Frankie accelerated to ten knots, a pace she could hold for a half-hour before the exertion drained the battery.
“Battle stations, torpedo attack,” Kane said.
The general alarm honked through the boat, electrifying the crew. They rushed to stations.
Reynolds and Rusty arrived to take their posts, Reynolds as assistant approach officer, Rusty as assistant diving officer. The captain filled them in. As plotting officer, Charlie continued to plot the targets on regular sound bearings.
The Japanese weren’t zigzagging. Something had put a bee in their bonnet. Frankie’s own course headed toward them in a straight line.
She wasn’t going to make it in time.
He drew another point on the graph paper. “They’re crossing our bow, Captain.”
The captain frowned at the plot. The warships were still out of range.
“Planes, forty-five feet,” he said.
The boat angled up and leveled off at periscope depth.
“Up scope.”
The captain peered into the eyepiece. “Too far away to even chance a long-range, up-the-stern shot. They’re going over the hill.”
Charlie put his pencil down and sighed.
“Sound contact,” Johnson called from the radio room, Marsh being off duty. “To the northwest. Multiple sets of heavy screws. About 6,000 yards.”
Kane swiveled the scope for a sweep and froze. “I’ve got eyes on the targets. Heavy cruisers! Three of ’em, including our old friend, Furutaka.”
Charlie grinned at the news. Maybe they’d get another shot at the big ship.
“Bearing, one-seven-five,” Johnson said.
“They’re too far away, and the battery’s almost out of juice,” the captain said with disgust. He slammed the scope’s handles back into place in cold fury. “We’re done for now. Secure from battle stations.”
Charlie’s face burned with frustration. The S-55 had just come from the area the cruisers were passing through. If these ships had shown up before the destroyers, Frankie could have been conned into a good firing position with time to spare.
“It’s a cat-and-mouse game,” Rusty said. “But the mice run about ten times faster than this old cat.” He leaned against the bulkhead, seemingly exhausted by the mere effort of standing.
Reynolds glared at the captain as if the lack of action weren’t the boat’s fault, nor even that of the fortunes of war, but solely Kane’s. “Let me know if we’re going to kill any Japs,” he growled. “Otherwise, I’ll be off duty.”
Kane regarded him icily. “You’re dismissed, Reynolds.”
The boat’s harsh environment, the stress, and the lack of a sinking were pushing them all to the edge. Now the officers were starting to get on each other’s nerves.
“I’ll keep an eye on the cruisers, Captain,” Charlie said. “If their course changes and I see an opportunity, I’ll let you know.”
“You do that, Harrison. Carry on.” Kane left the room.
The boat’s roll grew heavy as she entered rougher seas, up to thirty degrees on each side. The humidity in the boat, already torturous, became insufferable. The periscope fogged again.
Water condensed and streamed in tiny rivulets down the bulkheads. The water produced grounds. The grounds started a series of small electrical fires that had to be secured. The fires produced a chain of equipment breakdowns across the boat.
Charlie didn’t know who was more likely to do them in, the Japanese or Frankie herself.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
PASSING STORM
After the cruisers raced past at a range of 5,000 yards off the port beam, the captain returned to the control room and gave the order to surface. Frankie had missed her shot, but she still had a job to do. Namely, send a flash radio message to Perth about the Japanese armada headed toward Guadalcanal.
Dressed in sou’wester hats and oilskins, Charlie and his lookouts assembled in the access trunk that led up to the main hatch. Kane had told him it was raining on the surface, which explained the steady climb in humidity inside the boat. The S-55 blew clear of the water.
The hatch opened and released the boat’s air pressure in a whistling blast. A wave struck the boat. The torrent of cold seawater poured down the hatch.
“Lookouts to the bridge,” Charlie gasped.
Northerly winds, gusting at twenty-five knots, moaned across the open sea. The boat rolled heavily on big waves. The ocean, when roused, released colossal forces that reminded the submariners who was really boss here.
Rain drummed on the deck. Thunder growled like a distant bombing run.
“Refreshing,” Billy Ford said and whooped at the gale.
