CHAPTER THREE

FIFTY POUNDS OF PRESSURE

Things really did start the next day for March! In the morning he had a physical examination that made all his previous examinations look like quick once-overs. Eyes, ears, lungs, heart, stomach—they went over March’s body so thoroughly that he felt not a microbe, not a blood cell, had escaped their detection. But he knew, without waiting for the report, that he had no difficulty in meeting all the requirements.

In the afternoon there was the official call on the Commandant, which was not the stiff and formal ceremony such Naval customs often are, but an interesting and heart-warming experience. The “Old Man” really took the time to talk informally and in very friendly fashion with the new officers who came to the school.

March met the new officers who were just beginning their work at the school with him, got his schedule of duties for the next few days, and managed to work in a letter to his mother in the evening.

The next day, when March learned that he had passed his physical examination with flying colors, he also learned that one of the doctors examining him had been a psychiatrist.

“That’s the smartest thing yet!” he muttered to Ensign Bigelow, another new officer-student who had just come from a teaching assignment at one of the Navy’s technical schools. “Usually the psychological examination is separate. You know you’re going to be questioned by a psychiatrist who will ask you all sorts of strange questions about how you get along with girls and what you thought of your fifth-grade teacher, and—”

“And what your dreams are like,” added Bigelow.

“Sure, and you’re self conscious,” March went on. “A smart doctor probably sees through that and gets the real dope as to what makes your personality tick, but it has always struck me as a sort of silly business.”

“Same here,” Bigelow agreed. “Even though I know those Navy psychiatrists have been right about ninety-nine percent of the time.”

“But this was wonderful!” March exclaimed. “I just thought those three docs were all looking at blood pressure and listening to my heart and such things. Sure, one of them was especially friendly and talked to me a lot, but that was just natural. And, come to think of it, he talked a lot about what I did when I was on thePlymouth, and how I liked its Skipper, and where I’d gone to school.”

“I remember now,” Bigelow said, “that he asked me about my leave before I came here. Mentioned big drinking parties. I didn’t go in for any and said so. I thought he must be a heavy drinker from the way he talked, but he was just finding out whetherIwas or not.”

“He pulled the same line on me,” March said, “and I just thought it was making talk—you know, the way a dentist does before he does something that hurts, to take your mind off what’s happening.”

“Well, that won’t be the end of the psychological tests,” Bigelow said. “I understand that a psychiatrist is always there when we make our first dives, and he’s just happening to be around in the escape-tower tests. He’s keeping an eye on us all the time.”

“Some people might not like that idea,” March said. “I suppose they wouldn’t like the idea of having somebody looking them over to spot their bad reactions to everything that goes on.”

“Like a guilty conscience,” Bigelow added.

“Always on hand,” March grinned. “But I don’t think it’s a bad idea. After all, it’s for our own protection. They’ve got to try to weed out the guys who will crack at the wrong time. And nobody thinks he will, so you can’t find it out just by asking. If I’m that kind, then you don’t want to find yourself out in the Pacific undergoing a depth-charge attack with me alongside you, suddenly going nuts inside a very small submarine.”

“I should say not,” Bigelow said. “And it’s nothing especially against a fellow if he can’t stand this particular kind of strain that he gets in a sub. Maybe he’s got a kind of claustrophobia—fear of being shut up in small places—without knowing it. Maybe he’d make a swell aviator or bombardier or the bravest PT-boat Skipper in the world! It’s just that submarining takes certain qualities, that’s all. You’ve either got ’em or you haven’t.”

“And those docs find it out before you go out,” March agreed.

March spent the evening with Bigelow and began to like the red-headed young man more as he got to know him better. Stan Bigelow was a chunky, broad-shouldered fellow who looked so hard that a tank could not bowl him over. A broken nose, covered with freckles, added greatly to his appearance of toughness, even though it had come, as he told March, from nothing more pugilistic than a fall out of a tree when he was sixteen years old.

“Landed just wrong on a pile of rocks,” he said. “Didn’t hurt a thing but my nose. I was at a summer camp and the doc there didn’t fix it up right. By the time somebody tried to put it back into a decent shape the bones had set too well.”

Despite Stan’s look of a waterfront bruiser, he was really a serious-minded student. He had graduated from one of the country’s top-flight engineering schools just before going into the Navy, and then hadattended one of the Navy’s technical schools. Diesel engines were his specialty and he felt sure that this knowledge would quickly get him into submarine work where he wanted to be. But his work at the technical school had been so brilliant that they kept him on as an instructor despite his pleas for transfer to New London. Finally, after a year of teaching, he had been recommended for submarines by an understanding commanding officer.

