Six Old Men - Chapter Two - Rewrite

Chapter Two

Submarines of any kind can be very complicated machines, but the principles on which a submersible works are very simple.

         The core of the boat is a pressure hull, within which reside the crew and all the mechanisms that make the boat functional.  The pressure hull and everything within are too heavy to float and would sink to the bottom without its outer floatation tanks.

         Surrounding the pressure hull are a large number of empty buoyancy tanks that can be filled with water or air.  When these tanks are flooded with water the boat is brought to negative buoyancy and will submerge.  If the water is blown out, the ship will have a positive buoyancy and bob to the surface and float.  The trick is to keep a measured balance of water and air in the buoyancy tanks to keep the boat just a little positive when on the surface and just neutral or a little negative to submerge. 

         When submerged there are dive plains at the bow and stern of the boat that help control the depth of the boat when it has forward motion.

Day break (Departure day 05:30)

         A cold breeze sweeps in off the shore, along with a thin fog.  Most of New London is asleep; the streetlights are still on in the dim pre-dawn light.  The WWII submarine tied up to its moorings is markedly smaller by comparison to the Boomer directly in front of her.

         Four men stand the forward lines and four stand aft.  Captain Carbone, the executive officer and the COB are on the tiny bridge, two sailors stand on the observation platforms above and behind them. 

         On a busy day, with all the background noises of the this port, starting the engines of this old prowler would blend in and not be noticed, but this is not the middle of the day.  The two working diesels scream to life with a roar, echoing across the mouth of the river, breaking the calm of the quiet cove.  A large plume of black exhaust rises from the stern and disappears into the slowly lightening morning sky.  People on the morning ferry take notice, as do the sailors on duty on the boomer.  After about five minutes the sound settles into a manageable rumble. 

         The orders are passed and the lines cast off.  A tug stands by, but is not required.  At first, barely perceptible, the boat moves, clearing the boomer by thirty yards, there is laughter and applause from the deck of the missile boat, but then the three men stand at attention and saluted as Hacklehead passes their stern at three knots. 

         Commissioned fifty years earlier, this is her last voyage.  She was going to become a tourist attraction, a piece of history.  All she has to do is make a little less than two hundred miles, an easy trip for a boat that fought a World War and circled the globe more than three times.

         The boat, when it was new, with all four diesels operational, would easily do better than 22 knots making the trip in a mere ten hours.  Now with only two power plants and considering the stresses high speeds puts on an old hull, she would not be put to go more than 15 knots. 

         This means her course is set to make a wide loop around Long Island and down the coast to the mouth of New York Harbor.  The Navy wants the grand entrance, all available hands in dress blues, standing the rail as she enters the harbor.  She will be the showpiece at the new Naval Museum at Newark New Jersey. 

Day one (fifteen miles out of New London) 07:00 Hours

         The Captain is standing at the plotting table at the center of the control room with John Marsh the Navigator.  “Chief, how’s the charge in the batteries?”

         Two of the younger enlisted men look at one another, puzzled, ‘why batteries? We weren’t diving, were we?’

         “For the number of cells we got, we could run for two hours.  With a little reserve.”  Henry is listening intently from maneuvering.

         Until now, fourteen of the men are lolling about the boat awaiting orders they never thought they would receive.  They are a dive crew, and they are confident that this boat wasn’t going to dive today!  These men are there to fill out part of the normal crew of a diesel powered WWII boat, they expect to stand in their dress blues when the boat is presented and party in the big city.  All they need to do was help deliver the Hacklehead to Newark Naval Station. 

         Horace picks up the intercom to the topside bridge. “Larry how’s the weather?”

         “We’re picking up quite a bit of wind and four to five foot swells. As far as I can see on the horizon, we’re in for a little blow!” 

         Henry knew the routine; he had spent two years doing this with these guys.  He knew what was coming next and he did not like it.

         “Henry raise the scope and do a three sixty.” 

         Four of the off duty sailors start to migrate from their bunks to the access hatches at either end of the control room.  They all have puzzled looks in their eyes.

         Henry did as he is ordered, for on a boat like this, there is no second thinking your commanding officer, even if you disagree.  Henry stands to the scope station on the maneuvering deck and raises the primary.  The periscope smoothly starts to extend its thirty feet to the sky above the twenty-foot height of the sail.  He carefully scans the ocean all around, he sees that they are blocked in with squalls in all the directions they are supposed to go.  “Rough seas ahead capt’n, look’n like a real blow in about thirty miles.

         Horace looks at his friends and decides this is the time for a disclosure.  He grabs the ships intercom microphone and activates the system.  “Attention crew, this is the Captain.  I know you thought you were all here just to take a ride and celebrate on Broadway.”  He pauses for a moment.  “Now that we’ve been out for a while and you have become familiar with one another, I would like to make an announcement.  This will be a training exorcise.”

         In forward torpedo, the three guys that were gambling started betting again.  Sam Welch is helping in engineering; he looks at the old man next to him and says. “Shit.  Is he for real?”

