The Iceman

by P. T. Deutermann

  He must be sweating in that coat, Malachi thought. He himself was wearing service dress khakis, a much cooler uniform. They were badly wrinkled from his seeming endless trip across the world, though.

  The admiral was looking at Malachi’s uniform. “Where’s the DSO?” he asked.

  “I didn’t know where to put it,” Malachi said. “I have the medal, but there’s no ribbon.”

  “I’m told you flirted with the seaward edge of a German minefield to get those U-boats. Is that true?”

  “The field was buoyed, Admiral,” Malachi replied. “Or at least the entrance to the swept channel was. We didn’t just blunder in.”

  “That’s good, Captain,” the admiral said. “The Japanese do not buoy their minefields. If we think there’s a minefield somewhere, we stay far away, understand?”

  “Seems like a good plan, Admiral,” Malachi said, as neutrally as he could. He hadn’t liked that word “flirted.”

  “You are class of ’thirty, correct?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Young for command of a fleet boat,” the admiral observed. “Most of your skipper contemporaries out here are class of ’twenty-five through ’twenty-eight. Class of ’thirty are still execs.”

  “I was early-promoted because of the U-boat sinkings,” Malachi said. “I had a year in command on an S-boat before coming back to the States. I don’t feel particularly young.”

  “Indeed,” the admiral said.

  Malachi said nothing. The admiral’s meaning was clear: you showboated over there in the Atlantic, made a name for yourself, and now you’re in command before it’s appropriate for your age or experience. Damned upstart that you are.

  “Were you submerged during that attack?” the admiral asked.

  “Decks awash,” Malachi replied. “The water is cold there, and our periscope was often fuzzy due to condensation. If you got it higher in the air the humidity would burn off and then you could see. I needed to see.”

  The admiral frowned. “That’s not how we do it out here, Captain. Our doctrine states that all attacks are to be made submerged. Our priority is large warships, especially carriers. We do not engage escorts, either.”

  “Is this doctrine written down, Admiral?”

  “We’re working on that, but I believe I’ve made myself clear—preservation of the force, such as it is, is paramount. Same with torpedoes. There’s a critical shortage after the attack on Cavite, and it’s going to take some time to get production numbers up.”

  “I understand,” Malachi said. “Do I have sailing orders?”

  “Yes,” the admiral said. “I want you to take Firefish out as soon as possible. I’d like to give you three days to get used to her and your crew used to you, but now that we’re about to invade some island in the Solomons, they’re screaming for submarine support. Assuming you’re RFS, leave for the Solomons tonight. Captain Collins is my chief of staff. He’ll give you a prepatrol brief before you depart this afternoon.”

  Malachi nodded. He’d hoped for a short break-in cruise before going on a full-up war patrol, but a real war patrol would do just as well.

  “Any questions for me, Captain?”

  “Yes, sir. The torpedoes. We had only Mark tens in the Atlantic. They worked fine, but I heard a lot of complaints about the Mark fourteens when I was in Pearl. Can someone on your staff fill me in?”

  The admiral’s face darkened. “There’s nothing wrong with the Mark fourteen fish, Captain, and don’t let mess-deck scuttlebutt tell you anything different. The so-called torpedo problem has more to do with incompetent or timid attack geometry and lackadaisical maintenance than the torpedo itself. I assume you’ve been briefed about the new exploder?”

  “Yes, sir, in detail,” Malachi replied. The admiral was talking about the super-secret magnetic exploder. He didn’t think it prudent just now to bring up all the negative comments he had listened to from other skippers he’d met in Pearl. There was universal distrust among the officers who’d actually tried to sink ships with the magnetic exploder. Malachi also knew something the admiral might not know: the Brits had discarded their version of a magnetic exploder a year ago because it simply didn’t work. But since Admiral Britten had been one of the proponents of the magnetic system at the Bureau of Ordnance, this was probably not the time.

  “Well, the policy here is that we primarily use the magnetic exploder, sending the torpedoes under the enemy ship so that the warhead breaks the ship’s back.”

