Silent Sea

CHAPTER 1

The twin-engined Mitsubishi Zero-1 medium bomber, called a “Betty” by American forces, cruised on a westerly course across the southern end of the Gulf of Leyte. To the bomber’s left the northern peaks of Dinegat Island were wreathed in a soft haze. To the plane’s right the waters of Leyte Gulf sparkled in the late afternoon sunshine, the slanting rays of the sun making the water almost opaque.

The bomber’s crew, bored with their daily routine, searched the sea looking for the telltale dark, cigar shape of a submarine beneath the surface. The plane’s commander looked out his windshield at the southern end of Leyte Island, squinting against the sun and then at his wrist watch. With a grunt of relief he banked the bomber to the right and headed for the airport outside of Tacloban, fifty miles north.

“Another day’s work done,” the copilot said. “I don’t think we’ll ever see anything out here.”

“There’s nothing to see,” the pilot said. He made a minute adjustment to the trim tab controls as he steadied the plane on its course. “The Americans are not complete fools. They wouldn’t risk putting their submarines so close to our airfields.” He wriggled in his seat, trying to ease the cramp of sitting in one position for hours.

“No, not complete fools,” the copilot murmured. “May I make the landing, sir?”

“No,” the plane commander said.

Far back of the cruising bomber the U.S.S. Eelfish, Fleet Submarine, U.S. Navy, cruised slowly at a depth of 125 feet, safe from the searching eyes above. The submarine, 312 feet long and only 16 feet wide amidships, its widest point, was a new ship, commissioned at New London, Connecticut, in late 1942. Its main weapons were standard for a U.S. submarine of that time: 6 torpedo tubes and 16 torpedoes in the Forward Torpedo Room, 4 torpedo tubes and 8 torpedoes in the After Torpedo Room. Unlike submarines built before World War II, its topside armament was massive. Two 5.25-inch wet-type guns built of stainless steel and monel metal dominated the main deck fore and aft. A 1.1 rapid-fire quad pom-pom gun was mounted in the center of the cigaret deck just behind the ship’s bridge. Forward of the bridge and below it on a platform there was a twin 20-millimeter machine gun.

Designed originally for long-range reconnaissance, the Eelfish was powered by four 1,600-HP diesel engines and carried 112,000 gallons of fuel oil, enough for a cruising range of more than 12,000 miles. Like all U.S. submarines on war patrol, the Eelfish carried a stock of essential spare parts; its crew knew that if the ship were to be disabled, and they could not repair it themselves, they would get no help from their own forces.

There was sufficient frozen and canned food aboard to feed the crew of 72 officers and men for 90 days. The Kleinschmidt evaporators in the Forward Engine Room could make up to 1,900 gallons of fresh water a day from sea water to offset the more than 4,000 gallons of fresh water used each week for cooking, cooling the diesel engines, and replenishing the water in the 252 huge storage-battery cells that provided power for the submarine when it was submerged.

Although living conditions were by most civilian standards cramped, there were some creature comforts. Each man in the crew had his own bunk with a good mattress. Each bunk had a reading light and an individual air-conditioning vent. An ice-cream-making machine dominated the Crew’s Mess, and two washing machines stood in the crew’s small shower space.

The crew of the Eelfish was an odd mix that had become common in submarines by mid-1943. They were all volunteers; submarine service was purely voluntary, but unlike the submarine crews prior to 1941, the men of the Eelfish were almost evenly divided between Reservists who had enlisted for the duration of the war plus six months and Regulars, career Navy men.

The mix of Regulars and Reserves was born of necessity. When the Navy’s prewar submarine building program went into high gear just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor the Navy found it did not have sufficient qualified submarine men to man the new ships. The Navy’s solution to the problem was to pick men who had experience — and after the war broke out men who had made one or two or three war patrols — to form a cadre aboard the new submarines, fleshing out the rest of the crew with Reservists who had volunteered for the rigorous training at the Navy’s Submarine School in New London. By mid-1943 half of the men aboard new submarines were Reservists whose first experience at sea was aboard their submarine.

The senior enlisted man aboard the Eelfish was Chief Torpedoman Joseph J. Flanagan, called “Monk” by his friends because of his perpetual scowl, his thick thatch of black hair, and his long, powerful arms, which hung from a set of wide, sloping shoulders.

Flanagan held a position found only in submarines. He was the “Chief of the Boat,” a classification that put him above the rest of the enlisted men and just below the officers of the Wardroom. As an enlisted man he was required to give rank its due honor. In actual practice the Chief of the Boat reported directly to the Captain and the Executive Officer.

The leading petty officers were almost all Regulars. Steve Petreshock, TM 1/c, a stocky, usually soft-spoken career man, ran the Forward Torpedo Room with quiet efficiency and a dedication to detail. In the After Torpedo Room Fred Nelson, TM 1/c, hawk-nosed, a big man who stood well over six feet, ran his torpedo room with the same efficiency. But where Petreshock was quietly insistent, Nelson was more often noisily firm.

Chief Ed Morris, a dour, pipe-smoking Chief Electrician’s Mate, drove his crew of electricians with a heavy hand to keep the electrical end of the Eelfish’s diesel-electric propulsion system in perfect operating condition. In the galley Elmo “Scotty” Rudolph, like Chief Morris a veteran of more than a dozen years of submarine duty, turned out three meals a day and a midnight snack for the crew of 72 men on only four large hot plates and two small ovens.

When Lieutenant Commander Mike Brannon, USN, had reported to New London to take command of the Eelfish he was a veteran of three war patrols aboard the U.S.S. Mako. Two days after he had reported for duty he sat with his wife Gloria in the sparsely furnished quarters the Navy had provided, holding his small daughter in his lap.

