Run Silent, Run Deep

6

Our vigilance was intensified by our escape from the German submarine, and for a time our lookouts thought they saw torpedo wakes or enemy submarines in every whitecap.

But aside from several false alarms during the next day and night, the rest of our trip was uneventful and two mornings later we sighted the high tree-covered slopes of Santo Domingo rising majestically above the horizon. Some distance to the left, lower-lying and not yet in sight, lay the shores of Puerto Rico. Mona Passage, the waterway between, was reputed to be a favorite hunting ground for German submarines; logically enough: a large percentage of the traffic to and from the Caribbean Sea had to funnel through it.

I could visualize two or three wary U-boats lurking at periscope depth in the approaches. The bottom of the ocean on both sides, Caribbean and Atlantic, was already littered with the shattered hulls of our merchant vessels.

We went to the last notch of our speed, "All ahead flank," on the annunciators, the throttles jammed wide open, till the pitometer log dial in the conning tower registered twenty and a half knots. And as we neared the passage we stopped zigzagging and arrowed for it to get through as rapidly as possible.

Perhaps our stratagem was successful, perhaps it made no difference. Perhaps there were no German submarines there. At any rate, hugging the shores of the one-time Pearl of the Antilles, we roared into the deep blue, transparent Caribbean Sea, the storied highway of the Spanish Plate Fleet, and of Drake, and Morgan-and Captain Blood.

The Caribbean Sea is one of the loveliest bodies of water in the world. It is warm, usually calm and peaceful, always beautiful, seldom roiled by bad weather, but able to produce, almost in minutes, the most violent and unpredictable hurricanes.

Thus far in the war it had already proved a profitable operating area for German submarines. Somewhere, probably in one of the briefings just before leaving New London, I remembered having read a description of a proposal to convert it into an Allied lake. All the entrances: Yucatan Channel, Mona Passage, Windward Passage on down through the Lesser Antilles to Trinidad and the coast of South America, were to be closed off by nets, mine fields, and heavily armed patrols. A mammoth project, but the destruction the Germans had already wreaked during half a year of war in its freely accessible waters was also mammoth.

It took us two days to drive across its broad expanse. Two days during which we doubled the lookout watch on the bridge and kept all watertight doors continuously closed, not dogged, but latched shut, ready for instant dogging down.

Nor were there any complaints from the crew at this temporarily increased watch load or the inconvenience caused by latching shut the five-hundred-pound doors.

A period of even higher tension came as we neared Cristobal, the harbor on the Caribbean Side of the Panama Canal, where, if anywhere, German submarines would be concentrated, but where also our defense forces were massed in strength. A long-range, two-engine flying boat first spotted us.

A little later another joined and we were continuously under air coverage for the last hundred miles of our approach. A few miles outside the harbor an escort vessel, a converted yacht similar to the Vixen but smaller, came out to meet us, flashing a signal searchlight insistently from the bridge. We had the recognition answer ready, flashed it in our turn.

"MIKE SPEED FOURTEEN," spelled out Rubinoffski, as an- other series of flashes came from the yacht. "What shall I tell him, Sir?"

I paused for a moment, trying to think just how to word it. "Send him 'MIKE SPEED TWENTY REQUEST PERMISSION TO PROCEED AHEAD OF YOU.'"

The signal searchlight clattered as Rubinoffski banged away on the shutter handle. As the answering message came back, Rubinoffski shouted the words one by one.

"HELL YES THIS OLD TUB WAS BUILT FOR SEX NOT SPEED."

Rubinoffski didn't get the ninth word, had to have it repeated twice more, by which time everyone on the bridge had recognized the letters with loud delight.

"Maybe that's the yacht I heard about a little while ago,"

Jim commented.

"Which one's that?" I said, inspecting her through my bin- oculars. "She's a mighty neat-looking craft, I'd say."

"Neat is right. The story is that a little while after the Navy took her over they found that if you pushed the right button the bulkhead between the skipper's and Exec's state- rooms turned out to be an electrically operated sliding door."

The spectacle of a pajama-clad skipper confronting his startled half-undressed Exec was too much for my straight face and I joined the guffaw of laughter.

"Send him 'THANK YOU,'" I called to Rubinoffski as soon as I managed to regain my composure. "Jim," turning to him, "lay us a zigzag course for the harbor entrance."

As Jim disappeared below I took another good look at our escort. Here and there streaks of black paint showed through the seat of wartime gray. Although salt spray encrusted her sides and delicate yacht fittings and she looked considerably the worse for wear, there was no doubt she once had been a and lovely yacht.

We passed fairly close aboard without slackening our pace.

I watched her until the wash of our screws set her rocking in our wake, then tamed to search for the passage through the Cristobal breakwater to the sheltered waters beyond.

