Hara-Kiri_a novel of the Pacific War Read online

  Charlie and Rusty exchanged surprised grins. A convoy, heading their way?

  “How many contacts?” Charlie asked.

  “Wait, one … One hundred and five, Captain.”

  “Repeat that, conn.”

  “One-oh-five. We counted twice.”

  After a few seconds processing this news, Charlie said, “Very well.”

  “Make that one hundred and ten, Captain. More keep popping up.”

  “Over a hundred ships,” Rusty said. “Jesus. Something big is happening. What do you think? Ours or theirs?”

  Charlie aimed his binoculars east. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

  After some waiting, the first ships appeared along the horizon. They were destroyers, and plenty of them.

  “They’re American,” he said, setting off a cheer from the lookouts.

  More vessels popped along the horizon, creating a solid wall of ships. Destroyers, battleships, cruisers, and fleet carriers.

  Rusty laughed. “That’s Halsey’s Third Fleet. It’s happening.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m guessing, but I think we might be invading the Philippines.”

  Charlie chuckled. “Perkins, start flashing recognition signals.”

  “Aye, Captain,” the quartermaster of the watch said.

  God, it was beautiful. He was looking at a vast fleet. America’s clenched fist reached across the world to smite the empire that had attacked it.

  “We take the Philippines, we’ll have bombers that much closer to Tokyo,” Rusty said.

  “We’ll isolate Japan from the rest of Asia.”

  “And we can start invading the home islands.”

  “Then we take Tokyo.”

  “Then it’s over.” Rusty guffawed. “It’ll finally be over. God!”

  “And we can go home,” Charlie said.

  The exec raised his fist. “Come on, you beautiful sons of bitches!”

  “Plane, approaching!” one of the lookouts cried.

  Charlie spotted it. A bomber had swooped from the cloud cover and was howling toward the Sandtiger.

  “That’s not a Betty,” Perkins said, referring to a Japanese patrol bomber. He flashed recognition signals at it. “It’s one of ours.”

  Charlie wasn’t about to take any chances, remembering the Navy fighter that strafed the Sandtiger in the Battle of the Philippine Sea.

  The plane continued to scream toward the submarine with a zero angle on the bow.

  He punched the bridge diving alarm. “Clear the topsides! Take her down, emergency! Dive, dive, dive!”

  The men tumbled down the ladder, the submarine already angling into the sea. Past the shears, the Navy torpedo bomber shrieked at them in a glide bombing run. A TBF-1 Avenger manufactured by Grumman and General Motors, swooping down on its fifty-four-foot wingspan like a giant bird of prey.

  In the Battle of the Atlantic, these planes were notorious U-boat killers.

  Charlie secured the hatch as the Sandtiger submerged and clawed for depth. He reached the conning tower.

  “Thirty feet!” Rusty called out.

  Charlie grabbed the nearest handhold. “Rig for depth charge—”

  The Avenger’s bomb splashed into the water and exploded close astern.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  BROACHED

  The shockwave struck the Sandtiger like a giant hammer.

  Light flared in Charlie’s eyes. The submarine around him was disintegrating, shards breaking off and flying up and disappearing into a pure white sky.

  Then he was back in the conning tower. The deck tilted as the stern rose, the superstructure still trembling.

  Charlie gasped, horrified by his awful vision.

  His hearing returned next, a clamor of men screaming at each other.

  The boat was rising.

  “Our stern broached!” Rusty shouted at him.

  Charlie gaped at the overhead bulkhead. Right now, the Sandtiger’s ass was sticking above the water.

  While the Avenger circled for another bombing run.

  Horror hardened into rage. An American was trying to kill him. An excited pilot with limited awareness who’d spotted a ship surfaced near islands targeted for invasion. The pilot thought he was doing the right thing. Thought he was a hero for doing it.

  But Charlie was angry with himself most of all for not diving the boat the instant he spotted Third Fleet. He should have known they’d be in the kind of jumpy mood where they shot first and asked questions later.

