War Beneath the Waves (7 page)

The quiet began to grate on their nerves as certainly as the thunder of the depth charges would have.

Millican was busily looking for a way out before the enemy captain decided to blast them. But no matter which way the
Thresher
turned, propelled by her quiet, battery-powered electric motors, the destroyer turned with them. The enemy ship stayed right above, shadowing them, as if attached by an unseen umbilical.

Still, the waters of the pass remained hushed—no more grumbling, teeth-rattling depth charges—like the calm before a particularly deadly storm. Only the gentle, watery shuffle of the destroyer’s engines directly overhead. The crew went about fixing the things that broke with the first attack from the aircraft, still anticipating the telltale splashes of depth charges in the water in a circle around them.

What
Thresher
and her new skipper did not know at the time was that the initial close-by explosion damaged one of their compressed air tanks, one used to store high-pressure air needed to flush torpedoes from their tubes. It leaked a trail of tiny air bubbles to the surface, a perfect marker for their position. The aircraft could no longer see them in the murky water.

Even so, the destroyer crew knew exactly where its target was. She could remain right above them, following the bubbles through any evasive maneuvers the submarine might make while trying to slip away.

So why were they not pounding the American vessel?
Thresher
and her puzzled crew were about to find out.

Rigged for silent running, the inside of the submarine was as near completely quiet as seventy men could make it. They could hear the screws of the destroyer making a wavering drone above, the noise of the enemy ship even more pronounced without the splashes, clicks, and explosions of depth charges. Their faces shiny with sweat, those who were not doing something that required their eyes to focus downward looked up instead, as if they could determine the enemy’s intent if they stared at the hull over their heads hard enough.

Then, suddenly, a loud, metallic
clank
shattered the silence! Something hard and heavy on the starboard side, somewhere near the bow.

At first, the men thought they might have struck something, maybe even another submarine, but there had been no sonar indication of an obstruction in their path. The boat still swam smoothly forward, looking for a way out.

No sign of a collision. No rip in the hull. No flood of water. But what was that noise?

Again the men in the control room all looked at one another, then upward, but no one ventured a guess.

Then the piercing, clanking noise rang out again, like a clapper striking the inside of a giant bell. The harsh, metallic noise reverberated the length of the submarine. Next, it melded into a ragged, piercing, scraping sound, running slowly down the length of the submarine from the bow toward the stern, like the shrieking of an angry banshee. It passed each man working on the starboard side of the submarine, making its way all the way down the outside of the hull.

Then the hellish racket stopped as suddenly as it had started when it reached a point on the hull just outside the aft torpedo room, near the very back of the vessel.

Jesus! What
was
that?

Each man looked at his shipmates, wondering if maybe they had cruised past and brushed against a sunken hulk without somehow bouncing a sonar ping off it. Or maybe they had encountered a submerged mine that had—so far—miraculously failed to explode. Or had they actually snagged the chain of a mine, and were about to tow it along with them until it did blow them to kingdom come?

The grating noise was frightening enough, but everything else seemed normal. Except for the continued absence of attack by the destroyer that still clattered away three hundred feet over their heads.

“Captain, something’s wrong with the stern planes,” the sailor who was operating those controls reported in a remarkably calm voice. “They must have been damaged when . . .”

The planes on a submarine act similarly to flaps on an airplane, controlling the angle of attack the boat takes through the water. Like wings, they enable the planesman to bring the stern of the ship down or up as necessary to keep the sub from diving or surfacing too abruptly and thus losing control. They also enable him to keep the boat at a steady, level angle—“maintain the trim”—when they cruise along while submerged. Losing control of a plane in these shallow waters, with angry bees buzzing around on the surface, was a very serious development.

Suddenly they lost the influence of the planes completely. The controls would not budge. The diving officer noticed something else worrisome.

The stern of the boat was definitely starting to rise as the bow began to point decidedly downward. The decks beneath the crew’s feet tilted more and more toward the bow and the sea bottom.

Something powerful had hold of them. It was trying to pull them to the surface by the tail!

It was clear then that a grapnel of some kind had them hooked like a very big fish. Their lip was the stern plane on the starboard side.

Millican quickly deduced that the giant fishhook had snagged the now inoperative stern plane on that side of the boat after scraping all the way down their side. That was why it no longer worked.

While on the surface, a submarine in
Thresher
’s class displaced fifteen hundred tons, which made her quite heavy. However, while submerged, she was relatively light. Even a small ship, with a strong winch, chain, and grappling hook, would have a good chance of successfully dragging her to the surface.

Millican and his crew quickly realized that this was exactly what was happening to them!

The enemy did not intend to blow them to kingdom come after all. He was intent on capturing an American submarine and her crew and everything she carried, especially the top secret documents and codebooks locked in the safe in the captain’s stateroom and in the radio room.

Every man looked to their new skipper. Millican’s actions in the next couple of minutes could mean escape or capture, freedom or torture or death. In the back of every man’s mind was the thought, Would the “old man” allow the ship to be captured, or would he order the detonation of the torpedoes and scuttling charges and kill them all before he allowed that to happen?

Would he sacrifice the boat and crew to prevent the enemy from capturing
Thresher
, its crew, its confidential paperwork and top-secret codebooks? Or would he allow them all to be captured?

“All ahead emergency!” Millican barked. “Planesmen, hard dive! Hard dive!”

While there was urgency in his commands, there was no panic. He was going to do what he could to get away first; then he would make that life-or-death decision that loomed ahead if he failed.