Going through the Panama Canal is a thrilling and never- to-be-forgotten experience, even to those who have done it many times. The great locks, one thousand feet long and one hundred ten feet wide, were planned to take the largest ship anyone might conceivably want to build. Now streaked with moss and green with slime on their inner sides, they still performed the function perfectly-a testimony to the competence of the Army Engineers who built them. That only recently had any vessels tested their size was a testimony also to the vision of their designers.

It was still early on the morning of June sixth that we passed into the breakwater at Cristobal, there to be met by a message directing us to proceed to the entrance of the Panama Canal and make transit that same day. There was something in the wind. No one seemed to know what it was.

It was not exactly hushed expectancy or worry, more an attitude of waiting for news. Our pilot, whom we queried as soon as he came aboard, knew nothing at all. Dave Freeman searched the schedule sheets, but beyond discovery of an unusually large group of messages all in the same code- which Walrus had not been issued-he could furnish no enlightenment.

It took us most of the day to travel the forty miles of canal from Atlantic to Pacific. When we got there we were met on the dock by the Commanding Officer of the Naval Station, another old-time submariner, now a Captain, U. S. Navy, but still known as Sammy Sams. His car was waiting, and he whisked me off in it to his office.

Once there, he closed the door carefully. "Rich," he said, "have you heard the news from the Pacific?"

"No, sir."

"It's a battle. Biggest one yet."

"Where?" I asked.

"Midway. The Japs are trying to capture it."

"Capture it? Not just attack it?"

"Nope, they're going to move in this time. They muffed their chance at Pearl Harbor. They could have taken Hawaii with a battalion, then, or Midway with a couple of boatloads of seamen. This time they are coming for keeps."

"What are the latest reports? How's it coming out?"

"The whole Jap Navy," said Captain Sams, waving at a map of Japan on the wall behind him, "has been steaming across the Pacific loaded for bear. They attacked Midway yesterday, and it has been a hell of a fight. Our forces are badly outnumbered. I wonder how Nimitz scraped together enough carriers and airplanes to stand up to them."

"I guess it was not so much a question of 'how' and 'have to,'" I ventured.

"Have to, is right," Captain Sams exploded "If those monkeys ever get a base in Midway we might as well kiss Pearl Harbor good-by."

We talked on for some time, and it was with an enlarged appreciation of the supremely critical nature of the Pacific operation that I journeyed back to my ship. As I approached the dock where I had left Walrus I had a moment of panic.

She was not in sight! I had visions of some catastrophe for a split second before I realized that in the interval I had been gone the tide had fallen several feet, concealing her hull from me.

It was a welcome relief to stretch our legs ashore after a week at sea, but Captain Sams didn't give us much time, only what remained of the day of our arrival in fact, and then solely for the purpose of using it to unload our cargo of "warshots" and take aboard exercise torpedoes. Next morning we were under way again, bound for what he called his "refresher training area," Las Perlas Islands, not far offshore.

Not many submarines had yet come through his station, the Captain said, but be intended to help us make the most of the few days allotted before we were to start for Pearl Harbor. From somewhere he had collected a motley fleet of boats they could hardly be classed as "ships," to be used in "convoys" as targets, and for three days he kept us at it day and night, making us get under way as dawn flooded the anchorage and keeping us at approach work until long after dark."

For three days we fired torpedo after torpedo-the same ones over and over again because Captain Sams had only a dozen exercise torpedoes in his entire base and we had ten of them. We would fire a torpedo; then we would surface, pursue it, lift it aboard with our torpedo loading equipment, slide it down the torpedo loading hatch into one of the torpedo rooms, overhaul it, clean it up, refuel it, refill the exercise head with water, test all mechanisms; then we would load it in a torpedo tube and fire again. With six torpedoes 'm the forward torpedo room and four in the after torpedo room, there were always a couple under overhaul while the others were being fired. At the end of our first day our torpedomen simply curled up on the deck or on their zippered, water- proof mattress covers and went to sleep, oily, greasy, filthy, and exhausted. The rest of us were not far behind.

Sammy Sams drove all of us relentlessly, cajoling, wheedling, threatening, and promising. It was soon apparent that his target fleet either idolized him or was petrified with fear of him, for every morning they got under way before us in order to be ready for the first approach in plenty of time, and they always gave us the favored position, winding up at quitting time much farther away from the anchorage than Walrus.

At the end of the third day Sammy Sams declared our refresher training over, and invited everyone in the ship except the duty section to what he announced was a Hawaiian luau.

There was no roast pig, no poi, nor any octopus, but we had fish and shrimp and other sea food delicacies, and the piece de resistance was roast beef. Toward midnight the old sub- mariner rapped for quiet and made us a speech.