  Malachi fully understood the principle of the magnetic exploder, having done a lengthy tour of duty at the Naval Torpedo Station in Newport. The flaw in the argument was that if the magnetic exploder didn’t work, the contact exploder couldn’t be counted on as a backup because the fish was running under the target. Besides that, if the torpedo itself was running deeper than set, as most of the Pearl Harbor skippers thought it was, the magnetic exploder couldn’t work because the target’s magnetic influence was too weak.

  “Beyond that,” the admiral continued, “we make all attacks submerged. We have too few submarines to cover this huge operating area, so preservation of the boat is as important as sinking Jap ships. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir,” Malachi replied.

  “Okay. Now, if you’ve no more questions, I’ll call in Captain Collins and he’ll give you your sailing brief.”

  Malachi stood up and left the office. Welcome aboard, shipmate, he thought. But not very.

  FOUR

  By 2100 that evening, Firefish was cruising on the surface at 15 knots, on the way to a patrol area off the island of New Britain, some 2,500 miles to the northeast of Australia’s west coast. They’d sailed at 1600, secured from the sea detail, and then made several dives, stabilized at ordered depth, surfaced, and then another dive as the new captain got a feel for his boat. He’d found some holes in the crew’s training, such as when he ordered the diving officer to hold her at decks awash, a maneuver designed to leave as low a silhouette as possible while remaining on the surface and able to use the diesels. The diving officer lost depth control and the boat submerged suddenly, causing the main air induction valve to slam shut, just about breaking everyone’s eardrums. The main induction piping provided air to the diesels. In an orderly submergence, the diesels were first shut down, then the valve closed, and only then would the ballast tanks be flooded to submerge the boat. If the diving officer “lost the bubble,” as it was called, and opened the ballast tanks before shutting down the four engines, the main induction valve would close automatically, and then the engines would try to suck all the air out of the boat.

  Malachi didn’t say a word through all of the ensuing drama. He stood in the control room like a specter at a feast and watched his people recover from their mistakes. He knew part of it was a case of nerves with a new CO onboard, but he was more interested in seeing how well they pulled together to overcome a problem. He kept his face a blank mask, aware that the entire control room team was watching him as hard as he was watching them. When he sensed they’d had enough, he told the exec to secure from drills and to feed the boat. He took his meal in his cabin, and then had the exec gather the officers, less the diving officer and the OOD up on the navigation bridge, for a meeting in the wardroom.

  Firefish had eight commissioned officers aboard. Malachi, the executive officer, and the third officer formed the executive triumvirate. Below them was a chief engineer, a torpedo officer, and three lieutenants (junior grade) who held various duties such as communications, supply, gunnery, first lieutenant, and main propulsion assistant (MPA) while they worked on qualifying for the coveted golden dolphins pin. They gathered in the tiny wardroom space, which allowed Malachi and four other officers to sit, while the rest stood against the bulkhead.

  “My name is Malachi Stormes,” Malachi began. “I’m originally from eastern Kentucky. I’m Annapolis class of nineteen thirty, courtesy of NAPS and a year and a half of being a torpedoman aboard a battleship. I’ve been in submarines for ten years. When I
was ashore I was assigned to the Newport torpedo station as a consulting engineer. My last sea duty station was as CO of S-fifty-seven, which was based in Holy Loch, Scotland. I had the good fortune to trap three U-boats in the swept-channel of a minefield and kill them all. The Royal Navy made a big deal out of that, which is, I think, how I got command of Firefish at such a young age.

