“Should be a good patrol area,” Olsen said. “If the Japanese are concentrating their naval forces at Tawi Tawi that means they’ve got to have oil, and their oil comes from Balikpapan. The tankers coming from there to Tawi Tawi will have to run right by us. Unless there are several other boats along the route to intercept them before they get to us.”
“I don’t think there will be,” Brannon said. “The reassignments of patrol areas the last couple of days from Fremantle argue against that. I’d think that Admiral Christie is throwing every submarine he can get over on the Pacific side of the invasion area. If the Japs ever get wind of what MacArthur’s planning I think they’d throw every damned ship they’ve got into battle to stop it. And one of the things they would have to smash would be the carrier fleet we’ll have steaming off the east coast of Samar. If they could smash the carriers the invasion goes down the drain. So I’d assume that Christie is setting up a scouting line of submarines to detect any Jap fleet movements. We might be the only guy on the block when we get to where we’re going. How far is it?”
“About seven hundred miles,” Olsen said. “Three, three and a half days at the most.” He grinned at Brannon. “I looked in the haversack Flanagan brought back last night. The bottle of booze was still in the sack and the canned ham. I gave the watch in the Control Room the word to have him report to me, to you, as soon as he wakes up.”
In the Crew’s Mess Bill Brosmer, the leading Quartermaster, was drinking coffee, surrounded by the off-watch crew.
“I’m tellin’ you,” Brosmer said, “I’m tellin’ you that the Chief of the Boat was drunk as a skunk and he smelled of pussy and I know pussy when I smell it!”
“I don’t know about the Chief of the Boat smellin’ like pussy,” one of the night lookouts said. “But I helped carry him down the ladder to the Control Room, and I know one thing, old Chief was passed-out drunk. Stiff as a board. I haven’t seen anyone that drunk since the first liberty I made out of boot camp.”
“Which ain’t been that long ago,” Scotty Rudolph said as he came out of his small galley. “You assholes get out of here unless you want to volunteer as mess cooks. Gettin’ to be time to set table.”
Late that afternoon a freshly showered and shaved Chief Flanagan presented himself in the Wardroom. Mike Brannon sat at his accustomed place at the head of the table, with John Olsen seated outboard of the table to his Captain’s left. Flanagan was seated at the Captain’s right.
“Please fill us in, Chief,” Brannon said.
Flanagan talked slowly, recounting the trip in to the beach, the first contact with the guerrillas, the trip up in to the mountains to the base camp, the delivery of the orders from General MacArthur.
“Very well,” Brannon said. “Before you go on, Chief, will you please tell me just what in the hell happened to you?”
Flanagan looked at Brannon and drew a deep breath. “I can’t make any excuses, sir. It was a long hard walk up that mountainside. When we got up there the Sergeant asked me how long it would be before we got back to port. I told him maybe a month, maybe longer. He said he figured something like that and that his people had laid on a feast of roast pig and other stuff. They gave me some home-brewed rum. Awful sneaky stuff. I never drink much when I’m ashore at the hotel. You know that. The stuff sneaked up on me, and this Sergeant, he said he didn’t want to make that trip down and back up the mountain again that night. They kept giving me that rum to drink, and before I knew it I was drunk.
“I woke up the next day and they told me they’d take me back down the mountain at night. They had some more chow and more of that rum.
“All I can say is that I’m sorry, sir. But I didn’t take a drink until the Army Sergeant had the orders and said that he understood them and that he’d carry them out, sir.”
“I’m not going to court-martial you, Chief, although I guess I could,” Brannon said slowly. “You did carry out the mission. But you know and I know that you didn’t set much of an example for the crew.” Flanagan sat, his head lowered.
“Let’s get the yeoman in here,” Brannon said. “I want you to dictate a complete report, Chief, but before you do, what sort of a force does this Sergeant have? They told me in Fremantle that he had ten thousand troops.”
“He said about three thousand, sir. I saw some of them. They look and act sharp. Good weapons, and every weapon I saw was clean, well cared for. Lot of his people are women. He said they make good spies and that most of them are very slick at cutting a Jap throat.
“They’re well disciplined. They don’t make noise. Even at that feast they put on for me, when some of them got passed-out drunk there was no noise. They even laugh in whispers. He and his people sleep days and work nights. He said that gives him an advantage over the Jap.”