"You men are men, not kids, even though some of you are still pretty. young. This is the biggest opportunity you will ever have to repay to the United States some of the debt you owe for having been born there. The enemy is vicious and treacher- ous, but the important thing is that he is also very able-don't ever forget that. That's why, so far, he has had us back on our heels. There aren't enough of us and what we've been able to accomplish hasn't been nearly enough. He is equal to us in equipment and in the bravery of his soldiers and sailors, but the One thing he doesn't have, and never will have, is the tremendous staying power of America." He went on for some minutes, sometimes eloquent, sometimes bone dry. It didn't take me long to sense that he was trying to tell us why we were in a war and pass along to us something of his own philosophy about it.

His ending was simple. "I know you know this will be a tough war. I know you realize that Walrus may never come back and that maybe some of you men won't come back either, and if that's what it comes to for you, if I can leave you with one thought, one bit of comfort, it's this: it's worth it. It's what America expects of all of us." He sat down. There was silence for a second, then our men were, on their feet with a roar, led by Kohler who was clapping like a man inspired.

I saw a suspicion of moisture in the old man's eyes, and here again, as in the case of Captain Blunt, the thought sprang into my mind-here was an old submariner who had given his all to the cause of submarines, who, at the moment of their greatest trial, when all the teachings of his younger days were being brought to bear, found himself passed by, too old to participate. A little wistfully, these older men-men like Captain Blunt, Admiral Smathers, and Sammy Sams- were doing their best to support us younger ones who would have the duty, or privilege, of carrying on for them.

Next morning we got under way for Pearl Harbor with Captain Sams on the dock bidding us good-by. As we made our way into the broad expanse of the Bay of Panama and pointed Walrus' prow south to clear Punta Mala, the right- hand promontory, I could not help thinking that, though angry German submarines prowled the seas within fifty miles of us, except for the remote possibility of a Japanese submarine at this great distance we here in the Pacific might as well be a million miles away from danger. Here our danger was ahead in the home waters of the land of the Rising Sun, our next destination but one.

As night came I wrote in the Captain's Night Order Book: "Course 200. Transiting Gulf of Panama en route Pearl Harbor. Cruising on three engines 80–90; making about 14- knots, zigzagging. The ship is rigged for dive and darkened.

Call me if other ships or land are sighted. Punta Mala is ahead and to starboard. Maintain a steady watch on air search-radar and carry out all instructions in the front of this book."

Then I signed my name, went below, and had the first good night's sleep under way I had had since leaving the Octopus, fifteen months before.

Our trip across the Pacific was actually a little boring.

We devoted a part of each day to fire-control and emergency drills and we permitted members of the crew in small groups to come on the bridge to sunbathe. The ocean was beautiful, the water sparkling, and the weather balmy as we forged steadily westward-west by north, actually, once we had doubled Punta Mala. Our progress was measured only by the steady change in our clocks as we kept up with the various time zones through which we passed. It was a peaceful pleasant trip, marred only by the thought that at the other end lay war.

And then one morning, as Jim had, predicted from his star sights of the previous evening, the headlands of Oahu hove in sight. We had been given a rendezvous position with explicit instructions regarding it, and we were there at the point of daybreak. Barely visible over the southwest horizon was the familiar volcanic outline of Diamond Head and, sure enough, here came a patrol plane to see if we were on schedule.

The approach to Pearl Harbor was in some respects a repetition of our approach to the Panama Canal with one exception-there was no levity. A PC boat, a steel-hulled sub- marine chaser expressly built for the purpose, came boiling up from the south to meet us, flashed us the recognition signal, and a curt "FOLLOW me." We swung. in astern and, still zigzagging, the two of us raced for Pearl Harbor.

We skirted close under Diamond Head, ran down past Waikiki Beach where through our binoculars we could see figures lying on the sand or playing in the surf. Well could I remember the few times I had been able to spend a week end off the Octopus here on this beach, or night-clubbing at one of the-beautiful hotels lining it. In those days Waikiki was the height of fashionable play and only the wealthiest could afford to go there. A Navy Lieutenant's pay would last for only one or two evenings.

Alongside the white, square Moana was the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, gleaming purple-pink in the mid-morning sun, standing on the water's edge as though growing from the sea.

A little to the left, and beyond, rose the rooftops of the city of Honolulu, with the Aloha Tower prominent along the waterline. Backdrop to all this were the mountains of Oahi4 green and verdant, covered with sugar cane, pineapple, and other exotic semitropical plants. It was from here that the Jap planes attacking Pearl Harbor had swept down, over the mountains and through the mountain passes-on our unsus- pecting fleet at Pearl Harbor. There had even been, so the story went, wide swaths cut through the sugar-cane fields pointing in the direction of Pearl Harbor, and we had heard stories of clandestine radio stations hidden in the hills, broad- casting vital information to the enemy.

