Run Silent, Run Deep. Edward L. Beach
party what you want to do were both doctrine requirements.
For several more minutes S-16 rocketed along, her superstructure vibrating and her antennas and lifelines singing, her thrashing propellers communicating a drumming note to the body of the ship. On and on we went. Jim, deep in consultation with Keith, seemed perfectly satisfied. One minute passed—then two—then five. Still nothing from Jim.
My anxiety mounted once more. Jim had made only one observation; as a result we had been racing at top submerged speed for several minutes, heading for a mythical point near where the target would be if it, likewise, kept steady on its course. This is the essence of the submerged approach—except that if the target zigged, Jim’s tactic of running blindly would almost certainly put him out in left field. This is exactly what the zigzag system was designed to achieve. The counter to it is to make sufficient periscope observations to detect the zigs, and to govern your approach course and speed accordingly.
But Jim had only seen the target once and as a result of that had been running for it as though no change whatever could take place in the Falcon’s course. True, with such a large initial angle on the bow we had a long distance to cover—and each observation required slowing down to avoid a big periscope feather. The problem is always to outguess the enemy, but the sub skipper has no occult powers to help him guess. He has to compromise with speed, and look at the target every one or two minutes.
But not Jim this day. One would have thought he knew exactly what to expect, judging by his lack of concern, and by the time he made up his mind to take another observation I was nearly beside myself. The Falcon might have zigged sharply just after Jim had last seen her, and the whole distance we had covered since, at the expense of around half of our total battery capacity, might have been in exactly the wrong direction.
I tried to project my thought waves at him, to catch his eye, lift an eyebrow, somehow make him realize he could not keep on blindly, but Jim did not even look in my direction. Nor was Keith any better, huddled with him beside the periscope in the dimmed light of the control room. Minute after minute dragged by. By the time the order came I was sweating—and I noticed that Messrs. Savage, Miller, and Kane were watching gravely.
“All stop! Parallel! The drumming stopped precipitantly, and you could feel the boat slow down.
“Parallel, sir!” from Larto an instant later, as his eyes caught mine. Jim had either never realized that he had failed to shift to series, or was not going to let on.
“All ahead three hundred a side!” He turned to Tom. “Make your depth four-six feet,” he ordered.
Schultz had been keeping the depth gauges rigidly at forty-five feet. Jim’s order would bring the boat down one foot deeper in the water, resulting in one foot less of the periscope sticking out of water when fully raised.
Tom had been handling depth controls for years and he knew his job. He gave a few quiet instructions to the planesmen. After a few moments the depth gauge needles gently moved from the forty-five to the forty-six-foot markers and remained there.
Jim turned to Larto. “Speed through water?”
Larto, expecting the question, had been consulting the ammeters and voltmeters as well as the shaft-revolution indicators. He shot back the answer immediately, “Four-and-a-half, sir.”
Still too fast. Jim waited.
Keith brought up the Is-Was, showed him the relative positions of submarine and target. Propped in a corner was another device, shaped roughly like a banjo, which Keith, at Jim’s indicated request, now picked up. The purpose of the Banjo was to give the firing bearing, or lead angle, for shooting torpedoes. The two discussed for a moment the various solutions which might be arrived at with the problem as it stood.
Jim turned back to Larto. “What speed we making now?”
“Three and a half knots, sir!”
Jim motioned the Banjo back into its corner, turned toward the periscope.
Keith ranged himself on its opposite side, facing Jim, reached for the control knob, or “pickle,” hanging on its wire nearby.
There had not been much conversation among the other members of the control party, but now the control room seemed to grow even quieter as men stood stolidly to their stations waiting for the periscope observation.
Larto broke the silence. “Three knots, sir!”
Jim motioned with his thumbs upward, and Keith squeezed the pickle.
The hoist motor brake clacked open again. Accompanied by sounds of spinning sheaves and the squeak of flexible steel cables, the periscope started up from its well.
Jim and Keith stood there motionless. Except for the movement of the hoist cables from out of the well as they brought the periscope up, the shining steel barrel, wet and oily, might as well have been motionless too. Then suddenly the periscope yoke appeared, bolted to the ends of the hoist cables. Immediately below it was the base of the periscope with eye-piece, range dials, and two handles folded up at its sides.
Jim was ready for it, stooping as before. The handles rose into his outstretched hands, were snapped down. He rose up with the periscope, before it was all the way up suddenly motioned to Keith. Keith released the button on pickle and the periscope stopped, not quite fully raised.
Jim was looking through it now, stooped over in an unnatural position, swinging it first one way and then the other.
“Can’t see him,” he muttered. “I’m under now—now I’m up again—” as a wave on the surface of the sea passed over the periscope.
This was good technique: minimum practicable exposure.
“Where should he bear, Keith?”
“We should have been gaining bearing on him,” answered Keith, consulting the Is-Was. “He should be on the starboard beam. Swing more to the right.” So saying, Keith placed his hands over Jim’s on the periscope’s handle, and forcibly turned it until Jim’s stance showed he was looking on our starboard beam.
Jim suddenly pushed the periscope back a trifle the other way. “There he is!” unnaturally loudly, “it’s a zig! Bearing—Mark! Down ’scope!”
“Zero-eight-seven,” answered Keith, as the scope went sliding down. “What’s the angle on the bow, sir?”
“Starboard thirty,” from Jim. “Didn’t get a range, about four thousand.”
Keith was spinning the Is-Was when Jim motioned for the periscope to be raised again. “Stand by for a quick range,” he said. As the periscope broke water he had his hand on the range dial, adjusted the bearing slightly as he turned it.
“Bearing—Mark! Range—Mark! Down ’scope!”
“Zero-nine-zero”—“Three-eight-zero-zero,” answered Keith, shifting his attention rapidly from azimuth ring to range dial.
“Right full rudder! All ahead two thousand a side!”
The ship surged ahead again as Larto twisted his rheostats.
“What’s distance to the track?”
“Nineteen hundred yards!”
Jim seemed to be in complete command of the situation. “Target has zigged to his left. We’ll swing around and get him with a straight bow shot starboard ninety track as he goes by.”
In nonsubmarine parlance this meant that although the target had changed course, thus putting us on his other side, Jim was coming around toward him and and would try to hit him squarely on the new side. As before, he hoped to do it with a torpedo with zero gyro angle—set to run straight ahead. The whole submarine would have to be aimed at an angle ahead of the target in somewhat the same manner as a duck hunter leads his birds.
Jim was doing very well, aside from his initial error in running too fast and too far in one direction before taking a second look through the periscope, and fortunately