Run Silent, Run Deep. Edward L. Beach

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 Falcon’s zig had taken place late enough so as not to be particularly damaging. I was particularly warmed, also, by Keith’s steady behavior as assistant.

      Jim spoke again. “What course do I come to for a straight bow shot?”

      Keith didn’t answer immediately as he studied the figures on the face of the Is-Was. In a moment he said, “One-three-four,” holding out the Is-Was to Jim as he did so.

      Jim consulted it briefly. “Steady on one-three-four,” he directed the helmsman, and the latter called back just past my ear, “Steady on one-three-four, aye, aye!—passing zero-one-zero, sir!”

      We had to wait until the boat came around to the new course. I could not help noticing how luck had played into Jim’s hands. He had actually overshot the target, but Falcon’s zig had come so late that he was still in an excellent attack position from the opposite side—a bit long-range, but nice.

      Another thirty seconds passed. S-16, like most S-boats, turned on a dime once you got her going, and we were nearly around to the intended firing course.

      “All ahead two hundred a side!” Another periscope look coming. At least Jim was not forgetting all he had learned about periscope technique. That is one of the items most closely observed in a submarine officer, and one of those most freely criticized—especially by one’s Qualification Board. Every skipper counts himself an expert and has strong opinions about how the ’scope should be handled.

      One thing Jim had not yet done; at no time had he looked all around with the periscope, turned it through a full 360 degrees. Doctrine as well as technique called for this as assurance against being caught unawares by another ship or a screening vessel.

      Jim waited for our speed to come off; then directed the periscope to be raised.

      As before, he rode it up, with Keith swinging it around to the port bow as the Is-Was had predicted.

      “Bearing—Mark!”

      “Three-one-seven!” Keith was quick with his answers.

      “Range—Mark!”

      “Two-three-double-oh!”

      “Down periscope!” Jim was still looking СКАЧАТЬ