Eelfish ran on the surface for two days and nights through seas empty of Japanese shipping. As the submarine approached the Lesser Sunda Islands Brannon gave the order to submerge during the daylight hours so enemy air patrols wouldn’t spot them. It was an hour past noon on the second all-day dive when Perry Arbuckle motioned to the Quartermaster of the Watch to raise the search periscope for the hourly check on sea and sky. He swung the periscope around and gasped.
“Captain! Captain to the Conning Tower!”
Brannon scrambled out of the Wardroom and ran into the Control Room and up the ladder to the Conning Tower.
“What have you got?”
“Snakes, sir! Millions of snakes, long brown snakes with yellow bellies all over the ocean! They’re swimming with us!”
Brannon looked through the periscope and saw that the surface of the sea was covered by a mass of sea snakes, all swimming steadily westward. He shuddered and recoiled as the periscope lens brought a snake’s head into close view.
“My God!” he muttered. “Imagine swimming in the middle of those things. I’ll bet they’re poisonous, too.” He turned and went to the ladder, and started to descend. “Next time, Perry, try to pick up something we can shoot at. I’m going to get a few hours’ sleep.” He grinned at the Reserve Officer and went down the ladder.
An hour later Arbuckle walked to the periscope and waited for the Quartermaster to raise the long steel tube. He put his eye to the lens and froze.
“Captain to the Conning Tower!” Arbuckle’s voice was hardly more than an agonized croak. Mike Brannon, roused from a deep sleep, stumbled through the Control Room and climbed to the Conning Tower.
“Not more damned snakes!” he grumbled. He put his face to the big rubber eyepiece on the periscope and the Quartermaster saw his shoulder muscles bunch up.
There, almost dead ahead of the Eelfish, a submarine was lying, fully surfaced. He twisted the periscope handle to bring the submarine focus and saw the insignia on the side of the Conning Tower: U-135.
“Down periscope!” Brannon snapped. “Sound General Quarters. Rig for silent running. Set all torpedo depths two feet. Open the torpedo-tube outer doors.” He waited, fidgeting, listening to the small noises of the crew hastening to their battle stations. John Olsen, a battle telephone set hung around his neck, climbed three steps of the ladder into the Conning Tower.
“All battle stations manned, sir. Torpedo depth set two feet. Torpedo tube doors open. Sonar is manned. The Plotting Party is standing by.”
“Sonar reports no contact,” Paul Blake said from the after end of the Conning Tower.
“Up battle ‘scope,” Brannon said to Brosmer. The Quartermaster punched the button that controlled the battle periscope and the oily tube slid upward. Brannon went to his knees and caught the two handles of the periscope as they rose above the deck, snapped them outward, and rode the scope upward, his eye at the lens.
“Mark!” Brosmer looked upward.
“Bearing is three five zero.” Brannon heard the gears in the TDC clicking as Arbuckle cranked in the bearing.
“Range is one zero zero zero, one thousand yards. Angle on the bow is zero eight zero port. There’s a lot of people on the deck and the bridge of that damned sub! They’re staring into the water.”
“You’ve got a solution,” Arbuckle said from the TDC. “Stand by Forward… My Irish oath! A damned U-boat in this ocean… stand by.”
“Fire one!” He counted down from six to one.
“Fire two!”
“Both torpedoes running hot, straight, and normal.” Blake’s voice was loud in the Conning Tower. Brannon hung on the periscope handles staring at the enemy submarine. He saw a man on the bridge of the submarine suddenly wave his arms and point at the surface of the sea. There was a flurry of activity among the men on the deck of the submarine and then the first torpedo from the Eelfish hit the U-boat and exploded with a great gout of water and fire. Seconds later the second torpedo slammed home into the heeling submarine and blew it apart.
“Two hits!” Brannon yelled. He pulled the periscope around in a 360-degree search for other ships.
“Come to forty feet,” he called down the hatch. “I want a radar search.” He waited as the Eelfish planed upward. Rafferty, manning the radar, reported no contacts other than two small ones bearing three five eight.
“Those are the target,” Brannon said. “Stand by to surface. Chief of the Boat to the Conning Tower with a boathook and a safety line. Two seamen to the Conning Tower for deck rescue party. Maybe we can get another prisoner.”
The Eelfish surged upward, and Brannon climbed the ladder to the bridge hatch, hanging on with one hand, turning the wheel that undogged the hatch with the other. He heard Jerry Gold say “Twenty feet, sir,” and he pushed the hatch open, gasping as the residual water in the bridge flooded down the hatch.
Ahead of the Eelfish the German U-boat had broken into two pieces, its stern rising out of the water before it began to slide down to the sea bottom. Flanagan climbed over the bridge rail followed by two seamen.
“Chief,” Brannon yelled over the bridge rail, “if we can get a prisoner I want one. For God’s sake don’t fall over the side, don’t even get down on the pressure hull.” Flanagan looked at the water and drew back. The surface of the sea was alive with long, sinuous, swimming snakes.
The submarine’s bullnose eased slowly through the snake-covered water as Brannon conned the Eelfish toward a mass of debris on the surface. He raised his binoculars and searched the debris. He saw shattered bodies, pieces of what looked like mattresses, and other debris. Flanagan and the two seamen, trotting up and down the deck looking at the water, searched for a survivor but saw none.
“You see anyone alive, Chief?” Brannon called down to the deck. Flanagan shook his head.
“Deck party below,” Brannon ordered. He waited until Flanagan dropped down the hatch and then moved to the port side of the bridge to get out of the way.
“Clear the bridge,” he ordered and as the Quartermaster followed the lookouts down the ladder he punched the diving klaxon button twice and dropped through the hatch opening, pulling the hatch closed.
“Sixty-five feet,” he ordered. He turned to Perry Arbuckle. “Make a continuous periscope observation for the next ten minutes. Then go to one hundred feet and resume regular submerged patrol. Periscope observations on the hour. I want the sonar manned for the next hour. Stand easy on Battle Stations. Smoking lamp is lighted. Close torpedo tube outer doors.” He went down the ladder to the Control Room where John Olsen was standing at the gyro table with the plotting party. Brannon picked up a telephone and thumbed the button that connected him with all compartments.
“This is the Captain,” he said. “An hour or so ago Mr. Arbuckle saw an ocean full of swimming snakes. A few minutes ago he saw a German U-boat, lying to on the surface with a lot of people on deck. I assume those people on the German submarine were looking at the snakes. We scored two hits on the U-135, and it broke in two and went down. We searched for survivors and found none.” He put the phone down and turned to Olsen.