Griffin W.E.B. - The Corps 08 - In Dangers Path

«That's one of the things we're going to find out,» Dillon said. «Option Two is running a telephone line out to the airplane in a rubber boat.»

«What rubber boat?»

«Today, the one on the plane. If we do this—«

«When we do this,» Lewis corrected him.

»

When

we do this, there will be rubber boats aboard the

Sunfish''

Dillon finished.

Buchanan had a thought as the Catalina approached the surface of the sea. «Give me the mike,» he said to the talker. «And go below.»

The talker's face showed he didn't like the order, but he raised the microphone over his head and gave it to Buchanan, who lowered it in place on his chest.

«What you say when you go below and they ask you what's going on up here,» Buchanan ordered, «is 'I don't have a clue.' And I want you to keep your guesses to yourself. Understood?»

The talker nodded his head.

«That's what they call an order, sailor,» Buchanan said firmly, but not unkindly.

«Aye, aye, Chief,» the talker said, and started down the hatch in the conning tower.

The Catalina touched down and then stopped. The pilot shut down the port engine, then revved the starboard and taxied toward the

Sunfish

. A sailor—Navy enlisted aircrewmen were known as «Airedales»—appeared in the forward gun position of the Catalina with an electric bullhorn.

«Ahoy, the Catalina,» Lewis said into his microphone.

Almost immediately the Airedale put his bullhorn to his lips. «Ahoy, the

Sunfish

.»

«I'll be damned, he heard you,» Dillon said.

«Welcome to the Pacific Ocean,» Lewis called cheerfully.

«Ahoy, the

Sunfish

,» the Airedale called again.

«Wave if you hear me,» Lewis called.

«Ahoy, the

Sunfish

,» the Airedale called again.

«Shit,» Dillon said.

«We can hear him, but he can't hear us,» Buchanan said. «We're getting drowned out by the sound of his engine.»

The Catalina was now a hundred yards off the

Sunfish

.

Lewis called, «Shut down your engine!» and waited a moment, then made a cutting motion across his throat.

«I don't think I would want to shut down my engines on the high seas off China,» Captain Houser observed.

«The wind is going to blow him away from us,» Buchanan said.

«Well, then we won't collide with him,» Captain Houser said.

The Catalina pilot shut down his starboard engine. Immediately, just perceptibly, the wind began to turn the Catalina's nose, which had been pointed directly at the

Sunfish'

's conning tower.

«Shit!» Jake Dillon said again.

«Welcome to the Pacific Ocean,» Lewis called.

«We're going to have to stop meeting like this,» the Airedale called back. «People will talk.»

«You couldn't hear me before?» Lewis called.

«No, sir,» the Airedale called back.

«Not over the sound of that aircraft engine,» Buchanan said. «Damn!»

«Put the rubber boat in the water,» Lewis called. «When it's in the water, it might be a good idea to start an engine and maintain your position.»

«Understood,» the Airedale called back.

«What happens now, Chief,» Lewis said, «is that the rubber boat is going to bring us two hundred feet of half-inch hose. We'll need two people on deck to take the end of it and tie it to the

Sunfish

. I volunteer. Can you give that talker microphone to somebody else?»

Buchanan replied by speaking into the talker microphone.

«Talker to the bridge,» he ordered.

The talker appeared so quickly that it was evident he had been waiting at the foot of the ladder to the conning tower bridge.

«You and Mr. Lewis are going to climb down, meet that rubber boat,» Buchanan ordered, pointing toward the Catalina, «which will have some hose on it, and tie the end of the hose to one of the conning tower ladder steps.»

The talker looked at the Catalina, which was parallel to the

Sunfish

. As he did, the Plexiglas bubble on the portside of the fuselage rolled upward on its tracks. A black package was tossed through it. The package quickly unfolded and expanded into a small rubber boat, held to the airplane with a line.

An officer climbed into the boat, and then the half-inch hose was fed into the boat and coiled on the bottom. Finally, an Airedale joined the officer in the boat and paddles were handed to them from the airplane.

The talker waited until they had started paddling, then started down the ladder. Lewis handed his bullhorn to Buchanan and followed the talker down the steps— steel rods welded to the side of the conning tower.

«We'll have the hose, as well as the boat,

boats

, aboard the

Sunfish

, right?» Captain Houser asked.

«Yes, sir,» Jake Dillon replied.

It took what seemed like a very long time for the two men in the small rubber boat to paddle to the side of the

Sunfish

. Once there, it bobbed beside the curved hull of the submarine.

After three tries, a thin line was thrown and caught by the talker, who, with Lieutenant Lewis holding him by his waist belt, leaned as far down toward the rubber boat as he could.

A more substantial line was then hauled aboard, followed by the end of the half-inch hose.

«One of the questions when we actually do this,» Jake said, «is whether it will be wiser to load all the hose aboard the rubber boat and then pay it out from the boat as it returns to the plane, or whether just the end should go with the boat, and the hose paid out from the submarine.»

Captain Houser grunted.

«Right now, because the hose is already in the boat, we're going to try paying it out from the boat,» Jake added.

«How are you going to pump the fuel?» Captain Houser asked.

«That's another of the questions,» Dillon said.

The Catalina's pilot started one of the engines and moved the airplane back to where its nose was again pointed at the

Sunfish

. He then shut the engine down again. And the Catalina immediately began to move from the force of the wind. By the time the rubber boat was halfway to the Catalina, the Catalina was again parallel to the

Sunfish

. And the pilot again started an engine, maneuvered back into position, and shut down the engine. He did this a third time when the rubber boat was fifty feet away.

The rubber boat's return trip to the Catalina took an even longer time than the trip to the

Sunfish

. And there was a lever effect. That is to say, the weight of the hose in the water raised the bow of the rubber boat. By the time they reached the Catalina, the two men paddling it were both perched precariously on the bow.

«That's going to be fun in, say, six-foot swells,» Captain Houser observed.

«Well, maybe we can do it with just a light line and pull the hose from the airplane,» Jake said, without much conviction. «This—what do I call it?—dry run is to see what the problems are.»

One of the other problems became immediately apparent: With enormous effort, the end of the half-inch hose was taken to the wing of the Catalina where the fuel fill ports were located.

The first Airedale who tried this was dragged off the wing and into the water, together with the hose, when the weight of the line and the stress of a small swell stretching the hose proved too much for him.

Some of the hose was still in the bottom of the rubber boat. When the Airedale was hauled from the water, he tried dragging the hose onto the wing again, this time with an assist from another Airedale. It took their combined strength to keep the hose from being pulled away again.