“You’ve got all tubes, all tubes,” Flanagan’s voice roared out of the bridge speaker. “You’ve got ten tubes, outer doors open, depth set four feet.”
“Very well,” Mealey answered.
The next twenty minutes, as Brannon was to recall later, were the wildest he had ever experienced. Eelfish, the target of seven destroyers, twisted and turned through an ocean lit by the glare of the burning ships. Sirens on the stricken ships moaned and wailed as Captain Mealey dodged and twisted, using the sinking ships as shelters to dodge behind as Eelfish raced at top speed through the sea.
Brannon remembered later that at one point Eelfish had plowed through hundreds of troops swimming in the water. He had heard the screams of the men in the water as the bull-nosed bow of the Eelfish cut through a life raft loaded with men and then sideswiped a lifeboat, turning it over and spilling everyone in it into the water.
Dodging and twisting, Eelfish cleared the bow of a sinking troop transport, and Mealey saw a freighter heading for him, its whistle blowing steadily.
“Target is dead ahead!” Mealey yelled. “Angle on the bow is zero.
“You’ve got all tubes forward and aft,” Flanagan repeated from the Control Room.
“Down his damned throat. Stand by forward!”
“Fire one!
“Fire two!
“Fire three!”
The first two torpedoes missed ahead of the freighter’s blunt bow. The third torpedo exploded with a roar against the side of the ship’s bow, just below the hawse pipe, and the ship slowed and began to plow its way into the sea.
“Hit on that target!” Mealey yelled. “Give me fifteen degrees right rudder.” Eelfish twisted away as the freighter exploded with a gigantic roar.
“Ammunition ship!” Mealey yelled. “Set up on this destroyer coming in from behind that last target. Angle on the bow is nine zero port!”
“Solution!” Arbuckle yelled.
“Fire four!
“Fire five!”
Mealey saw the destroyer heel sharply to put its squat stern to the oncoming torpedoes. ‘“Bastard!” Mealey yelled as he saw the phosphorescent wakes of both torpedoes race past the destroyer. He turned and saw another destroyer astern, heard Brannon chanting bearings and an angle on the bow, heard him give orders to fire tubes Seven and Eight. And then Brannon’s exultant yell.
“Hit! Hit on that destroyer! He’s broken in two!”
Mealey looked around him. The last ship he had hit was disintegrating in a series of violent explosions. Beyond that ship the destroyer he had fired at and missed was turning to come back toward him.
“Right full rudder,” Mealey yelled. “Brannon, take that bastard coming at us! Eyeball it!”
“Fire nine!
“Fire ten!”Brannon’s voice was a scream. Mealey, watching, saw the destroyer swing wide to one side. “That bastard’s got a charmed life,” he muttered to himself. He yelled at Brannon to come forward to the bridge.
“We’re being boxed in,” he said, ducking with Brannon as a shell screamed over the forward deck of the Eelfish.
“That bastard in charge of those tin cans knows what he’s doing. He’s closing us in. Let’s get down and out of here. Dive! Dive!” His fist hit the diving alarm and he followed Brannon down through the hatch, grabbing at the toggle on the end of the short bronze cable that hung from the center of the hatch, hauling downward on the cable as Brosmer pushed by him on the ladder to spin the dogging wheel and close the hatch tightly.
“Four hundred feet,” Mealey called down the hatch to the Control Room. “Make it fast! Rig for depth charge. Rig for silent running.” He slid down the ladder to the Control Room.
“How’s your trim?” he said to Jerry Gold.
“Can’t tell,” Gold replied offhandedly. “We’ve got a fifteen-degree down bubble. Seems to be all right. I’ll know when we try to stop her at four hundred feet.”
Mealey glared at Gold’s broad back and then turned his eyes to the long black needles of the depth gauges.
“Screws coming fast,” Blake reported from the Conning Tower. “Bearing one four zero, sir, coming very fast.” Mealey raised his head and listened as the thunder of the destroyer’s propellers filled Eelfish’s hull. The people in the Control Room saw him wince slightly as two sharp cracks could be heard.
“Here it comes,” Mealey said in a low voice, and then two tremendous explosions shook the Eelfish. Jerry Gold was spun away from his position by the ladder to the Conning Tower.
He tried to catch his balance and slammed into Mike Brannon, knocking him off his feet. A light bulb burst with a sharp noise.
“Two sets of twin screws coming fast, bearing one five eight and one four seven,” Blake called from his place in the Conning Tower.
The thunder of the destroyer’s screws reverberated through the hull of the Eelfish as the attackers raced overhead. The Eelfish reeled and twisted as the depth charges exploded in what seemed to be a continuous roar of sound, the ship’s thin hull creaking under the force of the underwater explosions. Captain Mealey stood at the gyro table, his hands clutching at the edge of the table for support, his eyes on the line on the plot that Bob Lee was drawing.
“They’re dedicated bastards,” Mealey said dryly. He raised one hand from the edge of the gyro table and put a finger on the plot. “We’re here, and that’s almost the exact spot where we ran through all those troops in the water. Those bastards are dropping charges with their own people there. They’re killing their own damned people!” He looked over at Jerry Gold.
“I asked you for a report on your trim.”
“Slightly heavy by the bow, sir,” Gold said. “Next time they make a little noise I can correct that, sir.”
“Five hundred feet,” Mealey said. Gold turned his head and looked at Mealey. He nodded and touched the bow and stern planesmen on their shoulders.
“The man wants five hundred feet. So go to five hundred feet. Smartly.”
A sharp ringing noise sounded throughout the hull of the Eelfish. It sounded again, and Paul Blake called out, “He’s pinging on us with sonar, Control.”
“Very well,” Captain Mealey said. He looked upward toward the Conning Tower hatch. “Advise me the minute you hear his screws pick up speed, sonar.”
The pinging went on for several minutes, and then Blake called out, “Three sets of screws picking up speed, Control. Bearings are from one six zero to one eight zero.”
“Six hundred feet, fast!” Mealey snapped. Eelfish took a steep down angle and slid deeper beneath the sea. Gold leveled the ship off at 600 feet as Eelfish reeled under a barrage of depth charges exploded around and above the submarine.
“Get ready for a long siege,” Mealey said calmly. “We’re going to be getting hell for a long time. We’ve made those people pretty angry. I want damage reports from every compartment after every attack. I want reports of leaks, no matter how small. We may have to go deeper than where we are now.” He wiped perspiration from his face and neck with a towel and studied the chart and plot.
CHAPTER 17
Three miles to the east of where Eelfish was being pounded by the Japanese destroyers the bridge crew of the Hatchet Fish could see the fires of the burning ships and hear the thunder of the depth charges. Captain Chet Marble leaned toward his bridge transmitter.