our passage, increasing in intensity, began plucking at our hair, searching the gaps in our shirts. It felt wet and clammy. I was sweating, and an alien unwelcome thought had intruded: Could there be a rebuke, implied or intended, in the message from Com- SubPac?
Walrus swung to the left, steadied on the new course, and the enemy vessel began to grow rapidly larger. I placed my binoculars into the bracket on top of the Target Bearing Transmitter, or TBT, a waterproof instrument by which target bearings could be transmitted to the TDC in the conning- tower.
'Stand by forward,' I repeated. Late or not, if we sank the enemy sub-for such it must be-any disapproval of our cautious attitude up to this point. would be forgotten.
Back came Jim's voice: 'Standing by forward, Sir. Outer doors are open!'
'we will shoot a salvo of three,' I said into the speaker at my side. 'What's the range now?'
'Range two-five-double-oh!… Torpedo run three thousand!'
It was then that I realized we had made a serious error. In our anxiety to determine whether this was an enemy ship, and avoid being detected in the meantime, we had neglected to get into a proper firing position. One of the very first rules of submarine approaches, a cardinal principle, something I had known, had had drilled into me for years. When being approached from astern, the target's speed lengthens the distance a torpedo has to travel, and the submarine must consequently fire from closer range than it might otherwise choose.
Likewise, a longer-than-usual range is possible if the torpedo is fired from well forward of the target's beam, but it is harder to hit by consequence of the sharp angle. The best position, considering the angle of hitting with the torpedo, or 'torpedo track angle,' is such that the torpedo intersects the target at ninety degrees. In the situation Walrus was in, to get a decent torpedo run of approximately fifteen hundred yards we would have to shoot from a range of about one thousand yards, and the torpedo track angle would be obtuse, in from astern after a stern chase, the least desirable situation of all.
My mind went through the calculations again. Barring a radical course change to the right, hardly to be expected, there was no hope for improving our firing position. If we turned away now for another attempt a little later, we would only expose our broadside to the enemy and almost certainly cause him to see us. No; we had already cast the die. Poorly situated though we were, we had to go through with the attack on the lines already begun. We were essentially bows on to him, too close to turn, so close that our detection sooner or later was a certainty. AR we could do was to shoot soon enough, get our torpedoes on their way before the Jap lookouts spotted the tell- tale, bow wave and bows-on silhouette on their starboard quarter.
'What's the range now?'
'Two-two-double-oh. Torpedo run two-five-double-oh.'
Perhaps we could compromise a little, shoot from fifteen hundred yards and accept a torpedo run of two thousand. This would be better than getting so close, one thousand yards, as to be in danger of being spotted.
Another minute. 'Range!' I called.
'Two-oh-double-oh,' came the answer.
I had been watching the other ship through my binoculars.
She was a submarine all right, with that ungainly, broken silhouette which could only spell Japanese. Jim had been right from the beginning. We need not have waited for a reply td our message. Had we only approached close enough we could have identified her by sight. No other ship, but a Jap sub of the, large ocean-cruiser I-class would look like this. She was a big ship, bigger than the Walrus, and not nearly so trim. I was about to ask for another range, it would have been the last one-when I realized she must have seen us. We were already abaft her beam, but even as I watched, her length shortened still further. I found myself looking at her stern.
'We're all ready below, Captain,' from Jim. 'Shoot any time, sir!'
Heavy with disappointment, I had to give him the answer.
'Don't shoot, Jim. Belay everything. Angle on the bow is now one-eight-zero.'
The enemy submarine was harder to see, end on, just the silhouetted cut-up shape of her conning tower and bridge structure as she mounted the succeeding seas ahead, its reduction almost out of sight as she pitched into the hollows- and then I was looking only at the ocean. The gray-black silhouette had not remounted the next slow swell.
Hugh Adams noticed it a moment later. 'He's gone, Captain! He must have dived!'
'That's right, Hugh,' I said, still looking. Walrus ran on nearly half a minute before I caught on, and my hair lifted along the back of my neck. 'Right full rudder!' I shouted into the conning tower. 'All ahead flank!''
The rudder went over to full right, the diesels roared as the annunciators went all the way up against the stops, and our stern commenced to scud across the undulating Pacific swells.
Walrus heeled to port, driving the port-side engine mufflers under water. They spluttered and splashed, threw a shower of spray into the air.
'What's the matter, Captain?' asked Hugh Adams.
Furious at the trap, I snarled back at him. 'Why do you think he dived? He's ready for us now. He hopes we'll keep coming.'
Adams stared, wide-eyed. 'You mean…'
'Precisely!' I spat the word out. 'He's looking at us this very minute. He's probably turned around and headed our way. We were almost close enough to shoot, remember, and so is he.' I felt myself trembling with the reaction. From being the pursuer we had suddenly been converted into the pursued, and I had blundered right into it. If only we had carried out Jim's original impulse, gotten close enough to attack immediately, we might have carried off a quick surprise.
Now, only failure! The Jap had been more alert than we.
He had seen us soon enough, at sufficiently long range, turned immediately and dived, thus instantly taking the initiative right out of our hands.
We steadied Walrus on course northeast, almost directly away from where our attack had gone awry, ran on a good hour before daring to turn again toward the west. I felt sick at heart. It had been my first view of the enemy, and our first brush was hardly a drawn battle.
And, of course, there was the question of what to tell Com- SubPac.
Three days later we entered Midway Lagoon. We fueled ship, topping off our fuel tanks once more after the twelve- hundred-mile trip from Pearl Harbor, and we delivered. an even dozen sacks of mail to the eager Midway population.
When we departed that same day I had also made my first acquaintance with the large, foolish-looking 'gooney bird' for which Midway had already become well known. The Lay- san albatross, as the gooney bird is ornithologically called, is a most graceful lovely bird at sea or in the air, but on land it is an ungainly, clumsy creature, the butt of jokes and the product of ninety per cent of the entertainment on Midway. This was the albatross which the Ancient Mariner had shot, I reflected, but it wasn't until we had left Midway over the horizon and one of them came gliding effortlessly in the ocean breezes, swooping and spiraling above us, circling ahead and astern, all without the slightest movement of its wings, that I could really understand the reverence in which the mariners of the old days held them.
Now began Walrus' first war patrol in earnest. It would take us twelve more days to reach Japan according to Jim's calculations, based upon running most of the distance upon the surface and spending the last few days en route submerged during daylight. We had approximately sixty full days at sea, two months to look forward to.
We passed through the Nanpo Shoto submerged on the ninth day, within sight of Sofu Gan, or Lot's Wife-a desolate rock rising straight out of the sea-and at approximately noon of the twelfth day the hazy outline of the coast of Kyushu could be seen dead ahead through the periscope, bearing due west.
We had yet to see an enemy plane, ship, or other kind of enemy activity since the submarine off Oahu. Somehow, I think, we had expected to find AREA SEVEN teeming with ships, crisscrossing, going in all directions, but such was not the case.
By the time the evening twilight had drawn to a close and it was nearly time to surface for the night, the coast of Japan was plainly in sight, low-lying on the western horizon. I had already come to the conclusion that the Japanese were aware of the possibility of American submarines off their coast, and were holding-their ships in port.
We began to make preparation for surfacing. We would not, of course, come up until it was dark enough to do so with minimum danger of being seen by any Japanese aviator fisher- man, or other craft which might happen to be in the vicinity.