“So here I am,” he concluded. “And right now I’m scared to death that it won’t make any difference how much I want to be a submariner or how much I know about Diesels. If I get jittery in the pressure tank tomorrow—out I’ll go!”

“You don’t even need to get jittery,” March laughed. “How do you know whether you can stand pressure or not? Even in perfect physical shape, some people just can’t, that’s all. I don’t mean because they’re nervous. Maybe their noses bleed or their ears won’t make the right adjustment or something.”

“Well—we won’t know until we try it!” Stan exclaimed. “I’m just going to keep my fingers crossed.”

After breakfast the next morning March and Stan Bigelow, along with the other new officer-students, reported to the little building at the base of the tall escape tower. They were joined by the new class of enlisted men who were to undergo the same tests. During preliminary training, there was no differencebetween officers and men in the examinations and work they had to undergo. Only later, when actual classes of study began, did they separate—for the enlisted men to learn their particular trades in reference to submarines and for the officers to get the highly technical studies and executive training they must have.

March saw Scott, the radio petty officer, and the others who had ridden to the sub base on the same bus with him. He called a friendly hello to them as they all stood waiting for the Chief Petty Officer in charge to call the roll.

After roll was called all the students were instructed to strip to the swimming trunks they had been instructed to wear, eyeing the pressure chamber suspiciously all the time.

“Looks like something to shut somebody up in if you never wanted him to get out,” Stan Bigelow said, nodding at the huge gray-painted cylinder with its tiny portholes and small hatch-like door.

“Anyway, we can look out,” March said, “even if the portholes are tiny.”

“I wonder if that psychiatrist will be peeking in one of those deadlights at us,” Stan mused, “making notes about every flicker of an eyelash.”

But then the grizzled old Chief Petty Officer opened the small door to the chamber and ordered the new men inside. Stooping as he stepped in, Marchsaw that the sides of the chamber had long benches, about twenty feet long, on which the men were to sit. The compartment was brightly lighted, and March noticed a fan in one corner.

“I guess it gets a little warm,” he told himself, “with so many people in a small closed space like this.”

Stan Bigelow sat beside him on the bench, and the other students filed in after them. March saw that Scott, the radioman, sitting opposite him, looked a little frightened, and he wondered if he appeared the same to the others.

“Funny how this gets you,” Stan said in a low voice. “There’s not a thing to be afraid of, of course.”

“No, the most that can happen is that your nose will bleed or some small thing like that will show you can’t stand pressure,” March agreed. “But some of the older guys around here have had a lot of fun, particularly with the enlisted men, building up some fancy pictures of what the pressure tank and escape tower are like. They say you get weird sensations in your head, feel flutters in your heart.”

“Oh—just a little bit of subtle freshman hazing,” Stan laughed. “Well, I think the reason I’m nervous is that I don’t want anything to happen to toss me out of submarines.”

They looked toward the door of the compartment as the Chief Petty Officer stepped inside and tossed a bunch of robes on the seat near the door.

They Filed into the Pressure Chamber

“Wonder why the robes?” March muttered. “If anything, it’s going to be too hot in here—that’s why there’s a fan.”

“Maybe this is a combination test,” Stan said with a grin. “They want to see if we can stand pressure—and heat.”

The CPO closed and fastened securely the door, and they all heard someone on the outside testing it to be certain it was tightly shut.

“You’re goin’ to be out of here pretty fast,” the officer said to the students, “so don’t fret. We get fifty pounds of pressure in here, that’s all.”

His tone was casual and reassuring, but none of the men sat back in relaxed positions, even though they tried to appear completely at ease and even unconcerned. They almost jumped when the CPO banged his fist lustily against the end of the chamber as a signal to the man handling the valves outside.

They jumped again as a hissing sound filled the small compartment. The air was pouring in, and the men sat listening to it in silence. March saw that the Chief had his eyes on a dial at the end of the chamber and he looked there, too. Stan noted the direction of his glance, and in another moment every student was staring at the hand that moved up slowly to indicate one pound of pressure, then two pounds, then three pounds....