“I can’t believe it,” he said, easing his heavy, six-foot frame in a creaking wicker chair that was the only seat in the small living room other than a threadbare sofa. “I’ve got one Academy man in the Wardroom, John Olsen, the Executive Officer. I’m lucky, he’s a hell of a good man. He was on the S-Thirty-Seven when the war broke out. They fought their way out of Manila and down to Australia. But he’s never been on a big Fleet submarine. John’s got his hands full learning the ship and making sure the Regulars in the crew teach the Reservists port from starboard.

“The rest of my Wardroom are Reserves. My Gunnery and Torpedo Officer is Bob Lee, Robert E. Lee if you please, a Lieutenant, Junior Grade. He’s a lawyer. My Engineering Officer is another J.G., Jerry Gold and he’s a dentist, for God’s sake! That is, he graduated from dental school but he didn’t get a chance to take his exams or whatever they have to take to go into his own practice.”

“Why isn’t he in the Medical Corps if he’s a dentist?” his wife asked.

“Don’t ask me, Gloria,” Brannon said. “The Navy apparently found out that Jerry has a lot of mechanical aptitude so they made him a line officer and sent him to Sub School. His number one man, the Assistant Engineering Officer, is an architect named Perry Arbuckle.” He shook his head.

“They’re good men?” Gloria Brannon asked.

“Oh, heck, they’re wonderful. Bright as hell. But not one of them has ever been to sea. Lee is so smart that he scares me. He’s not very big, sort of skinny, but he’s all brain. Jerry Gold is a big man, I think a pretty tough dude if you crossed him, but he’s very willing and he’s damned bright to boot. Arbuckle is a cagey sort. He’s bright as hell but he gives me the impression that he’d never blow his stack in a crisis. We’ll have to have them over pretty soon. I know, this place isn’t big enough for the three of us let alone entertaining anyone. We’ll do it at the O-Club. Maybe early next week.”

“What about your other officers?” his wife asked.

“What others? That’s all I’ve got! I get one more man, not the two or three I could use, but not till we get to Australia. That means that Olsen and I will have to stand four on and four off on the bridge at sea until the other officers are qualified to stand a sea watch.” He eased his small daughter off his lap and got out of the creaking chair with care and began to pace the living room, his heavy shoulders hunched.

“The trouble is we need submarines so damned badly in the war zone. We don’t have any surface fleet to speak of, outside of a few carriers. And we’re building submarines almost faster than we can find crews for them. Half of my crew are Reservists who have never been to sea.”

“You had some Reserves aboard the Mako,” his wife said.

“Sure,” he answered. “But we had time to train them. I don’t have the time now, honey. In four weeks they’re going to hold sea trials and the Navy will accept the ship from the builders. Then we’ll have a week, one week, to shake down the ship and the crew.

“Then we leave.” His big Irish face softened. “I thought when I lucked out and got new construction we’d have about a year together, the three of us. It comes down to five, maybe six weeks or so.”

She nodded, her eyes bright with unspilled tears. “It doesn’t seem fair,” she said. “It isn’t fair, damn it!” She blinked and smiled, but a tear ran down her cheek.

Lying in his bunk in his tiny stateroom in the Forward Battery Compartment of the Eelfish Mike Brannon woke as he sensed the slight shift upward of the ship’s bow. He heard the whine of the motors raising the periscope and the voice of the Chief of the Watch in the Control Room advising Lieutenant Lee in the Conning Tower that the ship was at periscope depth. He rolled over and closed his eyes, listening to the soft murmur of water against the submarine’s submerged hull and drifted back to sleep.

“Periscope observation at sixteen hundred hours,” Lieutenant Lee said. “No shipping in sight. No aircraft in sight. Sea is calm. Down periscope. Control, go back to one hundred and twenty-five feet.”

Bill Brosmer, Quartermaster 1/c, entered Lee’s observations in the ship’s log in his neat, crabbed handwriting. He reached into the hip pocket of his khaki shorts for a comb and pulled it carefully through his thick, curly red beard.

“Same damned report we’ve been making every hour for the last week,” he growled. “Ain’t seen one damned ship. This patrol area is dead, Mr. Lee.”

“The people in Fremantle seemed to think we’d see some good targets here,” Lee said. He shrugged his thin shoulders. “It should be a good area. There are a lot of troops up around Tacloban and there’s two big airfields up there. With lots of troops and airfields there should be supply ships coming and going.”

“But there isn’t,” Brosmer said.

“Have to be patient, Bill,” Lee said. He lounged against the edge of a shelf that held the sonar gear.

“We can’t complain, you know. This is our first war patrol and we got those two big Jap destroyers when they were sinking Mako. A lot of submarines have never had a chance to fire torpedoes at even one destroyer. The Old Man is a good shot.”

“How’s he taking the loss of the Mako?” Brosmer’s eyes were half shut, his face noncommittal, his voice carefully casual.

“Pretty hard,” Lee said. “He put the Mako in commission just before the war broke out. He made three war patrols on her as the Exec under Captain Hinman. From what John Olsen has told me Hinman was the closest friend our Old Man had.” He turned his head and looked at the gyro repeater to see if the helmsman was on course.

“If we hadn’t been twenty miles away when the Mako told us they were going after a convoy and invited us to come over and help them, maybe the Old Man could have sunk those two Jap destroyers before they blasted Mako. He talks about that quite a bit, the Old Man does. About getting there sooner.” He looked at Brosmer, his brown eyes guileless.

