Reluctant Warriors (14 page)

The tiny island of Aguijan appeared off the port bow, clear in the early morning
light, as well as a still smaller shoal area off the starboard quarter. Ferrell judged
that the boat could pass through the shallower water at top speed. Soon they came
back into deep water.

A third hour passed, with Tinian easing by at what seemed to every man on board an
agonizing slowness. They took a few degrees off the heading every few minutes as
they rounded the tip of the island, finally winding up on 059. The fourth hour came
and went, and the crew became more and more alert, knowing that
Goby
's last position
made it possible for her to be anywhere.

“Smoke!” the lookout called out to Phelps, still on the bridge.

The squadron commander whirled around. “Bearing?”

“One-nine-zero, sir,” the man called out, which was almost directly astern of the
speeding submarine.

Phelps called over the intercom. “Harry, we got a contact at 190. Got anything on
the radar?”

There was a pause while Harry checked. “Nothing yet, Red.”

“Put the scope up all the way and look.”

The scope went up. Then Harry was back on. “Yeah, I can see her. Looks bigger than
a patrol boat. Maybe twelve miles out. Looks like she's heading this way.”

“Come up to the bridge.”

Harry motioned to Fordyce, pointing upward. The officer nodded, and Harry ascended
the ladder to the bridge.

Phelps silently offered Harry a cigarette, which Harry accepted silently, as usual.
“So, what do you make of this one, Harry?”

The intercom buzzed, Harry picked it up, listened, and then passed the word on to
Phelps. “They got her on the radar now.”

“So, Harry, what do you think? It's like they knew we were here.”

“Well, I expect they saw us some time ago, had some kind of gunboat at Rota thirty
miles south—or maybe Guam—and ordered it against us.”

“Could they have seen us from those islands we passed?”

“Probably. We passed that last speck in enough daylight for them to see us.”

Harry tilted his head and shrugged. “It's just like these guys, to put some poor
slob on just such a place with a radio.” He buzzed the Control Room. “Rudy, check
with Bob in the Radio Room. Have we picked up any communications in the last hour?”

In a minute Ferrell was back on. “Harry, Bob says there were a flock of them about
the time we passed Aguijan.”

Harry relayed the word to Phelps.

“That's just great!” Phelps said.

“Red, my guess is that they're watching us right now. The Japanese probably have
a telescope on the southern end of Tinian.”

“I wonder why they don't shoot at us.”

“They'd need a six-inch gun for a shot like that, and they probably don't have one.”

At that instant a terrific geyser erupted out of the sea, about half a mile toward
Tinian. Phelps looked at the water cascading down.

“You were saying?”

“I wonder if that's extreme range,” Harry responded.

“I expect we'll find out soon enough,” Phelps answered.

Several more geysers followed, all short by at least half a mile. Hitting the button,
Phelps asked the radar operator, “How far is that ship?”

“She's closing fast, maybe eight miles.”

“She must be a patrol craft of some type to make that kind of speed,” Harry said.

“That's just
great
,” Phelps said. “We got this ship on one side of us and an enemy
island on the other.”

Another great geyser appeared to seaward. One of the lookouts called down. “Harry,
I think that's a Chidori gunboat.”

That really set Phelps off. “Jesus Christ, this is all we need, a damn Chidori! We
can't fight it out with one of them.”

“Well, it's not going to help just talking about it. What do you want to do this
time?”

“Harry, it's your boat.”

“Let's at least make it so they can't see us.” Harry leaned toward the intercom and
hit the button. “Flood negative and take her down.”

The lookouts jumped down from their perches on the periscope shears and disappeared
down the ladder into the conning tower. The diving alarm sounded throughout the boat:
Ah-oogh-gah! Ah-oogh-gah!

The thirty-six-inch round main induction valve was closed to the outside air, and
the crew started the complicated process of closing down the diesel engines and switching
over to battery power.

Harry was last down the ladder. As he reached the bottom, he asked Fordyce, “Green
Board?”

“Yes, pressure in the boat, Harry.”

“What do we have under the keel?”

