Splinter on the Tide

by Phillip Parotti

  Immediately, as everyone took cover to avoid being struck, a bosun on the oiler swung the lead-weighted bolo and then heaved it over. As soon as it landed on the chaser’s deck, Samarango and his deck crew seized it and began to pull the messenger across. Thereafter, the lines came over without a hitch, Samarango seeing to their hookup with the efficiency of a thoroughgoing professional while on the bridge, Solly and Hamp watched Ash con the ship so as to keep her in a steady position alongside. The fuel and water lines then slid down the cable on which they rode over from the oiler, the flexible tackle that controlled them on the oiler giving and taking, releasing and retracting tension so as to conform to the minimal rolling and pitching of the two ships. As Ash looked back and forth between the oiler and his own deck where the connections were being made, he saw to his satisfaction that Chief Stobb had stepped forward and secured the correct hoses. A word to the oiler over the sound-powered phones started the big ship pumping, and once that evolution began, Ash turned the con over to Solly for five minutes’ practice and then to Hamp. With their tanks topped off, the connections were broken, the hoses retrieved, the lines sent back, and the final pelican hook tripped so that the connecting cable snapped back through the air to the oiler’s side. Chaser 3—topped off, fueled, and free—put on turns and broke away, proceeding up through the convoy to rejoin the screen.

  “Well done, all hands,” Ash announced by means of his megaphone. He then reset the normal watch sections. When Samarango came up for the afternoon watch as OOD, Ash waited until the watch had been relieved and settled into normalcy, and then moved up beside his bosun and started a private conversation with the man.

  “When do you take your exam for Chief?” Ash asked.

  “In January,” Samarango replied.

  “I have no doubt that you’ll pass it,” Ash said, “and I’ll see to your promotion as soon as the Navy will allow it. But there’s this as well. You’ve been doing the job of an officer up here since we first started out, and I’d be more than pleased to recommend you for Officer’s Candidate School if you’d like to give it a try.”

  Samarango hesitated. “I don’t have the education, Cap’n. I think they want at least two years of college, an’ I ain’t even got that.”

  “What they want right now,” Ash said, “are experienced line officers. You’ve got the experience they’re looking for, and I think they’re making provisions for people like yourself to do the college after the war—if you intend to stay in, that is. I’d hate like hell to lose you, but North Africa or no North Africa, this is going to be a long war, and OCS would be a good career move. Give it some thought. No rush. And when you make a decision, come and see me.”

  “Thank you, Cap’n,” the man said. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Do,” Ash said. “I think you’ve got the right stuff for it, and I think it would open some doors for you.”

  Things went well for the remainder of that afternoon until, during the first dog watch, a 5,000-ton freighter loaded with foodstuffs hauled out of the convoy and stopped dead in the water owing to a breakdown. Seconds later, by means of flashing light, the skipper of the DE signaled Ash to detach and guard the freighter while she made repairs. Hamp, having the deck, pulled away from the screen immediately, reversed course, crossed behind the convoy, and began to circle the freighter with the radar rotating and the sonar pinging to provide the big ship the best protection he could give her.

  “Pisser, this,” Hamp said, as Ash came to the bridge to join him.

  “Sitting ducks, the both of us,” Ash said.

  20

  Whatever troubled the big ship turned out to be something that kept her stationary for more than four hours, so that when the two ships finally got underway around 2100 that night, Ash estimated that the convoy might be as far as 40 miles ahead of them. The captain of the freighter, an American out of Baltimore, seemed as anxious to rejoin the convoy as Ash, so when he told Ash that he thought he could make 16 knots, the two of them, zig-zagging only mildly, took off lickety-split to catch up.

  Ash remained on the bridge until around 0100 that morning, but with both sonar and radar operating effectively in relatively calm seas, he once more slung his hammock in the chart house and turned in, leaving Hamp on watch, confident that Hamp would call him if anything turned up. Ash reasoned that by making up about 4 nautical miles on the convoy for each hour they were underway, they would rejoin sometime late the following morning.

  Ash managed to sleep through the mid-watch and for about an hour into the early morning 0400-0800, but at 0515, Solly called into the chart room, woke him firmly, and summoned him to the bridge.