“Does the crew talk much about the Mako?”

Brosmer looked at his comb and pulled a long, curly red hair out of the teeth. “Damn,” he muttered, “must be gettin’ bald in the chin.” He turned toward Lee.

“Yeah, they talk about it.” His voice was flat. “It’s like, well, it’s like we got sunk, you know what I mean? Mako was the same class ship we are, damned near our spittin’ image except we got a new SJ radar.

“But the crew, well, they think about how it was when the Mako was sinking out of control into six fucking thousand fathoms of water where she went down. I do it myself. I wonder what the Quartermaster who had my job on the Mako was doing when she was sinking so fucking slow. Was he standin’ in the Conning Tower like I’m doing now, talking to an officer? Did the Conning Tower just squash in on him and kill him quick? Or did he drown? Gives me the creeps so I don’t think about it anymore. Rest of the people, the crew, most of them think about the same thing.”

“Did you lose any friends on the Mako?” Lee’s voice was soft.

“No, I didn’t know anyone aboard her,” Brosmer said. “Some of the guys knew some of the Mako crew, the Regulars, I mean. I think Petreshock in the Forward Room knew some of the crew. I’d guess that the Chief of the Boat knew a few. From what I hear she was a good ship. Two things die when what happens to the Mako happens. The ship dies and the crew dies.” He took a long, deep, slow breath.

“I know one thing, sir, and you can maybe tell this to the other Reserve officers in the Wardroom. I think maybe the Old Man and the Exec, they might know it already. The crew of this ship was just another crew before the Mako went down. Now it’s different. We’re Eelfish. It’s like it was before the war when I was in the Thirty-Seven Boat with Mr. Olsen.

“You could get in a fight in a bar in Manila or up in China and if you hollered ‘Thirty-Seven Boat!’ anybody from the ship who heard you would come runnin’, ready to fight even if the odds was twenty to one.” He pulled the comb through his beard and stared at the hairs in its teeth. “That’s the way this crew is now, sir. All for one and one for all. Used to take years before a crew felt that way about each other. This crew got that way in one night, listening to the Mako go down.”

Lee looked away from Brosmer’s intent eyes. “Does the crew feel that way about the officers? I mean, four of the six of us are Reserves.”

Brosmer grinned suddenly, his teeth flashing white in the dense red beard. “Get yourself in a fight next time we’re in Perth, Mr. Lee. Holler ‘Eelfish’ real loud and find out.”

“Would you come running?”

“I’d do my damndest to beat the Old Man and Mr. Olsen. I figure either of them would fight any time.”

Mike Brannon rolled over in his bunk and looked at his wrist watch. Almost sixteen thirty hours. He’d had almost seven hours of sleep, the longest stretch he’d enjoyed in a week. He got out of his bunk and hitched up his wrinkled khaki shorts. On a submarine on war patrol all hands usually slept in the khaki shorts that were the unofficial uniform of the day; there was no time to get dressed if the General Quarters alarm went off. Pete Mahaffey, Officers’ Cook 1/c, stuck his head through the two green curtains that served as a door to the stateroom.

“Evenin’, Captain.” Mahaffey’s hand and muscular black forearm came through the curtain with a cup of hot coffee that had been liberally laced with canned evaporated milk and sugar.

“Thank you, Pete. Come in. What’s new?”

“Same as yesterday, same as the days before that, sir. Nothing in sight topside. Mr. Olsen’s waiting on you in the Wardroom with his charts, sir.”

“Tell him I’ll be in as soon as I shower and shave,” Brannon said. He sipped at the hot coffee.

“Sunday sir. No showers today. Showers go on the line tomorrow, sir.” Brannon nodded. Submarines on war patrol observed water rationing. Making fresh water out of sea water by electrically heating the sea water to the boiling point and then collecting and cooling the steam was a hot, miserable chore that was thoroughly detested by the Engine Room people. Brannon let down the stainless steel washbowl from its clips and ran a few inches of hot water into it. As he washed his face his mind flickered back, as it so often had this past week, to the night when he and John Olsen had stood on the bridge after the torpedoes he had fired had blasted the two Japanese Fubuki destroyers that had been depth charging the Mako.

The flotsam of the second destroyer was floating off the port beam of Eelfish as Brannon and Olsen listened to Paul Blake, the young sonarman of the Eelfish, talk to the Mako by sonar, repeating each word the Mako’s sonarman sent so that Brannon could hear and the yeoman could take down the words in his notebook.

The report by Mako’s sonarman had been succinct: Mako had made a night surface attack on a small convoy. Two big Japanese destroyers had apparently been lying in wait behind the convoy. Heavy gunfire killed Captain Hinman, the Executive Officer, the Quartermaster, and the lookouts on the bridge. The Mako dove and came under heavy depth charging. The After Torpedo Room was ripped open and flooded with water and Mako had struggled to the surface just as the Eelfish arrived on the scene and sank one of the destroyers. The remaining destroyer had opened fire on the Mako with deck guns and hulled the submarine in the Forward Torpedo Room. The sonar-man signaled to the Eelfish that the Mako was sinking, slowly, inexorably, out of control.

Brannon stared at his face in the stainless steel mirror over the washbowl as he rubbed lather into his beard, reliving again the scene on the bridge of the Eelfish.

“Mako is at four hundred feet and sinking,” Paul Blake said from the Conning Tower.

“Oh, God!” Brannon said. “What in the hell can we do?”

“Not much,” John Olsen said slowly. “Not much except pray, sir.”

Mike Brannon wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

“Tell them,” his voice broke, “tell them we are praying for them. Tell them that.” He turned away, sobbing.

