Run Silent, Run Deep

by Edward L. Beach

  I could sense the revulsion of feeling taking possession of him, and felt the same within myself, as the boatloads and raftloads drifted past. Stricken faces stared at us or turned away to hide from us. The pathetic figures huddled together, not for warmth, for it was warm enough, but for fear of us.

  To them, probably only simple merchant seamen, we must have seemed malevolent, inscrutable, the perpetrators of all that was evil. It was a wonder, in fact, that there were so many of them. Their ship had sunk so rapidly that there could hardly have been time even to get topside after the explosion of the torpedo.

  Tom put it into words: "They must have been sitting in the boats and rafts waiting for us to attack that ship!"

  There could be no other answer. Furthermore, the lifeboats must have simply floated off as the decks went under, certainly they could not have used davits and lowering gear. The sinking of their consort, and the previous unsuccessful attack in which two dud torpedoes had already hit their ship, had no doubt provided ample incentive for all hands to get into the boats. Even so, those on the forecastle of the ship must have had a bad time of it, for any boats or rafts located there must have been hurled over a hundred feet into the water!

  It was, Jim estimated, about one hundred and fifty miles to the nearest island of the Palau group, Babelthuap. The kindest thing we could do for the survivors was to leave them alone and to depart the scene before some hothead in their group unlimbered a gun he might happen to have carried with him. We headed northward, doubled around to the southwest after losing sight of them.

  Palau is a most frustrating area to try to patrol with a single submarine. In the first place, there are two entrances to the main ship harbor of the archipelago, one on either side of the island chain, and keeping a watch on either one is a full- time job for one boat. If a ship is attacked near either entrance, or if presence of a submarine is known or suspected, it is a simple matter merely to use the other one until the scare dies away. Under the circumstances we felt as if the enemy retained the initiative.

  Certainly, our first two days in the area were not characteristic of the remainder. We went — for a week without sighting another ship. Then it was a huge, new tanker making high speed. We pulled out all the stops, ran our battery almost flat, never got within shooting distance. We tried patrolling on the surface out of sight of land, changing our locale radically whenever there appeared the possibility of our having been, detected by a plane. Days went by in which we slowly wandered about in an oily, flat sea. The oppressive heat of the sun beat down upon us until our bridge watchers, at least, gave the lie to the theory that all submariners looked pale and wan when they got back from patrol. But we saw no enemy ships.

  We had already decided to head back to close-in submerged patrolling around the entrances to Palau harbor, when finally a convoy showed up. Four ships, this time, and we sighted them shortly after daybreak on a calm, clear, hot day without a vestige of cloud, hint of rain, or shadow of a breeze.

  Two Chidori-class small destroyers or large submarine chasers, depending on how you wanted to look at them, furnished the escort group. We ran up a periscope, maintained a watch on the enemy ships through it, and ran on the surface at full power to get in front of them, so that we could submerge and lie in wait. They were zigzagging, which made it more difficult, and because of their high speed it took us all day. After we did dive, which was only an hour or so before sunset, the absolutely flat sea caused any kind of periscope exposure to take on the aspect of a severe risk of detection.

  And the two little Chidoris didn't make it easier, for in preparation for the inevitable depth-charging, turning off our ventilation shot the temperature within the sub to fantastic heights. One hundred thirty-seven degrees in the hot engine rooms and maneuvering room, someone reported.

  The approach was routine, without incident. We got inside the escorts, fired three torpedoes at each of the two leading ships, were swinging to bring our stern tubes to bear, when all hell broke loose. The harbinger was O'Brien. He turned a pale face to me right after the sixth torpedo was sent on its way: "High-speed screws, running down our port side!"

  I spun the periscope. Nothing. Putting it down, I grabbed for the extra earphones and heard it. No doubt about it; O'Brien was right. It sounded very much the same as one of our own torpedoes, the same high-pitched whine I had heard hundreds of times. It crossed our stern, came back up the starboard side, veered to the left as if to cross our bow. That was enough. My hair tingled as I thought of the secret magnetic exploder in the warheads of our torpedoes.

