Ghosts of Bungo Suido (3 page)

He looked over at the battery discharge meters. “All ahead Bendix” was slang for max power, regardless of what was left in the batteries, but those damned batteries kept score. They had maybe fifteen more minutes before the lights would go out.

Four more depth charges exploded, but this time, they were some distance away. He looked at the battery meters again.

Hell with this, he thought. I’m gonna go get this guy.

“Slow to four knots and come to periscope depth,” he ordered, visibly shocking everyone in the conning tower. “Make ready tubes nine and ten.”

The Dragon trembled as they came off full battery power to something more manageable and began the climb back to periscope depth, right through that protective thermocline layer that had
not
kept them safe this time. Why had they not detected pinging? This second destroyer had come right to them as if following a homing beacon.

Pah-pah-pah-pah
. Slower now, as the tin can up above repositioned somewhere behind them for another run.

“Got him on zero seven five,” Popeye called. “
Down
Doppler.”

“Passing three hundred feet.”

“Level straight to sixty feet,” Gar said. No more fine-tuning. He was going to get up there, take a look, and take a shot. Right now this guy thought he was in charge. We’ll see about that. They waited as the sub came up, tipping back and forth a bit as the diving officer fought to keep her in trim.

“Sixty feet, aye,” called the diving officer.

Then they waited. The TDC team was entering sound bearings and assumed ranges, trying to coax the computer into a firing solution.

“Bearing zero eight zero, null Doppler. He’s turning.”

Coming in for another try. Gar hoped he would be set deep this time, while they would be back at sixty feet.

“Target’s entering our baffles,” Popeye announced.

Gar closed his eyes for a moment, visualizing the tactical picture. They had no idea of the range to their adversary, but he knew the tin can would steady up as he ran in to make another depth-charge run. That’s when he would become the target.

“Bearing?”

“He’s somewhere in the baffles,” Popeye replied, impatiently. As in, I just told you I can’t hear him anymore. “Dead astern.”

“Passing two hundred feet.”

He turned to the torpedo data computer team. “Set running depth to ten feet, torpedo gyro to three zero five, shoot nine and ten when ready.”

Pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah.
Closing rapidly. The external sonar heads were blinded by the Dragon’s own propeller noises, but the destroyer was close enough now that the whole sub could hear him coming in. Three seconds passed, and then they heard and felt the first fish punch away from the stern tubes, followed a few seconds later by the second.

“
Right
standard rudder, make one full circle, then steady on two seven zero, periscope depth, and make ready tubes seven and eight.”

“Hot, straight, and normal,” Popeye reported.

“Run time unknown,” said the TDC operator.

“No kidding?” Gar asked, and everyone grinned for a brief moment. He’d fired blind, but there was a decent chance the destroyer would be coming at them right on that bearing.

Then came a satisfying blast, followed by a second one. Gar saw the exec wince as the whole boat shook from end to end, then realize those weren’t depth charges. The torpedoes had found their mark. Lucky, lucky,
lucky
! It sounded like the destroyer was disintegrating right on top of them. Time to stop that turn and get out from under.

“Steady as you go.”

“Steadying on—one eight five.”

“Passing one hundred feet. Coming to periscope depth.”

“All ahead one-third, turns for three knots.” He waited for a full minute for the speed to come off the boat. “
Up
scope.”

A moment later they leveled off, mushing into the surface effect of topside waves as they slowed. Gar straightened up as the scope came up, the lenses still underwater.

“Passing eighty feet.”

He held his breath. The scope might be dark, but there was no lack of sound effects. Two torpedoes had torn the approaching destroyer apart. The roar of an exploding boiler filled the conning tower, accompanied by the cacophony of rending steel as the destroyer’s shattered hull collapsed into the mortal embrace of the ever-hungry sea. Thankfully the sounds were coming from astern of them now.

“Level at periscope depth,” called the diving officer. His voice sounded more than a little bit strained.

These guys needed to buck up, Gar thought. It was one thing to lie in ambush for a fat merchant ship and blow its bottom out from a mile away. It was quite another to get in close with a Jap destroyer and go a couple of rounds—and then do it again.

