by some wretched Asian fever. The second in command, Lieutenant Willis Fargo, was inexperienced, and it was decided that Griddle would take the Monk, as she was known, out to sea and retreat to Pearl. Griddle had been on Hart’s staff and had previously commanded a sub. It was a logical choice.
This had not made him popular with his crew, who both had liked Jacobs and didn’t wish to leave the Philippines without striking back at the Japanese. To date, the Monk had accomplished absolutely nothing to that effect, and their failure was grating on the crew.
The Monkfish was a reasonably new boat. She had been completed in the latter half of 1939 and was one of the Sargo class of submarines. She displaced 1,425 tons and had a crew of sixty-two. For weapons, she had eight torpedo tubes, four each in the bow and in the stern, and a four-inch deck gun. A pair of 20 mm Oerlikon antiaircraft guns completed her armament.
Griddle squinted through the periscope and didn’t care for what he saw. Steaming insolently in front of him was a Kagero-class Japanese destroyer, one of the newest in their navy. She was traveling quickly through the water and in apparent ignorance of the existence of the Monk, which was gaining on her.
At first Griddle had been torn with indecision. His orders were to get to Pearl Harbor as quickly as possible, but how did one not attack an enemy warship? Besides, both he and his crew felt a compelling need to do something, anything, to strike back at the Japs. If he were to do nothing, he might also lose what little respect his crew had for him. Other forays had resulted in no attacks by the Monk, because no Japs had been sighted or because they’d been in shoal water, where a sub couldn’t go, or because the Jap ships had been too well protected. The Monk had not yet fired a shot in anger. Thus, they could not pass up an attack on a lone destroyer in deep water, and one where a converging course would put the destroyer in range within moments.
Yet another nagging possibility haunted Griddle and the crew. Was there something wrong with their torpedoes, or was it something else? No one knew, but one thing was certain-far too many torpedo attacks by other subs had been fruitless. Good, solid targets had been inexplicably missed, and often at great danger to the attacking subs.
While a few sinkings had been achieved, it was common knowledge that elite, well-trained crews with first- class subs were accomplishing far less than they should, and that left the torpedo as the reason for failure.
The torpedo in question was the brand-new Mark 14. That it could go more than two miles at forty-six knots was not an issue. What happened when it got to the target was. The Mark 14 was designed to focus on a target ship’s magnetic field, streak under the ship, and then explode, which, according to theory, would break the back of the target ship and sink it more efficiently than a normal, old-fashioned impact torpedo.
It was elegant in theory, but it didn’t seem to work out in practice, and this concerned Griddle. If they missed the Kagero-class destroyer, they’d have one pissed-off Jap warship to contend with. Not too much was known about the Kagero class, but Griddle’s periscope view confirmed that she had what appeared to be five-inch guns, torpedoes of her own, and a clustering of depth charges at her stern. A miss or a malfunction by a torpedo could become extremely uncomfortable.
It was now or never.
“Range?” Griddle asked.
“Two thousand yards” was the reply from Lieutenant Fargo.
Seconds later, four torpedoes were streaking toward the Kagero-class. The target was clear, and they could not miss, not all four of them.
Griddle ordered the Monk deeper. They would wait it out under periscope depth. Several stopwatches clicked off the seconds to impact. Now they could clearly hear the screws of the destroyer as she churned the water ever closer to them.
And then the watches were past impact time. Griddle paled. The torpedoes had missed. It was impossible! Not all four of them!
To their horror, they heard the destroyer coming even closer. She had seen the torpedo wakes and was following them to their source. Griddle didn’t have to see the destroyer to visualize her slicing through the waves toward them at more than thirty knots per hour.
Then the men of the Monkfish heard splashes. “Depth charges,” Griddle hollered, and the men prepared to hang on for their lives.
An explosion rocked the Monk, sending equipment and men flying in the narrow confines. There were screams of pain as men caromed off the pipes and deck. Another explosion, this time much closer, hurled Griddle against a bulkhead and then onto the floor. The lights flickered, went out, and returned.
Griddle had landed on something soft, and he felt his hand go into the mush of a crewman’s skull. The commander couldn’t see out of his left eye, and blood was pouring down his face. Waves of pain flowed over him, and he wondered if he could talk.
Another depth charge exploded, this one almost on top of the Monk. Griddle felt himself losing consciousness. As he slipped in and out, he wondered if he was going to die. He didn’t want to. There was so much to live for. For one thing, he wanted to kill the son of a bitch who’d invented the Mark 14 torpedo.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt lit the cigarette he’d just placed in the long holder that was as much his trademark as Winston Churchill’s cigar was his. The British prime minister was en route, and much had to be decided before the two allies conferred and planned for the continuation of the war that was now raging on two oceans.
But first, there were some unpleasant specifics to clear up. Roosevelt smiled disarmingly at General Marshall and Admiral King. “Gentlemen, just what are the Japanese up to this time?” he asked.
“We’re not certain,” King admitted. “All indications are that a reconnaissance in force is going to occur, but exactly what the target is, we don’t yet know.”
Roosevelt inhaled and blew out a perfect smoke ring. He watched it ascend to the ceiling of the Oval Office. “Why don’t you know?”
“Sir,” King continued, “we can read many of their messages, but not all of them. Part of the problem is manpower, while the other is the fact that their military codes have not been totally broken. A month ago, we had only a couple of score men and women doing this, and they were totally inundated by Japanese communications traffic.”
“Which may be why we didn’t know about the attack on Pearl Harbor?” Roosevelt mused hopefully. His political enemies were still raking him over the coals for that failure, and he knew it would be a sore point for future generations. He’d been shocked to hear that some Americans were claiming he’d intentionally permitted the slaughter of Americans to get the United States into the war.
“Yes,” King answered. “Although there were other factors, not the least of which was that the Jap fleet steamed in total silence, which meant there were no messages to intercept. But, getting back to the people working on the Japanese messages, we now have several hundred and will doubtless have more as soon as we can find them and hire them, but they are still learning their job. We have listening posts on Hawaii and the Philippines as well as here in the States, but the situation is still far from perfect.”
“Not in the Philippines?” Roosevelt asked with alarm. MacArthur’s command had been reduced to a perimeter that was bound to fall.
King corrected himself. “The Philippine operation has been shut down and the personnel evacuated. Only Hawaii remains operational outside the United States.”
“Good. We cannot have anyone with knowledge of Magic falling into Japanese hands. So, where is this Japanese fleet headed?”
“One of three places,” King said. “Midway, Samoa, or one of the lesser islands in Hawaii. We think it might be Molokai.”
“And what are you going to do about it?”
King’s always stern face clouded. “Nothing. Until you release ships from the Atlantic, Nimitz’s Pacific Fleet is a shadow. The Japs can come and go as they please, and there’s damned little we can do about it.”
Roosevelt glared at him. “You know I cannot give you more ships at this time. We are committed to a Europe-first war. You don’t have to like it, Admiral, but that’s the way it’s going to be.”
King could only glower. Well before the attack on Pearl Harbor, plans had been drawn up to cover a number of contingencies. Rainbow 5 was the plan that covered a war with Germany and Italy, and a simultaneous war with Japan. It was predicated on fighting an aggressive but defensive war with Japan until the defeat of the other Axis countries was assured. It accepted the painful reality that the United States could not fight a two-front war at that
