“Time to fire is fifty seconds,” the TDC operator announced.
Two carriers in a down-the-throat shot. They were going 25 knots. His fish would be going 46 knots. A 70-knot closure rate. None of them would be able to turn in time to avoid. “Down scope. Fire all tubes in sequence, commencing now.”
“Forward torpedo, aye. Firing one.”
Malachi waited for the fifth torpedo to be fired, already feeling that tinge of uncertainty as the boat began to lose stability from the sudden weight loss forward.
“Six away,” forward torpedo reported.
“Conn, Sonar: all appearing to run hot, straight, and normal.”
“Conn: aye. All stop. All back one third. Open outer doors aft. Close outer doors forward.”
They all had to hold on as the boat mushed to a stop and then began to go backwards. And downwards, as all that water came pouring into after torpedo. He’d decided to not try to fight the boat’s instability, but rather to flood her aft and then let her do what she would want to do, which was to slide backwards into the depths. Depths being the operative word once those fish found their marks.
“All stop,” he ordered, and then watched the depth gauge, as they accelerated backwards. For every foot they went down, the water would come in even faster. He had to catch her before this became a runaway.
“All ahead one third,” he ordered. “Forward planes thirty degrees rise.”
The depth gauge read 180 feet when the first booming sounds came through the hull on the bearing of 350. They’d hit something. Or else the escorts were dropping depth charges after seeing torpedo wakes.
“Passing two hundred feet,” the OOD reported nervously. Malachi watched the horizontal level indicator, mentally shouting at the bubble to move back to the center, but it wasn’t budging. The boat was still bow high and sliding backwards.
“Close outer doors aft and get that eductor going,” he ordered.
“Passing two fifty.”
The boat’s attitude hadn’t changed, and he thought he could feel that big slug of water back in after torpedo dragging them backwards. And down. “Flood negative,” he ordered, in hopes of counterbalancing the extra weight all the way aft. “Blow all after ballast tanks. Blow safety tank.”
“Passing two eighty.”
Finally the boat started to flatten out and stop her descent. The rumble of compressed air disgorging into the after ballast tanks was dangerously loud, now that there were destroyers looking for them. But he’d left the outer doors open long enough, he hoped, to flood that compartment and drown the fire. Now the eductor system would begin dewatering, although he realized that that might take as much as an hour.
“Steady at three hundred feet,” the diving officer reported from Control. “Recommend pumping negative to fifty percent.”
Good, Malachi thought. The diving officer understands our problem. From here on out it would be a balancing act, as the extra water aft was pumped out and they had to use the ballast tanks to keep the boat under some semblance of depth control. “Concur,” he replied.
“Conn, Sound: I have pinging in a sector between three three zero and three five zero; no detectable Doppler.”
Yet, Malachi thought. That’s when he realized he was still going 350, his firing course, right back toward the destroyers. “Come to one seven zero,” he ordered. “Use no more than five degrees rudder.”
“Conn, Control: we’re still too heavy. I can’t maintain depth control.”
Malachi glanced at the depth gauge, which had slipped down to 325 when no one was looking. Do what you might with plane angles and speed changes: if you have more weight in the boat than the boat itself displaced, the boat becomes a rock.
“Passing three four zero,” the OOD announced, but quietly, as if not to alarm anyone. The familiar creaking and groaning sounds began to make themselves heard.
“Sound, Conn: what’s the bearing of the pingers right now?”
“Conn, Sound: three two zero for the strongest signals.”
“Plot: based on the little bit of dope we had about those carriers, what should the range be right now?”
The TDC operator looked at his wheels and dials. By doctrine, he’d kept the computer running on the original firing in case they needed to reattack. “Six thousand yards, Captain, but we only had two radar ranges, so that’s a WAG.”
Great, Malachi thought. A WAG—wild-ass guess. Better than nothing. “Open outer doors aft,” he ordered. “Prepare to fire our remaining three fish: contact exploders, speed low, running depth six feet. TDC: force firing bearing to three two zero. Spread is four degrees. Remote fire from forward torpedo as quickly as possible. What’s our course?”
