Yashimoto's Last Dive

Four

With the heat and smoke, the acrid smell and shock of the explosion still about him, Yashimoto knew that he must at once get I-357 clear of the Liberty ship’s gun. It was no time to question how an apparently dead gun’s crew had come to life, though the puzzle of this nagged at the back of his mind. More important was the reality that the submarine, moving slowly past the sinking ship, could no longer bring her own gun to bear on the enemy’s stern gun. The most effective manoeuvre now was to increase speed and take station immediately ahead. Shouting into the voice-pipe, ‘Emergency full ahead together,’ he ordered the Coxswain to steer fifteen degrees to starboard.

Distant lightning, followed by thunder, came from the storm which had moved away to the south-east, taking with it the rain. The thunder all but coincided with the bright flash and muffled report of the Liberty ship’s gun, the screech of the shell rising in pitch as it passed astern of I-357. It was evident that the enemy’s increasingly severe list was making it difficult for her gun’s crew to train on the submarine with accuracy.

Yashimoto stood at the bridge screen, taut nerves jangling, his mind a turmoil of anxiety as the submarine drew slowly ahead of its adversary. In the flickering light of flames from the fire he saw the name-board on the bridgehouse; Fort Nebraska, beneath it the port of origin, Baltimore. To his longstanding dislike and contempt for the Americans was now added an immense anger. The shell which struck I-357’s conning-tower had been fired after the enemy had given every indication of abandoning ship. They would have to pay dearly for that.

When I-357 was at last in station ahead of the Fort Nebraska, Yashimoto ordered stop engines. Only three minutes had elapsed since the shell hit the submarine, but to him they seemed the longest three minutes of his life.

From the after end of the bridge he watched the ship astern through binoculars; the plume of escaping steam was still jetting from the funnel, the shrieking hiss now joined by the deep note of the siren, a weird harmony which lent to the scene a Dantesque quality. Turning from it he ordered the officer-of-the-watch to examine the damage done by the enemy shell and report back without delay. Toshida disappeared in the darkness. The voice-pipe call sounded. It was the First Lieutenant, reporting that the explosion at the foot of the conning-tower had caused a number of casualties in the control-room; one man killed and several wounded.

‘The explosion was not in the conning-tower,’ barked Yashimoto in angry contradiction. ‘The shell struck the base of the outer casing. It must have been splinters from that which fell down the tower into the control-room.’

‘I see.’ There was muted doubt in the First Lieutenant’s reply. ‘Matsuhito is checking the damage. He will report back shortly.’

‘I have already sent Toshida to do that,’ snapped Yashimoto, adding, with some petulance, ‘I suppose it will do no harm to have two reports.’ He went back to the front of the bridge uncertain, confused, worrying about how shell splinters could have caused casualties in the control-room. Was he right in believing that they had been fall-out from the shell-burst at the foot of the conning-tower, in the same way that splinters had fallen on to the bridge itself?

Back from a quick inspection, Toshida brought contrary and more serious news. ‘The armour-piercing shell penetrated at the foot of the tower’s outer casing, sir. Then went on through the side of the conning-tower itself and burst as it struck the coaming of the lower hatch.’

Yashimoto received the report in stubborn silence, his mind wrestling with its implications. Though insulated from the pressure hull by the lower hatch, the conning-tower was itself a unit of the pressure hull. Once pierced, its watertight integrity had gone. It would mean diving with a flooded conning-tower and relying on the lower hatch to maintain the integrity of the main pressure hull. A holed conning-tower would not only make a crash dive impossible, but would involve some difficulty in trimming when dived.

He was considering these problems when the Yeoman called out, ‘She’s going, sir.’

Yashimoto trained binoculars on the sinking ship. She was deep in the water now, listing heavily to port and down by the stern, flames from the fire casting flickering light over the desolate scene. But there were more urgent matters to attend to than watch the last moments of the stricken vessel. He ordered Toshida to take over the bridge. ‘I will see for myself the damage.’ He gestured astern. ‘When it has gone, proceed at eight knots, turn slowly to port. I will not be long.’

The contempt in Yashimoto’s voice when he’d referred to the ship as it instead of she warned the Gunnery Officer that the Captain was in a dangerous mood.