  Helpless, the Sandtiger struggled at a steep down angle.

  Then, with a sickening flop of gravity, she plunged nose first toward the seafloor. A relief, though he now faced in a different kind of danger.

  The boat was out of control.

  “Hard rise on the planes!” Charlie ordered. “Blow bow buoyancy!”

  “Passing seventy-five feet!” Rusty called out.

  “Blow safety!”

  Chief of the Boat Spike Sullivan called up from the control room: “Planes are stuck on dive, sir!”

  “Blow all ballast!”

  “Passing 150 feet!”

  “Chief, get control of the planes!”

  “We’re on it, sir!”

  Below, several sailors joined the planesman and grabbed hold of the wheel. Roaring with the strain, they began to wrestle the jammed planes to hard rise.

  “Passing 250 feet!”

  “Come on!” Charlie growled.

  “It’s moving, Captain!” Spike said.

  He was right. After a nosedive straight to 320 feet, the Sandtiger began to level off.

  “We’re slowing,” Rusty said. “We’re getting buoyancy.”

  Another sickening change of gravity.

  The boat began to lurch back toward the surface.

  “Get us under control, Chief!” Charlie said.

  Morrison leaned to the open hatch and yelled into the control room, “Vent the tanks!”

  “One of the tanks isn’t venting!” Spike yelled back.

  “Do it manually,” Charlie ordered. “Now, Chief!”

  “Already on it, sir!”

  Rusty: “One hundred feet!”

  Charlie gazed up again at the bulkhead in horror. In moments, they’d be back under the Avenger’s crosshairs.

  “We’re broaching again,” Rusty said. “We’re surfacing!”

  The Sandtiger broke the water.

  The air pressure in the conning tower suddenly jumped, which meant the last tank was venting.

  Achieving negative buoyancy at last, the submarine plummeted into another dive.

  This time at a gentler incline. Which was good because they were less likely to lose control again, but bad because they weren’t making depth fast enough.

  “Fifty-five feet—”

  Splash!

  Charlie flinched and waited for it.

  The second five-hundred-pound bomb exploded off the port beam, a muffled boom that struck the boat with an air-rending bang and buckled the hull in and out. The jolt hurled sailors sprawling to the rolling deck, shook metal seams and fastenings loose, blew a cloud of paint chips off the bulkheads. Dials and gauges danced crazily and popped. The light bulbs rattled and shattered, plunging the compartment into darkness. A high-pressure line ruptured, whistling compressed air.

  The section of piping Charlie was using as a handhold wrenched loose, gushing water. He tumbled to the deck, which had buckled and still trembled in a series of aftershocks.

  Like being on the ground floor of a collapsing building.

  Men moaned and coughed on air thick with cork insulation dust. The superstructure vibrated like a tuning fork, filling the fouled atmosphere with a deep, menacing hum that burrowed into their ears.

  By now, the emergency lighting, supplied by the battery, should have switched on, but the bulbs were broken. They were in the dark. The overload relay breakers had popped. The Sandtiger drifted in the water without power.

  Charlie heaved himself
onto hands and knees. “We need light.”

  A hand lantern flared to life. “It’s me. Morrison. I got it.”

  Rusty finished a coughing fit and spat. “I don’t know whether to kill that pilot or give him a medal. He’s good.”

  Charlie had to agree. Hard as it was to fight the Japanese, he’d far rather fight them than the Americans at this point in the war.

  Right now, apparently, he had no choice in the matter.

  The battle lantern's light glared across the conning tower, revealing pale gasping faces, warped pipes, ruptured valves, burst gauges. The soundman attacked a spraying valve with a wrench. Cork dust and water sparkled in the swinging light beam. Compressed air howled from the ruptured high-pressure line.

  “Our own side!” somebody was raving down in the control room. “I’m gonna kill that son of a bitch!”

  “Injuries?” Charlie said. “Anybody injured?”

  Barkley, the SD radarman, said he thought his wrist was broken. Everybody else had cuts and bruises but was otherwise fit for duty.

