“Time to first impact?” he asked.
“Ninety-five seconds remaining,” the fire-control officer said. “Fish appear to be running hot, straight, and normal.”
A minute and a half later came the first explosion on the predicted bearing. Then a second, followed by a third some thirty seconds later.
“Got something,” Malachi observed. “Up scope.”
He studied the situation on the surface. “The maru is settling by the stern. Big fire aft. I can’t see the escort. Down scope.”
He started to say something else when the sound of a really large explosion rumbled through the hull, followed by the crackling sounds of rending steel and the wet thump of boiler explosions. “How far away is that maru according to TDC?”
“Twelve hundred fifty yards. The escort was ahead of him when we first saw them, but I don’t have a range.”
“Come left to three four zero, and make your depth one fifty. Maintain five knots. I want to get two thousand yards off firing track before my next observation in case that escort retraces his own track.”
The boat tilted slightly as the diving officer took her down to 150 feet and the helmsman brought her around to the northwest. The noises of the sinking faded and then there was only the whir of the fans in the control room.
“Maybe you hit both of them,” Marty said.
Malachi shrugged. “It’s possible,” he said. “Two hits on the freighter, one on the tin can, then the tin can blew up. Or the freighter was an ammo ship and blew up and the tin can got the hell out of Dodge. We’ll take another look when we get a mile sideways off the track. Do I need to tell forward torpedo to reload?”
“No, sir,” Marty said. “They’re on it, and tubes five and six are available.”
After ten minutes and no further sounds from the surface, Malachi ordered periscope depth and then took a look all around. “A low cloud of black smoke to the east,” he reported. “I don’t see either one of them. Put up the air search radar mast.”
The second mast went whining up behind the periscope. The radar operator turned the unit on and studied the scope. “No contacts,” he reported.
“Down the radar mast,” Malachi said. “Prepare to surface. How far are we from the nearest land?”
Marty consulted the chart. They’d established a good fix earlier that morning, so the dead reckoning track would be pretty close. “We’re about seventy miles west of Bougainville and fifty miles south of Rabaul.”
Malachi knew that Rabaul, a harbor on the northeast tip of New Britain Island, was a major Japanese navy and air base. If that cargo ship got off an SOS, there would be planes coming from Rabaul to investigate. He could surface for about twenty minutes, but then they’d have get down and out of sight.
“Surface and get on the diesels,” he ordered. “Run at twenty knots to the estimated position of the sinking. Four lookouts, air search radar on the air every five minutes for one sweep only.”
The klaxon horn sounded and the usual controlled stampede of men heading through the conning tower and up to the navigation bridge commenced. Malachi pulled Marty aside. “Remain in the control room and be prepared for a fast dive. I’m going to the bridge. If the air search radar generates a contact, sound the dive alarm immediately, and commence the dive, all right? No reports, just blow the horn and flood negative.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Marty said. “How about the surface search radar? Want to take an occasional sweep with that as well?”
“Forgot about that,” Malachi said, with a frown. “We had no radars on the S-boats. Yes, same deal. Intermittent radiation. Contact—blow the horn.”
“Got it, sir.”
Malachi grabbed his pair of binoculars and hustled up the vertical ladder through the conning tower hatch. Marty went to the plotting table and figured out a course back to the last-known position of the cargo ship. He called the OOD up on the navigation bridge and told him the course to take at 20 knots. The diesels erupted into their comforting growl and the boat heeled as it took off for that low, black cloud that was diffusing to the east.
Marty climbed down into the control room, where there was a lot of chatter about the attack they’d just made. The fresh air whistling down from the open hatches above was blowing papers everywhere, but the guys were excited. They’d certainly hit something out there. Marty went to the diving officer, LTJG Gary White, the navigator, and explained Malachi’s instructions about making a crash dive the moment either radar picked anything up.
“A quarter of the Jap navy is at Rabaul, along with a couple hundred planes,” he said. “They come out, we have to make like a sounding whale. Prep maneuvering for a fast shut down and shift to the batteries. Brief your planesmen.”
