Then, for a moment we hear only the thrashing of many screws, in particular the set belonging to the little man who sent “Baker” by light. We are at 300 feet, but he comes in as if he could practically see us, and drops twenty-five absolute beauties on us. How Trigger manages to hold together we’ll never know. Her heavy steel sides buckle in and out, her cork insulation breaks off in great chunks and flies about. Lockers are shaken open and the contents spewed all over everything. Ventilation lines and other piping familiarly start to vibrate themselves almost out of sight. Light sheet-metal seams and fastenings pop loose. With each succeeding shock, gauges all over the ship jiggle violently across their dials, and several needles knock themselves off against their pegs. In spite of careful and thoughtful shock mounting, instruments are shattered and electric circuits thrown out of order.
During the height of the depth charge barrage the forward auxiliary distribution board circuit breaker emits a shower of sparks and a sudden crackling “phf-f-f-ft.” The electrician’s mate standing by hastily opens the “depth-charge ‘look-in’ switch”—and throws the circuit breaker out. All lights in the forward part of the ship go out, but the emergency lights, turned on at “Rig for depth charge,” and various hand lanterns strategically located, furnish sufficient illumination for essential operations. Electrician’s mates in the forward repair party quickly and silently turn to, working to locate and eliminate the trouble in the near-darkness amid the shattering noises of the depth charges, the convulsive whipping of Trigger’s hull, and the bouncing of the machinery. In a matter of minutes it is spotted, the offending water-soaked gear disconnected, and the forward board thrown back in. The lights come on again, and we feel a little better.
Finally the barrage is over and we listen while five more escorts detach themselves from the convoy and come back to look for us, signaled, no doubt, by the chap who had so vigorously counterattacked us. No more depth charges for a while, and we think that perhaps we’re going to get away with just a little beating. Hopes begin to rise, but no such luck!
The six Japs form a ring around us, and keep contact, moving with us so as always to keep us in the center. No matter which way we go, which way we turn, they keep up with us. Every half hour or so one breaks off and makes a run, dropping only a few charges each time — thum, thum, thum, THUM, THUM, THUM — WHAM, WHAM! WHAM! Now and then they vary their routine, and make a “dry run,” as if to say, “We know you’re there, old boy. Might as well surface and get it over with.” But Trigger sticks it out, long past dawn, past noon, until late afternoon.
We had dived at a little after midnight. Seventeen hours later we are still creeping along under continual harassment by our pursuers. All bilges are full of water to the danger limits. We have been bailing from the motor room to the after torpedo room for twelve hours, keeping the water out of the motors and reduction gears. The temperature has risen to a fantastic 135 degrees throughout the ship. Two or three men are near collapse from combination of nervous strain, lack of sufficient oxygen, and loss of salt from the system — though we all eat handfuls of salt tablets. We sweat profusely, and our clothes are drenched, our socks soggy, and our shoes soaked. In an attempt to lessen the nuisance of constantly wiping the sweat out of their eyes or off their bodies, many men knot rags around their foreheads or drape them over their shoulders and around their necks. The atmosphere is laden with moisture, which condenses everywhere. Bulkheads and vertical surfaces are simply beaded with water, perpetually running in sudden little rivulets to the deck. Our green linoleum decks are themselves a quarter of an inch deep in water already, and the constant moving about by men in greasy, soggy shoes has churned it up into a disgusting, slimy, muddy ooze through which we shuffle, oblivious to anything but the awful nearness of those menacing propellers overhead, the labor of breathing the foul air, and the terrific concussions of the unrelenting depth charges.
Three hundred feet below the surface, where the water is black and always cold, and the sea pressure compresses the hull with a force of 150 pounds per square inch, sustaining a total “squeeze” of about three hundred million pounds, Trigger fights for her life. Her sleek black hull, now tortured and strained, is heavier than the water it displaces by many thousands of pounds. This condition is due to loss of buoyancy caused by the compression of her hull and to the fact that her seams have been leaking steadily under the pounding she’s been taking-and the pumps cannot be run, for the noise would immediately betray her exact position. With bow and stern planes at full rise and herself at a ten-degree up angle, Trigger struggles to keep from sinking any deeper. Gradually, as the water inside increases and she becomes heavier, she is forced to assume more and more of an up angle, like a heavily laden airplane climbing under full throttle — only her problem is to maintain the same depth with minimum power.
That the water at 300 feet is colder than at the surface is a help, because it is denser, giving Trigger more buoyancy — but we’ve used up this “velvet” long ago. This difference in surface and deep-water temperatures should also hinder the Japs’ sound-detection apparatus, but so far as we can discern, it hasn’t bothered them much.
No matter which way we go, the deadly circle moves with us. We try several times to go through the gap in the circle left by the destroyer making the current attack, but that move apparently has been foreseen, for we are invariably blocked by not one but two sets of screws — those of the two vessels adjacent to the one making the run.
We wonder why the six escorts do not make a single coordinated attack on us. They have us so well boxed in that such an attack really would be a lulu! The thought grows that possibly they expect us to surface and surrender. If they keep up these tactics, and don’t sink us with a lucky depth charge, eventually we will run out of oxygen or battery power and be forced to surface.
But we lay our plans for that contingency. Trigger will never surrender. We’ll come up in the darkest hour of the night, at full speed, all hands at gun stations, and twenty torpedoes ready. It will be mighty dangerous for anything short of a full-fledged destroyer to get in our way.
The decision is made to surface at about twenty-one hundred, after sunset and evening twilight are over, and before moonrise. Our battery and oxygen would probably last us another twenty-four hours, but then we’d have to come up. This way, at least, we still can dive and hide, and if we can only get up for two hours or so we’ll be almost completely recovered, battery more than two thirds recharged, and ready for anything.
Such are the plans and arguments that pass through our minds that long and horrible day. Late that afternoon, however, fortune once more smiles our way. We realize that we have approached the southern edge of the circle, that the Japs have apparently temporarily lost contact, perhaps grown a bit careless, and that no depth charge runs have been made for quite some time.
We’ve tried it before, but here goes again. We head for the biggest gap in the circle, and slowly increase speed as much as we dare — which isn’t much. We listen with bated breath, hardly daring to breathe, plotting in those malevolent screws, trying to identify the bird who is supposed to cover the sector we’ve chosen for our escape route.
Here he comes! One set of screw noises slowly gets louder and begins to draw ahead. We shudder as he gains bearing on us. Surely he’ll pick us up, because he’ll be practically right on top of us! But — another smile from the blindfolded gal — all at once he stops drawing ahead. Now, as we cluster around the sound gear, we watch the telltale bearing pointer move aft, ever aft, till finally he passes across our stern! A guarded cheer breaks from the desperate men in the conning tower. We’ve broken through!