Chapter 11 chapter Ten

Byron had never heard the sound of a depth charge exploding underwater: nor had anyone else on the Squid. There was only a bang, earth-shattering and deafening, like a sledgehammer hitting a giant bell, shaking the entire submarine.The tossing in the control room was like an earthquake, making people's internal organs uneasy; amidst the thunderous thunder, glass shattered, unsecured things flew around, and the lights flickered frighteningly.The level helmsman lined up to hold the steering wheel, the plotters stumbled, Sergeant Major Derringer fell to the ground, and the others hit the bulkhead.Byron felt a piercing pain in both ankles, so painful that he feared that both feet would be broken.A gauge box fell headfirst, dangling from a cable, sending blue sparks and a puff of burnt rubber smoke.The whole boat was full of shouts and chaos.

Boom! The second loud sound of metal impact knocked out the lights, and the deck was shaken up with the bow of the boat.In the dark, I saw blue sparks flashing non-stop, shouting in the boat, the sound drowned out the rumbling roar outside the hull, and a heavy body with arms waving slammed into Byron. Come over and smash Byron's back against the ladder leading up to the conning tower, and it hurts him so much. The hull of the submarine was upturned surprisingly, and there was a sound of cracking everywhere, and Derlinger was pressed on him like a corpse with a heater—he could still smell the smoke from this man’s mouth—the Japanese The sonar was triumphantly beeping loudly and rapidly with narrowband pings.Ping, ping, ping, ping!This time the truth seems to be the end!There was another explosion, and the shell of the tortured hull made a sharp and harsh sound.A gust of cold water rushed to Byron's face.

Except for the deadly magic weapon of torpedoes, the equipment on the "Squid" is very weak, and its actions are also very slow.Even if it floated to the surface, its speed was only half that of the destroyer above it.At the bottom, its full speed is eleven knots, and its usual amble speed is three knots.Destroyers can pin it in circles and use sonar to detect it; the depth charges rolled from the ship into the sea don't even need to hit directly, the sea water will radiate away the shock wave formed by the explosion.Thirty feet of error would have killed the Squid.It is nothing more than a boat hull connected by nine slender cylinders, a section of drainage pipe that can accommodate people.Its pressure hull is less than an inch thick.

The slowness of action can be compensated only by its only military advantage, which is surprise; and the hope of surprise has failed.Now it's a scorpion crawling in the torch beam.Its only recourse is to dive; the deeper it dives, the less chance it has of being spotted and bitten by the Echo Rangefinder.But in Lingayen Bay, this expedient measure will not work.The tested depth of a fleet submarine was four hundred and twenty feet, which was then kept secret, and the safety factor of this depth was nearly one hundred percent.As a last resort, the submarine captain could usually order a dive to six hundred feet, with some hope that the poor hull would survive the leaks pouring in at the seams.No matter how deep you dive, the heavy black fist of the sea will crush the steel hull like tinfoil.At the present time, Huban was happy to risk the Squid below the test depth; but in most parts of Lingaying Bay, the silt layer was encountered at a depth of about a hundred feet or so.

There are other risks as well.A ship on the surface naturally balances, but a submerged submarine is a waterlogged object that has not completely sunk.The sealed air in the air chamber made the sub hang in the water, a wobbly thing that was difficult to control.Through the cobweb-like pipelines, water is pumped here and diesel oil is pumped there, causing the long hull to wobble, and the hull is kept stable by stretching out the horizontal rudders that look like airplane wings.But the sub has to keep moving, or the horizontal rudders won't work. A submarine like the "Squid" will die if time stops for too long.It would sink slowly below the test depth, in this case into the silt layer, or rise to the surface and face the destroyer's five-inch guns.And underwater, no matter what speed you drive for less than three or two hours.Because there is simply no air for the internal combustion engine to use underwater.Since there is only so much stored air on board that is available to the crew on each dive, there is only so much stored power available to apply.It would then either have to stop and stay on the bottom, or rise to the surface to replenish the air needed to burn the fuel so it could start again.

