Run Silent, Run Deep

by Edward L. Beach

  The moment, after our moments of tension, was one of anticlimax. We had fired our torpedoes, heard what we had assumed was an explosion of one of them, plus another peculiar low-order explosion, and had withstood our first depth- charging. Besides, we had heard the screw noises of several ships departing from the scene of the attack, among them at least one positively identified as a destroyer. I was eager also to see the results of our first encounter with the enemy-and so I allowed myself to be convinced.

  Control! Six-four feet! Bring her up flat!" I leaned over the control-room hatch, called the order down to Tom, whose head I could see just below.

  "Six-four feet, aye, aye!" Tom acknowledged, looking up.

  "Request more speed!"

  "Nothing doing, old man," I responded, squatting on my haunches to speak to him more easily. "Bring her up easy.

  We've plenty of time." If Jim's evaluation was correct, there was nothing to worry about up above; there would be no reason why we should not, come up with normal procedure, letting Tom have a bit more speed for better control. But more speed would mean more noise also, and more disturbance in the water. Some subconscious caution held me back, caused me to direct that the remaining torpedoes loaded forward be made ready for instant firing, though later examination of the events of the next few moments could furnish no clue as to why.

  Gently Walrus inclined gently upward. With no more than minimum speed, it would take her a long time to plane up to periscope depth. After several minutes had passed we had only covered half the distance, and I could feel the impatience around me. As we passed the hundred-foot-depth mark the angle of inclination decreased still more; Tom was obey- ing my dictum to "bring her up flat." Two more minutes passed. The ship was at seventy feet, with zero inclination.

  Having no speed for control submerged, Tom was afraid to come right up to sixty-four feet for fear that some unexpected variation in water density or temperature might cause us to broach.

  Slowly, Walrus swam up the few remaining feet. I now regretted not having authorized more speed, for at sixty-nine feet we were still totally blind, the periscopes still four feet short of reaching the surface. I nevertheless ordered one of our two scopes raised.

  When it was "two-blocked" all the way up, we were passing sixty-seven feet, and through it I could see, just over- head as though it were actually only a couple of feet above, the ripply surface of the ocean. Only two feet-as good as two hundred. As I waited, the wavy surface, which looked exactly as I had seen it many times, looking down from above, grew nearer, then farther, then nearer, as the Pacific swells passed over.

  "What's the bearing of the noise now?" I spoke without talking my eyes from the periscope.

  "It's shifted to the port bow, Captain!" Jim's voice.

  "Put me on it!" I felt someone's hands laid on mine, felt the pressure. The periscope was twisted some considerable distance to the left, and I followed docilely.

  Suddenly I was conscious of a flash of brilliant light; then it was gone, and the light through the periscope was darker than it had been before. In the split-second interval I had seen blue sky and clouds. I realized I had tamed the elevation control to full elevation, was looking nearly straight up, had missed the precious chance to garner a quick look on the port bow. Hastily I turned it down to the horizontal, determined not to miss the next chance.

  The periscope popped out again, for a longer interval, in the hollow of a long swell. It was possible to see only a few feet, and only for a moment at that, until the wave in front of me engulfed the periscope eye-piece. Then we were out again, in the trough of the next wave. I caught a glimpse of masts above the crest of the wave in the direction in which I was looking, but nothing more. They seemed fairly close, but the momentary impression was too fleeting to make much out about them.

  I waited another second or two, I would be able to see in a moment-the periscope popped out again: there was a wave in front of it, beyond which I could see the upper section of a mast. It might be the mast of our target at some little distance away, perhaps a thousand yards, or it might be the mast of another ship considerably closer. I tried to flip the periscope handle to the low-power position, found that it was already in low power.

  The wave in front of me receded, the periscope eye-piece — topping it easily, and the source of the masts came clearly- and suddenly-to view.

  It was a Japanese destroyer, broadside to us, and it was close, very close, nearly alongside in fact.

