Dust on the Sea (12 page)

Hartly by consequence had been more than a year away from the
war; but his ideas were nonetheless positive. He spent far more time expounding on their advantages than in listening to those of others. Blunt was the only one who might have commanded his attention, but even the wolfpack commander, with no war patrols to his credit, was at a disadvantage. Only Keith, with eight, topped Hartly's record of seven war patrols, and Hartly quickly disposed of all suggestions differing from the conclusions he had already fixed on.

The way to handle a convoy, he said many times, was to attack instantly, if possible as soon as contact was made. In this way the risk of counter-measures would be least. He thought of
Chicolar
as a huge torpedo running on the surface which he would steer at high speed directly for the enemy, continually altering course to keep bows on to the ship he had selected for primary target. Hartly's attack course was thus always a long sweeping curve. At the last minute he would shoot his torpedoes and then put the rudder over hard in whatever direction looked best.

Since Hardy wasted no time in preliminaries, other than seeking a feasible attack position, his method had the undeniable advantage of being finished very quickly. Another strong point was that
Chicolar
never exposed more than a bows-on silhouette to her intended victims.

Vainly, Richardson stated the counter arguments. The curved attack course deprived Hartly's plotting parties of a reasonable opportunity to determine the enemy course, speed, and zigzag plan. The emphasis on immediate attack compounded the plotters' difficulties. Lack of previous study of the enemy's movements would prevent them from detecting an unexpected zig until some time afterward, if at all. A large zig away would put the submarine far astern, with a long chase or loss of the opportunity inevitable. A zig toward might put the submarine suddenly dead ahead of the enemy—which usually had one escort out in front—in a bow-to-bow situation with a closing rate equal to the sum of the speeds. This was the most serious of all the contingencies. A surface attack was no longer possible; discovery and counterattack were virtually certain.

It was a matter of individual submarine tactics, professional expertise. Because of the large divergence in views the subject was tacitly avoided in Blunt's presence, but several times, until it became an incipient cause of acrimony, Rich brought a more general discussion between the three skippers around to this topic. In desperation, and against his better judgment, he finally began to extole his own procedures, which were to track at about seven miles' distance, and a little ahead of the beam, until all the variables had been as well determined as could be. Then, immediately after the convoy had settled upon a
favorable zig course, so that there would be several minutes before the next zig, he would turn in for a deliberate, calculated attack. An inestimable benefit Rich saw in his method was that anything out of the ordinary on the part of the target would instantly be detected by plot, for by this time the plotters would have nothing else to worry about.

But there was no convincing Les Hartly. And he roundly condemned
Eel
's extra torpedoes and the second five-inch gun.

Whitey Everett, the new skipper of
Whitefish
, must have been assigned that particular submarine by someone with a sense of humor. The nickname had been bestowed years ago for his extraordinarily blond hair, now shading into premature gray. The
Whitefish
was a relatively old submarine, having been completed at the Electric Boat Company yards in Groton, Connecticut, only a couple of months after the
Walrus
. Rich and Keith had watched her launched and had known many of her original crew.

She was essentially a carbon copy of
Walrus
, with slightly greater austerity in her interior appointments because, unlike the
Walrus
, her construction had been ordered after the war began. Everett, a year senior to Richardson, was in fact her third skipper. This was to be his first command patrol. Slow-moving, taciturn, he had early developed a reputation for wisdom. He had been executive officer of a fleet submarine at the beginning of the war, but had then spent some time in New London as skipper of one of the training boats. Subsequently he had returned to the Pacific for a “make-ye-learn” cruise as a prospective commanding officer—a “PCO”—and now, somewhat to his chagrin, had drawn the
Whitefish
instead of one of the newer, heavier-built submarines like
Eel
or
Chicolar
.

Whitey had never participated in a night attack on the surface, Rich quickly realized. Perhaps the aura of deliberateness which he had so long cultivated actually masked inner insecurity. Despite all the theory he had been subjected to and all the discussions he had engaged in, he really had no confidence in his ability to engage in a high speed night action. Patently, he felt most comfortable submerged. On the game floor, whenever the choice was left to him, he elected to attack submerged at daybreak, having used up the whole night waiting for this single opportunity.

The gaming sessions were made as realistic as possible. Each of the three subs was given its own headquarters, with charts, navigation tools, and encoding equipment, and was permitted to communicate with the other submarines only by simulated radio messages. All messages were required to be in the special submarine attack code which Rich
and Keith had devised, and no submarine could send or receive messages while it was “submerged.” Players were permitted to view the game floor only when, according to the tactical situation, they were actually in a position to do so. Even then, they could see only that portion of the game floor which, supposedly, would have been in sight through the periscope, or on their radar, under the conditions of the moment.

By the time the long game days wore to an end, Richardson felt mentally exhausted. It was not so much that he was physically tired. Keith rightly put it to boredom. “Dammit, Captain, this is just a communication drill. All we're doing is writing messages on pieces of paper. It's almost a waste of time!”

“Not quite true, Keith,” said Richardson, again alertly ready to defend Blunt. “We're getting to know how the other fellows think and work. We've noticed quite a difference between Les Hartly and Whitey Everett. Another thing it's doing is to give all of us a workout in your new code.”

Again there was the slightly abashed look on Keith's face. Twice, within a very few days, he had thought he understood what was running through his skipper's mind only to find that, somehow, he had missed a signal, had gotten unaccountably off the track. “Well, I guess that's right,” he said uncomfortably. “But you've got to admit this is sure tiresome. I suppose it will be a lot different when we try it aboard ship at sea.”

