Submarine! (36 page)

Naturally,
Batfish
cannot afford to remain overly long in the vicinity. Every extra minute she spends there increases by that much the diameter of the circle upon which the enemy may be; and even at that very moment he may be making a periscope approach—while she hangs around and makes it easy for him. But Fyfe has no intentions of making it any easier than he can help. Once he has put his ship in what he has calculated to be a logical spot to await developments, he slows down to one third speed—about 4 knots. Then he orders the sound heads rigged out. With his stem toward the direction from which the enemy submarine would have to come, were he making an attack, and making 4 knots away from there,
Batfish
is forcing the Jap to make high submerged speed in order to catch her; she is banking on detecting him by sound before he can get close enough to shoot, or on detecting the torpedo itself if a long-range shot is fired.

Twenty minutes pass. Fyfe cannot guess how long the Nip sub will stay down, but his game is to outwit him. If his initial gambit of running away to the northward has fooled him, he'll probably show within an hour after diving. The soundmen listen with silent intensity, their headphones glued to their heads. The radar operator scrutinizes his scope with equal urgency. It would not do to miss any indication.

Suddenly, both sound operators look up at the same time. The senior one speaks for both. “Mr. Sprinkle! There's a noise, bearing zero one five!”

Clark is there in an instant. “What's it like?” He flips on the loud-speaker switch.

Clearly, a rushing sound can be heard, a sort of powerful swishing sound. It changes somewhat in intensity and tone, then suddenly stops. Like a flash the exec grabs the portable mike. “Captain,” he bellows to the bridge. “He's blown his tanks, bearing zero one five. He'll be up directly!”

The blast from the bridge speaker nearly blows everyone off the bridge, for Sprinkle has a powerful voice. All binoculars
are immediately turned to the bearing given. But the black night conceals its secrets well. Nothing can be seen.

The bridge speaker blares again. “Radar contact, zero one eight. That's him all right!”

Apparently convinced that all is clear, the Japanese submarine has surfaced, and is evidently going to continue on his way.
Batfish
is to get another chance. Whether the target saw them, or thought he saw them; heard them or thought he did; detected them on radar, or simply made a routine night dive, will never be known. One thing Jake is definite on, however: he will get no chance to detect
Batfish
this time.

Once again
Batfish
goes through all the intricate details of the night surface approach—with one big difference. The skipper is not going to go in on the surface. The Jap detected him the last time. He's got more strings to his bow than that.

The Jap has speeded up and changed course slightly.
Batfish
again seeks a position in front of him, and when the range and distance to the track are to Fyfe's liking,
Batfish
dives—but not entirely. Since the radar antennae are normally on top of the highest fixed structure of the ship, it follows that they are the last things to go under when a submarine dives. All Fyfe had done was dive his ship so that these vital antennae were still out of water, although nearly all the rest of the submarine is beneath the surface. This is a good trick; that
Batfish
had been able to do it so neatly is a tribute to the state of training and competence of her crew. With her radar antennae dry and out of water, they still function as well as when she was fully surfaced, and the dope continues to feed into the fire-control gear, even though not a thing can be seen through the periscope.

And of course the Jap, probably alerted and nervous—maybe he has heard of the failure of one of his brother subs to get through this same area two nights ago—has no target to see or detect by radar, unless you consider a few little odd-shaped pieces of pipe a target.

So on he comes, making 12 knots now, fairly confident that he has managed to avoid the sub which had stalked him
a couple of hours ago. He doesn't even notice or pay any attention to the curious structure in the water a few hundred yards off his starboard beam—for Jake Fyfe has resolved to get as close as possible—and four deadly fish streak his way out of the dark night.

Mercifully, most of the Nip crew probably never knew what hit them. The first torpedo detonated amidships with a thunderous explosion, virtually blowing the ill-fated ship apart. As the two halves each upended and commenced to sink swiftly amid horrible gurgles of water and foaming of released air and fuel oil, the second and third torpedoes also struck home. Their explosions were slightly muffled, however, as though they might have struck some stray piece of metal and gone off mostly in water; but they served to in crease the probability that none of the enemy crew had survived the initial attack.

Three minutes later Fyfe logged two more blasts from deep beneath his ship, evidently some kind of internal explosions in the broken hulk of the sinking submarine. Eight minutes later one terrifically loud explosion rocked
Batfish
. First thought to be an aircraft bomb, the explosion was finally put down to part of the swan song of the Nipponese sub. All during this period, and for some time later, Sound heard the usual noises of a sinking submarine—mainly small internal explosions and escaping air.

This time Jake Fyfe was prevented from trying to rescue any of the possible survivors of the catastrophe by the presence of a plane, which was detected just as
Batfish
was getting ready to surface. It is highly doubtful, however, that there could have been any survivors, in view of the triple-barreled blow the submarine had received.

Shortly after midnight, some twenty-four hours later, one of the more irrepressible members of
Batfish's
crew was heard to mutter, “What, again? Ho hum; here we lose another night's sleep playing tag with these slant-eyed submarines!”—as Captain Jake Fyfe rushed past en route to the conning tower.

For the third time in four days the radar operator has called his skipper—unfortunately the patrol reports of our submarines do not usually list the names of the crew, nor their stations—it would be interesting to know whether the same man spotted the enemy each time. From the times of the three contacts, however, 2210, 1915, and 0155, it would appear that one contact was made by each of the three watch sections, and that therefore the three men standing the radar watches each can lay claim to one Nip sub.

Naturally, the particular peculiarity in the appearance of the radar scope which had first served to alert
Batfish
had been carefully explained to all radar watchers, and they all knew what to look for. In this case, as in the last, the operator simply pointed to his scope and stated flatly, “There's another one of those Jap subs, Captain!”