  “This boat is much more capable than my S-boat. I regret that your previous skipper was relieved for lack of results. I’ve never met him, but I’ve been told he was a prince of a guy.” He paused for a moment. “For what it’s worth, I will aggressively seek results. Understand that I am not a prince of a guy. I’m all about business, all the time, which I define as killing Japs and their ships wherever I find them. I’m not especially friendly. Don’t take that to mean that I don’t like you or that I’m dissatisfied with your performance. You will know when that’s the case, although if you’re trying your damnedest and things still go wrong, you won’t hear me bitching. My personality was shaped by becoming a part-time night-shift hard-rock miner at the age of thirteen down in a coal mine in Floyd County, Kentucky. When I finished high school I went full-time. The work was dangerous and the people around me were tougher than plow steel. If the mine didn’t kill you, one of them just might. After awhile, deep coal takes the friendly right out of you. So don’t take it personally.

  “Now, regarding the torpedoes. I’ve heard all the stories, and I understand probably better than you do the politics involved, by which I mean the notion in Washington that what they call the ‘so-called’ torpedo problems are the result of incompetent fire-control teams, overcautious skippers, and improper torpedo preparation and maintenance, and that there’s nothing wrong with the fish themselves.

  He looked around the table. “Some of that has to be true. You know it, and I know it, but I’ll tell you a dirty little secret. The Mark fourteen was tested with its magnetic exploder against a real ship target and with a real warhead only twice. The target was an antique sub, and she was anchored. The first torpedo did not work. Second one did. Success was declared with a failure rate of fifty percent. Think about that. Additionally, the depth-control running mechanism on the Mark fourteen is shaky at best and just plain defective at worst. I know these things because I spent a lot of time at Newport, and every time I raised these issues I was shut down by the Gun Club in Washington.

  “So, I mean to make some engineering changes to our torpedo load. We are going to disable the magnetic exploder and we’re going to fire all fish in contact-exploder mode for a while. We are going to fire every torpedo at the shallowest setting possible, every time, every target. I allow that we’ll see some porpoising, and that the Japs will see our fish coming. But if we get in close and shoot like we mean it, that won’t make any difference.

  “Finally, I’m told that SubPac doctrine is to attack submerged if at all possible. That makes sense during broad daylight. But here’s the thing: when I grew up in Kentucky, the hunting laws said you had to hunt deer in the daytime only. But if you needed meat on the table, you went out at night when the deer were up and about. In the LantFleet, the Germans control the air near and in Europe, so during the day you went down and stayed down. At night you came back up, stuffed some amps in the can, and waited for a target to drive by. Because most boats just waited, there weren’t many enemy ships sunk. I decided that as long as we had to be on the surface anyway, we should go hunting rather than sit around waiting. I plan to do that out here. Hunt on the surface at night, maybe even attack on the surface at night. Instead of settling for the best attack geometry the gods hand us, I intend to use our twenty-two-knot speed to set up the geometry I need to get hits.”

  He leaned back in his chair and plucked a cigarette out of his shirt pocket. He waved it at them as a signal that they could smoke if they wanted to. No one did, apparently.

  “I believe in training, which means I believe in drills. We will drill all the way to the northern Solomons, with a focus on doing things at night. High-speed runs, followed by careful submergence and then setup for a torpedo attack. High-speed runs, followed by a decks awash partial submergence and then setup for attack. High-speed runs followed by a crash dive at flank speed. In that regard, how deep has this boat been?”

  “Three hundred feet is test depth,” Marty Brandquist said, promptly. “We’ve done that once on sea trials, and again off Pearl on the way out after some valve repairs.”

  Malachi nodded, taking a deep drag on his cigarette. “We will submerge to three hundred feet tonight, and we will stay down there until we find every leak or potential leak in the boat. Then we’ll see what she’s really capable of.”

  Marty raised his hand as the other officers tried not to look at each other. “Sir, PacFleet regs say test depth is an annual test.”

  “Those are peacetime regs,” Malachi said. “Daggerfish went to five hundred feet off Bungo Suido last month, not by choice but that’s how she made it back alive to Pearl. They didn’t stay dry, but all the Jap depth charges were going off at one hundred fifty to two hundred feet. She’s a year older than we are. Second question: has the boat been depth-charged?”

  There were heads shaking around the table.

  Malachi smiled. “Me, neither, but I ’spect we’re gonna be. Okay. That is all. XO, I need a detailed familiarization tour of the conning tower. Now would be a good time.”