“Got it, XO,” White said. “I’ll keep the GQ crew on station. Did we get that target?”
“We’re going to find out,” Marty said. “There were two ships out there. Now we can’t find any.”
Up on the navigation bridge, Malachi, like the four lookouts and the OOD, scanned the ocean ahead with binoculars for signs of the ships they’d attacked. The conning tower plotters reported they had about another half mile to go before they entered the area where the torpedoes should have impacted. Malachi was nervous about running at 20 knots on the surface on such a clear day. The sunshine almost hurt his eyes as he looked for signs of a sinking. The dirty brown cloud they’d seen when they surfaced had dissipated, and he also knew that the boat was creating a broad white wake behind them. A Jap plane would be able to see that from 15,000 feet.
“Oil sheen, dead ahead,” called one of the high lookouts. “Four hundred yards.”
“Slow to ten knots,” Malachi ordered, and the OOD relayed the order down to the control room. Thirty seconds later he caught the rainbow glint of fuel oil floating on the surface. He slowed the boat to five knots, and they came left to avoid the main slick.
“Objects in the water, starboard bow,” the other high lookout called out. He was positioned way up on the periscope structure, which gave him ten more feet of elevation.
Malachi saw them, too, as the boat slowed down on the edges of the oil slick, which looked to be a quarter mile wide. There were some charred crates wallowing in the oil, along with the lumpy shapes of bodies bobbing amongst the debris. They finally hit the stinking haze of the oil slick and it was strong enough to make their eyes water. The OOD pointed silently at a cluster of men floating in life jackets 50 yards out in the oil slick. Their faces were covered in the heavy bunker oil, and they made no sign that they’d seen the submarine as it cruised through the wreck site. Malachi knew there was nothing he could do for them, and that they’d probably refuse any help he offered. There was quite a lot of debris in the water now that they were on the edge of the slick, but it was so covered in oil as to be visible only as black lumps.
Malachi called the conning tower plotting crew and asked for a course to where the destroyer would have been. They reported that it should be 600 yards on the starboard bow. They cranked it back up to 15 knots and drove over to the estimated position, but found nothing. No additional wreckage and no oil slick. Malachi concluded that the escort had taken off for parts unknown, which meant that the Jap forces at Rabaul knew about the sinking. Time to go down for the day.
“Something in the water, Captain,” one of the lookouts called down, pointing off to starboard. “Can’t make it out, but it’s pretty big.”
Malachi made a hurried sweep with his binocs, fearing a Jap sub. Then he saw it. Dark colored. A familiar shape, bobbing gently in the water. He thought he saw tiny figures clinging to it, but he was looking into the sun. Then he recognized it: a bow. A destroyer’s bow, floating vertically in the water. There were men surrounding it in the water, bobbing up and down like little dark corks in the seaway. There must have been twenty or even thirty survivors out there.
“Come left with ten degrees of rudder to course three zero zero,” Malachi ordered, “and prepare to dive.”
The men
on the bridge looked at one another for a moment, and then the lookouts began to scramble down from their perches as the OOD passed the word to prepare to dive. The diesels cut off abruptly and then it was just Malachi left on the navigation bridge. He took another long look at the half-drowned men hanging onto the remains of their ship, and then he pressed the switch to sound the dive alarm. He went down through the conning tower hatch, stopping to pull the hatch down and firmly secure it. He could hear the rush of water flooding around the navigation bridge as Firefish went under in a roil of bubbles.
That night Marty brought Malachi the sinking report, claiming both the freighter and the escort, with visual evidence recorded on both sinkings. The message also stated their position in the general area of the huge Jap base at Rabaul.
“A nice start,” Marty said while Malachi read over the draft message.
“Yes, it was,” Malachi said. “Change the tonnage down to six thousand tons from eight. I don’t think she was that big. And change the destroyer to destroyer escort. Otherwise, we’ll go up at midnight to periscope depth long enough to transmit this, and then go back up again at zero two hundred and copy the fleet broadcast for an hour while we get some amps in the can. We should be getting more specific patrol area instructions just about now.”