As we neared the Pearl Harbor Channel entrance, naval activity increased rapidly about us. On the horizon we could see the tops of two new fleet destroyers evidently on anti- sub patrol. Closer in, another destroyer, an old "four-piper" like the Semmes, cruised about aimlessly. Passing out between the entrance buoys as we neared them was a gray-painted tug, a mine sweeper, — with signal flags flying from her yard- arm, and, several hundred yards astern a float bobbed through the water carrying a small flag signifying the end of her tow.

And the closer we approached to the entrance buoys, the more aircraft there were flying about.

"They're sure putting on a show, aren't they, skipper?' said Jim, standing alongside me on our gently heaving bridge.

"Show is right," I returned, "Only I don't think this is just for appearances.

"Guess you're right. Wonder if the Japs have any submarines out here? Maybe we can find out when we get in."

I felt a pang of nostalgia as I swept the countryside with my binoculars, picked out the channel buoys, and surveyed the way into the harbor. It all seemed so much as I had remembered. We had operated from Pearl Harbor for months, and I had taken my turn as Duty Officer, getting the ship to sea and bringing her back again, so many times that I knew the harbor by heart. It was here that we had brought Octopus in that day the Yorktown had rammed us. It was through these buoys that I had taken her out for my qualification for command trials. On the day before I was detached and sent to S-16 I had done the same-and now, only a year and a few months later, I *as back again, now in command of a newer, finer version of the Octopus, a ship not even thought of then, and the Octopus and all my shipmates were gone beyond recall, numbered among the first sacrifices our submarine force had laid-on the altar of war.

There was something unreal about the scene near the harbor entrance. It was so much the same and yet so vastly different. The urgency of our escort-the determined manner in which the planes overhead flew. their search orbits-bespoke an entirely different atmosphere. I wondered what we would see after we reached the harbor itself.

Dave Freeman, Officer of the Deck, was standing along- side me. "Permission to station the maneuvering watch and enter the harbor, Captain?"

"Permission granted," I returned. The feeling of unreality was growing. Dave bent his head under the bridge conning and shouted at the open hatch at his feet: "Station the maneuvering watch! Line handlers stay below." Then a few minutes later, after taking a good look through his binoculars, "Right ten degrees rudder! All ahead standard!" I could feel the rudder take hold gently and ease the ship around into the channel. The black left-hand buoy at the channel entrance swam into my field of view. The forceful beat of our engines back aft subsided just a trifle, and there was a, different motion to the ship as the seas caught her from another direction. it still seemed unreal, too familiar; even the corkscrewlike motion of the ship, as Oregon fought to keep her on her new course, was exactly as I had expected. The unprotected channel entrance, at right angles to the line of the shore, permitted seas to sweep right across it, resulting at times in a peculiar heave to the ship and difficult steering. Once we were free of the ocean effects, however, and inside the sheltered headlands of the harbor itself, the channel was as smooth as a millpond. With her speed reduced, Walrus forged steadily onward past Hospital Point, around the next bend to the left, then to the right, and suddenly I gasped.

Nostalgia vanished, never to return.

There indeed were the old familiar landmarks: The Navy Yard with its huge cranes, Ford Island in the center of the harbor, ten-ten dock-so named for its length of one thousand and ten feet-extending rectangularly into the water and blocking view of the submarine piers beyond. And there were the dry docks and tanks and buildings as I had known them. But my brain encompassed none of these.

The stench of crude oil was everywhere. It struck my nostrils almost with physical pain. The shoreline, wherever it-could be seen, was black; filthy; and the water was like- wise filthy, with here and there a coagulated streak of black grease clinging like relaxed death to bits of oily debris.

But the worst was alongside Ford Island, to port as we came through, and it slowly unfolded itself as America's one-time battle line came into view. I had been prepared, but not enough. The pictures had showed a lot, but they could never show the hopeless, horrible desolation and destruction, the smashing, in an instant, of years of tradition and growth.

California's cage masts had seemed canted a bit peculiarly when we first caught sight of them, now we could see why.

Her bow was under water. Only a few feet of her stern were exposed. Clustered about her were boats, a small tug or two, and there was considerable activity going on alongside. repair work evidently. Astern of her lay the bulging side and bottom of a great ship with one huge propeller sticking out of the water. I knew from pictures that this was Oklahoma.

Some kind of a structure had been erected on her slanting belly and a few men seemed to be working around with hoses and other paraphernalia. I could see one large hole in the heavy plates, and remembered what we had heard about men trapped inside.

A little distance away from Oklahoma another shattered, sunken hulk showed its gaunt sides: West Virginia, once the pride of the fleet; winner of the Marjorie Sterrett trophy for excellence in battle practice more times than any other; and the Iron Man trophy for athletics likewise. A grimy, dirty waterline, now high out of water, showed how far she had sunk.

She was obviously now afloat again, but horribly mangled.

We could see some of the shattered side, gaping above the cofferdam built around it.

Abaft West Virginia, a single tripod mast stood in the water.

