Dust on the Sea (48 page)

“I recommend we send
Whitefish
a message tonight that we're coming in to join her in the Maikotsu Suido,” announced Richardson soberly. “We can send the message while we're still out here, and tell her not to receipt for it or open up her radio in any way. We have four fish left, and if we're lucky, we might be able to bag another ship. If we can get one out of a convoy running along the coast, that will divert the rest of them offshore into the middle of the Maikotsu Suido, and that's where
Whitefish
will be waiting for them.” Rich could see that Blunt was somewhat less than enthusiastic.

“Why don't we just tell
Whitefish
to go into shallow water?” said Blunt.

Richardson could feel his eyes narrowing. If Blunt could not see the obvious, somebody had to tell him. “Listen to me,” he said; then suddenly he realized that his voice had taken on much the same timbre as when he had protested Blunt's callous comments about Joan and Cordelia Woods. “Listen: Les Hartly lost his ass and his ship because he didn't know his business! It was our job to square him away, and we didn't do it. He thought he knew all the answers because he'd
been a skipper a long time, but a lot of things have changed since he made war patrols. He ran into a bear trap without even knowing what was going on, and they nailed him. It's just the opposite with Whitey Everett. This is his first command. He's not sure of himself. He's good at the periscope, but he's never made a surface attack at night, and you know he won't. He'll never go after those ships in shallow water, either, and we'll just waste the rest of our time out here in the area. Dammit, Commodore, we've got to back in there! We know where the enemy is, and that's where we've got to go!” The intensity of Richardson's words clearly surprised the squadron commander. A lot depended upon Blunt's reaction to Richardson's harsh words. His mention of Les Hartly had been just right. Blunt hesitated. Rich moved in for the kill.

“Commodore, Les was away from the war too long. Things changed a great deal while he was in Mare Island getting the
Chicolar
ready. In a different way, the same thing is the problem with Whitey. Hardly anybody has figured everything out on his first patrol in command. Even you, sir. This is your first war patrol. You get to have a feel for the enemy after you've been fighting them. You can't get it by reading patrol reports. Keith and I are the experienced ones. This is the sixth war patrol for me and the ninth for Keith. We know what we can do, and we know what the enemy can do. ComSubPac has some experienced skippers on his staff. He knows, too. He is practically ordering us to go into the shallow water after them, and he's right.”

The squadron commander said nothing. His eyes flickered twice as he listened. Richardson realized he had carried the day. In a very real sense, command of the wolfpack had now passed to him. The patrol had already cost something in terms of mutual respect and friendship—this would merely add a little more to the price—but the way was clear for him to put his scheme into execution.

Shortly before dawn, having run at maximum speed to the east all night,
Eel
slipped between two of the islands at the southern edge of the western side of the Maikotsu Suido. Immediately she felt the current set to the north. Relentlessly Rich drove her toward the coast of Korea, intending to get as near as possible before it became necessary to dive. Perhaps all the aircraft patrols were far to the west into the Yellow Sea. Morning twilight was well advanced before the need to remain undetected caused him reluctantly to submerge.

By ten o'clock
Eel
was patrolling 2,000 yards off a point of land around which any ships heading up or down the coast would have to pass. It was an ideal spot for submarine patrol, provided one was acclimated to shallow water. There was no way traffic hugging the coast
could avoid a submarine stationing herself here. Shortly after noon a single freighter, unescorted, chugged slowly up the coast, zigzagging perfunctorily, puffing a cloud of black smoke from obviously ancient boilers, secure in the information that ships had been passing daily, that no submarines were close in to shore. The approach was almost like a dance, simple in its execution, flawless in its performance, strenuous only in some of the details. With a slight stretch of the imagination, the maneuvers, the periscope work, the macabre ritual before the sacrifice, could be compared to the high leaps and entrechats of a dancer acting out the denouement of a tragic ballet. Shortly before
Eel
achieved the firing position, more smoke appeared to the south. The situation was exactly as Rich had hoped it might be. One last pirouette, a rising crescendo of music, a final leap before the graceful submission to the inevitable outcome—only the ending was barbaric because it was real, not fanciful, its artistry shattered in the thunderous roar of two torpedoes striking ten seconds apart, a cloud of smoke, debris, and steam rising from the vitals of the doomed ship—this too was real—and it was death, and murder, and war, and no longer artistic, but only dreadful.