  The following morning the boat submerged at dawn nautical twilight. Malachi ordered a depth of 250 feet and then stationed himself in the control room. He’d instructed the exec to put a chief petty officer in each of the major watertight compartments. Then he ordered the boat to general quarters, which included all hands manning their regular battle stations except for the chiefs.

  Marty reported that the boat was at GQ and that everything was buttoned up.

  “Very well,” Malachi said. “Diving officer: make your depth three hundred feet.”

  The diving officer ordered the two men operating the diving planes to begin the descent to 300 feet. The back edges of the bow planes tilted up and the stern planes tilted down, forcing the boat, moving at a sedate 3 knots on the battery, to dip deeper into the ocean. The diving officer gave quiet orders to move water in the various ballast tanks from bow to stern to keep the dive under control.

  “Passing two sixty,” the diving officer announced. Throughout the sub a small chorus of noises started up as the pressure from the sea began to squeeze her steel hull. Malachi ignored them. His S-class boat had been riveted together. This one was welded together. Metallic crackling and groaning gave evidence of the pressure hull’s deformation but also its flexibility. The circular hull was designed to do this, to “give” under pressure. Rigidity would mean a crack, and a crack could mean an unrecoverable flood.

  “Passing two eighty.”

  Malachi nodded. “Very well. Settle out at two ninety, ballast drift to three hundred.”

  The diving officer acknowledged. Aim for 290, make fine adjustments to level off at 300 feet.

  The temperature in the boat began to climb as the entire pressure hull literally began to change shape, deforming in response to the 18,720 pounds per square foot of seawater pressure at this depth.

  “Stable at three hundred feet,” the diving officer announced, finally. His voice betrayed the strain he was under. A mistake here could cause the boat to go out of control and either broach, or worse, much worse, go deep.

  “Very well,” Malachi said. He then walked over to the coffeepot at the forward end of the control room and casually made himself a cup. The control room was crowded with people, every one of them watching the depth gauge. Two hundred fifty feet was deep and also the informal operating limit, the depth where there was or should be no danger of a hull collapse due to depth. Three hundred was entering into uncharted territory. His S-boat had been limited to 200 feet.

  “Come left to course three zero zero with ten degrees rudder,” Malachi ordered. The conning officer relayed the order to the
helmsman, who was sitting next to the planesmen. The boat could also be steered from the conning tower.

  This was a thirty-degree course change. Flying submerged straight and level at three knots gave the diving officer a steady reference by which to control the boat’s depth. Changing course added some new vectors to the situation.

  “Coming to course three zero zero,” the helmsman announced. Malachi watched the depth gauge to see if the diving officer could maintain depth control as the boat changed course. The needle dropped, registering 310 feet.

  “Diving officer, maintain your depth at three hundred feet, if you please,” Malachi said softly.

  The diving officer said nothing, then gave some orders to the ballast tank controller, who moved water via the sub’s elaborate pumping system to bring the bow up enough to return to three hundred feet. The diving officer’s forehead was covered in perspiration, but, as Malachi observed, his concentration was complete.

  “Continue left to course two seven zero,” Malachi ordered. He was standing in a corner of the control room, which gave him a fine view of everyone involved in the maneuvers—the ballast tank operator, the planesmen who controlled the diving planes, those big steel fins deployed on either side of the bow and stern when the boat submerged, and the diving officer, who had to keep a mental picture of the forces acting on the boat at depth and then make fine adjustments to keep her stable, all the while pretending not to hear the creaking and cracking of the hull under the relentless assault of 300 feet of depth.

  “Steady on course two seven zero,” the helmsman called, his voice cracking just a little, along with the hull.

  “Very well,” Malachi said. He waited for a full minute. “Make your depth three fifty.”

  The silence in the control room became, if anything, more intense. The air vents and small electric servo motor noise were more noticeable. Malachi closely watched the exec, who swallowed visibly, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down a couple of times.