Run Silent, Run Deep - Страница 38

Superficial damage topside there was aplenty. All our radio antennae were gone and so were the stanchions to which they had been secured. There was a large hole in our main deck forward-approximately twenty square feet of wooden slats missing, testimony to the force and nearness of at least one depth charge. Our superstructure held a few dents, inconsequential, of course, and the three-inch gun on the main deck must have had a depth charge go off right on top of it, for the telescopic sights for both pointer and trainer were gone.

Below in the innards of the ship our four most important items of equipment were fortunately entirely undamaged. Our propellers and propeller shafts, which might have been bent or distorted by the force of the explosions, were, so far as careful inspection could tell, perfectly sound. The main engines had suffered no damage whatever; the battery seemed all right, although it indicated a very low resistance to ground and had a few cracked cell tops. A hot soldering iron drawn across the cracks, melting and resealing the mastic, and a thorough washing down with fresh water afterward, brought the insulation readings, our main concern, up again. And lastly, our torpedo tubes seemed to have apparently suffered no damage. But quite a few other items had been put out, of action for the rest of the patrol. The fire in the after torpedo room had been in the stern plane motor, mining it. Until we returned to port our stern planes would have to be operated by hand power-not an easy task. The trim pump, cracked right across the heavy steel housing and knocked off its foundation, was beyond repair; we would have to cross-connect the drain pump to the trim line and make — shift with it as well as we might. One air compressor was also cracked across one of its foundation frames and could not be used. The other was still intact; if we were careful it would provide us with enough compressed air to remain operations.

There were also several persons slightly injured, among them Quin and Hugh Adams, and we had one- case of smoke inhalation from the after torpedo room. None of the injuries was serious, however, and all the men were soon back to duty.

And after thoroughly looking the ship over, it was apparent we could stay on patrol.

During the remainder of that first night, from midnight to dawn, we worked feverishly against time to get things back in shape enough for Walrus to dive. The radar and the stern plane motor were probably our two most serious losses, and we wasted hours on both of them before admitting defeat.

But the ship as a whole was undamaged. We searched for evidence of cracks in her hull or dents where a too-close depth charge might have caved in her side. There were none of any kind, despite plenty of mute evidence of the closeness of the explosions. I wrote in our patrol report: Thorough inspection of the vessel indicates no further structural damage. The hull appears to have stood up very well. Our fervent thanks to the workers at Electric Boat who built this wonderful ship for us.

I meant every word of it.

It took us four days of steady labor, working submerged all day long, surfacing at night for battery charging and ac- complishment of such topside repairs as were necessary. One immediate problem was the fact that all radio antennae had been swept clean off the ship. Before we could communicate with our home base we would have to get up some kind of jury rig. The lifeline around the cigarette deck was comman- deered, as well as a few sections from one of the torpedo-load- ing tools and a spare hatch lanyard which we happened to have, and under Kohler's direct supervision, he being the only man aboard who had ever done any wire-splicing, a short, patched antenna wire was spliced together. During our second night of repairs we got it up and were able to receive messages, but it was apparent that we would not be able to send any until much closer to Pearl Harbor.

We had moved into a far corner of AREA SEVEN during the critical period of making repairs, and had seen no vessel of any kind, for which, under the circumstances, we were thankful.

Finally on the fourth day, weary from our almost incessant labors but well recovered, we stood back in toward the Bungo Suido, stationing ourselves in the second of the four positions we had selected for surveillance of that harbor. For a week more we remained in essentially the same locality, sighting nothing. Jim and I renewed our argument.

"Let's get in to the coast, skipper," he pleaded. "We know they're going by close inshore. It is quite possible that that Jap destroyer did not report us as a sure kill, and, if not, that could be their reason for not sending any more ships out this way."

Finally I gave in, and we proceeded cautiously to a place Jim had picked some distance south of the Bungo, where coast- wise traffic would have to make a jog to seaward to double a projecting point of land.