  I snapped the handle into the high-power position, felt my- self catapulted almost into his bridge. There were white-clad figures all about his topsides. A quick glimpse of activity, several arms pointed our way-we could not have been more than two hundred yards from him, a hustle on the bridge, someone battling the wheel, someone else doing something to an instrument which could have only been annunciators; There was no time to do anything. No time to do anything at all except try to get away. We were caught, caught fair!

  "FIRE!" I shouted. I banged the periscope handles up. My hair felt as though it were standing on end. The flesh crawled around my belly. "Down periscope! Take her down! Take her down fast!"

  "What is it? What's the matter?" shouted Jim. Involuntarily my voice had risen in pitch, and my fright must have been evident. So was Jim's. Keith, Rubinoffski, and Oregon, at the wheel, likewise turned their startled faces toward me.

  "Take her down! Take her down fast! All ahead emergency, Left full rudder!" The urgency in my voice brought instant obedience: Oregon heaved mightily on the steering wheel, whipped both annunciators all the way to the right, banged them three times against the stops. A whoosh of released air welled up from the control room. where Tom's action in flood- ing negative tank had probably been equally instinctive.

  Through it all I felt-sensed would be more accurate-three solid jerks in Walrus tough frame as three torpedoes went on their sudden way.

  We could practically feel the bow and stern planes bite into the water. The increased thrust of our screws heaved us forward and downward, but the movement of two thousand tons of steel is a slow, ponderous process.

  "What is it, Captain? For God's sake, tell us what's the matter!" Jim was nearly beside himself.

  "Destroyer! Waiting for us! Not over two hundred yards away! He'll be on us in seconds!"

  "Do you think they saw us?"

  "You're God dam right they saw us." The people on the Bridge were pointing at us!" I swore without even thinking about it or meaning to. "There were at least fifty men all over his topsides on special lookout watch, and they looked as though they all, every one of them, had a big pair of binoculars!"

  "Is he headed for us?"

  "Hell yes! We were so close I could even see them put the rudder over and ring up full speed!"

  Careless of how it might sound, I had almost been shout- ing. Now I recollected myself, turned to Quin. "Rig ship for depth charge! Rig ship for silent running!" The yeoman's eyes were huge as he repeated the orders over the telephone.

  They flickered to the conning-tower depth guage. It read sixty-five feet. It was hardly moving.

  The sounds of slamming of watertight doors and bulkhead ventilation valves came clearly into the conning tower. No need to be careful about noise right now! Our straining propel- lers were making more than enough anyway, and besides, our torpedoes would give us away for sure, draw an arrow to our position at the apex of their wakes. No more ventilation. The conning tower again grew stifling and humid, but no one noticed. I crossed back to the sonar gear, picked up the extra set of headphones.

  "Where is he?" O'Brien indicated the pointer in the sonar dial, nearly dead ahead, moving from port bow to starboard.

  Our rudder was still at full left, and Walrus was now swing- ing rapidly. Turning toward had been the instinctive thing to do, and also evidently the best maneuver in the emergency.

  We would let her turn a bit longer, then straighten out.

  "What's our depth?" I looked at Jim. "Passing eighty feet!"


  His face worked as he spoke, and he tapped the glass face of the gauge to make sure it was not stuck. It had only been about twenty seconds since we had started down, hardly time for Walrus to have gained much depth yet. We had achieved a small down angle, however, should begin to go deep-rapidly now.

  I put on the earphones, immediately became conscious of the high-speed screws of our enemy, and his rapid, steady pinging. Gone also, now, was any attempt to quietness or concealment on his part. The screws were becoming rapidly louder. The pangs were continuous, steady, practically with- out interval. He was well on our starboard bow, coming in at high speed, perhaps hoping to ram.

  "Rudder amidships!" Our compass card slowed its spin, steadied. This would increase our speed across the enemy track, tend to make him shoot his depth charges astern.

  Perhaps our torpedoes would prevent him from attacking immediately, possibly one might even, by great good fortune, hit him.