One look at the screen, and Jake Fyfe raps out the command to sound the general alarm.

This time Fyfe himself gets on the ship's interior announcing system. “It looks like another Nip submarine, boys,” he says. “We ought to be written right into their operation orders by this time. Let's see if we can't help him along the same road as the other two!”

Fyfe and his tracking party are pretty fine hands by this time, and it only takes a short while before the Jap is picked up for sure on the radar; and his course and speed are known. The United States submariners are fairly certain he will either be on the northerly course of the first sub, or the southeasterly one of the second. It proves to be the latter—course one two zero, speed 7.
Batfish
heads to intercept, playing it cagily, as always, but a little more self-confident this time. Somehow these Japs don't seem to have as good equipment as our own—we can thank the home front for that—and they surely are not using what they have to the best advantage—for which we can thank
them
. And we will—in our own unique fashion.

But with the range still quite long, and before
Batfish
is able to get into attack position, the Japanese sub dives. Just why he does, no one knows. Possibly he detected an aircraft
, or thought he did—although
Batfish
sees no planes on her radar—or perhaps he got a momentary contact on
Batfish
through some unexplained vagary of his radar equipment. The most probable explanation is that he has heard of the failure of two other boats to get through this particular stretch, and is attempting to make pursuit more difficult by diving occasionally.

But Jake Fyfe has the answer for this one cold. Last night qualified him in its implementation. He heads, despite this new development, to the spot originally selected for attack position. Then, instead of diving, he proceeds down the track at 4 knots, sound gear rigged out, radar sweeping steadily and deliberately, lookouts alerted and tensely watching.

Half an hour after the Jap dived,
Batfish's
radar once again picks up the faint, shimmering emanations of the Nip radar. He's back up again, though this time no blowing of tanks has been heard. Fyfe, Sprinkle, and the tracking party start the same old approach game.

The first thing to do is to get actual radar contact; this wobble in the scope is no good for tracking, even though it does give a vague indication of the enemy's bearing. So
Batfish
heads for the source of what her radar operators now term the “wobbly,” expecting to get contact momentarily. Several thousand yards are covered in this manner, with no result, except that the wobbly is getting stronger. Fyfe and his exec become worried over this development. They know the Jap is surfaced—or can he have thought of the same dodge they themselves used only last night? Suppose the Jap is even then in the process of making the same type of approach on
Batfish!
An unpleasant thought to entertain. The lookouts redouble their vigilance, especially directing their search at the water surface within half a mile around them. At the skipper's order everything else in the ship is subordinated to the sound watch. Fans and blowers are secured. Unnecessary gear throughout the ship is turned off. Most important, the diesel engines are secured and propulsion shifted to the battery. Silently, eerily,
Batfish
glides through
the water, peering and listening for the telltale swoosh of a torpedo coming at her. If the Jap is very smart indeed, he will silence also, and will get so close before shooting that
Batfish
will not have a chance of avoiding the torpedoes, even though she might actually hear them on the way.

The lapping of the water alongside is excruciatingly loud in the unnatural stillness. The very air seems stifling and oppressive on the bridge, as it most certainly is down below, with all blowers turned off. Your breath seems to stop, and your heart beats with a muffled thump. The tiny blower motor in the radar gear whines insistently in the conning tower; impossible to shut it down because it keeps the radar tubes from overheating. Sprinkle makes a mental note to have it pulled out and overhauled at the first opportunity.

Down below everyone talks in whispers, not that whispering could do any good, but in tacit recognition of the deadly desperateness of the situation. The Jap sub, submerged, possibly making an approach, and
themselves still on the surface!

The basic problem, of course, is to compute how far the Jap sub can travel toward them, assuming his most probable course and speed for the time since he dived, and then to stay at least that distance, plus a little to be on the safe side, away from the spot where he submerged. Fyfe, straining for that elusive radar contact which his reasoned deductions say should come soon, allows
Batfish
to go as far as he dares before reversing course again. Just as he gives the order, someone in one of the engine rooms drops a wrench on the steel deck. The sharp noise is carried up the silent main induction pipe and hits the tensely waiting and watching bridge with a shock. All hands are visibly startled, and one lookout almost drops his binoculars. The skipper half opens his mouth, then shuts it again. It wouldn't do to show exasperation at this point.

And then, finally, with
Batfish
still swinging to her hard over rudder, it comes at last. “Radar contact, bearing three three six!” Fyfe's judgment and nerve have been vindicated again. The Jap was probably just being cagey himself, and
had no knowledge of the presence of the United States submarine.

It happens that there are only two torpedoes left forward in
Batfish
, which really does not matter much since she is due shortly to depart station en route to Pearl Harbor. But it must be admitted that no one expected to run into three nearly identical situations like this—and until the third submarine was detected Fyfe had held no qualms whatever at being nearly dry forward. Now, however, a problem presents itself.

It is necessary to maneuver
Batfish
so that the Jap goes across her stern instead of her bow. Not too easy to do, since you have to be going away instead of toward the target. Fyfe plays his target slowly and carefully, somewhat like an expert fisherman campaigning against a crafty big one. The cast has been made, the fly has landed, the big fellow is nosing toward it, ready to head back for the deep water at the slightest suspicious sign.

This particular submarine has shown considerably more wariness than either of the other two. His peculiar actions on surfacing have proved him to be astute and careful, and Jake Fyfe is not the man to underrate his opponent. His recent scare is rather fresh in mind, and the ice is still mighty thin, measured as it is only in the superiority of United States equipment and alertness.