“Did he say he could carry out his orders to cut roads or whatever he has to do?” Olsen asked.
“Yes, sir. He told me there was one main road with four bridges on it leading into Tacloban and one secondary road with three bridges. The bridges, he said, go over valleys that a tank couldn’t get through. He can blow the bridges and mine the road approaches. He said he intended to steal all the distributor caps off the Jap vehicles the night before the invasion. I got the feeling, sir, that if the Jap tries to reinforce Tacloban, sir, that this man will cut him into small slices.”
Brannon nodded and sent Pete Mahaffey for Booth, the yeoman. He came in to the wardroom with his pad and pen, and Flanagan went over the entire operation from the moment of leaving the ship to his return, carefully omitting any mention of the rum he had been given. When he had finished Brannon turned to Olsen.
“John, when Michaels wakes up have him put together a mission completed message to Admiral Christie with the addition that the Army Sergeant said he would carry out his orders without fail. We’ll get that off tonight when we surface.”
Eelfish arrived at its patrol area just before dawn and dove near the edge of the 100-fathom curve, a few miles to the east of the entrance to Sibutu Passage. As soon as Mahaffey had cleared the table of the breakfast dishes Mike Brannon called a meeting of his officers.
“We’ve got quite a bit of latitude so far as our patrol area is concerned,” he said. “We can stay out here, where we are to the east of Sibutu Passage, and wait to intercept any tankers coming up from Balikpapan. Or we can move over to the Sulu Sea and watch Tawi Tawi and hope to get something coming out of that Naval Base.
“I want to run at a hundred twenty-five feet during the day when we’re submerged. Periscope observation every hour. Sonar sweep before every periscope observation. No radar unless I give the order. If there are Japanese Naval ships in Tawi Tawi, and intelligence says there are, they’ll have some sharp people on watch, and I don’t want radar used without my permission.”
The days and nights passed slowly with no sign of any targets. Mike Brannon paced the cigaret deck all night long, straining his eyes through his binoculars. On the sixth night on station Brannon heard the Chief of the Watch’s voice echo in the bridge speaker.
“Radio shack says an Ultra message is coming in, Bridge.”
“Bridge, aye,” Jerry Gold answered. He turned to go back to the cigaret deck to tell Brannon and saw his Captain coming forward.
“I heard,” Brannon said. “I’ll go below and decode.”
The message was long and took the better part of an hour to decode. When he had finished Brannon went out into the Control Room and told the messenger to wake Mr. Olsen and bring two cups of coffee to the Wardroom.
“The code breakers in Pearl say there are two big battle fleets leaving a port over on the west side of Borneo, place called Brunei,” Brannon said as Olsen, his eyes bleary with sleep, sipped at a cup of coffee. “They say these two battle fleets are going to follow two different routes. One of them is going up the west coast of Palawan and then over through San Bernardino Strait to the Pacific. The Dace and the Darter are up off the north end of Palawan now, and they’ve been alerted to i
ntercept, inform, and attack.
“The second battle fleet is headed our way, through the Balabac Strait to the west. We’ve got to get into position to observe and report and attack if possible. But we don’t attack until after we’ve sent a contact report on the task force.” He shoved a chart, dividers, and a pair of parallel rulers over to Olsen, who read the message and then busied himself at the chart.
“The course they give for this bunch we’re supposed to find and report on, they’re heading right for Leyte Gulf!” His eyes widened as the import of the message, the enemy’s course, hit him.
“They must know that MacArthur is going to land there!”
“If there’s enough Jap ships, if they’re big enough, if they get to Leyte Gulf they can steam right up the Gulf and smash the invasion force from the rear,” Brannon said dryly.
“This other bunch, the one that’s going up Palawan and then out to the Pacific through San Bernardino Strait?”
“Probably going to go after the carriers that will be offshore a hundred miles or so and supporting the invasion,” Brannon answered.
“Ain’t good, Skipper,” Olsen muttered. “We can get our ass under way right now for Balabac Strait. We’re two hundred and sixty miles away. We can be in position before they’re due to come through the Strait.”