He waited, the tears streaming down his cheeks, listening to the measured sound pulses of the Mako’s response. Paul Blake in the Conning Tower called out each word to the yeoman, and on the bridge Captain Brannon and John Olsen heard Blake’s voice.

“The Lord is my shepherd… I shall not want… He maketh me to lie down in green pastures… He leadeth me beside the still waters…”

There was silence.

“Sir.” The sonarman’s voice was small, hardly audible. “Sir, transmission stopped and I heard a big crunching noise.”

Brannon looked at his Executive Officer, his eyes streaming. “My God, John, the water is six miles deep here!”

John Olsen nodded and in a soft voice finished the words of the Twenty-third Psalm.

He reached for his razor and shaved, forcing himself to stop thinking about that night. There was no joy in knowing that he had sunk Mako’s killers. Finished, he combed his hair and went into the Wardroom, smiling his thanks at Mahaffey, who had put a fresh cup of coffee and a sweet roll in front of his place at the table.

“What’s on your mind, John?” Brannon asked. He bit into the roll, savoring the sweetness of the prune filling.

“This damned gulf is too wide to patrol submerged,” Olsen growled. “Fifty miles is too wide. Takes us all day, submerged, to cover half of the distance. Takes us all night on the surface to go from one side to the other. Too much can slip past us. I’d like to go up the gulf a little way, about twenty, twenty-five miles, half way up to Tacloban.” He pointed at the chart. “We’ll be here when we surface tonight. By the time we’ve finished charging the batteries we’ll be off the east of Leyte Island. We could turn north and run at ten knots up the coast for a while. Stay close enough to the coast so the mountains hide us from radar in case they got a night-flyer out there or a patrol boat. If we don’t see anything in a couple of hours we could come right and angle back to our area and be there before we have to dive for the day.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Brannon said. He reached for Olsen’s pack of cigarets and took one. “Work out the courses and speeds.” He waited as Olsen busied himself at the chart. He looked at the result and nodded assent.

“Enter the courses and speeds in the Night Order Book,” Brannon said. “Might break the monotony.” Olsen slid out from behind the Wardroom table and unfolded his long, lean length. “Hope we run into something,” he said. “The crew’s getting itchy.”

In the ship’s galley Scotty Rudolph stared balefully at a big dishpan full of boned steaks. He turned to a messcook.

“Get one of them jugs of papaya juice I bought in Fremantle and mix a cup of the juice and a cup of Wooster sauce together and paint each side of each steak with the gunk. Put a thin coat each side. Use that brush hangin’ from that ventilation duct.”

“What’s that for?” the messcook asked.

“Aussie beef is tough. They feed their cows on grass. Papaya juice is a tenderizer, but you got to be careful, you can’t use it full strength. That stuff will turn the toughest steak you ever saw into gray mud you put it on full strength and leave it on. Hour or so should be about right. Make them steaks nice and tender.”

The Eelfish surfaced an hour after the sun had dropped behind the mountain ranges of Leyte Island. The submarine’s four big diesels belched a small cloud of black smoke and then settled down to a steady pounding, three of the engines charging the two giant storage batteries, the other engine moving the Eelfish at a sedate six knots. Mike Brannon climbed through the bridge hatch and took a deep breath of the fresh night air.

“Nice night, Jerry,” he said to Lieutenant Jerry Gold, the ship’s Engineering Officer, who had the Bridge Watch. “Going to be a quarter moon in a couple of hours.” He went aft to his night station, the cigaret deck area back of the periscope shears. He leaned against the 1.1 quad pom-pom gun mount that stood in the center of the cigaret deck and raised his night binoculars to his eyes to search the horizon. Above him, in the lookout stands in the periscope shears, the three lookouts adjusted their night binoculars and searched the sky, the horizon, and the sea.

A few minutes before midnight Mike Brannon heard Lieutenant Gold reciting the litany that all Officers of the Deck on a submarine must go through when they are relieved of the Deck Watch. He listened as Gold told Lieutenant Bob Lee that the battery charge had been secured at twenty-three hundred hours, that number one main engine was on the line and making turns for six knots, the lookouts had been relieved, the below-decks watch had been relieved, the fresh-water tanks had been topped off and the evaporators were being shut down, depth set on all torpedoes was four feet, all torpedo tube outer doors closed. Course was 285 degrees, true.

“You’re relieved sir,” Lee said to Jerry Gold.

“Thank you,” Gold said. “The Captain’s on the cigaret deck and he hasn’t had a cup of coffee for two hours.”

“Why don’t you send up some coffee for the Captain when you go below?” Lee said with a grin. Gold nodded his head and dropped through the hatch to the Conning Tower.

John Olsen brought Brannon’s coffee to the cigaret deck, balancing the two coffee mugs one on top of the other.

“Thanks, John,” Brannon said. He sipped at the hot, sweet liquid. “Anything on your mind tonight?”

“I’d like to make a radar sweep at zero zero thirty, sir,” Olsen said. “One sweep to get a fix on the mountain peaks on Mindanao and Leyte for navigational purposes.”

“Very well,” Brannon said. He walked forward to the small bridge. “The Exec will make a radar sweep at zero zero thirty hours, Bob. He’ll tell you when he lights off the radar.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Lee said. “Radar sweep at zero zero thirty, ten minutes from now.” He moved to one side as Olsen went down the hatch.

Brannon heard the SJ radar antenna begin to turn, and from below decks he could hear the voice of Elmer Rafferty, the radioman who doubled as a radar operator, calling off the bearings and ranges to the mountain peaks on Leyte and Mindanao islands. There was a short pause and then Rafferty’s voice went up a notch in tone.