“Aye, aye, sir. I’ve put the word out to the crew that we got them both. Do we surface later and get a full charge on the batteries?”
“No,” Malachi said. “I think the Japs will have some of those big Kawanishi seaplanes up in this area tonight, looking for a boat on the surface. Go to max conserve on the battery and stay down at two hundred feet.”
“Should we stay in this area or head somewhere else?” Marty asked.
“For tonight let’s head south, toward that big open passage through the Solomons. But only three knots. If it were my option I’d head for Rabaul and see what we could knock off on their logistics train. But…”
“Yes, sir. Big minefields around Rabaul.”
“Exactly. So let’s see what Admiral Britten has in mind now that we’re in the assigned area. What’s the date?”
“Seventh of August.”
“I have an envelope in my safe that I’m supposed to open on the morning of the eighth and not before. That’s all operations would tell me. Pass the word that I was pleased how people handled themselves today. Plotting, TDC work, shooting. All good. See you in the morning.”
Marty headed back to the control room. A compliment. That was progress.
SIX
The boat was hot and stuffy the next morning, the result of no air-conditioning and minimal ventilation through the night to save battery life. Malachi stuck his head into the wardroom long enough to grab a coffee and a soggy donut and then headed for the control room.
“Captain’s in Control,” one of the enlisted announced. The men at the helm and the diving stations sat up a little straighter. Lieutenant Caldwell was the officer of the deck.
“Status?” Malachi said.
“Stable at two hundred feet, course one eight zero, speed three, no sound contacts. Battery is at fifty percent. There’s a three-degree layer at one eighty feet. One motor on the line, most machinery is at max conserve, crew in their bunks unless they have the watch. Some indications of weather topside.”
Marty slipped though the hatch into the control room, having been alerted by a watchstander that Malachi was up and about. “Morning, sir,” he said.
“XO,” Malachi replied. “Restore normal ops and get us up to periscope depth. I want to see this weather.”
The XO began the process of getting more people up and about, restoring ventilation, and brought a second motor on line. Malachi climbed up to the conning tower so he could make periscope observations. The OOD went with him, along with the helmsman. Everyone else stayed down in the control room.
Ten minutes later they were at 60 feet, and everyone could feel that there was a large swell running upstairs. The planesmen had their work cut out for them just maintaining 60 feet. Malachi took a look and grunted. “Perfect,” he said. “A good running sea, lots of whitecaps. Overcast. Looks clear but run up the air and surface search radars, take two sweeps. If we’re all alone, prepare to surface.”
The presence of swells, wind, and whitecaps meant that aircraft would have a tough time sighting a submarine on the surface. If they could stay up for three hours undetected by minimizing their wake, they’d have the battery back to full charge. They could remain on the surface and start making progress to their assigned patrol area as long as the weather stayed nasty.
An hour later the bad weather had begun to take its toll on some of the crew. Heading south, the boat lay in the trough and with its round hull was rolling heavily. Submariners used to the dead calm of the depths were now starting to show a few green faces. Malachi laughed it off. After operating in the Irish Sea and the English Channel, this was nothing. The good news was that there was fresh air coming down and they were making a good 15 knots toward the lower Solomons. Malachi called a department head meeting in the wardroom for the opening of the sealed orders.
“Well,” he began, after reading for a minute. “Looks like today we were supposed to have landed Marines on some place called Gua-dal-canal, down at the bottom of the Solomons chain. According to this they went in this morning to take a Jap airfield and also a small harbor called Tulagi. The Intel people are expecting a ‘vigorous’ reaction from the Japanese forces at Rabaul as early as today, and the way down to Guadalcanal from Rabaul is that big, inland passage. Our orders are to set up shop in suitable waters to take a shot at whatever comes south from Rabaul. XO, we have charts?”
