Reluctant Warriors (15 page)

Harry called into the intercom, “Gun Action!”

Men began to scurry up from below. In minutes, they had manned both weapons.

“Harry,” Phelps said, “Find out if that boat is salvageable, should be scuttled,
is towable, whatever. I knew you would want Duke, but take with you whomever else
you wish except Rudy. Understood?”

“Yes, sir. I want Botel, Polavita, and Freddie Warren. I'll swim over now. Duke,
you coming? Send Botel with as much medical stuff as the raft will carry. Get Tony
and Warren to paddle him over.”

“Good.”

Phelps went to the intercom and ordered Polavita and Warren to the bridge. Harry,
and then Osborne, stepped off the deck onto the ballast tanks and dove in.

After several minutes they were pulled aboard
Goby
's tanks.

Harry climbed up toward the bridge. Bump Barton awaited, a grim look on his face.

“Sir,” he said, saluting.

“You Barton?” Harry asked. The officer nodded. “I'm Harry Connors. I'll be in command.”

“Yes, sir! We sure are glad to see you! We'd about given up hope. We've
been thirty-two
hours like this, occasionally seeing smoke in one direction or another, knowing it
wasn't anyone friendly.”

“What happened?”

“It was a bomb, sir. We couldn't have been unluckier. It was a clear day just like
today. The radar was down one hour! So we had extra lookouts on the bridge. The plane
must've come right out of the sun. None of them ever saw it. Captain Estes was on
the bridge and the executive officer, Steve Franz, had just come up. They and the
lookouts were killed, all eight of them.”

“I can see the hole through the side,” Osborne said, coming up beside Harry.

“Must have hit close aboard,” Barton said. “It blew that hole right through into
the crew's mess. Killed another four men outright, and wounded many others. Four
of them are barely holding on.”

“We have our pharmacist's mate coming over on a raft to help with the wounded.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You can't make speed?” Harry asked.

“No. The electrical circuits have troubles all over the place. We've been all of
these hours trying to patch them.”

“Who's chief of the boat?” Harry asked.

“Arnie Krolewitz.”

“Let's get him up here.”

“Yes, sir.”

Harry edged toward Osborne and whispered in his ear. “You know if this Krolewitz
is any good?”

“Harry, he's good, a real electrical whiz.”

Krolewitz clambered onto deck. He looked visibly worn, but he smiled when he saw
Osborne and warmly shook his hand. “Glad to see you, Duke!”

Harry interrupted. “I want a complete report from you two in thirty minutes as to
the chance that this boat can get under way. Go! Bump, you will assume the duties
of executive officer.”

“Yes, sir.”

In twenty-five minutes, the two chiefs were back on the bridge. Osborne did the talking.

“Harry, we got real trouble!” He shook his head and ran his fingers straight back
through his long, graying hair. “It's hard to find a place to start. I've never seen
anything this bad.”

He frowned and pointed at the hole in the hull. “First, there's that thing. You pull
the plug on it, and it's straight to the bottom. Second, she got jolted so hard that
some of the battery cells have been ruptured. How many, there's no way to tell. The
chlorine gas is very strong down there, a sure indication that some cells are cracked.
We can't even get in either the fore or aft battery rooms to inspect or add water
to the cells unless we get some ventilation.

“Which leads to the third major problem, the engines. Without ventilation from the
engines, not only are we sitting ducks, but acid leaking from the batteries will
actually eat holes right through the hull, though it might take a couple of days.
Without water added in there, and no ventilation down there, the batteries could
blow up like a Roman candle and take us with them.

“The good news, if there is any,” Osborne continued, “is that if you give us two
hours, we think we can get two of the diesels working and one of the two shafts turning.
These are the brand new Fairbanks-Morse diesels, new motors three months ago. That
would give us the ventilation we need to get in there and add water to the batteries,
and maybe get some kind of a guess as to how many are ruptured. Maybe get you ten
to twelve knots too. Besides the boat itself, they got ten men in serious shape,
others wounded. If she sinks, which could have been an hour ago, there'd be no way
to get them out of the boat before they drowned.