“Contact! Several small pips bearing zero eight five, sir. Range is… range is one five zero zero zero yards, fifteen thousand yards, sir!”

“Secure the radar,” Olsen’s voice was sharp. “Bridge! Tell the Captain that radar has a contact bearing zero eight five. Range is one five zero zero zero, fifteen thousand yards. Radar is secured, pending Captain’s orders.”

Lee turned and saw Brannon standing behind him. “I have the word, Bob,” Brannon said. He lowered his head to the Bridge transmitter.

“Control. Let’s get another radar bearing on those contacts. Make it short but get a good bearing and range.” He looked upward as the radar antenna steadied on the bearing, and then he heard Rafferty’s voice.

“Positive contact bearing zero eight four, sir. The range is closing slightly, closing a little bit. Contact is coming this way, sir.”

“Secure the radar,” Brannon ordered. “Come right to course three one five. All ahead full. Mr. Olsen to the bridge.”

“Steady on course three one five, all ahead full is answered, Bridge.” The helmsman’s voice from the Conning Tower was flat, unemotional. Brannon heard the coughing roar of the other three diesel engines starting and then the quickening of Eelfish under his feet as the ship picked up speed.

“Very well,” Lee answered the helmsman. He turned and repeated the information to Brannon as Olsen climbed out of the hatch and went back to the cigaret deck.

“That radar contact look solid to you?” Brannon asked.

“Jim Michaels was in the Control Room when we lit off the radar,” Olsen said. “He’s damned good on that thing. They told us in Fremantle when we took him aboard that he was the best they ever saw. I tend to believe him when he looks at those little spots of light and tells us he’s got a solid contact.”

“Several pips might be a convoy,” Brannon said. “Go below, John, and start the plot. I want to stay on this course until we know more about the contact, until we know its speed and course. Once we’ve got that I want to be put on a parallel course, an opposite course to that of the contact. I want to run past the contact at no more than four thousand yards. Clear?” Olsen nodded and went forward to the bridge and down the hatch. Two minutes later his voice came over the bridge speaker.

“Bridge. Tell the Captain that we want to make two radar sweeps, one now, one in five minutes. Recommend slowing to ten knots until we have course and speed of the contact.”

“Very well,” Brannon said. He turned to Lee. “Keep the lookouts sharp. We should be seeing whatever is out there in a little while.” He raised his night binoculars as he felt the Eelfish slow down.

The minutes crept by. Olsen’s voice came out of the bridge speaker.

“We’re going to make the second radar sweep, Bridge.”

“Very well,” Brannon said. He walked forward to the bridge and stood beside Lee. Above them the radar antenna was making short, jerky sweeps.

“Targets bear zero five seven, Bridge,” Olsen’s voice said from below. “Range to the targets is now nine five zero zero yards. Repeat, ninety-five hundred yards. Target course is one eight zero, dead south. Target speed is one zero, repeat, ten knots. Distance to the target track is now four one zero zero yards, repeat, forty-one hundred yards.

“We’ve got several targets out there, Bridge. Suggest we come right to course zero zero zero. Request permission for another radar sweep to determine disposition of the ships in the convoy, sir.”

“Very well,” Brannon said. “Execute course change. Let’s make this next radar sweep a solid one, Control. Is Mr. Michaels at the radar?”

“Yes, sir,” Olsen answered. “Mr. Michaels and Rafferty are manning the radar. Plot is running, sir.”

“Very well,” Brannon said. Olsen was showing no signs of excitement, Brannon reflected. He was doing his job calmly, plotting the problem, figuring the courses and speeds to bring Eelfish into contact with the enemy as Brannon wanted that contact to be made. He braced himself as the Eelfish heeled as it came to the new course.

“We have a good idea of what’s out there, Bridge,” Olsen said through the bridge speaker. “We make it a convoy led by one small ship, probably a small escort vessel.

“Back of that escort there are two larger pips. They are running abreast of each other one thousand yards back of the escort in the van. These two ships are eight hundred yards apart. Then we have two more ships. These pips are even larger. These two are aft of the first two ships at a distance of one thousand yards. They are following in the wakes of the ships in front of them. There is one more ship, a smaller pip, dead astern of the second line of ships. We assume that ship is an escort. It is one thousand yards astern of the second line of ships. We have also picked up one small pip abeam of both sides of the convoy at a distance of five hundred yards from each side of the convoy. Assume them to be small escort vessels, sir. The entire convoy is spread out along course one eight zero over three thousand yards of ocean, sir.”

“Very well,” Brannon said. He stood at one side of the bridge, his mind sorting out the information given to him, figuring out the plan of attack he would make.

The classic, the approved manner of attack on a convoy would be to reverse his course and run out ahead of the convoy. He had enough speed to be able to do that. Then he could submerge Eelfish and wait for the convoy to come to him. Once they did so he would open fire.

The classic approach was a good one, Brannon thought. What it didn’t allow for was that the water was too shallow, only 180 feet deep. That wasn’t deep enough to give him the room to maneuver away from a determined depth-charge attack. Once he started shooting from ahead of the convoy it was certain that the escort in the van and the two on each beam would rush to the attack. The escort astern would likely herd his sheep off to safety while the other escorts pinned down the submarine. Brannon turned the problem over in his mind, his face somber in the starlight.

“I have ships!” the starboard lookout called out. “I got several ships bearing zero four zero, Bridge.”

“Very well,” Lee said. He looked at his Captain.