Below it a silent gun turret, water lapping in the gun ports and around the muzzles of the huge rifles. Nothing forward except a confused, jumbled mass of rusty junk. A flag floated from the gaff of the tripod mast, symbol that the United States Navy would never surrender. Arizona's forward magazines blown up by the uncannily accurate Jap bombing, nothing left of her except her iron will she could still serve as a reminder of the sacrifice war had demanded on its first day, and the huge reckoning we would someday exact in return.

Dave Freeman by this time had given permission to open deck hatches and some of the crew had come topside to get our mooring fines ready. But no one touched a line. All stood staring in awe at the spectacle of destruction. Here and there I could see some of them pointing. Perhaps they recognized something, a ship they had once served in-some recognizable bit among the twisted, shattered remains. We had been forewarned of this and yet the full realization of what the Japs had done to us that day last December had not struck home until now. Except for a few commands given by Dave as he conned us through the harbor, not a word was spoken for several minutes on Walrus' bridge. This was death, un- varnished. This was the holocaust; this the destiny of three thousand U. S. sailors and officers.

Jim broke the silence. "Good lord!" pointing to the California. "I heard she was not seriously damaged."

"Depends on what you figure is serious, I guess," I answered. "It looks pretty serious to me all right."

"Serious! Hell I think she's sunk!"

"We'll get her back up and in commission." I was repeat- ing what I had been told in the briefing before leaving New London.

"Maybe so." Jim's voice was dubious. "What about that one?" He pointed to the Oklahoma. "I suppose she's not very badly damaged either?"

I felt myself distinctly on the defensive. The newspaper accounts we had read and the official briefings I had received were all to the effect that the Oklahoma also would be returned to service.

"Well," I said, "we'll turn her right side up again, clean the mud off…" I paused, realizing haw ridiculous I was sounding. Jim looked at me with a strange expression, exhibit- ing puzzlement, amazement, and disbelief all at the same time. Then the corners of his mouth quivered and he almost laughed. He pointed to the Arizona.

"Nothing wrong with her either, much. Just no hull!"

The comment was so spontaneous, comical, and, so true that I would have laughed myself, except that it contradicted all the feelings of the past few moments. These ships had been the Navy's backbone for twenty years. As a boy I had had pictures of all of them posted on the wars of my room. Some- day, I had dreamed, I would be Captain of one of them. Now here they lay shattered, twisted, destroyed. Powerless to have defended themselves, powerless now, even to take revenge.

Dave Freeman had been tending to his business of conning us through the channel. The submarine base commenced to come into view as we reached the end of ten-ten dock along- side of which was visible the side of another rolled-over sunken ship. This would be the Oglala, an old ex-mine layer in use as Service Force Flagship, which, according to unofficial reports, had simply died of fright. She had been touched by neither bomb nor torpedo, but her seams had opened up from the concussions nearby.

Up ahead something was going on at the submarine base, and the strains of loud band music claimed our attention. As the submarine base docks came into view suddenly my heart leaped-for there, with nearly every detail unutterably familiar, lay the Octopus, half out of a slip-with flags flying and people standing all about her decks.

She looked different, worn, and yet terribly the same. The cigarette deck bulwark was gone and there was no plating around her periscope shears. Their steel foundation structure stood naked, like bare bones. But I would have recognized her anywhere, and at the same time I cursed myself for being a sentimental fool. Of course it could not be Octopus. It must be her sister, the Tarpon. We slowed down and waited while she backed clear, turned, and squared away past us in the opposite direction. Through my binoculars I looked over the faces on her bridge. There, sure enough, stood Tarpon's skipper, easygoing old Jim Tattnal who had been on my Qualification Board. He was wearing a cap with scrambled eggs on the visor, something I had not seen him in before, signifying his promotion to the rank of Commander. I grabbed a megaphone and yelled across the intervening water.

"Where are you going, Jim?" He cupped his hands, shouted back: "Back where you came from! San Francisco!" He answered my upraised arm with a wave of his own as the two ships passed. He had not recognized me, didn't realize Walrus had come from New London instead of Mare Island, but that made little difference. The Tarpon had been brought back from the Southwest Pacific, was en route to Mare Island for a well- deserved overhaul. It would be a rest for her crew and a surcease from anxiety. Octopus, long ago, had received her surcease from travail in a very different way.

So might Walrus, for that matter, except that we didn't know what our fate would be yet. I nodded to Dave, and a few minutes later we gently nosed into the same pier which Tarpon had just vacated. The band greeted us with several well-known compositions, conspicuous by its absence, how- ever, being "California, Here I Come!" a loud rendition of which we had heard a few minutes before., A delegation met us as we put our lines over: Admiral Small, ComSubPac, followed by several other officers, one or two of whom I recognized. We shook hands. Then came two dungaree-clad men bearing a huge sack of mail. This was pounced upon by Quin and dragged forward where he was immediately surrounded by a crowd of eager Walrus sailors.