And then the ship was gone, leaving wreckage floating about on the water, a matted slick of coal dust, junk and life rafts, and a single damaged lifeboat into which a dozen men climbed. More men were on the life raft, and more clung to pieces of wreckage. But some of them clung to nothing, merely floated motionless, scalded to death in the engine room or boiler rooms, broken by the shock of the earthquake which had overwhelmed them, converted suddenly from living sensate beings into the pitiless flotsam of war.

Far to the south, three columns of smoke turned sharply westward. They would move well out into the Maikotsu Suido before heading north again, knowing that the submarine so catastrophically revealed in their path could not possibly follow submerged. An aircraft would soon appear, did appear, circling the area of devastation off the little point of land. Richardson watched it all through the tiny tip of the attack periscope, barely exposed above the placid surface.

Four hours later Stafford reported distant explosions to the northward. Some of them, he said, sounded like torpedoes, but this must have been his imagination willfully embroidering upon the situation. No one at that distance could tell a torpedo from a depth charge.

He had, however, counted twenty-five or more explosions. Six of them, or perhaps as many as ten, judging by their timing, could certainly have been torpedoes.
Whitefish
must have got into action.

ATTACKED THREE SHIP CONVOY POSITION MIKE XRAY FORTY TWO X SANK ONE FREIGHTER X DEPTH CHARGED X TEN TORPEDOES REMAINING ALL TUBES LOADED X CLEARING AREA TO INSPECT FOR DAMAGE X
. The message was sent in the wolfpack code and therefore required no identification as to addressee or sender.

“He fired six fish and probably missed with his second salvo,” commented Blunt. “At least he equalized his expenditure of torpedoes and has six forward and four aft ready to go. That was good planning.”

It was, of course, exactly what every submarine skipper should endeavor to do. Although considerable design effort had been expended, no workable scheme had ever been developed to permit torpedoes to be transferred from one end of a submarine to the other without taking them out of the ship. Even though dismantled into its three main components—air flask, warhead, and afterbody—the air flask was too long to be maneuvered around the bends in the congested fore-and-aft passageway, even if there were equipment to do it with. Obviously, a prudent submarine captain would do his best to equalize torpedo expenditures between the forward and after torpedo rooms so that the undesirable condition of having a surplus of torpedoes in one end and empty tubes in the other would not occur.

“Commodore,” said Rich, “I think we'd better follow Whitey and clear the area too. We've raised so much hell here in the Maikotsu Suido that they'll have all of their available ASW forces out looking for us. By now they've got to know for sure that there are two submarines involved.”

“What do you suggest, Rich?” asked Blunt. There was a querulous note in his voice.

“This is the first time any submarine has gone into the Maikotsu Suido since the
Trigger
, more than a year ago. Before her it was the
Wahoo
, but they were the only two. Both were topnotch subs, with top skippers, and both reported this area as being difficult for submarines because of the high current and confined waters. No subs have come here since the
Trigger
, and the Japanese have had a clear run through here. No doubt they figured for some reason we simply were not up to sending any more boats here. Now, all of a sudden, they have lost six ships in the Maikotsu, and two more just beyond its borders. They've already saturated the area with antisub air patrols. They've got to know, now, there are two submarines here. They've got to stop all traffic, at least in this vicinity, until they find them.”

Blunt seemed to accept this analysis.

“So, all we're going to find around here for the next few days are air and surface patrols. We have about a week left in the area, and I
think we ought to try to get rid of at least some of those ten fish Whitey has remaining. If we move right away and catch a convoy running along the Chinese coast, the Japs might even think there are four subs in the Yellow Sea. That will likely make them shut down all their traffic for a while, and that alone will hurt them.”