“Give the courses and speeds to the Bridge,” Brannon said. He waited, looking at the chart, feeling the sudden vibration in his feet and legs as the Eelfish picked up speed. Olsen came back with a small tray with two fresh cups of coffee and four doughnuts. The Control Room messenger stuck his head through the green curtain at the door and held out a message.
“Just came in, sir,” the messenger said.
“Thank you,” Brannon said. He looked at the message. “Standard Fleet code,” he said and reached for the code book.
“It’s to Dace and Darter,” he said after he had decoded the short message. “All it says is ‘one to look and one to play.’
I guess that means that one has to see what that task force is and report it and the other one can go in to attack. Nice little problem in who does which, depending on the seniority of the skippers.”
“Let’s see,” Olsen said. “Dave McClintock has the Darter. Clagget’s got the Dace. Those are two pretty tough people, good submariners, good fighters. I’d bet a month’s pay that they’ll get off a sighting report and then they’ll both attack.”
The Eelfish arrived on station before daylight on the day the Japanese battle fleet was to transit Balabac on its way northeast. The Eelfish dove and slipped down to cruise at 125 feet to escape observation by scouting planes that Brannon reasoned would be out ahead of the ships as they moved through the Strait.
The hours ticked away. Every half-hour the sonar watch made a sweep, and when he reported no screws could be heard the Eelfish planed upward to sixty feet and the OOD raised the search periscope. In the middle of the afternoon watch Lieutenant Bob Lee raised the ‘scope. His hoarse cry brought Brannon scrambling to the Conning Tower.
“Ships, lots of big ships!” Lee said as he stepped away from the periscope. Brannon put his face to the big rubber eyepiece.
“Sound General Quarters!” he said as he rotated the periscope a full 360 degrees. “Down periscope.” He walked to the hatch that led down to the Control Room.
“Open all torpedo-tube outer doors. Set depth ten feet on all torpedoes. Repeat ten feet. Rig ship for silent running. Rig for depth-charge attack. Plotting party stand by.” He moved to one side of the hatch as Lieutenant Perry Arbuckle scrambled to his station at the TDC. Paul Blake relieved the watch sonar man and Booth sat down beside Blake, his notebook and pen in his hands. Bill Brosmer buckled on his battle telephone set and stood by the periscope control. The subdued whine of the air-conditioning blowers slowed to a stop. The interior of the Eelfish was silent except for the low hum of the electric motors that drove the ship and the gurgle of water outside the hull.
“All Battle Stations manned,” John Olsen said in the Control Room. “All torpedo-tube outer doors are open. Depth set on all torpedoes is one zero feet. Ten feet. Ship is rigged for silent running. Ship is rigged for depth-charge attack, all bulkhead openings closed, Conning Tower. Plot is ready.”
“Very well,” Brannon said. He nodded at Brosmer, who pushed the up button on the periscope control. The long steel tube slid upward, and Brannon went down on his knees and grabbed the handles as the eyepiece of the periscope cleared the deck level, snapped them outward, and rode the periscope upward, his eye at the lens.
“Mark!” he snapped, and Brosmer read off the bearing to Lieutenant Arbuckle who cranked it into his TDC.
“That mark is on a big battleship.” Brannon’s voice was tight. “Take this down.
“The task force is led by three very large destroyers. Followed by a big battleship. Then there’s another big battleship followed by what I think is a heavy cruiser followed by a big destroyer. Heavy air cover overhead.”
“Can you give me a range, Captain?” Arbuckle asked in a low voice.
“Range on the first battleship is ... range is five thousand yards. Range to the second battleship is seven, make it sixty-nine hundred yards.”
“We’re on their port hand, sir.” Olsen’s voice came up the hatch. “Suggest we come right to zero five zero and make another observation in three minutes, sir. We can get their speed and base course down pat then.”
“Down periscope,” Brannon ordered. “Come right to new course zero five zero. Let me know when you want another look, Control.” He waited, his plump face impassive.
“Suggest you take another look, sir,” Olsen said.
Brannon rode the periscope upward and steadied on the first battleship in the line.
“Mark! That’s on the first battleship in line. Angle on the bow is one six zero port. Those people are making knots. Destroyer is coming this way. Down periscope. Close torpedo-tube outer doors. Make depth one hundred fifty feet, Control.”