The CPO banged on the side of the chamber again. The hissing stopped. Everyone looked up in surprise, wondering if there was something wrong. March glanced around quickly. Was one of the students too jittery? Had a nosebleed started already? But everyone looked all right, except for an expression of worry.

“There’s only three pounds pressure now,” the Chief said. “Even fifty’s not really a lot, but three’s almost nothing. Still, just to give you an idea that air pressure is real pressure and not just something like a billowy cloud, I thought I’d tell you that we couldn’t possibly open that hatch now. You see—when I say three pounds of pressure, that means per square inch. There’s about a ton and a half of pressure on that door right now. Figure out how much there is onyou.”

With another bang the hissing of the inrushing air began once more and the hand on the dial began to creep around again, passing the figure five, then the figure ten, then fifteen. March began to feel uncomfortably warm, and then he saw that most of the other men were beginning to sweat. Stan leaned over and put his lips close to March’s ear so that he could be heard over the sound of the air.

“Air under pressure gets hot,” Stan said. “Remember your physics? It’s the whole basis of a Diesel engine, incidentally, but the pressure is considerably greater. The temperature in a cylinder gets up to about a thousand degrees.”

“Around a hundred in here now, I’d say,” March replied in a loud whisper, and Stan nodded in agreement. Then he swallowed with some difficulty, and smiled in some surprise afterward.

“My ears popped when I swallowed;” he said. “Feels better.”

“That’s right,” boomed the CPO, who had apparently noticed what Stan did. “Everybody try swallowing a few times if your ears feel funny.”

March swallowed and then almost laughed as he saw the two rows of students earnestly swallowing. Then he realized he had not looked at the pressure dial for some time. He was startled to see it at thirty-five pounds. It was a good deal hotter now and everyone was sweating profusely. March looked around at the others carefully, forgetting his concern about himself in his interest in the others.

There seemed to be less tension now than at the very beginning. A few of the men talked to each other, comparing their reactions, laughing at the way their ears popped, expressing surprise at the increasing heat. Suddenly there was another banging on the wall of the chamber, and the hissing stopped. Everyone’s eyes went to the pressure dial, and saw the hand standing at fifty pounds.

So this was it! Well, it wasn’t so bad. March felt that way himself and saw the same feeling spreading to all the others, who smiled slightly as they knew they had withstood the pressure test successfully.

“So far, anyway,” March told himself. “Some things happen occasionally, I guess, when the pressure is reduced.”

Already the hand on the dial was moving downward again, as the air was released from the chamber by a man handling the valves on the outside. March began to feel cooler, and in a few minutes he shivered suddenly.

“Better put on the robes,” the Chief said, tossing the robes to the men on the benches. “The temperature was up to a hundred and thirty for a while there, and it drops just as fast as the pressure drops.”

“Feels good!” Stan said, as he slipped into the robe.

“Sure, but I’d like a couple of blankets, too,” March replied, feeling his teeth begin to chatter.

They heard another pound on the wall and saw that the dial hand stood at ten pounds of pressure inside.

“We’ve got to stop it here for a while,” the CPO explained. “There’s a regular rate at which a man’s got to come out of pressure to keep from getting the bends. You probably know something about the bends—every sailor does—but here’s the idea. Your blood’s under pressure in the arteries and veins, too, just like the rest of you, and there’s oxygen and other things carried in that blood. When pressure is reduced too much too suddenly, some of the gases in your blood form bubbles—just like a kettle boiling. And those bubbles in your blood can cause plenty of trouble.”

Stan turned to March. “Sure,” he said. “Remember those experiments everybody has in first-year chemistry? Making water boil when you put it on a cake of ice? The water’s under pressure in a closed container, and cooling it condenses the steam vapor so that pressure is reduced. So the air forms bubbles which escape when pressure goes down.”

“I remember,” March said. “They’ve got the bends licked now, though, since they know just how fast to reduce pressure.”

More air was let out until the dial showed five pounds of pressure for a while, and then it was reduced to zero. The door was swung open by the Chief and the men stepped out of the chamber with smiles on their faces.

“One test passed,” March said. “What’s next?”

“The escape tower,” Stan replied. “Tomorrow.”

UNDERWATER ESCAPE

When March returned to his quarters that afternoon he found a letter from Scoot Bailey waiting for him. It was full of excitement and enthusiasm, and it filled March with a good deal of envy.

