Dust on the Sea (11 page)

He could feel himself pulled in two directions at the same time, but all the decisions had already been made. Admiral Small of course knew that Blunt had once been skipper of the
Octopus
, and that Richardson had served three years under him there, as well as an additional time in New London. Obviously, it was Small who had decided that Blunt would ride the
Eel
.

“Great,” said Rich, this being the only reply he could think of. “What do we have to do for training? And when can we start?”

“There'll be a little more work in it for you and some of your officers, of course, and you won't have as much free time in the Royal Hawaiian Hotel as maybe you'd hoped. I want all of you to study all the reports of all the previous wolfpacks. And I want you three skippers to get to know each other pretty well, too. Then we'll set up a training period to work out our tactics.”

“Is our area picked already?” Rich asked.

“
AREA TWELVE
, the Yellow Sea and East China Sea. That was where we were going to send you, remember, when we diverted you to the Bungo Suido last time. Matter of fact, we've not had a submarine in there since, and by now the Japs must be running a lot of traffic through there. There should be plenty of targets, at least in the beginning. As soon as we hit them, of course, they'll close off again. So I want to go in and hit them real hard right away. Good thing they won't have old Bungo to shift over there.”

“Fine,” said Rich. “It sounds like a lot of fun.” “Fun” was the wrong word, but Blunt did not seem to notice. If Richardson's latest evaluation was on target, there would be a lot more than “fun” involved. He hoped he had sounded convincing. “When do we start getting ready?”

“Right after the
Chicolar
gets in, day after tomorrow. I'll call all three of you skippers together, along with your execs. It won't be too tough a schedule. You'll have plenty of time off. There'll be plenty of time to see the Lastrada dame, if she has any free time. After sixty days at sea you must really have had lead in your pencil last night. . . .”

Somehow, Richardson managed to make a quiet retreat. There was something wrong, all right.

To Richardson's surprise, at the afternoon-long refit conference there was no resistance at all to his proposal to move the two Target Bearing Transmitters into little bulges built into the sides of
Eel
's bridge. He had prepared himself with diagrams showing the increased arc which could be covered by either TBT in the event of failure of the other, and he was psychologically ready to discuss the loss of aiming capability from the forward TBT after Nakame's rifle had smashed it.

In this instance,
Eel
had no torpedoes remaining forward—or aft either, for that matter—but the principle was valid. Rich would use this argument last, had begun to describe his intended use of the side-mounted bearing transmitters for director control of the two five-inch guns, when he realized here was no opposition to his proposal. So far as the refit people were concerned, it was only the question of the physical capability to do the job.

The reaction to his other primary request, that extra skids be provided for stowage of ten torpedoes in the after torpedo room, instead of the standard eight, was the same. He had been prepared for opposition, for no submarine had yet taken twenty-six torpedoes on patrol.
Sufficient space existed, but the designed load was only twenty-four fish. Should
Eel
be unlucky enough to have a “dry run,” be forced to bring her full load of torpedoes back to her base, expenditure of fuel—lighter than the water replacing it—would cause her to be so heavy that submerged trim would not be possible without using Safety tank as a part of the trimming system. The extra gun forward compounded the problem. Well, Safety had been designed with a view to this potential necessity. It was already piped and valved into the trim system. If necessary, he would use it.

Keith put it into words. “Skipper,” he said, “they'd give you ten TBTs on the bridge if you wanted them, or fifty torpedoes. If you asked them, I think these guys would jack up the periscope and build a new submarine underneath it for you!”

It was true, and the amount of work agreed to be accomplished upon
Eel
in the period of two weeks was nothing less than prodigious. The clue—it was more than a clue, it was a plain statement—came as the conference was ending, as the base repair officer shook hands with Rich. “All of us lost some friends in
AREA SEVEN
,” was what he said—and then his face showed dismay as he realized that somehow he had said the wrong thing.

The biggest problem concerned the hydraulic plant and what to do about it.
Eel
was a new submarine. The patrol just finished had been her first. She was also, however, one of the first to have the new enlarged hydraulic system. There had been no previous experience with this particular design. Much was known about the older hydraulic plants, which involved a smaller hydraulic accumulator and an entirely different hydraulic pump, but
Eel
presented completely new problems.

Al Dugan had carefully maintained the operational history of the plant, especially after difficulties had begun to appear. It was apparent that there was gradually worsening leakage of some kind taking place, perhaps in the accumulator itself, very likely elsewhere too. The expenditure of replacement hydraulic fluid had increased alarmingly in the last few days of the patrol, and the time between recharging cycles of the accumulator had reduced correspondingly.

It was agreed that the hydraulic plant would be completely disassembled and carefully tested. This was to be the principal job of the refit.

Richardson also found, to his surprise, that apparently as an afterthought Keith had requested a survey of the officers' shower with view to restoring the head room. If the heating control panels for the electric torpedoes could be relocated anywhere else in the compartment, Keith pointed out dryly, it might be possible to do away with the
commanding officer's discomfort while bathing. Richardson had not spoken of the shower design, or joked about revenge upon the designer, for weeks. Changing the heating panels would be a large job for a marginal result. Keith must have done some negotiating with the base repair shop. Clearly, he expected the base to agree to do the work. He must have considered the job important.

Another conference was scheduled for the following morning, at which only Keith, as the ship's personnel officer, need be present. This was to review the rotation of crew members. Even though
Eel
had finished only one patrol, in order for the crew rotation policy to work it was necessary to replace some 20 percent of
Eel
's complement by new people.

