Voyage of the Devilfish

“My rudder’s right fifteen degrees, sir,” the helmsman at one of the airplane console-style seats on the forward bulkhead said, turning his wheel. “Maneuvering answers ahead standard. Steady course north, sir.” Pacino frowned at the firecontrol console. The first zig had been routine, but a target zig with target acceleration was much more difficult to deal with, particularly when their own ship was turning. Now the sonar data had become a mass of relatively meaningless numbers. Computers were useless at times like these. Only human judgment and intuition, and perhaps some luck, would put the torpedoes on the alerted target.

Michael Pacino shut his eyes, rubbed his temples and imagined a God’s-eye-view of the sea. What would he do if he were the “enemy.” He opened his eyes, moved off the elevated periscope stand, nudged aside Lieutenant Stokes, grabbed two solution guess-knobs and twisted in a guesssolution. “Keep that in,” he told Stokes, whose expression betrayed he thought Pacino’s solution flawed. For the next thirty seconds Pacino really sweated. Two sonar bearings came in and lined up vertically. His solution was dead on. He punched Stokes’ massive shoulder and pointed to the computer console. Stokes just shook his head.

“Weps, steer the first fired unit to course one seven five,” Pacino said to Weapons Officer Bahnhoff on the firing panel. “Steer the second to one eight zero.” He looked over Bahnhoffs shoulder as he programmed the firing panel with the steercommands; the firing panel talked digitally to the torpedo-room console, which relayed the instructions to the tubes, which passed on the steercommands through a neutrally buoyant wire the size of a stereo-speaker cord, snaking out the tube to the ocean beyond through twenty miles of wire to the units. The units heard the order and turned to the south, listening to their pings. One unit got a ping return in its search-cone almost immediately.

“Detect,” Bahnhoff announced, smiling at Pacino. “Unit one… detect. Homing, unit one. Go, baby, go.” The first fired unit had heard three returns in a row, deciding that Target One was a valid target. The torpedo sped up to 50 knots, its attack speed. The faces of the controlroom crew lit up in anticipation.

“Unit two, detect,” Bahnhoff said happily. “Detect. Lost it… Come on, sweetheart. Detect. Acquisition, unit two. Captain, we’ve got him.”

“Conn, Sonar,” Pacino heard through his headset, the volume suddenly loud. “Torpedo in the water, bearing two three five!” Target One had finally returned fire.

“Helm,” Pacino ordered, “all ahead flank. Maneuvering cavitate. Diving Officer, depth fifteen hundred feet, 35 degree down angle.” Four ominous BOOMS shook the ship as its main reactor-coolant pumps were switched to fast speed. Aside from a torpedo launch, the check valves in the coolant piping made the loudest noise the Devilfish could make. The deck began to vibrate as the ship came up to flank speed, 35 knots, her dual main engines shrieking far aft in the engine room, her screw spinning wildly and cavitating — boiling up sheets of angry, noisy bubbles of steam in the ocean. Pacino looked to the forward bulkhead at the ship control panel’s gages. The control team was three men seated at controls, two in front on either side of a central console and one in the middle to supervise the other two. In the port seat was the stern planes man, who put his control yoke to full dive. Two hundred feet aft the huge control surfaces, driven by high-pressure hydraulics, went to the dive position, forcing the submarine to a down angle. Her speed, and the fairwater planes in a diving position on the sail, nosed her down into a steep 35-degree dive. Every man at battle stations held on to keep from falling to the forward bulkhead. The hull of the submarine groaned and popped as seawater pressure increased with the depth. No matter how many years a man spent at sea, submerged, the sound would always be eerie, ominous, Pacino thought.

“Loss of torpedo-control wires, units one and two. Captain,” Bahnhoff said, not yet registering that the target had counterfired. He was so caught up in his two torpedo hits that he didn’t realize it.

“Torpedo room. Conn,” Pacino ordered over a hand-held microphone he had grabbed, “cut the wires to tubes one and two, shut the outer doors and drain tubes.” Suddenly the deck levelled out at 1500 feet, test depth, her deck still vibrating as 30,000-shaft horsepower blasted her through the water at flank speed.

“Conn, Sonar,” Pacino’s headset crackled, “incoming torpedo now bears two three three. Slight right bearing drift. It’s range-gating.” Outside the hull they could hear a high-pitched pinging that got louder, more frequent, more insistent. The torpedo knew exactly where they were. And Pacino knew his only chance was that by going flank speed he might draw out the chase long enough to make the torpedo run out of fuel.