“Eyes peeled, Billy,” Charlie said.
The storm had reduced visibility dramatically. The heavy rains had likely grounded the Japanese pilots for the rest of the day, but some planes might still have been patrolling. Mostly, he kept his eyes on the water, watching for an enemy submarine.
“Bridge, stay clear of the antenna,” the control room ordered. “We’re transmitting.”
“Roger,” Charlie shouted back.
Another wave washed over the bridge, leaving them all soaked and sputtering.
Something else to tell Evie in his next letter. He’d been writing to her steadily since his near-swim in the Coral Sea, documenting the challenges, tedium, and periodic hilarity aboard the submarine. He kept everything focused on his personal impressions outside of combat to avoid upsetting Evie as well as the military censors enforcing the secrecy rules of the Silent Service.
Rather than distract him, thinking about her as much as he did was getting him through this. He missed her. The little things, in particular. Her smile. Her laugh. The way she touched his arm when he made her laugh. The way she punched it when he teased her. Her scent. Her kiss. The way she looked at him.
When he returned to Brisbane, he’d mail the letters. Maybe he’d even discover a letter from her. He smiled at the possibility. He wondered what she was doing right now. What she was thinking about. If she still thought of him.
Another wave swamped the bridge. The S-55 bounced on the swells.
Sometimes, he heard Evie calling him in the drone of the machines as he approached the edge of sleep.
Rusty emerged from the hatch. “Permission to relieve you and your men, Charles.”
“Granted, Mr. Grady. No activity up here on watch. How goes it with the repairs?”
“Frankie’s having a bad day. We cleared the grounds out of the battery, but a valve broke in the starboard engine. There’s oil everywhere. We’re back on battery power until we get it fixed.”
“Mechanics first,” Charlie said. “You weren’t kidding about that.”
“If Pharaoh ran this boat, he would have let the Hebrews go after his first war patrol.”
Charlie followed his exhausted men down the ladder and went to sack out. Fresh air had cooled the boat and put the heavy odors in the background where they belonged. He used straps to tie himself down so he wouldn’t fall out of bed due to the boat’s heavy roll. Otherwise, he didn’t mind it. Seasickness had never bothered him.
Lying in his rack, he sensed the boat’s trim getting heavier. The captain reduced speed to two-thirds. The bilge pumps worked nonstop to eject water flowing into the boat through the open main air induction. A change in the atmosphere told him the captain closed it.
He’d reached a point where he could feel the boat’s status and condition with his eyes closed. Frankie had gotten into his mind. Rocked like a baby by the waves, he fell into a deep, peaceful sleep understanding he was a part of the boat now, and the boat a part of him. He didn’t know how he’d ever be able to sleep again without hearing the constant drone of machinery.
Hours later, he awoke to shouting. He jumped out of his bunk and started for the control room, hands on the bulkheads to steady himself against the roll. The men were cheering.
“What’s the word?” he asked Chief Dobbs.
“The Jap
s got a licking at Guadalcanal. We really socked it to ’em!”
The battle group that had passed the S-55 yesterday had been surprised by an American fleet of four cruisers and five destroyers off Savo Island. These ships sank the Furutaka and one destroyer and heavily damaged a second cruiser. During the exchange of deadly salvoes, the Japanese sank a destroyer and damaged two other ships.
Charlie smiled as he absorbed the details. It was a tactical victory; the battle for ultimate possession of Guadalcanal was far from decided, and the IJN still controlled the seas around it at night. It was a major win, however, for the simple fact that Japan, with its limited resources, couldn’t afford such losses, while America put new ships to sea every month.
Rusty could have been right that they were in for a long war, but after victories at the Coral Sea, Midway, and Savo Island, winning it seemed inevitable.
The captain smiled at his cheering men, though it was a sour one. No doubt he regretted moving the S-55 off station and into the Slot. He’d missed the battle and the laurels he might have earned. Nearly two weeks into his patrol, and he had nothing to show for it. Every day that passed, pressure mounted to sink a ship or go back to Brisbane empty-handed.