“About thirty fathoms.”

“A hundred and eighty feet. That's not enough for much maneuvering.”

Harry leaned over the opening in the floor leading down to the Control Room and called,
“Rudy, come up here with your map.”

Ferrell climbed up, slightly wide-eyed, map clutched in his hand.

“What's it look like as we head inshore?” Harry asked.

Ferrell checked. “It looks like the bottom comes up gradually all the way to the
island.”

Harry turned to the diving officer. “Rocky, bring her down to sixty-two feet.”

“Sixty-two feet, sir. Passing forty feet.”

Harry turned toward Phelps and lowered his voice. “If we head out to sea at any angle,
that gunboat will cut us off in this shallow water and sink us. They got the best
sound stuff in the Japanese navy on Chidoris.”

“Yeah. We got to go inshore,” Phelps added. “They might get the pinging screwed up
against the land formation.”

Harry nodded. “Yeah, but we won't have much water under the keel. If they find us,
we'll have to battle surface and shoot it out. I think she's got three 4.7-inchers
to our one five-inch gun.”

Phelps nodded and frowned.

“Rocky,” Harry called, “you got those two tanks filled again?”

“All filled.”

Phelps asked the hydrophone operator, Ned Curic, “Is she pinging for us?”

Curic listened for several seconds. “Just starting now, sir.”

“Rudy,” Phelps asked, “any idea of the current around here?”

“My guess is that it blunts against these islands and sort of splays in this direction
south as much as east, actually driving us back out to sea.”

“So, southeast. Two knots,” Harry said, thinking. “So, at least we won't be pushed
toward the island.”

“Leveling off at sixty-two feet, sir,” Fordyce called out.

“Rudy, give me a course inshore. She's less likely to follow us into shallow water.”

“I'm on it, sir.” Making quick calculations, Ferrell answered back in less than twenty
seconds. “Try, uh, 350.”

“Come to course 350,” Harry ordered, “all ahead full.”

Phelps leaned toward Harry again and spoke quietly. “He can't carefully ping for
us going at top speed. So, if this joker knows what he's doing, he'll
slow and come
right up our tail. Then, if he doesn't turn us up, he'll start a box search, turning
off perpendicular to us in one direction or the other to begin his pattern.”

Harry interrupted, knowing exactly what his boss was about to say. “Yeah, that would
give us enough time to get in close enough to make this work.”

Phelps nodded. “We need all the speed we can get.”

The sub slowly came up to ten knots. For the next forty minutes, as the gunboat slowed
but still headed directly toward her,
Bluefin
headed as fast as she could toward
Tinian, every man on board counting the seconds. A man might look at his watch, believing
minutes had passed, only to see that it had been mere seconds.

By 0800, Curic concluded that the gunboat was only three thousand yards off.

Phelps nodded. Harry ordered, “Rig out for silent running,” and, a minute later,
“All stop.”

The command quickly passed through the boat. The crew turned the air conditioning
off, along with trim pumps and all other electrical devices that the enemy might
pick up on their hydrophones.

The sub glided, slowly losing headway. The
thum-thum-thum-thum
of the gunboat's propeller,
clearly audible through the submarine's pressure hull, tapered off also as the Chidori
slowed even more, until she seemed to hover not far away.

For every man on board
Bluefin
, the minutes were almost more than they could bear.
A powerful enemy was above them, holding them down near an island occupied by thousands
of enemy soldiers. One false move, one slip, and the enemy would close in and attack
them. Though it was unnecessary, the men whispered and acted as if the enemy were
in the next room.

Phelps spoke in a low voice. “We can't keep her down for long without some speed.”

With that, the boat rose a little, and both of the commanders looked at the diving
officer as if to ask,
Can you hold her down, hold her level?
Fordyce knew exactly
what was up, and nodded.

After nearly ten minutes, all on board were relieved when the Chidori's
engines suddenly
increased their revolutions. They built quickly: THUM—THUM—THUM—THUM.

Phelps and Harry looked at each other, wondering if the gunboat had finally picked
them out against the landmass of Tinian.

