“Target speed?” Brannon asked.
“We make that fifteen knots, Bridge, but we’d like to double-check that, too.”
“Very well,” Brannon said. He stood, chewing his lower lip as he worked out the problem in his head. At 13,000 yards the targets were almost seven and a half miles away. At fifteen knots the targets would cover a mile in just under two minutes. That meant the targets would be abreast of Eelfish in about fifteen minutes. He turned to Olsen.
“I’m going to attack submerged. We have to assume they have radar. We’re too far away from Celebes to use the island as a background. Right now we’re too small a target to be picked up, but they’ll sure as hell find us if we stay on the surface. Go below and take over the plot. Tell Mr. Gold that when I dive I want to run at forty feet so I can use the radar as long as I can.” Olsen nodded and dropped down the hatch. His voice came over the bridge speaker a few minutes later.
“Recommend we stay on this course, Captain, at least until we have a better picture of the targets. Mr. Gold has the word on depth. Plot is running.”
“Very well,” Brannon answered. He looked upward at the lookouts.
“Clear the bridge!” he shouted and stood to one side as the three lookouts thudded down into the small bridge space and then dropped through the hatch. Brannon punched the diving alarm twice with his fist and slid down the ladder, pulling the hatch cover closed behind him. Brosmer spun the hatch wheel closed, dogging the hatch down tight.
“Forty feet,” Brannon called down to the Control Room.
“Forty feet, aye,” Jerry Gold answered. He watched as the bow and stern planesmen eased the Eelfish down to forty feet and leveled the ship off.
“Forty feet, zero bubble, sir,” Gold called up the hatch, his voice betraying his pride. His last-minute shifting of water from the variable ballast tanks to compensate for the fuel consumed during the four and a half hours Eelfish had been on the surface and for the flour the baker and the messcooks had lugged from the Forward Torpedo Room to the Crew’s Mess had resulted in a perfect diving trim.
“Very well,” Brannon said. “Mr. Michaels, please come to the Conning Tower ladder.”
Michaels climbed a few rungs and leaned his back against the rim of the open hatch. Brannon looked down at him.
“I’m going to depend on your radar for as long as I dare stay at this depth,” he said. “I want quick readings, on and off. I’ll give you bearings from the periscope so you don’t have to waste time searching for the targets.” Michaels acknowledged the order and went back down the ladder. Brannon turned to Paul Blake on the sonar.
“Let me know if you hear anything at all out there.”
“I’m just beginning to get some faint propeller noises, sir,” Blake said. “Too faint to tell anything.”
Brannon nodded and relaxed, leaning against the chart desk. Lieutenant Perry Arbuckle, wearing one of his telephone ear muffs cocked on his temple, grinned at Brannon.
“Life in the Navy is just one long waiting in line,” he said. “You wait in line to eat, you wait in line to get paid, you wait in line to go ashore, and now we wait to shoot.”
Brannon grinned at the irreverent Reserve Officer. “I’m glad we’re not in that line of ships coming toward us,” he said. “Might get noisy.” He turned as Blake spoke.
“I’ve got steady propeller noises bearing zero zero two, sir. Solid heavy propeller beat.”
“Radar,” Brannon called down the hatch. “Sound has a bearing at zero zero two. Give me a picture.” He waited, hearing the muffled conversation between Michaels and Rafferty down below.
“We have six targets on the radar scope, sir,” Michaels called out. “Range to the first target, a big pip, sir, is one one zero zero zero. Repeat eleven thousand yards. We have three big pips, one behind the other. We have one smaller pip out to port and ahead of the three big pips. We have two more small pips well back, well astern on the starboard side of the three big pips, sir.”
“Very well,” Brannon said. “Secure the radar. Plot, how does it look from here?”
“We can stay on course for another four minutes, sir,” Olsen said. “That will bring the targets to within fifty-five hundred yards, sir. At that point we can come right to course zero zero two and let them come right across our bow.”
“Very well,” Brannon said. He stood quietly in the Conning Tower, glancing at his wrist watch from time to time as he sorted out the factors of the problem in his head, plotting the intricate approach to the moment of the final truth that faces every submarine commanding officer in war; when to give the orders that would send torpedoes shooting out toward the enemy, what the guarding escort vessels might do in retaliation.
“I have several sets of propeller noises, sir,” Blake said. “Slow and fast screws. Pretty broad spread of sound, sir, but I’d say the first heavy screws bear zero one zero, sir.”
“Very well,” Brannon said. He looked at his watch.
“Radar bearing,” he said.
“Targets bear zero one three, sir. Range is five three zero zero. Repeat fifty-three hundred yards. We have the same formation, sir. Three big pips in a line, one ship out ahead to the port side of the convoy. Two ships well aft to the starboard side of the convoy. Target course is zero eight eight. Target speed is one five, fifteen knots, sir.” Olsen’s voice followed hard on the heels of Michaels’s report.
“Recommend we come right now to course zero zero two, Captain.”
“Execute the course change,” Brannon said. He looked at Arbuckle, who had cranked the data Michaels had given into the TDC.
“Give me the torpedo track distance to the targets,” Brannon said.
There was a short silence from below, and then Olsen said, “First target will be in position in six minutes, sir. Torpedo track will be two thousand yards.”
“Too far!” Brannon snapped. “Give me a speed that will shorten that down to a thousand yards. Give me one more radar bearing.”
“First target in line bears three four three, sir. Target course is zero eight eight. Target speed is one five knots. Repeat, fifteen knots. Range is six zero zero zero yards. Repeat six thousand yards.
“Recommend we come right to course zero two zero, sir,” Olsen called out. “Recommend we make turns for five knots, sir.
“Secure the radar. Execute speed and course change. Sixty feet.” Brannon snapped out the orders, bracing himself as the deck slanted down sharply.
“Sixty feet, sir,” Gold called out. Brannon nodded at Brosmer to raise the periscope. He put his eye to the big rubber eyepiece that shielded the periscope lens. He saw the ships ahead of him and to his port side, three big oil tankers, one behind the other. Out ahead of them a destroyer was moving away from Eelfish. He swiveled the periscope to the left. One destroyer, far back along the starboard side of the convoy was moving toward him. He turned the periscope, searching for the other destroyer.
“Damn it,” he said. “I’ve got two destroyers up here. Can’t see the third one.”
“He might have gone around the stern of the convoy, sir,” Michaels said. “He did that once before and then came back, sir.”
Brannon stared through the periscope. The ships were lit clearly by the moon, moving in a line like ponderous elephants. Below him he could hear the small sounds of the Control Room, the muttered commands of Jerry Gold to the men on the diving planes, the shuffle of paper as the Plotting Party penciled in the last bearings of the targets.
“Let’s start the dance,” Brannon said. “Open all torpedo tube outer doors. Stand by for shooting bearings.” Brosmer, the Quartermaster, moved over and stood on the far side of the periscope, his head turned upward, ready to give the bearings to Arbuckle on the TDC. Brannon centered the cross hairs in the periscope lens on the first tanker.