Silent Sea

CHAPTER 16

Mike Brannon, standing on the port side of the bridge, turned to speak to Captain Mealey and saw that the older man was standing head bowed, his hands clasped in front of him. He lifted his head and raised his binoculars to his eyes.

“Captain Brannon, take the After TBT, please. As soon as the radar gives us the disposition of the task force we can plan how we’ll go in among them.” He bent to the bridge speaker.

“Radar check, Control.”

“Bearing on the biggest target is three five five. Repeat. Three five five. Here is the disposition as we see it, sir.

“There are two smaller pips one thousand yards in front of the mass of ships, sir. We take those to be destroyers sweeping out ahead.

“One thousand yards astern of those two contacts there is a very large pip. Very large. We take that to be the aircraft carrier. Then we have two more ships abreast, one thousand yards astern of the large pip. Two more ships back of those two, range about seven hundred fifty yards aft of the first two.

“There are three other ships back of those five and they are maneuvering. Mr. Olsen assumes they are forming up after coming out of that narrow gut. Far back of this mass of ships there is one large pip. Mr. Olsen assumes this to be the cruiser.

“There is one small pip on the starboard after quarter of the convoy. We assume that to be a destroyer. Range to that destroyer is five zero zero zero yards. Repeat. Five thousand yards.

“Range to the largest ship in the task force is two zero zero zero yards. Repeat. Two thousand yards, sir. Bearing on that ship is three five seven. Repeat. Three five seven. On the far side of the task force there are several small pips maneuvering. Assume these to be destroyers, sir.”

“Open all torpedo-tube outer doors,” Mealey said. “Set depth all torpedoes four feet. Repeat. Four feet. Light off numbers three and four diesels. Make the following message to Maulers One and Two.

“Mealey is mauling!”

The word came up from below. All torpedo-tube outer doors open. Depth set all torpedoes four feet. Making turns for full speed.

“All ahead flank! Stand by to shoot at the largest target. We have him in plain sight. That’s a carrier, by God!”

Eelfish shuddered as Chief Ed Morris threw all the power generated by the four big diesel engines into the generators that drove the big electric motors. In the Forward Torpedo Room Steve Petreshock eased between the two banks of torpedo tubes, his hand hovering over the safety bar for Number One tube’s firing key.

“Olsen, start the problem on that big target,” Mealey rasped. John Olsen flicked the focus handle on the battle periscope and steadied the periscope on the target. Brosmer sang out the bearing to Arbuckle. John Wilkes Booth, the Chief Yeoman, settled himself on his stool next to Paul Blake, at the sonar, and prepared to take down in his notebook every word that was said.

“Request desired shooting range, Bridge,” Arbuckle called out.

“One thousand yards,” Mealey answered. “The escort back on the task force starboard beam still hasn’t seen us. Angle on the bow of the first target is zero six zero, starboard. Here we go!” He stood in the center of the small bridge, his fierce eyes glaring at the dark bulk of the aircraft carrier that was sharp on his port bow.

“Range to the first target is now eleven hundred yards, Bridge.” Michaels’s voice floated up to the bridge. In the Conning Tower Arbuckle cranked in the range on the TDC. He spoke softly into the battle telephone that hung around his neck. “Stand by forward…”

“You have a shooting solution, Bridge,” Arbuckle sang out.

“Fire one!” Captain Mealey yelled. He felt the thumping jolt in his legs and feet as a fist of compressed air and water hurled the 3,000-pound torpedo in Number One tube down the length of the tube, its steam engines screaming into life as it passed through the tube. Mealey counted down from six to one

“Fire two!” He felt the second torpedo leave.

“Fire three! Begin the reload forward!”

“All torpedoes running hot, straight, and normal, Bridge,” Paul Blake called out from the Conning Tower.

A booming roar echoed across the surface of the water, and then another explosion shattered the night. Mealey saw two orange and red explosions against the dark bulk of the target. A siren began to wail in the night.

“Two hits!” Mealey yelled. “Two hits in the first target!”

Brannon’s voice came from the after end of the cigaret deck. “Escort on our port quarter has a bone in its teeth. He’s seen us!”

“Very well,” Mealey said. “Left fifteen degrees rudder.” Eelfish heeled over into the turn, its bow swinging away from the stricken aircraft carrier. Mealey glanced briefly at the target and saw a huge explosion of flame gush out of the carrier’s midsection.

“Meet your helm right there!” Mealey yelled. “Steady on that heading, Plot. Next target is the ship on my port hand. Angle on the bow is twenty port. Target is beginning a turn away. Make that angle on the bow thirty port. Give me a solution!” He heard Olsen’s voice calling out the bearing and Michaels giving the range.