Submarines are on the surface ready for submersion.The internal combustion engine not only propels the submarine forward, but also charges two huge banks of batteries.Once submerged, the Squid is powered by these batteries.The faster it goes underwater, the faster the battery drains.At three or four knots, it can stay underwater for about twenty-four hours.With an emergency escape at ten knots, it would be over in an hour.When it is really desperate, the captain can let the submarine hide at the bottom of the water during the time when the crew on board runs out of air, and try to find a way to soak mushrooms with the destroyer.The time limit for lurking underwater is from forty-eight to seventy-two hours. After this time, the submarine has only two options: if you don’t want to suffocate underwater, you have to surface and be bombarded by destroyers.

The lights flickered.Byron wiped the seawater off his face - it had seeped in through a seam somewhere from the depth charge explosion, but thankfully the seam hadn't burst open!The sergeant major propped himself up from Byron, muttering apology, but the second lieutenant Byron was so deaf that he couldn't hear, as if he was stuffed with a ball of cotton, he could only hear Esther yelling loudly. "Captain, we're going to be in trouble at this depth. We're getting beaten. Why don't you go up to fifty feet and give him a 'spray'?" The captain yelled through the mouthpiece: "Branney, up to fifty feet! Fifty feet! Call back!"

"Fifty feet! Yes, sir!" The level helmsman stabilizes the hull and prepares to ascend.Although both of them turned livid and looked back at Byron with round eyes, their reactions were calm and skilled. The "Squid" ascended through the turbulence formed by the depth charges, made a sharp turn, and made a "spray wave" to make the turbulence even more turbulent to interfere with the echo ranging.The sailors clung to whatever was at hand, and Byron clasped the ladder with his crutches, and on the depth gauge he saw that the powerhouse must still be generating electricity.Because according to the angle and speed of ascent, the speed can reach as much as ten knots per hour.Four more explosions sounded, shaking the deck; the sound was frightening, but far away.This time there was no damage in the control room, only the sailors staggered and staggered, and the shattered objects fell on Byron's face.

"Captain, maintain level sailing at a depth of fifty feet!" "Excellent. Is everything all right down here?" "Looks all right, sir." Dellinger was tugging on the sparking broken cable.The other sailors swayed and cursed as they picked up instruments and rubbish that had fallen on the deck. There were a few more rumbles of bombs underwater, each sound getting louder and farther away.As the pulse signal of the Japanese destroyer is switched to broadband: Ping——!Ping -!Byron's heart was pounding!Back then, during the drills at Pearl Harbor, when the search ships wailed and admitted that the clues were interrupted, they had to resume routine searches, and that was the moment when the submarine won.And the low Doppler echoes—increasingly low in pitch—indicated that the destroyer had turned away from the Squid.

Byron couldn't help feeling a burst of joy all over his body, as strong as the fear just now. This was a warm current of comfort all over his body.They finally escaped, and he was in a tried and tested submarine! The "Squid" managed to survive a depth charge attack!It suffered enough, but finally got rid of the relentless enemy ships.Everything he'd ever read about submarine warfare was eclipsed to mere dry words.Drills in peacetime seem to have become child's play.No one can describe what a depth charge attack is like, you must have experienced it yourself.The air raids he experienced in Warsaw and Cavite paled in comparison.This is the real sword and gun. The terrifying grin of the god of death is a terrible test for any fighter.Byron.Hearing the low-Doppler echo and the wide-band pulse signal from the destroyer next to Henry's ears, he couldn't help but feel joyful and relaxed.These thoughts ran through my mind.