“I’ll have to take a look, Captain. A lot of this area comes under the title of Oceania, which means whatever charts we do have are gonna be based on old, really old, information.”
“We do have the most current HO charts?”
“Yes, sir, our chart portfolio is up to date. It’s just that these are not normal operating areas for the Navy.”
“Very well. Ops—anything on the fleet broadcast last night?”
“Not a word, sir,” Lieutenant Caldwell said. “That’s unusual, actually. There’s always admin stuff. Since we’re up on the surface, we’re guarding the broadcast continuously now to see if we’ve missed anything.”
“Very well, keep me informed. XO, let’s take a look at those charts. We’ll stay on the surface for as long as we can to get farther south and away from Rabaul. Occasional radar sweeps throughout the day, air and surface. Any hint of a contact, we get down quick.”
The XO and the navigator came back to the wardroom ten minutes later with three Navy Hydrographic Office charts for the Solomons archipelago. The term “old” hardly described them. One of them, dated 1929, cited data provided by the explorations of Captain Edward Manning, RN, in 1792. Entire stretches of the passage running from Rabaul down to Guadalcanal, called New Georgia Sound, were marked simply with the words “dangerous ground.” Malachi could only shake his head. “About all these tell me is here is water, here is land,” he complained. “Half these so-called channels don’t even have soundings.”
“Yes, sir,” Marty said. “Probably why the admiral instructed us to find ‘suitable waters.’”
“Easy for him to say. On the other hand, if we can find some deep channels amongst the hundreds or so islands here, we could lay a nasty ambush.”
A radioman interrupted them. “Got fresh traffic for us, Captain,” he announced, and handed over a roll of yellow teletype paper.
Malachi took the roll and began to read it like an ancient papyrus scroll. Then the diving alarm sounded, and the boat tilted down. Malachi dropped the roll on the table and hurried to the conning tower. He had to wait for the lookouts and the OOD to tumble down through the hatch, slamming it behind them, as the boat slid under the surface. The familiar clamp of pressure in the boat indicated she was watertight and that the diesels’ main induction valve was closed and locked out.
He told the diving officer to make his depth 200 feet, and then went up the ladder into the conning tower. “What’ve we got?”
“Air contact, sir, air, closing, eighteen miles.”
“Helmsman, come right ninety degrees. Slow to five knots.”
“Come right ninety degrees to course two six five, speed five, aye, sir.”
Malachi knew that there was a chance, however remote, that the approaching Jap aircraft might have some kind of radar. If he’d made contact on Firefish, and, more importantly, tracked her, he could fly in to the last-known position of the sub and start laying down a line of depth bombs. Turn ninety degrees off his previous track and they were safe. He sent one of the plotters to the wardroom to retrieve the broadcast printout. The exec brought it up.
“Battery’s at eighty-five percent,” he reported. “We’re stable at two hundred feet. Recommend slowing to three knots to conserve the battery.”
“No, once this intruder is gone, I think we need to turn around and keep going southeast at five, at least. We’re over a hundred miles away from the nearest point where I think we can penetrate that inner passage. We can come back up tonight and make twenty knots and recharge.”
“In that case, I recommend we head south, not west.”
Malachi gave him an exasperated look. “Do you know why I turned west?”
“No, sir, I don’t.”
Malachi explained it to him, realizing as he did so that he needed to establish a much better bond with his exec. Then he took the message roll and went below to his cabin, ordering the helmsman to come back to a southerly course and to maintain five knots.
He read the messages the radiomen had captured from the fleet broadcast for Firefish. The fleet headquarters in Pearl operated a powerful broadcasting station. In order to allow the submarines to remain radio silent, messages addressed to any particular submarine were collected onto a fleet-wide broadcast and transmitted three times a day. Each individual submarine was responsible for copying the entire fleet broadcast at least once a day, and then printing out the messages that pertained to them. The station in Pearl changed the encryption codes once a day, as did every submarine, also once a day.
The Iceman_A Novel Page 5