“We owe you a vote of thanks, Captain,” he said. “Our radioman didn’t get a receipt for our Mayday call, and we figured we might have gone down with no one knowing where we were. When we saw that Jap ship coming toward us we figured it was a prison camp for all of us for sure. But then we saw an explosion. Guess that was your torpedo. It didn’t make much of a noise or anything. I thought a torpedo hitting a ship would be like a bomb.”
“I think we had a low-order explosion with that warhead,” Brannon said. “It happens every once in a while. Same as you get dud bombs, I guess.
“I want my Chief Pharmacist’s Mate to take a look at all of you, Colonel. Then if you would give our yeoman your names, ranks or ratings, and serial numbers we can notify your home base that you’re all safe.” He stopped as a firm rap sounded on the bulkhead of the Wardroom. Doc Wharton stuck his head in through the curtains.
“Steve came to while I was bandaging his head, Captain. He won’t take a shot. Says that all’s wrong with him is a big headache. He wants to go back on watch.”
“Negative on the watch,” Brannon said. “Tell him my orders are light duty only. Keep an eye on him, Doc.” Wharton nodded and left.
“I can’t figure out why that guy opened fire,” Brannon said. He looked at the fliers sitting at the Wardroom table.
“We fight different battles, I guess, but it’s been evident to us for months now that this war is over. I don’t think a submarine has seen an oil tanker or any merchant ship of any size for months, now. We haven’t seen a Jap warship for, oh, weeks. The information we get is that the Japs are out of oil.”
The Colonel nodded his head. “We hear the same thing. I’ve been flying that route from Tinian to Japan for about six weeks now. Hardly ever see a ship down there, except for those little ships like the one you just sank. Tokyo is half burned away now. Same with the other industrial areas. We drop fire bombs on ‘em by the ton. But I guess they don’t give up easy.”
In the Crew’s Mess the off-duty crewmen surrounded John LaMark and John Wilkes Booth, the gunners who had killed the Japanese in the small boat and then sunk the patrol craft.
“Can’t figure that dude in that small boat,” LaMark said. “The son of a bitch is looking right at those gun barrels, he can see that both of us, me and the Chief, are staring right at him, and he still begins loosing off rounds out of that damned pistol he was hiding. Hell! He knew that if he made a wrong move he was going to buy the farm but he did it anyway. Can’t figure it.”
“Man takes on odds like that dude in that boat did,” Chief Booth said. “Just think what a picnic the Marines are going to have when they invade Japan itself. Jap kids will be dropping grenades on every round-eye head they can see.”
Mike Brannon came in and stood at the head of the Wardroom table. “We want all of you to be as comfortable as possible,” he said to the fliers, “but you have to understand that we don’t have any extra bunks. Your people will have to hot-bunk it with our people. We hope you’ll understand and be patient.”
“You must have done this before,” Colonel Roberts said.
“Only once, off the Bonin Islands. We picked up a crew from a B-twenty-nine. The plane wouldn’t sink and we had to shell it. A Major was the plane captain and it upset him quite a bit when we had to sink his plane.”
“Major Haskins,” the Colonel said. “Kind of a short fella, always trying to grow a mustache. Never could quite make it.”
“That was his name,” Brannon said. “How is he?”
“Dead,” the Colonel said. “Jap Zero did the suicide thing. Crashed him head on at twenty thousand feet. Both planes exploded.” Brannon nodded slowly.
Two days later, cruising on the surface, the Eelfish was challenged by an Army B-25. Lieutenant Bob Lee, who had the OOD watch, made the correct reply by voice radio and watched as the plane swung far out ahead of him and then came back, aiming directly at the submarine. Lee yelled at the lookouts and hit the diving alarm. As the Eelfish passed 100 feet with a steep downward angle the B-25 dropped a string of bombs off to the port side. The explosions shook the submarine and later, in the Wardroom, Mike Brannon had pointed things to say about bomb-happy pilots.
The days wore on, and life in the Eelfish became difficult. The ten extra men aboard complicated the sleeping arrangements, and Scotty Rudolph swore silently as he prepared extra meals from his shrinking food supplies. Shortly after dark on a rainy night Jim Michaels brought a message in to Mike Brannon, who was drinking coffee in the Wardroom and talking with the plane commander. Brannon decoded the message and called for Ralph Ulrich.
“We’ve got to get out of this area,” he told Ulrich. “We’re right in the way of Admiral Halsey’s task force on its way to hit at Japan.” He looked at the pilot of the B-29.
“If one of our own aircraft tries to bomb us I don’t want to take a chance with some edgy destroyer skipper.”
Eelfish raced to the northeast, and after it circled for four days Brannon asked for orders. The answer came back in 48 hours; return to Pearl Harbor. The rescued fliers groaned in unison. All their personal belongings were on Tinian Island, in the Marianas.
During the midwatch on the morning of August 8 the Chief of the Watch notified the Bridge that an Ultra radio message was coming in. Brannon left the cigaret deck and in the deserted silence of the Wardroom decoded the message. Ralph Ulrich, possessed of the intuition that every good Executive Officer must have, appeared in the doorway of the Wardroom holding two cups of coffee and stared at Brannon’s ashen face.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, putting the cups on the table.
“The President has announced that the most destructive weapon known to mankind has been dropped on a Japanese city called Hiroshima. This one weapon has obliterated the entire city and killed everyone in it!”
“My God!” Ulrich said. “Did he say who dropped this weapon?”
“A bomber from Tinian,” Brannon replied tonelessly. “That’s the home base of our passengers,” Ulrich said. “I’ll get their skipper in here.”
Lieutenant Colonel Roberts came into the Wardroom rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Ulrich gave him a cup of coffee and Brannon handed him the message. He read it and nodded.
“So they finally used it,” he said.
“It?” Brannon said.
“We called it the ‘Thing,’ ” Roberts said. “Two weeks or so before you picked us up they cordoned off a whole corner of the field where we flew from. Never saw so many civilians in the war zone in my life. My crew chief told me they were all big-dome scientists and they had some new weapon that could wipe out a city the size of Chicago. No one believed that, naturally. But the rumors kept flying around, and when they built up this great big bomb, funny looking thing my crew chief said, big and round and fat, and then they started building a second bomb well, we sort of began to believe them. Some, not all.”
He sipped at his coffee. “I wonder,” he said in a reflective tone, “if the shock wave from something like that would affect the aircraft?”
The second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki as the Eelfish neared Midway en route to Pearl Harbor. Before Eelfish arrived at Pearl the war was over.
CHAPTER 26
The war was over, but Eelfish had to wait outside the harbor for the submarine net to be dragged to one side so the submarine could enter the port. The traditional welcoming party that had always greeted a submarine returning from a patrol was absent. Only a Lieutenant with a large clipboard was waiting on the dock with the line-handling party when Eelfish pulled in. He came aboard and introduced himself to Captain Brannon and read from his clipboard.