off. Soon the sound man reported the close approach of the propellers.
March had judged right—they were passing overhead.
“Destroyer a little to starboard, passing over,” the soundman reported.
“Another to port,” he reported in a moment. Then, a little later,
“Battleship.”
“Boy, wouldn’t it be nice to get that?” murmured one of the men.
“Nice, yes,” March replied. “But that wouldn’t do the job for the other
boys that we’re going to do. We’ll let one of the Forts get that
battleship. We’ll just send it running.”
The men nodded in agreement. They knew the Skipper’s plan was best.
Ship after ship passed over as there was silence in the submarine. Then
March spoke.
“Come up to seventy-five feet now. They can’t hear.”
The motors whined again and the sub tilted up slightly. Everyone
watched the depth hand move to seventy-five and stay there. The sound
man continued to report propellers overhead. March figured that they
must be getting near the center of the convoy.
“Say, here’s something!” the sound man exclaimed. There was complete
silence as he listened more intently. “That’s a carrier or I’m a
monkey!”
“This is our spot!” March said quietly. Then he spoke over the phone to
the entire ship. “We’ve found our spot. Right by a carrier.”
There were a few cries of pleasure, but most of the men were too
excited to shout. March gave the order to bring the boat up to
periscope depth, standing by the shaft ready to grab it.
As the ship leveled off he cried, “Up ’scope” and the big shaft slid
upward. March grabbed the handles and had his eyes in place in a
fraction of a second. All the others watched him intently. He swung the
’scope a little to the left, then to the right. His voice came sharply
then, giving the target setting for the forward tubes—all six of them.
The men knew that was for the carrier.
Then March swung the ’scope clear around a hundred and eighty degrees
and focused. “Troopship!” he called, and then gave the target setting
to be relayed to the after torpedo room.
“Down ’scope!” he called. “Stand by to fire!”
The shaft slid down. Everyone in the boat knew that the periscope might
have been seen even in those few seconds it was up, even though most
lookouts on the convoy were keeping their eyes chiefly on the seas
beyond the group of ships. The sound man would know if a destroyer came
racing toward them. But March was not going to wait.
“Fire one!” McFee pressed the button that fired number one torpedo.
“Fire two!” The second one shot from the bow.
“Fire three! Fire four! Fire five! Fire six!”
In rapid order the commands came, then everyone waited tensely. March
looked at his watch, counting off the seconds. Then it came—the roar,
the shock of an explosion, and the mighty cheer that tore through the
throats of every man on _Kamongo_. The first torpedo had struck home,
but at that moment March called out, “Fire seven! Fire eight! Fire
nine! Fire ten!” And during those commands the men heard further
explosions from the first torps that had gone streaking out.
March had not been able to count how many had come, but he knew that
McFee had done so. But now all were waiting for the first sounds from
the aft tubes. In a moment it came—the first torpedo against the
troopship, and March waited no longer.
“Take her down!” he cried. “Three hundred feet!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
DEPTH CHARGES
Three hundred feet was just about the limit for them. Pressure was
terrific at that level, they all knew. But they wanted to get as far
away from the depth charges to come as they could.
_Kamongo’s_ motors whined at high pitch as they sent the boat angling
down toward the bottom. As they went down March got the report that
five torpedoes had hit the carrier and all four had ploughed into the
troopship.
“It was hard to concentrate,” said McFee, “but I know I’m right. And,
brother, that’s good shooting.”
“Wish we could know just how much damage we did,” March said.
“But you don’t want to know badly enough to surface and find out, do
you?” asked Mac with a grin. “The planes will find out when they come
along in a few minutes. They’ll tell us—later, just what we did. Anyway
the sound man reports that the ships are scattering in so many
directions he can’t keep track of them.”
Then March heard something else from the sound man. “Sounds as if
there’s solid rock below us—at about two hundred eighty feet.”
“Wonderful!” cried March. “Settle down to it and we’ll just lie there
and rest. Shut off all motors. Then let them try to find us.”
“Destroyers coming in up above, sir,” the sound man said.
“Pretty slow, weren’t they?” Mac commented.
March picked up the phone from the orderly and spoke to the ship.
“They’ll be coming any minute now. Hold fast. And we’ll be snug on the
bottom.”
The first depth charge came far above them, and the shock from it was
very slight. But then the submarine bumped slightly as its keel settled
gently against the bottom. Motors were shut off and _Kamongo_ tilted a
little to one side as it lay down on the sloping shelf of rock at the
bottom of the sea.
There came the metallic click and then the monstrous b-b-r-r-rrooom of
a depth charge to the right and above them. Then one to the left. Then
one beyond the bow. Then one beyond the stern.
“Laying a nice pattern,” McFee called, as he held fast to the little
railing at the periscope well.
“That would get us if we were higher,” March said. “They probably
figured we’re at about two hundred feet.”
“They don’t dare go any lower in their subs, usually,” McFee said, as
he braced himself for the next series of charges which shook him.
March looked around the control room. Everyone was holding fast, but
looking very calm. He phoned forward to the torpedo room to ask how
everything was up there.
“All fine, sir,” reported Pete Kalinsky. “And nice shootin’, sir.”
Room after room reported everything all right. “Just a light filament
busted from that last one in here,” said the machinist’s mate from the
engine room.