  No doubt that this was one of our fish, running awry, in circles. If it passed too close, or overhead…

  "Take her down, Tom! All- ahead emergency!" No time to wait to see the results of our other torpedoes. We'd be lucky to get out of this ourselves! Walrus clawed for the depths, the depth gauge slowly, ever so slowly, indicating safety gained.

  The screws approached again, from the port side again.

  Didn't seem to be running down toward the stern this time, might curve away before getting to us, though, O'Brien's face looked positively pasty as he manipulated his control handle.

  "Coming right at us!" he whispered to me.

  I nodded. It all depended if we could get deep enough in time. The screws became louder, still louder-and still on the same relative bearing. Probably the arc of the circle the misguided torpedo was making just happened to be such that it kept up with our increased speed.

  "Right full rudder!" I said. I had refrained from giving the order until now for fear that the slowing effect of the rudder might also slow our dive to the shelter of deeper depths.

  Maybe now it would be all right. The depth gauge showed eighty feet. Still wearing the sonar phones, with the horrible little propellers beating into my ears, I looked about me. For several seconds I had forgotten the remainder of the conning tower party. They stood in hypnotic attention, riveted upon me. In his hand Jim held the stop watch with which he had intended to time the torpedo runs to the targets… I could see the slender hand moving around the dial. It was almost straight up toward the winding stem, one minute since we had fired.

  Time, indeed, stood still. Every second was a heartbeat.

  I imagined, I could hear the ticking of the stop watch, an impossibility because of the earphones and the fact that I was listening to the hypnotizing rhythm of our own juggernaut come back to seek us out. The high whine came closer, louder, still closer-sweat standing out on the face. of O'Brien, told sweat. Salt taste in my mouth; I licked the edges- of my lips.

  They were dry and salty, too.

  WHRAAANNGGG! The explosion seemed to burst my eardrums!

  The conning tower danced before my eyes. I felt myself flung bodily against the sonar receiver. Walrus lurched madly, her hull resounding, her deck plates drumming beneath our feet. Startled eyes looked widely at me, and at the familiar instruments about them., Jim's mouth moved. I couldn't hear him. I ripped off the earphones, still couldn't hear. There was a roaring in my ears. I cupped my hand behind them.

  "What?" I said, or tried to say. My mouth made the motions, my vocal cords felt normal, though a bit dry, but I could hear nothing come out. I tried again. "What?" Then I realized I was deaf. O'Brien was holding his hands to his ears, rolling his head from side to side in helpless pain. He had forgotten to tune down his sonar receiver, and he and I had gotten the full force of the amplified explosion. No wonder I was deaf!

  Jim's lips moved again, but this time he was addressing Quin. The Yeoman spoke into his telephones. "All compartments report," his lips seemed to form.

  Before he could receive answers, three more explosions came in. "Wham!… Wham!"… a little wait, then "WHAM!" for a third time. These I could hear clearly, though they seemed not nearly so loud as the explosion just preceding.

  Three hits, they sounded like-ordinarily a cause for rejoicing, but hardly worth noticing for the moment. Quin was receiving his reports. My ears were recovering, for I heard his ow
n: "All compartments report no damage, sir!"

  We were still going deep, which it seemed appropriate to keep on doing until we arrived at deep submergence. Then we quieted everything down and waited for the depth charges.

  They came, too, but they couldn't compare in loudness with the near-hit of our own torpedo nor the workout from the Q-ship, and after several hours of evasion we slowly crept away.

  We had no torpedoes left forward, and received orders the next night, as a consequence, to return to Midway again.

  Our — time on station was nearly done anyway, but the orders to Midway were a big disappointment. It was unusual to send a ship there twice in succession. Many of the crew had had their hearts set on a trip south of the equator to Australia.

  10

  Our stay in Midway was no different from the previous one, but the island itself had undergone considerable change since the last time any of us had seen it. There was a big new pier constructed in the lagoon, and one of our great seagoing submarine tenders, the Sperry, was moored there to increase the refit capacity of the island base. Instead of one submarine, there were four in various stages of refit between patrols at the atoll, Walrus becoming the fifth.

