“We’re getting the drain pump lined up. How fast is the water coming in? Can we reach the drain pump suction?”
“Pretty fast. It’s up nearly to the lower generator flats, but so far I don’t think any has got into the main generators. Good thing we were able to take the angle off when we speeded up. We’ll get the bilge suction open, but the drain pump won’t be able to handle it. It’s coming in too fast. We’ll have to put a pressure on the compartment.”
“Not a hundred and fifty feet worth. We’ve got to reduce external pressure too. Tell off the engineers you’ll need down here. Send forward everybody not required here or in the compartments aft. You can start pressurizing whenever you’re ready, but let me know first, and come out yourself. A few pounds will be enough, and I’m going to need you back in conn.”
Suddenly it was clear what he had to do. From the look in Keith’s eyes he understood, and agreed. “That last salvo makes sixty-five depth charges he’s dropped on us,” Richardson said quietly. “He probably has at least that many more in his locker, and sonar conditions are phenomenal. He’ll figure to keep us down here either until our battery gives out or he gets one of those blockbusters right on target. It’s time to see if those five-inchers are as good as we think they are!”
There was a hissing of air through hidden pipes. Al Dugan had begun to put air into the aftermost ballast tank to counteract the growing weight of water in the after part of the boat. With a final word to Keith, Richardson started up the ladder. He had reached the upper level of the engineroom, had just motioned to the men watching through the viewing port of the watertight door, when a change in Eel communicated itself to him. Perhaps it was the lessening of the sensation of speed through the water. Perhaps it was a gradual squashing down aft. His sixth sense—a faculty developed by all submarine skippers—told him all. The main motors had stopped!
A telephone handset was nearby for the convenience of the engine throttlemen. He grabbed it. “This is the captain! What’s happened?”
It must be the maneuvering room which answered. “Ordered all stop, sir.” There was lethargy, acceptance, in the voice. To stop the screws meant sinking to the bottom. There could be only one possible result of such a move, and only a single reason could be the cause. Some catastrophe had taken place in the nerve center of the submarine!
“Conn! Are you still on the line?”
“Yessir, Captain.” Quin’s voice. It, too, carried a hidden message. “The commodore ordered all stop, sir.”
“Who ordered?”
“The commodore, sir!”
The watertight door had been undogged. The men were swinging it open. Rich slammed the phone in its place, jackknifed through the door, ran the length of the forward engineroom. Here they had not seen him coming because the door was behind an exhaust trunk and out of the line of sight. Several seconds were needed to get it open. In the crew’s dinette, however, someone had been listening surreptitiously on the phones. The watertight door was already being undogged as Richardson raced for it.
He was panting heavily when he reached the diving station. Al Dugan’s face was working. “As soon as you went aft, the commodore went back up the ladder and had the hatch shut. A minute ago he sent word you had been injured, and he was taking command and putting the ship on the bottom. He’s flipped, sir! You can tell by looking at him” The oval-shaped hatch to the conning tower was closed. Both dogs had been hammered home.
Consternation. A knot in the gut. Neither must be allowed to show. “All right, Al. I’ll take care of this. Is your air manifold still rigged to blow number seven tank?”
“Just through the after group. The forward group blow is as was.”
“Fine. Keep her balanced, and keep her off the bottom. Use safety tank if you have to.” There was grateful relief in Dugan’s acknowledgment. Rich could guess at the quandary he had been in.
“Sargent!” The auxiliaryman responded with alacrity. “Yessir!”
Richardson spoke slowly and distinctly, so that everyone in the control room would hear and understand. “Shift steering and annunciators from the conning tower to the control room!” Sargent jumped to the forward bulkhead, rapidly began to make the shift.
“Al, get a quartermaster out of the damage-repair gang and put him on the steering station. Report when he has steering control.” To the man wearing the telephone headset Rich said, “Inform all stations that I have the conn in the control room.”