  Forlorn hope! The whole inside of the submarine was resounding with the enemy destroyer's propeller beats. The pings of his echo-ranging apparatus were fast, short, continu- ous, implacable. I could hear the echoes rap off our bull al- most as soon as transmitted, could even hear a double echo- the return bounce off him. We had reached ninety feet when the destroyer's roar attained an excruciating, violent crescendo of sound, and coherent thinking became frozen. He could not have been more than thirty feet away from where I was standing, dead overhead, roaring like an express train. My brain throbbed in the furious convulsion of noise. There was a screaming of tortured gears, the whine of high-speed turbines, the spitting, churning, tearing fury of his propellers, the blast of water-all combined into a frenzied, desperate, sudden drive to send us forever into the black depths of the sea.

  "Here we are!" I remember thinking. "Here comes the granddaddy of all depth-chargings!" Walrus moved bodily in the water as the destroyer passed overhead. We could feel his initial pressure wave, and we also knew, by the abrupt change in the pitch Of the noise, the exact instant he passed over. Just before he did so, the bearing from which the sound had been coming in widened until it encompassed the entire three hundred sixty degrees around us. Ninety-one feet the depth gauges said. It was time, it was time, here it comes!

  WHAM! A prolonged, crushing, catastrophic roar! The lights went out. I was thrown to the deck, grasped the periscope hoist wires with both hands. They were tingling, alive. The deck plates were rattling likewise. There was someone lying on the deck beneath me-as I felt for him, amid the convulsive shudders of Walrus great steel fabric, my feet were jerked out from under me and I was flung bodily on top of him. He felt wet, warm-wet, and he didn't move.

  Scrambling to my feet, I realized the motion of the ship had changed. We were on the surface. The ship still had a large angle down by the bow, but our rocking and pitching could only be the result of being on the surface in the wash of the vessel that had just passed overhead. No doubt our stern was well out, high in view-a beautiful target; I was still hold- ing to the periscope wires, and to my horror I saw light at the bottom of the periscope well Then the explanation occurred: the top of the periscope, though housed, was also out of water, and light naturally streamed out of the other end. To confirm it I reached for the other 'scope, looked down into the well, saw light there also.

  Still black as ink in the conning tower. On rig for depth charge the hatch between us and the control room had been dogged down, and there was no communication except by telephone, useless at the moment, of course. The whole interior of the submarine was a huge, sounding cavern, rever- berating and reflecting the uproar. If only we could see!

  "Turn on the emergency lights!" I shouted. I might as well have whispered. The emergency lights should have come on.

  Standard practice called for them to be turned on auto- matically by anyone, if the main lighting went out.

  No need to look at the depth gauge anyway. "All ahead emergency" I had already ordered emergency speed, sub- consciously wanted to reinforce the order after the attack.

  In the shattering uproar I bellowed as loud as I could. Quin might hear me, might be able to get through to the maneuvering room, or Oregon, at the other end of the conning tower, could ring for flank speed again three times. They were probably having a pretty bad time back aft, but "emergency ahead," under the circumstances existing, would cause Larto to open the main motor rheostats as far as they would go, put everything the battery could give into the propellers.

  The noise was subsiding a little. I had no knowledge of how many depth charges had gone off, perhaps a dozen all almost simultaneously, and there was no telling, yet, whether Walrus had survived. The conning tower, we knew, was still whole. With all hatches and ventilation valves shut tightly, there could he no telltale increase in air pressure as water came rushing into another compartment. Since our stern was on the surface, a hole there might give no indication at all, or merely a loss in what slightly elevated pressure Walrus' atmosphere might already have. We'd find out soon' enough as we drove her down.

  The destroyer's rush had carried him well past. I could hear his screws again-now on our port quarter. He had passed directly overhead. Our only hope' was that the depth charges had been set too deeply, that, although blown to the surface, we were not seriously damaged-but there was no time to think about damage already received. Four-inch shells would be whizzing our way within seconds. We had to get back under immediately!

  There was an emergency Light switch near the ladder to the bridge. I collected myself, gropingly reached for it, fum- bled a moment, turned it. Dim lights came on at either end of the conning tower.