“I’ve flown already!” Scoot wrote. “I didn’t think we’d get around to it for quite a while, but I got up the third day I was here. Of course, I didn’t handle the plane, really, but I just held my hand lightly on the stick while the instructor took me through a few simple turns and climbs. Just to give me the feel of it, he said, and so I’d know I really came here to fly, not just to study in classes.”

March shook his head. “And to think that I’ve hardly seen a submarine!” he muttered to himself. “And I surely haven’t been inside one. But Scoot’s already been up in a plane! It just goes to show,” he told himself, “that submarines are tougher than planes. Just think of the tests we’ve got to go through before they can even let us take a ride in a sub. With a flier all he’s got to do is pass a physical test!”

“And speaking of classes,” Scoot’s letter went on, “they are really tough! Remember back in college we used to think we had to study fairly hard? Boy, we just had a picnic in those days! We’d look on that kind of business as a hilarious vacation down here.”

March felt worse than ever. “I’m just wasting time!” he complained to himself. “Not even a class yet, and Scoot’s studying already!”

He finished Scoot’s letter quickly, learning that he had made a few good friends already, that he felt fine, that he loved flying. Then March sat down and wrote Scoot a long letter.

“I’ll tell him about the pressure chamber,” March said. “I’ll show the lad that we’re doing plenty here that he never even dreamed of. And I’ll tell him about the escape tower we’re going to have a try at tomorrow. That ought to show him that he’s picked just an easy branch of the service.”

So March wrote, and he told Scoot plenty. He made the test in the pressure chamber sound much more harrowing than it had actually been, even inventing one man who passed out, bleeding profusely, in the middle of the test.

Then he felt better, and went down to dinner feeling once more that he was in the cream of the Navy. As he walked down the hill he heard the drone of an airplane motor overhead.

“Simple,” he said to himself. “See how easy it is? Just push a stick this way or that, just push a couple of pedals, and keep your eyes on a couple of dozen instruments. Why, in a sub we’ve got more instruments and dials than in twenty-five bombing planes!”

When he sat down next to Stan Bigelow, it was even better, for Stan agreed with him completely about the super-importance of the submarine service, thinking up a few additional reasons for its superiority over Naval Aviation that had not occurred to March. Then they began discussing the escape tower test the next day.

“Do you know much about this Momsen Lung they use?” Stan asked. “I saw some today when we took the pressure test, but I don’t know the details of how they work.”

“Yes, I read all about them a few years ago,” March answered. “They were invented by an Annapolis man—then Lieutenant Charles Momsen—not much more than ten years ago. And you know, Stan, that guy conducted every single experiment himself—wouldn’t let anybody else take the chance.”

“Boy, he should have got a medal for that!” Stan exclaimed.

“He did! Distinguished Service Medal,” March said. “And the Lung is one of the biggest things ever invented to make subs safer. Simple—really, like most good things. The good thing about it is that there’s no connection at all with the outside. Most such devices had a valve system for letting the exhaled air out into the water. But the valves jammed shut—or open—too often. There’s nothing like that to go wrong in the Momsen Lung.”

“How does it get rid of the carbon dioxide that you breathe out?” Stan asked.

“There’s a can of CO(2) absorbent inside it, that’s all,” March explained. “Of course, in time it wouldn’t absorb any more, but how long are you ever going to use a Momsen Lung at one stretch, anyway?”

“Ten or fifteen minutes, I suppose,” Stan replied.

“Sure,” March agreed. “And the can of absorbent can take care of your carbon dioxide for a lot longer than that. And the rest of it is really just as simple. It’s an airtight bag that straps over your chest. There’s a mouthpiece you clamp between your teeth for breath, and a nose clip to close your nose so you won’t breathe through it. When the bag’s filled with oxygen—there you are!”

“Wonderful!” Stan said. “But doesn’t that bag of oxygen, plus your own tendency to float, send you shooting up to the surface in a hurry?”

“It would if you let it,” March replied. “That’s why there always has to be a line or cable up to the surface, so you can hold on to it and keep yourself from ascending too quickly.”

“And get the bends,” Stan concluded. “If anything, I know I’ll go more slowly than they tell me.”

The next morning they had a chance to look more closely at the Momsen Lungs before they put them on, with the instructor explaining their workings andshowing the students how to adjust them. March did not see Scott, the radioman, among the group, although all the others were the same that had gone through the pressure test the day before. He spoke to the young pharmacist, asking about Scott.

“Got a cold,” was the reply. “Just a little nose cold, but they wouldn’t let him do the escape test with it.”