“Solution!” Arbuckle yelled.

“Fire four!” Mealey counted down carefully, watching the ship out to starboard beginning to turn away from him.

“Fire five!”

“We’re getting company.” Michaels’s voice over the bridge speaker was calmer than it had been. “The escort vessels out ahead of the task force are now coming this way.”

“Fire six!” Mealey roared.

“Torpedoes running hot, straight, and normal,” Blake reported. On the cigaret deck aft of the bridge Mike Brannon crouched over the TBT, lining up the pointer on the TBT with a destroyer that was plunging toward them.

“Escort astern is coming up on us fast,” he yelled.

“Right ten degrees rudder,” Mealey ordered. He saw a sudden blossom of flame near the second target’s bow and heard the roar of the explosion. Another burst of flame in the midships section of the target lit up the sky.

“Two hits in the second target!” Mealey yelled. “Reverse your helm! Steady on this heading. All ahead flank! Maneuvering, give me every turn you can.”

He stood in the small bridge space, his hands gripping the teak rail, his seaman’s eyes judging the speed of the escort that was swinging into a wide turn around the bow of the sinking ship he had hit in the second attack. He looked at his second target. He could see hundreds of men leaping from the decks into the water. “Troop transport,” he said to himself. He raised his voice.

“Brannon! Set up on that escort when he’s broadside, before he makes his turn to come down on us. Conning Tower, give Captain Brannon some help!”

Eelfish raced down the side of the sinking troop transport as the escort vessel swung wide of the bow of the troop transport. Mealey heard Brannon’s voice giving the Conning Tower the angle on the bow of the destroyer, heard him yell,

“Fire eight!

“Fire nine! Begin reload aft!”

Mealey forced himself to look away from the action astern. He searched the dark sea ahead of him, looking for his next target. Behind him he heard the familiar sound of a torpedo exploding against a ship and heard Brannon’s exultant cry.

“Hit! The destroyer is down by the bow! He’s sinking!”

In the Forward Torpedo Room the incredibly intricate choreography of a reload had begun as soon as the first torpedo had been fired at the aircraft carrier. Petreshock whirled the big Y-wrench that was used to open and close the outer torpedo tube door and shutter in a spinning arc as he closed the outer door to Number One tube. As the door slammed shut he tossed the wrench to a member of the reload crew, who put it in an upper bunk. Petreshock opened the drain valves for the tube and twisted an air valve to put pressure into the tube to blow the water in the tube down into the WRT, the Water ‘Round Torpedo tank. He counted to himself, listening with one ear to the flow of orders the telephone talker was hearing and repeating aloud. He closed the air valve and vented off the pressure in the tube, and a reload member gave him a wrench. He slammed the wrench on the stud that turned the locking bayonet joint on the inner door and heaved on the wrench. The door came open with a jolt and a stream of water poured out into the room. Petreshock struggled through the water pouring out of the tube and ducked down as the reload crew, hauling mightily on a block and tackle, began to move the reload torpedo into the tube. As he crouched below the moving torpedo Petreshock opened an air valve to recharge the impulse firing tank for the tube. He raised a hand as the tail of the torpedo cleared the forward end of the roller stand. The reload crew stopped hauling and Petreshock threw off the block and tackle and began to push the torpedo the final few inches into the tube, easing it in until he felt the guide stud on top of the torpedo come up against the stop bolt in the tube. He yanked the brass propeller guard off the torpedo’s screws and tossed it up into a bunk, then closed the door and carefully adjusted the tail buffer to make sure the torpedo was held firmly in the tube. He opened the tube vent, stooped and closed the air valve to the impulse tanks, and began to open the outer tube door. In between the tube banks Jim Rice carefully engaged the gyro spindle, engaged the depth spindle and set the depth at four feet, and disengaged the depth spindle.

“Report Number One tube reloaded, depth set four feet. Gyro spindle engaged. Outer door open.” He ducked back between the tubes to avoid being hit by the Y-wrench Petreshock was spinning as he closed the outer door to the Number Two tube.

“Right ten degrees rudder,” Mealey roared. Eelfish was twisting and turning in the midst of the task force. Ahead of him Mealey could see the dark bulk of ships moving in different directions. From one of the ships rockets were being fired to explode far overhead, bathing the ocean in an eerie red light.

“Reload completed on Number Two tube. You have Number One and Two tubes forward ready to shoot.” Flanagan’s voice over the bridge speaker was calm.

“Next target bears zero eight zero. Meet your helm right there,” Mealey yelled. He looked around swiftly. Astern he could see the bulk of the first target, lit now by a roaring column of flame that seemed to reach hundreds of feet into the air. On his port quarter the second target was down by the bow, sinking, its whistle bellowing hoarsely to indicate the ship’s plight. The destroyer Mike Brannon had hit was gone, nowhere in sight.