“Passing one four zero, sir. Coming to course one seven zero.”
After an eternity of seconds, they felt the thump of the first torpedo going out aft, followed quickly by two more thumps. “Close after outer doors,” Malachi ordered.
“Passing three five five feet,” the OOD said.
“Give me full power now. After planes twenty degrees rise.”
They waited to see if the boat would respond. Malachi had just ejected three tons of weight from the after tubes. He may have let some more water in by re-opening the after outer doors, but he didn’t think so. The chances of them hitting anything were nil, but those three fish just might distract the searching destroyers long enough for Firefish to get away. If she responded.
They waited, everyone in the conning tower fully aware of the throbbing propellers and the increasing protests of the boat’s hull.
“Passing—no, steady at three six zero feet,” the OOD announced, finally.
“Control, Conn: what’s the battery state?”
“Twenty-five percent, Captain.”
They were just holding her, but not rising. With the battery at twenty-five percent their fate was sealed unless something changed. He reached for the bitchbox. “Maneuvering, Conn: can you get HP air into after torpedo?”
“Well, it’s already there, for the torpedo flasks, but we can’t get in and energize that line.”
“Steady on course one seven zero, Captain.”
“Very well,” Malachi said. “But you’ve got HP air available in after engine room, correct? For main engine start?”
“Yes, sir, and the HP air line runs from the after engine room through Maneuvering into after torpedo.”
“Is there a tap in Maneuvering from that flask supply line?”
“Yes, sir, there is. We use it to blow down the switchboards.”
“All right, this is what I want you to do. Connect a line to that tap. Then I want you to drill a hole between Maneuvering and after torpedo and insert that line into that hole, and then open up the HP air. We’re nearly at four hundred feet. The pressure outside is about one seventy-five psi. The HP air is three thousand psi. The after outer doors are open. I need you to blast that water out of there, or we’re going to see what it’s like at five hundred feet. Gotchee?”
“Yes, sir,” the chief engineer said. “We’re on it.”
Then they heard a distant boom, different from the thumping depth charges that had been going off for the past twenty minutes. Everyone in the conning tower looked at one another.
“End of run, boys,” Malachi said. “There’s no chance that one of those fish hit something.”
The high-pressure air, fed from a compressor in the after engine room, worked. Two men had to hold the end of the blow-down line to the three-quarter-inch hole they’d drilled through the bulkhead, but the combination of the HP air and the eductor steadily blew all the water out of after torpedo. Suddenly the boat began to respond to the planes and the propellers, shooting up from 370 feet to 275 before they got her under control. Malachi ordered the after outer doors closed and then slowed the propellers down to 5 knots again. For the next two hours, they slunk away from the scene of the carrier attack, staying down at 275 feet.
Malachi was more than ready for darkness and the opportuni
ty to surface. The air in the boat was becoming unfit to breathe as CO2 built up. Once the outer doors aft were closed the fire-fighting party went back into after torpedo, which was a complete mess. Making matters worse, much worse, they found the three missing men, whose charred remains had to be literally scraped off the deck plates. Flooding the compartment had indeed snuffed out the fire. They found the source of the air that had reflashed it: a spare high-pressure air flask for the torpedo tubes. The fire had melted a brass valve, allowing the fully charged flask to feed a steady supply of oxygen to the fire.
Some of the men in the fire-fighting party became sick when they encountered the remains. Unlike their surface ship counterparts, submariners rarely experienced the sight, and smell, of wounded, burned, or maimed shipmates. Either everyone came out of a fight in one piece, or they all perished together in the dark depths of the sea. The boat’s hospital corpsman, a chief petty officer, called the conning tower and recommended against restoring ventilation until they could surface. Malachi immediately understood why, because the boat’s ventilation system constantly recirculated all the air onboard. He ordered the after torpedo room hatch closed and locked and any surviving vents taped off.
