Ghosts of Bungo Suido (12 page)

Then one interesting technical note: Set torpedo running depth for 10 feet when attacking this carrier.

That made no sense at all to Gar. An aircraft carrier drew between 30 and 40 feet of water. If he’d ever encountered the Wounded Bear, IJN
Shokaku,
he’d have set his fish for 25 feet running depth. Ten feet? Somebody knew more than he was telling about this mysterious ship.

The picture wasn’t particularly good as a recognition photo because it was an overhead shot. Fine for dive-bombers, but their view of this ship, assuming they found her, would be from about a foot above the water. The good news was that if they succeeded in bagging this big guy, they’d accomplish in one attack a tonnage score to equal even the most famous of the PacFleet sub skippers.

Big if, though.

The sole attachment to the operations order, besides the picture, was a map of the
known
minefields in the Inland Sea approaches, with the clear inference that there were probably
un
known minefields.

That was it. No mention of the old man, although Gar had had his orders on that score from Nimitz himself. The second envelope looked like nothing more than a letter, but it was heavily taped and labeled
For Commanding Officer’s Eyes Only, upon arrival
inside
the Inland Sea.

He sighed and looked at his watch again. They were supposed to rendezvous later tonight with the
Archer-fish,
through whose patrol area they were going to transit. The skipper of that boat, a seasoned veteran named Joe Enright, would brief them on what they’d been seeing in the op area and give them any recent information on Jap patrols, radar usage, and aircraft surveillance.
Archer-fish
would have already made an intrusion into the approaches to Bungo Suido to confirm water and sonar conditions so that
Dragonfish
could optimize the setup of her new sonar before they got there. While they were surfaced for the
Archer-fish
join-up, Gar’s guys would be rigging the defensive cables that would shoulder away any mine mooring chains they happened to scrape up against. Gar made a mental note to remind the XO to get evening stars; an accurate fix was vital for a submarine rendezvous.

He’d met several times with his tactical team after reading the sealed orders. Everyone was interested in the carrier, and Gar had even expected some amplifying information from SubPac while they’d been making the transit. They’d heard nothing. In fact, there had not been a single message addressed to
Dragonfish
since they’d left. This whole patrol was one big mystery, Gar decided. Or they’d already been written off.

He’d also spent a lot of time with the exec and Hashimoto-san, whose English was better than he had first let on. They worked on making a composite of the U.S. Navy charts for Bungo Suido and the Inland Sea and the old man’s personal charts. Everything on his charts was annotated in kanji characters, and they’d labored mightily to translate depth and obstruction marks into characters that both of them could recognize. Hashimoto-san had, of course, no knowledge of minefields, but he did show them interesting hydrographic features that would make the placement of mines almost impossible. They’d slowly managed to develop a plan of attack for the penetration of Bungo Suido, and that was going to be the subject of the department head meeting this evening.

ComSubPac Headquarters, Pearl Harbor

“And, last but hardly least,” Captain Forrester said, “Guam reports
Dragonfish
has departed for empire waters. No mechanical problems, traded in one sick fish, one emergency leave case, but otherwise she’s off to the races.”

“The original reluctant dragon,” Admiral Lockwood said, and Forrester grunted his agreement.

“That night Chester Nimitz went down to ‘share his thinking’ with Gar Hammond, I would have given a lot to hear what he said.”

“I’ll bet it didn’t take very long,” Forrester said.

Lockwood smiled. “A half-dozen yes-sirs is what it looked like. Maybe ninety seconds. Everybody in the dining room pretending not to notice. Wonderful.”

“Hammond has his moments,” Forrester said. “And a disrespectful tongue, too.”

“The real killers are that way, Mike. He’s never been married, been at sea for almost his entire career, and goes for the throat when he finds Japs. It’s just too bad he didn’t come to our attention until now.”

“If a guy like that had been out there in ’42, he probably wouldn’t still be with us,” Forrester said. “Mush Morton, Sam Dealey, they were hotshots, too, but they never gave me the impression that they were out of control like Hammond sometimes does.”

“And where are they, now, Mike, hmm?” Lockwood asked, knowing all too well the answer. “I wouldn’t want Gar Hammond for a staff officer, but for this harebrained mission, he’s perfect.”

