Dust on the Sea

by Edward L. Beach

  “They have to come through here,” Blunt would say, banging his pipe on the chart in the approximate center of the area, scattering ashes and sometimes small glowing tobacco embers on it. Richardson would argue the Japanese had long ago learned that the shortest distance between two points at sea was not necessarily the straight line which crossed the center of a submarine patrol area.

  “Look,” he would say, “the only things we’ve seen since we’ve been here are wooden sampans. Maybe some of them are on antisub patrol, as they told us about at the briefing. The big cargo ships must be going up and down the coast of China close inshore. We’ve not seen any out here. They probably enter harbor at night, anchor in the mud flats off the Chinese coast, or travel inshore of some of these small islands. The chain of islands off Korea forms almost a protective barrier against submarines.”

  For four nights in a row Keith and Richardson had pored over the combined contact and patrol track chart which someone in ComSubPac headquarters had compiled from all submarine patrol reports for the area. The chart clearly showed that of all the submarines which had been assigned AREA TWELVE since the beginning of the war, most had patrolled in the center of the area. By far the majority of contacts, however, had been made on the periphery. The submarine which had turned in the best patrol to date had never been in the center of the Yellow Sea except to cross it en route from one side to the other.

  The arguments had no effect on Blunt. The wolfpack commander would not permit them to patrol surfaced during daylight, nor to shift their patrol areas closer inshore. Several times he pointed out that a submarine built for a test depth of four hundred feet, like Eel, was not able to realize her entire potential in the shallow water of the Yellow Sea. Even in the deepest part of the area it was impossible to achieve maximum submergence. Richardson decided not to bring up the fact that this was known before the Yellow Sea had been selected for their combined patrol area, and that unless ComSubPac was to abandon AREA TWELVE altogether, some submarine would have to patrol it.

  The fifth night, however, brought a change. Ensign Johnny Cargill had the coding watch. “It’s one for us,” he said simply, handing a decoded message to his superiors.

  The message said: SPECIAL TO BLUNT’S BRUISERS 151800Z X SIX SHIPS 34 DEGREES 10.1 MINUTES NORTH 127 DEGREES 30 MINUTES EAST X COURSE WEST X SPEED TEN 151016Z X

  “That’s three o’clock tomorrow morning our time,” said Leone.

  “How long will it take to get there?” demanded Richardson.

  Using a pair of dividers Keith picked off the distances. “One hundred twenty miles for us,” he announced. “About one hundred three miles for the Whitefish and one hundred forty or so for the Chicolar.”

  “It’s nearly twenty hundred now. We have seven hours. Barely time,” calculated Richardson. He seized a piece of paper and Keith’s thin wolfpack code book.

  “Chicolar and Whitefish will have got the message too, don’t you think?” said Keith.

  “They’re supposed to. . . . Johnny, tell the officer of the deck to shift the battery charge to one main engine and the auxiliary diesel, and go to full power on the other three engines on course zero-two-five. Tell him we’ll adjust the course later. Tell him also as soon as we can put that fourth main on propulsion, I want him to do it.” As he spoke, Richardson was busying himself with the code book, in a moment handed two separate pieces of paper, one in plain language, the other coded, to the wolfpack commander.

  Through the entire rapid exchange, he suddenly realized, Blunt had said not one word. Carefully Blunt read, perhaps for the third or fourth time, the message Rich had drafted: REFERENCE COMSUBPAC 151016Z X PURSUE AT MAXIMUM SPEED X JOE This was what they had trained for in Pearl Harbor. Exactly this situation had been foreseen, this message sent in drill. Time after time, under various different contingencies, they had rehearsed how they would respond to exactly the contingency now before them.

