“Weather’s turning to shit,” he announced. “Make this a radar attack on the nearest escort. Use low speed, depth setting ten feet, from a range of fifteen hundred yards. One fish. Start the track.”
The plotters went to work as the radar operator gave them a single sweep every three minutes, aimed at the pair of escorts. It looked like the destroyers, or more likely smaller destroyer escort ships, were making bare headway, so they had to force a course and speed of east at one knot to satisfy the TDC. The computer balked. The TDC operator had to report an unstable solution.
“Okay, we’ll do this the traditional way,” Malachi said. “Down the radar mast. Point the boat at the last-known bearing of the nearest escort. Cease any reloading operations and open the outer doors forward.”
Once this was done he slowed to three knots to minimize the periscope wake. “Make ready tube number six. Up scope.”
It took thirty seconds before his eyes could pick out the dim shape of a DE, which was broadside to him. He couldn’t see the other one at all. There were small whitecaps everywhere, so he left the scope up. “Bearing—mark.”
“Bearing is three one zero.”
He scanned the range lines engraved on the scope’s optics, which basically gave him a stadimeter to work with in estimating the range. He could have used the radar, but two masts up was asking for a sharp-eyed lookout report. He worked the dials until he got the dim image exactly between two horizontal lines. “Range—mark.”
The exec read the dial so that Malachi could stay on the target. “Range is eighteen hundred yards.”
“We will fire manually. Enter a firing bearing of three one zero, speed low, depth ten feet.”
Cutting out the TDC, the operator connected with tube six and made the settings. “Tube six is ready, sir.”
“Fire six.”
The torpedo went out with a good thump. Malachi kept the scope up, pretty sure that the lessened wake would not be discernible in the growing chop. The escort suddenly bucked up in the middle as a large waterspout lifted above her masts. This was followed by a series of steam explosions as she collapsed back into the sea and broke in half. The sound reached them a second later. “Up radar mast—find the other guy.”
The mast went back up while Malachi swung his optical scope around, looking for a bow wave. There was nothing there. He went back to the escort. The forward half of the ship had capsized, and the escort’s stern was showing now, the tops of his rudders just becoming visible. Malachi realized they were still closing and ordered a turn away to due south.
“Conn, Sonar: screwbeats bearing zero one zero—high speed, classify as a destroyer type ship. Doppler is—wait.” There was a three second pause. “Doppler is down-Doppler. He’s running away.”
Running away or trying to make us think so, Malachi wondered. “Stay on him, Sonar, make sure he doesn’t circle back.”
“Sonar: aye, starting Doppler tracking.”
Malachi turned back to the escort in time to see the back end slip down into the depths, leaving a large cloud of steam and a boil of large bubbles in its place.
“Target sunk,” he announced. “A DE, I think. We’ll track the other one until we lose his screw noises. Then I want to surface in the area.”
It took thirty minutes before Sonar reported no more contact on the escort’s thrashing propellers. Doppler had remained down the entire time, indicating she was exiting the area. If she’d turned back, the Doppler would have gone to null and then up, indicating she was headed back in. Malachi ordered Sound to keep a close watch.
After they surfaced Malachi ordered the 20mm gun team to come up, and then set two lookouts and called for the exec to come to the bridge and to bring two rain slickers. Higgins came up two minutes later after securing the attack party in the conning tower and instructing Sonar to remain vigilant. He’d also ordered periodic single-sweep radar observations. That second destroyer was still on everybody’s minds. It wasn’t like the Japs to cut and run like that. Malachi told Control to stay on the batteries until he told them otherwise, but that the engine room could turn on main induction on low and suck some fresh air into the boat. He asked for a course back to where they thought the big ship had gone down.
By now there was a light rain falling, amplified by a lightly blowing spray. A steady breeze from the northeast was raising ever-bigger whitecaps. There was more lightning now, periodically turning night into bright, black-and-white day. Malachi ordered Control to institute a broad weave around the baseline course so as not to present a steady course and speed in case there was a Jap sub in the area.
