Submarine! (35 page)

“Left full rudder!” Fyfe's command whips down the conning tower hatch to the helmsman.

“Rudder is left full, sir!”

“All ahead two thirds!” Fyfe has waited a moment before slowing, in order to make the turn faster.

“Answered all ahead two thirds!” Maneuvering room has matched annunciators with the conning tower, thus indicating that they have the word.

Sprinkle has been following things closely from the conning tower—checking bearings, ranges, courses, and speeds. He performs a rapid mathematical computation, drawing arrows this way and that, and measuring angles. Then he speaks into his little mike: “Captain, if we steady up on two four oh we'll have him ten degrees on our port bow, going across. His angle on the bow is now starboard forty.”

“Steady on new course two four oh!” The ship has about thirty degrees more to swing, and the helmsman eases the rudder upon receipt of the command from the bridge.

“Steady on two four oh, sir!”

The exec speaks again. “Captain, he is on course zero two oh, making fourteen knots. Angle on the bow is starboard
forty-five, and he now bears five degrees on our port bow. The distance to the track is two three double oh. Range, five oh double oh.”

No answer from the bridge, but that doesn't bother Sprinkle. He knows he will hear quickly if the skipper isn't satisfied with the way things are going or the reports he is getting.

A few more tense moments pass. Again the speaker near the skipper's left elbow reproduces Sprinkle's familiar voice. “He's crossing our bow now. Range, four oh double oh.”

“Come right to two five oh.” Fyfe, who is working the same problem in his head that Sprinkle is solving mechanically in the conning tower, has the situation firmly fixed in his mind. He wants to keep coming around to head for the enemy, and has anticipated by seconds only the latter's recommendation.

“What is the distance to the track?”

“Two oh double oh, Captain.”

“All ahead one third.”
Batfish is
closing the target's projected track too quickly, and the firing range will be too short, or the target might detect her before firing. Fyfe's brain is now in high gear, and he can feel every part of the problem falling into place. In fact, it is almost as if he could reach out and control the movements of the Japanese skipper also, and his mind wills the enemy to keep on coming, to keep on the course and speed as set up; to come unerringly and steadily on to his doom.

And on and on he comes, totally unaware of the trap set for him, totally unaware that he is springing the trap on himself, that any change whatsoever which he might make would be to his advantage, that the most serious mistake you can make, when it's submarine against submarine, is to relax—
ever
. Of course, to give him his due, the Jap doesn't know he is being shadowed. But he knows very well that he is proceeding through a submarine-infested area—and in this little game no excuses are accepted.

At 1,500 yards the keen eyes on
Batfish's
bridge distinguish a blur in the gray murk, and at 1000 yards the sinister outline
of a Japanese I class submarine is made out—the first time during the whole evening that the enemy has actually been sighted. He wallows heavily in the slight chop of the sea—low, dark, and ungainly.

At 1000 yards the Jap is broadside to
Batfish
: Fyfe's plan has borne fruit, for his own bow is exactly toward the enemy, and he has all the advantage of sighting. Furthermore, the darkest portion of the overcast is behind him.

Sprinkle is beside himself with eagerness. For about thirty seconds he has been imploring his skipper to shoot. He has a perfect solution and doesn't want to let it get away from him. “We've got them cold! Ready to shoot any time, Captain!” He repeats the same formula over and over, a veteran of too many patrols to say what he really means, which would be more on the order of,
“Let's
go,
Captain! What are we waiting for?”

But Fyfe refuses to be hurried. He's worked too long for this moment, and he has already missed once, possibly because of a little haste in firing. Carefully he takes a bridge bearing and has it matched into the TDC, swings the TBT and takes another, to make sure there is no transmission lag which might cause an error. Then, for the first time using the word, he says, in a curious flat voice, “Fire torpedoes!”

“Fire one!” Sprinkle's voice is a split second behind that of his skipper's.

Almost immediately the telephone talker standing under the conning tower hatch shouts loudly, so that his message is heard in the conning tower as well as on the bridge:

“Number one did not eject! Running hot in the tube!”

Something has gone wrong. The torpedo should have been pushed out of the torpedo tube by the high-pressure air ejection system. Instead, it has stuck in the tube, and the torpedomen forward can hear it running in the tube. This is critical, for it will be armed within a matter of seconds, and then almost anything could set it off. Besides, the motor is overspeeding in the tube, and it could conceivably break up under the strain and vibration—which might itself produce sufficient shock to cause an explosion.

But there isn't time to think much about possibilities. The skipper's reaction is instant. “Tubes forward, try again, by hand. Use full ejection pressure!” Full pressure is used only when firing at deep submergence, but this is an emergency.

The next command is for Clark Sprinkle in the conning tower. “Check fire!” Fyfe is not going to let the Jap get away while he waits for the casualty to be straightened out, but neither does he want the faulty torpedo to be ejected at the same time as a good one, and possibly interfere with it. If it does not eject on the second try, he will shoot the remaining tubes, and then return to the balky one.

“Number one tube fired by hand. Tube is clear!” The very welcome report is received after a few anxious seconds with a profound sense of relief. Only half-a-dozen seconds have been lost, altogether, and the situation is still good for the remaining fish.

“Resume fire, Clark!” But the exec has not needed that command. Number two torpedo is already on its way, followed a few seconds later by number three. Torpedoes number four, five, and six are held in reserve in case the first salvo misses.

Because these are wakeless electric torpedoes, Jake Fyfe, on the bridge, does not have the pencil-like wakes of steam and air to mark where they have gone. There is a slight disturbance of the surface of the water to show the direction they took, but that is all. Seven pairs of binoculars are glued to the Jap's low, lumbering silhouette and his odd-shaped bridge.