The situation calmed down.The plotting team was again surrounded by the automatic dead reckoning tracer.Esther and Captain Huban came down from the conning tower to watch the plotting paper.The trajectory on the plot immediately connected the two routes; the destroyer headed straight for the beachhead in Lingayin Bay, and the "Squid?" was heading in the opposite direction. Esther breathed a sigh of relief, grinning and said, "I guess the enemy thought we still wanted to drive to the landing area." "I don't know how the enemy guesses, but it's a wonderful point!" Huban turned to Byron again, "Well, go to the cabins, Blaney, and let me know all about- Injuries." "Yes, sir." "Talk to the crew again. See how they're doing. We heard someone in the aft torpedo bay screaming for water. Maybe a valve came loose for a while." The captain speaks in a calm and composed tone, and looks very natural everywhere, but there is always something strange about him.Could it be that he shaved off his beard?No, not this one.It was his eyes, Byron figured, that were strange; they seemed larger and brighter, despite the two dark circles that seemed to be formed by fatigue.The brown eyes on Huban's face were the brightest now, quick-witted, bright-eyed, and concerned.The leader can appreciate the weight of his burden.Once the burden is on, anyone's mind will clear up.When Byron stepped out of the cab, "Madame" Esther licked the butt of a Havana cigar wet, and frowned at him. In every stateroom there were reports of minor ailments or mechanical malfunctions, such as bunks hanging dangling, light bulbs shattered, tables overturned, water pipes clogged, and so on.However, under this blow, the "Squid" turned out to be particularly impact-resilient; that's all Byron saw.Not a single thing indispensable to combat was damaged.The situation with the crew was another matter.Some were pale with fright, some were fearless, there were all kinds of people, but the atmosphere of the whole submarine was despondent; although everyone used a lot of foul language when talking about the horror- — one of the cabins still had kitchen trousers, which stinks to the sky — and the despondency was not so much the result of the depth charges, but the missed torpedoes.They were beaten in vain.In the practice, the grades were excellent, but now it is really awkward to end up like this.The crew on board are used to sailing with the wind.Some sailors dared to whisper to Byron, blaming the captain for his slow positioning and hasty launch. Byron collected the report and returned to the officer's room. Esther and Huban were already working on a sketch attached to the battle report.The captain was drawing a schematic diagram of his attack, in orange ink the tracks of the enemy ship, in blue ink the tracks of the Squid, in red ink the tracks of the torpedoes.Hu Ban's schematic diagram has always been a model for combat teaching materials. "Damn it, Ma'am, I could see the torpedo track clearly," he said gloomily, marking with ink pen and ruler. "There's something wrong with those new magnetic detonators. For God's sake, I'll write that in my combat diary and in my combat debriefing. I don't care if I get hanged for it. I know we've got a long range, but we've got everything The calculations were absolutely accurate. The trajectory of the torpedo clearly went straight to the underwater parts of the first enemy ship and the third enemy ship. Normally, these two enemy ships should be bombed in two sections, but the torpedo did not explode at all." "Before taking over, you'd better check the plot first. We're heading to the mouth of the bay." Esther said casually to Byron. "The mouth of the bay?" The captain heard his puzzled tone, and his eyes with dark circles flickered for a moment. "That goes without saying. The entire landing area is now on alert to prevent submarine harassment, Braney. We can't do anything there. We might as well get some good deals at the mouth of the bay." "Yes, captain." Esther winks oddly over Huban's head as he ducks his head to draw.The implication was clear, but Byron didn't think it was right. The combat mission of the "Squid" is to prevent the Japanese from landing on the beachhead at any risk. This is the only way to prove that its 20 years of energy storage and training to prepare for war are by no means in vain.They are paid to perform particularly risky missions!Byron expected that once out of the area attacked by the enemy, Huban would sail in a detour to attack the troop carrier.This is the moment when the submarine shows its skills, and it is also the reason why the submarine was built and manned in the first place.Here's a complete submarine with twenty torpedoes still on board, Branch.Hu Ban was cautious and plausible, but gave up the original combat mission of the submarine. Although they escaped the destroyer, they did not get rid of it. On the sonar receiver of the "Squid", the wide-band pulse signal of the enemy ship was still faintly received, trembling and screaming. According to Dellinger's plot, the Japanese search plan was immediately figured out: a right-angled