Our first day there also was fruitless, except for a number of fishing boats, which we kept clear of. On the second a small freighter hove in sight, chuffing a large cloud of dirty smoke from her single tall stack. Jim bared his teeth with a curious grimace when I described the target to him.

"Let me see, skipper," he begged. I stepped aside out of the periscope circle, motioning to him to take a look. I watched his face carefully as the base of the periscope came up and he put his eye to the eye guard. — "Bearing-Mark!" he said. "Range-Mark! Down scope!"

Rubinoffski dutifully read off the data, and Keith checked to see if it agreed with what the TDC generated. Jim grimed as he turned to me-a hard, tight grin.

"This fellow's our meat." His eyes were dancing as he reached for the Is-Was.

Our spot had been well chosen; the hapless vessel blundered into our trap and was saluted with a salvo of three torpedoes, one of which struck home. It was the first time I had ever seen a ship sink.

To my surprise there was something of sadness and grace about the submissive way the clumsy old freighter bowed her angular head under the waves, put her dirty stern to the sky and gently slid under. Several lifeboats, some debris, and half a dozen bobbing heads remained behind, — and as we moved clear the men in the lifeboats were busy hauling the survivors aboard. Only a few miles from shore, they would be safe by nightfall.

It was several days more before we sighted another vessel; it went by too rapidly and was too far out of range. Then a week passed and we saw another lone ship. As before we worked into position, fired a three-fish salvo. The torpedoes ran perfectly, as far as we could see, and the target saw their wakes only a split second before they got there. We saw the streak of vapor from his funnel, although to whom he might have been signaling was hard to determine and, for some un- accountable reason, the torpedoes missed.

Unexplained misses had been the subjects of some heated arguments among submarine skippers. Torpedoes which seemed to run in all respects exactly as they should, somehow frequently failed to hit the target. There were complaints that they were not running straight; that the gyros were not steering them correctly; that the TDC's were inaccurate; or that perhaps enemy vessels were not making the speed we thought they were. Another school of thought maintained the torpedoes were running below the targets; that Jap ships had been built with shallow draft for this very purpose.

I had heard stories of torpedoes being set to run at two feet below the surface and still passing beneath a destroyer.

It was hardly conceivable that such could be the case, but these were the facts and now Walrus had a case of her own to add.

Perhaps it was the cumulative reports of our activities in AREA SEVEN or perhaps the report of our near-hit by the last ship we attacked. At any rate, search as we might, we saw up more Japanese vessels, and during the latter part of Au- gust we passed through the Nanpo Shoto, heading eastward en route to base. "Base" in this case turned out to be Midway Island, and loud were the groans of disappointment from the crew when the location of our refit was announced.

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Midway, although listed as one of the Hawaiian Island chain: is actually a coral reef containing two small islands, the larger of which is also known as Midway. Its chief inhabitants, until the Navy came along, were hundreds of thousands of gooney birds. People who had to spend time on Midway were known for their perverse refusal to appreciate the beauties of nature to which they were being exposed. After a man had been a while on Midway, the story goes, he both thought and acted like a gooney bird.

But we were to be spared this after all. Two days out of Midway, as flights of the albatross circled lazily about over- head, orders arrived directing us to stop only long enough to pick up our mail which had already been forwarded there, and continue on to Pearl. Our consumption of fresh water for bathing purposes instantly tripled.

As we entered Pearl Harbor I looked over the scene with interest. Battleship row was minus one battleship: West Virginia had at last been towed away for repair. California would be next. I searched the Navy Yard as we passed it. At the far end, next to an empty dry dock, looming among the forest of cranes in all her battered majesty, bulked the unmistakable silhouette of a carrier. I gasped. She could only be the Enterprise. Her presence in Pearl Harbor must be a huge secret.

Saratoga, I knew, was undergoing repair in Puget Sound.

Lexington, Wasp, Yorktown, and Hornet had all been sunk in action. The Big E was our last effective flattop.

We put into the same dock from which we had set forth almost exactly two months before, and this time the crowd and the band and the welcoming committee were all for us.