Ghosts of Bungo Suido Read Online Free Page A

by the wardroom, where three of the junior officers were talking excitedly about the destroyers and the skipper’s “amazing” torpedo work.
    Gar knew better. That last shot had been a Hail Mary if ever there’d been one—firing two fish on a sound bearing from depth meant that the fish had had to launch, turn, stabilize their gyros, climb, and then stabilize again at ordered depth in under a minute before colliding with the destroyer’s onrushing bow. Amazing, yes, but amazing luck, not amazing skill. He asked himself again why they hadn’t detected pinging. This news would really interest Pearl. The Japs had been slow to realize that the American submarine force was becoming a much bigger threat to Japan’s survival than the big American battle fleets. They were starting to improve their sonars, depth charges, and use of radar. Their torpedoes had always been the best in the world, unlike what the American submariners had struggled to deal with for the first two years.
    He held on to the bulkheads now as he progressed forward; the boat was encountering the deep swell that was always present in the Luzon Strait. At flank speed, she pitched up and down in what felt like slow motion. Some of the guys he walked past already looked a little queasy. Being submerged a lot of the time, submariners were often lacking in the sea legs department.
    In Forward Torpedo the sweating crew was just finishing the reload of tube one. The interior of the sub was still under red-light conditions, and the torpedomen looked like they had been slow-roasted during the previous hours. Dragonfish had sailed from Pearl with twenty-four torpedoes: fifteen steamers, seven electrics, and two Cuties, as the new homing torpedoes were called. After Torpedo carried eight fish, four in the tubes, and four reloads. The balance lived in Forward Torpedo. Gar was not a fan of the electrics, but they were the prescribed weapon for use against Jap ships that could shoot back. The merchies, on the other hand, could only watch in horror when the telltale trail of bubbles from a steamer appeared, poised to open up their engine room.
    Tonight he’d fired steamers at both tin cans, which technically was a violation of approved doctrine. The main advantage of the electrics was that they left no telltale wake to show the escorts where the submarine was lurking. Gar, however, was no slave to doctrine, especially when it was emanating from big staffs, safe back in Pearl. The second tin can had already known where they were, and the first one wouldn’t have been able to see the torpedo wake embedded in his own wake, bubbles or no bubbles. Besides, the steamers had a much bigger warhead. In any event, he was protected by the unwritten rule: Nobody in Pearl would be second-guessing his using steamers as long as the targets were on the bottom, where all Jap ships belonged. Except, he thought, the chief of staff at SubPac, Captain Mike Forrester, who was not one of Gar’s fans.
    He walked back aft through the boat, talking to the men and generally taking the crew’s emotional temperature after the fight with the destroyers. The chief of the boat joined him on his way back to After Torpedo, where they’d finished reloading. As they headed back forward toward Control, he paused in the passageway and asked Cob if his predilection for engaging destroyers was truly scaring the crew.
    “They love it when they sink a Jap ship,” Svenson said. “But there is a pretty high pucker factor when you decide to go one-on-one with a tin can.”
    “Going after them is a better tactic than just going deep and spreading our legs,” Gar said. “You go deep and just wait for it, you hand the initiative to them. You start shooting back, you raise their pucker factor and maybe throw ’em off the scent. I’ve seen escorts run for it when we shot at ’em. The best defense, and all that.”
    “Yes, sir, and I agree with you,” Cob said. “I’ve never felt so damned helpless as