  The conning tower looked as if a cyclone had struck it.

  Hugh Adams' chart table, shaken loose from its mountings, had fallen to the floor. Hugh himself lay still on the deck.

  Evidently he had been the one I had stumbled over. Keith was still at his station, frantically gripping the handles of the TDC and bracing himself with his foot on the comer of the angle solver. Jim was standing shakily beside him, while as a sheet, but apparently unhurt. But these were not the im- portant ones at the moment. Oregon was still at his steering wheel, and there seemed to be no damage in his locality.

  Quin was sitting on the deck holding his left arm- 'Mere was an ugly gash in it from which blood was dripping onto his trousers. He seemed otherwise in condition to be of assistance, however.

  "Quin!" I roared. "All ahead emergency!"

  Painfully the yeoman reached up with his uninjured arm, gave the order into the telephone mouthpiece. Fastened to the side of the conning tower beneath the firing panel was the hand telephone for routine communication throughout the ship. I reached for it, pressed the button. "Control!" The response was immediate.

  "Control, aye aye!" It was Tom Schultz himself an the other end, and I could remember the instant feeling of relief to discover that at least part of the ship was still functioning,

  "We're broached, Tom. Can you get her down?"

  "Trying, sir!"

  "Have you got your vents open?" Possibly some of the gases from the underwater explosions could have come up into our ballast tanks and now, having broached, we would be bound to have air in some of them.

  "Yes, sir " Tom replied again.

  "We're going ahead emergency speed. Drive her as deep as you can. Get on over to twenty degrees angle if you have to," I told him. The order was superfluous, since Tom knew very well the seriousness of our situation, and the ship had already attained. an angle of fifteen degrees down by the bow.

  The slanting deck was becoming difficult to stand on.

  There was nothing farther I could do and no reason to hold up the telephone from other use by talking myself. I listened, however, and within a few seconds was rewarded by hearing, the reports of the various compartments. All had taken some damage from the knocking about, but none, apparently, was in serious trouble except the after torpedo room. The voice from there said simply, "We have a fire back here."

  "Can you handle it
?" I snapped.

  "Yes, sir, we're handling it." I relaxed. We couldn't go to fire quarters. The men back aft had either to get the fire out by themselves or abandon the compartment. The main problem was getting Walrus into the safe haven of the deep depths.

  The motion of the ship felt different, less jerky. I looked at the depth gauge. We were under again! The deck tilted down even more; I had to put my left arm around a periscope. barrel to retain my balance. The bubble inclinometer, similar to a curved carpenter's level, mounted beneath the depth gauge, showed eighteen degrees inclination down by the bow, more than Walrus had ever experienced before, or I either, even counting in S-16 and her Polish crew. I hoped we could take it, mentally resolved to drill at steeper-than-usual angles if we ever got the chance.

  Quin was struggling to his feet, still clutching his, injured arm.

  "Test depth, Captain?" he said through strained, bloodless lips.

  This was from Tom. Our decision, made some time ago, was automatically to go to full-test submergence in situations like this. Tom would not have had to ask, unless he anticipated possibly exceeding it.

  Our hull, we knew, had a large safety factor of strength.

  This was, if there ever was to be, the time, we had to use some of. it. The answer I gave Quin brought a startled look to his-face before he relayed it.

  Down Walrus plunged, the depth-gauge needle spinning rapidly. The conning-tower gauge went only to one hundred fifty feet. When it reached one hundred forty I reached over and closed the valve in the waterline for fear of breaking the delicate mechanism. We could hear the rushing sound of water streaming past us. The power we were putting into our propellers was beginning to take effect.

  "Two hundred feet!" said Quin. Our down angle remained rock-steady.

  "Two hundred fifty feet!" The angle was still steady. Tom was really carrying out instructions. Finally he began to ease her off, until, without slackening speed, the ship became nearly level. Her whole frame now shook and trembled as she tore through the water. Something carried away topside and I heard a rattling, banging noise for a moment. Then it stopped.