  As Blunt held the two papers in his hands, Rich could hear the air discharge signaling the starting of two more main engines. The gyrocompass repeater in the overhead of the wardroom began to spin. He could feel the different motion as Eel changed course and began to pick up speed. There had been two main engines on battery charge, with just a trickle of electricity going to the motors. The time fully to recharge the battery would unavoidably be longer when one of the charging mains was replaced by the auxiliary, but three main engines wide open on propulsion would drive Eel at nearly seventeen knots. Already he began to feel the drumming of the water along Eel’s sides. There was a low shriek of blowers from the control room area. The OOD had ordered the low pressure blowers put on to expel the remaining water in the ballast tanks. In anticipation of another night of slow cruising on station, they had not been entirely emptied.

  “We should send the message as soon as we can, Commodore,” said Rich urgently. “The other boats will be expecting orders.”

  Still Blunt said nothing. His face looked strained, the jowls on either side of his chin more prominent. Intuitive understanding struck Richardson. Despite all his years in submarines, Blunt had never been at sea in the war zone before. This was his first experience! He held authority, but he had never been tried. How many other wolfpacks must also have had this specific problem! Strange that no one had mentioned it. . . . Obviously, the flagship skipper must carry the load for his neophyte superior—this must be why Admiral Small had insisted Eel be Blunt’s flagship! But it was an intolerable burden; it was not fair. . . .

  Rich hesitated, his brow furrowed. He tore a third sheet off the pad, copied the encoded message on it. “I’ll be right back, Commodore,” he said, stepping swiftly out of the wardroom and walking aft.

  In a moment he was at the radio room, a small compartment just off the passageway in the after portion of the control room, “Here, Nelson,” he said, handing the message to the chief radioman, “get this out right away to the other boats. Commodore’s orders.”

  Back in the wardroom he picked up the dividers, a pencil, and a plotting protractor. “Here’s our position, sir,” he said. “And here’s this convoy. It’s just south of the island chain on the south coast of Korea. My guess is they’re going to round the southwestern tip of Korea and head north. Anyway, where they are right now—or will be at three this morning if this dope is correct—they can’t head north yet, and it would make no sense to go south. So I figure if we head for this spot, right here, we’ll be in good shape to pick them off. At their speed of ten knots we ought to be able to overtake them pretty easily even if they do pass through there a little ahead of us; and if we get there quickly enough, we’ll intercept them before they get to the point on the tail of Korea where they’ll probably change course and head up through the Maikotsu Suido. That’s why we have to go to full speed, sir.”

  For the first time Blunt spoke. “I can’t risk my submarines in the shallow water around those islands,” he said.

  “You won’t have to, Commodore. Look.” Rich pointed with the closed dividers. “These islands aren’t all that close together. The water around the outlying ones is as deep as it is anywhere in the Yellow Sea. If these ships are closer inshore than the message says, we can trail them from seaward until we find a spot where there’s enough room to attack.”

  Blunt stared at the chart, still said nothing. Richardson wondered how he could state the clincher argument without being too obvious. “Maybe they won’t be there at all,” he finally said, “and we’ll have to send a message to ComSubPac that his dope was no good.”

  Just possibly, Rich later concluded, Blunt realized he was really telling him their explanations of failure would also have to carry proof of adequate effort. He well remembered the sarcasm with which Blunt himself had in the past occasionally referred to certain submarines which, for one reason or another, seemed to have so much difficulty finding the enemy.

  The race for position ran on through the night and into the morning. Around midnight, the rate at which Eel’s two main storage batteries co
uld continue to accept a charge had diminished to such a degree that the charging rate could be carried on the auxiliary engine alone. Thenceforth, on four big ten-cylinder diesels, trailing four exhaust plumes behind her, she raced at full top speed for the designated spot on the chart.

  Everyone not on watch or actively engaged had been directed to try to get some sleep. Richardson lay down at about 11 o’clock and actually dozed off, to awaken, momentarily confused, a couple of hours later. Keith, he noted, turned in the moment he knew his skipper was on his feet. Blunt remained virtually in the same place he had been, drinking cup after cup of coffee and incessantly smoking his pipe in the wardroom.

  At about two in the morning, first carefully adjusting his red goggles to protect his night vision from the white lights, Richardson took one last tour through the ship. As he had expected, nearly everyone was already in the vicinity of his battle station, some dozing quietly, others intensely alert.

