Gerold Frank - U.S.S. Seawolf - Submarine Raider of the Pacific

The whole crew relaxed. But the tension was gone only momentarily. The Wolf was going into that cove and make the Japs like it, too. We’d see action quickly enough. Kelly’s Pool Room became crowded with men off duty drinking coffee and talking things over. Captain Warder and Lieutenant Deragon pored over their charts in the control room: slim men both, one big, the other small, both in khaki shorts and sandals, their bodies glistening with perspiration under the subdued light. Circumspection was the word now.

All that day we patrolled carefully, waiting for cover of darkness. With nightfall, the seas grew mountainous. We drew away from the bay: Captain Warder wanted his men to catch some sleep during the night.

A few of us tried to doze off, but we were too tense. Some of the boys were seasick. Most of us stayed at our stations, checking and rechecking our gear. Langford and his torpedo crew toiled over their fish. It takes six strong men to move a torpedo on its rollers and bring it out for inspection. At Squeaky’s command, the men seized a heavy line and tugged. The great, twenty-foot torpedo slid out on its tiny rollers from the loading rack. They went over it as a diamond cutter goes over his diamond, then slowly they slid it noiselessly back into place.

We submerged at dawn and started into the cove. The approach was a delicate matter. We spent four hours negotiating the short distance, making periscope observations every few minutes. The order would come, “Up periscope.” The glistening metal pillar—for all the world like a huge, shining perpendicular piston—would glide up with a soft drone, up out of its well until the periscope lens was above the surface of the water, far overhead. Captain Warder would place both arms over the two crossbars protruding more than a foot from either side of the periscope base, and, half-hanging on them, his forehead pressed against the sponge-rubber eyepiece, he would rotate with it like some strange acrobat in slow motion. I knew what it was like to look through that eyepiece: the sense of shock you had when you saw the brightness of daylight, the sun sparkling on the blue waters of the sea. Looking through a periscope is like looking through a high-powered binoculars: almost under your nose the sea heaves and tosses, so near that you almost pull back from the spray. The droplets of water roll down with amazing speed from the elliptical object glass, and the image is framed and clear. If the sun were too bright, a twist of the wrist—and a green filter fell into place. I knew that with a flick of his right hand Captain Warder could reduce his magnification to 75 percent of normal—this if he found himself so near a target that it occupied the entire field of vision and a lesser magnification would give him a more complete picture of target and surroundings. With another flick of his hand he could sweep the sea from horizon to sky; a glance downward at the periscope base, and he knew almost instantly how far away, in yards, the target stood; and all these infinite calibrations could, with a single press of his right thumb, be transferred into the very torpedoes themselves so that, once fired, they became all but human flashing toward their victim at such a rate of speed, with such a change in direction, set to explode precisely at contact.

Slowly we crept up on our still-unseen prey. In the silence, above the steady whine of the Wolf’ s motors, we could hear overhead the gurgle and splash of the sea itself. The Skipper gave way, after a little while, to Lieutenant Holden, and with each “Up periscope” Holden took his navigation fixes, using points of land for reference. Stationed at sound, I heard the rough sea. The water noises were deafening, a roaring, snapping, crackling bedlam blaring through my phones like static in a terrific electrical storm. To hear the beating of a ship’s screws above this scratching inferno of sound meant listening with such intensity that often you mistook the pulsations of your own blood for the enemy.

Suddenly Holden’s deep voice rang out: “Call the Captain!”

The Skipper raced up the ladder. “What have you got, Mr. Holden?”

“I don’t know, sir. I saw the mast of a ship.”

“Can you make him out at all?”

“No, sir.”

The Captain took over the periscope. He studied the sea for a full minute, then pulled the periscope down again. “There’s a ship in there, all right. Looks like a big baby. Hmmmm .” Silence. “Mr. Mercer”—he was turning to Ensign Mercer, standing over his charts on a tiny desk less than three feet away—“how’s the depth of that water?”

“We can’t go in far, sir,” said Mercer. His voice had a different timbre. “It’s pretty shallow. But I think we can get within firing range.”

“Good!” said the Captain. “Up periscope.” A moment later: “Jap seaplane tender at anchor. Looks about 12,000 tons…”

Down below, in the sound room, Maley and I looked at each other.

“Seaplane tender!” Maley pursed his lips in a silent whistle. “Now wouldn’t that make a nice Christmas present for the boys!”

Captain Warder’s voice was even. “Bearing three five five relative. Guns fore and aft. Two stick mast cranes. Might be a sub tender. Something alongside of her that might be subs or seaplanes. Down periscope.”

Maley scratched his head. “Funny we don’t patrol in a little closer.”

“Hell,” I said, “there’s that Nip destroyer right around the corner. He can get here in ten minutes.”

Maley looked at me almost scornfully. He was young, and he wanted action. “He won’t help her if we get her first, will he? Let’s sink the damn thing now and worry about him later.”

I said nothing. Silence in the conning tower. I had a pretty clear idea of what was taking place up there. Captain Warder, brows knit, was at his chart desk, checking carefully through his confidential papers, trying to type the Jap ship we wanted to attack. Apparently he was satisfied, for a minute later:

“Battle stations!” sang out the tinny voice of the intercom.

“Battle stations!” echoed from bow to stern of the Wolf . Before the words died out, the aaap! aaaap! aaaaap! of the battle alarm rang through the boat.

The emergency lights were snapped on. A dull reddish glow suffused the interior of the Wolf .

“Up periscope… Make ready the bow tubes. Down periscope.”

Behind the Captain, Signalman Frank Franz stood with phones and chest telephone. He was the Captain’s talker and relayed his orders. He repeated: “Forward torpedo room, make ready the bow tubes.”

The Wolf slowed down so that when her periscope was raised again she would not cause a noticeable wave.

“Open outer doors,” ordered Captain Warder.

Talker repeated: “Open outer doors.”

In the control room below a man worked feverishly spinning a huge control wheel by hand… ten revolutions, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen… Far forward in the bow, two great steel doors in the Wolf ’s hull swung slowly open, exposing the blunt heads of the torpedoes…

“Forward tubes ready, Captain,” Franz reported. “Outer doors open.”

“Up periscope!” said the Skipper. A few moments later: “Stand by.”

Then: “No, no, wait a minute! Rudy, come left a little more, little more… there! Hold her, Rudy… Fire one!”

There was a sudden whoosh! as though the safety valve of a radiator had blown off. Then a gentle kickback, as though the Wolf coughed, suddenly alive. I felt the pressure on my eardrums.

Torpedoes are fired by an impulse of compressed air. The air pressure within the boat goes up correspondingly.

The crew was on its toes: water had to be flooded into tanks to compensate for the change in the boat’s weight and center of gravity. The Wolf had to be trimmed, placed in balance again, or she might bounce to the surface like a rubber ball.