In the meantime I could feel S-16 tilting her nose down.
It was still only about twenty seconds since the diving alarm had been sounded, but we had only about the same number of seconds left.
"Leone," I snapped. "Get below and surface the boat."
Keith gave me a scared look and bolted below.
Undecided as to my next move, I stood there, feeling far from heroic, half standing on the ladder and hanging on to the hatch wheel with both hands. I looked it over carefully. The latch, the immediate cause of the jamming, was partly home under the rim of the hatch seat. Made of a piece of steel about a quarter of an inch in thickness, it offered only a relatively sharp edge to push or hammer on. Attached by a linkage to the latch, so that it would retract when the latch engaged, was a short bolt supposed to intersect the spokes of the hatch hand wheel when the hatch was fully open to keep the hand wheel from turning. The bolt was retracted, all right, as it should be, but the hand wheel still would not turn in either direction. Three of the four hatch dogs had slipped past the inside edge of the hatch seat, but one was clearly caught on top, jammed between the seat and the hatch itself. With one dog jammed one way and three the other, the hand wheel was effectively prevented from any movement whatsoever.
The only way to clear the jam was to push back the latch, open the hatch, reverse the hand wheel so as to take up the lost motion, retract the dogs, and haul it shut again. Standing on the second rung of the ladder to reach it, bracing myself and wrapping my left arm around the rail I pushed an the latch with all my might with my right hand. Nothing happened.
I tried hammering it with my clenched fist, bruising the fleshy part of the hand in the process. Still no luck, though my hand ached.
Suddenly the noise of air blowing stopped from the control room, though air still hissed out the open ring around the hatch. In a second I heard the noise of the main vents shut- ting and more air blowing, a different note, as high-pressure air whistled into the main ballast tanks. Keith had gotten through and surfacing procedures had been started.
But there could be no stopping the downward momentum of a thousand tons of steel. Suddenly I heard a gurgling sound.
A quick look through the nearest eye-port was rewarded with a splash of sudsy foam; then another and then suddenly there was green water and the daylight in the conning tower grew dimmer.
Air continued to hiss out above me, as the slightly increased pressure in the reservoir of S-16's hull equalized to atmosphere.
I could hear water climbing quickly up the watertight structure.
Obviously the boat would not stop before the open hatch went under. There was no telling, in fact, how far she might go down, and maybe the sudden inrush of tons of water into the ship would overbalance the slight amount of positive buoyancy we were gaining by the air-going into her tanks.
At this point I don't remember any further conscious thought about it. Once the hatch went under, water would rush into the control room, sweeping people away from their stations, shorting the electrical equipment, generally making a mess of things and possibly knocking out the bow and stern planes, the main motor control, and the high-pressure air manifold on which our safety now depended. If the control room were flooded, nothing could keep the ship from sinking to the bottom of Long Island Sound. Perhaps some of the crew would be able to shut watertight doors leading forward or aft, but men trapped in the control room would certainly be drowned, while those who managed to save themselves from that fate would be faced with the prospect of slow suffocation if for any reason the rescue bell or the Momsen lung device could no be used.
It is said that a drowning man sees his whole life flash before him. Perhaps my sensation at that moment was some- what the same. Certainly it could have taken me no more than a second to race through all these possibilities.
Water, which had been gurgling up the sides of the conning tower, now reached. the hatch-there, meeting the gush of air still streaming out, it blew idiotically backward, and only a few drops fell inside.
From my position on the ladder I could see into the control room through the still-open lower hatch. I leaned toward it and roared, "Shut the hatch!" just below it stood Tom Schultz, and I caught a glimpse of his twisted face as, with- out a word, he reached up, grabbed the hand wheel and tried to pull it down. It was awkward for him and the spring resisted movement. He had the hatch almost closed when it swung partly open again. I sprang off the ladder and landed on the top of the hatch, holding it shut with my weight while Tom spun the hand wheel between my feet from below, sealing it tight.
Instantly a deluge of cold sea water hit me in the back, knocking me to my hands and knees. I struggled to my feet in a veritable Niagara of angry ocean pouring into the conning tower. I still remember a moment of wonder at the tremendous amount of water that came in despite the fact that the hatch was actually ninety per cent closed. It rose rapidly in the tiny compartment, and I could feel the pressure on my ears as the air was compressed. Ultimately, of course, a condition of equilibrium would be reached, and the air would commence to bubble out through the hole at the top. Frantically I searched the overhead for some high protected corner where I might be able to find a few gulps of precious air when the compartment became entirely flooded.
S-16 now commenced to right herself, her bow slowly coming up. With the flooding confined to the conning tower, there was no doubt that she would get back to the surface all right. The question was whether I could manage to avoid drowning until someone was able to come out through an- other hatch and rescue me. With that weight of water in the conning tower there would be no hope of pushing open the lower hatch and draining it through there. Besides, with the difficulties they were facing below they might not even think of me for a few minutes.
I climbed up on the tiny chart desk, bumping my had against the overhead, but the water had reached my waist and was rising rapidly when it stopped coming in as though a hydrant had been shut off. I can remember the instantaneous relief. The ship was safe, and so, in a few moments, would I be.