  Two surviving light bulbs flared to life.

  “We’ve got power,” Rusty said.

  God bless the A-gangers. The electrician’s mates had acted quickly to pop fresh fuses into the electrical panel.

  “Very well,” Charlie said. “I need damage reports. Exec, get us back into good trim. Morrison, get the A-gang up here to start repairs, and get this water pumped out. Barkley, go see Doc.”

  The compressed air’s whistle died as the auxiliarymen closed off that section of piping. An A-ganger mounted to the conning tower and installed fresh light bulbs.

  “Light screws, bearing two-nine-oh,” the soundman said.

  Charlie and Rusty exchanged a nervous glance. Third Fleet wasn’t happy just bombing them. Now they were sending a destroyer to finish the job.

  “He’s echo ranging,” the soundman added.

  “Helm, come right to three-four-oh,” Charlie said. “All ahead full.”

  The helmsman repeated the order and turned the boat.

  “Have Mr. Nixon report to the control room and find me a thermocline,” Charlie added, relieved the Sandtiger still had propulsion and steering. “And somebody tell that skipper, if my boat gets even so much as a scratch, I’m going to kick his ass.”

  “You take the skipper, Captain,” the SJ radarman said. “I’ll handle the pilot.”

  The sailors cracked grins.

  Sometimes, you had to put on a front for the men. It wasn’t about him, about faking it to put on a show. It was about his crew’s morale. Right now, they needed to see their captain as a rock.

  He was going to have to be to get them out of this alive.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  HUNTED

  Sound: “Target still approaching on two-nine-oh bearing, range 5,000 yards.”

  “Very well,” Charlie said. “Helm, come right to double-oh-five.”

  “Come right to double-oh-five, aye, Captain.”

  Soon, they’d be far from shore and reaching for the open expanses of the Philippine Sea. Plenty of thermoclines to hide under out there.

  “Splashes!”

  Thunder rolled in the deep. Depth charges. The blast waves nudged the Sandtiger’s stern.

  The bomber had marked its final sighting of the submarine with smoke. The destroyer had zeroed in on the spot and dumped a series of charges.

  Charlie frowned. Something about the sounds of the attack wasn’t right, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

  “He’s got throwers,” the soundman hissed from his station.

  That was it. The explosions sounded too far from the propellers to be depth charges dumped from the stern. The destroyer had K-guns, which launched depth charges up to 150 yards. The explosives bracketed a submarine above and below, creating a tremendous shockwave that could smash a submersible.

  Which meant Charlie wasn’t facing a destroyer up there. No, it was a destroyer escort, a lightweight tin can. Probably a Buckley class, with a crew of 186. While escorts had only three-inch guns and fewer torpedo tubes, they carried an impressive anti-submarine arsenal. In fact, their sole purpose was to destroy submarines.

  Great.

  “He crossed our track and is coming right astern,” the soundman reported.

  “Control, check for fuel leaks,” Charlie said. “We might be giving away our position.”

  If the bombs had caused a leak, oil floating to the surface would reveal a clear path to the Sandtiger.

  The telephone talker received another damage report. “Chief Braddock says the bombs blew out the forward engine room gasket, and the hatch is leaking water.”

  “Tell him to do the best he can to stop the leak until we can surface.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  Of all the damage reports that flooded in during the bombing attack’s aftermath, this was the most serious. Water was gushing into the boat through the forward engine room hatch, which would make her heavy, slower, less maneuverable. Little could be done about it for now.

  Diving deep was riskier because of the increased pressure. The water had to be pumped out, meaning he couldn’t go to silent running until it was absolutely necessary.

  The sound of the destroyer escort’s screws grew louder until it filled the conning tower and resonated through the hull. As it closed, it switched to short-scale echo ranging, filling the boat with the squeal of its rapid pings.

  A series of thuds above.

  “Splashes off the port bow!”

  Charlie tensed for the shock. Nothing. Then he yelled, “Helm, all stop!”

  The Sandtiger coasted on her momentum.

  “What’s going on?” Rusty wondered.

