Part 9 (1/2)
One dark night she was struck amids.h.i.+ps by a 2,000-ton British sloop-of-war. In crowded quarters and steaming without lights those little collisions are bound to occur.
This one was. .h.i.t amids.h.i.+ps--bam!--and amids.h.i.+ps is a bad place for a destroyer to be hit--her big engine and boiler-room compartment lie amids.h.i.+ps.
This one of ours was. .h.i.t so hard that n.o.body aboard ever thought she would stay up. She did go down till her deck was flush with the water's edge, but there she stayed; and her crew, climbing back aboard, took a hawser from the sloop-of-war, which towed her back to port. She was a fine heartening sight coming in. If she could come back, why worry about minor mishaps?
One of them--the 343 say--had performed her duty, which was to see a small convoy to a point well on toward a large port, and was returning to the naval base.
She was in no great rush, and, it happening to be smooth water, which is a rare thing up this way at this time of the year, she stopped for a little needed gun practice.
There was no more thought than usual of U-boats. n.o.body would have been surprised if one popped up--it was a coast where they had been regularly operating--but no one was particularly expecting one.
Destroyers are bad medicine if you do not get to them quickly, and lately the U-boats seemed to care more to get merchant s.h.i.+ps; but this day the lookouts were not loafing on their job on that account.
The 343 got through with her target practice, and, except for a few gunners' mates still coddling their pet guns, the crew were taking it easy around deck; and also, because of the smooth sea, the s.h.i.+p was making easy weather of it toward port.
Seeing a periscope is oftentimes a matter of luck. When they stay up it is easy enough, but when they are porpoising, shooting it up for just a look around, you have to be looking right at one. What they first saw on the 343 was the wake of this torpedo, coming on at a forty-knot clip for the waist of the s.h.i.+p.
The commander of the 343 was on the bridge at the time and saw the wake almost with the cry of the lookout. The wake was then pretty handy to the s.h.i.+p, and the torpedo itself would be fifty feet or so ahead of the wake.
There was no getting away from it then. The only hope was to take it somewhere else than amids.h.i.+ps. Engine and boiler compartments were amids.h.i.+ps. If it struck her there they might as well call it taps for all hands. So the commander put the wheel hard over--to take it on his quarter, where there was also a chance that it would pa.s.s under her.
Torpedoes generally strike twelve to fifteen feet under water, but just before this one could make the 343 it broached--came to the surface of the water--but without slacking her forty-knot speed. It was unusual and spectacular. The sun shone on the polished sides of her as she leaped from the sea.
She struck the 343 above her water-line and pretty well aft. Those on her deck who saw her make that last leap out of water hoped for the best, though waiting for the worst. But the resulting explosion was nothing tremendous--so officers and men say, and so adding a little more data to U-boat history. The bark of one of their own little 4-inch guns was more impressive. There was a flame and an up-shooting cloud of black smoke, followed instantly by another explosion, that of their own depth charges, of which there were two of 300 pounds each in the stern. Those who had any thoughts about it at the time were sure that if the torpedo did not get them the depth charges would.
When they went to look they found that thirty-odd feet of the after end of their s.h.i.+p had been blown clean off. The torpedo had hit them on the port side, and the wreckage was hanging from the starboard quarter. Of the after gun only the base was left; they never did see any of the rest of it. The gunner's mate, one of those men who love to keep a gun in shape, was swabbing it out at the time, and they never saw anything of him again.
The chief petty officers' quarters were farthest aft on the 343. The after bulkhead to their compartment was blown in, leaving the inside of the s.h.i.+p open to sea and sun. Fourteen men were in there at the time, lounging around or in their bunks. Many of them were bruised and all were shook up, but they all made the deck. They do not know how they made it, but they did. The after hatchway to the deck was closed with tumbling wreckage, so they must have gone up the mids.h.i.+p hatch.
One man taking a nap in the cot bunk farthest aft had a part of the bulkhead blown past him. It cut off a corner of his cot and broke one of his legs, and blew him into the pa.s.sageway in pa.s.sing. Landing in the pa.s.sageway he sprained his other ankle. He is not quite sure how he made the deck without help, but he did make it, and he says he beat some of them to it at that.