“He asked me why we didn’t just go in and bomb the damned carrier, especially if she’s still in dry dock. I deflected him, but it seemed like a reasonable question.”

“Nimitz has his reasons, and, as I witnessed personally, one does not go asking Himself to explain why he wants something done. Anything else? I need a drink.”

“No, sir, other than to remind you that we won’t hear from
Dragonfish
until she gets in
and
back out of the Inland Sea.”

“If she gets back,” Lockwood said.

“Don’t go jinxing it, now, Admiral. They’ll get back.”

*   *   *

The rendezvous with
Archer-fish
was scheduled for 0130, and
Dragonfish,
courtesy of an 1830 four-line star fix, was in position at the appointed time. Gar took a long look around with the night scope. They were lying surfaced and motionless in a flat, calm sea on what appeared to be a clear, starlit night. He’d kept her at what they called radar depth, the boat’s decks awash in order to make as small a radar target as possible should any Jap planes be patrolling. Gar had their own radars in standby, and he was hesitant to put either one into radiate. They were a good 60 miles from the Japanese coast, but a radar signal could be intercepted farther than the radar itself could see. There was no one topside in case an emergency dive had to be made, and they were back to running on the battery, in deference to any prowling Jap subs.

“Like two scorpions looking for each other in the dark,” he muttered, continuing to train the periscope in a slow, continuous circle.

“Especially if one of ’em is a Jap I-boat,” the exec said. “Who makes the first move?”

“We’re the ones passing through
Archer-fish
’s patrol area,” Gar said. “We came to the rendezvous point on the surface and on the diesels, and then we went quiet. If he was anywhere around, he’d have heard us on the diesels, and should be looking at us right now.”

“Asking the same questions we’re asking?”

“Yeah, probably. Radar, put the SJ on short time constant, radiate for one revolution.”

“Radar, aye,” said the operator at the other end of the conning tower. “One rev, STC on. Stand by.”

They waited.

“One contact, very small, one five zero at two thousand yards.”

Should be him, Gar thought, as he spun the periscope to 150. He couldn’t see anything, so he keyed the signal light embedded in the periscope head three times in accordance with this day’s recognition code sheet. If the radar had caught
Archer-fish
’s shears or periscope, he should answer with two flashes.

“Got him,” Gar announced. “What’s the second signal?”

“The letter Dog. Then the letter Tare. He should answer with the letter Fox.”

Gar keyed the light: long, short, short. Pause. One long.
DT.

The reply was immediate: two short, one long, one short.
F.
This should be
Archer-fish.
Since he had initiated the light sequence, Gar now spelled out a course and speed to
Archer-fish
and ordered Control to trim the boat up to the normal surfaced depth.

“Station the bridge watch,” he ordered. “Four lookouts. Come to course three three zero, switch to main engines, speed ten.” He turned to Russ. “XO, stay on the scope. Once he gets alongside we’ll need a light-line party forward to get a sound-powered phone circuit up. Do a one-sweep air-search radar transmission every six minutes, and a ten-mile surface search sweep every other ten minutes.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” the exec said and handed Gar his jacket and binoculars. It was November in the North Pacific, and the tropical heat of the Luzon Strait was a distant memory.

Fifteen minutes later the two subs were running alongside each other at a distance of 75 feet, and Gar was on the sound-powered bridge-to-bridge phone line with Commander Enright.

“How’s the hunting?” he asked.

“Not worth a shit,” Enright said. “We’ve been out here a month, had a couple of scares, but zero worthwhile targets. Where you guys going that you need my BT logs?”

“Big secret,” Gar said. “But I’ll give you a hint: From here it’s three four zero.”

“You do that, you’ll run right into the minefields at Bungo Suido.”

“Fancy that,” Gar said.

“You out of your gourd?” Enright asked.

“Somebody is,” Gar said. “From our perspective, though, it looks a lot like a direct order.”

“The Inland Sea? Can’t be done, Gar. Hell, from twenty miles out you’re looking at pretty much constant air cover, and when they take somebody through, we’ve seen as many as a dozen escorts.”

“So there is a channel through the minefields?”

