Submarine! (15 page)

When Dealey brought
Harder
into Fremantle, he had sunk one destroyer and one freighter and damaged and probably sunk a second destroyer. As he indicated in his patrol report, his ship now had the pleasure of seeing her total tonnage record of enemy ships exceed the 100,000 tons' mark—a distinction attained by only a few of our undersea fighters. That it was due entirely to his own efforts, Sam would have indignantly denied, pointing to the outstanding officers and men who served with him, who, he said, were responsible for making
Harder
what she was. Frank Lynch, his executive officer, and Sam Logan, his torpedo officer, were his two mainstays, and to them he invariably tried to shift the credit. Frank, a behemoth of a man, had been regimental commander and first-string tackle at the Naval Academy. He combined qualities of leadership and physical stamina with a keen, searching mind and a tremendous will to fight. Sam, slighter of build, less the extrovert, was a mathematical
shark and had stood first in his class at the Academy. Under pressure of the war years, he had discovered a terrible and precise ferocity which always possessed him whenever contact with the enemy was imminent. To him, operation of the torpedo director was an intricate puzzle, to be worked out using all information and means at his command, divining the enemy's intentions and anticipating them, working out new techniques of getting the right answer under different sets of conditions.

“With those two madmen pushing me all the time,” Dealey would say, “there was nothing I could do but go along!”

It was, however,
Harder
's fifth war patrol which fixed her position, and that of Sam Dealey, in the annals of the United States Submarine Force for all time.

On May 26, 1944,
Harder
departed from Fremantle, Australia, on what many have termed the most epoch-making war patrol ever recorded. It must be remembered that Sam Dealey, Frank Lynch, and Sam Logan were by now experts who had long served together. Their ship was a veteran, and organized to the peak of perfection in fighting ability. Who can blame Dealey, with this sort of help, for deliberately selecting the most difficult of accomplishments?

Your submarine is primarily a commerce destroyer. While it will attack any moderate-to-large warship it encounters, its principal objective is the lifeline of the enemy—its merchant carriers. The submarine will spend long hours lying in wait in sea lanes frequented by enemy cargo vessels, and her personnel will spend longer hours trying to outguess their adversaries, to determine where they are routing their ships in their effort to evade submarine attack. The submarine will, of course, similarly try to intercept enemy war vessels. But the destroyer or escort vessel is the bane of the sub's existence, for it is commonly considered too small to shoot successfully and too dangerous to fool around with. Besides, sinking a destroyer was not ordinarily so damaging to the enemy's cause as sinking a tanker, for example. Sometimes
a destroyer would intercept a torpedo intended for a larger vessel, and sometimes you had to shoot at one in desperation—and sometimes one would give you a shot you simply couldn't pass up. But ordinarily you avoid tangling with one.

Sam Dealey, ever an original man, had a new thought. It was known that the Japanese Navy was critically short of destroyers of all types, first-line or otherwise. Intelligence reports were to the effect that those few they had were being operated week in and week out, without pause for even essential repairs, in their desperate effort to keep their sea lanes open. Add to this the tremendous screen necessary for a fleet movement and the probability that it could be hamstrung—or at least rendered extraordinarily vulnerable—if the number of destroyers or escort ships could be substantially reduced. In short, Dealey decided that the war against merchant shipping was entirely too tame for his blood, and he asked and received for his operating area the waters around the major Japanese Fleet Operating Base of Tawi Tawi in the Sulu Archipelago. He reasoned that once he revealed his presence there, which he planned to do in the time-honored submarine manner, there would be no dearth of destroyers sent out to track him down. And if there were too many in one bunch, he could avoid them; if they came out by ones and twos, he'd deliberately tangle with them.

And tangle he did. Shortly after sunset of the first day in the area, a convoy was sighted and
Harder
gave chase. The moon came out during the pursuit, the convoy changed course, and events soon confirmed the submarine's detection by the enemy. The nearest destroyer emitted clouds of black smoke, put on full speed, and commenced heading directly for her—and there was nothing left to do but run for it.