“The radar's gone, really gone. No possibility for either of the periscopes. You
may have salt water in the fuel oil too. The Kleinschmidt evaporators are busted,
so no fresh water. There's maybe 4,500 gallons in the tank, enough for three, four
days, even including enough for the batteries—if we could get into those compartments.
Maybe we could rig a radio with short-range transmission.”

“Get at it,” Harry said. “Make it an hour.”

The two men went down the hatch into the conning tower.

Standing next to Barton, Harry was in deep thought.
We have to either abandon ship
or be prepared to fight it out,
he pondered
. If we fight it out, we could lose both
boats and all 160 men. On the other hand, if we scuttle the boat, sounds like four
or five men will die in the transit over to
Bluefin
. Four or five men! I just don't
know. I just can't think! I have to decide right now if we should begin evacuating.
It'll take an hour for sure, which we may be lucky to get. The plane that bombed
Goby
might come back with his pals.

With a little luck
, he thought,
we could haul off to the east, elude the enemy, and
get everyone back. If one plane attacks, we got plenty of firepower from the two
Bofors. I only wish those five-inch guns could be raised enough to down attacking
planes.

In an hour, by a miraculous effort, just as the two chiefs had hoped, the crew had
restored power to one of the two shafts. Two of the four diesel motors came on line.
Harry nudged Barton and told him to pick up the megaphone and yell across to
Bluefin
.

“Can . . . not . . . sub . . . merge . . . On . . . one . . . shaft . . . now . .
. Cov . . . er . . . us . . . to . . . the . . . east!”

Phelps took the megaphone and raised and lowered it several times, signaling his
agreement.
Bluefin
informed Pearl of the emergency, and that the two subs would attempt
to make Midway Island, some 1,850 miles to the northeast.

Soon
Goby
was able to make ten knots, then thirteen. Ventilation was restored, and
crewmen were able to brave the chlorine fumes and inspect the fore and aft batteries.

All seemed to be going well until Clemens, the same
Bluefin
lookout who had originally
spotted
Goby
, sang out. “Smoke, bearing 311.”

Phelps came around to the rear of the bridge. “Yes,” he said, “I see it, probably
beyond the scope of the radar. Must be . . . twenty thousand yards.”

Phelps turned toward
Goby
and saw Harry raising and lowering the megaphone. Obviously
they also had seen the smoke.

The mystery vessel continued to close. The two subs also closed, this time to one
hundred feet. Phelps yelled across to
Goby
: “If . . . a . . . crui . . . ser . .
.
or . . . des . . . troy . . . er . . . scut . . . tle . . . your . . . boat . .
. We . . . will . . . pick . . . you . . . up . . . if . . . can!”

On
Goby
's bridge, Harry winced as he realized his terrible mistake. If the approaching
vessel was a cruiser or destroyer, the two sub deck guns would be no defense at all
against such firepower and
Goby
would be doomed. The entire crew could be captured
by the Japanese and subject to beatings and execution, especially those who were
even slightly wounded. Survivors would face the doom of imprisonment in some place
like the Ashio copper mine north of Tokyo that all submariners had heard of. Bump
Barton noticed the look on Harry's face, but he said nothing.

How could I have been so stupid?
Harry wondered. He prayed that it was just some
small patrol boat.

The enemy ship came on quickly, despite the subs moving directly away. Once it came
on the radar, its speed could be judged: twenty-five knots. It soon became obvious
what it was.
It's the Chidori!
Harry thought.

Two lookouts confirmed what he already knew.
That captain figured we scooted off
his tail to the east, so he backtracked,
Harry thought.
This guy's no second-teamer.
He got nothing on the box pattern, probably came up the east coast for a while, and
then came out to sea. Pretty smart.

Phelps was shouting something baffling on the megaphone. “Come . . . to . . . two
. . . five . . . ze . . . ro.”

Harry mashed the button on the intercom.

“Sir?” Barton answered.

“Bump, take on a slow turn to starboard, finally taking up the new heading of 250.
Where does that take us?”