  There seemed, to be at least twice as many men on the island as before, twice as many planes, and four times as much work being done. Midway did its best for us, receiving us with a brass band when we warped alongside the Sperry, dumping a load of mail on our decks, plus ice cream and a crate of fruit and we were carted off almost immediately to the old Pan-American Hotel, now known as the Gooneyville Lodge, to begin our two weeks' rest and recuperation. During the ensuing time we did our best to avoid boredom. We threw a ship's party, complete with huge steaks and all the trimmings, and we organized fishing parties, baseball games, and other diversions.

  Naturally it was not enough, and no one pretended it was.

  More and more our crew spent their free time down in the ship, watching her get ready for our next run, and more and more we speculated where it would be. The only thing which could be counted to keep most of us away from the ship, for a time at least, was the receipt of mail, which arrived on the average of three times a week from Pearl. I never ceased to wonder at the efficiency of the San Francisco post office, which somehow always knew where to send mail so that it would be waiting for us when we arrived, and kept it coming until we had left. Then, apparently, the mail would be allowed to accumulate somewhere, probably in Pearl Harbor, until our next port of call.

  Jim, as usual, received the lion's share of mail in our group, and somehow also seemed to be able to view it with greater detachment. For the rest of Walrus' crew, and for an of Midway, for that matter, arrival of the mail plane and the unavoidable, aggravating wait while the Midway mail clerks swiftly parceled out the. different bags, had assumed the, proportion of a ritual. The reception committee at the airfield, for instance, merely to see the mail plane arrive, grew so unwieldy that a notice over the signature of the Island Commander was issued, requesting the practice be terminated and promising utmost, dispatch in sorting and handling.

  And, with little else to occupy their spare time, our crew. became prolific letter writers. This added a burden to Hugh Dave, and Jerry, who were required to censor every piece of outgoing mail. After giving them a hand once or twice, which all the officers did when the pile grew excessively large, I could readily understand their often-repeated reassurance, to the crew that they did not remember what they had read.

  But I did carry away the impression that some of our letter writers were certainly unabashed, if not adept, at putting their thoughts and yearnings down on paper.

  ComSubPac's endorsement to our patrol report, when at last it came in, was of course of consuming interest to Jim, Keith, and me. We were credited with two ships sunk and two probables, which was what we had expected, but the comment of most importance was the one which simply stated, "The reports of torpedo failure during this patrol are important additions to the growing body of evidence in this regard, and to the remedy of which active steps are in hand."

  Two days later a bulky package labeled "Secret' arrived in the mail, addressed to "The Commanding Officer, USS Walrus." It was from ComSubPac and contained our Operation Order. We were to return to AREA SEVEN, the scene of our first patrol.

  And three days after that, a newly painted Walrus, now gray instead of black, refitted, repaired, and cleaned up, and her bridge even more cut down than before-pointed her lean prow once again to the western sky. She was no longer the brand-new submarine we had brought out from New London the previous year. The miles she had steamed and the battles she had fought had taken their toll on her appearance.

  Over a hundred depth charges had left their marks, both internally and externally, as well as the chance Mt by a Japanese shell. The changes brought about by time and use, the modifications required by ComSubPac, and our own realization of our needs to do the job, more plotting equipment, more bunks, more food stowage, a bigger crew, were equally marked.

  Walrus' bridge was now a low, streamlined structure, with a bare steel skeleton bracing the periscope supports. It looked a little strange compared with the sleek, rounded bridges and elongated conicalperiscope shears of the newer subs beginning to arrive from the States, but it was roomier, and did the job as efficiently. Around the bridge were welded several foundations for 50-caliber machine guns, and on its forward and after parts we now carried two double 20-millimeter gun mounts, with watertight stowage alongside for the four guns when not needed.

  On our main deck the torpedo reload equipment had been removed entirely. The large steel mast and boom originally stepped in the main deck forward had been demounted and left in Pearl. Our old three-inch antiaircraft gun which had been mounted aft of the bridge was gone. In its place, but mounted forward in the area of the torpedo loading mast, was a broadside-firing four-incher, exactly like the gun the old S-16 had carried and very likely lifted from one of her sisters.