“Blow safety!” suddenly called out Dugan. The diving officer raised his right hand, palm open. Lichtmann, appearing from nowhere in Sargent’s place, knocked the air valve open. “Secure!” Dugan clenched his fist. Lichtmann spun the handle shut.
“Steering and annuciators shifted to the control room, Captain!” Sargent was reporting.
“I have steering control, sir. Annunciators too.” The new helmsman was Sodermalm, a lithe young sailor with several patrols under his belt.
“All ahead full!” Richardson still spoke portentously. This was the test, the resolution of the most immediate emergency. Sodermalm clicked over the annunciators.
“Captain says all ahead full from the control room,” he heard the phoneman say into his mouthpiece. The electricians in the maneuvering room must have been waiting for the order, for the answering signals on the two instruments were instant and simultaneous. Richardson could feel Eel responding to the additional power. Grins of approbation from Dugan and the men in the control room.
There was still more to be done. “Conn, control,” he said to the man wearing the phones—it was Livingston, the young seaman who only yesterday had mistaken a bird for a plane—“What is the latest bearing of the enemy?”
Under the steady gaze of his skipper, Livingston was intent on redeeming his spurious warning. He carefully repeated the message, afterward treasured the fleeting smile of gratitude from his superior’s strained, stubbled face when he reported, “Two-three-seven, true, sir.”
The enemy was still dead astern. The total time elapsed since the most recent salvo of depth charges had been less than five minutes. There was still a little breathing space. This would be the moment to relieve some of the tension. If the new helmsman behaved true to form, he might be the means. “Sodermalm, you don’t look big enough to steer the ship in hand power. Get some others to help you, and see if you can ease the course right to zero-five-seven.”
“Ease right to zero-five-seven, aye aye. I can handle this better than those conning tower jockeys anytime. This is no sweat. Just tell me what you want and leave it to me, sir!” Sody, as Rich knew the crew called the irrepressible little Swede, was nothing if not a self-confident sailor. Smiles appeared on several faces. Rich also grinned inwardly, and then decided to let some of it show.
Now for the most difficult problem. Access to the sonar gear and Stafford’s expertise was imperative. The tincan would be getting ready for another run soon. “Livingston, tell conn to open the hatch. I’m coming up.” Control had been wrested from Blunt with ridiculous ease. It was important for morale that it be absolutely clear there had never been a threat to Richardson’s command of the submarine. He swung himself onto the rungs of the ladder. Quin would repeat the instruction from Livingston loudly enough for all in the conning tower to hear. Blunt would realize he had been bested, would give in as gracefully as he could.
The hatch dogs moved a trifle, but then they returned to the engaged position. The hatch remained closed. Livingston gave the clue. “Quin says the commodore is standing on the hatch!” But the words were no sooner out than the dogs precipitantly turned free. The hatch sprang open. He leaped up the ladder rungs.
A scuffle was going on. Blunt, Williams, and Lasche were struggling between the periscopes. Quin staring aghast. Scott—it must have been he who had kicked open the hatch—the same. Cornelli, still braced at his useless steering wheel, rigidly keeping his eyes front. Only Stafford, padded earphones covering half his face, seemed oblivious. “Stop!” roared Richardson. “Stop i
t! All three of you!” The three were breathing with tremendous heaves. Rich, too, had hardly recovered from his run from the after engineroom, and was panting again from his swift ascent to the conning tower.
The wolfpack commander was the first to speak. He was sputtering with rage, the querulous note in his voice never more evident. His eyes were unnaturally wide, staring. His whole face was loose. Even his words were loose, poorly pronounced. His breath came in great, fetid wheezes. “Richardson, I took command of this ship when you left your station! Somebody has to take care of things around here! I’m charging these two officers with assault on a superior in the performance of his duty, and I want them transferred as soon as we reach port!”
“He wouldn’t get off the hatch when you wanted to come up,” said Williams, “so Larry and I pulled him off. We knew you weren’t hurt. He made that up. Maybe he was thinking of Keith—is he all right? What about the flooding aft?”