“Sir, that takes us south, almost in the direction of Guam.”

Harry was nearly dumbfounded. Back toward the enemy! Was Phelps luring the Chidori
into an ambush with maybe
Terrapin
, three subs against the gunboat? That would certainly
be a lot of firepower, and maybe the Chidori would back off. But wasn't
Terrapin
on the other side of Guam, too far away?

Tension immediately built in his head. Turning away from the others on the bridge,
he muttered, “This is all my doing.”

Then, before he could dwell on his mistake, an idea flashed into his brain. He looked
at his watch.
It's nearly 1720 hours,
he realized.
Red is maneuvering the enemy so
that in an hour or so the sun will be going down in their eyes, and a target the
size of a sub running directly away from them would be a difficult one to hit!

Foolishly, the Chidori slowly made the arc with the submarines instead of cutting
the distance. In ten minutes, all three had taken up the new course.

Harry thought to himself:
That's the first mistake he's made.
He called down to Barton
again. “Look up a Chidori on
Jane's
. Doesn't it have one forward firing gun?”

Just as he spoke, the enemy vessel opened fire at about nine miles' range, with the
shell hitting more than five hundred yards to the port of
Bluefin
.

The intercom buzzed. It was Barton. “Sir, we looked at
Jane's
, but we also have an
update from Fleet. Just like you thought, one 4.7-incher firing forward, one amidships,
and one firing off the stern.”

Harry saw some movement on
Bluefin
out of the corner of his eye. A sailor appeared
on the deck and began sending a message with semaphore flags as another shell landed
far off to port.

Well, at least they're rotten shots
, Harry thought, as he read the message:

STAND
OFF FOUR HUNDRED YARDS.

Knowing his boss as well as he did, it took only a few seconds for Harry to grasp
the meaning. He hit the button and called down to the conning tower. “Bump, come
up!”

In ten seconds, Bump was climbing up next to Harry. “Sir?”

“You need to know this in case something happens to me,” Harry began. “I can tell
you what Red's thinking. That Chidori has one forward firing gun, but two others
aft. If we stay relatively close together, say four hundred yards apart, she won't
be able to bring either rear weapon to bear, just one gun to our two. Then we'll
have him in a little crossfire. Luckily, both of our deck guns are located aft. If
their captain fishtails to bring his other guns to bear,
he'll be able to use them
only at the chance of giving us a much better target. Of course, a Chidori is only
about six hundred tons, with each of us being more than three times that. None of
us can stand much damage.”

“Okay,” Barton acknowledged, and went below as a third shell landed about two hundred
yards to port.

The signalman appeared on
Bluefin
's deck, which Harry read as an order to open fire.
He raised his arm as a signal and
Goby
's deck gun fired, jolting the entire ship.

But the signalman sent another message, and Harry read it:

THE TRUMPET BLOWS.

Harry nodded with a wan smile and thought of his family, halfway around the world.
The big gun fired again, with a deep BOOM. Harry looked respectfully at it.
Bluefin
's
gun had saved his life twice.
I wonder if it can do it a third time
, he thought.
I always said I wanted to have one of these things, so here's my chance.

At the distance between the two subs, he could barely distinguish Phelps on the bridge.
So, the trumpet blows, and it's time to fight it out,
Harry thought.
Let's see if
this guy continues rushing us when he figures out he's facing two five-inchers. He
does have a higher fire control system, which will make his fire much more accurate.
If he puts a shot in
Goby
, it could sink us, and if he puts a shot into
Bluefin
,
he may have two crippled subs he can finish off anytime he gets around to it. I did
this to us. And Red trusted my judgment and bought into it.
Harry shook his head
as the deck gun fired again.

The enemy ship slowed its advance when the avalanche of more than ten shells a minute
showed the Japanese what they were up against. She veered off to the north, and the
Americans hurried to make their escape.

The range widened slightly, from seven to seven and a half miles, and for several
minutes the enemy seemed content to offer a number of broadsides. None came particularly
close. The Americans began assuming that the range would continue opening and that
the battle might be over.