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somewhere between the maneuvering room and the after torpedo room, killing as many as half the crew instantly and flooding all aft compartments as far forward as the crew’s quarters, midway along the boat. 2
    Caverly was standing looking at a radarscope when it happened. He knew the outer hull was almost a full inch of nickel-alloyed steel, perhaps the best of its kind in the world. The Tang was rugged, but the sheer violence of the impact was astounding. The Mark 18 electric torpedo was packed with a powerful new explosive developed in the early days of the war to give submarines the extra punch required to sink thick-skinned enemy boats.
    Caverly thought that the Tang had been snapped in two. The waves of concussion from the explosion made him feel as if he were experiencing a massive earthquake. He did not know which way to step to catch his balance. The deck plates rattled and shook. Lightbulbs went out.
    In the conning tower, there was chaos.
    “We’ve been hit!” 3 cried Executive Officer Frank Springer.
     
     
     
    IN THE FORWARD TORPEDO ROOM, Pete Narowanski found himself flat on his back from the huge explosion. 4 He picked himself up. What happened? There had been no alarm. One moment he had been rejoicing, looking forward to carousing in San Francisco. Now he could feel the Tang sinking. Had the Tang been hit by a Japanese shell? Loose equipment began to slide through the compartment. 5 Then he felt a bump as the stern hit the bottom. A few seconds later, he heard air rushing through the main ballast tank blowers—someone in the control room was trying to blow the Tang back to the surface. But it didn’t work. Clearly, much of the after section of the submarine was flooded.
    Narowanski looked around at his comrades in the forward torpedo room. Among the men now holding on to anything within reach and nursing serious bruises were blonde-haired Hayes Trukke; the burly Leland Weekley, chief torpedoman; and Virginian John Fluker.
    Narowanski was in good company. After four patrols and several hair-raising episodes in their presence, he could rely on these men totally. They wouldn’t “flip out” in a crisis. 6
    Narowanski’s fellow torpedomen also knew they could depend on him one hundred percent. “Ski,” as he was nicknamed, and the other men in the forward torpedo room remained calm. They were well trained and had many years’ experience between them. As they tried to figure out what exactly had happened to the Tang, they scanned the compartment for damage. There was surprisingly little. Then their training kicked in. They closed the watertight door leading to the next compartment. One of the men, who was still wearing headphones, tried to contact other compartments but without success. Someone else turned on the emergency lights. 7
    Narowanski and the men in the forward torpedo room were lucky. Unlike men trapped in other compartments, the torpedomen knew they had a way out from theirs—they were a few feet from one of only two escape trunks on the Tang . The other was in the after torpedo room, which was flooded, its occupants either killed instantly by the explosion or now drowned. But Narowanski and the men with him could not use the escape trunk yet. They would have to wait until everyone left alive made it to the forward torpedo room. Only then could they try to get out. For the time being, all they could do was hold on and pray. 8
     
     
     
    ON THE BRIDGE, Bill Leibold saw a cloud of what looked like black smoke. In fact it was water thrown up from the explosion. He and other men on the bridge felt the boat being wrenched, as if it were being split in half. 9
    A few feet from Leibold, Dick O’Kane watched, aghast, as the tops of the after ballast tanks blew into the air. Water washed across the wooden main decking, around the five-inch main gun, and then toward the aft cigarette deck where the Tang ’s 40mm gun was positioned, several feet from where O’Kane now stood on the bridge.
    “Do