roundabout search, which is similar to the American anti-submarine canon.Back then, when a normal exercise was held outside Pearl Harbor, every time the submarine got rid of the chasing ship, it would send out a sonar signal, so that the destroyer would speed up and chase again; this kind of search process was really tedious and boring. Waste of time and waste of fuel.But the process in front of me was not boring at all; this time it was real, tense and terrifying, full of dangers.The enemy ships searching overhead were determined to find the "Squid" and sink her.The chances of enemy ships are still good. For, although the scorpion had escaped the beam of the torch for the moment and crawled away in the dark, it could not find a satisfactory hiding place.Huban's battery was nearly dead.The enemy ship that was chasing had just arrived from Japan, and the fuel tank was well stocked, and it was eight or nine times faster than Hu Ban's normal underwater speed.In two or three hours, the "Squid" will have an "empty battery" left, and there will be no power at all.Now it's mostly down to luck.Huban was heading straight from the point where the destroyer had lost track of them.Although Byron (and Esther obviously) didn't think he should drive directly to the mouth of the bay, that was the canon.The captain of the destroyer was searching twice in a rectangular shape, and now he was about to conduct an extended search.If he happened to hit him right on the turn, he might rediscover the invisible reptile in the submerged water.However, the sea is vast at night and the turbid waves are churning. There are thousands of roads and thousands of roads, which one is the best one to choose, because if you can't find it, you will be discouraged.Besides, he might have been ordered to carry out other tasks as well.These are all favorable factors for the problem; it is a pity that "problem" is a word used in peacetime, and it is too trivial to use this word in the face of this unknown threat. Byron was on duty in the conning tower and heard the captain and mate discussing tactics.After sunset, Esther wanted to surface.Running on internal combustion engines, they could advance at full speed, break the destroyer's search pattern, charge the batteries fully, and continue to operate underwater; perhaps even launch an attack on the chasing enemy ship.Huban flatly dismissed the idea. "Isn't that right, ma'am, is it on the surface? How can we bet on the unknown? What's the weather like up there? What if it's a clear night with no wind or waves? We may be somewhere between the moonlight and the enemy. In the middle of the ship—have you ever thought of this? A black lead target against the moonlight! In the telescope, even our periscope can be seen clearly. Is our sonar reliable? Even if it is a little bit wrong Miles, but with five-inch muzzles waiting for us, we'd better count it as two miles? Well, where are they on the chart now—seven thousand yards away?" "Seven thousand five hundred yards and increasing distance, sir, low Doppler echo." "Come on, so be it! We're three or four thousand yards away, and the lookout post can find us with binoculars. Who said the Japs can't see at night? It's a complete fart. If the destroyer sees that we've run out of batteries and floated On the surface, we're done. If we can get the distance to 12,000 to 14,000 yards now, then maybe there's some point in going to the surface. Actually, that's the thing to try. Blaney! Accelerate to seven knots." "Seven miles, sir?" "Are you deaf? Seven miles." "Seven miles. Yes, sir." This decision baffled Byron.Esther turned pale with fright. The "Squid" traveled seven knots per hour, so it could only sail for an hour underwater at most.Captain Hu Ban tried to be cautious, but it seemed that he was going to break the only remaining safety factor. The charting team reported that the Japanese destroyer was turning, and after a while, it turned again.The sonar team reported, "High Doppler echo." Now the destroyer is approaching the "Squid".When Esther and the captain figured out the latest action of the enemy ship in the command tower, they delayed for a while to consume power.Did the Japanese devils receive the occasional sonar reflection?Is it no coincidence that the enemy received the reflected wave of the fish school in the direction of the submarine?Should they change course?Huban decided to drive straight to the mouth of the bay.The sonar range gradually dropped to seven thousand yards; twenty minutes later, it was down to six thousand yards—nearly three miles.If it was dark, or rainy, Byron thought, they could still surface and escape at twenty-one knots.Why doesn't the captain take a risk, at least use the periscope to detect the weather?By the time the range dropped to four thousand yards, the chances of ascending to the surface dimmed.Right now, the entire hull began to faintly echo the pulse signal of the sonar.Byron had only a glimmer of hope, that the destroyer would have passed without a single reflection; but that was also lost when he heard Derlinger's sullen voice from below announcing that the destroyer