“Get behind the damned shears, Brannon!” Mealey yelled. “That son of a bitch is going to open up with small stuff in a minute!” Brannon scrambled forward from the TBT and crouched behind the heavy steel structure of the periscope shears.
Captain Mealey stood in the center of the open bridge, judging distances, judging his speed, the slowing speed of the burning tanker and the speed of the destroyer racing toward the Eelfish. Eelfish was closing on the burning tanker, racing to cross its bow before the destroyer coming up the tanker’s starboard side could ram. Brannon, crouched behind the periscope shears, looked at Captain Mealey and saw him raise both arms and shake his fists as the destroyer raced toward Eelfish, its bow guns firing continuously. In the red glare of the burning tanker Brannon could see that Mealey’s face was set in a demonic grin.
“My God!” Brannon muttered to himself. “He’s Captain Ahab and this is his white whale!”
The Eelfish cleared the bow of the burning tanker by a scant fifty yards and heeled in a sharp left turn in response to Mealey’s barked order.
“Shoot that son of a bitch coming after us when he makes his turn,” Mealey yelled back at Brannon, who sprang to his feet and ran aft to the TBT.
“You’ve got all tubes, all tubes,” Flanagan’s voice roared out of the bridge speaker. “You’ve got ten tubes, outer doors open, depth set four feet.”
“Very well,” Mealey answered.
The next twenty minutes, as Brannon was to recall later, were the wildest he had ever experienced. Eelfish, the target of seven destroyers, twisted and turned through an ocean lit by the glare of the burning ships. Sirens on the stricken ships moaned and wailed as Captain Mealey dodged and twisted, using the sinking ships as shelters to dodge behind as Eelfish raced at top speed through the sea.
Brannon remembered later that at one point Eelfish had plowed through hundreds of troops swimming in the water. He had heard the screams of the men in the water as the bull-nosed bow of the Eelfish cut through a life raft loaded with men and then sideswiped a lifeboat, turning it over and spilling everyone in it into the water.
Dodging and twisting, Eelfish cleared the bow of a sinking troop transport, and Mealey saw a freighter heading for him, its whistle blowing steadily.
“Target is dead ahead!” Mealey yelled. “Angle on the bow is zero.
“You’ve got all tubes forward and aft,” Flanagan repeated from the Control Room.
“Down his damned throat. Stand by forward!”
“Fire one!
“Fire two!
“Fire three!”
The first two torpedoes missed ahead of the freighter’s blunt bow. The third torpedo exploded with a roar against the side of the ship’s bow, just below the hawse pipe, and the ship slowed and began to plow its way into the sea.
“Hit on that target!” Mealey yelled. “Give me fifteen degrees right rudder.” Eelfish twisted away as the freighter exploded with a gigantic roar.
“Ammunition ship!” Mealey yelled. “Set up on this destroyer coming in from behind that last target. Angle on the bow is nine zero port!”
“Solution!” Arbuckle yelled.
“Fire four!
“Fire five!”
Mealey saw the destroyer heel sharply to put its squat stern to the oncoming torpedoes. ‘“Bastard!” Mealey yelled as he saw the phosphorescent wakes of both torpedoes race past the destroyer. He turned and saw another destroyer astern, heard Brannon chanting bearings and an angle on the bow, heard him give orders to fire tubes Seven and Eight. And then Brannon’s exultant yell.
“Hit! Hit on that destroyer! He’s broken in two!”
Mealey looked around him. The last ship he had hit was disintegrating in a series of violent explosions. Beyond that ship the destroyer he had fired at and missed was turning to come back toward him.
“Right full rudder,” Mealey yelled. “Brannon, take that bastard coming at us! Eyeball it!”
“Fire nine!
“Fire ten!”Brannon’s voice was a scream. Mealey, watching, saw the destroyer swing wide to one side. “That bastard’s got a charmed life,” he muttered to himself. He yelled at Brannon to come forward to the bridge.
“We’re being boxed in,” he said, ducking with Brannon as a shell screamed over the forward deck of the Eelfish.
“That bastard in charge of those tin cans knows what he’s doing. He’s closing us in. Let’s get down and out of here. Dive! Dive!” His fist hit the diving alarm and he followed Brannon down through the hatch, grabbing at the toggle on the end of the short bronze cable that hung from the center of the hatch, hauling downward on the cable as Brosmer pushed by him on the ladder to spin the dogging wheel and close the hatch tightly.