“Too bad,” March said. “But he’ll be able to catch up with the rest of us soon.”

The Chief Petty Officer in charge was explaining the test to the men, as they got into their swimming trunks.

“First we’ll have twenty pounds of pressure in the chamber,” he said, “just to be sure noses and ears are in good shape before going into the water. And then you’ve got a long climb ahead of you. You see, the bottom of this tower is a hundred feet from the surface at the top. You won’t be taking the hundred-foot escape for quite a while yet. Today we go up to the eighteen-foot level.”

March thought that ought to be simple. He had been almost that far beneath the water sometimes when he went in swimming. But then he remembered that this test was to teach the men the proper use of the Momsen Lung, the rate of climb up the cable to the surface. It wasn’t the pressure at eighteen feet that would bother anyone, unless it was somebody who had some deep fear of being under water.

“Such a person wouldn’t very well select the submarine service, though,” he said to himself. “Of course some people have these fears without knowing it. Nothing has ever happened to bring it out, that’s all.”

The time in the pressure chamber seemed like nothing after their fifty-pound session of the day before, and soon the students found themselves ascending to the eighteen-foot level of the tower.

“Up at the top,” the Chief was saying, “there are plenty of men ready to take care of you. Nothing much is likely to go wrong with such a short escape, but we don’t leave anything to chance. So if you get tangled in the cable or decide to go down instead of up, or anything like that, there’s a few mighty good swimmers to do the rescue act. There’s one thing to remember—we send you men up one after the other, pretty fast, just the way you’d be doin’ it if you were getting out of a sub lyin’ on the bottom of the ocean. So get away from the cable buoy fast, and without kickin’ your legs all over the place. You’re likely to kick the next one in the head, especially if he has come up a little too fast.”

“How fast are we supposed to go, Chief?” one of the men asked.

“About a foot per second,” the officer replied. “You hold yourself parallel with the cable, body away from it a little bit, and let yourself up hand over hand. Youcan put your hands about a foot above each other, and count off the seconds to yourself. We’ll be timing you at both ends, so you’ll find out afterwards whether you went too fast or too slow. Then you’ll catch on to the rate all right.”

March was among the first men who stepped into the bell at the eighteen-foot level. The water of the tower came up to his hips and was kept from going higher in the little compartment by the pressure of the air forced into the top of the bell-shaped room. He saw a round metal pipe shaped like a very large chimney extending down into the water.

“That skirt goes down a little below the water level in here on the platform,” the Chief said. “When you go up, you fasten on your Lung, duck under the skirt, and go straight up. First, I’m going to check to be sure that the cable’s set okay.”

March and the others watched closely as the Chief adjusted his nose clips and mouthpiece deftly, turned the valve opening the oxygen into the mouthpiece, and ducked under. In a moment he reappeared and removed the Lung.

“All set,” he said. “Okay, you—” he pointed to the young pharmacist, “you go first. Your Lung’s filled with oxygen, plenty of it. There’s the carbon dioxide absorbent in there to take up everything you breathe out. Remember to go up hand over hand, about a foot per second. And don’t be surprised if a coupleof guys go floatin’ past you in the water on your way up. There’re other instructors swimmin’ around up there and once in a while one of ’em swims down to see how you’re makin’ out. All set?”

“Yes, Chief,” the pharmacist answered. March thought he looked completely calm, though he felt himself growing excited at even this short escape.

“Okay, mouthpiece in place,” the Chief said, making sure that the student did it correctly. “Now, nose clips on—that’s right. Finally, open the valve so you can get the oxygen. Okay?”

The pharmacist nodded that he was all right. “On your way, then, my lad,” the Chief said. “Duck under.”

March watched the young man duck under the water and disappear as he went under the metal skirt. Then he saw the Chief go under, too, right behind him. Up above, he knew, the instructors would see a tug on the yellow buoy fastened to the cable, and would begin their timing of the first ascent. One of them would dive down and have a look at the student coming up, would make him pull away if he were hugging the cable too closely, speed him up or slow him down if necessary, with a gesture and a pat on the shoulder.

Suddenly the Chief reappeared.

Hand Over Hand He Ascended

“Okay, you,” he said, pointing to March. As he put the mouthpiece in place, he thought how strange it was that in the tower in a pair of swimming trunks he was just plain “you” to the Chief Petty Officer, while in uniform outside he would be “sir.”