had changed to an oncoming course. Disappeared. Esther climbed up the ladder in three steps and two steps, squinting her eyes, biting a dead gray cigar between her teeth. "Get into combat post, Blaney." "What's the matter?" "Oh, the enemy has indeed found us. The captain is about to dive to the bottom of the water." "Is that okay?" "Let's see." "See what?" "First of all, it depends on how sensitive the enemy's sonar is. Maybe they can't distinguish the reflection signal from the bottom." Byron remembered this tactic during the submarine school drills off New London.Echo ranging from underwater vessels is imprecise; irregular reflections can scatter gauge readings.He hurried down the ladder and returned to the officer's post in charge of the submarine's dive. He saw the captain Huban staring intently at the chart, on which the arc track of the destroyer drawn in pencil was moving towards The course of the "Squid". "Fill the negative tank! Sonar dome retracted!" Lake Ban rushed to the steps, raised his head and yelled at the hatch." 'Ma'am, report the echo sounder reading to me, send a message to all personnel, hold on Post, ready to dive to the bottom.Full right rudder! " The sub dived at a half-stall, slowed, and turned around.Byron sailed level at depths below the echosounder reading.After a while, there was a violent jolt, and then another, and the "Squid" wobbled and creaked and landed on the mud layer; judging from the depth gauge, it was exactly on the reading of the echo sounder— — Eighty-seven feet. Inside the Squid there was silence, dead silence waiting; outside there were loud broadband pings and the sound of the propellers.On the automatic dead reckoning tracer, the destroyer's track was getting closer and closer to the stationary bright spot.The propeller tightened like a sound.Dellinger was not using sonar for range finding now, because the opponent was too close; he was marking the destroyer's track by ear and judgment.Just when Byron was almost breathless, the pencil line crossed the bright spot and slowly moved away.The tone of the wide-band pulse signal suddenly dropped and turned into a low-Doppler echo, which proved that the plot drawn by Dellinger based on guesswork was not bad at all.Everyone in the control room heard the sound. Young sailors, young officers, and old sergeant majors all looked at each other and looked around with faint hope. Byron thought to himself, how thoroughly a submariner relies on the captain, and how important it is to trust him!Although he once hated Huban, he never doubted Huban's ability; in fact, he was only dissatisfied with Huban's domineering.Panic was now gnawing at Byron's soul like a rat.Was it not his fate, after all, to be caught in the palms of trembling hands, a hundred feet below the sea, in a long, vulnerable steel pipe, while ships on the surface blasted him to drown him? ?The black water clung to the thin hull under its powerful pressure; one crack, one valve burst, and his life would be taken away by the rushing water.He would never see Natalie again, not even a glimpse of his own baby.He will rot on the bottom of the bay of Ringha, and fish will swim among his bones. What the submarine officers and soldiers suppressed in their hearts but couldn't completely forget for a moment was this critical situation underwater, and now this consciousness was relentlessly clutching Byron.Henry.Just before he reported to the military headquarters building, he was still braving the scorching sun, squatting on a box of mines behind a truck along the boulevard in Manila, bumping all the way, chatting and laughing with his logistics team partners all the way He drank his beer all the time, and it was less than forty-eight hours ago.Who knows now—Dellinger said in a hoarse voice: "Mr. Henry, I see the enemy has turned around again." The pulse signal from outside becomes narrow-band again. Then a sudden terror seized Byron's mind. This time the submarine was caught; motionless and almost exhausted, it was captured alive at the bottom of the sea; The terror is like a dream, but none of this is a dream.The doom of being buried in the bottom of the sea is imminent, and the god of death is screaming louder and louder through the narrow-band pulse signal with ulterior motives and triumph: "Catch it! Catch it! Catch it!" The faces in the control room were all ~frightened-totally terrified.Sergeant Sergeant Dellinger no longer looked at the chart, but turned his eyes up in a daze, with his thick lips parted, his chubby face looked like a Greek mask showing a panic expression; this man had five Children, two grandchildren.The sound of propellers came again and again overhead; click-da-tron!Tron!Tron!The bow level coxswain Morelli grasped the hanging cross, made the sign of the cross on his chest, and prayed in a low voice. Click!Click!Click!It was like pebbles or marbles bouncing on the hull; it turned out to be the sound of the depth charge opening the fuze at the preset depth, but Byron didn't know what it was making.He was also saying a prayer, a simple prayer, just saying, "God, let me live. God, let me live."