Blunt appeared to agree, yet he remained irresolute. “There's no reason for
Eel
to go over there,” he said. “Those two fish you have left aft won't be much use.” The unstated portion of the argument, the important part of it, Blunt still could not see: without the presence of the
Eel
to drive her,
Whitefish
would find no more targets.

The discussion would have gone on longer. Richardson had not expected an easy victory. The degree to which he could push for his own point of view had to be balanced against the resultant stiffening, the psychological resistance which Rich had by now come to expect. Admiral Small, in Pearl Harbor, made it all academic. For the second time, his message was most complimentary:
DEPREDATIONS OUR BOATS CLOSE INSHORE KOREA HAVE CAUSED JAPANESE FITS X WELL DONE BRUISERS,
it said. Then it went on to the meat of the communication:

KWANTUNG ARMY EMBARKING TWO DIVISIONS THREE LARGE TRANSPORTS TSINGTAO X DEPARTURE IMMINENT X ESCORTED BY TOP ASW TEAM RPT TOP ASW TEAM NOW REDUCED FROM THREE TO TWO MIKURAS PLUS DAYLIGHT AIR COVER X INDICATIONS CONVOY BOUND FOR ICEBERG X WILL SORTIE DURING DARKNESS FOR HIGH SPEED DAYLIGHT DASH ACROSS YELLOW SEA TO COAST KOREA X MUST NOT RPT MUST NOT ARRIVE X COMSUBPAC SENDS X TERMINATE ALL OTHER OPERATIONS CMA MAKE MAXIMUM EFFORT X

On a moonless night in a cold but musty sea,
Eel
arrowed at maximum sustained speed to the northwest. The storm of the past week had blown away the customary overcast, but this could not last long in the Yellow Sea, and the cloud cover with its atmosphere of sea dust had returned. Somewhere to starboard,
Whitefish
was also running for the same destination. Now, the decision made, Richardson found himself unable to remain in the warmth and comfort of
Eel
's below-deck spaces, or to participate in the interminable strategy sessions in the wardroom. Nor was there solace in the bellowing roar of four powerful diesel engines, the purposeful routine of the control room, or the quiet readiness of the conning tower. There was no interest left in the torpedo rooms; only two useless fish remained, both aft—well, not quite useless. If
Eel
could engage the escorts, take them away from the convoy,
Whitefish
had ten torpedoes with which to deal with the three troop transports.
Eel
's two fish might give her some capability,
should an opportunity develop, of handling at least one of the two remaining
Mikuras
. As to the other, he would simply have to take what came and do what he could. The important thing was to make it possible for Whitey Everett to carry on, for only
Whitefish
could do the job that had to be done.

Restlessly, Richardson wandered from forward torpedo room to after torpedo room. The supreme test of his career, of his command of
Eel
, was about to come. He must be ready for it, must meet it, without adequate weapons. Only once before, in his youth, had he been faced with a similar situation. On a camping trip with three other boys, all of them Eagle Scouts, they had come upon a female grizzly bear with young. The bear attacked, the boys ran, and she caught one of them. Rich had saved his life by making a huge show of attacking the cub, striking it with a stick until it bawled, with result that its mother left her victim and made for him instead. He had by consequence spent the night in a tree, from where he had continued to occupy the bear's attention while the other scouts took their injured companion to safety. The totally unexpected conclusion to the affair was that the Senator from his state, learning of it from a newspaper account, had offered him a vacant appointment to the Naval Academy for the following year.

That had been nearly fourteen years ago, and there were some analogies to his present situation. The wolfpack commander had been quite right in his observation that the two torpedoes remaining, both in stern tubes, would be of little use. Perhaps they could sink one of the transports—indeed, if the chance offered, he would seize it. But
Eel
's job clearly was to help
Whitefish
get into action with her ten torpedoes, and if necessary she must be prepared to take the required risk. If Richardson could divert the attention of the escorts, Everett would be able to make an unopposed approach. With the transports in close formation, as they would be, he ought to be able to hit at least two of them.