March saw that one of the men at the controls was steadying another
while he lighted a cigarette. He smiled, and then looked up sharply as
a figure appeared in the door at the forward bulkhead. It was Scoot,
hanging on groggily and looking angry.
“What’s goin’ on here, anyway?” he demanded loudly. “Can’t a guy sleep
in peace?”
March ran to him, but a depth charge—the closest yet—sent him sprawling
to the floor. McFee picked him up, holding fast to the bulkhead while
doing so. Then, between explosions, they got Scoot back to his bunk,
where they strapped him in place. The young flier went to sleep again
peacefully.
On the way back to the control room March and McFee stopped to look at
the Skipper. Sallini was with him, and he smiled.
“Temperature went down—just about the time you hit that carrier, sir,”
he reported. “He’s coming through all right, though they’ll have to
take those slugs out of him pretty soon.”
[Illustration: _Scoot Appeared in the Doorway_]
“We’ll get him to a hospital,” March said, and then grabbed the door
hard as he heard the click and then the hardest explosion of all.
“They can’t hear anything,” he said to McFee. “Do you suppose they
figure we’re lying quiet down here and are going to send them deeper
and deeper?”
“Might be,” Mac said. March knew that if such were the case it would be
better to try to zigzag away. The next explosion was so close that it
knocked over two men in the control room who thought they were holding
on fast. The next one knocked out the lights, and March shouted for the
emergency system. In a moment there was light again but March was
worried, trying to make up his mind what to do. Suddenly he felt that
he just could not make any more decisions. He wasn’t supposed to be a
submarine Skipper yet, anyway. Why decide?
“Well,” he said to himself, “if the next one’s any closer I’ll try
moving away from here.”
He waited tensely. The next explosion would decide the matter for him.
He still waited. It didn’t come. He looked at the sound man, puzzled.
“Destroyers moving away, sir,” the sound man reported.
Then they heard another explosion. But this was different. It was near
the surface, far away, and it was not like a depth charge. Then came
another and another.
“What can that be?” March said, turning to Mac.
“Darned if I know,” the veteran said.
And then it came to March. He knew. With a smile he picked up the phone
and announced to everybody, “It’s all over, folks. Those things you
hear are bombs from airplanes—our airplanes chasing the destroyers away
from us and blasting the daylights out of the convoy we’ve scattered.”
The cheer that went up was tired but came from the heart. All over, men
relaxed their grips, lit cigarettes, strolled for a cup of coffee.
“We’ll just stay right here where it’s safe for quite a while longer,”
March said. “Then we’ll move on slowly—toward home.”
* * * * *
_Kamongo_ was limping when it came into port and tied up alongside the
tender _David_. It had run submerged so long that its batteries were
almost dead. But as they pulled into the little harbor the Skipper came
to, first saying “Take her down! Take her down!” and then opening his
eyes and looking around in a daze. He found plenty of story-tellers
eager to tell him what he had slept through.
“It’s just as well,” he smiled weakly, when he had heard. “I never did
like depth charge attacks.”
Scoot was up and about now, his arm in a sling. He would not believe
that he had complained about the noise that disturbed his sleep during
the depth-charge attack.
No one was completely happy, though, until they had full reports of the
convoy battle from the Intelligence Officer at the tender. It was with
pride that March Anson carried the complete news to Skipper Larry Gray
as he lay in the small sick bay aboard the tender.
“We got the troopship ourselves,” March said. “The carrier was on fire
and listing badly when the planes came and finished her off. Not a
plane got off her. Of the rest, thirty-eight ships are at the bottom of
the sea. Not one ship reached Truk!”
Larry looked at March silently and then a slow smile spread over his
face. “Skipper,” he said, “you did a swell job.”
That was all the commendation March wanted or needed, though he wasn’t
dismayed later when he got the Navy Cross and his promotion to full
lieutenant.
As for Scoot Bailey, he was flown to Australia to get over his broken
arm before resuming his flying from _Bunker Hill_. The same award and
promotion had come to him for his part in breaking up the Jap convoy,
and he was very happy. But his last words to March were on the old
argument between them.
“I won’t say another word against pigboats,” he said. “But I still want
to get back to a plane. As I said once before, they make a great team,
don’t they?”
--------------------------------------------------
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Transcriber’s Notes:
Italicized phrases are presented by surrounding the text with
_underscores_.
Boldface phrases are presented by surrounding the text with equal
signs.
page 39 - changed "Biglow" to "Bigelow"
original text: "Same here," Biglow...
page 64 - changed "says" to "said"
original text: "Don’t have to," Scott says...
page 79 - changed "complete" to "completely"
original text: who stood near by were complete silent.
page 87 - changed "topedoes" to "torpedoes"
original text: along one of the big topedoes.
page 114 - changed "focussed" to "focused"
original text: his eyes focussed on two or three...
page 142 - changed "begining" to "beginning"
original text: at the lights of the city of Panama which were
begining...
page 172 - remove apostrophe
original text: There’ll be plane’s coming a...
page 225 - changed "destoyers" to "destroyers"
original text: and at the end three cruisers and more destoyers...
page 235 - removed extra "the" at end of sentence
original text: and took him back to the the submarine
page 240 - changed "focussed" to "focused"
original text: and eighty degrees and focussed