If that happened, the admirals wouldn’t blame the faulty torpedo, the vintage boat, or bad luck. They’d blame the captain. If Kane couldn’t deliver, they’d find a man who could.
Charlie knew that was unfair, though he also knew that’s how the game was played, and he couldn’t change it. For his part, he had to hand it to the captain. Kane was doing the best he could with what he had. Charlie couldn’t see how he could do any better.
“It’s a good thing we were here, sir,” he told the captain. “We warned the fleet."
As far as he was concerned, Frankie had played a critical part in the battle.
“Maybe you’re right,” Kane said.
“Sometimes, there’s a good move, but there might be one that’s even better.”
The captain smiled again. “Fast learner, Harrison.”
The next day, the seas calmed, and the tropical sun blazed in a clear sky. While on periscope watch, Rusty discovered the remnants of the Japanese armada steaming back to Rabaul. Geysers boomed out of the sea as General MacArthur’s bombers set up a run over them, dropping their payloads from a dizzying altitude of 18,000 feet. An impressive thing to see, though they didn’t score a single hit on the compact, fast-moving, zigzagging destroyers.
The captain ordered flank speed to intercept but never got closer than 3,000 yards.
His occasional pronounced blink had grown more frequent, an internal Morse code.
Gritting his teeth with frustration, he called a meeting of his officers.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE LION’S DEN
The officers fell into chairs in the wardroom. Grimy and sweaty, hair matted, eyes lined with fatigue, scratching at their beards, they struck Charlie as warlords of some future apocalyptic generation, cavemen living among machines.
“We have two choices,” the captain said. He laid out a map of the Solomons.
Reynolds produced a battered pack of cigarettes from his Australian Army surplus shorts and lit one. He exhaled a cloud of smoke.
Kane tapped the St. George Channel with his finger. “Option one is we finish our patrol in the Slot. We still have over a week before we have to start back to Brisbane. If we get a shot, we take it. If we don’t, we send a message to Perth so the fleet can handle it.”
Reynolds grimaced. “What’s option two?”
The captain’s finger slid across the map and stopped. “We go to Rabaul.”
The men perked up at that. Three hundred miles northwest of Guadalcanal, Rabaul was the most important Japanese base in the South Pacific. It was the hub for the biggest concentration of warships in the Imperial Navy, all tasked with kicking the Americans out of the Solomons.
Minefields and more than forty massive coastal guns defended the harbor. Behind them, 100,000 crack troops. Airfields launching fighters around the clock.
Rusty said, “What does that mean, exactly, sir?”
“It means we skirt around Bougainville and get up here in the area of Duke of York Island. There’ll be plenty of traffic running through that area between Rabaul and the entire island chain. If we run into trouble, we can hide around these little islands around Duke of York.”
“Our charts aren’t exactly reliable, Captain,” Rusty reminded him.
The only documentation the Navy had of the area was old Dutch charts from the late nineteenth century. The S-55 risked running aground on shoals, which would chew up the boat and leave them stranded without hope of rescue by friendly forces.
Charlie whistled at the captain’s nerve. Submarines often ventured deep into enemy territory, but Rabaul was the lion’s den.
Reynolds expelled a stream of smoke. “Do you want to kill Japs, Captain?”
Kane frowned. He’d clearly had it with his exec sounding off. “No, Reynolds. I’m taking us there to switch sides.”
“I’ll take that as a yes. How bad do you want to kill Japs?”
“Not bad enough to see the men under my command die by doing something stupid.”
The exec sucked on his Lucky Strike and put his own finger on the map. Simpson Harbor.
Rusty paled. “Jesus Christ.”
Reynolds was proposing they take the S-55 right to the mouth of the harbor at Rabaul, where they’d stand face to face with the lion.
He said, “If you want to sink Jap ships, this is where they are.”
“We’d never get out of there alive,” Kane said.
The captain blinked aggressively as he wrestled with the idea. He was considering it.