  Immediately abaft the control room, on the after side of the dividing watertight bulkhead, was the ship’s galley, with the operating mechanism for the main induction valve directly above the stove. Here he found the entire complement of ship’s cooks manufacturing a mountainous pile of sandwiches. “Just figured we might be needing ’em, Skipper,” said one.

  In the crew’s dining space adjoining the galley were the gun crews of both five-inch guns and the ammunition resupply team. Some of them, he saw, were already wearing red goggles. There was no one in the sleeping space abaft the dinette, but in the next compartment aft, the forward engineroom, there was a double watch of engineers, most of them standing around idly. Here and there a toolbox had been opened, its contents laid out for easy access.

  The after engineroom was the same. Both enginerooms were thundering with the full power of twenty huge diesel cylinders and twice that number of pistons in each. The compartments were also frigidly cold—windswept—as the frosty atmosphere of the Yellow Sea whistled in through the main induction outlet in the overhead of each, was sucked into the voracious engines, and spewed overboard through their exhausts. Beyond, in the electrical maneuvering room, steaming hot from the loaded electric motors and control systems, again there was a double complement of engineering personnel, in this case, electrician’s mates. And down below, through the open hatch leading into the cramped motor room, he could see two men watching the temperature gauges.

  The last compartment aft was the after torpedo room, with its four large bronze torpedo tube doors matching the six in the forward torpedo room. Counting the four torpedoes in the tubes and the six reloads—two more than the designed load—the after torpedo room had ten torpedoes compared to the forward torpedo room’s sixteen.

  With approval the skipper saw, already laid out as in the forward torpedo room, the special equipment which Keith and Buck had designed to make possible a torpedo reload even with the ship pitching and rolling on the surface.

  Still wearing the red goggles, Rich returned to the control room, passing forward through the broiling hot maneuvering room with its two huge motors beneath the deck, and the contrastingly cold engine rooms with their roaring diesel monsters and whirling electric generators on either side.

  In the crew’s dinette, one of the mess tables now held a large oval tray with a mound of sandwiches covered with a dampened cloth. Several were already being eaten, Rich noticed, and he filched one from under the cloth as he went by. In the galley two more loaded trays had been put aside for use later. They would be needed.

  The watertight door to the control room was closed to protect its darkened condition. Rich lifted the latch, stepped over the coaming, relatched it. Through the goggles he was instantly aware of the red lights glowing about, but at first could see very little else. In a moment, however, thanks to the protection given by his goggles, he was able to distinguish the familiar objects.

  Since the ship was on the surface, the diving station was secured. The bow planes were rigged in, the stern planes locked on zero. Al Dugan was loitering about on the diving station in desultory conversation with the battle stations bow and stern planesmen, who were sitting on the toolboxes which doubled as seats when they were operating the planes. Al gave a thumbs-up signal as Rich started up the ladder into the conning tower.

  It too was dimly lighted, had been “rigged for red” since surfacing. The roar of the engines came more clearly here through the open hatch in its forward starboard corner. Also could be heard the rush of the sea through which Eel was cleaving, the muttered monosyllabic words of the watch on the bridge deck above, the occasional response from the helmsmen or the quartermaster in the forward part of the conning tower.

  The speed indicator, mounted on the forward bulkhead just above the helmsmen’s head, stood at just a shade below twenty knots. Its needle indicator, in reflective paint, stood out sharply in the soft glow of the instrument lighting.

  Eel pitched softly, rolled gently, but there was a purposefulness to her motion. The very steel fabric of the submarine exuded a determination to go about her deadly business.

  In the after port corner of the conning tower, the Torpedo Data Computer—the TDC—purred softly, its instrument panel lights glowing. It had been turned on for hours, and the automatic inputs from ship’s own course and speed had been checked and rechecked. Buck Williams had long ago reported the TDC in readiness to receive the observed inputs of target course and range, plus the all-important item of exact target bearing from radar, sonar, the TBTs on the bridge, or the periscope. With this information it could help determine target speed and automatically make the necessary computations to set the correct gyro angles on the torpedoes. Then, when the firing key was pressed, the selected torpedoes would be sent on their deadly mission aimed with the most accurate information the human mind and the mechanical computer together could devise.