Seconds passed as Curic listened carefully. After a long silence, he looked toward
Harry and Phelps. “She's going away.”

“She's beginning her box search,” Phelps said, in the same low tone.

“Which way, Ned?” Harry asked just as quietly.

The operator listened carefully for a few more seconds. “West.”

Harry smiled. After five more minutes, he was ready with a new order. “All ahead
one-third, come to new course 090. That'll take us out to sea some. How much is under
the keel?”

“Ten fathoms.”

Phelps chimed in. “Well, that was close enough. Another fifteen minutes and we could
have docked at the place.”

In the next thirty minutes, as the gunboat continued to go west, the submarine came
up to full speed. Within fifty minutes, Harry ordered that
Bluefin
be brought up
enough that the deck was barely out of the water. That way, the main induction valve
could be opened and the ship could go on diesel power and higher speed.

Harry was ready to take his chances. He ordered, “Surface.”

The sub emerged from the ocean depths, and the diving planes were secured. Harry
was on the periscope immediately. On the six-power lens he could see the gunboat,
now only a speck, and remarked to Phelps: “I sure hope they don't have search radar.
Rudy, how far are we from Tinian?”

“Twelve miles, sir.”

“All ahead flank speed.”

Looking at Phelps, Harry said, “We are heading directly away from Tinian. They would
have to be looking directly at us with a telescope to see us, so let's see what happens.”

The search for
Goby
then began in earnest. In an hour, some thirty-two miles off
Tinian, the intercom buzzed on the bridge. Harry pressed the button.

“Sir, we're picking up something on the radar about sixteen thousand yards out, bearing
120.”

“Battle stations,” Harry ordered. “Come to new course 120.”

Men jumped from their bunks and ran through the corridors of the submersible. In
less than forty seconds, all the crew were again at their stations, hoping and praying
that it was, indeed, the missing sub.

In fifteen minutes, Clemens, the lookout with the keenest eyesight, sang out. “It's
a sub, Harry!”

The vessel gradually became visible to all on the bridge. It was
Goby
. It had to
be her; it was obviously an American sub, and
Goby
was the only one assigned to that
area.

“Tell Chief Osborne to come to the bridge,” Phelps ordered.

In less than a minute, the sixty-year-old chief was standing next to Phelps and Harry.
The three men looked toward
Goby
as
Bluefin
drew closer and closer.

“Duke,” Phelps said, “I want you to be ready to go aboard and survey the damage with
Harry. I'll hold the fort.”

By now, the trio could see the entire submarine. They looked her over with binoculars.
Goby
was wallowing in the shallow waves, with about a twenty-degree list to port.
Several officers and crew were visible on the bridge, and both of her gun crews were
in position.

“Both periscopes look like they were twisted around by a giant,” Osborne said. “No
radar or even radio antennae.”

“She's been hit by a bomb or shell,” Phelps said. “The bridge is all warped, the
lookout perches askew.”

The radio man couldn't raise
Goby
.
Bluefin
turned and came abreast of her. Osborne
brought up a megaphone and yelled across, oscillating his voice from high to low
as best he could: “What . . . hap . . . pened . . . to . . . you?”

An officer on the bridge of
Goby
picked up a megaphone and yelled back in the same
manner. “Plane . . . at . . . tack . . . cap . . . tain . . . ex . . . ec . . . dead,
. . . ma . . . ny . . . woun . . . ded.”

Phelps sagged visibly, his mouth open a little. “Billy Estes. Dead. How the hell
are his parents and his girl Rosaline going to take it?”

Rocky Fordyce had come up to the bridge during this exchange. He looked across at
the stricken sub. “Red, that's Harold Barton shouting. He was our fullback at the
Academy. Everyone calls him ‘Bump.' He's a very good man.”

Phelps, still pale with shock, turned to Harry and saluted him, which surprised everyone
on the bridge. “Harry, you are to assume command of
Goby
from this moment.”

Harry saluted back as Phelps continued. “They got guys on the Bofors and the deck
gun, so they've got some firepower. Let's get our gun crews up too.”