“Bilge sump stop valve to the drain line is open, sir,” he said to Lee. “Now all we got to do is wait until that old Slant-Eye up there drops some more of his shit-cans and maybe that stupid fuckhead on the trim manifold can pump some of this damned water outa my room.”
“You won’t have to wait long,” Lee said. “He’s on his way.
The attack was sharp and heavy. Eelfish, her bow at 450 feet and her stern sagging below 500 feet, staggered through the attack. As the continual roar of the exploding depth charges went on, the man at the trim manifold ran the drain pump at high speed. In the After Torpedo Room the water began to recede and the down angle by the stern began to ease.
“If he comes back again we’ll do it once more,” Brannon said. “I can’t afford to pump the After Room dry. Number Six main ballast is empty and I can’t flood it because the damned air bubble from the vents would give us away too damned much. Even at night that son of a bitch up there could see that air bubble.
“We’ve got a seven-degree down bubble by the stern, sir,” Jerry Gold said. “We can hold pretty good if we can get that down to about four degrees, sir.”
“Very well,” Brannon said. “Get ready to pump, I can hear that bastard coming!”
After three more runs, dawn streaked the sky, and the destroyer gave up the hunt. Paul Blake, listening with all his being, heard the sound of the destroyer’s screws fade and then disappear. In the Control Room Mike Brannon nodded his acknowledgment of the information. He turned to Jerry Gold.
“Switch to hydraulic power on the bow and stern planes and the helm. Bring me up to sixty-five feet.’ He climbed the ladder to the Conning Tower, wondering at the weariness of his legs and then realizing that for hours he had been braced against the depth-charge explosions. He swung the periscope in two complete revolutions and saw nothing. He ordered Gold to bring the ship up to forty feet and took a radar sweep. No evidence of any ships. He walked to the hatch.
“Jerry, tell the engine and maneuvering rooms to stand by. I’m going to surface after one more radar sweep, and I’m going to stay up there as long as I can. I want a battery charge started as soon as the main induction is open. Start pumping that After Room now and keep at it until it’s dry.” He waited for the radar report and then punched the surface alarm three times. Eelfish rose, sluggishly, her stern sagging. The bow broke water first, rearing toward the sky, and then the Conning Tower burst through the surface. Brannon opened the hatch and scrambled back to the cigaret deck. The afterdeck of the Eelfish was under water from the gun mount aft. He heard the drain pump straining down below, and as he watched he could see the stern beginning to rise slowly. He turned as Jerry Gold, who had the OOD watch, spoke to him.
“Charging batteries on three main engines, Captain. Chief Electrician says if you can give him an hour he’ll have enough juice crammed back in to go down until after dark tonight if we behave ourselves and don’t go chasing anything.”
“Very well,” Brannon said. “Jerry, I’m going below. I want to take a look at that torpedo room. Keep the lookouts on their toes. If you see anything larger than a sea gull dive the ship.”
He stopped in the Maneuvering Room where Chief Ed Morris was overseeing the battery charge.
“Give me an hour or so, Captain,” Morris said. “After that we can dive and make out easy for a good twelve, fourteen hours.”
“I’ll try to give you more than that,” Brannon said. He stepped through the watertight door opening into the After Torpedo Room.
“Afraid you’ll have to duck down and crawl, sir,” Lee called from the torpedo tubes. Brannon ducked under the torpedo that was blocking the room and scrambled along until he reached the clear area in front of the tubes. He stood up gasping for air.
“Whew,” he said. “Air back here is foul.”
“You should have smelled it when we had the watertight door closed and that torpedo was belching exhaust gas in here,” Lee said. “I don’t know how the Chief and Nelson could work in that air.”
Brannon looked at the two men. “You did one hell of a job,” he said slowly. “I won’t forget it.”
“Mr. Lee just didn’t stand around, sir,” Flanagan said. “He stayed back here after I ordered the room cleared. He was one hell of a lot of help, sir.” Brannon nodded.
“You have any idea of the condition of the outer door, Chief, Nelson?”
“It’s either knocked off or it’s hanging by its hinges,” Flanagan said. “Nelson tried to close it but when he put the Y-wrench on the stud it just turned. Easy. So we lost the connecting linkage between the stud and the door for sure. But I don’t know if it’s still there or not. That’s not what’s worrying me, sir.”
“What is?” Brannon said.
“The warhead is leaking, sir. Must have split when it hit the outer door. When you mix sea water with the Torpex in the warhead you get stuff called exudate. Exudate is explosive. But we can handle that.”
“What else?” Brannon asked, looking at Flanagan’s hard face.
“I think we got an armed warhead, sir. The stream of water coming out of the tube was hitting the front of the warhead square. The little propeller that arms the warhead was right in the path of that stream of water.”
Brannon looked at the dull coppery sheen of the warhead and then at Flanagan.
“Anything hits that warhead with a force of four pounds of impact,” Flanagan said slowly, “anything hits that warhead, it’s gonna explode!”
CHAPTER 8
There was a dead silence in the After Torpedo Room. Mike Brannon licked his lips and looked at the Chief of the Boat.
“You’re sure the warhead is armed?”
“I got to figure it that way,” Flanagan said. “That little propeller on the underside of the exploder, we call it an impeller, it spins when the torpedo goes through the water. It arms the exploder at about four hundred and fifty yards.
“That stream of water coming out of the tube was hitting the warhead full on the nose. I figure the stream of water would turn the impeller enough times to bring the fulminate of mercury cartridge up out of its safety chamber in the exploder. Once that happens, all you’ve got to do is to hit the warhead with a force of four pounds and she explodes.”
“Be fatal,” Fred Nelson chimed in, his eyes staring belligerently from either side of the big hawk nose that dominated his face. “If this baby goes off the warheads on the other fish in the room go off with a sympathetic explosion, they call it, Captain.”
“Don’t scare me,” Brannon said slowly. He looked at Flanagan. “I guess the only answer is to get the exploder out of the warhead?”
“That’s the only thing I can think of, sir,” Flanagan said. “But it ain’t gonna be easy to do, sir.”
“Why not?” Brannon said. “You’ve had enough experience taking exploders out of warheads to modify them and then to put them back the way they were if we didn’t fire them.”
“First place,” Flanagan said, “we’ll be working from the underside of the fish. Normally, we roll the fish over in the skid so the exploder is on the top side and we can work on it. When you roll a fish over it doesn’t come easy. You got to put a steel cable sling around it and use a slewing bar and sort of jolt the damned thing until it finally rolls over.
“Then we take out the studs and screw two lifting tools into the exploder base plate, there’s tapped holes for the lifting tools. And then, and this is the way it is every exploder we’ve taken out, damned near, it won’t come out of the warhead. You pull on the lifting tools and you hit the edge of the exploder with a rawhide maul and you work it out gradually.