“He’s dropped six of them!” The report sounds oddly loud in the confined conning tower, and O’Kane realizes with a start of sympathy that this operator — his best — has been on duty for two strenuous hours without once removing his earphones.
“Ten seconds more, Captain!” Frazee tries to assume the disinterested voice of an observer at a target practice.
“WHAM!.. WHAM!.. WHAM!.. WHAM!.. WHAM!.. WHAM! The shock is beyond all expectation, beyond reason. With a scream of agony, the sound man jerks off his earphones and stands up trembling before his instrument. The poor fellow had forgotten to turn down his gain control before the charges went off, and is really in severe pain. Dick O’Kane clutches the steel hoist cable of the periscope to keep from falling down, and with his free hand supports the shuddering sound man, who has been flung off his balance by the succeeding blows. Several cigarette receptacles are flung to the furiously vibrating deck plates of the tiny compartment. The explosions resound throughout the ship like pile-driver blows. The atmosphere is filled with a strumming many-pitched roar, produced by the sudden vibration induced in the bulkheads and all the pipes and fittings. Occasionally a piece gives way with a peculiarly explosive noise of relief which only adds to the discordant uproar.
Several men are knocked off their feet by the intensity of the barrage. The air within Tang’s tough steel hull is filled with flying bits of dust and specks of paint, plus larger items such as sections of cork insulation and other material not firmly nailed down.
Frazee and O’Kane look at each other with dismay. This birdie certainly has the range all right. Wonder how much of this kind of pounding good old Tang can stand. So far, not much serious damage, but there’s no telling when one of these blockbusters will be a bull’s-eye.
Regaining control over his jumping reflexes and somehow quieting the ringing in his ears to at least bearable level, the sound man returns to his listening equipment, and immediately picks up the gunboat’s screws on Tang’s port bow, where he is heard to slow down, apparently waiting for possible results to his first attack, and no doubt planning another.
The Captain speaks to the conning tower telephone talker. “Check and report all compartments!” The crisp command goes out to all the eight other watertight compartments of the ship, and the reports come back immediately, indicating that the men in each have already taken stock of their situation. So far all is reassuring, although no one in the ship can recollect ever having received a barrage as close as this one before.
O’Kane’s mind is a boiling mass of ideas for evasion; so is Murray Frazee’s, and the two hold hurried counsel. It is probable that the enemy will try to box Tang, in shallow water, against the not-too-distant coast of Honshu.
By this time it is deathly quiet again, even the prolonged swishing noise produced by the depth charges having died down and the querulous “Peep… peep… peep” can again be heard by the people in the conning tower. O’Kane would like to take a sounding, but dares not, since the signal of his depth finder would furnish the Jap with precisely the information he is seeking — the location of Tang. But after a moment’s thought Dick has the answer for that one. The operator of the depth-finding equipment receives instructions to take one sounding in the middle of each depth charge barrage, and to leave the gear turned off otherwise. The scheme is instantly obvious to all, for naturally the Jap sound man will not expect to hear anything while the depth charges are going off-while Tang’s operator, knowing when to expect the return echo, can probably catch it through the terrific uproar of the explosions. A neat dodge, and one requiring considerable skill.
“He’s turning this way!” The sound man in the conning tower diagnoses the maneuver heralding the arrival of a second attack, the one which Dick O’Kane has been waiting for, during which he will put into effect the evasive maneuver he has planned.
“Here he comes! Shifting to short scale! Screws speeding up!”
“Right full rudder! All ahead full!” Until this moment Tang has been creeping along at evasive speed, which is as slow as she can go and, of course, running as noiselessly as possible, which can only be accomplished effectively while at creeping speed. This full-speed business will surely be detected over the Jap sound gear, though the enemy’s own speed will make this more difficult. But O’Kane is figuring on completely outwitting him. Tang turns quickly and heads straight for the Jap gunboat. Perhaps Dick has remembered something which Mush Morton did one time, in a similar situation when brought to bay by a Nipponese destroyer — only difference now is that Tang has had no opportunity to get any torpedoes ready forward. And Dick’s plan proves to be a modification of the one Morton had used in Wahoo, for Tang rockets along, figuratively laying her ears back alongside her head, and runs at full speed directly beneath the on-rushing Jap.
But though this unorthodox maneuver has caught him somewhat by surprise, the Jap skipper is not napping, and unloads a full cargo of ash cans as the submarine passes beneath him. The deliberate attack he had planned is frustrated, but he makes with a mighty good one, nonetheless.
Sixteen depth charges this time. Because of her high speed, Tang’s sound gear is unable to pick up the splash of the depth charges dropping in the water, and there is therefore no warning as to how many to expect. It is just WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM! One prolonged, unpunctuated, smashing, shattering cataclysm! Nearly everyone in Tang is knocked off his feet by the fearful pounding! Deck plates are hurled about, the very frames ring, and the bulkheads and built-in fixtures resound in a hundred different keys. Tang shakes throughout her length, seems to whip convulsively in fishtailing fashion, every part of her jumping around weirdly and frighteningly. The unfortunate men handling vital equipment, such as the bow planes, stern planes, and steering, grip their large stainless-steel wheels with white knuckles and bloodless joints, for they have come alive in their hands as though electrified, transmitting a shivering vibration into the very marrow of their bones. In the maneuvering room, where the full power of the battery is being fed into the straining propellers, there is continual arcing and flashing in the control cubicle, the heart of the electric-propulsion equipment. If some of those huge switches should fly open, or if an unusually heavy arc were to fuse some errant piece of copper or steel into a dead short circuit, the whole place would go up in smoke. The battering and pounding are terrific, but the electrician’s mates, knowing their lives depend upon it, are holding the most crucial levers and switches in by hand — and lucky is the man who has asbestos gloves.
O’Kane and Frazee, having had perhaps more warning than the others, have hung on where they were, still on their feet. It seems to both that Tang’s last moments must have come, for how can a simple steel shell, no matter how strongly and honestly built, withstand a succession of near bull’s-eyes? But the unholy barrage finally stops, and a breathless quiet suddenly envelops the ship.
The Jap had been so thrown off balance by Tang’s sudden maneuver that he was unable to regain contact, and searched fruitlessly in the wake left by her mad dash for deep water. Thirty-eight minutes after the torpedoes had been fired, Tang was back to periscope depth, to see her recent antagonist still searching and depth charging the area, planes circling overhead, and the other escort, which had never been involved in the action, cruising about slowly, picking up survivors. There was nothing else in sight.