Despite an outward show of calm, Yashimoto was dismayed by what he found in the conning-tower. The shell had penetrated both the outer and inner sides of the tower before exploding as it struck the coaming on which the lower hatch lid was seated when shut. The explosion had not only torn away most of the starboard side of the oval shaped coaming but had left a jagged hole in the main pressure hull adjoining it. He trained the beam of his torch on to the hatch lid. Before the explosion it would have been in its open position, standing vertical, clipped back against the inside of the conning-tower. It must have taken much of the force of the explosion for, apart from blast marks and deep scoring by shell fragments, one side of the lid was noticeably closer to the conning-tower than the other. He assumed that the hammer effect of the explosion had warped the lid, twisting it on its massive hinges. With a sense of helplessness, of bewildered dismay, he saw through the shellhole the broken ends of air pressure pipes and electric cables. He saw, too, the fracture marks on the heavy steel hinges of the hatch. Shaking his head, his emotions a mixture of despair and anger, he sent for the Engineer Officer, whereafter he went to the bridge a deeply troubled man. I-357 could not dive. That was the stark reality which now faced him. Nor would she be able to until the damage had been repaired. If it could be repaired? How long would it take? Only Susuma Satugawa, the Engineer Officer, was qualified to answer those questions. As long as the weather remained fine I-357 could run on the surface, but if the weather deteriorated that too would be hazardous with the main pressure hull holed no more than six or seven feet above the waterline. The fundamental problem remained: I-357 could not dive. When daylight came the chances were they would be found by the enemy’s air reconnaissance. That would be the end of the submarine and the seventy-five men of her crew. The attack on Fort Nebraska had been disastrous. Not, he assured himself, because of any failure on his part. It was due to an incredibly lucky hit by the American ship. The stern guns of merchant ships were 1914–1918 War relics, their crews naval reservists with little training. That they could in almost total darkness score a direct hit on I-357 after their own gun’s crew had been knocked out by a shell burst was almost beyond belief. And yet it had happened. He supposed that one or two members of the American’s gun-crew had recovered from concussion and managed to lay and train the gun. That, too, must have involved a considerable element of luck.

He was brooding over these hard facts when the First Lieutenant came on to the bridge with more bad news. A leading torpedoman had been killed and three seamen wounded by fragments of metal. The wounded were receiving attention. The dead man’s body had been placed in the torpedo compartment. Even more serious was the news that during the gun action, which had lasted less than five minutes, Yochiro Keda, the submarine’s Chief Telegraphist, had heard Fort Nebraska transmitting a wireless message. It had, he said, been a brief transmission, apparently giving the ship’s position but beginning and ending with four Ss. Though Yashimoto appeared to take the news calmly, even phlegmatically, he was shattered by it. The message transmitted by the American ship must bring enemy naval and air units to the scene. Survivors would report having seen a shell burst on the submarine’s conning-tower after which, they would say, it had moved away on the surface. The brief W/T transmission had made a bad situation a greal deal worse.

In the eastern sky the moon came clear of the clouds, revealing to those on the submarine’s bridge a lifeboat, several rafts and an odd assortment of floating wreckage strewn across an area where widening patches of fuel oil, dark and sinister in the moonlight, marked the grave of the Fort Nebraska.

After that second round, that must have gone way over the U-boat because they didn’t see any splash this side of it, and with the list getting worse, Corrigan knew there was no point in standing by the gun with the dead bodies around it.

‘We better get to hell out of it, Smitty,’ he shouted to the man leaning against the breech of the 5.5 inch gun. ‘Get ourselves into a lifeboat.’ He’d had to shout to make himself heard above the shrill hiss of escaping steam.

‘Reckon I can’t make it, Brad. Legs feel kinda weak,’ was the hoarse reply.

‘Aw, c’mon boy. I’ll lend a hand.’ In the darkness Corrigan put an arm round the other man’s waist. Together they hobbled and staggered across the sloping poopdeck, making for the starboard ladder. They reached it as the lightning came and for a moment Corrigan saw water swirling at the foot of the ladder.

‘Jesus!’ there was fear and astonishment in the loud oath. ‘The well-deck’s awash, Smitty. Can’t get forward now. She’ll be going soon.’ It’s all right for me, he was thinking, I belong in the water. But Christ! What about Smitty Fredericks?