Next over the gangway came two five-gallon tins of ice cream, well frosted on the outside, and finally a crate of choice red apples. Russo was topside in a moment at Dave's quick summons, but he was too late to save the apples from the eager hands which had already removed nearly all. The ice cream, however, he preempted and carried, grinning, down below.

Admiral Small was speaking. "Richardson," he said, "we're short of boats as you know and we've got to get you on the firing line as soon as possible. How soon can you go to sea?"

"Right away, sir," I answered, "we have a full load of torpedoes, but well need to refuel and reprovision."

"The E&R shop can handle any outstanding repairs."

The Engineering and Repair Officer was one of those whom I had recognized from my times as Engineering Officer on the Octopus.

"We're in pretty good shape material-wise," I began.

"Good," said the Admiral, "all well need to give you then is a quick going-over. We want to take all your torpedoes out and check them, and we have a few pieces of equipment to install in the ship. Then you will have a one-week training period before you go."

"We don't need any training, Admiral; we're all set," I protested.

"Oh, yes, you do, Richardson. The training you've had has been all to peacetime standards. I know how it is in New London. It's my responsibility to make sure every boat is up to scratch before it leaves here. Besides we want to give you an SJ-radar."

"What's that, sir?"

"The radar you have is only the-SD-type, designed for air- craft search. This is for surface search and it will increase your effectiveness at night. After you get it, you'll have to learn how to use it. That's another reason for the training period."

I nodded, and he changed the subject.

"Would you care to show me through, Richardson? I want to see what your boat looks like down below."

The 'Admiral was an enthusiastic visitor as I took him through the ship. As I pointed out several of her internal features, he compared them to older installations of the same type and commented upon the improvement. He was especially pleased with our control room and conning tower, and spoke favorably of our two engine rooms and the four great sixteen-cylinder diesels installed there.

He also insisted on meeting each of the officers and as many of the enlisted men as he could. Then he was off, and as I saluted him over the gangway a horde of workers, inspectors, and checkers descended upon us.

Pearl Harbor, or at least the submarine base in It, was really well organized, I reflected a few hours later. A crew was already on the bridge installing the new radar; two cranes were on the dock hauling out our torpedoes from both ends at the same time, as rapidly as our men could get them ready.

Another group had summarily confiscated both of our 30-caliber machine guns, replacing them with four 50-caliber models, and a gang of welders was going about the ship installing mounts for them. To my consternation I discovered another crew of men happily cutting away the bulwark around our cigarette deck and two more had climbed on top of the bridge, and were removing the plating on the sides of the periscope supports. At this I registered a protest.

"What's the idea!" I asked my friend, Eddie Holt, the E&R Officer.

"Relax, Rich," he said. "Admiral's orders." He went on: "We're trying to cut the silhouette down as much as possible.

Every boat that comes in here from the States has got too much stuff on her and looks bigger than the one before, and he's out to out it down so you can get away with night sur- face attacks without being seen. Say," here Eddie's eyes widened, "weren't you the boat that was shot at by the German sub a while ago?"

I nodded. We had, of course, reported the incident by dispatch immediately.

"W-e-l-l, I should think you'd have had all this extra super- structure off here before this. He nearly had you, you know.

The way I heard it, you didn't even see him until he fired the torpedo at you."

"That's about right," I admitted.

"We've found that pulling off the plating around the peri- scope shears lets enough light through that they can't be seen on the horizon. The difference is even more noticeable at night. That's why we're taking off your cigarette deck bul- warks, you don't need them. We'll give you lifelines to lean against."

Three days we were alongside the dock at Pearl Harbor, during which the welding smoke, the babble of workers, and the clatter of air-operated chipping hammers never left us.

I had thought the workmen at Electric Boat were fast, — but these, every one an enlisted man in the Navy, were faster.

Furthermore, time apparently meant nothing to them. They worked as if their lives depended upon it, and more than one man I saw remained aboard for twenty-four consecutive hours, working, almost continually. Russo, I found, was responsible for some of this. He and his assistants always seemed to be cooking something. There was a never-ending stream of sandwiches, bowls of soup, cookies, and the like coming out of his galley. I noticed also a few private little repairs and improvements being accomplished under his direct supervision, and, having had some experience in the ways of the American sailor, said nothing. No doubt we had paid for them with a couple of extra sandwiches or perhaps a surreptitious mid- night steak.

Toward the end of our third day alongside, exercise torpedoes once again arrived. Next day we took a cut-down Walrus to sea for our first day of training.

It was a repetition of our time at Balboa except that we had farther to go to reach our target area, and there was plenty of help to retrieve torpedoes. We got under way before daybreak and returned after dark. Three nights we remained at sea all night-for a convoy was arriving from San Francisco and an opportunity to practice a — convoy attack was too good to miss.