“Four hundred feet,” Mealey called down the hatch to the Control Room. “Make it fast! Rig for depth charge. Rig for silent running.” He slid down the ladder to the Control Room.
“How’s your trim?” he said to Jerry Gold.
“Can’t tell,” Gold replied offhandedly. “We’ve got a fifteen-degree down bubble. Seems to be all right. I’ll know when we try to stop her at four hundred feet.”
Mealey glared at Gold’s broad back and then turned his eyes to the long black needles of the depth gauges.
“Screws coming fast,” Blake reported from the Conning Tower. “Bearing one four zero, sir, coming very fast.” Mealey raised his head and listened as the thunder of the destroyer’s propellers filled Eelfish’s hull. The people in the Control Room saw him wince slightly as two sharp cracks could be heard.
“Here it comes,” Mealey said in a low voice, and then two tremendous explosions shook the Eelfish. Jerry Gold was spun away from his position by the ladder to the Conning Tower.
He tried to catch his balance and slammed into Mike Brannon, knocking him off his feet. A light bulb burst with a sharp noise.
“Two sets of twin screws coming fast, bearing one five eight and one four seven,” Blake called from his place in the Conning Tower.
The thunder of the destroyer’s screws reverberated through the hull of the Eelfish as the attackers raced overhead. The Eelfish reeled and twisted as the depth charges exploded in what seemed to be a continuous roar of sound, the ship’s thin hull creaking under the force of the underwater explosions. Captain Mealey stood at the gyro table, his hands clutching at the edge of the table for support, his eyes on the line on the plot that Bob Lee was drawing.
“They’re dedicated bastards,” Mealey said dryly. He raised one hand from the edge of the gyro table and put a finger on the plot. “We’re here, and that’s almost the exact spot where we ran through all those troops in the water. Those bastards are dropping charges with their own people there. They’re killing their own damned people!” He looked over at Jerry Gold.
“I asked you for a report on your trim.”
“Slightly heavy by the bow, sir,” Gold said. “Next time they make a little noise I can correct that, sir.”
“Five hundred feet,” Mealey said. Gold turned his head and looked at Mealey. He nodded and touched the bow and stern planesmen on their shoulders.
“The man wants five hundred feet. So go to five hundred feet. Smartly.”
A sharp ringing noise sounded throughout the hull of the Eelfish. It sounded again, and Paul Blake called out, “He’s pinging on us with sonar, Control.”
“Very well,” Captain Mealey said. He looked upward toward the Conning Tower hatch. “Advise me the minute you hear his screws pick up speed, sonar.”
The pinging went on for several minutes, and then Blake called out, “Three sets of screws picking up speed, Control. Bearings are from one six zero to one eight zero.”
“Six hundred feet, fast!” Mealey snapped. Eelfish took a steep down angle and slid deeper beneath the sea. Gold leveled the ship off at 600 feet as Eelfish reeled under a barrage of depth charges exploded around and above the submarine.
“Get ready for a long siege,” Mealey said calmly. “We’re going to be getting hell for a lo
ng time. We’ve made those people pretty angry. I want damage reports from every compartment after every attack. I want reports of leaks, no matter how small. We may have to go deeper than where we are now.” He wiped perspiration from his face and neck with a towel and studied the chart and plot.
CHAPTER 17
Three miles to the east of where Eelfish was being pounded by the Japanese destroyers the bridge crew of the Hatchet Fish could see the fires of the burning ships and hear the thunder of the depth charges. Captain Chet Marble leaned toward his bridge transmitter.
“Give me a radar check. I want to know how many ships there are out there.”
“I read seven ships maneuvering radically, Bridge. Range to the mass of ships is six thousand yards.”
“Very well,” Captain Marble said. His Executive Officer, a tall, lean, dour man named Abe Wilkinson, looked at his commanding officer.
“We’re going over to help Eelfish, aren’t we?”
“No,” Captain Marble said. “Captain Mealey gave us our orders. He was specific. We are to wait here and intercept and sink any shipping that comes our way.”