“Very well,” Brannon said. He bent his head to the bridge transmitter.

“Plot, give me a range to the target’s course line.”

“Range to the target track is four zero zero zero, repeat four thousand yards, sir.”

“Very well,” Brannon answered. “Plot, here’s what I want: We’ll run on this course at this distance from the enemy track until the last ship in the convoy is to our beam to starboard. Then I want to come right and run to the enemy’s course and come right again so that we’ll be dead astern of the convoy. We’ll attack on the surface.”

He waited a moment so the plotting party down below could make notes. Then, his voice calm, Brannon said: “Set all torpedoes for two feet depth. Repeat two feet. Gun crews to the Control Room in red night goggles. Sound General Quarters.”

He heard the muted clanging of the General Quarters alarm and the rush of feet down below as the crew raced to their battle stations.

He listened as the reports poured in from each compartment of the ship. All battle stations were manned. Depth set all torpedoes two feet. All torpedo tube outer doors were closed. Course is zero zero zero. Speed is ten knots. Plotting party standing by. Brannon nodded to Lee and steadied his elbows on the teak bridge rail and raised his binoculars to his eyes. He could see the targets plainly, one small ship out ahead of the others and then two lines of ships. He bent to the transmitter.

“Radar. Are you sure there’s a small ship abeam to starboard in the convoy? I can’t see him at all. Take a look through the periscope to verify.”

Brannon heard the search periscope sliding upward above him and then the voice of Lieutenant Perry Arbuckle, the Assistant Engineering Officer who manned the Torpedo Data Computer in the Conning Tower, said, “Bridge, confirm a small ship close aboard the second ship in the line. He’s very close to that ship, sir.”

“Very well,” Brannon said. “Plot, give me a time at this speed when we will be abeam of that last ship in the convoy.”

“Twelve minutes, sir. One two minutes.”

“Plot a course to the enemy track, John,” Brannon said, “then turn the plot over to Mr. Lee and come up here. I need you up here for this action.”

Olsen climbed out of the hatch, his lean face beaming. “We’ve got a lot of ships out there, Skipper. All of them waltzing down the garden path just as nice as can be. How are we going to hit them?”

“I’m going to fall in behind the convoy,” Brannon said.

“I’ll give Plot time to give me a shooting setup on that Tail End Charlie back there, the last ship in the convoy. He might be an escort, and I want to get rid of him before anything else. Then I’ll set up to take the ship that will be on our port side as we go in, the second line of ships.”

“Gun crews are standing by, sir,” Olsen said.

“Good. If the convoy breaks up and scatters, as I think it will, we can add to their confusion by opening fire with the deck guns. They might discourage the escorts from getting nasty while we’re working in the middle of the convoy. Pass the word below to break out extra ammunition for the deck guns and have the ammunition party standing by to pass it topside if we call for it. This thing could get a little hairy, John, just a little bit hairy before we get through.”

“Could get a little hairy?” Olsen said to himself as he went forward to the hatch to pass the word about the ammunition party. “By my late Swedish father’s ass it could get hairy!”

“Last ship in the convoy will be abeam to starboard in ten minutes, Bridge,” Lee said from down below. “Suggest we come right to course zero nine five and make turns for flank speed, sir, twenty knots. When we reach a point astern of the convoy, sir, that will be in five minutes and twenty seconds, we can come right to course one eight zero. At that time the last ship in the convoy will be two two zero zero, repeat twenty-two hundred yards dead ahead of our position.”

“Execute the course and speed changes at the proper time,” Brannon said. He waited, feeling the vibration in the deck under his feet as the Eelfish picked up speed and began to turn to starboard, heeling sharply. A bow wave curled over the starboard side of the bow and splashed the gun sponson. Brannon felt a sudden alarm. If a Japanese lookout on one of the ships out there saw the bow wave there would be hell to pay. He gritted his teeth, watching for a searchlight signal, a star shell from the convoy, a sign that Eelfish had been seen. The convoy plodded southward without a change of course or speed, and Brannon let his breath go out in a long sigh. He bent to the bridge transmitter.

“Mr. Lee!” Brannon’s voice was sharp. “You will execute speed changes after a change of course. Repeat, execute speed changes after a change of course. We made a big bow wave and there’s some moon and starshine up here. You were given the order to change course and speed. You will do it in the future in that manner.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Lee’s voice was subdued. Eelfish rushed through the night toward the convoy’s wake. Down below in the ship the telephone talkers relayed the conversation to the people at battle stations.

“Old Man’s getting cranky,” a reload man in the After Torpedo Room said with a grin. “Chewin’ that feather merchant’s ass out in public.”

“He’s got a right to do that,” Fred Nelson said. He glared at the torpedomen and the reload crew under his charge, his fierce eyes staring from either side of a big, hooked nose.

“Old Man’s fighting this ship. You do what he says you do. You do it right, first time. Without being told to do it right. That’s what bein’ a submarine man is all about. You do things right the first time without being told how to do it.” He turned as the telephone talker raised a hand.

“Lee is asking for permission to execute a right turn and to open the outer doors in the Forward Room before he goes to flank speed,” the talker said.

“Fucker’s gettin’ smart,” Nelson grunted. “He’s the Gunnery Officer. He should know you can’t open them outer doors on the tubes in the Forward Room you goin’ faster’n ten knots. Not without gettin’ a hernia.”

“Old Man gave him an ‘execute.’ Here we go: Open doors on tubes in the After Room!”

“What doors, fuckhead?” Nelson snarled. He grabbed a Y-wrench and fitted it in place on the stud that opened the torpedo tube outer doors.