They surfaced just after sunset. Once the main diesel engines started up, fresh air was drawn into the boat in great quantities. Malachi considered doing a quick air and surface radar search, but decided against it with Truk nearby. He posted six lookouts instead and increased speed to 18 knots on a course for Perth. It would take a week to get back. Then he went below to his cabin to write an operational report, including his intentions to return to port. He told the exec to prepare a burial at sea ceremony for midnight. The exec said he would make it so, and then reminded Malachi that it was New Year’s Day.
“Time passes fast when you’re having fun,” Malachi grumbled. “Happy goddamned new year.”
“Happy goddamned new year, aye, sir,” the exec said, as he drew the curtain and headed off to find the COB.
NINETEEN
They had only ten percent fuel left onboard when they pulled into the harbor at Perth. Malachi had timed the arrival for ten in the morning. The voyage back had been uneventful except for one emergency dive when one of the lookouts had spotted what he thought was a periscope just southwest of New Guinea. The line handlers had been out on deck early, fore and aft, as they passed the breakwater and approached the tender. They were dressed out in dungarees, white T-shirts, and clean, white Dixie cup hats. Several members of the crew were also on deck, anxious to see dry land again amid the prospects for some well-earned time ashore with Aussie beer and all those delectable Sheilas. Malachi allowed the exec to make the landing alongside USS Trout, which was the outboard boat on the nest of four boats alongside the tender.
As the exec grappled with the problem of maneuvering a close-coupled, twin-screw submarine alongside another one without colliding, Malachi scanned the decks of the tender. To his surprise, he spotted the admiral up on the bridge wing of the tender, waving at him. He straightened up and saluted. The admiral returned the salute, as did the second older officer standing next to him. Oh, shit, he thought. They’d brought someone in to head up the investigation into the fire and the deaths of three crewmen. Well, he’d been expecting that, but not a flag officer. The two officers disappeared into the tender’s pilothouse door.
He’d sealed the after torpedo room for two reasons: the smell, primarily, and also to preserve any evidence of what had started the disastrous fire in the first place. And then there was the problem of his patrol orders: report, but do not attack. That might be an even harder issue to confront than the fire. He had no idea if he’d hit either of the carriers with that down-the-throat, no-spread salvo of six torpedoes. There’d been sounds of torpedoes going off, but that could mean anything: they’d prematured or even hit an escort ship. Or run out to the extent of their fuel and detonated at end-of-run. His only defense would be that the two Jap carriers had presented him with an unheard-of opportunity. He could not believe that anyone would have approved his not taking that opportunity. Except maybe Rear Admiral Hamner W. Marsten, who had thought that he and Malachi were not going to “get along.”
He’d given the bare minimum of details in the radio message he’d sent in after clearing Truk Lagoon. Fire in the after torpedo room. Attack on a two-carrier formation while fighting that fire. The decision to flood out the after torpedo room to smother the fire. The need to jettison the torpedoes from the after torpedo room in order to recover from an uncontrolled descent past 400 feet. The loss of three crewmen in the fire. His unilateral decision to return to Perth once all torpedoes were gone.
After that, he’d handwritten a lot more details into his captain’s log. He’d wrestled with the idea of trying to justify disobeying his patrol orders to attack the carriers, but decided against it. They’d either approve or they’d disapprove. It would be interesting to see which. Then he’d written three letters of condolences to the parents of the three men killed in the fire. Two were just twenty years old; the third a graybeard of twenty-four. He hadn’t realized his crew was quite so young.
The shrill sound of a police whistle indicated that Firefish had landed at least one mooring line on Trout, which meant that they were officially moored. As the exec used the engines to hold the boat snug against Trout, a crew from the tender slid the brow across. Back aft the American flag went up on the flagstaff as the at-sea flag was brought down on the sail. Malachi reluctantly climbed down from the bridge to the main deck and headed aft to meet the brass.
By the time he got back to the quarterdeck there were two captains waiting to come aboard. One he recognized as the “new” chief of staff, who had been in the process of replacing Captain Collins when Firefish had left for her third patrol. The other he did not recognize, but soon found out was the equally new squadron commodore, Captain Harold VanBuren, who’d taken command of the Perth submarine squadron while Firefish was off Truk Lagoon. Behind them were two commanders and a lieutenant commander, whom he assumed were staff officers. The second year of this war, Malachi thought, and the staffs are already propagating like weeds.
