They think they’re safe in this darkness, Tremain thought, so they’re trying to make a run for it. They’re trying to get into port tonight. They still haven’t learned the lesson about the capabilities of American radar.
“Any sign of escorts?” Tremain said.
“Not yet, sir, but if they’re patrolling off the convoy’s bows we won’t be able to detect them. The heavies are hiding that whole area from our radar with their large crosssections.”
“Right, XO. Bring us up between the port and middle columns. I want to know when we are well inside the heart of the convoy.”
Cazanavette came back a few seconds later with some course and speed recommendations and Mackerel came to the left and sped up to enter the Japanese formation.
Although Tremain knew their chances were good that the Japanese ships were not equipped with radar, seeing their wakes slapping against his own ship still made him uneasy. There was always a chance that the enemy could get lucky, such as if some alert lookout sighted them in the blackness. Most of the merchant vessels carried guns large enough to sink a ship the size of the Mackerel. Tremain took comfort only in the fact that the Japanese lookouts would be directing their searches toward the convoy’s beams and not toward the inside of the convoy.
“There, sir,” Hubley said suddenly, pointing off the starboard beam.
Tremain looked to see a dark shape, plowing up the sea right next to them. The ship was running parallel to Mackerel and was close enough that he could hit it with a small caliber pistol. A few minutes more and he noticed another one on the port side. The ships appeared to be roughly the size of freighters, although it was still hard to tell, even at this close range.
“XO,” he keyed the intercom. “We see two ships. One off the starboard beam, the other off the port beam.”
After a brief pause, Cazanavette’s voice replied, “That checks with the radar, sir. Those are the trailing ships in the middle and port columns. The next ships should be visible right about now.”
On cue, Tremain saw two more dark shapes appear off both bows. He suddenly felt more aware of their situation and it made his scalp crawl. He imagined how much more horrifying it would be if somehow it were suddenly bright as day. He nervously chuckled to himself at the thought.
He would be standing on the bridge of a tiny-surfaced American submarine completely surrounded by Japanese ships, some of them less than three hundred yards away.
He quickly shook the thoughts from his mind. He had to keep a clear head.
Tremain keyed the intercom again. “XO, I think we’ve about pushed our luck as far as it’ll go. Open the outer doors on all tubes. Obtain a firing solution on the first two ships in the port column and lock them into the TDC. Let me know when you’re ready.”
Minutes later came the response, “Outer doors open on all tubes, Captain. We’re set up now on the lead ship in the port column. Range, five hundred yards off the port bow.” Tremain paused. Once the shooting started there would be no going back. Their presence would be known and it would be an all-out slugging match between Mackerel and the convoy. It would be a fight for survival.
“Fire one.. fire two,” Tremain said into the intercom, before he could think about it too much longer.
The deck shuddered as the torpedoes left their tubes and sped off toward the first target.
“Shift to the second ship in the port column,” Tremain ordered. “Fire three … fire four.”
The vibrations in the deck were followed by Cazanavette’s voice. “Tubes one through four have been fired, sir.”
“Very well. Set up on the lead ship in the middle column. Stand by tubes five and six.”
Tremain had just finished speaking when the night erupted off Mackerel's port bow. Two massive explosions shot flame and debris hundreds of feet into the night sky. The first torpedoes had hit their mark. Tremain and Hubley quickly ducked behind the bridge coaming to avoid the tremendous heat and the shower of debris. Tremain ordered the lookouts down from their perches so that they could do the same.
Then two more explosions came, this time even closer and off the port beam. Torpedoes three and four had hit their target, too. Mackerel rocked to starboard as the shockwave hit and then rolled back slowly to an even keel.
Tremain peered over the coaming to see the entire area bathed in the orange light of several thousand gallons of burning oil. The oily slick rapidly became a fiery moat completely surrounding and engulfing the first ship in flame. Moments before, the proud ship had been a tanker for His Imperial Majesty. Now it was nothing but a useless burning hulk. Tremain could easily discern where Mackerel's torpedoes had hit. They had obviously hit her up forward because the ship no longer had a bow. It had been completely blown off, leaving a gaping hole, which rapidly gulped up seawater. Like the sea around it, the remnants of the ship still on the surface were on fire and rapidly settling.
Tremain then turned to check the spot where the second ship had been, but there was nothing there, nothing but burning flotsam. Either the ship had been atomized by Mackerel's third and fourth torpedoes, or else it had sunk within seconds.
The scene was mesmerizing, the heat tremendous. Tremain had to pull his eyes away from the scenes of carnage to keep going. The area was now bathed in the orange light of the fires allowing him to see plainly that the other ships in the convoy were beginning to scatter. They desperately turned to port and starboard in cumbersome maneuvers to avoid their unseen assailant and to prevent colliding with one another. Tremain assumed that none of the enemy ships had seen the Mackerel yet, or at least they had not yet fired on her.
In the sporadic light, Tremain noticed the lead ship in the middle column, a large transport, make a sharp left turn five hundred yards off Mackerel’s starboard bow. In conducting the blind evasive maneuver, the transport’s captain had inadvertently placed his ship directly in front of Mackerel’s bows, lining up his slow-moving vessel for a perfect torpedo shot.
“Set gyro angle at zero on torpedoes five and six,” Tremain hurriedly spoke into the intercom.
“Set,” Cazanavette answered on the intercom.
“Fire five … fire six.”
The torpedoes sped from their tubes. Tremain watched as their frothing twin wakes, glimmering in the firelight, traced a direct path to the transport’s exposed port beam. Seconds later two ear-shattering blasts lifted the transport’s midsection out of the water along with two distinct columns of water that shot high into the night sky. The ship then came back down into the water and bent inward with a sharp splintering crack. It was the sound of the transport’s keel breaking in two, and it began to fall apart. The stern and fore sections quickly drifted away from each other. Both sections, including the sea around them, were covered with flailing soldiers and sailors, some gasping for air, some on fire. The transport had been full of troops and most likely destined for the Solomon Islands.
Tremain felt bile in his throat as he forced himself to turn away from the gruesome spectacle. Although he kept compassion for the enemy to a minimum, especially when he thought of his lost crew on the Seatrout, he still felt a surge of pain in his heart knowing that these hundreds of men would be left to the mercy of the sea and flame. The other ships in the convoy would not stop to rescue them for fear of being sunk themselves.
“Sir!” Hubley exclaimed, pointing astern.
Tremain turned to see the knifing bow of a freighter plodding the ocean behind them. The ship was so close he had to angle his neck to look at its super structure. Tremain could not imagine how it had gotten so close, and it was heading directly for Mackerel’s stern.