments and to tell you it’s an emergency that the LTJG get blown. I’m supposed to do it myself.”

  “Tell Braddock I said he’s an idiot. Tell him I said the LTJG got blown just a few days before we got underway and can’t be blown again until his main ballast tanks are full.”

  Puzzled: “Sir?”

  “Tell him what I said, Billy. Word for word. Now get lost so I can sleep.”

  “Aye, aye.” The kid ran off.

  Moments later, Charlie heard quiet laughter from Rusty’s bunk.

  “I’m glad you think it’s funny,” Charlie growled.

  “It’s the little things that get you through a war,” Rusty chuckled. “The little things.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  A GAME OF STRATEGY

  Charlie awoke with the terrible feeling he’d missed something important.

  As his consciousness cleared the cobwebs from his brain, he realized nothing was wrong. He’d simply slept a long time, much longer than the normal six hours a day.

  The captain’s doing, he suspected. Repairs had been completed. Through superhuman effort, Frankie had been brought back to something resembling fighting trim. Kane was now resting his crew for battles ahead.

  Rusty snored in his bunk, dead to the world.

  What time was it? Sometime during the day, judging by the heat; he was bathed in sweat. Frankie was submerged. Charlie read his watch. 1537.

  He slept as the crew did—in his shorts with a rolled-up pair of dungarees as a pillow. Still feeling groggy, he rolled off his sweat-soaked bunk and slipped his feet into his sandals. He used the officers’ head and got a cup of coffee in the wardroom.

  Kane dozed in one of the chairs, arms folded across his chest, still holding his pipe. The captain roused and regarded Charlie with a fatherly smile. “Ready for duty, Harrison?”

  Charlie sat and held up his cup of coffee. The oppressive heat normally made him avoid it during submergence, but he needed the boost. The gesture said, I’ll do anything you ask, Captain, but after my coffee.

  Kane smiled. “Make sure you eat something too. Nimuel will bring you a sandwich.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Perhaps you feel fit enough for a game of chess while we eat.”

  Charlie was so used to automatically responding to the captain’s wishes with, “Aye, aye,” it took him a moment to realize the captain was making a request, not a command.

  A game of chess sounded fun; he enjoyed the game, which sharpened the mind. Normally, the officers spent their off-duty hours in card games like Hearts and Bridge. They required strategy too but not nearly as much as chess did, in Charlie’s view.

  He said, “I’d like that, sir. But maybe you should think about catching up on your own sleep, if you don’t mind me saying.”

  “I’m too tired to sleep. A challenging game will help rest my mind. I hope you’re planning to challenge
me.”

  “That’s the plan, sir. But we all know what happens to plans.”

  The captain reached behind him and produced a battered chessboard and box of pieces. He poured out the contents of the box, and he and Charlie began setting up their game.

  By privilege of rank, the captain took white. He opened with the Queen’s Gambit. Charlie saw a swift and bloody confrontation over the board’s strategically vital central four squares. After another moment’s thought, he moved one of his pawns.

  Kane lit his pipe and waved the match. “You move quickly. You should think through every decision before moving, no matter how small the stakes. Do you know why?”

  “Because I might get sloppy and make a mistake?”

  “More than that. It could be a good move. But there might be a better one.”

  Charlie nodded. The coffee and the game were reviving him. Nimuel brought in some bacon sandwiches and a pitcher of cold water, and he dug into the meal with a hearty appetite.

  Kane said, “Friendly forces are moving into Area Roger today. Which means we’ll have to stay out of their way. And when we catch a ship, we’ll have to try to make contact with the blinker gun first to make sure it’s not friendly.”

  “That doesn’t sound very enabling to our advantage of surprise.” In fact, it sounded like a great way to get sunk by a salvo of six-inch guns.

  “We have little enough of that left anyway, since the enemy now knows submarines are operating around Savo. We’ve lost the initiative. Important in both war and chess. Check.”

  He’d timed the move well to prove his point. Charlie countered with his bishop, which now threatened the captain’s queen. When the captain withdrew his queen, Charlie pounced with his bishop. “Your king is in check, sir.”

  “I see you’re a fast learner.”

  Kane blocked the bishop with his knight. Charlie traded pieces, resulting in the captain doubling up his pawns on the right side of the board. A weakness to be exploited later.

  The captain said, “But you’re still not thinking things through.”

  He brought his queen forward to take a pawn, threatening Charlie’s rook on his left flank. Charlie’s only option was to shift his rook next to his king and let the flank collapse. But the captain’s bishop threatened the square next to Charlie’s king. His rook was doomed.

  A neat little trap. Charlie studied the board carefully now, looking for relief. “So it appears we’ll be spending the rest of our patrol staying out of everybody’s way.”

  “Think of the 55’s dilemma as a game of chess, Harrison. The enemy has the initiative. He’s boxing you in. What do you do?”

  “Regain the initiative, of course,” Charlie answered. “Counter threat with threat.”

  “How do you do that?”

  “Go somewhere he’s weak and doesn’t expect you. Decisively and aggressively.”

  The captain toked on his pipe, releasing a burst of cherry-smelling smoke. “Yes.”

  Charlie saw the captain’s plan now. “We’re leaving Area Roger. Moving up the St. George Channel.” To Rabaul? No, the captain had made his feelings clear that he didn’t want to take that much risk. “Right into the heart of the Slot.”

  Kane smiled. “Right again. Brisbane approved my request this morning. The 41 will take over Area Roger.”

  The captain’s strategy would put Frankie into a hornet’s nest, far from help. But she’d regain the element of surprise in a war zone dense with enemy movement. And she’d get another chance at doing something big in the Battle of Guadalcanal.

  Charlie smiled. “I’d love another crack at a cruiser, sir.”