Goddam wound’s bleeding. Sharks go for blood like crazy. And I’ll be supporting the guy.

But there wasn’t time to think that one out. The hull shook, the list increased steeply, the movement now more a series of jerks than smooth like before. The sound of escaping steam had been muted by the deep thrum of the siren, a bizarre duet which deadened thought.

Corrigan remembered the stack of hand-floats on the poop. Shouting, ‘Hold on there, Smitty, while I put a float over,’ he disappeared into the darkness. With the list too steep to walk without support he had to crawl, hanging on to deck fittings as he went. He reached the stack, flicked open the locking grips and pulled a float clear. He began dragging it back towards the ladder. He hadn’t gone far when the hissing sound from the well-deck ventilators rose to a scream, like a gale blowing through rigging. Must be the pressure of water flooding into the holds, forcing out the remaining air, he told himself. Before he could reach Smitty the ship began its final, stern first slide. A slow but irreversible movement, the level of the sea rising until it had covered the after well-deck, then climbing the poop ladder rung by rung. He couldn’t see his companion. If only the lightning would come again. He yelled, ‘Let yourself down the side, Smitty. Switch on the survivor’s light. I’ll look after you in the water. You’ll be okay.’ He kicked off his shoes, switched on the life-jacket’s red light, climbed over the guardrail and slid down the side of what remained of the stern above water. When his feet touched the sea he leant forward and plunged in. A strong crawl took him clear of the ship.

He stopped swimming, flipped on to his back and floated. Turning his head he searched the darkness for Smitty’s red light, but nothing showed. He shouted, ‘Smitty,’ several times but soon gave up. There was no chance of being heard above the noise of escaping steam and the siren. He’d have to wait now until the ship had gone before searching for Smitty. So he lay on the smooth sea, rising and falling to the undulations of the swell, wondering about how, when and if he and the other survivors would be picked up. Those thoughts were disturbed by the moon breaking through the clouds. It was as if a giant light had been switched on to reveal the scene. The sinking ship seemed closer now that she could be seen, her dying more awesome, whorls of smoke leaping and twisting from the fire, the solitary funnel in its midst like some martyr at the stake. With the stern submerged and the bows high out of the water she slid slowly beneath the sea. Then, where the ship had been, the sea was in turmoil, pieces of wreckage, jets of fuel oil and water, and great bubbles of air bursting to the surface with obscene plops and hisses like gargantuan farts, leaving only the pungent odour of diesel to hang in the air like some invisible mantle.

The turbulence of the sinking was followed by a strange calm, a sudden silence, a tranquillity which Corrigan found comforting. But moonlight and the voices of men soon dispelled the illusion. Because he was looking for Smitty, and couldn’t really see properly until lifted by a swell, he focused on the area closest to him. That was where the stern had been, where the dead bodies of the gun’s crew lay sagging in the water like black gunny sacks, the air trapped in their clothing ballooning, distorting the shape of their corpses. But there was no sign of Smitty, no one moved, no red light winked, no response to Corrigan’s repeated calls.

In and around the widening pools of fuel oil he saw the litter of wreckage: pieces of timber, gratings, hatch-planks, wooden buckets, crates, mooring rope bins, gas cylinders, fire extinguishers and glass bottles. But it was the two lifeboats, some distance from him, which dominated the moonlit scene. One loaded with men, a few of them rowing untidily, was heading for the other which had capsized. Corrigan could see men clinging to its lifelines. Wondering whether to swim towards the lifeboats or make for the hand-float he’d thrown over the side, he heard what sounded like a diesel locomotive in the distance. Soon afterwards, from the top of the next swell, he saw the U-boat, a dark shape on moonlit water. It was a good few hundred yards away, turning in a wide circle.

Several swells later he saw that it was moving slowly towards the lifeboats.

He knew from shipmates who’d been in other sinkings what the U-boat was after. Its commander would interrogate the survivors: what ship, where from, where bound, tonnage, cargo, number of crew? Then the Germans would wave, wish them good luck and steam away. Some U-boat commanders had been known to hand cigarettes to survivors, to indicate the direction of the nearest land, to pick a man out of the water and take him on board. Not that Corrigan wanted that. He’d rather take his chance with his own lot.