“I’ve got three fast ships coming at us from ahead, four from our starboard bow,” Michaels’s voice came over the speaker.

“Reload on Three and Four completed, Bridge. Reload on Seven and Eight completed.” Flanagan reported.

“Very well,” Mealey said. Ahead of him to starboard he saw the long outline of an oil tanker.

“Come right five degrees, Helm,” he yelled. “Next target is the ship bearing dead ahead and moving to our starboard bow.”

“Bearing is zero zero nine,” Olsen yelled from the battle periscope. “Range is nine hundred yards.”

“Angle on the bow is one one zero starboard,” Mealey called out.

“Solution!” Arbuckle yelled.

“Fire three!

“Fire four!” Mealey looked around quickly. He could see the closest of the four ships Michaels had reported coming at the Eelfish, a destroyer, its bow wave curling high and white in the moonlight. He turned and looked astern. In the light from the burning aircraft carrier he could see three ships coming at him, all destroyers. He turned back and saw a huge explosion of flame in the tanker.

“Hit!” he screamed. “Ten degrees right rudder. Pour on all the coal we’ve got, Maneuvering!

“Michaels. Call up Maulers One and Two. Invite them to the dance at all possible speed.” Eelfish was swinging to the right, running toward the burning tanker. Mealey looked at the closest destroyer, gauging the distance between the destroyer and the burning tanker.

“Meet your helm right there. Give me more speed, damn it!” he yelled down the hatch. “More speed or we’re going to be rammed!” He ducked instinctively as a shell from the onrushing destroyer screamed above the periscope shears.

“Get behind the damned shears, Brannon!” Mealey yelled. “That son of a bitch is going to open up with small stuff in a minute!” Brannon scrambled forward from the TBT and crouched behind the heavy steel structure of the periscope shears.

Captain Mealey stood in the center of the open bridge, judging distances, judging his speed, the slowing speed of the burning tanker and the speed of the destroyer racing toward the Eelfish. Eelfish was closing on the burning tanker, racing to cross its bow before the destroyer coming up the tanker’s starboard side could ram. Brannon, crouched behind the periscope shears, looked at Captain Mealey and saw him raise both arms and shake his fists as the destroyer raced toward Eelfish, its bow guns firing continuously. In the red glare of the burning tanker Brannon could see that Mealey’s face was set in a demonic grin.

“My God!” Brannon muttered to himself. “He’s Captain Ahab and this is his white whale!”

The Eelfish cleared the bow of the burning tanker by a scant fifty yards and heeled in a sharp left turn in response to Mealey’s barked order.

“Shoot that son of a bitch coming after us when he makes his turn,” Mealey yelled back at Brannon, who sprang to his feet and ran aft to the TBT.

“You’ve got all tubes, all tubes,” Flanagan’s voice roared out of the bridge speaker. “You’ve got ten tubes, outer doors open, depth set four feet.”

“Very well,” Mealey answered.

The next twenty minutes, as Brannon was to recall later, were the wildest he had ever experienced. Eelfish, the target of seven destroyers, twisted and turned through an ocean lit by the glare of the burning ships. Sirens on the stricken ships moaned and wailed as Captain Mealey dodged and twisted, using the sinking ships as shelters to dodge behind as Eelfish raced at top speed through the sea.

Brannon remembered later that at one point Eelfish had plowed through hundreds of troops swimming in the water. He had heard the screams of the men in the water as the bull-nosed bow of the Eelfish cut through a life raft loaded with men and then sideswiped a lifeboat, turning it over and spilling everyone in it into the water.

Dodging and twisting, Eelfish cleared the bow of a sinking troop transport, and Mealey saw a freighter heading for him, its whistle blowing steadily.

“Target is dead ahead!” Mealey yelled. “Angle on the bow is zero.

“You’ve got all tubes forward and aft,” Flanagan repeated from the Control Room.

“Down his damned throat. Stand by forward!”

“Fire one!

“Fire two!

“Fire three!”

The first two torpedoes missed ahead of the freighter’s blunt bow. The third torpedo exploded with a roar against the side of the ship’s bow, just below the hawse pipe, and the ship slowed and began to plow its way into the sea.

“Hit on that target!” Mealey yelled. “Give me fifteen degrees right rudder.” Eelfish twisted away as the freighter exploded with a gigantic roar.

“Ammunition ship!” Mealey yelled. “Set up on this destroyer coming in from behind that last target. Angle on the bow is nine zero port!”

“Solution!” Arbuckle yelled.

“Fire four!

“Fire five!”