  “Radar’s picked up something funny,” Solly said. “I’ve got Moroni up here on the scope, and I think you’d better have a look. Might not be anything, but then again …”

  Ash went straight to the radar.

  “Where’s the convoy?” he said.

  “Still out of range,” Moroni replied. “I’m guessin’ they mus’ be up there, 20 miles or more.”

  “What have you got then?” Ash said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and trying to concentrate on the radar.

  “There,” Moroni said, pointing to a spot on the scope. “It comes and goes, Cap’n. ’Bout 12,000 yards. See, there it is again.”

  Ash looked. Twice, the sweep on the scope went around, turning up nothing, and then, on its third circuit, Ash saw a blip, a small one—a blip almost so insignificant that he might have questioned its existence.

  “When did you pick this up?” Ash asked.

  “Krupp picked it up first, Sir, and that’s when he called me up here. That was ’bout 15 minutes ago. We wasn’t seein’ it much at first. Now, it’s showin’ up more.”

  Ash studied the scope.

  “Anything on sonar?” Ash said.

  “Nothing,” Solly said. “I just got Gomez up. Pierre’s on watch in there at the moment.”

  “Pierre knows his stuff well enough,” Ash said, “but you did the right thing. Get ‘em up, Solly. Sound General Quarters. I don’t know what we’ve got up there, but if that’s a U-boat stalking the convoy, I want to be ready. And get Teague up here; I want to talk to him as soon as he’s up.”

  Five minutes later, following a flurry of running legs and flashing elbows, Chaser 3’s battle stations were manned and ready. In the meantime, Ash had taken the ship up to 18 knots, Chief Stobb promising that he would give Ash everything the plant had while assuring him that both engines were running like well-tuned clocks. By that time, Gomez was on the scope in sonar and reporting nothing, and that’s when Ash told him to shift his mode from active to passive.

  “If this radar contact turns out to be a U-boat,” Ash told Gomez, “I don’t want him to hear us pinging on his listening device; I’m guessing he’ll be in passive and listening for the convoy’s screw beats up ahead of him. If we can catch him on the surface and get up close enough to shoot at him, I’ll want you to switch back on the minute we open fire. Got that?”

  “Yes, Sir,” Gomez called back. “Soon as we fire.”

  “Right,” Ash said. “And in the meantime, you listen for screw beats and let me know if you pick up any.”

  Then Ash turned to Teague. “All right Gunner,” he said. “That shot at a U-boat that we’ve wanted … well, we might be about to get it. No nonsense now, no wishful thinking. How close do I have to get you before, given these seas, you think you can hit it? We’ll be coming at it from behind, and whether this thing will have a 40mm back there or not, I don’t know. If it does and we can see it, go for the gun first, and if you get in a good round, I’m guessing that it will hit the conning tower as well. If the damn thing turns and tries to shoot it out with us, go for the 4-inch forward of the conning tower. That’s the worst danger we face. My guess is that she’ll submerge pretty quickly as soon as we begin shooting at her. My hope is that you’ll have time to get off three or four rounds and do her some damage before she goes down. So, what’s your best range
for opening fire?”

  Teague looked at the seas, what he could see of them in the dark, and then at Ash.

  “If you can get me in to 8,000 yards, I think I can hit her, Captain.”

  “Then that’s what we’ll try for,” Ash said. “Check your rounds, and wipe ‘em down. Don’t want any dirt or salt fouling things up in the breech.”

  “Right,” Teague said. “Loaders are doing it now.”

  “And if I turn broadside to ‘em,” Ash said, “order the Oerlikons to open up. They’ll be out of range, but it might confuse the krauts and make them think we’re bigger than we are.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Teague said.

  “Radar,” Ash called, “give me a range.”

  “Ten thousand,” Moroni called back, “and closing. Firmer contact, each sweep.”

  “Polaski,” Ash called down to radio, “coded message to the DE: Possible U-boat on surface astern of convoy. Estimate bearing from convoy guide, 310, range 18,000 yards. Closing for attack. Get that straight off, and let me know as soon as the DE acknowledges.”