         They heard Horace say. “We’re footing the bill for everyone here so you will need to do a little work!  Prepare for the first exorcise!”

         Harry shook his head, “Damn right sailor.” 

         “Petty Officer Iaconi, Sonar what’s the depth?”  The captain already knew what the answer is going to be, he had sailed this area so many times before, but it was a regulation to ask.

         “Twenty fathoms, no contacts and an uneven bottom sir!”  There is no humor now.  It is all business.

         Henry keeps rotating the scope and returning to the beam, always know what’s in front of you. 

         “Chief of the Boat, make ready to dive.”  Horace moves to one side in preparation  to allow all the young sailors to move to their posts.  Like reading a script, the captain has re-read all the manuals and practiced this for a year, looking forward to it.

         Most of the young men had spent many training hours on this boat or one exactly like her, they all know their jobs.  When they submerged her at the training pier there was no apprehension or fear, now they were out at sea, approaching a storm, and being lead by a bunch of geriatric cowboys and an eighty year old past U-Boat commander.

         The chief stands his post and starts to bark orders into the intercom. “Port watch Control room specialists man your stations.” 

         He operates the Claxton horn three times.  “Dive, Dive, Dive!” 

         As the crewmen start to move into their positions one of them mutters sarcastically, “Did you say DIE or DIVE?” 

         As he passes, the chief raps him on the back of his head.

         The topside bridge crew is already on their way to the control room securing the deck hatch on the way down. 

         COB continues to bark orders. “Secure all hatches. Extend and zero the planes.”  The two large fins at the bow that are normally folded into the side of the prow are extended and leveled to be flat with the surface of the water. 

         “Prepare to stop engines.”

The boats screws, or propellers, are driven by electric motors all the time.  When submerged the motors derive their energy from the batteries, on the surface diesel engines drive generators that produce electricity to run the motors and charge the batteries. 

A diesel engine breaths air and produces exhaust like any other internal combustion engine.  They cannot be run when the ship is sealed up and submerged, so they must be shut down and all the air intakes and exhaust ports sealed shut.  The largest port in the ship is the main air induction trunk into the engine compartment.  Two, sixteen cylinder, diesel engines, running at eighty percent in a small compartment are loud enough to cause deafness.

         “Close secondary induction.  Secure diesels. Close primary induction.” 

         Sam and Harry sit in the engine control compartment, aft of the actual engine room, the hatch between the two compartments sealed shut.  They prepare to shut the two roaring beasts down and switch to battery. 

         There’s a choreographed regiment required to shut down the engines.  Sam had been taught the process years before and Harry had done it hundreds of times but not since the end of the war.  Harry had one advantage over Sam, he had practice the process on this boat for the past three months.

         Once the engines are shut down and the vents sealed, without ventilation the temperature in the engine room soars due to the residual heat of the engines themselves. 

         “Put positive pressure to the boat, flood neutral buoyancy.”

         This is when the dive master must know how much the ship weighs in relation to the surrounding water.  Then, open the flood valves just long enough to allow enough water into the floatation tanks to make the boat as heavy as the water it displaces.  Making the boat weightless in the water. 

         Each command was given in turn and was answered to by the responsible crewmen.  Then after a long pregnant pause, everyone’s eyes were glued to the Christmas tree, a panel of red lights that slowly started to turn green.  As each light switched from red to green it indicated increased integrity of the inner pressure hull.    They would not attempt to dive unless all the lights turned green. 

         “The board is Green, come to periscope depth.  Slowly!  Give the old girl some tender care guys!  Hold your coarse at 170 magnetic.”  Horace looks over at Tweed and they exchange broad grins.  Henry is the only skeptic in the bunch.

         “Five degrees down bubble, hold course at 170 degrees.  Make your depth seventy-five feet.” The chief repeats everything, detailing aspects of the captain’s commands.

While on the surface the crew can feel the slight swell of the sea as they approach the storm.  The boats deck goes awash then the sail begins to disappear, the periscope still extended became the only object left to indicate the boat is there.  As it dives the sensations of the surface swells smooth out. 

         The chief continues.  “Check the boat for leaks.”  He leans over and looks forward and then aft with a surprised look on his face, all the hatches he can see are open.  “And secure all compartment hatches, I thought you guys are submariners?”

         A number of the men who had been kibitzing at the control room hatches swiftly close them and move forward and aft; carefully examining all the nooks and cranny’s for water, where it isn’t supposed to be. 

Just a little orientation:

The control room is a large compartment located amidships directly under the sail, but filled with so much equipment, there is little space for the eight or sometimes nine men required to handle the ship.  Above the control room is the con, also known as tactical maneuvering, periscopes and a helm position.  It is the only part of the pressure hull that extends into the sail.  During combat or when in close proximity to other ships the commanding officer is up in the con with the executive officer and a helmsman.  Of course the sonar operator is always on duty while submerged, but he has his own little nook between the head of the control area and the pressure hatch.  At night all the compartments in the ship are lit with red light to promote night vision, but during this trip that should not be needed. 