“It's pretty tiresome, all right. But it will be better when we take on that convoy from San Francisco.” Richardson was feeling twinges of conscience for not having let his most loyal supporter know more of what had been troubling him, but of this he could not speak. He would, however, have continued with a few more encouraging words had not the approach of the unwitting cause of the misunderstanding, Captain Blunt, cut short the conversation.

In addition to the preparations for wolfpack operations, a great deal was going on exclusively concerned with the
Eel
herself. The relaxation and ease of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel could not compare with the supreme interest in seeing that she was properly gotten ready for the forthcoming patrol. Most of her officers, particularly as the two weeks off the ship drew to a close, found more and more reason to spend long hours on board. Al Dugan, heavyset, phlegmatic, methodical, a submarine engineer to his fingertips, nearly matched Richardson's own devotion to
Eel
's reconditioning. The most important thing he had going, he several times told his wardroom mates, was the hydraulic plant. There was no question in his mind that the problem would be discovered and solved, but as the days wore on and the
week of refamiliarization training approached, he gradually began to devote most of his time to watching the work and participating in it. His responses to Richardson's questions on the subject, while still full of confidence, betrayed his concern. To assist Al in his other responsibilities, he was given full use of the new officer just assigned, Ensign Johnny Cargill. In size, shape, and temperament a younger Dugan, Cargill had graduated from the submarine school at New London only weeks before. His orders to
Eel
in his hand, he had been an unnoticed member of the group which met the submarine upon her arrival in Pearl Harbor and had automatically landed in her refit crew. He was eagerly trying to be useful and, according to the engineer, despite his youth and complete lack of experience was proving to be of real help. It became accepted that he would be assigned under Al as assistant engineer.

Richardson himself took on the problem of relocating the two Target Bearing Transmitters—one of them new—on either side of
Eel
's bridge cockpit. A segment of the bulletproof side plating had been cut out of each side, and new bulged pieces to accomodate the instruments inserted. To get it done right, Richardson went over to the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard with the sections of heavy steel plate which had to be bent into a particular shape to fit his drawings. When the TBTs were mounted he personally supervised their location, height and precise alignment. Finally, with Buck Williams and Keith Leone assisting him, he spent hours carefully “bore-sighting” the transmitters, so that they accurately transmitted the angles of aim to the repeater dials in the conning tower.

The two-week refit at Pearl Harbor, supposed to be rest and relaxation for submarine crews between patrols, had been something less than restful for him,
Eel
's skipper realized, when he and his crew rendezvoused back aboard their submarine. First, of course, there had been the coordinated tactics training, the “convoy college.” Then there were the demands of the refit itself, theoretically carried out in entirety under the supervision of the relief commanding officer. Obviously, however, the real commanding officer of any particular submarine could never be unconcerned about the work in progress.

And finally, of course, there was the time spent with Joan. Blunt had been right in one thing. She was indeed sought after. She must have especially made herself available for him—otherwise he'd have had no time with her at all. He found it difficult to analyze his feeling for her. The tensions of war and his own psychic needs were a part of it. So was her tremendous physical attraction. But this last was not special for him alone. Many had felt it. Jim Bledsoe, for one.

Deliberately, he had made his second evening with Joan as different from the first one—only the day previous—as he could. There was a nightclub in Honolulu which catered to the young-officer set, with a maximum of privacy and a dance band. Ostentatiously, it was placarded to the effect that it would close its doors half an hour before the curfew, to make sure that everyone had plenty of time to get home. For most of its habitués, Richardson found, this only adjourned the evening somewhere else. Hesitantly, he confessed that his ingenuity had not extended that far, and that he had not wanted to be with Captain Blunt a second night. Joan dimpled, and made it come right. Her room in Fort Shafter was only a convenience, a place to sleep should she have to remain late on some special project. She had a private apartment in the Moana Valley, with a private entrance.

The apartment was tiny, secluded, tastefully decorated, austere rather than luxurious. All Joan's possessions, she told him, had been lost when she had had to leave Japan on the eve of war. Her father was in the diplomatic service, but she did not know where he was and thought he might be dead. (Richardson felt this was not strictly true.) Her mother had died some years ago. (This must be true.) It was not until several days later that Richardson realized this was the extent of the information he was likely to learn about her. She was adroit at making him talk about himself, his time at Annapolis, his first duty after graduation, his boyhood in California, his father's zealous career as a Presbyterian minister, the often expressed ambition for Rich to follow in his footsteps. The bad times of 1930 had wrecked the traveling preacher's hopes of sending his son to divinity school, and he had died within the year. The appointment to Annapolis had come as a chance for an education which the new widow would have been unable to provide from her meager estate. It also answered a deep personal dilemma. Rich, even as a boy, had sensed that he lacked his father's dedication to the ministry. His mind ran to mechanical things. He loved machinery. The complex machinery of a submarine was a constant source of delight, and operating it, or watching someone else operate it—if he did it well—was sensuous pleasure.

It was peaceful listening to Joan's records and talking quietly about the years before the war, when things (from the present view, at least) were much less complicated. He even told her one day about his girl while at the Naval Academy, his “OAO” (the initials were for “One And Only” in the schoolboy lexicon). Sally and he had had fun together. Undoubtedly, she had made someone a fine wife. His classmate Stocker Kane had married immediately after the expiration of the two-year rule, two years to the day after they had graduated. At one point Sally and he had planned the same; but as the two years
stretched out ahead, and the demands of a navy life occupied all his interest, he had realized that his own confidence had not matched Sally's.

“It was just that you didn't really love her, Rich,” said Joan. “It was too soon for you.” He had to admit to himself that this was true.