Ignoring the questions, Richardson spoke rapidly. “We’ve got to surface. Get the gun crews ready!” He turned to Blunt. “Commodore,” he began, spacing his words but speaking gently, “you’re not yourself. Please go below. The pharmacist’s mate will report to you. . . .”
“No! You can’t make me! I’ve taken charge here!” Blunt’s voice trembled.
He would have said more, but Stafford interrupted. There was excitement in his tone, combined with dread. “I think she’s shifted to short scale and started a run! She’s dead aft in the baffles! Our screws are making so much noise I can’t tell for sure!”
Were Eel to turn to clear the sonar for better hearing, her partial broadside would return a far more definite echo than the Mikura could get by pinging up her wake, as she was at the moment forced to do. For some time Rich had been considering another idea, born of what he had read of German submarine tactics. “Control,” he called down the hatch, “Al, open the forward group vents. Get ready to blow a big bubble through forward group tanks!”
“Control, aye!” A moment later Dugan leaned his head back again. “Forward group vents are open. We’re ready to blow!”
“All stop,” ordered Richardson. Cornelli reached for his annunciator controls, but the order had been called down to the control room. Cornelli had forgotten he was disconnected. He dropped his hands, helplessly looked backward.
The follower pointers still functioned, however, and clicked over to “stop” just as Al Dugan called from below, “All stop, answered.”
“Blow forward group, Al. Full blow! Half a minute!” The noise of air blowing. A different sound in the water rushing past, because full of bubbles. Eel coasted through them as they rose from her open vents and broke up into millions of tiny, sonar-stopping granules of air. A long bubble streak would form on the surface as well, but in the rapidly growing darkness this might not immediately be noticed. When it was, the tincan skipper would very likely think he had delivered a lethal blow at last. Whatever else, for a time his sonar would never penetrate the double barrier of Eel’s wake, thrown directly into his receiver, and the cloud of diffused air immediately following. He would have to proceed through the entire mess before his sonar conditions would be back to normal, and might well assume, temporarily at least, that the air bubble marked the rupture of Eel’s pressure hull; that the now flooded submarine, dead at last, was lying on the bottom under it.
Rich was looking at his watch. Eel’s speed had only begun to drop. He ordered emergency speed a few seconds before the half-minute expired, and the needle on the pitometer log indicator again began to rise. It was hardly possible the enemy tincan would recognize the change through the reverberations in the water and the blanket of air now astern. Very deliberately, Rich put on the spare set of sonar earphones. In the depleted condition of her battery, Eel could not run long at full battery discharge, but a long run was not in his mind. Depth charges were; and after a lengthy silence, during which the roaring of water rushing past and the vibration of whatever it was that had been damaged topside seemed to grow ever louder, he suddenly relaxed.
Stafford was also grinning, for the first time that day. Through the earphones, dim in the distance and masked by the tumultuous wash of Eel’s thrashing screws, there could clearly be heard the thunder of many depth charges. The tincan was depth charging the air bubble! It would be long minutes before the enemy skipper realized he had not driven Eel to earth at last.
This would be the opportunity. Richardson had given Blunt no attention for several minutes, was on the point of forgetting him when he realized he was still in the conning tower. The wolfpack commander was still breathing hard, still slack-jawed, his eyes still glaring under the bunched, bushy brows. Obviously he was still confused, still antagonistic. He would be terribly in the way. It was not possible to stop the sharpness in Richardson’s voice. “Commodore, please! I asked you to go below! We’re going to have to do a battle surface!”
“No! You can’t make me!” The identical words as before. Unreal. Manic.
“Quin, pass the word for Yancy to come up here.” Richardson waited until the pharmacist’s mate appeared on the ladder. “Commodore, unless you go below with Yancy by yourself, we’ll have to have you carried down. I really mean it, sir!” Not until later did Richardson recall his next words, wrenched from the depths of his private grief. They were expressive of all that had happened between them, all Rich had tried to do for his onetime idol; symbolic, too, of the change in their relationship, and of the onslaught of time which casts one up and at the same moment must cast another down. “I’ve come to the end of my rope, Joe,” he said. It was the first time ever that he had used Blunt’s given name.