Richardson remembered his conversation of the previous evening with Admiral Small's driver, He fumbled for the page in his notebook where he had written his name. Lichtmann. “It's as good as done, Skipper,” said Keith. “I told you they'll do anything they can for us around here. If we wanted Captain Blunt himself to go out with us next time, I bet he'd come.”

“He is coming!”

“What?”

“We're going to the Yellow Sea on a three-boat wolfpack, with Blunt as wolfpack commander. This is all confidential, for now, so don't repeat it around where you can be overheard. We'll be flagship, so he'll be riding with us. You and I are going to be his right and left hand, I suspect, to help put this thing together.”

“Oh, hell, Skipper, I was hoping to have another chance to go off by ourselves.”

“Me too, Keith, but that's the way the ball bounced this time. Anyway, you know Blunt's an old friend and ex-skipper of mine. It will be great having him along with us.”

The look on Keith's face showed his doubt. Clearly, Keith shared his skipper's silent reservations.

The chief problem of coordination between submarines, as all parties to the wolfpack well knew, was that of communication, Submarines patrolling close to an enemy shore spent their days submerged, surfacing to recharge their batteries under cover of darkness. When well away from land they might extend their daylight patrol radius by remaining on the surface, but they had to be ready to dive instantly if in danger of detection.

Once a radio circuit was established between surface ships, transmission and receipt of messages could be virtually assured. Because one
never knew when a submarine might be submerged, however, such certainty could never exist between the members of a wolfpack. Very long wave signals from a powerful nearby shore station could be received to a shallow depth with a specially insulated antenna, but the high frequency radio signal of even a nearby submarine could not be heard beneath the surface; nor could a boat transmit while submerged. Furthermore, a receipting system was mandatory, for otherwise there would be no assurance that a particular message of extreme importance had been received by one's wolfpack mates. A submarine required to make an important transmission, for example an enemy contact report, very likely might have only seconds available before combat or initimate danger. But she could never be sure the message had been received until at least one other boat transmitted a radio receipt signal. She would have to wait, possibly repeat the message, and thus further compromise herself.

The longer the radio message, the greater the chance of its interception by an alert enemy. This could lead to location of the transmitting submarine by a direction-finding station, even to breaking down the code of the message. The result would be a paucity of enemy traffic through the suspect area and a greater likelihood of antisub sweeps. Some wolfpacks had developed special codes to reduce the lengths of their radio transmissions. Keith had been an interested follower of the systems devised, and several times he had stated they did not go far enough. Communications between its members, he said, was the crucial weakness of all wolfpacks. It had been left almost entirely to the communications officers and senior radiomen, whereas clearly it should receive the personal attention of the wolfpack commanders and skippers. Keith's impassioned presentation easily convinced Richardson, who had long harbored the same thoughts himself. The interview with Blunt ended as Keith and Rich had hoped, with Blunt's approval of Keith's ideas. But, beyond giving support to the project in general terms, the prospective wolfpack commander had displayed surprising passivity, almost disinterest.

“You'd think he thinks it's easy!” burst out Keith, once safely out of earshot.

“He's just depending on us, especially you, since it's your idea. He's paying you a compliment.”

“I don't read him that way at all. He just doesn't realize how tough it is to talk to another boat out in the area!”

“Come on, Keith. Neither have we experienced the problem so far. He knows what he's doing. Anyway, we've got his backing. Isn't that what you wanted?” Richardson's words were mild enough, but
there was a snap of finality to them. His protective instinct regarding Blunt had overreached; he had overdone it. Keith had felt the slight degree of asperity and was giving him a troubled look.

Two days after the new
Chicolar
had been welcomed from Mare Island, the three skippers and their wolfpack commander met for their first formal conference. Blunt had decided, he said, that the first submarine to detect a convoy would not attack. It would instead trail the enemy and send position reports to help the other two boats to make contact also. The second submarine to make contact would be the first to attack. Then it would fall astern to perform the trailing duties. Not until at least one other sub had attacked and had fallen behind, out of the immediate vicinity of the convoy, was the original “trailer” released to make an attack of her own.

Attacks were to be made on the surface at night as a matter of preference, with due regard for the location of the trailer, who would presumably be keeping station from a sufficiently great distance that no one could mistake her on the radar for a patrolling enemy escort. In addition, narrow sectors directly ahead and directly astern of the convoy center were designated as safe sectors. No submarine could attack another ship in such a sector without positive visual identification. Other larger sectors were designated as unlimited attack zones, where attack on any target was permitted no matter how it might have been detected.

Whenever possible, day or night, Blunt stressed, all submarines should stay on the surface in order to facilitate both communication and positioning for attack.

Richardson found that the ideas of the other two skippers as to how to carry out night attacks in the surfaced condition were quite at variance with his own. Les Hartly of the
Chicolar
, a rotund and very intense officer, the senior of the three submarine captains, had only one method, to which he held strongly. At the beginning of the war he had commanded an S-boat in the Asiatic Fleet, undeniably an experience to confirm anyone's latent qualities of self-sufficiency. Lack of a TDC in the S-boats had led to development of more rudimentary approach techniques, based mostly on time-honored concepts of the “seaman's eye.” Even though Les had later commanded the more modern
Porpoise
for several patrols, the presence of an early TDC in her control room had not caused him to modify his notions. After three runs in the
Porpoise
he had been granted leave, to which all Asiatic submariners were clearly entitled, and had then been sent to Mare Island to commission and bring out the new
Chicolar
.