“What are we looking for?” Higgins asked.
“I wanted you to see something,” Malachi replied.
A bolt of lightning crashed down about a mile away, leaving a boiling cloud of steam in its wake. “Now I can’t see a thing,” Higgins complained above the rumble of thunder.
“Were not there yet, XO.”
Ten minutes later they entered the area of probability, according to the plot. Even in the fresh breeze they could suddenly detect the bright stink of fuel oil in the air. The boat was sliding through the water in dead silence except for the occasional slap of a wave against the windward bow. A sudden burst of cloud-to-cloud lightning illuminated the sea for a mile around. Malachi heard the exec gasp at what he saw.
The boat was slicing through a sea of heads and faces, hundreds, possibly thousands of them, bobbing up and down between the whitecaps. Malachi could just barely hear faint cries of alarm from the men in the water. Some were in lifejackets, others clinging to each other in sodden lumps in the rising seaway. The boatswain asked if the captain wanted him to do anything; Malachi told him no. “The sea will take them, Boatswain mate. Save your ammo.”
“Wouldn’t have enough, anyways,” the boatswain replied. “Jesus!”
The boat passed through the sea of heads, some turning to look at them, others facedown in the water, kept afloat by lifejackets that were slowly absorbing water until they no longer floated. An occasional scream from out in the darkness told of sharks. It took them fifteen minutes to get through the scene, after which Malachi ordered Control to shift to main propulsion diesels. There were still some hours until daylight, and the batteries, as always, craved their amps.
Once down below Malachi and the exec went to the wardroom for coffee. The exec was still a bit shaken by the scene they’d just driven through.
“They’re not just toy boats in the periscope, are they,” Malachi said as they nursed their coffee. “That ship might have had as many as a whole Army division onboard, bound for one of the Palaus. They’ll all die unless the Japs get some ships out here, so I want to close the islands, which is their nearest base. If rescue ships come out, we’ll attack them if we can.”
Higgins shook his head slowly. “We sank three ships on my last boat. Not much to brag about. Never gave the crews a moment’s thought. You’ve put down a whole lot more than that. Does it ever get to you?”
“Tonight was exceptional in terms of killing enemy soldiers, but no, it does not get to me, ever. I read an intel report recently saying that they beheaded a hundred navy and Marine aviators held prisoner on Wake Island. That’s total war, XO. Tonight was total war as well. That’s how I feel about the Empire of Japan. If anything the killing is going to get a whole lot worse, which is why I wanted you to see that tonight. If you’re not as dedicated to that kind of thing as I am, tell me now.”
“Remember Pearl Harbor,” Higgins said. “I’m with you.”
“Good,” Malachi said. “Now we need to get a sinking report out.”
THIRTY
The following night they surfaced 30 miles west of the island of Peleliu, site of the Japanese airbase in the Palau archipelago. They’d reported sinking the troopship and one destroyer escort the night before. After surfacing they received a report from Pearl that the troopship had been carrying 2,900 Army troops and over a thousand tons of guns and ammunition. The ship had formerly bee
n a French ocean liner, displacing 18,500 tons fully loaded. The Japanese high command was declaring them all lost at sea because a storm had made rescue impossible.
Malachi got on the 1MC, the ship’s announcing system, and told the crew what they’d accomplished last night. “That’s three thousand Jap troops who won’t be there if the Marines ever have to take that island,” he concluded. “Good work. Really good work.”
The storm had passed by the time they came back up, leaving the same half moon and relatively calm seas. Malachi had them patrol a barrier line running roughly northeast-southwest, still using a random broad weave so that her aspect kept changing should there be any Jap subs prowling these waters. After dinner in the wardroom, Malachi took his customary station up on the bridge, with a pack of cigarettes and a mug of coffee to keep him company. Four lookouts clung to various protrusions up on the sail as they scanned their assigned quadrants.