“Right now,” March thought as he adjusted the nose clips and turned the valve, “this man’s my superior and my teacher. A young officer can learn plenty from these boys who’ve had so much experience, if they give themselves a chance by forgetting for a few minutes that they’re commissioned officers.”

As the Chief patted his shoulder, March ducked under the water, found the bottom of the round metal skirt, and went under it. Looking up, he saw the long shaft of darkness made by the walls of the tower, and the filmy, cloudy circle of half-light at the surface which suddenly seemed a great distance away. His hands had already found the cable, and he held on to it as he felt the upward tug of the Lung which tried to carry him swiftly to the top.

Putting one hand about a foot above the other he began to count to himself, hoping that his counts were about a second apart. For every count he put his hand up what he judged to be another foot in distance. Then he realized that his legs were unconsciously starting to twine themselves around the cable, and he pulled them away, holding his body straight up and down a short distance away from the escape line.

“That’s funny,” he told himself. “I guess I always twined my legs around a rope when I was going down it, so I want to do the same thing going up.”

He looked up again quickly and saw legs kicking above him. That would be the pharmacist pulling away from the buoy. How much farther did he have to go? It was hard to judge the distance. He had reached a count of nine, so he should be halfway if he had been putting his hands a foot apart.

His eyes blinked at a form moving up close to him. He saw a man in trunks floating toward him in the water, waving his arms slowly. No, he wasn’t waving—he was swimming! He wore a pair of nose clips but no Momsen Lung. One of the instructors from above, March concluded.

The man motioned his arms upward urgently. Unmistakably March knew that he had been going too slowly, so he increased the tempo of his count slightly. And before he knew it, his eyes blinked in the sunlight and he felt water running down his face. He was up!

“Clips off! Valve off!” an instructor in the water beside him said.

March moved away from the buoy toward the side of the tank, where he saw other men standing on the little platform, and as he did so he removed his nose clips with one hand, shut the oxygen valve. Then he remembered that it had not felt a bit strange to breathe through his mouth instead of through his nose.

“I guess as long as your lungs get the oxygen they need, you don’t much care how it gets there.”

He felt a hand helping him as he climbed up on the little platform at the top of the tower. Standing there, he removed the mouthpiece and then took off the lung itself. As he dried himself and slipped into his robe, the man behind him broke the surface and started toward the edge.

Suddenly March felt a little dizzy. He had looked out the window and had seen how high he was from the ground. And then he smiled.

“What would Scoot think of me?” he thought, “getting dizzy even for a second only a hundred feet off the ground?”

Down below was the river, and March saw a sub making its way down toward Long Island Sound. It looked very tiny and slim.

“How did it go, sir?” asked a voice behind him. He turned and saw the pharmacist.

“All right, I guess,” March replied. “Didn’t mind it, anyway. I guess I was a little slow. They had to send a man down to hurry me up.”

“They sent one down to slow me down,” the pharmacist said, “but I came out just about right. They told me it was a better sign if you went too slow than too fast.”

“I suppose it indicates you’re not overanxious about being under water,” March said.

A familiar head broke the water of the tank and March saw Stan Bigelow moving over toward the platform. When he had got out and removed his Lung, he smiled at March.

“Nothing to it, was there?” he called. “I’d like to try the fifty-foot level right away.”

“Same here,” March said, “but I guess we wait a day or two.”

Later, when theydidmake the fifty-foot escape, they found that it went just the same as the eighteen-footer. Sure, it took fifty seconds, but the sensations were about the same. There was more pressure on the ears, but not enough to bother anyone. March was very surprised to hear that one of the enlisted men, near the end of the group, had suddenly gone panicky just before it was his turn to go.

“Had he gone through the eighteen-foot test all right?” March asked the Chief Petty Officer in charge.

“Yes—just too fast,” the man replied. “But lots of them do that at first. He must have been holding himself under control for that one, though, and the thought of the fifty was too much for him.”

“Too bad,” March said. “Will they transfer him back to his old branch of the service?”

“No—they’ve decided to give him another chance,” the Chief said. “The Doc—the psychological one—thinks it’s just a fear the guy never even knew he had. He’s goin’ to talk to him a bit to see if he canfind out what caused it. Then maybe he can get rid of it. He won’t be able to go down in a pigboat until he handles the fifty-foot escape okay, but we’ll keep him on for a while to give him another crack at it. Good man in every other way, as far as I can see.”