“I understand, sir,” Wilkinson said patiently. “But at the time he issued those orders to us nothing was said about one or the other of us being attacked with depth charges. I would assume that if we were being pounded, as Eelfish is being pounded, that Captain Mealey would come to our rescue.”
“Don’t assume,” Chet Marble said, the acid in his voice apparent to everyone within earshot on the bridge. “Captain Mealey would come to our rescue if he could see another Medal of Honor in it for him. We will follow our orders, sir.” His Executive Officer stared at him for a long moment.
“Permission to go below, sir?”
“Granted,” Captain Marble said. “Send me up a cup of coffee when you get below.” He turned and leveled his binoculars at the fires on the horizon. His Quartermaster turned his back on his Captain and stared to the eastern horizon.
On the Eelfish, twisting and turning 600 feet below the surface, the temperature had climbed to 120 degrees. The humidity was 100 percent. Puddles formed on the deck, on level surfaces, and re-formed as rapidly as they were wiped up. The continual barrage of depth charges had long since broken all the lights and most of the gauge glasses. The interior of the Eelfish was lit by battery-powered battle lanterns equipped with heavy glass fronts that could not be broken by anything less than a direct blow with a sledgehammer. The interior of the Eelfish reeked with the fetid odor of stale air and sweating men and the stench of fear.
The hours wore on. Up above, on the surface, the Japanese destroyers had established a pattern. Two of them searched for the Eelfish with sonar beams, and when they found the submarine they took up position on either side of the Eelfish, while the other five destroyers made their runs between their two sister ships, dropping depth charges off their sterns, firing them out to the sides with Y-guns.
The Eelfish responded to the attacks, speeding up when Paul Blake reported that an attack run had started, turning in half circles, changing depth upward and downward to throw off the gunners on the Japanese ships who were setting the depth-charge explosion depths. Captain Mealey stood at the gyro table, a soggy towel draped around his neck. Mike Brannon stood beside him. Mealey peered at the luminous dial of his wrist watch, barely visible in the gloom of the Control Room.
“It’s daylight up above,” he said. They’ve been at it for over eight hours.” He wiped his face with the end of the towel as Paul Blake reported that another attack run had begun.
“Right fifteen degrees rudder,” he snapped. The two men stationed at the helm grunted with effort as they turned the ship’s rudder by hand power.
“Rudder’s fifteen degrees right, sir,” one of the men gasped. He hung on the brass wheel, sobbing with his effort, gasping for air in the oxygen-depleted atmosphere.
“Very well,” Mealey said. “Seven hundred feet, Mr. Gold. Smartly, if your people can do it.” At the bow and stern planes the two Battle Stations planesmen gasped and grunted as they fought to tilt bow and stern planes downward by hand power alone. Eelfish slanted downward as the crashing explosions of the depth charges shook the submarine and twisted it in a vortex of water until the hull rivets creaked and groaned under the strain.
In the Forward Torpedo Room Steve Petreshock had organized his torpedomen and the reload crew into four groups. Two of those groups worked at the job of turning the sound heads by hand power while the other two groups rested.
“Son of a bitch can go back to hydraulic power any time he wants,” Rice grunted. “Fucking Japs know where we are anyway, so why make us do this shit, go to hand power on the helm, the planes and the sound heads?” He staggered away from the sound head shaft and sagged against a torpedo skid. “Bad enough you wear your ass out reloadin’ all the fish in this room, including that fucking Numbers Five and Six, bad enough you got to do that without puttin’ up with this shit.”
“Save your breath,” Petreshock grunted. He looked at the pressure gauge and tried to whistle and failed. “My God, we’re at seven hundred feet! What the hell does he think this damned submarine is?”
In the Control Room Mealey stared at the plot and then looked at Jim Michaels.
“What was the last contact you had with Maulers One and Two?”
“They receipted for our message that we were beginning the attack, sir. Mauler Two receipted for the message inviting them to take part in the action. Mauler One did not receipt for that message, sir.”
“Bastards!” Mealey growled out the word from between clenched teeth. “If one of them would get over here and fire at one of those tin cans up there it might help out a hell of a lot. As long as they think they’ve got only one submarine here they might stay here all day and night.” He looked at Flanagan. “How many torpedoes do we have, Chief?”