The Eelfish slid downward. Brannon walked to the hatch and stood, looking down through the circular opening at the plotting crew at work on the gyro table.
“We’ve got their speed, sir,” Olsen said. “They’re making twenty-four knots.”
“Very well, Brannon said. “I’m going to stay on this course. There might be more ships coming. We can’t risk not being sure of that.” He turned to Perry Arbuckle.
“That’s the first time I ever saw a Jap battleship, and when I do I see two of them and I don’t dare shoot!” He looked at his wrist watch and turned to the hatch.
“Sixty-five feet, Control. I’m going to raise the ‘scope now so watch your angle.” He nodded his head at Brosmer, who raised the periscope. The Eelfish took a slightly sharper up angle as the periscope went up. Brannon searched astern and on both flanks and saw empty ocean. Far ahead, on his starboard bow, he could see the smoke of the task force.
“Booth, get down below and give your information on the task force to Mr. Michaels. Tell him that I want a message encoded at once. As soon as he’s ready we’ll come to forty feet and get the message off.”
Fifteen minutes later Eelfish planed upward to forty feet and the radio mast was run up. The radioman began to pound out the groups of five numbers in the coded message. He stopped sending and his fingers delicately adjusted his receiver dial.
“Message received and receipted for,” he said to Jim Michaels.
“I’ve got fast screws bearing one seven zero, sir,” Paul Blake called out. “Pretty far away but getting a little stronger.”
“Three hundred feet,” Brannon ordered. “Down radio mast. Bastards probably zeroed in on the radio signal.” He walked to the Control Room hatch.
“Stand easy on Battle Stations. Smoking lamp is lighted for ten minutes only. Maintain silence about the decks.”
The Japanese battle fleet sighted by Eelfish was called, officially, the Southern Force. It was commanded by Vice Admiral Nishimura, and it was one of three task forces
that were under way to smash the invasion at Tacloban. In Tacloban there were 28 big Liberty ships, hundreds of landing craft, and a vast armada of Navy supply and support ships, all concentrated around the port city. The cruiser U.S.S. Nashville, with General Douglas MacArthur aboard, was anchored in the midst of the invasion fleet, the command center for the vast amphibious operation that was striking both at Tacloban and a little farther south, along the shoreline.
Ashore the initial reaction to the American landing was light. As the hours wore on the resistance solidified and grew stronger as the Japanese began to close in on the landing areas. The call went out to units farther inland to come with all possible speed to reinforce the garrison at Tacloban. Those units could not reach the invasion area; the main roads had been cut.
While Vice Admiral Nishimura’s force was sailing across the Sulu Sea toward Leyte Gulf, another battle force, this one commanded by Vice Admiral Kurita, moved to the north along the west side of Palawan Island. The Darter spotted the battle force and sent off a contact message, and then moved to the attack, calling on Dace to help.
Darter fired all six torpedo tubes forward at a heavy cruiser leading the battle force and then swung and fired four torpedoes from the after tubes at another cruiser. Five of the six torpedoes fired out of Darter’s forward tubes hit the heavy cruiser, and Vice Admiral Kurita’s flagship, the heavy cruiser, Atago, blew up with spectacular explosions. Vice Admiral Kurita decided to go down with his ship, but his junior officers persuaded him to swim for it, and he was rescued by a destroyer.
The salvo from the Darter’s after torpedo tubes smashed into the heavy cruiser Takao, damaging it severely. Dace, racing to get into the fight, set upon the heavy cruiser Maya and fired six torpedoes at it. Four of the torpedoes hit, and the Maya rolled over and sank in four minutes.
The task force moved north, undeterred by the attack by the two submarines. Vice Admiral Kurita’s orders were to go north and east and exit through the San Bernardino Strait to the Pacific and then run south down the length of Samar Island, turn west and north, and rendezvous with Vice Admiral Nishimura at 0430 on the morning of October 25, 1944. To make sure that the American aircraft carriers could not get into the fight at Tacloban or harass the two Japanese battle fleets racing toward Tacloban, Vice Admiral Ozawa’s Northern Force was successfully decoying Admiral Bull Halsey’s main carrier fleet away from the invasion area and to the north.
Silent Sea (The Silent War Book 2) Page 28