Three thousand troops, he thought. Three thousand Japanese teenagers, dressed up in Army uniforms, crammed ten to a stateroom in the elderly liner, headed for a single godforsaken island in the middle of nowhere called Peleliu. All now littering the bottom of the sea, some three miles beneath them. In one night Firefish had squared the deal in terms of killing almost as many Japs as they had killed Americans at Pearl.
The war was headed into the winter months of its second year and yet the Marines and the Army were still battling Japs in the Solomons, albeit the northern Solomons now. Guadalcanal had been declared “secured.” But it was still only the submarine force that was directly battling the Empire’s forces all throughout the western Pacific, even off the shores of Japan itself. Malachi thought that the brass back in Pearl had finally figured out the correct strategy: remove the troops, the oil, the rice, the tankers, and the freighters and that fearsomely armed Imperial Japanese Navy would grind to a halt. He had read that the Japs ended up calling Guadalcanal Starvation Island. Good omen.
The sound-powered phone squeaked. He picked up the handset. “We have a special in radio central,” a voice announced.
“Be right down,” Malachi said. A special was the term for one of those super-secret messages sent out by the codebreakers. Only the captain could read them. The radioman who decoded them from the transmission code typed groups of letters into a machine. The machine then produced a thin ribbon of yellow tape containing the translation. The radioman never saw the tape, and Malachi would have to memorize the message and then feed the tape into a burn bag. He read the message and then went to his cabin, where he called the exec.
“We’ve been given a new station,” he told Higgins. “Apparently carrier air is going to hit Peleliu two days from now, and they want us to be the rescue submarine if any of our birds get shot down. The station is ten miles west-southwest of the Jap airfield.”
“Wow,” Higgins said. “Our carriers are gonna start attacking Jap island bases?”
“You mean instead of playing defense and getting torpedoed? Looks like it. That has to be a good sign, though.”
“Yes, sir, it surely is,” Higgins said. “I’ll go find the op-order for rescue submarine.”
Two days later they submerged at the designated position, which they’d determined by radar fixes on the island. According to the operations order, the pilots would be briefed as to where the boat would be in relation to the airfield. They’d be instructed to ditch as close to that point as possible if they got hit and couldn’t make it back to the bird farm. The sub would come up at night and go looking for rafts, which were equipped with small red-lens marker lights.
Malachi stayed at periscope depth until the attack got going in earnest, just after dawn, when the sound of bomb explosions rumbled across the water from the airfield. The entire island was soon obscured by towering columns of dust and black oil smoke as the invisible bombers dropped 500-pound bombs on the runways, hangars, and fuel storage tanks. He then took her down to 250 feet and put the rudder over five degrees, speed 3 knots. There were several islands in the Palau group, and he didn’t know if the Japs had dispersed some Kawanishi flying boats to outlying islands. The waters here were too clear to stay near the surface.
They came back up at 2000 that night, taking a quick radar fix to make sure they were near the designated point. They found their first customer after an hour’s searching, a tiny red light broad on the starboard bow. Still on the battery, Firefish slid silently alongside the startled airman and took him aboard. He told them there were probably three more rafts out there, based on radio traffic during the attack. They found two more within thirty minutes, but not the fourth, despite searching until 0500, when Malachi thought it prudent to submerge. He reported the three rescues and then took her back down to 250 feet. The pilots were all from the Enterprise and were in good shape. This was the first time a sub had been used to rescue downed airmen, and all three had been desperately glad to see their saviors.
At nightfall they came back up and continued searching. Just before midnight they came upon a group of four more rafts, containing three live pilots and one who had succumbed to his wounds. Malachi came down to the foredeck of the boat near the five-inch gun and conducted a quick burial at sea ceremony for the dead pilot, recovering only his dog tags and academy ring. The surviving men were badly dehydrated and sunburned, but the first three rescued pilots quickly took charge of their care with the help of the boat’s corpsman.
Then one of the lookouts called down to Malachi from the sail. “Radar contact, inbound,” he shouted.