There was something juvenile, something pitifully childish, in the stubborn refusal, the retreat into the accustomed corner under the bridge hatch. But there was neither time nor any more emotion to waste.
Quin was trying to get Richardson’s attention. “Mr. Leone is on the phone. He says the engineroom is lined up to pump, and he’s beginning to pressurize the compartment. He says he’ll have to use a lot of air if we stay down.”
Once air pressure in the after engineroom became equal to the sea pressure at the depth, water would cease coming in. When air pressure exceeded sea pressure, water would begin flowing back through the same hole through which it had entered. This would be true, of course, only so long as the water level in the engineroom covered the hole; and anyone remaining in the compartment would be subjected to the same pressure, with consequent danger of the bends if prolonged. But there was no longer any need for that worry.
He picked up the handset. “Keith? . . . Go ahead. We’ll be coming up in a very few minutes, so hold it down to ten pounds’ pressure.”
It must be quite dark topside. Eel would slow down and come to periscope depth immediately. This would greatly reduce the necessary air pressure in the after engineroom. The bubble in number seven tank would expand as the ship rose nearer to the surface, giving additional buoyancy, but of course additional buoyancy would be needed as she slowed down. Exactly how much was the problem. As the lifting effect of the stern planes became less pronounced, the whole business of balancing weights and buoyancy submerged would become more ticklish. The risk of emitting another bubble, if the buoyancy aft became too great, would have to be accepted.
Richardson paced around the periscope in the darkened conning tower, becoming readjusted to the reduced light. He could hear the repeated orders to “blow” and “secure the air”—and once or twice a quickly telephoned order to the after torpedo room to “crack the vent,” then shut it tightly again—as Dugan fought to maintain submerged trim.
There were other noises too. The bustle of breaking out ammunition, the preparation of the gun crews, the setting up of the ammunition supply parties. At one point, Richardson got on the telephone to all compartments and quietly announced his instructions to the gun crews. The gun captains and the pointers and trainers of the two five-inch guns were summoned to the conning tower for specific instructions. Their first
move would be to check the bore-sight of their guns, for their telescopes might well have been damaged or knocked out of alignment. They could do this swiftly by sighting on the previously laid-out marks on deck forward and aft, using Buck Williams’ improvised bore-sight telescope jammed into the open breech. Then they were free to swing on the target, but they were not to open fire until ordered.
The six men, goggled and garbed in heavy clothing, listened gravely. This was very near to the situation for which they had trained and planned two months ago, and for which periodically, whenever they had the opportunity, they had checked out the guns. Their only chance to fire them since leaving Pearl had come briefly, some twelve hours previously, at the last troopship. Combined with awareness of the emergency, it was also clear there was a certain relish at the prospect of vengeance against their tormentor. The gun captains would wear telephones and would receive range settings from Buck Williams, who would be manning another set in the conning tower. Buck, in turn, would receive ranges from the radar and firing bearings from the bridge TBTs.
Final instructions were for Keith alone. “If anything happens to me on the bridge,” Richardson said, “do not dive under any circumstances. We’ll have to hope that water hasn’t gotten into number three and four generators—Johnny Cargill and Frank will be checking on that. The first thing to do is to damage this tincan so that he won’t be able to follow, or anyway, keep up with us.” It was characteristic of Keith that he should merely nod.
Time for all the preparations could not have taken ten minutes. The crew was working in desperate haste, well aware of the danger that the destroyer might come upon them before they were ready. In the dim visibility through the periscope, the tincan could barely be seen in the darkness. Eel’s high-speed run had gained considerable distance. Now the enemy was slowly and methodically moving up her wake. He had probably finally realized his mistake with the air bubble, but was still beset by confused echoes from his own recent depth charges and from the turbulent water left behind by the submarine’s propellers. Nevertheless, the sonar conditions would clear, and at the end of the disturbed water he must find the submarine.
Dust on the Sea Page 44