Thinking about that reminded him of sharks. The sooner he was out of the water the better. There’d been no sign of them yet. They kept away from fuel oil, waited in the waters beyond. Corrigan knew a lot about sharks. A lifeguard on a Massachusetts beach had to. Sharks were attracted by vibrations in the water. For a shark vibrations were worth investigating, especially vibrations from large, irregular and unfishlike shapes. Corrigan knew just about every tactic a swimmer should employ when sharks were about. As a last resort he could defend himself with the sheath-knife on his belt. A blooded shark was always attacked by other sharks. He knew of men who had saved their lives that way. So he didn’t feel too bad about sharks, although with wounded corpses in the water and plenty of blood about he reckoned things might go wrong.

Even so, he’d rather stay with his own crowd than be picked up by the U-boat. It had come closer, bows on to him now, maybe a couple of hundred yards from the loaded lifeboat. The rowing had stopped. Someone, the Captain he supposed, was standing in the sternsheets with an arm raised. To Corrigan there was something strangely reassuring about the sleek hull of the U-boat, shining wetly in the moonlight. It represented order and purpose among all that wreckage and devastation. He was aware of the contradictory nature of his thoughts — it was the Germans who’d created the devastation — but there was a bond between seamen which somehow transcended the grim realities of war.

The U-boat came on, moving more slowly. He supposed it was stopping. But it didn’t stop. Instead it went steadily on, its bows slicing into the lifeboat, the shouts and screams of the Americans drifting across the water in a frightening dirge. The two halves of the lifeboat, crushed and broken, were thrown aside and began to pass down the length of the submarine. Suddenly, spurts of flame and the rat-tat-tat of automatic fire came from its casing. Disbelief gave way to horror; the U-boat was machine-gunning survivors in the water. Now, less than a hundred yards from him, it was turning to port. With desperate haste he tore loose the tapes of his life-jacket, slipped it off, took a deep breath, duck-dived and began to swim underwater towards the hand-float. Three times he had to come up for air before reaching it: saw the flashing lines of tracer bullets and heard bursts of machine-gun fire. The float with its hanging lifelines was a small, two-foot-square affair, no more than a stout wooden frame over a buoyancy tank. It was designed for swimmers to cling to but not climb upon. Used in that way it could support four men in the water.

Corrigan surfaced on the side away from the submarine, put up a hand and grasped a lifeline. Keeping his chin level with the water he turned the raft just enough to enable him to see the submarine when the swells lifted.

It must have rammed the other lifeboat, the capsized one, while he’d been making the underwater swim to the float. Only its fore-end now remained, the bow pointing forlornly to the sky. Beyond it the submarine was turning to starboard. A powerful beam of light from the conning-tower swept the sea, settling on what remained of the lifeboat. Searchlight, he muttered to himself. Christ help us!

For some time the long black shape, doubly sinister now in the moonlight, continued its grim task; steaming through the wreckage, machine-gunning as it went, then turning to make another run, the beam of light probing the surface of the sea. Once it swept round in his direction. Realizing that the float would be a target he ducked under and began swimming away from it. Never in his life had he swum so far underwater, and certainly never with such urgency. The sound of the submarine’s propellers came closer and his terror mounted. But in spite of it he had to come up. With the pressure on his lungs beyond endurance, he surfaced. The submarine was no more than thirty feet away. It must have passed between him and the hand-float, because in the instant of gulping in air he’d heard the rattle of automatic fire and caught a glimpse of men on the casing. The beam of light from the signal lamp had been trained on the side away from him.

In that split second the moonlight had revealed something else, something painted on the side of the black conning-tower: a white rectangle, at its centre, in red, the rising sun of Japan, beneath it, the jagged hole made by the shell he and Smitty had fired. So that was why those bastards were killing everybody. Christ Jesus! The Japs had sunk old Fort N and killed most of the gun’s crew. Wasn’t that enough? They didn’t have to massacre the entire crew.

He tried to wipe the oil fuel from his face but realized that it coated his hands and arms and just about everything else. And it burnt his skin and hurt his eyes.