Run Silent, Run Deep - Страница 65

"One thousand yards!" This was the turning point we had decided on. We had to get close to give us the maneuvering room to turn around. They would find it hard to look into the scud upwind; we could reach one thousand yards from that direction with a fair degree of impunity. Even if they did see us, accurate gunfire from that pitching, rolling platform would be impossible. Only a real director system, with a gyroscopically controlled stabilized firing circuit, could handle these conditions.

Of course, there was always the chance of a lucky shot "Right full rudder! Starboard stop! Starboard back full!" It would be a job even swinging into the wind. Eel started to swing nicely enough, got halfway around before the wind really hit her. I could feel the combined force of the wind and sea as our bow rose and exposed itself freely to the effects of both We stopped dead, as though we had hit a wall of mush. The gyro-compass repeater indicated that we had actually swung back a few degrees.

"Port ahead emergency!" With both screws racing, she would have greater force to push her around. Now I regretted having reversed the starboard propeller, for doing so had killed our forward progress and removed much of the effect of the rudder. And besides this, our straining engines were having all their exhaust fumes blown right down on the enemy ship. A keen nose would detect the characteristic odor of diesels, might just have the flexibility to do something about it.

Still no good. We gained a little, then lost it as the bow came up again.

"Control!" I thumbed the button for the speaker, spoke into it. "Open bow buoyancy vent!" This would lessen the buoyancy of the bow, reduce the area the wind would have to work on.

If we could only keep the bow from coming up at all!

"All Go on down to the control room." I had to cup my mouth and hold it close to his ear to make him get it all.

"Secure the engines and shut the main induction. Put the battery on propulsion. When I give you the word, open the forward group vents, hold them open for three seconds, and then shut them again!" I gave him a shove toward the hatch.

On diving, bow buoyancy vent and all the main ballast tank vents are opened and left open until the ship goes under. The main ballast tanks are handled as two groups, a forward group and an after group, with a set of controls for each.

Opening the forward group of vents for about three seconds would not permit all the air entrapped there to escape, but would vent off a large percentage of it. We would not dive because the after group would be still holding all its air in addition to what had not had a chance to whistle out of the forward group vents.

But much of our buoyancy forward would be destroyed, and our bow would sink deeper in the water. This would reduce the sail effect of the forward section of the ship-probably eliminate it alto-ether because we would inevitably ride under all the seas instead of only some of them.

Shutting off the main engines and going to the battery was merely precautionary, so that we could close the main induction valve under the cigarette deck. Otherwise we'd pull tons of water down the huge airpipe when the bridge went under.

I grabbed the mike. "Keith, raise the night periscope and see if you can make out the target!" One of the scopes had a slightly bigger light path than the other and hence the name "night periscope." If Keith could see the enemy vessel through it, perhaps it would do to take bearing to shoot the torpedoes with, and I could repair below and do it from the relative safety of the conning tower. I waited a few seconds.

"No luck, skipper. Can't see a thing!" This might be because Watching the dials and instrumentsespecially the radar scope had cost him his night vision. We couldn't wait, however.

"All right, Keith. Station somebody in the bridge hatch ready to shut it if necessary."

"Roger."

"Bridget" Al Dugan, from the control room. "Ready below!"

There was no more exhaust aft. I had not heard the main induction go shut, but it no doubt had.

My little microphone went only to the conning tower. I had to press the bridge speaker button firmly and yell into it to reach Al. "Control! Open and shut the forward group vents!"

Instantly white spray whirred out from between our slotted forward deck, was blown, just as instantly, to nothingness. I counted three to myself. The spray stopped at "four." Nothing happened at first. We heaved up as before to a passing sea, rolling far over to port, losing the few degrees of turn we had managed to accumulate during the past several seconds.

Then we dropped, far down. The next sea swept across our deck as though there were no deck there, poured over the bridge side bulwarks, inundated the whole place, filled it with foam- topped green water.

Instinctively I had sought the leeward side, the port side.

And just as the roar of the approaching wave heralded its closest proximity, boiling up from beneath as well as overwhelming us from on top, I saw the hatch slam shut. Tons of water roared around me. Frantically I gripped the lookout guard rail, felt my feet swept from under me. Sick despair engulfed me. The bitter certainty filled my brain that with the lack of buoyancy forward and the heavy seas rushing at us we had driven completely under. If we did not come up soon I was done for, and Bungo Pete would have won again.