March learned later that the man was one of the fire controlmen who had ridden out on the bus with him.

“Gee, I hope he makes it,” Scott, the radioman, said to March when they talked it over. “He’s a swell guy. Cobden’s his name, Marty Cobden. And he’s got his heart set on bein’ a submariner, dreams about it at night even. Never had the faintest notion he was scared of anything, least of all just fifty feet of water.”

“Did he go swimming much?” March asked.

“I asked him that, too,” Scott replied. “He says he liked to swim but he didn’t like to dive. But he wasn’tscaredof it!”

Scott had got over his cold and had caught up with the rest of them, making the eighteen-foot and fifty-foot escapes without difficulty.

“Well, we’re qualified now to go to school here,” March said. “And we can even go down in a sub. But when do we take the hundred-foot escape?”

“Don’t have to,” Scott said. “But most of ’em try it, sir—some time later. They all want to see Minnie and Winnie.”

“Minnie and Winnie?” March asked. “Who are they andwhereare they?”

“They’re mermaids,” Scott said without a smile. “Beautiful mermaids. And they’re painted on the walls of the tank down at the hundred-foot level. Only one way to see ’em—and that’s to make the escape. An’ you get a diploma when you’ve done it.”

“I’ll see you there, Scott,” March said. “We’ll both have a look at Winnie and Minnie one of these days.”

FIRST DIVE

The next day classes started for March and Stan and the other new officers going through the school. Expecting the most difficult and intensive of studies, March was a little disappointed in the first day’s work.

“Just ground work, I suppose,” he said to Stan at mess that evening. “They couldn’t start throwing the whole book at us on the first day.”

“I think they did pretty well,” Stan said. “I got a big dose of the history and development of the submarine and the construction of modern pigboats. Back in college we’d have taken a week to cover what we got in this one day. But, of course, you’ve read a lot of general stuff about subs. I was so busy studying engineering in college I didn’t look at anything else.”

“Yes, Ihaveread a good deal about the underwater ships,” March said. “I always did think those first experimenters had a lot of guts. Imagine that Dutchman, Van Drebel, submerging a boat more than three hundred years ago.”

“Sure, and he stayed down two hours,” Stan agreed. “Made about two miles—with oars for power!”

“He must have been a clever guy to have those oars sticking out through leather openings sealed so tight that not a drop of water could come in,” March said. “But it was the Americans who really made submarines go.”

“Yes—isn’t there a ship named after Bushnell,” Stan asked, “the man who made that submarine during the American Revolution?”

“Sure, a submarine tender, naturally,” March replied. “Too bad his idea didn’t work better. It was a clever one.”

“I had never realized until today,” Stan said, “that Robert Fulton had anything to do with submarines. I thought inventing the steamboat was enough for any one man. But now I find out he invented pretty good submarines long before he did the steamboat. But he just couldn’t get anybody to listen to him.”

“Well, the sub really couldn’t develop into a reliable ship,” March said, “until electric motors and storage batteries came along. There were some pretty good attempts, of course, and John Holland and Simon Lake, the two Americans who really made subs that worked, turned out some fair ones driven by gasoline engines, steam engines, and compressed air.”

“And don’t forget the Diesels!” Stan laughed. “My sweethearts, the Diesels! They were the last things needed, after storage batteries and electric motors, to make subs really dependable and good.”

“I won’t forget your Diesels, Stan,” March said. “I’m going to have to learn plenty about them in the next few weeks, and I know almost nothing now. And you’ve got to learn plenty about other things, too.”

“Sure, it’ll be tough going,” Stan said. “But it’s a wonderful idea to have every officer, no matter what his specialty, able to take over almost any department on a sub if he has to.”

“Yes, if I get knocked cold just when we’re trying to slip away through some coral atolls to miss a depth-charge attack,” March asked, “won’t you be glad you really learned how to navigate?”

“Why, all Navy men know how to navigate,” Stan protested. “I know my navigation pretty well.”

“Maybe so,” March agreed, “but do you know it well enough to take a ship a few hundred miles under water without ever a chance to look at the horizon or shoot the sun or get a fix on some landmark? I know I couldn’t do it, and navigation’s been my main job so far.”

“Navigating a sub’s no bed of roses, of course,” Stan said, “but nursing my pretty Diesels is no easy task, either. When you’re workin’ on those babies, you pay attention and be good to them.”