Down in the conning tower, the radar operator and the exec are staring at their screen, where the blip which is the target is showing up strongly and steadily, showing radar emanations still at the same uninterrupted interval. Suddenly, however, the radar waves become steady, as though the enemy operator had steadied his radar on a just-noticed blip, possibly to investigate it.

“I think he's detected us, sir!” whispers Radar. “See—it's steadied on us!”

Sprinkle has also seen. Eyes fixed on the cathode tube face
he reaches for the portable mike to tell the skipper about this new development, when he drops it again. Before his eyes the blip has suddenly, astoundingly, grown much larger. It is now nearly twice the size it had been an instant before. Small flashes of light can be seen on the screen, going away from the outsized pip and disappearing. Then, swiftly, the pip reduces in size and disappears entirely. Nothing is left on the scope whatsoever.

At this moment a jubilant shout from the bridge can be heard. “We got him! We got him! He blew up and sank!” Sprinkle mops his brow.

The watchers on
Batfish's
bridge had hardly expected anything quite so dramatic as what they saw. One torpedo had evidently reached the target, and must have hit into a magazine or possibly into a tank carrying gasoline. The Nip sub had simply exploded, with a brilliant red-and-yellow flame which shot high into the night sky, furiously outlined against the somber, sober grayness. And as quickly as the flame reached its zenith, it disappeared, as 2,500 tons of broken twisted Japanese steel plunged like a rock to the bottom of the ocean.

There was nothing left for torpedo number three—following a few seconds behind number two—to hit, and it passed over the spot where the enemy ship had been.

Batfish
immediately proceeded to the spot where the sub had sunk, hoping to pick up a survivor or two, but the effort was needless. Undoubtedly all hands had been either killed instantly by the terrific explosion, or had been carried down In the ship. There had been absolutely no chance for anyone not already topside to get out. All Jake Fyfe could find was a large oil slick extending more than two miles in all directions from the spot where the enemy had last been seen.

Strangely—delighted and happy though he was over his success in destroying the enemy sub—the American skipper felt a few twinges of a peculiar emotion. This was very much like shooting your own kind, despite the proven viciousness and brutality exhibited by some of the enemy—and but for
the superiority of his crew and equipment, the victim might have been
Batfish
instead of HIJMS I-41.

The final attack on the Jap sub had been made at exactly two minutes after midnight on the morning of February 10. Then, an hour or so after sunset on the 11th, at 1915—

“Captain to the conn!” The skipper is up there in an instant.

The radar operator points to his radar scope. “There's another Jap sub, Captain!”

Sure enough, there, if you watch closely, is the same tiny disturbance which alerted
Batfish
two nights ago. This time there is less doubt as to what action to take. The same tactics which were heralded with such signal success on the first occasion are immediately placed into effect. The crew is called to battle stations, the tracking parties manned, and all is made ready for a warm reception. The radar party is cautioned—unnecessary precaution—to keep that piece of gear turned off except when a range and bearing are actually required.

If anything, it is even darker than it was the first night. Having found how ineffective the Jap radar really is—or was it simply that the Jap watch standers were asleep?—Fyfe determines to make the same kind of attack as before.

The situation develops exactly as it did before, except that this submarine is heading southeast instead of northeast. At 1,800 yards he is sighted from the bridge of the American submarine. He is making only 7 knots, somewhat slower than the other, and it takes him a little longer to reach the firing bearing. Finally everything is just about set. Sprinkle has made the “ready to shoot” report, and Fyfe will let them go in a moment, as soon as the track improves a bit and the range decreases to the optimum. About one minute to go—it won't be long now, chappy.

“Hello, he's dived! He dived right on the fire bearing!” Where there had been an enemy submarine, there now only the rolling undulation of the sea. Nothing to do now but get out of there.
Batfish
must have waited too long and been detected.
The Jap was keeping a slightly better watch than Fyfe had given him credit for, and now
Batfish
is being hunted. Just as quickly as that the whole situation has changed. With an enemy submarine known to be submerged within half a mile of you, there is only one of two things to do. Dive yourself, or beat it.

If you dive, you more or less give up the problem, and concentrate on hiding, which many skippers probably would have done. If you run away on the surface, however, there is a slight chance that he'll come back up, and you'll have another shot at him. Jake Fyfe is a stubborn man, and he doesn't give up easily: he discards the idea of diving. “Left full rudder!” he orders instead. His first object is to get away; and his second is to stay in action. Maybe the Jap will assume that he has continued running—which is precisely what Jake hopes he will do.

“All ahead flank!”

The Jap was on a southeasterly course before he dived. Knowing that his periscope must be up and watching his every move, Fyfe orders a northerly course, and
Batfish
roars away from the spot, steadying on a course slightly west of north. Three miles Fyfe lets her run, until he is reasonably sure to be beyond sonar as well as visual range. Then he alters course to the left, and within a short time arrives at a position
southwest
of the position at which the Jap sub dived.

In the conning tower, at the plotting station, and on the bridge there is some rapid and careful figuring going on. “Give the son of a bitch four knots,” mutters Sprinkle to himself. “That puts him on this circle. Give him six knots, and he's here. Give him eight knots—oh, t' hell with 8 knots!” Clark Sprinkle's exasperation is almost comical as he grips his pencil in sweaty stubby fingers and tries to decide what he'd do if he were a Jap.

The point is that
Batfish
wants to arrive at some point where she will be assured of getting a moderately long-range radar contact the instant the Nip surfaces, in a position to be able to do something about it.
But don't let her spot us
through the periscope, or wind up near enough for her to torpedo us while still submerged
. This is where the stuff you learned in school really pays off, brother.