Mealey saw the destroyer heel sharply to put its squat stern to the oncoming torpedoes. ‘“Bastard!” Mealey yelled as he saw the phosphorescent wakes of both torpedoes race past the destroyer. He turned and saw another destroyer astern, heard Brannon chanting bearings and an angle on the bow, heard him give orders to fire tubes Seven and Eight. And then Brannon’s exultant yell.

“Hit! Hit on that destroyer! He’s broken in two!”

Mealey looked around him. The last ship he had hit was disintegrating in a series of violent explosions. Beyond that ship the destroyer he had fired at and missed was turning to come back toward him.

“Right full rudder,” Mealey yelled. “Brannon, take that bastard coming at us! Eyeball it!”

“Fire nine!

“Fire ten!”Brannon’s voice was a scream. Mealey, watching, saw the destroyer swing wide to one side. “That bastard’s got a charmed life,” he muttered to himself. He yelled at Brannon to come forward to the bridge.

“We’re being boxed in,” he said, ducking with Brannon as a shell screamed over the forward deck of the Eelfish.

“That bastard in charge of those tin cans knows what he’s doing. He’s closing us in. Let’s get down and out of here. Dive! Dive!” His fist hit the diving alarm and he followed Brannon down through the hatch, grabbing at the toggle on the end of the short bronze cable that hung from the center of the hatch, hauling downward on the cable as Brosmer pushed by him on the ladder to spin the dogging wheel and close the hatch tightly.

“Four hundred feet,” Mealey called down the hatch to the Control Room. “Make it fast! Rig for depth charge. Rig for silent running.” He slid down the ladder to the Control Room.

“How’s your trim?” he said to Jerry Gold.

“Can’t tell,” Gold replied offhandedly. “We’ve got a fifteen-degree down bubble. Seems to be all right. I’ll know when we try to stop her at four hundred feet.”

Mealey glared at Gold’s broad back and then turned his eyes to the long black needles of the depth gauges.

“Screws coming fast,” Blake reported from the Conning Tower. “Bearing one four zero, sir, coming very fast.” Mealey raised his head and listened as the thunder of the destroyer’s propellers filled Eelfish’s hull. The people in the Control Room saw him wince slightly as two sharp cracks could be heard.

“Here it comes,” Mealey said in a low voice, and then two tremendous explosions shook the Eelfish. Jerry Gold was spun away from his position by the ladder to the Conning Tower.

He tried to catch his balance and slammed into Mike Brannon, knocking him off his feet. A light bulb burst with a sharp noise.

“Two sets of twin screws coming fast, bearing one five eight and one four seven,” Blake called from his place in the Conning Tower.

The thunder of the destroyer’s screws reverberated through the hull of the Eelfish as the attackers raced overhead. The Eelfish reeled and twisted as the depth charges exploded in what seemed to be a continuous roar of sound, the ship’s thin hull creaking under the force of the underwater explosions. Captain Mealey stood at the gyro table, his hands clutching at the edge of the table for support, his eyes on the line on the plot that Bob Lee was drawing.

“They’re dedicated bastards,” Mealey said dryly. He raised one hand from the edge of the gyro table and put a finger on the plot. “We’re here, and that’s almost the exact spot where we ran through all those troops in the water. Those bastards are dropping charges with their own people there. They’re killing their own damned people!” He looked over at Jerry Gold.

“I asked you for a report on your trim.”

“Slightly heavy by the bow, sir,” Gold said. “Next time they make a little noise I can correct that, sir.”

“Five hundred feet,” Mealey said. Gold turned his head and looked at Mealey. He nodded and touched the bow and stern planesmen on their shoulders.

“The man wants five hundred feet. So go to five hundred feet. Smartly.”

A sharp ringing noise sounded throughout the hull of the Eelfish. It sounded again, and Paul Blake called out, “He’s pinging on us with sonar, Control.”

“Very well,” Captain Mealey said. He looked upward toward the Conning Tower hatch. “Advise me the minute you hear his screws pick up speed, sonar.”

The pinging went on for several minutes, and then Blake called out, “Three sets of screws picking up speed, Control. Bearings are from one six zero to one eight zero.”

“Six hundred feet, fast!” Mealey snapped. Eelfish took a steep down angle and slid deeper beneath the sea. Gold leveled the ship off at 600 feet as Eelfish reeled under a barrage of depth charges exploded around and above the submarine.

“Get ready for a long siege,” Mealey said calmly. “We’re going to be getting hell for a long time. We’ve made those people pretty angry. I want damage reports from every compartment after every attack. I want reports of leaks, no matter how small. We may have to go deeper than where we are now.” He wiped perspiration from his face and neck with a towel and studied the chart and plot.