Somehow, buoyed up by the water, I managed to pull myself up a little higher on the lookout rail-my lungs felt as though they would burst if I couldn't get a breath of air, and then I was out of it. The water had rolled past and part of our bridge reappeared. The after TBT came up, mounted on its tripod legs, just abaft of the periscope shears. My mike was gone, lost, but there was a bridge speaker installed under the TBT. Floundering in the water, I struggled aft to it; standing hip-deep I put my eyes to the binoculars. It was blurred-I wiped it off with my fingers, sucking the salt from them first.

Still blurred. There was a piece of lens paper in my pocket, somehow only damp, not dripping-wiped it off with that.

"Captain! Are you all right!"

The speaker startled me, booming right into my chest. I pushed the button, twice.

I "That did it! We're coming around! I'll steady up on course zero-eight-zero and slow down-all we need is the bearings, skipper!"

The last words were engulfed in another deluge of water.

This time I relaxed, twining my arms and legs into the TBT stanchions, waited for it to pass. Twice more the ocean buried me, welling up from beneath the deck and hurtling over the side at the same time, before the welcome voice of my Exec announced that the ship had reached the desired heading.

There was now some protection from the bridge bulwarks and periscope supports behind me, as well from the fact that the seas in sweeping in from dead ahead could not pick up quite so much of solid substance through the submerged forepart of the ship.

I wiped off the TBT lenses again, squeezing water from the precious piece of lens paper to do it, sighted through. "Ready'

Keith! Single shots! Don't shoot unless I'm holding down the button!" This was to take care of the possibility that I might be temporarily unable to aim. I turned the TBT slowly from side to side, centered the cross hair in the middle of the Q-ship's wildly tossing stack.

"Range, nine hundred! Can you see our stern, Captain?

Give us a bearing of the stern light!"

I sighted on to the stern light, which Keith and I had long ago designated as the bore-sight target for the after TBT, just as the center of the bullnose was for the forward one. It was a good precaution in case the seas had done some sudden unsuspected violence to the precious instrument, took only a second.

When you get there, take your time! I pushed the button on top of the right handle twice.

"OK! Give us the target for the first fish!" Another deluge of water, not so long, this time. I hardly felt it, got the TBT on as soon as my head came out, blurred or not, held the button down.

"One's away!" I let go the button. We'd watch to see where the fish would go, we had decided. Wipe off the lenses again.

BLAM! A stunning flash of light, followed by a solid explosion! Amazingly, I heard it, and almost immediately!

"Hit, skipper!" The speaker-how could Keith have heard, with the ship battened down as it was? Then the obvious explanation: the phenomenon had been noticed before; the sound had traveled four times as fast through the water as it could through air. Occasionally one torpedo would thus produce the sound of two explosions, if fired under conditions permitting the noise to be heard through both air and water.

The hit had been forward of the stack. I put the TBT cross-hair midway between the stack and the stern, thumbed the button again.

"Two's away!" This time I was under when the explosion came in. It shocked my eardrums. They were ringing when I came out again, just in time to see the column of water sub- siding, falling on the ridiculous foreshortened stern.

One forward and one aft. Not bad. I aimed the third one at the stack once more.

"Three's away!" The wait again. This was getting to be the payoff. To be reasonably sure of the destruction of the Q-ship, we had to hit her with a lot of torpedoes-three anyway, prefer- ably all four. A quick, secret flash of orange-gunfire! He had unlimbered one of his broadside guns, was shooting in our general direction I didn't even hear the passage of the shell, wouldn't have cared if I had. This was the payoff, this the moment of revenge. This was getting even for the Walrus, and for Jim, Hugh, Dave, and the rest. And it was making it up also for Stocker Kane, who never would have any children to speak proudly of the father who gave his life for his country, and for Hurry Kane, and Laura, and the rest of the people whose lives had been shattered by this fool war. Roy Savage and Needlefish, too, gone these long years, rusting their bones, somewhere not far from where we were at this very moment…