It was several minutes in fact before anything else happened. I found out later that, unable to open the lower conning-tower hatch, Keith and Kohler had come up through the forward torpedo room, rushed over the slippery deck, and climbed up on the bridge. With a large open-end wrench which Keith had snatched up, they began battering at the latching mechanism from above. I shouted to them to stop for fear of breaking it, had them slide the wrench through the opening to me down below. Sloshing backward away from the hatch I measured the distance, swung gently and fair, and tapped the latch free on the first blow. The hatch instantly swung open under the combined heave of the two anxious men above.
After dogging the hatch properly from topside, the three of us made our way forward and below via the torpedo-room hatch. Jim was waiting at the foot of the ladder.
"You fool," he hissed at Keith. "Do you realize what you almost did?" His face was livid with emotion and his lips quivered with the fury of his voice. I could see Keith wilt.
"That will be all for you, Leone," Jim raged, "this will be your last day in submarines. You ought to be court-martialed!"
I was amazed at Jim's outburst. Kohler and three or four other members of the crew who happened to be in the for- ward torpedo room stared, their shocked surprise.
"Cut it out," I told Jim. "It wasn't that bad. It wasn't Keith's fault." Then I tried to relieve the tension a little. "So what if I did get a little soaking? I needed a bath anyway!"
The joke fell flat. I motioned Keith up ahead of me through the watertight door into the forward battery compartment and followed him, dripping a trail behind.
A difficult decision confronted me, and I had to make it immediately. Roy Savage, Carl Miller, and Stocker Kane might just possibly, — still qualify Jim, particularly if I made excuses for him and pressed his case. Captain Blunt would of course take their word for it. The question which weighted me, as I sloshed my way aft to change clothes, was the same on
e with which I had got Jim, and myself-into the present impasse.
Except that the last four days had been an eye-opener. knew, now, that I could never turn the S-16 over to Jim, at least not until he had amassed considerably more experience and steadiness under stress. And I also knew that the whole situation had really been my own fault. I might have been blind, might have temporarily been tempted, but I could never face myself if anything later happened to S-16 under Jim's command. Everything he had done these last several days, every thought he had had, every word he had said, clearly demonstrated his unreadiness for that type of added responsibility. And yet, there was no denying that he was a fine submariner, all-in-all an asset to the Navy, and that he would not be in this situation had I not, for my own advantage, put him in it.
No matter how I argued it, it all came back to the same thing. I had to choose between sacrificing the S-16 or Jim.
In either case, I was really the one to blame and there was not a thing in the world that anyone could do about that.
As our sorry little procession wound its way between the bunks in the forward end of the battery compartment toward the wardroom and Jim's and my stateroom, I went over and over the situation in my mind. There was only one thing to do, and it was up to me.
When we reached the curtain in the doorway I turned to Jim. "Come in a minute, will you, Jim?" I said. The others, sensing their dismissal, went on. Jim stepped with me into our little room, automatically reached for a cigarette. He avoided my eyes as he offered me one. I ignored it. This was going to be tough.
"Jim," I said, "I'm more sorry than I can possibly tell you.
I'll take over. I want you to start us back for New London.
I'll explain to the board."
Jim had just taken a deep drag. With his lungs full of Tobacco smoke he at first seemed not to hear, and then as it sank home he choked. "Why, you-you-" he gobbled for a moment, unable to speak. He threw the cigarette on the floor, stamped it furiously, opened and shut his mouth twice with- out a word. When he finally found his voice, his words were in direct contradiction of every naval tradition, everything he had learned, all the indoctrination the Navy had exposed him to. He spoke in a manner which no self-respecting person could forgive or forget, no commander of a United States man-of-war could condone. And yet I couldn't do any more to him after what I had already done. I had to take it, had to let him get away with it, had to swallow the sudden sick indignation.
"You God-dammed son-of-a-bitch," he said.
3
Laura Elwood entered my life at the tag end of a nerve-shattering day in mid-August, shortly after the S-16 arrived in New London from the Philadelphia Navy Yard. One of old Joe Blunt's maxims had always been that no officer of the Navy worth his salt ever needed a drink to settle his problems, — but this was one time that I did, and I didn't care who knew it. An hour before I had supervised the final operations in tying the boat up to her usual dock in the river, and as soon as I could get rid of a few essential items of paper- work I headed for our tiny shower. Jim, from the appearance of our stateroom, had preceded me; we passed each other, draped in towels, as I headed forward. He halted, made a tremendous pretense of clicking his bare heels together, and raised his right hand in a caricature of a Nazi salute.
"Heil, Fuhrer! I took a good look and there's not a scratch on me, so can I have permission to go ashore?"
Jim was obviously trying a little, but the absurdity of his salutation could not help but make me chuckle. "Sure," I said. "After today I think I'll do the same." He strutted down the passageway between the bunks, teetering from one side to another. When I got back he was already dressed and gone.
Along with several other boats, S-16 had gone out into Long Island Sound for the so-called "graduation approach" of a group of Ensign students then nearing the end of their, accelerated three months' course at the submarine school.
