“He’s dropped!” Blake’s voice had a sudden maturity. Brannon braced himself at the gyro table, his knees bent to take the shock of the explosions. He heard the helmsman muttering to the brass wheel.
“Take it easy, old girl,” the helmsman said. “This ain’t nothing to what you can take.’’ He grabbed at the wheel as the Eelfish reeled to port and then to starboard as the depth charges exploded. John Olsen pressed the talk button on his phone and spoke softly. He listened and then turned to Brannon.
“No serious damage, sir.”
“Very well,” Brannon said. “Let’s hope you’re right, John. Maybe they’ll put more weight on protecting the tankers we didn’t get than keeping on us. They aren’t too good. They haven’t used a sonar on us once. They’ve been attacking using passive listening and by guesswork.”
“Damned good guesswork,” Olsen said. The two men looked upward as Paul Blake reported.
“One set of screws, dead slow, bearing one six zero, sir. Other set of screws has speeded up and is going away from us bearing one nine five. That set of screws is going away, sir!
Brannon reached for the towel and mopped his streaming face. “You’re guessing pretty good, John. One of the dogs has gone back to his sheep. All we have to do is be cute and let the other one get discouraged and maybe he’ll leave. Pass the word, dead silence about the decks. I don’t want to hear anyone even cough. Make turns for dead slow.”
An hour crept by with whispered reports from Blake that the enemy destroyer was still above but far out to one side. Eelfish crept away from the destroyer, running as silently as possible. Olsen looked at the clock on the bulkhead above the helm. The glass face of the clock had been shattered, but its black hands continued to move.
“Another hour should take us in the clear,” he whispered to Brannon. “He’s got to get discouraged and go back to his other ships.”
The eerie silence in the Eelfish was suddenly shattered by a whining scream from the after end of the ship. Brannon whirled around.
“Belay that damned noise!”
The high, whining sound kept rising in pitch. Blake’s voice came down the hatch.
“Destroyer is picking up speed, sir. He bears two seven five! He’s speeding up.”
“Damn it, shut down that noise!” Brannon snapped. Olsen looked up from his telephone, his face stricken.
“After Torpedo Room reports that the torpedo in Number Seven tube was fired accidentally with the outer door closed! The torpedo is running hot inside the tube!”
“Here he comes!” Blake wailed from the Conning Tower.
CHAPTER 7
The moaning scream of the runaway torpedo vibrated throughout the length of the Eelfish. Mike Brannon turned, his face grim.
“Flanagan, what in the hell can be done about this?”
“Only one thing to do, Captain. Get back there and open the inner door of the tube and snake that son of a bitch out of the tube somehow and shut the engines down.”
“You ever see it done?” Brannon asked.
“No, sir, but I sure as hell am going to find out how to do it.”
“Get back there. Lee, go with the Chief. Keep me informed.” Flanagan headed aft, opening each watertight door as he came to it. Lee, following him, closed the doors behind them.
The thunder of the destroyer’s screws drowned out the noise of the runaway torpedo as Flanagan and Lee hurried through the engine rooms. The first depth charge of the renewed attack went off with a shattering roar, throwing Flanagan against the guard rail of an engine in the After Engine Room. Lee heard him curse quietly as he regained his balance.
The scene in the After Torpedo Room was one of frantic activity. Fred Nelson had put in place the heavy bars that joined the skid supports on either side of the torpedo room and had moved the reload torpedo for Number Seven tube on to the crossbars. His reload crew, working with sheer muscle, had moved the 900-pound spare torpedo skid from the port side of the room over the tops of the reload torpedo in front of Number Eight tube and the torpedo that was now in the center of the room and put it in position in line with Number Seven tube. Flanagan and Lee ducked under the torpedo that was sitting on the skid cross bars and duck-walked their way up to the after end of the room to the clear space in front of the tubes.
“Cussed that damned extra skid every day since we left Fremantle,” Nelson said. “Now I could kiss the son of a bitch. At least we got something to put that bastard on that’s running away in the tube. If we ever get it out.”
“You got any bright ideas on how we’re gonna do that?” Flanagan grunted.
“Petreshock called from the Forward Room while you were comin’ aft,” Nelson said. “He figured the exhaust comin’ out of that tail cone would be hot enough to fry a man so gettin’ a line or a cable around the tail assembly to haul the bastard out would be a bitch unless we had asbestos hoods and gloves and we ain’t got any of them. He thought maybe we could shove a slewing bar down the tube, if we can reach the fish, and jam it in the screws.”
Flanagan shook his head. “Burn your damned hands off trying to put a slewing bar in the tube. You got some steel cable back here?” Nelson nodded.
“Get some steel cable. Make a coil, three or four turns about two feet across. Lash it together so it makes like a butterfly or a figure eight with a belt or something. We can feed a cable down one side of the tube so we don’t get burned off at the elbows and maybe whip it around until it catches in the screws. Might even catch good enough so we could use the cable to pull the fish out.” Nelson went scrambling forward on his hands and knees underneath the torpedo in the middle of the room. Flanagan turned to Lieutenant Lee, who had put on the Battle Station talker’s telephone set.
“Tell the Old Man what we are going to try to do, sir. Tell him we’ll do it as quick as we can.” Lee nodded and spoke into the telephone. He listened and then made a thumbs-up sign to Flanagan, who turned and looked at the cable that Nelson had prepared. He nodded his approval and picked up the heavy wrench that was used to revolve the bayonet ring that held the solid bronze inner torpedo tube door closed.
“All hands, out of the way. When this son of a bitch of a door comes open there’s gonna be noise and heat and gas like you never saw.” He put the wrench on the stud and spun it viciously. The door flew open and a high-pitched scream filled the room as boiling hot exhaust gases belched out of the tube.
Flanagan crouched below the level of the tube and to one side. Nelson gave him the looped end of the cable and Flanagan gingerly fed the loop into the tube. Nelson fed him cable as he pushed the loop down the tube. He felt it hit something solid.
“It’s at the fish,” he grunted. “Hold on to me, Fred, so’s I don’t slip and get in front of that damned exhaust.” Both men staggered as four heavy depth charge explosions shook the stern of the Eelfish. Flanagan took the cable in both hands and began to whip it up and down and to one side. Suddenly the cable jerked through his hands, and there was a grinding noise of gears shearing themselves to bits and the sound of the propellers stopped. The hot exhaust continued to pour out of the torpedo tube. Flanagan turned and saw that Nelson was laying out a block and tackle and fastening the cable to one block. The reload crew, coughing in the increasingly foul atmosphere of the torpedo room, were crouched on their knees in a line, ready to begin hauling on the block and tackle to pull the torpedo out of the tube. Flanagan turned to Lee.
“She ain’t frozen in the tube, sir. See that little bit of water leaking past the fish?” He pointed at a thin stream of water running out of the torpedo tube.