“Seven hundred feet,” he said in a low voice. “Keep us at seven hundred feet!” He turned to Sirocco.
“I’m going to stay this deep, she seems to be taking it, and go right out of here! I think we can take anything they throw at us. God knows it couldn’t be any worse than that last attack!” He looked over at the bathythermograph.
“Maybe if we can keep going we can find a layer.”
“Here they come again!” Cohen said.
Chapter 19
“Send Eagle’s Feather Two up the enemy’s track, please,” the Professor’s voice was gentle but underneath the soft tones there was the assurance of command. “I want to know, exactly, how deep the enemy is running.” He took off his billed cap and rubbed his bald head and then smoothed the ruff of gray hair that fringed his head. He waited, his face serene.
“Eagle Feather Two reports enemy is steady on a course of zero zero zero, sir and he is at depth seven hundred feet, seven zero zero feet, sir,” the radio operator on Eagle’s bridge said.
“Seven hundred!” the professor’s eyebrows went upward a fraction of an inch. “We set our charges too shallowly!”
“Our experience, sir, has been that American submarines do not operate below four hundred feet sir,” the destroyer captain’s face was stricken. “That is why I ordered the depth charges set at five hundred feet.”
“All life is an experience, one new experience after another,” the Professor said kindly. “So now we have learned something. The submarine is relatively safe from attacks at seven hundred feet. We can do him no structural damage of any consequence. If he makes a mistake, comes up from that depth for any reason, then we can get him but,” he paused. “Will you please call your gunnery officer to the bridge, Isoruku?” He used the younger man’s given name deliberately, to soften the rebuff he had just given.
The Gunnery Officer, a young Lieutenant, hastily buttoned his uniform jacket and set his hat straight on his head as he went toward the ladder that led to the bridge.
Why does he want to see me? he said to himself. One depth charge did not explode, that fool of a gunner forgot to pull out the safely key, but that old man couldn’t know that, he couldn’t count each explosion in the middle of an attack. Or could he? He walked out on the bridge and stood rigidly at attention.
“Oh, stand at ease, sir,” the Professor said. “I have a technical question to ask you. What is the very deepest, the absolute maximum you can set our depth charges to explode?”
The Lieutenant let his breath out slowly and carefully, he didn’t want his apprehension to show.
“With the new exploder mechanisms, sir, seven hundred feet. But the instruction manuals all say that six hundred and seventy-five feet is the maximum for consistent performance. When the tension spring is screwed up to seven hundred feet the pressure on the diaphragm is excessive and there is a danger of diaphragm failure. That would mean no explosion, sir.”
“But you rechecked each diaphragm on my orders, did you not? And you replaced all diaphragms that were not seated properly or appeared to be old or defective?”
“Yes, sir. All the ships in the squadron did this.”
“So we have good diaphragms which means we have a certain explosion of the depth charge at six hundred and seventy-five feet but an uncertain explosion at seven hundred feet?”
The Lieutenant saw the trap yawning at his feet. “I would say that, sir, if we could be sure of every diaphragm. Even some of the replacements we unpacked had cracks in them.”
“I won’t hold you personally responsible for what some civilian has manufactured, young man,” the Professor smiled gently. “Tell me if I am correct if I say this: If all the diaphragms in the exploders are properly made, if they are all carefully seated, if we use care in exerting maximum spring pressure against the diaphragms then we could expect performance at seven hundred feet? The reason I ask is that the enemy submarine is now cruising at that depth.”
“At seven hundred feet?” the gunnery officer’s eyes opened in surprise.
“Precisely,” the Professor said. “Now please answer my questions.”
“We found over twenty percent of the diaphragms in the depth charges to be defective sir. Those were replaced.” The friendly air of the small man with the four circles of salt-stained gold on his rumpled jacket sleeve emboldened the young Lieutenant.
“I would say that we have a better than eight-to-one chance that all our depth charges will function at seven hundred feet, sir!”
“Good!” the Professor said. “I am always happy to see young officers who are sure of themselves, even at eight-to-one-odds! Set all depth charges on the racks at seven hundred feet. Do not change the settings on the Y-gun charges. If he decides to come up a little shallower I don’t want to waste time re-setting charges.” He turned to the destroyer’s Captain.
“Please order the other ships to follow suit.” He waited until the order had been given and then walked over to the chart table and studied the plot.
“His strategy is obvious, don’t you think, Isoruku?” the Professor’s thin finger touched the chart. “See, here; he heads for the open sea. He hopes to find salt layers out there so he can hide under them and evade us or at worst, he will try to string out his defensive tactics until after dark when we will have a problem in maneuvering for closely coordinated attacks.
“He won’t expect our depth charges to harm him at his present depth because his own Navy’s depth charges are useless below four hundred feet, as ours used to be until we modified them.”
“We have about eight hours of daylight left,” the destroyer’s Captain said. “If we press him, make him evade at high speed, he will use up his storage batteries and that will force him to the surface.” He rubbed his chin. “We might even be able to smash him at seven hundred feet!”
“If we make perfect attacks,” the Professor said. “But the perfect attack can only be made when the target acts as he is supposed to act and this is not a man down there who will do the obvious. He is a fox!” His finger traced a line on the chart.
“When he reaches this point please send a message to Small Birds to deploy thus,” his finger made a curve on the chart. “When we have them deployed we will begin dropping charges from the Small Birds to turn him. I mean to drive him in a circle, like the American cowboy movies show cattle being driven! If we can keep him in this area where there are no salt layers we will have him!
“It is going to be a long day. Please lay out the plots and issue the orders to the Small Birds. And if you will, sir, ask the galley to send some food and hot drink to the crew. They have been on station for many hours and face many more hours of work.”
“For you as well, sir?”
“After the men have eaten we will eat,” the Professor said.
Mako crept doggedly along the course Joe Sirocco had laid out on the chart. The steady ringing of the noise of the pinging from the destroyer had become a major irritant. Men flinched as the sonar tone rang through the ship. Captain Mealey, taking advantage of the lull in the depth charge attacks, had ordered the galley to serve hot coffee and doughnuts and sweet rolls. As soon as each compartment had been served the water-tight doors were closed behind the mess cook and dogged down tight. Joe Sirocco munched a doughnut and sipped at a cup of coffee and looked at Aaron, who shook his blond head.
“All isothermal, sir. No layers yet.”
Mealey sipped at his boiling hot coffee. “Got to be some layers somewhere, damn it!” he growled. “I don’t want to string this thing out until way after dark, we’ll be out of battery before midnight!”