“Will you look at that?” Otter said, pointing at the screen. “Man, she’s one noisy bitch on emergency blow, isn’t she?”
“Is that what that is?” Forsythe said, a terrible certainty starting in his heart. “Emergency blow?”
Both sonarman nodded. “No doubt about it, sir. She’s scared and running for daylight.”
“Can she make it to the surface?
Neither sonarman answered.
“One hundred feet,” the Russian sonarman said, the relief plain in his voice. Depth was measured from the keel of the submarine, and if the keel was at one hundred feet, the conning tower was just twenty-five feet below the surface. They were near enough to get out if they had to. If they could.
“Captain, are we going to—?” The officer of the day never had a chance to finish his question.
The torpedo struck the ship in the aft one-third of the hull, about twenty feet forward of the propeller shaft. As its nose dented the steel hull, the force shoved the igniter back into the warhead. The torpedo detonated, instantly vaporizing the seawater around it and producing a massive pressure gradient along the hull of the submarine.
The force of the explosion, coupled by the sudden change in pressure, popped rivets along the junction between two plates. The sea took advantage of the submarine’s weakness immediately, pouring in, as though trying to demonstrate the principle that nature abhors a vacuum.
The sea acted like a giant wedge, forcing the two steel plates farther apart. Incredible forces brought to bear on buckled steel, mangled with nature’s force everything man had so carefully machined.
Inside the submarine, the effect was devastating. The original split in the hull filled the space with water, and the force twisted the inner hull out of shape. Given the submarine’s steep angle of climb, and the forces already in play on her, it didn’t take much to breach her hull completely.
The original leak — if such torrential force can be called by such an innocuous name — was located in a machinery space. The stream of water hit with the force of a fire hose, immediately enlarging the hole. The watertight bulkhead to the passageway held for five seconds, then, under the stress of the hull deformity, the rubber seal pulled away from the coming. Again, the water followed.
The submarine was divided, like a surface ship would be, into a series of watertight compartments designed to withstand considerable pressure. But every engineering design works on the assumption that the hull would remain intact.
The passageway running the length of the sub was empty. The submariners were in watertight compartments on either side, at the battle stations, torn between the duty and the compulsion to race forward or aft to one of the escape hatches. Everyone knew what the steep angle on the deck meant — they were surfacing, surfacing hard, and there was only one reason to do that with a torpedo in pursuit. Each one vowed silently that when he heard the submarine break the surface he would abandon his post and head to the escape hatch, protocol and duty be damned.
The ocean, however, had other plans.
The next to the last segment of the passageway flooded first and the watertight hatches on either side of it collapsed almost immediately. As the ancillary equipment room filled with water, it became heavier, deepening the submarine’s already steep angle of ascent, and severely slowing her forward progress. The submarine had enough inertia built up, however, that even the fatal breech of the hull could not stop her from reaching the surface. Still, she broke the surface at a sharper angle than her designers ever intended.
As she breached the surface of the ocean, the sea broke through the aft watertight door. Now, with the full force of the sea behind it, it smashed into engineering, cold seawater surging over the hot main propulsion engines. The engines flashed the first cascade of water into steam, then shattered, metal torn apart by the sudden change in temperature as more water followed.
There were three sailors in that compartment, each with his own general quarters station. The first was assigned to monitor the oil pressure and temperature over the main engines. The second was the damage control petty officer, standing by to coordinate any repairs or actions in an emergency. The third was a very junior member of the crew, whose only job in life was to watch the bilges and make sure that the seepage never rose above two inches.
They had approximately four seconds warning before the ship began to break apart, long enough for a prayer or a curse, depending on each one’s temperament. Long enough for the senior rating to scrabble up the ladder to the escape hatch and begin desperately twisting the heavy wheel, hoping against hope that he could somehow manage to get it opened, get inside, and get out before he was trapped. The other tried to follow what he was doing, but got in the way. While the senior rating might have had time to get the inner hatch open, it was almost certain he would not have had time to climb inside the escape chamber, shut the hatch behind him, and reseal it. Even if he had time, the pressure and forces acting on the hull would probably have warped the chamber itself, either preventing the hatch from securing or keeping the outer hatch from opening.
In any event, the others had forgotten to grab emergency egress breathing devices and would have drowned as the chamber filled.
As it was, the sea broke through suddenly, slamming into the compartment and flooding it instantly. The youngest seaman was slammed into a bulkhead and his neck snapped. He had a few seconds of fading consciousness, but not enough time to feel the cold, clear panic and fear flooding the other two.
The senior petty officer, the one who had climbed the ladder, was knocked off his perch. He took a deep breath, held it, and moved through the compartment, hoping to find an air bubble trapped there. The man in the middle panicked. He became completely disoriented. In trying to emulate the other in the complete pitch darkness and cold water, he swam for the stern of the ship. By the time oxygen starvation forced his mouth open in an instinctive insistence that he could indeed breathe seawater if he just tried hard enough, he had realized his mistake.
The third man lived — at least for a few more minutes. He had time to realize what was happening, to watch the water rising around him, to hear the sudden crack as the hull gave way. He was completely conscious as the water quickly rose, the cold leeching the heat almost immediately, the water filled with oily debris. He could not see the water rise, but followed its progress as it crept up his body, the heavy pressure on his chest, the icy oil against his skin, seeping into his tightly closed mouth and invading his nostrils.
He knew the submarine better than his own house and he tried to make his way forward. He pounded against the first door he encountered, but the man on the other side rightfully refused to doom the rest of the ship by opening the hatch. Finally, as he verged on unconsciousness from oxygen starvation, his mouth opened and he breathed in seawater.
Those in the forward compartments who were strong and acted quickly survived. As they heard the torpedo hit, they ignored their standing orders, opened their hatches and streamed forward. They secured the hatches behind them as the went, moving forward against the flood, struggling against the ever deepening inclination on the deck. Eventually, they reached the control room.
Inside the control room, utter chaos prevailed. The captain had roared out a hasty abandon-ship order that was not necessary. Every one of them instinctively knew that to stay in the submarine would be to die. No damage control effort could begin to staunch the flood.
At the bottom of every watertight hatch is a port, known as the telltale. Because there are no windows between the watertight compartments, the telltale provides a way of determining whether the other side is flooded or not.