  Down below, the interior of the ship looked somewhat different too. Much new equipment had been added, welded to the steel skin of the ship or bolted to the deck. The smooth cork lining the interior of the pressure hull was now pocked with spots where it had to be removed for welding and had been less attractively patched. New instruments had been installed: An automatic plotter, which required two men to keep pointers matched with our course and speed, and forced us to move Jerry Cohen's plotting position down into the control room; a gadget which measured the temperature of the sea at different depths; an improved SJ radar, using much more power, and producing longer detection ranges; and more air-conditioning, required not only for the increased heat out- put of our new gear but also for the increased crew we carried as a partial consequence.

  And as we got under way for the coast of Kyushu once more, changes again had been made in our crew. Fifteen men had to be left behind to fill the insatiable demands of new construction, and to provide continuity for the rotation program.

  Eighteen new hands all graduates of the submarine school but otherwise entirely new to submarine duty, took their places. The loss which affected the wardroom most was good old steady Tom Schultz, whose orders detaching him and ordering him to the submarine school as instructor had arrived in our first mail. Hugh Adams had moved into his shoes as Engineer, not without. some trepidation, and two new Ensigns had reported aboard.

  We held a special wake for Tom in Gooneyville Lodge, and he promised to look up our mothers, wives and relatives back; in the States. Not that any of the rest of us was married except Jim, who shook his head when Tom offered to carry any special trinket or message to Laura for him.

  The crew also tried hard to show Tom how well he was liked, presenting him with a gold wrist watch they purchased at the Ship's Service, and Tom, in his turn, insisted upon personally handling all our lines from the dock when we got under way.

  The changes left Keith, now a seasoned submariner and a full Lieutenant, the third officer in rank aboard, next after Jim." />
  Hugh was fourth, and Dave Freeman, his junior by only a few numbers, fifth, now serving as Keith's understudy as well as Communications Officer. Jerry Cohen, keeping his job as Plotting Officer during battle stations, became Hugh's assistant in the engineering department. Our two new Ensigns, who were named Patrick Donnelly and Cecil Throop, would, like Jerry during the previous patrol, be given general assignments under instruction.

  One disadvantage of this new setup, so far as I was concerned, was that I now had to share my room with someone, since Walrus was not fitted with the extra accommodations in the wardroom 'country" that some of the later submarines carried. Throop, who drew the unpopular assignment of sleeping in the bunk newly installed above mine, proved to be a very sound sleeper, and a very loud one. As we made our way west, I began to wonder how long I would be able to stand it when the irregular hours on, station began to take their toll. One thing which it was unnecessary to burden the others with, at the moment at any rate, was the following special entry in the Operation Order pamphlet, which I pulled out before handing the pamphlet over to Jim to read: Particular caution is enjoined with regard to an old destroyer of the Akikaze class operating out of the Bungo Suido. This vessel had been unusually successful in antisubmarine work, and prefers the astern position when escorting. You will under no circumstances seek combat with it except under conditions of special advantage.

  I read and reread the words. There must be some important reason behind them-and add to this the remembered conversation with Captain Blunt months before. Of specific information as to Bungo's activities I had heard very little, though there had been stories circulating about Bungo Pete and his abilities as a depth-charge launcher for some time. "He even seems to know the names of his victims," I remembered Captain Blunt saying.

  The fact that we had been warned against him was under- standable; the restriction not to attack him except under conditions of "special advantage" could only mean that we were to stay clear of him unless fate practically delivered him into our hands. But what were we to do if a convoy turned up with Bungo Pete as one of the escorts? For that matter, there was more than one Akikaze-class destroyer in the Jap Navy. How, then, to tell them apart? I studied her in the book of recognition photos until I could have recognized her, or one of her many sisters, through the periscope, from the bridge on a dark night, or anywhere else we might be likely to run into her. But if we ran into an Akikaze, it could be any one of fully thirty- four nearly identical tincans.