  Along the eastern horizon, Ash could see the first morning stars and knew that dawn was imminent. Soon, if not already, the U-boat would be putting on turns of her own, moving up fast on the surface, seeking to attack the convoy from behind as soon as she had enough of a sun to see precisely what she was attacking in order to calculate her torpedo solutions.

  “Chief,” Ash called down to the engine room. “Can you give me any more out of them?”

  “Maybe another knot, Cap’n, if we go balls to the wall.”

  “Do it,” Ash called back. “This is the time for it.”

  “Load and stand by,” Ash called down to Teague.

  Slowly, too slowly for Ash, a gray light began to creep across the horizon, the dark night fading away gradually to a pre-dawn haze. On the bridge, Ash and the lookouts strained their eyes to the limit, scanning ahead, searching for the contact.

  “Good solid contact, 8,300 yards,” Moroni shouted up.

  Still they couldn’t see it. Then, suddenly, they did—a raised U-boat’s conning tower, greenish gray against the haze, blending with it but steadily emerging, dead ahead of them on what was obviously the same course that Chaser 3 had been steering. Ash could not see a stern gun, but given the distance, that didn’t mean that the U-boat didn’t have one.

  “She’s dead ahead,” Ash shouted down to his gunner. “I can’t see a stern gun, but we’re down to 8,000, so as soon as you’ve got her in sight, you can open fire at will.”

  It wasn’t what Ash had expected. Rather than leaping with excitement, everyone had gone instantly silent, still, almost cold with a freezing intensity that Ash could never have foreseen. As more seconds ticked by, the atmosphere only hardened.

  “Sonar, stand by,” Ash called down through the voice tube.

  “Got her!” Teague sang out, quickly making an adjustment to the gun’s elevation. Half a second later, without waiting for further orders, Teague pressed the firing key.

  Instantly, Chaser 3’s 3”/23 slammed out a round, a wave of smoke and cordite fumes sweeping back over the bridge even as Ash and the lookouts searched ahead to spot the fall of shot. Teague broke the breech to eject the spent casing, while the loader stepped forward to ram home another round. And then Ash saw the splash.

  “Range perfect. Train right!” he called down, but Teague had seen the same splash and already adjusted. The adjustment had been spot on because, with what Ash instantly recognized as miraculous shooting, the second round exploded against the U-boat’s conning tower, blowing something or someone, Ash thought, instantly over the side.

  “Geez! Did you see that!” a lookout sang out. “We blew one of them bastards overboard! Holy Christ, Almighty!”

  “Quiet on the bridge!” Ash barked as the sound of their third round going out drowned his command.

  Teague’s third round missed entirely, going long, but by that time the U-boat was already submerging, going down so swiftly that Teague’s last round, another dead shot, caught only the upper lip of the conning tower just as the sub was going under, exploding a shower of spray and tearing away what Ash imagined as pieces of inconsequential steel as the boat disappeared beneath the waves.

  “Sonar contact, bearing 125, range 6,500!” Gomez shouted from below.

  “Stay on it,” Ash called back. “Ready depth charges?”

  Hamp reported the racks and K-guns ready as Ash tore ahead for his attack.

  “Radar contact,” Moroni reported, “bearing 130, range 13,000 yards.”

  That would be one of the escorts, coming back to assist, Ash imagined, thinking ahead to a two-ship search.

  “Sonar contact, bearing 105, range 5,800 yards,” Gomez called up. “He’s turning tight, Captain. Very tight.”

  And suddenly, Ash knew why.

  “Watch for a periscope,” Ash shouted to the lookouts. “Teague, you see a periscope in the water, plaster it with frag, and keep pouring it out until I tell you to stop. That son-of-a-bitch is going to try to torpedo us!”