The radar, although it did not work consistently and gave us some other incidental troubles, proved to be an invaluable instrument in making a form of attack I had never thought of before. The Germans, it seemed, had done most of their destruction at night without bothering to dive. By staying on the surface they had greater mobility than the slow, closely bunched ships in the convoys, and they would race about at high speed, firing their torpedoes when opportunities best presented themselves. Apparently because they lay so much lower in the water than their huge targets, they were practi- cally never sighted. Admiral Small believed we should adopt the same tactics, and had been pushing for a radar which could assist us. The Germans, of course, had used no radar, but our convoys were so large that they hardly needed one.

The Japanese, on the other hand, had small convoys, and a "fire-control" radar, as he termed the S J, would be invaluable.

Finally our week's training was over. It had been an ex- hausting period. Walrus lay quietly alongside the dock at the submarine base and the torpedo trucks began returning our original load of torpedoes to us after overhaul by the Sub- marine Base torpedo shop. Apparently the Admiral had not been entirely satisfied with the performance of torpedoes in recent months and had directed that every torpedo brought in by a submarine from the States, as well as those he had in his stockpile, should be overhauled and checked before being issued for war patrol.

Fuel we took on from a connection right in the dock, and then came trucks bringing provisions. Every nook and cranny' in the ship was crammed with food. I had a couple of extra lockers in my room, a single, relatively commodious room compared to the one I had shared with Jim in the S-16, with floor space nearly four feet by five feet and a desk all to my- self. There was more space than I would be able to use; so- Russo crammed several cases of canned food, can by can, into the unused spaces.

Other empty corners throughout the ship were packed in the same way. Up forward on both sides of the torpedo tubes, there developed a large space, not very accessible, but ideally suited for stowage of food in cans. In the comers of the control room and behind the engines in the engine room were other such spaces. The regular dry provision storeroom and the refrigerator space, of course, were crammed to overflowing.

Under Russo's ingenious supervision veritable mountains of canned food disappeared below, and Russo proudly reported that he had even stocked the storeroom in accordance with the menus. When I looked in I knew what he meant.

He had crammed the shelves and the spaces between the shelves and then he had started stacking things on the floor.

Finally food had been piled up right to the access hatch in the control room deck. It wouldn't do in such circumstances, ac- cording to Russo, to put all the beans in one place and all the potatoes in another, because if we did we would be eating beans for a week before getting to the potatoes and eating potatoes for two weeks before we got to the canned soup.

It was the day before we were to get under way for patrol that we had what appeared to be a serious casualty, Jim and I were relaxing over a cup of coffee in the wardroom when a piercing scream came from aft. With one motion we leaped to our feet and raced down the narrow passageway to the control room. Jim got there first. I was just behind him. The place was filled with choking, black smoke. Kohler was already there and Larto arrived from the conning tower at about the same time as we.

"Fire in the control room!" bellowed Jim.

Without saying a word Kohler reached up alongside the ladder to the conning tower, pulled the general alarm. Then he grabbed the announcing system microphone. "Fire in the control room!" he shouted.

I could hear the word "Fire" reverberating throughout the ship. The smoke was coming out of the forward distribution panel, in the forward starboard corner of the control room near the door through which Jim and I had just entered. Larto darted forward.

"Excuse me, Captain," he muttered, pushing me back at the same time. He reached down, grabbed a switch near the floor, pulled it. There was a loud electric "snap" and the smoke commenced to subside.

Sitting on the floor, staring in disbelief at his right arm, was one of Russo's "mess cooks," a young, red-haired sailor known as "Lobo" Smith. I looked, too, and nearly retched.

The arm was charred black. Great lumps of what had once been flesh hung on it. I was surprised Lobo was still conscious.

It must have been excruciatingly painful, or completely numb with shock.

Groups of men came pouring into the control room carry- ing various pieces of firefighting equipment. Jim waved them all aside. "Fire's out," he said.

Russo showed up from aft. "What's the matter with Lobo?" he began.

John Larto turned on him furiously. "You dumb bastard, who told him to stow anything behind the power panel? Look at him!" Larto indicated the hapless Lobo's right arm.

Russo stepped forward suddenly and, before anyone could stop him, gripped his assistant by the injured arm, commenced to strip off the charred flesh. There beneath it was Lobo's arm perfectly good and sound, though minus its usual crop of red hair.

"You jerk, Lobo," he said, "don't you have no more sense than to store powdered milk over there?"

So saying, Russo pulled the shaking Lobo to his feet, still gripping the supposedly injured arm. "Listen, I told ya before, PORT corner, not STAROARD! Don't ya know which is PORT and which is STARBOARD on a ship?"