Millican had just ordered the motors rammed into overdrive and for the men on the planes to steer their ship on a dive toward the bottom of the sea, which was not that far ahead of the bow. The entire submarine shuddered and groaned with the strain as the twin screws grabbed water and tried to pull them free from the grapnel’s firm grip.

The depth gauges showed that despite the tremendous energy expended by the motors, the enemy ship on the surface still dragged them upward toward capture.

The batteries could not supply enough voltage to keep the screws churning long at that rate. And if they ran out of juice, there was no way to prevent them from getting reeled in.

Millican ordered, “All stop.”

He then told the crew to flood all tanks with seawater, and even to flood the torpedo room bilges until water was up to the deck plates, where the men stood watch, ready to fire their weapons if called upon to do so. Maybe, by making
Thresher
as heavy as they could, they had a chance to snap the chain or break the hook and get themselves loose.

No such luck. The depth gauges showed they had been dragged upward past two hundred feet already and they were still going up. But now it was at a decidedly steeper angle. It was only a matter of minutes before their rear end and the impotently spinning screws were near the surface of the channel and they were being dragged to shore.

Even as the captain tried again to wrench their way free with the boat’s powerful motors—to no avail—he ordered the crew to set the scuttling charges and destroy as much secret information as they could. Several men lashed drums carrying fifty-five pounds of TNT between the torpedoes in each torpedo room, ready to blow at the right moment, to destroy
Thresher
. Maybe, if they made a big enough bang at just the right time, they could take with them the sons of bitches who were reeling her in.

One hundred and fifty feet, the depth gauges read, and the diving officer called out the numbers to confirm the bad news.

The ascent angle was even sharper, the boat’s nose pointed sharply downward. Objects not secured rolled down decks and crashed noisily into bulkheads. No one worried about the enemy hearing the noise now. Men braced themselves against anything solid to keep from being thrown forward.

There was only one other thing to try. Spit out the hook!

“Flood forward!” Millican ordered.

That filled the last available space with heavy seawater. And that dramatically increased the boat’s weight, making the downward angle even more pronounced, virtually standing them on their nose. Everyone grabbed whatever he could find to keep from being thrown forward against something hard or sharp.

“Left full rudder! All ahead emergency!”

Each man did his job and his captain’s bidding. With the screws boiling the sea around them and the boat’s rudder trying to take them into a violent left turn,
Thresher
seemed to be on the verge of coming apart at the seams. Her superstructure and hull creaked and groaned mightily, like a prehistoric animal in its death throes, its exoskeleton being wrenched apart by some powerful force.

Some of the men wondered if the strain would rip the tail off their vessel, but that was unlikely. It was far more probable that their screws would be pulled close enough to the surface that they would have little bite, not enough force to break the chain or hook or snagged plane.

The enemy would then scramble onto
Thresher
’s decks with explosives and try to blow the hatch covers. Or simply take their time and cut their way in with torches.

Then Captain Millican would issue the command to light off the charges nestled among the torpedoes.

They would have time for only a short prayer.

The resultant explosion would be heard for miles. The sea would burn. Bits of metal and rubber and glass and human beings would fall from the sky like hail for the next several minutes.

And that would be it.

Suddenly
Thresher
lurched downward and swerved around fiercely, sending sailors lurching painfully to the deck. The submarine’s tail skewed wildly as those still standing hugged anything solid as hard as they could.

The hook was loose!

However, that meant another bad scenario was now set in motion. They were plunging rapidly toward the shallow bottom. A collision with the seafloor at that speed would certainly do lots of damage and possibly be fatal. Even if they slowed the dive, they would likely burrow into the thick mud down there, maybe deeply enough that they would be trapped.

Instantly blown to bits? Trapped on the bottom of the sea? Trapped at least until the air ran out or they escaped one at a time through the torpedo room hatches, drifting to the surface in their Mae West life vests, directly into the arms of the Japanese?

Neither fate was appealing.

“Blow bow buoyancy! Blow bow buoyancy!” Millican commanded without hesitation. He was still remarkably calm and cool, as if this were little more than a training exercise somewhere off the shores of Oahu and Diamond Head.

Highly compressed air forced water out of the tanks in the heavy forward part of the submarine. They could only hope they could get enough water out to help control the angle and thus the speed of their dive. Men fought with their controls to regain mastery over the freed ship. Then maybe they would be able to swim away to deeper, safer waters.

It seemed they plummeted toward the bottom for an hour, but it was only seconds. They were able to get control of the dive moments before they hit and immediately made a turn for deeper water.

Meanwhile, the enemy realized their trophy fish had found a way to get unhooked. One second their stern was squatted down in the water, bringing in their catch. The next they were bouncing from the freed tension.

They began to chunk depth charges at the submarine.

Below, aboard
Thresher
, the renewed and relentless pounding was nerve-racking, but at least they were free to try to escape.

It was the darkness of night that ultimately came to their rescue. The trail of air bubbles on the surface was no longer visible in the dark tropical sea.

Thresher
was finally able to slip away from beneath the enemy vessels that were so close to landing a truly big one.

According to the sonarman’s count and the entry made later in the ship’s deck log, in less than twelve hours, forty-one depth charges and at least two bombs rocked
Thresher
and her crew. Still, they survived that barrage, as well as the experience of being firmly hooked on the end of a chain fishing line.

Millican was not deterred one whit by the harrowing events. The skipper continued to attack everything he saw that resembled a target as they made their way toward Fremantle-Perth. His crew quickly gained confidence and downright affection for their new skipper. Though they had had those distressing experiences with him at the helm, he had still done exactly what he had told them he would do. He pushed the attack when it was prudent. Yet he did it with the intention of getting his ship and crew to safety afterward.