“Three, sir. One in Number Six tube forward. Two back aft. In Nine and Ten tubes, sir.”
“Three fish, seven destroyers. Bad odds,” Mealey grunted. He looked up as Paul Blake’s voice came down from the Conning Tower.
“Here they come again, Control. Three destroyers coming at us from dead ahead, sir.”
“Rudder amidships. All stop.” Mealey snapped. “We’ve been turning away from his attacks. Last three runs he peeled off on each side to catch us. We’ll see if this does any good, staying almost still.” The crew braced, hearing the thunder of the destroyer screws, wincing as a man at the sharp crack of the depth-charge exploder mechanisms going off, and then the shattering roar of the exploding charges shook the Eelfish like a rat in the jaws of a terrier. In the After Torpedo Room Fred Nelson was thrown from his feet in front of the torpedo tubes. He hauled himself erect by grabbing at the torpedo roller stand, blood gushing from his hooked nose.
“One more like that, you fucker,” he growled, “and I’m puttin’ in for a transfer from this fuckin’ submarine navy.” He moved down the length of his torpedo room, patting men on the shoulders and backs.
“Don’t none of you people start pukin’,” he said, “because I ain’t got the patience to clean up after you. Last time I looked at the depth gauge that S.O.B. up there in the Control Room had us at seven hundred feet. No wonder the damned room’s beginning to leak.”
“You want to report leaks?” the telephone talker stammered, his chin wobbling with fear.
“No I don’t want to report no damned leaks,” Nelson growled. “That S.O.B. in the Control Room has got enough on his mind without me adding my share of shit. As long as I ain’t worried about a little water comin’ in you don’t have to worry.”
In the Conning Tower Paul Blake clung to the edge of the shelf on which his gear was mounted. Lieutenant Perry Arbuckle, who was hanging on to the periscope cables for support, saw the effort that Blake was making to stay calm.
“Must be hell up in the Forward Room, turning those two sound heads by hand,” Arbuckle said, trying to keep his own voice conversational. Blake nodded and bent his head,
listening. His head came up suddenly, his eyes wild.
“Control! I can hear torpedoes running, three or four of them! Control!” He cried out in pain as a tremendous noise crashed through his earphones and the hull of the Eelfish.
“Where did you hear torpedoes?” Captain Mealey was halfway up the ladder to the Conning Tower. “What bearing?”
“I was tracking a ship bearing one six zero, sir,” Blake said. “The screws I heard, very fast, high-pitched, just like our own torpedoes, sir, came from aft of that bearing. They ran right into the bearing of the ship I was tracking.”
“Left full rudder,” Mealey snapped. “Mr. Gold, don’t let this ship get one foot above seven hundred feet. I’ve got to sort this out.” He turned as the sound of two depth charges echoed through Eelfish’s hull, depth charges dropped at some distance.
“Will your torpedoes stand being fired at one hundred feet, Chief? Yes or no?”
“I Tacki-waxed the exhaust valves myself,” Flanagan said. “They won’t leak through the valves. Yes.”
“One hundred feet, Mr. Gold. Give it one big effort, men.” He joined Jerry Gold on the planes, Gold helping the stern planesman, Captain Mealey throwing his stringy muscle against the bow plane wheel.
“Set depth on torpedoes Nine and Ten at zero feet,” he called out. “Set speed at low. Repeat, torpedo depth on numbers Nine and Ten tubes at zero feet. Speed on the low setting.” He watched the black needles on the depth gauges moving toward the one-hundred-foot mark.
“Sonar! Give me an accurate bearing at the ships you have.” He waited.
“Bearing on the depth charging is one seven zero, sir.”
“Left five degrees rudder,” Mealey said. “Stand by aft.” He turned to Brannon. “I’ll shake those bastards up, when they see fish plowing toward them!”
“Targets bear one eight zero, sir,” Blake cried.
“Meet your helm. Stand by aft ...
“Fire nine!
“Fire ten!”
The two torpedoes burst out of the tubes at a depth of 95 feet, planed upward to the surface, and streaked across the sunlit water, splashing and throwing spray. A siren sounded on a destroyer, ululating. The pack of destroyers scattered, their squat sterns dropping into the water, their bows rearing high as their engines went to full speed.
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