“Outer doors,” the telephone talker said.

“Do your fuckin’ job right, first time,” Nelson snapped.

“All torpedo tube outer doors open, Bridge,” Lee reported. “Steady on course one eight zero, making turns for flank speed.”

“Very well,” Brannon answered. “Give me a shooting setup on this Tail End Charlie at the after end of the convoy. He sure as hell isn’t an escort, he’s a small island freighter.

“I want to take him as we go by him at eight hundred yards if that’s okay without any big course changes.

“Keep that problem running and then give me a shooting set-up on the bigger ship that will be to our port as we come up on the second line of ships in the convoy. I’ll take Tail End Charlie as we go into the convoy, and then I’ll take the bigger ship on our port hand and after that it will be Beulah bar the door!” He drew a deep breath.

“Now hear this,” he said into the bridge transmitter. “This is the Captain. We’ve maneuvered into position astern of a convoy of five ships and at least three escorts. We’re going to run the Eelfish right up under their skirts from the rear and give them a goosing like they never had before!” He straightened up and looked at John Olsen.

“John, I want you on the TBT on the cigaret deck. You use the fish in the After Room. Shoot if you see a good target. Keep me informed. Save at least two fish in case those escorts try to run up our backsides.” Olsen nodded and ran back to the Target Bearing Transmitter, a pair of night binoculars mounted on a pelorus that transmitted the relative bearings of a target to the Conning Tower.

In the Forward Torpedo Room Steve Petreshock slapped his hand against the warhead of a reload torpedo, his face exultant.

“Hear that?” he said to the torpedomen and the reload crew. “Hear that? The Old Man’s gonna go right up their ass on the surface. He’s got the gun crews standing by in the Control Room. He’s gonna raise hell!”

“I heard what he said,” one of the reload crew said. “I heard him say there’s at least three escorts up there. Three of them Jap destroyers can make us mighty sick. Ship’s cook told me there’s only a hundred and eighty feet of water in this fuckin’ place. That ain’t enough water.”

“Knock off the shit,” Petreshock snapped. “You engine room snipes ain’t good for anything but cleaning the bilges and being in the reload crew because all you’ve got goin’ for you is a strong back. This Old Man knows what he’s doin’. He’s a fightin’ son of a bitch!”

In the Control Room Bob Lee looked down at the neat plot John Olsen had drawn of the maneuvering of the Eelfish and his own additions to the plot. It all looked so, well, school-bookish, he thought. Like a problem out of a book about how to solve the problem of firing torpedoes at an enemy. All neat and easy. Elementary. He looked at the Chief of the Boat, Chief Torpedoman Joseph “Monk” Flanagan, who was lounging against the ladder to the Conning Tower, his eyes hidden behind the dark-red night-vision adaptation goggles. Flanagan’s jaws moved constantly as he chewed on a large wad of gum. Lee bent over the plotting board as Rafferty and Jim Michaels began to feed Arbuckle and Lee a stream of data. He heard Arbuckle’s voice in the Conning Tower.

“Bridge, you’ve got a solution on the first target. Range to the target is eight five zero yards, repeat eight hundred and fifty yards.”

“Stand by forward,” Brannon said. “Stand by… don’t get me off course, damn it! Stand by…

“Fire one!” Brannon yelled. He felt the jolt in his feet and legs as the 3,000-pound torpedo hurtled out of the torpedo tube, driven by a giant fist of compressed air and water, its steam turbines screaming into life as the torpedo passed down the tube. He counted down from six to one.

“Fire two!”

“Give me more speed, damn it! Give me a solution on that second target.” He heard Olsen’s voice from the cigaret deck before he heard the crumping boom of a torpedo exploding against a ship.

“Hit!” Olsen yelled. “You got a hit on the first target! Second fish missed ahead.”

“Give me a setup on the second target, damn it!” Brannon yelled.

“You can shoot, Bridge.” Arbuckle’s voice was high with excitement. “You can shoot!”

“Fire three!” Brannon yelled. He counted down to one.

“Fire four!” He spun and looked to starboard. “Target to starboard in the second row is turning away to starboard,” Brannon yelled into the bridge transmitter. “Give me a setup on that target!”

“Escort coming in from starboard, bearing one one zero!” The starboard lookout’s voice was a high scream.

“Hit!” Brannon yelled. “Hit on the second target!” He stared for a few seconds at the orange blossom of flame at the second target’s starboard bow.

“Battle stations surface!” Brannon yelled. He jumped to one side as Chief Flanagan literally seemed to bounce upward out of the hatch, and then he disappeared over the side of the bridge rail. He heard the Chief of the Boat’s voice cursing as he wrestled open the ammunition lockers in the Conning Tower fairing as the gun crews poured upward out of the hatch and went over the rail.

“Deck guns standing by and ready,” Flanagan’s voice was a bull-like roar from the deck.

“Collision!” the starboard lookout screamed. Brannon jumped in panic.

“Collision between that big ship on this side and the escort that was comin’ in,” the lookout yelled. Brannon whirled and saw the two ships locked together, the larger ship’s bow buried deeply in the small escort vessel.

“Olsen!” Brannon shouted. “Shoot at those two ships!”

“Escort comin’ in from the port side, bearing zero two zero, Bridge!” the port lookout was yelling loudly. “Son of a bitch is shootin’, Bridge!”

“Forward gun!” Brannon shouted over the bridge rail. “Take that escort under fire! Adjust fire by shell splashes!”