He introduced himself to everyone, and then led them to the forward hatch. The crew had spent the last four days cleaning and polishing, as everyone knew there’d be lots of visitors because of the fire. Malachi led the small parade of khaki back to the after torpedo room hatch, where the chief engineer was waiting.
“I decided to seal the space for the transit back to Pearl,” he announced. “If there’s evidence in there of what started this fire I wanted it to remain undisturbed. As you know, the after hatch is also the torpedo loading hatch, which lands in the space. I had the engineer use that to ventilate the space for the past few hours. But prepare yourselves. Three men were incinerated in there a week ago. There’s a bottle of Vick’s Vaporub right next to the hatch. I recommend you put a dab in each of your nostrils.”
The two four-stripers, knowing what to expect, did just that, as did Malachi. The chief engineer had already applied some of the creamy, white goo that reeked of camphor and eucalyptus oil. The other staffies did not. Malachi nodded at the chief engineer, who undogged and then swung open the hatch. Despite the ventilation efforts, a wave of warm, wet, and fetid air bloomed into Maneuvering. The commander gagged and barely held on to his breakfast, while the two lieutenant commanders bailed out back into the submarine, slamming a hatch behind them. Malachi stepped carefully over the hatch coaming, a flashlight at the ready, as all the light-fixtures had been burned away. The engineer passed out flashlights to the two captains, and they began their inspection. The chief engineer had some men position a red-devil blower in the hatchway to direct the compartment air up the torpedo loading hatch.
“There were no reports of where the fire started?” the commodore asked.
“No, sir,” Malachi said. “Control received a report of a fire in after torpedo, but no details. I asked if everyone was out and was told only that they were still cou
nting heads.”
“But Maneuvering shut that hatch immediately, right?”
“Yes, sir, I’m sure they did. That’s standard procedure, especially submerged. They shut off all ventilation as well.”
“And you ended up flooding the space to get the fire completely out,” the chief of staff said.
“Yes, sir. There was an air leak somewhere that kept reflashing it.”
The space looked the part. Charred insulation hung from the overhead and the bulkheads. The sailors’ racks, which were strung up between the reload torpedo trays, had been turned into sodden, black lumps. Steel hydraulic lines had held up, as had most of the cladded cabling, which is what had allowed Malachi to operate the after outer doors and fire torpedoes. The overhead light fixtures had all melted, as had some of the copper piping. Charred and soaked papers, maintenance logs, toolboxes, and one forlorn coffeemaker littered the bilge area under the stainless-steel deck plates.
“Okay,” the commodore said. “I’ve seen enough. If the torpedo tubes are undamaged, we can fix this here. If not, you’re going back to Pearl to the shipyard. I’ve convened an informal investigation; Commander Harris here will conduct it, when he feels better. Meanwhile, I’ve told the tender to get a tiger-team in here and see if they can put this all back in order.”
From the tone of his voice, Malachi could tell that the commodore had his doubts.
“And while all this was going on, you attacked an escorted carrier formation?” the chief of staff asked.
“Well, the damage-control team at least had the fire isolated,” Malachi said. “And it wasn’t like I had to do any tactical maneuvering to attack those ships—they were on a constant bearing, decreasing range from first detection. No zigzag that we could tell. We had a closing rate of nearly seventy miles an hour between my fish and their speed. All I had to do was to fire everything I had and then deal with the problem of a fire that wouldn’t go out.”
The chief of staff nodded. “Well, you’ll be pleased to know that both carriers were damaged and had to return to Japan for repairs,” he said. “One was the light carrier Otaka, the other was Shokaku, who’d been heavily damaged in the Coral Sea fight and was just returning to operations. Otaka ate two fish, Shokaku one. They both limped into Truk. A destroyer escort turned in front of another fish and was sunk. Not bad, Captain, for what you’re making it sound like an oh-by-the-way attack. Conducted on the shortest war patrol of the war, so far. Good work.”
The Iceman_A Novel Page 19