During the 800-mile trip north to Exmouth Gulf along the west coast of Australia Captain Mealey made several trips through the Eelfish, stopping to talk when he saw a face he knew from other submarines, other duty stations prior to the war. In the Wardroom he was a pleasant enough visitor, listening far more than he spoke. He unbent only once, the evening before Eelfish was due to arrive at Exmouth Gulf to top off her fuel tanks.
Sitting at the Wardroom table after dinner, Lieutenant Bob Lee suddenly asked Captain Mealey to tell the officers seated around the table about his strategy in attacking the battleship that was guarded by twelve destroyers and aircraft. Mealey looked at Lee for a long moment and then asked Pete Mahaffey to bring him a plotting board and a fresh cup of coffee.
With the plotting board in front of him he marked in the position of the battleship and the twelve destroyers guarding it and the position he had maneuvered Mako into before the attack began. Then, as he penciled in each stage of the attack, he paused to fire pointed questions at Bob Lee, Perry Arbuckle, and Jerry Gold, asking them to tell him why he had done this, why he had done that. Mike Brannon and John Olsen sat quietly, saying nothing, watching their junior officers squirm under the sharp questions. At the end of an hour’s give and take Captain Mealey sat back, stuffed his pipe with tobacco, and lit it. When it was drawing to his satisfaction he let a small smile show ender his white mustache.
“All three of you seem to have a good grasp of the fundamentals of the attack problem,” Mealey said. “I will credit Captain Brannon and Mr. Olsen for that. The knowledge you have gained will stand you in good stead in your careers. Assuming, of course, that you are Regulars?”
“No, sir,” Lee said. “All three of us are Reserves. I’m a lawyer, that is, I passed my bar exam in California before I enlisted for the duration. Perry is an architect.” Mealey nodded and looked at Jerry Gold.
“And you, sir? I noticed that when we made our first trim dive out of Fremantle that the ship was in almost perfect trim. That is quite a feat, sir, after weeks in port, after dry-docking. What is equally commendable is that I noticed in my walks through the engineering compartments that everything there is spotlessly clean and in excellent condition.”
“I thank you, sir,” Gold said with a grin.
“What are your civilian credits?” Mealey asked.
“I finished dental school and was getting ready to sit for my license when the Navy reached out and grabbed me,” Gold said. “I think being a diving officer is good training for a dentist. I fill and empty variable ballast tanks as a diving officer. When I get out and open an office I’ll be filling cavities and emptying abscesses.” Mealey’s frosty smile came and went.
“I have been in the Navy for eighteen years,” Mealey said. “I never cease to marvel at the way the Navy works. In time of war they seem to act without any thought when it comes to the assignment of personnel, and yet what they do seems to work out for the best. I had an Executive Officer aboard the Mako, a Reservist. The first, I believe, to ever be an Executive Officer. He was an engineer in civilian life, mechanical engineer I believe. He was an absolutely superb Naval officer. And a first-rate navigator as well.” He turned his pale blue eyes on Olsen.
“Your navigation on this patrol will be tested, sir. We are going to run Sibutu Passage between Tawi Tawi and Borneo and then run the Balabac Strait, south of Palawan, and then go north along the west coast of Palawan to our area.”
“Mines!” Olsen said suddenly. “Isn’t Balabac Strait heavily mined, sir?”
“It is,” Mealey said calmly. “But there are several passages through Balabac. The Japanese periodically sweep up their mines in one passage and then mine another. The Ultra decoders in Pearl Harbor have been very successful in keeping up with that information. Over thirty submarines have made a transit through Balabac Strait without incident, following the Ultra information. We will get the latest information on the mined and cleared areas the day before we make the transit.” He turned to Mike Brannon.
“While Mr. Gold is topping off our fuel tanks tomorrow we’ll have a conference aboard this ship with the Captains of the Hatchet Fish and the Sea Chub and their Executive Officers. If Mr. Olsen will oblige me, Captain Brannon, I’d appreciate it if he’d lay down our course to Sibutu Passage. Give me an ETA, Mr. Olsen, bearing in mind that we will be cruising at our most economical speed while on the surface at night. It’s a very long way to Luzon Strait, and longer coming home, if you run out of fuel oil. You’ll find two extra sets of charts in your chart locker, Mr. Olsen. When you have laid out our course I would appreciate it if you would mark the other two charts similarly for the benefit of the other members of the wolf pack.” He rose.
“If I may, Captain Brannon, I’ll go topside. I want to have a few words with young Michaels about radar and sonar. He has the OOD watch, I believe?”
“Yes, sir,” Brannon said. The younger officers around the table filed out of the Wardroom as Mealey left. Olsen came back from the Control Room with his charts and spread them out on the table.
“I was wondering,” Olsen said as he spread a chart out flat, “I was wondering why we didn’t do this in Fremantle? Sit down, all of us, and figure out the navigation, the courses and speeds, and all the rest of it?”
“I wondered, too,” Brannon said. He looked at the chart in front of Olsen. “Going through Balabac and then north, that’s quite a bit shorter than the easy way, across the Celebes Sea and out into the Pacific and then north, isn’t it?”
“Looks to be quite a bit shorter,” Olsen said. “But that’s a damned dangerous area to navigate in, where we’re going. Maybe that’s why he waited until now before he told us which way we’d be going. Maybe back in Fremantle the other skippers would have raised some heat about going this way. Out here they can’t do anything except bitch a little.”
“He’s a strange man,” Brannon said slowly. “He makes me feel like I’m a snot-nosed Ensign again. When I was backing out of the nest alongside the tanker I kept expecting him to walk forward and take the Conn away from me.”
“That’s why you didn’t let me take the ship out, huh?” Olsen said with a grin. “Afraid that if I made even one small mistake old Mealey would come down on me like a ton of bricks.”
“I wasn’t afraid of him gigging you,” Brannon answered. “I was afraid he’d come down on me for not training you well enough. I just figured if he was going to gig anyone it might as well be me for something I did.” He chewed his lower lip.
“I wonder how this damned operation is going to work out. Chet Marble in Hatchet Fish and Jim Shelton in the Sea Chub are both damned senior Commanders. They’re about ready for four stripes themselves, and neither of them has the reputation of being easy to get along with.”
“Neither one of them has ever sunk a ship,” Olsen said, his eyes flicking to the door opening of the Wardroom to make sure no one overheard him. “I talked to their Executive Officers in Fremantle before they got under way, and both of them told me they’d put in for transfers.”
“That’s odd,” Brannon said. “With both their skippers ready to be promoted they’d fleet up to command. Why would they put in for a transfer?”