Charlie knew as well as the captain that this might be Frankie’s last patrol. With her constant equipment breakdowns, it was all too likely she’d be taken off the line soon and overhauled as the new fleet boats started showing up in the Pacific in greater numbers.
After that, she’d be assigned to Submarine School to help train the next crop of young submarine captains. Men who’d marvel and laugh at her, just the way Charlie had been amazed at the cramped and primitive conditions aboard the R-boat he’d trained on.
And the captain would be captain no more. If he didn’t produce results on this patrol, he was finished, and he knew it.
Reynolds said, “If you want to kill Japs, that’s where you’ll do it. We’re talking big ships. Troop transports filled with riflemen. Oil tankers. Freighters packed mast to keel with tanks and ammunition. Maybe even a cruiser or a flattop. They all sail through Rabaul.” He stabbed his cigarette into the ashtray. “But again, it depends on how bad you want to kill them.”
Charlie marveled at the man’s ferocity. Before he considered his choice of words or whether he should say them at all, he asked, “Why do you hate them so much?”
“Because,” Reynolds said, “none of your fucking business, Lieutenant.”
“Harrison is right,” Kane said. “If I even consider your option, I want to know what you’re thinking. If this is just some score you’re looking to settle with the Japs—”
“I do have a score to settle with the Japs. One in particular. I’m looking for a destroyer. It may be at Rabaul. It may not. But odds are, I’ll run into him again eventually.”
The men waited, but he said nothing more. He produced another cigarette and lit it.
Everybody hated the Japanese. They were an alien race, but that had nothing to do with why Americans hated them. Americans hated them for the simple fact the Japanese Navy had bombed Pearl Harbor. If Brazil had bombed Pearl, Americans would hate Brazilians. It was simple, really. But Reynolds’s hatred bordered on pathological.
Charlie believed the exec had a vendetta against the captain of the destroyer that had sunk the S-56 in the Banda Sea. He thought of the screams that flooded out of the stateroom where the exec bunked. He wondered what the man saw in his dreams that could produce such terror.
Kane said, “Suppose Frankie makes it that far without everything going broke dick. Suppose we find a sweet spot in the bay. Suppose we don’t trigger God-knows-what sonar alarms they’ve got rigged up. Suppose patrolling destroyers don’t zero in on us and give us the beating of our lives.”
Reynolds said, “That’s entirely—”
“Suppose we see a convoy and release every fish in our tubes. Suppose the setup and the equipment all works just beautifully, and we sink four ships, including your destroyer. Suppose all that. How do we get the hell out? They’ll be all over us in a flash and box us in.”
Reynolds had no answer to that.
Charlie thought of the Q-ship. An idea came to him in a flash. “We decoy them, sir.”
Kane leaned on the table. So did Reynolds. Charlie explained his idea, which was simple enough. The veteran officers immediately improved upon it and made it practical.
Rusty laughed nervously. “We’re not really thinking about doing this, are we?”
The captain scratched at his beard. “I don’t know. Maybe. I mean, it’s still a hell of a risk. The whole thing’s a crapshoot.”
The men quietly considered the massive rewards as well as the astounding risk.
“I won’t ask you again if you want to kill Japs,” Reynolds said. “I know you do. Every red-blooded American sailor does. But I’ll ask again: How bad do you want to kill Japs?”
Charlie still struggled with the question. Was he willing to die?
If it ended the war, he thought he was. But sinking a few important ships, while possibly altering the strategic balance in the Solomons, might have little major impact on the overall war. Even if it shortened it by as much as a month, was that worth dying for?
Hell, that was assuming they sank any ships at all. That was assuming the IJN didn’t detect them, pin them down with destroyers, and send them to the bottom forever before they shot off a single torpedo.
Answering Reynolds’s question meant quantifying the conditions under which he would be willing to die for a cause. Charlie just couldn’t do that. But a primitive urge propelled him to take the risk. Blame it on foolish youth’s innate sense of immortality—the young man’s war cry, “It can’t happen to me!” Blame it on the same crazy desire that drove the first men up Mount Everest.
Crash Dive: a novel of the Pacific War Page 8