Throughout the evening she avoided my glance, applied her- self assiduously to gay repartee with the other members of our party, answered my attempts at conversation in monosyllables. I couldn't avoid asking her to dance, and it was as I had feared, like holding a faultless dummy in my arms. Jim claimed her as soon as he decently could.
The party, as far as I was concerned, was a flop. I had expected some such reaction from Laura, especially after realizing the store she and Jim had set by Jim's qualification for submarine command. Someday, perhaps, after Jim had become a skipper, she might understand why I had had to do it. But it was hopeless to try to explain. The hurt was deep, and I had to let it go in silence.
The Poles stayed in New London for several weeks after we turned S-16 over to them and then one day, as I was sit- ting in our second-floor office poring over Walrus' fire-control setup, I saw her beading downriver on her final departure from New London. The Blyskawica, or Blinks-a-Wink as we called her, was low in the water and down by the stern, loaded with fuel in her after main ballast tank for the long voyage.
She looked tiny and bold and a little forlorn, standing bravely down the Thames River with the white ensign of Poland fluttering from her flagstaff. Her crew was at quarters on deck as she passed under the bridges, and as she came by the dock where the Walrus lay I saw them stiffen to attention. The notes of a bugle wafted across the muddy waters of the river.
I had not known the Poles carried a bugler and I don't think anyone else saw her, but I stood up and returned the salute, bare-headed and indoors at that, feeling all choked up inside and just a little ashamed at the sentimental feelings suddenly evoked. I knew I would never see her again.
Walrus was half again as long as S-16, and she was at twice as much submarine. She had four huge diesel engines of the latest type, the same as in our latest diesel railroad tractors, in two engine compartments. There were ten torpedo tubes-six in the bow and four in the stern-and of course two torpedo rooms. Her battery was more than twice as large as S-16's, also located in two compartments, one just forward and the other just aft of the control room. Her control room was commodious compared with that of the S-16, and crammed with new equipment. Best of all was the conning tower, consisting of an eight-foot-diameter horizontal cylinder above the control room, — in Walrus a real fire-control station, from which the periscopes could be operated, the ship maneuvered, and torpedoes fired.
In the after end of the conning tower, curved to fit against its shell, was installed the computing machine by which we would solve for enemy course and speed and automatically send the proper torpedo gyro angles to the torpedoes. Its official, designation was "Torpedo Data Computer," and it was known by its initials as the TDC. I had become acquainted with an earlier version of it in the Octopus and therefore, fortunately, had some understanding of how it could be used.
The whole ship, for that matter, reminded me greatly of an improved Octopus, and I was soon grateful for my three years service in that vessel.
We had only a short time, two months, to get the Walrus ready to go to sea, and only four weeks after that to prepare for our voyage to the war. The emergency of the war had affected the shipyard workers, planners, and supervisors alike; they did their jobs with certitude and speed as though every welding bead they ran, every bolt they tightened down, were a personal attack on the enemy. We had our hands full keeping up with them, so that we would be ready for our new ship when it was delivered to us. All the new boats at Electric Boat had the same problem.
Most of the crew of S-16 had volunteered to come along to the Walrus. Kohler, Chief of the Boat and now additionally in charge of two torpedo rooms instead of only one, was in his element. He had long envied the fortunate submariners serving in the new "gold-platers," as he termed the fleet boats, and his pleasure in ours was good to behold. Larto, First Class Electrician's Mate in S-16, was notified of his appointment to Chief at the same time he was assigned to the electrical control station or "Maneuvering room" of Walrus. Quin happily took charge of a "really commodious"-as he termed it, little office all his own about four feet by three feet by five and a half feet high. It was, indeed, much bigger than the part-time corner he had been assigned before. Rubinoffski took over the conning tower, the bridge above, and a whole series of chart drawers located in the wardroom. Our cook on S-16, Russo, couldn't spend enough time in his new galley.
He had never seen anything so beautiful, he said, watching with delight as two new electric stoves were lowered into his new domain.
Jim, Keith, and Tom as a matter of course kept their original assignments as Exec, Gunnery-and-Torpedo, and Engineer. In addition we were informed that two more officers, junior to Keith, might be expected before the ship went into commission. They would become our Communications Officer and Assistant Engineer, we decided.
Getting a new ship organized and supervising her construction is in many respects a time-consuming and seemingly thankless chore. The prospective skipper and crew never quite see eye to eye with the, builder regarding just how the ship is to be built, just where each incidental piece of equipment is to be installed. Likewise, personnel requirements regarding the assignment of the crew and officers are bound to create problems needing solution. There is plenty to do from the beginning, especially when you start with only two months to go; and then gradually, as the commissioning date nears, you find that those, were the easy days. Long hours become ordinary, late nights the rule rather than the exception.
A Watch Quarter and Station Bill has to be worked up. The men have to be given battle stations, cleaning stations, watch stations. The crew must be divided into three sections, approximately equally spaced as to ranks and abilities, and given such training ashore as is possible. Certain men had to be sent away to school to acquire basic knowledge about some of our new equipment. We all, at Tom's insistence, attended diving drill on the diving trainer at the submarine school-with the equipment set up to simulate fleet-boat conditions, and Jim arranged for special time in the Attack Teacher's crowded schedule so that our embryonic fire-control party would have a few opportunities to work together as a team before we went to sea.
It was late in March, during this preparatory phase prior to getting Walrus to sea, that Jim sought me out. Something was bothering him and he hemmed and hawed before beginning.
"Skipper," he finally said, "the others thought I should bring this to you right away It's bad news."
"What?" I asked.
"It's about the Octopus. She's gone."
I stood up, feeling a peculiar distress in the front of my head. "Gone?" I repeated stupidly.
"Yes, sir, the announcement came in by dispatch about an hour ago. We just got it."
"Let me see it."
Jim silently handed me a pink sheet of tissue paper.
THE NAVY DEPARTMENT REGRETS TO ANNOUNCE THAT THE USS OCTOPUS IS OVERDUE FROM PATROL STATION AND PRESUMED LOST DUE TO ENEMY ACTION. X THE OCTOPUS ASSIGNED TO THE PACIFIC FLEET WAS FIRST COMMISSIONED AT NEW LONDON IN 1936. X HER COMMANDING OFFICER WAS COMMANDER GERALD M WATSON OF CHICAGO. X THERE ARE NO OTHER DETAILS AVAILABLE. X It had had to come, of course; losses in war had to be expected, but who could have foretold that when I departed to take command of S-16, then in the back channel at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, I was saying good-by to my ship- mates for the last time; that my orders to that "old, broken- down tub" would spell the difference between life and death between me and my old friends. I read the dispatch over several times. When I looked up Jim was gone.
Getting Walrus ready now took on a new meaning. The war had come home in a particularly personal way. I fretted under the delays and redoubled our efforts at training and preparation. March drew to a close; April came and went and our commissioning date grew nearer. I was wrapped up all day long with Walrus, all night studying her plans and specifications and the way we had to fit ourselves into them.