“There’s nothing I’d like better,” said Evans.
“I’ll get Larabee to let you come. It won’t be hard to arrange.”
This was what Evans wanted. He proceeded to interest Fraser in the work that the radio-compass shore stations were doing in reporting the movements of enemy submarines. Fraser had not appreciated the extent to which this had become possible.
“I tell you what we’ll do,” said the Commander; “we’ll choose a time when they’ve got a hot scent of some subs coming within striking distance, and then we’ll go to it.”
Soon thereafter Evans and Fraser met more than once at Communication Headquarters and looked over the radio-compass reports together. Before long Fraser was making the same generalizations concerning the habits of the enemy at which Evans had arrived. And as in the ensuing days, they watched the reports, Evans visited the three destroyers in Fraser’s squadron and made sure that men and material were up to standard in every detail, from the radio sets to the hydrophones and the internal communications on each ship. He drilled the radio-compass operators in taking bearings on dummy signals, drilling them so hard, with ever shorter and shorter messages, that soon they could give him a fairly good bearing even on the briefest signals.
Before many days of waiting had passed, reports came in from the radio compasses at the Grand Canary, Madeira, and the station at the eastern end of Saint Michael’s, showing that two submarines were proceeding on a northwesterly course from Lisbon toward the steamer lanes of the North Atlantic. First, one had been detected communicating with her base, and then the two communicating with each other and increasing the power of their signals as their divergent courses required it. The Flag Office, which had somewhat reluctantly acceded to Commander Fraser’s request that he be allowed to hold his squadron in port in order to await such an opportunity, now issued the orders to proceed to the indicated area in search of the enemy, and granted his request that the radio gunner should go with him on his ship.
Evans contrived to visit the weather station before sailing, and received assurance of two days at least without storms or fogs. He also arranged with Communication Headquarters that if the shore stations should report another “fix” on their intended quarry, the news should be transmitted to them without delay. The message was to be repeated three times, and there would be no acknowledgment, for the squadron had better keep quiet on this hunt. At dusk he went aboard the destroyer, and as he reached the deck he heard with a thrill the roar of the great blowers voicing the impatience of the ship to spring to the full speed of her thirty thousand horse-power. His blood stirred as he recalled half-forgotten days when to the tune of the same roar the gaunt destroyer on which he lived—a mere lad then—slipped her mooring at Queenstown and stood out into the wet drizzle of the North Atlantic. “From chief radio electrician to radio gunner,” he thought—not much change in status for twenty years.
It was just after dark when the three destroyers slipped their moorings and, headed by Commander Fraser’s ship, took the opening in the net at sixteen knots. Completely darkened, they headed south till well out of sight of land, then turned east and rounded the end of Saint Michael’s far enough away to be invisible from shore. It was not forgotten in the navy that news had spread mysteriously from Queenstown to Berlin with lightning speed in an earlier generation, and there were those on shore who were not over-friendly at heart with the Americans.
The last reported “fix” of the two submarines had shown them to be proceeding approximately northwest by west at eleven knots, having left Lisbon on the morning of the previous day. As the destroyers cleared Saint Michael’s, Fraser laid his course north by east one half east, or, as they say in the navy, seventeen degrees. Up to this point they had steamed in column, but now they formed a scouting line, Fraser’s ship in the center, each wing boat six miles away bearing abeam from the flagship. The accuracy with which these ships could place themselves by dead-reckoning, using engine revolutions for distance and careful steering for direction, was such that they could shift from column to line abreast and hold their relative positions for a considerable time, dark as it was, without any direct means of checking them. But this would not suffice for the task in hand; now they must be prepared for accurate triangulation upon their victim by radio compass with their scouting line as a base; they must at all times be sure of their relative distances and bearings from each other, for on this would depend their locating of the submarine by radio bearings. Attached to staffs at the bow and stern of each ship were two strange lanterns. No visible light came from them, but each emitted horizontally a powerful beam of infra-red rays, invisible to the eye, but capable of detection with a delicate instrument. By means of this instrument observers on the bridge of each destroyer could tell just where the other destroyers were—could register both direction and distance, invisible though they were to the eye even with the most powerful glass. Thus the two wing ships kept themselves in their proper positions as the flagship steamed ahead through the night, and thus the flagship verified the positions which they kept.
All night they steamed at eighteen knots, and though they did not expect to be in the vicinity of the submarines they sought till the following night, still all hands maintained a ceaseless vigilance. The weather was fine, and the three slender ships left scarcely any wake as they slipped quietly through the water.