By this time all the charred "flesh" had been knocked off Lobo's arm. Russo indicated the switchboard, looked at the electrician, who nodded. He reached behind the panel and pulled forth the remains of a can with, a blue paper wrapper labeled 'KLIM.' The edges were seared and melted; the con- tents, once a white powder, had bubbled up with the flame into large black globules. Covering and sticking to Smith's arm, this was what had given us the impression of charred flesh.

"I thought you was going to qualify in submarines, Lobo,"

Russo said roughly. "You get everybody mad at you and you'll be mess-cooking all your life, you'll never. qualify. Now you pull all this powdered milk out of here and stick it where I told you to and then you go get a rag and clean up the back of this here auxiliary power panel."

Larto grinned and nodded, and Lobo began to reach with trepidation toward the power panel. Tom Schultz, who had meanwhile arrived, and Jim were by this time grinning at each other, and Kohler and Larto broke into guffaws.

"Go wan, Lobo," said Kohler, "it won't bite you."

"Look out, Lobo," offered Quin, "it might burn off your other arm or maybe your head this time.

Lobo looked appealingly at me. After his experience he was obviously in deathly fear of the power panel. He had piled up cans of dried milk behind it until one of them had made contact with a copper bus bar. The resulting flash of fire had scared the wits out of him, not to mention the reaction at seeing his arm apparently burned off to the shoulder. I couldn't help chuckling a little despite his discomfort and terror.

"Go ahead," I told him, "there's no more juice on the board.

Larto's cut it off."

Larto grinned a large, even-toothed smile, nodded to the frightened Lobo.

"She's all right now, Lobo. I'll just sit and watch it while you clean it up so you don't make no more mistakes."

That ended the incident and the crowd gradually drifted away, but for the next two hours-we were aware of a running fire of sarcastic comment from Larto as he grimly supervised poor Lobo Smith's labors behind the once spotless electrical distribution board.

The next morning I presented myself in the Admiral's office.

"Come in, Richardson," said the Admiral. He led me into a room where a curtain had been pulled back to disclose a wall map of the Pacific. Various areas were outlined around the coast of Japan and elsewhere. Thumbtacked in some of them were paper submarine silhouettes, each bearing the name of a vessel. "Here's your area, Richardson," he said, indicating a spot off the eastern coast of Japan. "This is AREA SEVEN. you have one good harbor entrance here, — Bungo Suido, leading into the Inland Sea of Japan between the islands of Kyushu, Honshu, and Shikoku. There will be a lot of coastwise traffic and perhaps some ocean traffic in and out of the Bungo. Here is your Operation Order." He handed me a freshly made-up pamphlet. "Take a look at it now and take a good look at this chart. Maybe you'll want to study it a while and then we can talk further. You may not discuss it with anyone else until you're under way, not even your Exec."

And so a few hours later I stood on Walrus forecastle as preparations for getting under way were being completed.

The Admiral, as evidently was his custom, had come down to see us off and there was a small group of officers and enlisted men on the dock in addition to the line-handling crew and the band that we'd first seen on our arrival.

"You'll go via Midway Island," the Admiral had said.

"We've put a little mail aboard you for them. When you get to your area take it easy at first and explore the place. We've only had four other submarines bring us reports from there, and we want to get the lay of the land. Note particularly the traffic routes, what kind of ships seem to be using the Bungo Suido, whether there are any patterns of behavior, that is, whether they travel by night or day, morning or evening, zig- zagging, in convoy, or whatever. We would like you to try that night surface technique also."

Then the Admiral became grave. "The last boat to come back from your area went close inshore after a few days and was badly depth-charged. He thinks the Japs knew he was there the whole time. Anyway, he didn't have much luck and brought all his torpedoes back. Remember, Richardson, you have a submarine here. Don't let them detect you. Your mission is to inflict as much damage as you can on the enemy, not to get spotted or attacked yourself."

The band was playing as the Admiral said his good-byes.

"Oh, by the way," he said, as he turned to go back ashore, "a couple of old friends of yours are due in here soon. Captain Blunt is coming in to be my Chief of Staff and the Nerka will be here in two weeks from Mare Island. Aren't you a friend of her skipper, Kane?"

"Yes, sir," I said. This indeed was news. Stocker Kane, I might not see, because he would be gone on patrol long before Walrus was due back in Pearl Harbor. Blunt, however, would be there to welcome us back from our first patrol. "I'll be look- ing forward to seeing them, Admiral," I said. "Give them my best." I answered his salute to the colors as he walked across the gangway. Reaching the other side, he turned.

"Good hunting, Richardson," he called. "It's open season on monkeys."

Some wag had cooked up what he called a hunting license on monkeys and a copy of it was on my desk below.

The gangway was pulled ashore. I waved to Jim on the bridge and could hear the deeper note as our diesels com- menced to deliver power. Slowly we backed away from the dock and I waved one last time to the Admiral and his staff.

The band continued playing until we were out of sight.