Action for Men, May 1960 — page 58: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

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C-5, 3006 Olympic Station, Beverly Hills, Calif. 58 (Continued from page 56) order to get so close that errors in estimate would not be fatally large. “All tubes ready,” Ken Schacht called from the conning tower. Schacht was Perch’s gunnery and torpedo officer. Dave could sense the excitement in his voice as Schacht prepared to fire a torpedo in anger for the first time in his naval career. “Set depth for 12 feet,” Dave directed. “Range one one double oh. Stand by.” “Gyro angle zero. .. . Range nine double oh.” That would be his final instruction to the torpedomen in the forward torpedo room. In a matter of seconds they would have the gyro guidance mechanism on the torpedoes set for a “zero angle” straight shot. “Shoot !” HARD on the heels of his command, he heard Ken Schacht’s confirming report, “One away.” In quick succession the remain- ing three torpedoes sped on their way. The luminous sweep hand on his watch ticked off their time of run. The time ran out for num- ber one, and no rewarding explosion rent the night sky. The Japanese freighter held her course and speed, blissfully unaware that an American torpedo had passed under her keel without exploding. Number two and number three ran their fruitless course. When the time was within three seconds for number four torpedo, a blinding flash lit the sea and a thundering shock struck Perch with shat- tering force. Through it came the screech of flying scraps of steel and the rending of metal as shrapnel drove into the conning-tower superstructure close to where Dave Hurt stood on the bridge. Now at last the Japanese freighter changed course, putting her stern toward the direction of the explosion. Her whistle screamed a call for help from patrol units while her radio called more distant craft to the scene. The three-inch gun on her stern flashed omin- ously, sending shells screaming over the submarine. “Dive! Dive!’ Dave ordered. Although Perch could make only a maxi- mum of ten knots submerged, he wanted to get her down until he could determine if there were any fast enemy patrol craft in the immediate vicinity. At 100 feet, Perch stood eastward toward deeper water, almost scrap- ing the bottom in her flight with at times a bare 20 feet between her and the mud. “What happened?” Schacht asked. “I know we must have missed on the first three, but the fourth went off with a real bang. Sounded like it was right on top of us.” “It was,” Dave answered. “It ran a circu- lar path and headed right back for us. It’s just good luck that it exploded prematurely or we'd have been blown to bits. That Jap maru certainly got off with a cheap thrill.” “Did the other three do the same thing ?” Schacht inquired. “T thought I got a glimpse of their wakes close aboard the target. My guess is that they ran too deep and the magnetic ex- ploders didn’t work.” Dismissing the matter as something about which he could do nothing constructive, Dave addressed himself to.the business of getting his ship out of danger. ‘“‘Ask sonar if they have any high-speed propeller indications,” he directed the talker. “Nothing except receding low-speed pro- ’ peller noises from the maru,” came the re- sponse. “Surface,” he ordered. When Perch came up from her dive, Dave put all four diesels on the line and stood east- ward at full speed to get clear of the enemy search which their abortive attack was cer- tain to bring on. He could feel in the silence of his crew the sense of depression that he shared with them. After weeks of futile pa- trolling in the Philippine Sea it was disheart- ening to fail in an attack which, by all the rules of chance, could not possibly have missed. Only the erratic behavior of number four torpedo suggested that it was missile defect rather than poor attack technique which led to fiasco. Two hours later Perch slowed to two- engine speed and, with one engine on the job of charging batteries, began to cruise slowly in the shipping lanes approaching Hong Kong. The fleet broadcast that night carried an encoded message that Admiral Hart was departing Manila in the submarine Shark to take command of his surface forces in the Java Sea. It also advised all U.S. naval vessels that only Malacca and Singa- pore were still in Allied hands, and that the submarine headquarters for the southwest Pacific had been established at Darwin, Australia. With so much of the South China coast being closed off, Dave Hurt had to take a new look at his ship’s fuel supply. Darwin was almost 2,000 miles away, and Perch had already used up a good portion of her diesel supply. He elected to stand south toward Singapore to be nearer his base when the time came to go there, and at the same time prowl hopefully in search of the Japanese surface forces deploying southward toward the Dutch East Indies. The night of December 28 found Perch threading her way through the shoal-studded coastal waters off Cochin China some 20 miles to seaward of Saigon. The night was clear, starlit, and moonless—a good night for submariners who could see the bulk of their targets far more readily than could the en- emy lookouts spot the low silhouette of the undersea boat. Dave paced the bridge rest- lessly, trying to will a Japanese into range, beset by futile re-examination of the attack off Hong Kong. A realist and his own severe critic, he realized that only another go at an emeny ship would provide real evi- dence on which to base conclusions as to whether he, his crew, or the torpedoes had been at fault. “Target on the starboard bow!” “Sound reports low-speed propellers bear- ing two two five.” The lookout’s report, followed immediately by confirming sonar contact, established be- yond doubt that something lay off there in the night. Training out the powerful night binoculars of the Target Bearing Transmit- ter, he immediately picked up the image of a medium-sized freighter. If the ship were a neutral, she would be displaying the nor- mal running lights. The freighter which he studied through the glasses was skulking along the shallow coastal waters in total darkness. ‘High-speed propeller noises bearing two two zero!” With that clue from the sonar man, Dave now was able to make out the smaller sil- houette of a Japanese escort ship. “Battle stations, torpedo! Surface!” COMIEDOOKS.CO