  On the starboard side of the conning tower, opposite the TDC and a little forward of it, was the radar control console, glowing with suppressed green, orange and red lights. Faint flashes shone through crevices in the light shrouding covering it. A figure stood bent over the console, his face pressed into a conical rubber hood shaped to fit a man’s forehead and the bridge of his nose. The man, his two hands on the face of the instrument, fingering its dials, was relaxed but simultaneously all attention. In the darkness above the bridge, at the top of the periscope shears, the rotating electronic antenna was searching the area, probing the night, bringing in the information down to this vitally important instrument.

  Rich recognized the slight figure peering into the radar receiver as he stood beside him. “Quin,” he said, putting his hand on the yeoman’s shoulder, “how is the watch going? See anything yet?”

  “No, sir,” said Quin, keeping his face against the hood. “I’ve been up here since midnight, and all I’ve got is Quelpart Island, off on our starboard beam about forty miles away. Also, there’s radar sweeps coming in on our starboard and port quarter.”

  “Our friends, right?” said Rich.

  “Yessir. They’ve got rotating radars just like ours, and they’re on the same frequency. I can see them sweep across, so I figure it must be them.”

  “Let me see, Quin.”

  Quin stood up, stretched gratefully. Rich pulled the red goggles from his eyes, let them hang on their elastic thong around his neck, leaned into the hood. He was looking at a large circular dial, perhaps twelve inches in diameter, from the center of which a white shaft of light the thickness of a pencil line rotated ceaselessly in a clockwise direction. Faint concentric circles—the range markers—were visible as the moving pencil line illuminated them in passing.

  At the 2 o’clock position, out near the periphery of the dial, the jagged outline of land appeared clearly every time the rotating wand passed it, slowly faded as the wand continued around the circle, was regenerated when it passed over it again. Rich watched as the radiant wand made several passes, noticed when from slightly below the 5 o’clock position there appeared the faint evidence of anothe
r wand, also sweeping. When it intersected Eel’s wand, a series of dashes was produced. The 8 o’clock position had a similar, fainter wand rotating from it which could occasionally be seen.

  “That’s Chicolar over on our starboard quarter and Whitefish on our port quarter, Quin,” said Rich. “That’s where they should be. It looks as though we’re out ahead of both of them.”

  “The one to port seems to be dropping behind,” volunteered Quin. “But the one to starboard—it’s been there all the time I’ve been up here.”

  Theoretically, Whitefish should be a shade faster than either Eel or Chicolar, or so Whitey Everett had argued. Perhaps her battery had been more depleted and he had not yet been able to put all four main engines on propulsion.

  Richardson mentally projected himself out into the space covered by his moving radar beam. To starboard, silent and massive, the bulk of Quelpart Island, a mountain rising out of the water, divided the Yellow Sea into two parts. The ships he sought were coming toward him north of the island. Ahead, not yet near enough to be picked up on the radar, the rocky coast of Korea formed a corner projecting into the sea, its long side extending nearly due north, the short side stretching eastward to create a funnel through which the convoy passing to the north of Quelpart must come. Strewn about the Korean coast, extending northward and eastward, many small islands, rocky and inhospitable, stood like protective sentinels guarding the mainland. Soon one or more of them would become a jagged blob on the radar. Eel, scenting game, was racing toward them. In a little while a group of tiny symmetrical pips would appear among the jagged blobs. They would be arranged in some man-designed, coherent way, and they would move, whereas the islets would only grow nearer. Then would the prey be flushed, and the wolf of the sea gather her pack together. They had already been called to follow. They would pursue it, fall upon it like the ravening wolves they were, rend it to pieces. Man would eat man. It was as though Richardson stood omnipotent in the heavens, searching the sea below and seeing both the past and the future.