The pressure hull is two hundred and thirty feet from stem to stern, of living space.  It is separated into seven secure compartments, end to end, by pressure bulkheads and watertight hatches.  When these hatches are closed, each compartment is secure and isolated from every other compartment.  Starting at the bow the compartments are Forward Torpedo, Officers Quarters, Control Room and Maneuvering, Crew mess and Birthing, Engine Room, Engine Control Room and Aft Torpedo.

 

         The two sailors finished crawling through every hatch and completed their search reporting a dry ship.

         Harold notices that his hands are a little damp and he feels a slight tremor in his knees.  He now must crawled up the ladder into maneuvering and do his own look before committing the ship.  As he enters that cramped space he sees Henry is at the helm position.  Harold reaches up and knows where all the handholds are; he uses all of them so as not to show how unsteady he is.  He tucks his glasses in his shirt pocket, turns his ball cap around and relieves the lookout of the scope.  His viewpoint is about eight feet above the waves, not much to see ahead but gray skies over a rough sea.  As he pans the scope around the view does not change except the wake of the scope shaft ripping through the waves as he pans past a hundred and eighty degrees.  The captain finishes his look and calls out.  “Make the ships depth one hundred and fifty feet.”  As he passes the scope over to Larry he hears Henry exhale sharply. 

         “What’s the matter Henry, you want to live for ever?”  The captain chuckles as he steps down into the narrow opening to the control room. 

         The chief passes the order on and the old girl claws her way down to a safe diving depth, away from the keels of ships, storms and wind.  On batteries the boat will only be asked to do seven knots; they could do more but that would drain the batteries in a very short time, the slower they go the longer the duration of the dive.  Harold looks toward Tweed. “The Exec has the con!”  The old Skipper crawls through the forward hatch into Officer Country.

         As the dive clock passes one hour and seventeen minutes, COB looks at the depth gauge.  “Dive station, watch your depth!”

         Harold had popped another of his nitro pills earlier.  Then afterward he also took an antacid and two Ibuprofen.  He laid down for the past hour and went into a deep sleep, now he appears in the forward hatch looking chipper.  “Prepare to surface!”  He winks at the chief,  “Let’s see how bad it is up there.” 

         COB downed the last drop of coffee from his cup and shouted.  “Periscope depth, Captain to the CON!”  He looks up to see Harold’s legs disappear through the hatch above him. 

         After confirming the area clear of shipping the CO ordered. “Surface the ship!”

         To Henry’s joy the old girl breaks the surface just as advertised, but to a rough sea with heavy wind and rain.  They continue on the surface for five hours, the storm grows worse.  A couple of the sailors are beginning to turn green and the boat is beginning to take some real waves.

         The captain is sipping his coffee and examining the charts.  “How about we take a break from this crap and stop for a little while, this storm was not expected and should not last long according to the Coast Guard.”  Henry was staring at Larry, shaking his head no.

“Petty officer Iaconi, does any of the navigational equipment in the radio room work?”  The captain already knew the answer.

         “It all works perfectly sir, the only thing is, almost all of the beacons that this equipment is designed to work with are no longer operational…” He hesitated a second.  “Except Groton has a beacon for training purposes.  I’ve been pinging it all along and we are 95 nautical miles south, south east.” 

         Captains next question, “Depth?”

         Sonar responded, “We’re just at the edge of the shelf sir.  The charts say between 800 and 900 feet.”

         Larry looks at the captain and agrees, “Better floating just below this than putting the hull at jeopardy.”  So they dive again, but only using the electric motors to stabilize them, not for any significant forward motion.  They felt they could sustain a longer dive and outstay the storm by not stressing the batteries with a hard push for New York. 

         COB injects something he feels his buddies have forgotten. “Save the juice Captain?”

         Harold gives Tweed a quick look, realizing his mistake.  “Secure all unnecessary lighting or power use for the duration of the dive.  Use your flashlights when needed.”  Then acknowledges the suggestion with a thumb’s up, as the ship began to go dark and the control room goes into minimum illumination.

         Larry pulls Horace to one side and says,  “It’s thirteen hundred hours.”

         Horace calls Tweed over and whispers in his ear, then opens the ships intercom.  “Anybody hungry?  They packed us up with two days worth of sandwiches.  Let’s chow down gentleman!”

         The chief pipes in on the intercom, “Relief crew to the control room, distribute the box lunches to all off duty.”  He adds one other thing.  “Senor command staff to the Officers Ward room”

         The six old men make their way to the wardroom opening and closing all the watertight hatches as they pass through the ship.  Once there, they crowd into the space that is made for six slim young officers, not six fat old men. 

         COB looks at the Captain, he is sweating profusely,  “Cap.  You don’t look too good.”

         Harold grins at his friend, “I’m fine Chief.”  He looks around at all his friends.  “Stage one completed, we can submerge and surface reliably.” In Horace’s mind he is ecstatic.  He is sweating and his hands tremble a little.  “Stage two is to find a target.”  He sees concern in his friend’s eyes.