At full speed
Harder
could barely exceed 19 knots, and it soon was evident that the tin can astern was clipping them off at 24 or better. The range inexorably reduced to 10,000 yards, then 9000, then 8,500—at which point Sam pulled the plug out from under his ship and dropped her neatly to periscope depth.

The moment the ship was under water, Dealey called out, “Left full rudder!”

Obediently the submarine altered course to the left, drawing away from the path down which she had been running. A tricky stunt, this, fraught with danger. If the DD up there had enough sense to divine what had occurred and suspect the trap laid for him, things would be tough. He'd have little trouble in picking up the submarine broadside on with his supersonic sound equipment, and probably could do plenty of damage with an immediate attack.

But he suspected nothing, came on furiously down the broad wake left by the sub, blundered right across her stern, and was greeted with two torpedoes which hit him under the bow and under the bridge, and broke his back.

With his bow torn nearly off and gaping holes throughout his stricken hull, the Jap's stern rose vertically in the air. Clouds of smoke, spray, and steam enveloped him, mingled with swift tongues of red flame which feverishly licked at his sides and decks. Depth charges, normally stowed aft in the depth charge racks ready for immediate use, fell out the back of the racks and went crashing down upon the now-slanted deck. Some of them, reached by the flames, went off with horrifying explosions which effectively nullified any chance survivors of the holocaust might have had.

Less than two minutes after the detonations of the torpedoes, the lone black hull of the submarine boiled to the surface. Sam Dealey was not one to give up the convoy that easily, and
Harder
took off once more at full speed after the enemy. But further contact was not to be regained with this particular outfit.

“Radar contact!” another destroyer, and not far away. From the speed with which the range diminishes, it is obvious that he is heading directly for
Harder!

Battle stations submerged!
A few hurried minutes of tracking. No doubt about it: this fellow is a comer! Perhaps he has seen the submarine—although that seems hardly possible, or maybe he has radar information-we've suspected the Japs of this for some time. Or maybe he's merely running down
the most probable bearing of the submarine, based on previous information. Whatever the cause, he certainly deserves 100 per cent for effort so far, and
Harder
had better get out of the way.

“Take her down! Dive! Dive!”
There may still be a chance to go after the convoy, but this new fellow requires attention first. Again the approach. Not so easy as the last time. This bird is wary, and zigzagging. He's alert, no question of it, and no doubt is fully aware of what happened to his buddy. On he comes, weaving first one way, then the other. It is now fairly dark. Broken clouds obscure the moon and deprive. Sam Dealey of the light he sorely needs to make accurate observations. The destroyer is a dim blur in the periscope. Ranges are inaccurate and estimations of enemy course difficult to make. Finally, with the best information he can set into the TDC, Sam gives the order to fire. Six torpedoes flash out toward the oncoming destroyer.

Sound listens intently for the sound of the proper functioning of the deadly fish. A white-faced operator turns to the skipper. “Can't hear the first two!” he gasps. “Last four seem to be running O.K.!” Two sinkers! Damn those undependable torpedoes! But four out of six are still all right. They should do the trick, barring extraordinary luck and skill on the part of the Jap.

We've simply
got
to see what he's doing. Up with the periscope again. Time stands still for the members of the fire control party—as it does, indeed, for every man aboard. You have no way of knowing what is going on except through the eyes of the Captain. From his attitude and his actions, plus what few words of description he might remember to say, you make up your own picture of the topside.

This time they do not have long to wait. Dealey's figure stiffens. “He's seen them! He's turning this way! Take her down!” As the submarine noses over in obedience to the command, Sam gets a last sight of the enemy ship twisting radically as he avoids the torpedoes. Almost inaudibly he mutters, “Good work, you son of a bitch!”

And that is as far as Sam Dealey's accolade of the enemy's maneuvers goes, for he has much to do and a very short time in which to do it.
Harder
is immediately rigged for depth charges and for “silent running.”