  “Hedgehog,” Charlie told him.

  The deadliest anti-submarine weapon in the war.

  British-designed, the twenty-four-barrel mortar fired shells similar to potato mashers. While depth charges exploded at a set depth, these bombs detonated only when they struck a hard surface. Namely, the hull of a submarine.

  Charlie suppressed a shudder. “Control, do we have a thermocline?”

  “No, Captain,” Spike said from the control room.

  “Very well. Helm, come left to three-five-oh. All ahead full.”

  “We’re heading back to Samar,” Rusty said. “Into shallow waters.”

  “That’s right.”

  The Sandtiger wasn’t leaking oil. She was heading away from the approaching escort and toward open sea. The best escape route but also predictable.

  The destroyer escort had known exactly where she was going.

  “Two sets of light screws,” the soundman said. “Bearing two-eight-oh, one-one-oh relative. They’re echo ranging.”

  “Well played,” Charlie muttered.

  The three ships had him boxed in nicely, forcing him to go in the direction he’d already chosen himself, back toward Samar.

  “Helm, come right to triple-oh.”

  The screws and pinging intensified as the tin cans closed in. Charlie glared up at the bulkhead, his rage returning.

  His boat was getting heavier by the minute, and he couldn’t go deep. Three destroyers were closing in, one of them specially designed as a sub killer.

  His own country seemed dead set on killing him.

  The only way out was to outsmart them. But how?

  Whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh

  PING-PING

  Rusty paled. “He’s got a fix on us.”

  The destroyer escort darted right, pacing the Sandtiger to starboard. Thuds overhead as the ship fired its side-throwers.

  “Helm, all back, emergency!” Charlie cried.

  “Splashes!”

  “All stop! Sound, tell me which way he goes next—”

  The depth charges tumbled into the water in a bracket pattern ahead.

  WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!

  The shockwaves struck the bow and rattled the Sandtiger and her crew like a jar of peanuts.

  “Helm, steer double-oh-five,” Cha
rlie said. “Sound, call out the target’s bearings. Helm, as sound feeds you the bearings, take the steering.”

  “Captain?”

  “I want you to steer us onto the target’s course and stay in his wake. Stay on him like glue. Understand?”

  The helmsman nodded. “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  Rusty said, “That’ll buy us some time.”

  “We could try Morse code, Captain,” Morrison said.

  “Explain that.”

  “Go to silent running and wait until two of the DEs get close enough. Rise to periscope depth and bang out a message on a pipe. ‘We’re Americans,’ something like that. Then surface. They won’t shoot if we’re right between them.”

  “It’s not a terrible idea,” Rusty said.

  Charlie shook his head. “It’s too risky. We know there’s one crazy pilot up there. They might have called in more planes. I’d consider it our Hail Mary.”

  “Then what’s the plan, Skipper? We can’t stay on his stern forever. It won’t take long for that tin can to get wise.”

  “We’re going to have to test our new countermeasures. Morrison, stand by to fire evasion devices. All compartments, stand by for silent running.”

  “The bubbler or the sonar decoy?” Morrison asked.

  “The sonar decoy. We’ll fire six from the bow tubes. Three second intervals.”

  The torpedo officer’s idea had been too risky, but something else was driving Charlie’s decision-making. A bit of pride. A desire to beat the American skipper at his own game. A part of him still couldn’t believe an American was trying to kill him and his crew. He wasn’t having it.

  The forward torpedo doors thudded open.

  “He’s speeding up, Captain,” the soundman said.

  “Now or never,” Rusty said. “He’s trying to shake us.”

  The game was up.

  “Forward Torpedo reports sonar decoys loaded and ready to fire, Captain,” Morrison said. “Shoot anytime.”

  “Very well. Fire all decoys!”

  “Firing all decoys! Decoys away.”

  “Helm, all stop!” Charlie ordered. “Right full rudder! All ahead one-third.”

  The helmsman turned the rudder hard over, swinging the boat to starboard.

  “Rig for silent running.”