  By this point, he trusted Captain Kane’s instincts completely. He’d follow him anywhere, particularly if their course promised action against the Japanese. Frankie had brought twelve torpedoes. Still had eight with which she could sink ships.

  “Perhaps you will,” Kane said. “Let’s just hope we don’t fall into a trap as neat as the one I laid for you. Our strategy will be bold but our tactics cautious. We can’t just be aggressive; we must also be decisive. It’s your move, Harrison.”

  “I believe I’ll cede the game, Captain. Well played.”

  “We’ll play again, I hope.” He winked. “Maybe a more thoughtful game next time.”

  Charlie said, “I’d like that, sir.”

  He didn’t tell the captain that he always played fast and aggressive in his first game against an unknown opponent. It was a simple and direct way of testing an adversary’s play. In losing, he’d taken the captain’s measure without revealing his own skill level.

  The next time they played, he’d show the man exactly how fast a learner he was.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CAT AND MOUSE

  Bombed at Cavite and battered at Savo Island, Frankie continued to survive and now headed west by northwest along the St. George Channel, looking for another fight.

  Cruising submerged, she passed between the islands of Santa Isabel and New Georgia, where the Seventeenth Army had dug in against the Americans.

  “Up scope,” Charlie said.

  He swung the periscope, scanning the view for targets and threatening planes. He knew Santa Isabel was out there to the east, but he couldn’t make landfall. The sun glared hazily through a low overcast that reduced visibility to 10,000 yards.

  Frankie and her crew itched for another crack at the Imperial Navy. He took his time, hoping to deliver them a nice juicy target.

  A smudge of smoke.

  He said, “Helmsman, steer three-three-oh.”

  Charlie hoped the trail of smoke would lead him to a merchant ship or perhaps even a convoy. He imagined what it would be like if he were the captain, carrying the pressure to produce results while trying to keep his crew alive. Making snap decisions of life and death.

  He knew he wanted it. Wanted it bad, though he knew he wasn’t ready for the burden.

  He smiled as the ship’s masts came into view. A small merchant, traveling alone. Making way slowly, about six knots. Bearing one-double-oh, range 7,000 yards.

  The sea had grown choppy with the change in weather. Frankie showed only a foot of scope. The pulse of the waves limited his visibility.

  “Planes, up two feet,” he ordered. “All ahead one-third.”

  His view improved as the scope rose a little higher above the water. The ship’s profile came into focus. It smoked heavily, which had led Charlie to it like a trail of breadcrumbs.

  He asked the quartermaster for help looking up the ship in the S-55’s reference book of Japanese merchant ships.

  “I think he’s the Osaka Maru,” the man said. “Twenty-two hundred tons.” The Japanese traditionally included the word, maru, meaning, “circle,” in all their merchant ship names.

  “Down scope.” He smiled. “Please notify the captain we have a target.”

  He put the boat on an approach course to intercept the ship’s track. The helmsman rang up all ahead full.

  Kane arrived bleary-eyed from sleep. “I hope you’ve got something tasty for me, Harrison. I was having a hell of a dream. Up scope.”

  Charlie watched the captain as he studied the enemy ship.

  “Nice find,” Kane said.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “But he’s a Q-ship.”

  A decoy ship. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. A trap.

  The captain said, “His draft is shallower than it looks; a torpedo would go straight under him. If we surface to take him out with the deck gun, he’ll come at us hard and fast shooting guns he’s got hidden under cover. Then he’ll zero in on us with sonar after we dive, and rain depth charges on us. It’s not worth the risk. We’ll give this Jap a wide berth.”

  The Japanese had converted the merchant into a warship. Some submarine skipper had learned about the use of Q-ships the hard way, and he’d spread the word.

  The British had used Q-ships against German U-boats during the Great War. Charlie found it interesting to see the Japanese tryi
ng the same tactics. It made him wonder what kind of tricks Frankie could hide up her sleeve to sucker the Japanese or get herself out of a jam.

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Charlie said. He adjusted course and gave orders to dive to eighty feet.

  “Carry on,” the captain said. He left to return to his dream.

  The S-55 drove up the Slot.

  After another twenty minutes, Charlie took another look. He kept up this cycle for the next two hours. In between, he gave orders to maintain trim in the rough waters, ordering water pumped fore and aft as needed. The boat rolled with the pulse of the waves. He took his salt tablets and felt the sweat pour off him. He fidgeted at the routine. The sighting of the Q-ship had given him a taste for action, an itch he couldn’t scratch.

  Rusty was right about another thing. You had to loosen up to make it in the submarines.

  On the next look up top, he almost whooped.

  He saw a group of ships tearing down the Slot from the north. At this range, they were barely discernible, but they looked like destroyers. Another raiding party, and a big one. Bearing three-three-oh, range 10,000 yards.

  “Left full rudder,” Charlie said. “All ahead full.” He said to the quartermaster, “Jakes, please inform the captain we have another target.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  To the helmsman: “Steer to oh-nine-five.”

  Then he took another look. The ships were closer now, and he could make out some detail.

  The captain returned to the control room, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Are you the boy who cried, ‘Wolf,’ Harrison?”

  “I’ve located another Tokyo Express run and put us on an intercept course.”

  Kane looked through the scope and whistled. “Now we’re talking.”

  Charlie said, “I made out six destroyers, a seaplane carrier, and a seaplane tender. Three of the destroyers are Asashio class. Speed, twenty-eight knots. I’m certain the carrier is the Chitose.”

  Sinking the Chitose would be a major Allied victory.

  The captain ran his hand over his bristling chin. “It’ll be a close thing to catch them.” Then he nodded. He had to try. “Come right to one-one-oh. Dive. Seventy feet. All ahead flank.”