  The increasing light helped. The lookouts picked up the periscope as soon as it broke the surface, the sunlight glistening off its forward lens, and Teague instantly began throwing out one round after another of fragmentation ammunition, the kinds of rounds usually used for air defense. It didn’t matter whether he hit the periscope or not as long as he kept the sea boiling with a constant upheaval around it, making it hard or impossible for the U-boat’s commander to see the chaser and calculate his shot. Nevertheless, the German fired a spread of two torpedoes, and Ash—alerted to their screw beats by sonar and with the aid of a hard rudder to starboard—avoided both. Then, with the sub once more submerged and going deep, Ash turned, ran for where he imagined the sub’s bow to be pointed, and launched his attack, rolling off eight charges set for between 100 and 150 feet. Almost immediately, he believed that he had achieved a success when Gomez reported hearing an underwater explosion and what sounded to him like the U-boat’s hull cracking under pressure from the exploding depth charges. Suddenly all contact was lost and they heard nothing, so that when the DE which had come back at high speed arrived, the two ships could find nothing to attack and began to conduct a box search.

  Thirty minutes later, while the freighter Ash had been guarding proceeded on its way to rejoin the convoy, on the north side of the box, about where Ash assumed that Teague had first struck the U-boat, the DE picked up the mangled body of an Oberleutnant in Hitler’s Kriegsmarine, the man apparently blown overboard by the blast. An hour’s search turned up nothing else—not a single bit of debris, not a spot of oil, not even a torn bit of clothing—to mark the result of Ash’s attack, so with the sub disappeared and no sonar contact to prosecute, the DE signaled Ash by flashing light to break off the search, join him immediately, and return to the convoy.

  “You think he went deep?” Solly asked when he came up to take the watch. “No,” Ash said. “I think we spotted a U-boat and sank the same. I don’t think this one got away, Solly, but we don’t have a shred of evidence to prove it and never will. If they credit us with so much as a possible, I’m guessing that we’ll have to rest content.”

  “Hard life if you don’t weaken?”

  “No question about it,” Ash said.

  Two nights later, the convoy made San Juan, and against all of Ash’s expectations, Chaser 3 went in and tied up to a pier at the foot of Old San Juan within sight of Moro Castle.

  “How long are we here for?” Hamp asked.

  “COMDESLANT’s giving us two days,” Ash said. “Solly, split the crew. One section on liberty tonight; the other goes over tomorrow. Old San Juan’s supposed to be good liberty, but give them your speech before they go. I don’t want any of them raising a ruckus, and with regard to this sub we think we’ve just sunk, tell them to keep it under their hats. No crowing about it. Loose lips and all that merely cause trouble. But give Teague and the gun crew liberty on both nights. It isn’t much of a reward,
I know, but it’s about the best that I can do for them. They did some fine shooting out there, and they ought to have something to show for it.”

  To Ash’s surprise, the commanding officer of the DE showed up not long after Ash had turned his liberty section loose on the town. With Solly and Hamp gone over to arrange for both fuel and stores, Ash took the man down to the wardroom and, for once, had Watts bring them up a pot of coffee.

  The DE’s captain, a Naval Academy regular named Blake from the Class of 1933, struck Ash as a well-adjusted individual, very competent at sea from what Ash had seen, and both personable and courteous in conversation. The man smoked a pipe, sat comfortably in a chair across the table from Ash, and seemed to enjoy the coffee that Watts brought up to them.

  “I commend you for a good job on the way down here,” Lieutenant Commander Blake said to Ash, after the two had made some small talk. “Now that we’ve got a moment, I’d like to hear chapter and verse on your engagement with that U-boat. It will all be in your official report, I know, but I have to submit one as well, and I’d just as soon know the details before we both start writing things up.”

  Ash laid out the facts as well as he could remember them.

  “I know we hit him on the conning tower, twice,” Ash said, finally. “The dead man you recovered is the evidence. The U-boat fired two torpedoes at us, but we managed to avoid those by means of a sharp turn to starboard, and I made my depth charge attack immediately afterward. My sonarman claims that he heard both an explosion, well after the depth charges had gone off, and breaking up sounds, but we didn’t find a single piece of evidence to prove that we sank anything. I think we sank a U-boat, but I don’t think DESLANT will credit it.”

  “Probably not,” the commander said, “but for what it’s worth, Ash, I think you got him, and I intend to say so in my report. How long you in for?”