He scrambled around the periscope well, completing a three-sixty quick-look. A steady rumbling noise filled the conning tower as the destroyer sank, her remaining boilers bellowing steam into the cold sea as her bulkheads collapsed in a series of loud bangs. Gar mentally pushed away images of her crew being boiled alive as they were dragged down into the depths.

Remember Pearl Harbor, you sonsabitches
.

“Okay,” he said. “That’s that. Stand by to surface. Plot, give me a bearing to that first tin can datum. Radar, conduct two short-range sweeps as soon as you can.”

Everyone in the conning tower seemed to exhale at the same time, and then they all jumped in unison when the sinking destroyer’s depth charges started to go off as he plunged past their set points. The Japs always kept their ashcans armed. Any of the crew who had managed to get overboard alive were now having their insides squeezed up out of their throats.

Remember Pearl Harbor.

“Radar reports
no
contacts within five miles.”

Got ’em both, he thought. The three-ship convoy must have kept going once their escorts started mixing it up with
Dragonfish
.

“One radar sweep, long range,”

He could hear a commotion below as the bridge crew assembled down in the control room. The chief of the boat was coaxing the planesmen, who were having trouble maintaining a level depth with everybody moving around in the boat. The radar mast motors whined as it slid up to full height to improve their radar picture.

“Conn, radar: one contact, zero six five, twenty-one thousand yards.”

“Surface,” he said.

The Klaxon sounded. “Surface, surface. Lookouts to the bridge.”

There was a mad scramble down in the control room as the diving officer operated the ballast tank levers while Cob monitored the angle on the boat. The people in the conning tower had to flatten themselves against the bulkheads to admit the lookouts and the officer of the deck. Their ears popped as the first lookout opened the hatch. Everyone welcomed the cold, fresh air, even when it sprayed some seawater into the conning tower.

“XO, take the conn. Put three diesels on the line, and one for the can. Head to intercept that radar contact.”

*   *   *

Gar remained in Control until the surface watch had been established and the boat’s ballast tanks trimmed for surface running. He told the diving officer to make sure the negative tank remained full. If the Dragon had to submerge fast, the extra weight in the negative buoyancy tank would help get her under quickly. Satisfied, he nodded at the exec and went forward.

No radar contacts within 5 miles meant that both tin cans had been sunk, so now it was time to get back to the business at hand. They weren’t necessarily home free, though. There was always the possibility that those destroyers had sent off a distress call to the Japanese air bases on Luzon. The intel people back in Pearl had reported that the Japs had some of their new, radar-equipped night bombers in the region. Plus, there was that third, intermittent radar contact they’d seen in the convoy. It could be one of those new patrol frigates the Japs had begun using. One-third the size of a destroyer, but lethal nonetheless.

There was another ear-squeezing pressure wave as the diesels were lit off. If the air in the boat were unusually foul, the crew would crack all the watertight doors in the boat. Then the engine room crew would start the diesels with compressed air and let them take suction within the boat through the open bridge hatch for a few seconds before opening the main induction valve topside. This would quickly suck all the accumulated gases out of the boat, replacing it with air coming in from the conning tower hatch. It also created a momentary tornado in the control room, where any pieces of paper not nailed down began to fly around.

Once the diesels were on the line and warmed up, the exec would order flank speed, about 20 knots. Gar calculated the pursuit time: The convoy had been making between 10 and 12 knots, so their overtaking speed was only about 10 knots. An hour or so, then, and they’d go back to their sanguinary work.

The word came down from the bridge to secure from battle stations. This meant that all the watertight compartment hatches could be fully opened, and Gar could make a quick inspection tour. Three of the ship’s main diesels were feeding the propulsion motors; the fourth was recharging the starving batteries. He checked the hydrogen meters in the forward battery to make sure the heavy charge wasn’t building up explosive gases. Then he grabbed another cup of coffee as he passed by the wardroom, where three of the junior officers were talking excitedly about the destroyers and the skipper’s “amazing” torpedo work.