The forecastle crew got rid of the rafts by cutting their sides open, and then cleared the decks. Malachi hustled back up to the bridge and called down to the conning tower.
“Looks like a destroyer-sized ship coming out of the harbor area,” the exec reported. “It might be coincidental, but he’s coming our way at twenty knots.”
“Is he pinging?”
“Negative,” the exec replied. “But he’s coming on. Range is six miles.”
“Battle stations torpedo,” Malachi said. Now, he thought—stay on the surface or submerge? The destroyer probably wasn’t coming out after them, so if they simply submerged and went deep he might just drive over top of them and keep on going, especially since he wasn’t pinging. He hit the dive alarm and dropped down into the conning tower.
“Contact is continuing to close, steady bearing, zero eight five, up-Doppler, no ping,” Sound announced as the boat tilted down.
“Make your depth two five zero, come to course zero eight five, open outer doors forward, make ready tubes one and two.”
The boat tilted even more as it changed course to the east to line up with the approaching destroyer. No pinging, Malachi thought. No ping, no contact on them, but he still wanted to present the slimmest aspect to the oncoming sonar, should it suddenly go hot. “We have a layer?” he asked
“Negative layer,” Sound replied. “Still up-Doppler. From the sound of his screws, he’s going too fast to hear anything.”
Man on a mission, Malachi thought. Attack him? Or let him go? If he was making 20, maybe even 25 knots, their chances of a hit were small.
As nerve-racking as it was, they simply crept forward toward the increasing propeller sounds, staying deep and slow. After ninety seconds, the thrashing screws passed right overhead and then diminished as the tin can headed west, still in a big hurry.
Once they could no longer hear the destroyer, Malachi ordered the outer doors closed and the boat to secure from battle stations torpedo. He then came back up to periscope depth.
“Radar sweep?” Higgins asked.
“No, let’s rely on sound. That guy came right at us, but going too fast for sonar work. There might be a silent partner up there. Let’s listen for a while, and then we’ll do a radar look before we surface.”
He waited for the boat to get back to normal sailing conditions. What had that been all about, he wondered. He looked at his watch: 0115. The battery charge had been cut short. Then he had a thought.
“XO,
I wonder if that guy was hauling out to sea to meet something important?”
“Well, with no pinging, he was hell-bent on going somewhere fast,” Higgins said. “Him showing up wasn’t about us.”
“I concur. Wait thirty minutes, then put the radar mast up and make sure there’s no one lurking up there. Then we’ll surface and head west. We’ll follow that guy, see what’s got him so excited.”
They surfaced just before 0200, the radar having seen nothing at all. Malachi ordered the boat west, down the last sound bearing of the destroyer, and came up to 15 knots, a compromise between saving fuel and actually getting somewhere. They had about four hours before dawn would force them back down to elude scouting Kawanishis. Their patrol area was northwest of where they were headed, but COs had lots of latitude when it came to pursuing a possibly valuable target.
Malachi went back up to the bridge and wedged himself between a pelorus and the bridgewing bulkhead, where he soon dozed off, lulled by the rumble of the diesels. He was rudely awakened by a sudden roar from the diesels as they spooled up to full power and an equally sudden heel to port as the boat changed course sixty degrees to the right. He headed for the conning tower and slid down the ladder just as he heard the exec down in Control order a second course change, thirty degrees more to the right, while calling for more speed. Malachi went down the ladder into Control, where the entire watch team seemed to be waiting for something.
“What’s happened?” he asked in as normal a voice as he could manage.
“Sound heard a single ping,” the exec reported. “Left standard rudder, steady three three zero.”
The boat was vibrating as the engines reached full power. Even a standard rudder turn put her in a ten-degree bank. A submarine. Heads-up ball, XO, he thought, as Firefish raced away from danger at 21 knots, changing course every two minutes to foil the enemy’s fire-control situation. One of the rescued aviators was hanging around in Control. Malachi heard him ask a watchstander what was going on.
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