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O’Kane, peering through his binoculars. He saw the electric torpedo’s phosphorescent wake as it headed straight toward the crippled transport nine hundred yards ahead of it. It was running “hot, straight, and normal.” 17
    Now just one torpedo was left. Once it had been fired, the Tang could head back to safety, having completed one of the most destructive patrols of the war.
    O’Kane called for a time check. It was 2:30 a.m. on October 25, 1944.
    “Set!”
    In the conning tower, Larry Savadkin operated the torpedo data computer. He pressed a button that set the final firing angle of the Tang ’s last torpedo.
    “Fire!” ordered O’Kane.
    Frank Springer stood a few feet from Savadkin in the conning tower. He pressed the firing plunger. Again, a jolting whoosh as the last torpedo, Number 24, left the Tang . The submarine shuddered as compressed air forced the torpedo from its tube and seawater flooded back into the tube.
    In the forward torpedo room, Pete Narowanski slammed his fist into the palm of his left hand.
    “Hot dog, course zero nine zero,” he cried. “Heading for the Golden Gate!” 18
    “Let’s head for the barn,” someone else shouted.
    There was a massive explosion as Number 23 torpedo hit its target, sending flames and debris shooting into the sky and quickly sinking the 6,957-ton Ebaru Maru , officially the twenty-fourth victim during O’Kane’s eighteen months in command of the Tang .
    On the bridge, Bill Leibold scanned the waters with his binoculars. He stood next to O’Kane. Suddenly, he saw the last torpedo, Number 24, broach and then begin to porpoise, phosphorescence trailing it. A few seconds later, it made a sharp turn to port and then, unbelievably, began to come about. 19
    “There goes that one! Erratic!” shouted O’Kane.
    The last torpedo was now heading like a boomerang, back to its firing point . . . back toward the Tang . Something had gone terribly wrong. Perhaps its rudder had jammed or the gyroscope in its steering engine had malfunctioned.
    “Emergency speed!” cried O’Kane.
    Below, twenty-year-old Motor Machinist’s Mate Jesse DaSilva had just left his post in the engine room, having decided to get a cup of coffee. The Los Angeles native was standing with one foot in the mess. 20 Over the intercom, he could hear the bridge crew react as the torpedo headed back toward the Tang .
    “Captain, that’s a circular run!” he heard Leibold say.
    “All ahead emergency!” shouted O’Kane. “Right full rudder!” 21
    “Bend them on,” added O’Kane. “Control, just bend them on.”
    In the engine room, Chief Electrician’s Mate James Culp did his best to comply, knowing the Tang needed all the power she could get if there was to be a chance of saving lives. 22
    The torpedo was now making straight for the three hundred-foot submarine. The men on the bridge stood, transfixed, their eyes “popping out of their sockets.” 23 The Tang was moving at about six knots, twenty less than her final torpedo.
    “Left full rudder!” ordered O’Kane.
    Bill Leibold watched in stricken silence as the torpedo headed right at them, coming dead-on toward the Tang . Then he lost sight of it as it continued down the port side. 24
    Maybe it will miss. Maybe it will veer away and begin another erratic circle. Maybe the Tang will evade just in time.
    In a second or so, Leibold would find out. 25

PART TWO
    Escape from the Deep
Neither timid nor reckless men should go to sea.
    — Arleigh A. Burke, Admiral, U.S. Navy

6
    The Deep
    I N THE CONNING TOWER, Floyd Caverly waited like the other men for the inevitable.
    Surely there’s enough time to get out of the way — to get the hell out of here? Surely?
    Speed. Speed is all we need . . . just enough to get out of the way. If only the Tang would just set by the stern and set off like a speedboat. 1
    But the Tang was not a speedboat. She could not avoid the charging torpedo. It hit the Tang ’s stern with a massive explosion