“Damned submarine was just sitting there, John. She was lying to. Half of the crew must have been on the deck. Looked like a Sunday afternoon at New London.”
“We don’t have much of a plot, sir,” Olsen said. “Just the firing data and the one set of bearings and range.”
“Didn’t need much,” Brannon grinned. “I saw one guy on the bridge begin to wave his arms. I think he must have seen the wake of the first torpedo because the people on deck began to mill around just before the fish hit. I didn’t see anyone jump over the side, though, so I don’t know what he was waving at.
“Hell of a choice,” Olsen said. “Jump over the side into a mess of big snakes or stand still and get hit with a torpedo.”
Admiral Christie read the Eelfish contact report the next morning at a breakfast meeting of his staff.
“That’s the second U-boat that’s gone north into the Java Sea out of the Indian Ocean,” the Operations Officer said. “And it’s the second one we’ve sunk.” He grinned at the Admiral.
“I thought Mike Brannon had run out of Irish luck after he lost that outer door. So we order him to come home and he bags a German U-boat!”
“That part in the Eelfish contact report about the sea being covered with snakes, big snakes,” the Operations Officer said, squirming in his chair. “I hate snakes!” His assistant, a chubby Commander, looked up from his plate of ham and eggs.
“You’re in the right part of the world for snakes, sir. Australia is the only continent where there are more venomous snakes than harmless ones.”
“Belay the small talk,” Christie said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.” He looked at his Staff Engineer.
“What about repairs to the Eelfish? How long?”
“Can’t say, Admiral. Can’t tell until she gets here. We don’t know if she’s lost the outer door. We don’t know if there’s any damage to the tube itself. Have to wait until she’s here and we can send a man over the side to look. If she needs a new door, if the tube is okay, we’ll have to order a door from New London and have it flown out. That’s one thing we don’t stock in spare parts, a new outer door for a torpedo tube.”
“Have you ordered a new door?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, damn it, order one! Eelfish won’t be in here for another nine, ten days. By that time maybe we can have a new door here.”
The Staff Engineer shook his head slowly. “Sir, I’ll bet you a new set of khakis that when we get all the paperwork done and air mail it there the people on the other end will tell us that we have a Class Z priority and that they can’t ship the damned door until there’s a full moon or some other damn fool thing.”
“Never mind exercising your boundless optimism,” the Admiral said. “Get the order in by radio, not air mail.”
“Yes, sir,” the Staff Engineer said. Admiral Christie looked around the table.
“I can’t fault Mike Brannon for that casualty on the outer door. With Mark Fifteen torpedoes in the after tubes it can happen. It did. But he had a damned good patrol all the same. One tanker down, a good big one, a prisoner who speaks good English and who’s talking a blue streak, and a German submarine. He deserves a medal for this one.”
“He deserves a kick in his big Irish ass,” Captain Sam Rivers, the Admiral’s Operations Officer grumbled. “Three nice fat tankers coming along in a row. The nearest escort way back on the flank and he gets only one of the tankers. He should have got at least two.”
Admiral Christie grinned at Captain Rivers. “Sam, I do believe we’ll send you out on a war patrol. When you bag a great big Jap cruiser we’ll hold an ass-kicking ceremony on the dock because you didn’t get a battleship! You are the hardest damned man to please I ever saw!”
The Eelfish eased carefully into a berth alongside the submarine farthest outboard of the submarine tender in Fremantle, and Admiral Christie bounded over the gangway.
“Damned fine patrol, Mike,” the Admiral boomed. “Shame you had that casualty, but you did a damned fine job.” The Admiral pumped Brannon’s hand and the two men walked forward on the deck.
“We’ve got the prisoner below, sir,” Brannon said. “He talked a blue streak, especially after we sank the U-boat. I’ve had all that typed up and it’s with my patrol report. I hate to say this about the enemy but I have to, sir. He’s a very nice guy. Very nice. I wouldn’t want to see him thrown into some crummy jail cell or strung up by the thumbs. What will they do with him?”
“Our intelligence people here want to have some long talks with him,” Admiral Christie said. “We notified his wife, you know. I wrote her a letter. Once our people here are through with him he’ll be sent back to the States and put in a federal prison. Probably near ‘Frisco I’d think. That way his wife could visit him.”
A Chief Warrant Torpedoman followed by two Chief Torpedomen came down the gangway and picked their way through the Eelfish crew, who were sitting on deck, eating fruit and reading their mail. The Chief Warrant spotted Flanagan and the trio came up to him.
“Monk,” the Chief Warrant said, “Good to see you. What the hell happened in the After Room?” He turned to the two Chiefs with him.
“This is Chief Torpedoman Monk Flanagan, Chief of the Boat. Monk, Randy Nuthall and Bob Wilson. They’re my tube experts. Can we go down to the After Room?”
“Glad to meet you,” Flanagan said to the two Chiefs. “Have to use the Engine Room hatch, Mr. Glover. We’ve got the reload fish for Number Seven in the middle of the room. Can’t get down the hatch.”
He led the way, and when the other three men finished scrambling under the reload torpedo and stood up at the after end of the room, Chief Warrant Pines said, “Why don’t you start at the beginning, Monk?”
Flanagan nodded and told how the tube had been fired, the noise the runaway torpedo had made in the tube, and how he and Fred Nelson had decided to get the fish out of the tube.
“How in the hell did you get a line around the tail of that damned fish?” Wilson said. “My God, the screws turning up maximum RPMs, the hot exhaust gases?”
“You take a look at the screws back there on that fish,” Flanagan said. “That steel cable all wrapped up in the screws, that’s how we did it. We didn’t have to pull the damned thing out of the tube. The Jap dropped a charge right above our bow. You can see the damage up there when you go topside. The boat took a down angle by the bow and this fish came sliding out. Jammed its busted-up screws in the bulkhead to the Engineering Log Room. Then we had to jockey the damned fish out of the bulkhead and then move the after end of the skid over and pull the fish away from the tube so’s we could get the inner door closed. It wasn’t what I’d call a picnic.”
“Water coming in all the time?” Wilson asked. Flanagan nodded. “Got to be waist deep before we got the inner door shut. Helluva mess.”
“How many of you back here?” Chief Nuthall asked.
“The Gunnery Officer, he’s a Reserve named Lee, Fred Nelson, the guy who has the After Room and me. They bled high-pressure air into the room to keep the water down, but it didn’t do much good. The Old Man had to wait until the tin can up above would drop charges, and then he’d put the drain pump on the line and get some water out.”
“What about the outer door?” Warrant Glover asked. “Is it still there?”
“I don’t think so,” Flanagan said. “Nelson didn’t hear it banging or anything on the way home. I’d bet it’s gone.”