The sound man has suddenly become the most important man in the ship. All hands hang upon his words, as he deliberately turns his sound head control wheel. “Target is starting a run!” You might have thought the sound operator was reporting a drill instead of a life-and-death battle. “Target,” indeed!

“He's shifted to short scale.” The enemy destroyer has speeded up his pinging, shortened the interval between pings as the range closes. All hands unconsciously brace themselves, awaiting the first shock of the depth charges. It doesn't take long.

Harder
is just reaching deep depth as five depth charges explode in her face. This veteran ship and crew have received many depth charges in the past, but a depth charge is something you never get used to. The whole ship shudders convulsively as the explosions rain upon her, and the vibration of the hull swiftly fills the air with clouds of dust particles and bits of debris from broken light bulbs and other fragile fixtures.

In the control room a new man is on the stern planes. This is his first patrol and he is doing the best he can, straining perhaps a bit too hard in his anxiety to have everything perfect. The stern plane indicators stop moving. He instantly deduces that the electrical control for the stem planes has been damaged. Quickly he shifts into hand power, nervously tugging at the slow-moving change gear. Then, panting heavily and a little flustered, he rapidly spins the wheel—the wrong way! It takes less time to do than it does to tell about it. The power to the stern planes had not been lost—merely the indicating circuit. And as
Harder
reaches maximum submergence, she has full dive on her stern planes instead of full rise.

In a second everyone realizes that something is wrong. Instead
of gradually decreasing its angle, the ship tilts down even more, as though going into an outside loop. The deck slants at an impossible angle and the depth gauge needle goes unheedingly past the 300-foot mark.

“All hands aft on the double!” The diving officer's harsh command starts everyone moving, with the exception of those who are required to remain at their stations. In the meantime he quickly checks the situation, and reaching across the struggling stern planesman's shoulders, flips a tiny switch which cuts in the emergency stern plane angle indicator—which should have been energized previously. The emergency indicator shows Full Dive. Grasping the wheel, the diving officer puts his whole body into countering the frenzied effort of the now-frightened stern planesman, wrests the wheel away from him and commences to spin it counterclockwise. He works silently with the furious speed of urgency. When he finally has the planes corrected to full rise, he turns them back over to the trembling sailor who has been the cause of the trouble.

“Watch this,” he says, pointing to the emergency angle indicator. No time now for investigation or instruction. The angle is coming off the ship. She finally levels off, far below her designed depth, and then commences to rise again. Forty-odd men huddled in the after parts of the ship create a rather large, unbalanced weight. The stern planes in hand power are slow to turn, the bow of the ship continues to rise, and the deck now tilts again in the opposite direction. The men sent aft understand what is going on and stream forward as soon as the ship commences to rise, but it is not until she is halfway back to the surface that she is finally brought under control.

In the meantime, the destroyer has reversed course and returned to the vicinity, and lets fly with another severe hammering.

You have to hand it to this destroyer. He has taken the initiative away from the submarine and has effectively protected his convoy. Sam Dealey's only thought by this time is
to get away from him. It takes a few hours to do so, but finally
Harder
comes to the surface several miles away from the scene of the attack. These have been an eventful four hours.

Late forenoon of the next day
Harder
's crew is still resting from the strenuous previous evening. The ship is patrolling submerged, and everything appears to be calm and peaceful, when the musical “Bong! Bong! Bong!” of the general alarm shatters the quiet of the sleeping crew. The word flashes almost instantly through the ship: “Another destroyer!”

This is a fast one. There has been a slight haze on the surface and the range at sighting is 4000 yards, angle on the bow port twenty.
Harder
turns and heads toward the enemy, preparing all torpedo tubes as she does so. At 3000 yards the destroyer turns and heads directly toward the submarine as though he had sighted the periscope in the glassy smooth sea. He commences weaving, first to one side and then to the other, and increases speed rapidly as he roars in. No question but that he has detected the submarine. Sam will have to fire right down his throat in order to get him. If he misses—well, he'd better not. If the destroyer catches the submarine at shallow depth, things will be pretty tough.