The deck gun boomed, and Brannon saw a column of water rise on the port side of the onrushing escort vessel. The gun roared again and a second column of water soared upward in the moonlight, close to the escort’s bow. The escort began to turn to its starboard and Brannon heard John LaMark, the Gunner’s Mate on the 1.1 quad pom-pom, yelling from the cigaret deck.

“I can hit that bastard, Bridge!”

“Commence firing, pom-pom!” Brannon yelled. He watched as the deadly “Chicago Piano” began to spit its stream of high explosive shells toward the escort vessel. As he turned away to look around he heard LaMark’s high-pitched yell: “Gotcha, you bastard!”

“Hit!” Olsen was yelling from the cigaret deck above the steady roar of the pom-pom. “Hit, dead center!”

“Plot,” Brannon yelled into the Bridge transmitter, “give me a setup on the ships up ahead, damn it!”

“We’ve lost contact, Bridge,” Jim Michaels called out. “Last time we had a contact with them they were going in all directions, sir!”

Brannon heard Flanagan’s yell from the forward deck and turned and saw the escort vessel, its bridge a burning wreck, reeling under the combined assault of the 5.25-inch deck gun and the pom-pom. He saw a sudden explosion in the escort’s hull and the ship began to roll over.

“Cease firing!” Brannon shouted. “Radar, give me a picture of what we’ve got. Olsen, what in the hell is going on back aft?”

“The target that collided with the escort is sinking, sir.” Olsen’s voice was cracking with excitement. “The escort he hit broke up and went down. The first target you shot at, back aft, has rolled over, bottom side up. Second target is down by the bow but still underway.”

“Plot,” Brannon snapped into the transmitter. “Give me a course and bring me in to six hundred yards on that second target. We’ll take him with gunfire.”

“Come right to zero zero five, Bridge,” Lee answered.

“Execute course change,” Brannon ordered. He waited as the Eelfish heeled around in a sharp turn and steadied, running toward the second target.

“Radar range to the second target is six zero zero, repeat six hundred yards, Bridge,” Lee said.

“Both deck guns, set range six hundred yards,” Brannon called out. “Commence firing!”

He flinched as the two 5.25-inch deck guns roared in unison and then settled down to a steady barrage of fire. He saw the flashes of the hits in the ship’s bridge and superstructure and then a steady series of explosions as the gunners lowered their sights and began to pound at the ship’s hull. A great gush of steam and fire exploded out of the target’s midships section, and the ship seemed to rear slightly, like a wounded animal. Then it broke in two and the bow and stern began to drift apart.

“Cease fire! Cease fire!” Brannon yelled. “Plot, give me some information, damn it!”

“Ships up ahead have all disappeared from the radar scope, Bridge. We can come left to course one eight five, Bridge. That will take us toward where the rest of the convoy was when we started the action.”

“Close torpedo tube outer doors,” Brannon said. “Secure the Battle Surface party. Make the course change and give me turns for flank speed as soon as the torpedo tube doors are closed.” He went to the port side of the bridge as the deck gun crews poured into the bridge and went below. When the last of the gunners had gone below Brannon bent to the bridge transmitter.

“We’ll stay on this course until we see the other targets or we’re sure they got away,” he said. “Give me a constant radar sweep until further orders.” He straightened up and looked at the luminous dial of his wrist watch, blinked his eyes and looked again. He had opened fire on the Tail End Charlie at 0130. The minute hand on his watch was creeping toward four minutes after two. Thirty-four minutes? He shook his head. It had seemed more like thirty-four hours. He felt a hand touch his arm and turned and saw Olsen.

“I got a hit, Skipper! First torpedo I ever fired at an enemy ship and I hit him right in the midships section. That ship that was all tangled up with the escort!” His face suddenly sobered. “I missed with the second fish but I hit him good with the first one, blew him apart!”

“You had a sitting duck,” Brannon scoffed. Then he reached out and found Olsen’s right hand and pumped it with his own.

“I’m kidding, John! You did a damned fine job. You covered our stern and kept me informed.” He paused. “I wonder where in the hell those other ships went? There were two of them in that front line of ships and one escort.”

“We plotted them at ten knots,” Olsen said slowly. “I guess they could make fifteen, anyway. They were a good what, twenty-five hundred yards ahead of Tail End Charlie when you started shooting. How long were we engaged?”

“Thirty-four minutes,” Brannon answered. Olsen nodded and did the mathematics in his head.

“They could have gotten about fourteen, fifteen thousand yards out ahead of us plus the distance we lost when we turned and went back to take that one freighter with the deck guns. Jim Michaels said that we picked them up at fifteen thousand yards because there were several of them together. If they scattered and were that far out in front we might not be able to make a radar contact.”

Brannon nodded and turned to stare at the dim horizon aft of the Eelfish. “I’ve got a hunch that we’ll have company, John. The Japanese have aircraft at Tacloban, and there’s enough moon and starshine to help them if they come out to search for us. Go below and get our position nailed down and put me on a course back to the patrol area. Pass the word to stand easy on Battle Stations. Galley can serve coffee. Smoking lamp is lighted. I’ll keep the deck watch until we secure from General Quarters. Send the regular lookouts up as soon as they’re adapted to night vision.” Olsen dropped down the hatch. The regular lookouts came up to the bridge a half hour later and as the Battle Stations Surface lookouts went below Brannon patted each man on the back and murmured a “well done.”

“Contact! Aircraft bearing one six zero, Bridge!”

“Clear the bridge!” Brannon yelled. He waited until the last lookout had dropped down the hatch and then he punched the diving alarm with the heel of his hand and punched it once more. He went down the hatch, pulling the hatch cover closed behind him, and the Eelfish slid quietly under the sea.