“I’ll be good to your Diesels, all right,” March laughed. “But what I’m most anxious to learn about are all the new sound-detection devices. Pretty secret stuff, some of it, though we’ve had some of it on our surface ships.”

“I know,” Stan said. “You don’t feel so blind and lost in a sub any more, I guess. You can tell from the sound devices just how many ships are near by and even from the sound of their engines what kind they are, where they’re goin’ and how fast. But you know what I’m anxious to do—really get inside a pigboat and look around. Those cross-section charts are fine, but there’s nothing like seeing the real thing for yourself.”

“I think they’ll be taking us down for a dive within a couple of days,” March said. “Just for the ride, you know, and to see how we react. And it had better be pretty soon. That Scoot Bailey has probably been up in a plane half a dozen times at least and I haven’t seen the inside of a sub!”

The next morning they looked for an announcement that they would go down in one of the subs but there was nothing of the sort. They spent their time in the classrooms, and they began the really intensive work that March had been expecting.

“One day of preliminary stuff was enough, I guess,” he said to Stan at lunch. “They really put us to work this morning.”

The classrooms and laboratories of the officer-students were in the same building as those of the enlisted men. Officers and men alike had gone through the same preliminary tests, but now their paths separated. March saw the men regularly, ofcourse, in the halls and around the grounds. He stopped and chatted once in a while with Scott, the radioman, who struck him more and more as a pleasant and serious young man ideally suited to submarine work. He saw the pharmacist, Sallini, and also Marty Cobden, the fellow who had gone to pieces at the fifty-foot level in the escape tower. He was going at his studies like a demon, as if to make up in some way for his one failure to date.

March and Stan saw them that very afternoon again, when they reported, according to instructions, to one of the Chief Petty Officers at the sub base below the school buildings.

“Wonder what’s up?” Stan said. “Something for officers and men alike, whatever it is.”

“There’s only one thing left of that sort,” exclaimed March happily. “That’s our first pigboat ride! Come on, Stan!”

Stan noticed that there were only about a dozen enlisted men gathered together rather than the whole class.

“Why only some of them?” he wondered.

“Sub won’t hold many more, in addition to the regular crew,” March said. “And now these boys are really beginning to team up. You know how we’ve had it drilled into us already that teamwork is the most important part of submarining? Well, they’ve started to put their teams together. This bunch is adiving section—just enough men for one shift on a sub to handle everything that needs to be handled. They’ll work together all through the course, get to know each other, to work well together.”

“What if one of the men fails the course?” Stan asked. “There’s Marty Cobden, for instance. If he doesn’t manage to overcome that fear of the escape tower he’s through.”

“Then they’ll have to replace him,” March said. “But that will be just one man out of the section—or maybe two at most will not be able to make it. Well, the majority of the team is still intact. The new man can fit into a well-functioning team pretty fast.”

“Will they eventually go out on duty together?” Stan asked.

“Probably,” March replied. “When a sub gets three diving sections that have trained together, then it’s got a real crew. Of course, they usually try to put in just one new section with two old ones, men who’ve been through the ropes. The new section, already used to teamwork, fits in with the experienced men well, and learns so much from them that they’re veterans after one patrol.”

“What about us officers, though?” Stan wondered. “Maybe there’s a chance we’ll go on the same sub.”

“Maybe,” March agreed. “They may put two new officers on a sub with three or four veterans. Probably no more, though. Look, here comes the Chief!”

In a few minutes they were all walking down toward the docks where the old O-type submarines used as trainers lay bobbing gently in the waters of the Thames River. March saw that some of the crew were busy about the deck of one of the subs, to which a narrow gangplank led from the dock. As they walked, the Chief Petty Officer was talking to the students.

“When it’s in the water,” he said, “you can’t see much of a sub. The flat deck is just a superstructure built up on top of the cigar-shaped hull. You can see part of the hull itself where the superstructure sides slope down into it. But most of it’s under water, where it ought to be on a pigboat.”

March’s eyes were going over the long slim craft swiftly, not missing a detail. He saw the fins on the side at bow and stern, folded back now, but able to be extended so as to make the planes which could guide the ship up or down. He noted the looming conning tower which served as a bridge for the officers when the pigboat traveled on the surface. From there, he knew, a hatch led down into the center section of the ship. He saw, too, that the fore and aft hatches were open, one leading down into the torpedo room and another into the engine room.

“Look at the deck gun,” Stan said. “Wicked looking little thing.”

Back to Index Next