Five torpedoes had been loaded aboard, each one made ready by the Ensign who was to fire it. While he was doing so, the other four members of the party would take over the supporting assignments: Assistant Approach Officer, Banjo Officer, Diving Officer, and in nominal charge at the tubes. Our own crew, of course, would be standing by at the remaining stations necessary to operate the ship, and I, as skipper, held the responsibility of "Safety Officer."
Approximately fifty per cent of the glade the trainee would receive for the course depended upon the proper functioning of his torpedo, his conduct of the submerged approach leading up to firing it, and, most importantly, where that torpedo passed with relation to the target. It was a crucial test for each trainee and it was important to the S-16, too, since it was to be our first "shoot" for the school. Jim and Keith had labored most of the previous day and far into the night with our torpedo gang, checking our tubes and associated equipment.
As far as the first four fish were concerned, we need not have worried. Two of them passed under the target and the other two, though wide misses, were the results of poor approach technique. When our fifth and last approach began, however, it was late in the clay. Considerable time had been lost with both of the bad shots, since each had to be pursued and hauled aboard the converted motor launch acting as retriever before the approach following could begin. And it one could judge by the length of time required to locate them, Roy Savage in S-48, with whom we shared the target's services, must have had one or two bad ones himself.
Our target was the old four-stack destroyer Semmes, and her job was simple; merely run back and forth between two submarines five miles apart, and help chase the torpedoes at each end. Since Roy was senior, the odd-numbered runs were his, and, of course, he had chosen for his initial point the one nearer the entrance of the Thames River channel.
When the Semmes squared away for the tenth and last run, our fifth, S-48 was already well on her way back to port and every minute she ran for us carried her double that time directly away from her own comfortable dock in the sub- marine base. I think we all expected the target to crank up the maximum speed permitted and to make the run as short as she could. Everyone, that is, except the tensely anxious officer student waiting to shoot his torpedo.
His approach was doctrinaire; he looked through the periscope every three minutes regardless of when the target's zigs took place, and we ran first one way and then the other, and succeeded in remaining practically stationary near the spot at which we had originally dived. Even so, it looked as though he might attain a favorable firing position no matter what he did, for Semmes was coming right down the initial bearing line, zigzagging regularly an equal amount to either side. It would be difficult not to get in a shot, in fact, and this was doubtless what the skipper of the Semmes had in mind.
The school instructor, a Lieutenant named Hansen who had recently come from being Exec of the Barracuda in Coco Solo, looked my way and shrugged. He pointed with a grin to the sweat-streaming face of the toiling student, made as if to wipe off his own, looked at his wrist watch, shrugged again.
We were all anxious to get it over with, for it was hot in the control room. All of us were perspiring freely, moving about in a fetid atmosphere which reminded me of nothing so much as the fogged interior of the glass jar in which as a child I had once sealed a half-dozen inoffensive bugs.
The periscope rose out of its well reached the top of its travel, and stopped. Standing bolt upright before it, the Approach Officer reached for the handles, folded them down in to operating position, then gingerly applied his eye to the guard.
"Bearing-Mark," he said.
The acting Assistant Approach Officer red it for him, then turned back to fiddling with the Is-Was.
The Approach Officer jiggled the periscope back and forth with little taps with the heel of his left hand, his right hand cranking the range crank back and forth. "Range-Mark," he finally said.
"Two-four-double-oh!" read the yes-man, breaking away from the Is-Was and searching the range dial with his finger.
The Approach Officer was named Blockman
, and so far as I could tell the name suited him. Rivulets of sweat running down his face and into the open neck of his sodden uniform shirt, he put up the handles of the scope and turned away.
The yes-man fumbled for the pickle button hanging nearby on its wire, pressed it, started the periscope back into its well.
It had been up nearly a full minute.
Hansen and I exchanged glances. Nearly at the firing point, the supposed enemy hardly more than a mile way, the surface of the sea smooth and calm, — and the periscope up in full view for a minute! On the other side of the control room Jim winked as I looked at him.
"Angle on the bow is zero." The words cut across the compartment, perhaps from Blockman or his apparently equally stolid assistant. All three of them were now huddled with the Banjo operator in an oblivious group.
Even assuming a fairly large range error, there should be several minutes before he would be upon us. Fifteen knots equaled five hundred yards a minute. Divide that into the range for the time, — nearly five minutes. Nevertheless I had not made an observation myself for some while, and there was just enough of uncertainty in the air, something which did not quite fall easily into place as it should have, which impelled me to do so now.
"I'll take a look," I said. I gave the order to the yes-man: "Up periscope"
The scope whirred up. I stooped by force of habit, captured its handles as they came out of the well, folded them down-and as I did so a suddenly cold feeling gripped me in the middle of the belly. The right handle, the one governing the magnification power of the periscopes optical system, was in low power instead of high!
This meant that the range, instead of being twenty-four hundred yards at the last observation, had been roughly one fourth of that, six hundred yards. Some time had passed since, the Semmes was running right at us, and the range might have been inaccurate at that! I flipped the handle to high power, rose with my eye to the eye-piece. Lightning thoughts flooded into my brain.
Run Silent, Run Deep Page 6