“Must be,” Enright said. “Their big ships come through there from time to time. But where the channel is, where it starts, and how far offshore? Only the Japs know that. You got one of those new FM sonars?”

Gar told him about the upgraded mine-hunting sonar. Enright said he hoped it worked.

“Do you have some BT logs for me?” Gar asked.

“That’s affirm. Last thirty days, inshore waters, or as close as we could get without somebody jumping our asses. Water’s getting colder, layer’s getting thicker, but there won’t be any layers in Bungo Suido—the tides are too big and the currents too fast.”

“That’s what we were told, too. You need any spare parts?”

“Nope, we’re good right now. We’ll trade movies if you want to, but so far, nothing’s broken down. Yet. I’ve included some pass-down notes with the BT data about their air search patterns and when they seem to quit for the night.”

“These radar-equipped planes?”

“We think so—the two times we’ve been jumped they came straight in on us.”

“You have your radar on the air when they did?”

“Once yes, once no. We only come up at night, and preferably in dirty weather. They don’t seem to like flying when it’s low viz. May be different if something big’s coming in or out. If the merchies
are
running, they’re way inshore under all that air cover, or over in the SOJ.”

“We have anybody there?”

“Not that I know of. Ever since we lost
Wahoo,
I don’t think anybody’s made it through either Shimonoseki or La Pérouse Strait.”

They talked for another few minutes, mainly about the currents running closer inshore and any communications frequencies they’d been able to monitor. There were four other American subs patrolling in the empire areas, and none of them were having much luck, either. Enright wished Gar good luck with whatever craziness they were up to, and that was it.

Gar checked with the forecastle crew to make sure the bathythermograph logs and pass-down notes had made it on board, waited for the IC-electrician to send across and then receive some movies, and then ordered the light-line to be retrieved. Five minutes later,
Archer-fish
rumbled off into the darkness, headed back out into her patrol area. The three-man line-handling party came to the bridge with the small waterproof bag sent over from
Archer-fish
and took it below to the control room. Gar decided to stay on the surface to top off the batteries as long as the radar didn’t indicate any snoopers; he told the OOD and the bridge crew to listen as well as look.

Back down in the conning tower he checked the track, adjusted the ship’s speed to make the planned entry point at the straits two hours before dawn, then went below to see what Enright had sent over. Normally he would have sent off a position report, but the orders were clear: radio silence.
Archer-fish
would report the rendezvous, so Pearl would know the Dragon had made it this far. Considering what they were about to attempt, that might be the last time anything was ever heard about the
Dragonfish
. Everyone on board except perhaps Hashimoto-san knew they might very well end up on that dreaded “missing, presumed lost in Empire Patrol Area” list, like
Pickerel, Runner, Pompano, Wahoo,
and
Golet.

Gar tried to banish that thought. Getting through the minefields of Bungo Suido was going to be a one-man, one-sonar show, and he did not need the distraction of a bunch of drowned ghosts, wherever they were now sleeping.

EIGHT

“This is the captain speaking.”

That announcement produced the usual quiet throughout the boat. They were submerged at 300 feet and basically standing still as the boat pointed into an east-running current coming at them out of the entrance to Bungo Suido.

“We’re about to do something that is unusually dangerous. We’re going to penetrate the straits of Bungo Suido and go into the Inland Sea of Japan. We’re on the hunt for a very large aircraft carrier that has been spotted by army air force reconnaissance planes at the Kure naval arsenal. Our mission is to torpedo this ship, wherever we find her.”

Gar paused for a moment to gather his thoughts. He rarely got on the 1MC to address the entire crew. Up to now, he’d always kept his cards pretty close, but he’d finally concluded that the danger of what they were about to do justified letting his people in on the secret mission orders.

“Many of you know that our boats have been told to stay out of Bungo Suido and the other straits of the Home Islands for over a year now. We’ve lost five boats in this area, and when we go in tonight, we may be driving over their remains. Or not. Nobody knows where they actually went down. But the Japs have this place covered with destroyers, patrol frigates, land-based air, minefields, miniature submarines, and shore-based radar stations. The fishing boats that operate along this coast each have a soldier on board, a soldier with a radio. They know we’d love to get into this protected area, and they’re determined to prevent it.