The man who was working on the after gun with the gunner's mate who was blown up, saw the s.h.i.+ning torpedo leaping in the sun and heading straight for his part of the s.h.i.+p. If he did not do something he knew he was in for it, so he began to take long high leaps forward. The explosion came while he was in the air on his third long high jump. All he remembers happening to him after that was of an ocean of water flowing over him, and he not minding it at all. When he came to, the doctor was looking him over for broken bones, but did not find any.
After the doctor left him he sat up and said: ”I bet I've been as near to a torpedo exploding and getting away with it as anybody in the world, hah?” And ”Yes,” said one of his s.h.i.+pmates, ”and I bet you made a world's record for three long high jumps, without a run, too. You sure did travel, boy.”
When it was all over the two propeller shafts were still sticking out astern, one naked and s.h.i.+ning in the sun; the other also s.h.i.+ning and naked, but with a propeller still in place on it. Spotting that, the skipper ordered the engines turned. To their delight the shaft revolved, the s.h.i.+p began to move. No record-breaking pace, but--G.o.d love the builder of a good little s.h.i.+p--she was making revolutions. The wreckage hanging from her starboard quarter acted as a rudder, and so, instead of going straight ahead, she began to go round in circles.
She continued to make circles, and her officers and men stood to stations and waited for what next would happen. Destroyer people have it that there are grades of U-boat commanders--some of nerve, some only ordinary. The U-boat man with nerve enough to attack a destroyer is a good one. He will bear watching; so what they expected was to see this U-boat come up and finish the job. If she did come up and at the right place to get another torpedo in, then the 343 was in for a bad time. So they waited, some thinking one thing, and some another, but all agreeing that the odds were against them.
The U-boat did show again. They saw her conning-tower slipping through the water at about 1,500 yards. The skipper of the 343 was ready in so far as he could be ready with his poor little cripple. Crews were at gun stations, and that conning-tower had hardly got above the surface when two of the 343's guns cut loose at it. They got in four shots, the fourth one pretty handy. But no more. She submerged to the discouragement of one earnest gun-pointer. He leaned against the breech of his little 4-inch to say: ”One more and I'd 'ave got her. Bet you me next month's pay that I get her if she shows for two shots again.”
She did not show again, but her not showing did not end the 343's troubles. They could steam in circles, but it was not getting them anywhere. A few miles away was one of the roughest sh.o.r.es in the world, the kind where green seas piled up against rocky cliffs--and a tide that was already setting them toward it. A bad enough place in any kind of weather, but with wind and sea making, and this time of year!
It was about two in the afternoon they were torpedoed. By dark they were being driven by the tide and white-capped seas to the sh.o.r.e. They had one hope left. Their radio operator had managed to keep the radio gear in commission, and through all their troubles he had been sending out S O S calls, though not with too great hope that anybody would come in time. The U-boats had been pretty active thereabout, and it was not on any main sea route. There was always the chance, of course, that some war-s.h.i.+ps would be somewhere near.
For one hour, two hours, three, four, five, six hours they drifted.
Their wireless kept going out of commission, and their radio operator kept patching it up and getting it going again. S O S--he never let up with that call. It was midnight when a British mine-sweeper bore down and hailed. By then they could hear the high seas breaking on the rocks abeam. The Britisher got the word across the wind, and tried to pa.s.s a messenger--a light line, that is--across to the 343. They did not make it. They tried again and again, but no use. The 343 was then within a few hundred yards of the breakers.
The skipper of the Britisher then hailed that he would try to get a boat to them. They could hear him calling for volunteers to man the boat. He got the volunteers, and without being able to see every detail of it in the dark, the 343's people knew what was happening. They were making a lee of the trawler so as to get the boat over. But the boat was swas.h.i.+ng in and out against the side of the s.h.i.+p--up on a sea and then bang! in against the side of the s.h.i.+p. Merely as a sporting proposition, their own lives not depending on it, the 343's people would have been praying for that boat to get safely away.
The boat managed at last to get away from the side of the mine-sweeper, and in time, pitching down on the rollers, they made out to heave a line aboard the 343. And on the deck of the 343 they were right there to grab it and bend it on to a hawser. Fine. Off went the mine-sweeper after she had taken her boat aboard, tugging heartily. She tugged too heartily for the length and size of the hawser. It parted.