Gar knew better. That last shot had been a Hail Mary if ever there’d been one—firing two fish on a sound bearing from depth meant that the fish had had to launch, turn, stabilize their gyros, climb, and then stabilize again at ordered depth in under a minute before colliding with the destroyer’s onrushing bow. Amazing, yes, but amazing luck, not amazing skill. He asked himself again why they hadn’t detected pinging. This news would really interest Pearl. The Japs had been slow to realize that the American submarine force was becoming a much bigger threat to Japan’s survival than the big American battle fleets. They were starting to improve their sonars, depth charges, and use of radar. Their torpedoes had always been the best in the world, unlike what the American submariners had struggled to deal with for the first two years.

He held on to the bulkheads now as he progressed forward; the boat was encountering the deep swell that was always present in the Luzon Strait. At flank speed, she pitched up and down in what felt like slow motion. Some of the guys he walked past already looked a little queasy. Being submerged a lot of the time, submariners were often lacking in the sea legs department.

In Forward Torpedo the sweating crew was just finishing the reload of tube one. The interior of the sub was still under red-light conditions, and the torpedomen looked like they had been slow-roasted during the previous hours.
Dragonfish
had sailed from Pearl with twenty-four torpedoes: fifteen steamers, seven electrics, and two Cuties, as the new homing torpedoes were called. After Torpedo carried eight fish, four in the tubes, and four reloads. The balance lived in Forward Torpedo. Gar was not a fan of the electrics, but they were the prescribed weapon for use against Jap ships that could shoot back. The merchies, on the other hand, could only watch in horror when the telltale trail of bubbles from a steamer appeared, poised to open up their engine room.

Tonight he’d fired steamers at both tin cans, which technically was a violation of approved doctrine. The main advantage of the electrics was that they left no telltale wake to show the escorts where the submarine was lurking. Gar, however, was no slave to doctrine, especially when it was emanating from big staffs, safe back in Pearl. The second tin can had already known where they were, and the first one wouldn’t have been able to see the torpedo wake embedded in his own wake, bubbles or no bubbles. Besides, the steamers had a much bigger warhead. In any event, he was protected by the unwritten rule: Nobody in Pearl would be second-guessing his using steamers as long as the targets were on the bottom, where all Jap ships belonged. Except, he thought, the chief of staff at SubPac, Captain Mike Forrester, who was not one of Gar’s fans.

He walked back aft through the boat, talking to the men and generally taking the crew’s emotional temperature after the fight with the destroyers. The chief of the boat joined him on his way back to After Torpedo, where they’d finished reloading. As they headed back forward toward Control, he paused in the passageway and asked Cob if his predilection for engaging destroyers was truly scaring the crew.

“They love it when they sink a Jap ship,” Svenson said. “But there is a pretty high pucker factor when you decide to go one-on-one with a tin can.”

“Going after them is a better tactic than just going deep and spreading our legs,” Gar said. “You go deep and just wait for it, you hand the initiative to them. You start shooting back, you raise
their
pucker factor and maybe throw ’em off the scent. I’ve seen escorts run for it when we shot at ’em. The best defense, and all that.”

“Yes, sir, and I agree with you,” Cob said. “I’ve never felt so damned helpless as when we’re down below and getting hammered on. The guys’ll get used to it.”

“I hope so, Cob, ’cause this cat’s not gonna change his stripes. We’re out here to do a job of bloody work, and I’m just the guy, unfortunately, to take the fight to them for a change.”

“They’re good guys, Cap’n, but most of ’em are real young, remember?”

Gar knew Cob was right about that. The average age on board was probably twenty.

“Captain, please contact Conn,” came over the announcing system.

Gar grabbed the nearest sound-powered phone handset, set the dial for Conn, and twirled the handle once, causing a squeaking noise at the other end. The exec picked up the phone.

“Whatcha got, XO?”

“Plot has these guys zigzagging. We’re gonna be on ’em pretty quick—their true speed of advance is only six knots. I’m assuming a surfaced attack unless we discover another escort. I’d like to set battle stations, surface, in ten minutes.”