Submarine!

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Book: Read Submarine! for Free Online
Authors: Edward L. Beach
immediately returns to an even keel.
    Stare as they may, Seawolf’s skipper and exec must admit that there is no conclusive evidence of damage. Despite an obvious hit and the subsequent wild rolling, the target has suffered no appreciable increase in draft.
    â€œHow long did that torpedo run?” Warder suddenly asks.
    Bill Deragon looks at his stop watch. “Forty-four and a half seconds, Captain.” The two men look at each other thoughtfully.
    Warder speaks first. “Let’s see, now. Torpedo run . . . torpedo speed . . . Why, the earliest that fish could have got there is forty-five seconds, probably a little longer! It must have gone off just before hitting the target!”
    The exec nods in agreement. “That’s why he rolled over so far. What’ll we do now?”
    â€œDo? We’ll let him have another one, that’s what! Set depth FOUR feet!”
    And so a few moments later fish number three goes on its way, set even closer to the surface. Again the torpedo track is observed to run straight to the target, but this time there is no explosion whatsoever. Sound hears the torpedo running perfectly normally long after the time it should have hit the target. Suddenly it stops.
    â€œStandby FOUR! . . . FIRE FOUR!”
    Again nothing. Seawolf has expended all her bow tubes, and Sagami Maru still rides at anchor in Talomo Bay—unharmed. And now the submarine has drawn upon herself the quite understandable wrath of Sagami . Two large guns on the Jap’s bow and stern have been manned and are lobbing shells at Seawolf’s periscope. The explosions of gunfire on the surface of the water are remarkably loud, and possess a characteristic entirely their own. If Seawolf ever had any idea of trying her luck with the deck gun, this battery effectively changes it. But Warder has no thought of quitting with his target still afloat. The Mark XIV torpedoes have failed. Now he will try the old Mark X fish.
    Working against time, “topping off,” checking and reloading torpedoes in the four bow tubes, the men of the Seawolf silently perform a miracle of effort, in spite of a room temperature hovering around the 120-degree mark. And half an hour after the fourth torpedo was fired the submarine stealthily creeps back into Talomo Bay for another try.
    Having lost sight of the periscope when it was lowered, the gun crews of Sagami Maru are firing blindly and rapidly in all directions. Again Warder approaches as close as possible before shooting—if anything a little closer this time—again gyro angle is zero, and the camera ready, and so are the obsolete torpedoes.
    â€œFIRE ONE! . . .” This one does it. The torpedo explodes in the stern of the ship. When the smoke clears away the after gun crew has disappeared and Sagami is sinking at last, with bow up and stem down. Time for the coup de grâce .
    Seawolf has approached so close to her enemy by this time that it is necessary to turn around before shooting again. Besides, this will enable her to fire a stem tube, and will tend to equalize expenditure of torpedoes, always a concern of the provident skipper.
    Sagami’s forward gun crew have deserted their posts, and Seawolf is allowed to complete her reversal of course within the harbor unmolested. Twelve minutes later she is ready with the stern tubes, and fires one torpedo.
    â€œWHANGP!” A solid hit, in the bow. A fire sends billows ofsmoke into the air, and the target now sags down by the bow, with the more slowly sinking stern up. Several backward looks from Seawolf —snaking her tortuous way seaward—confirm that Sagami Maru is on the way to Davy Jones’ locker with a whole cargo of essential supplies for the Japanese occupiers of Mindanao, and in plain sight of hundreds of native and Japanese watchers from the shore.
    And then come the countermeasures. Three aircraft direct two anti-submarine vessels to the vicinity of the submarine. Seawolf is

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