“Come up to seventy-five feet now. They can’t hear.”
The motors whined again and the sub tilted up slightly. Everyone watched the depth hand move to seventy-five and stay there. The sound man continued to report propellers overhead. March figured that they must be getting near the center of the convoy.
“Say, here’s something!” the sound man exclaimed. There was complete silence as he listened more intently. “That’s a carrier or I’m a monkey!”
“This is our spot!” March said quietly. Then he spoke over the phone to the entire ship. “We’ve found our spot. Right by a carrier.”
There were a few cries of pleasure, but most of the men were too excited to shout. March gave the order to bring the boat up to periscope depth, standing by the shaft ready to grab it.
As the ship leveled off he cried, “Up ’scope” and the big shaft slid upward. March grabbed the handles and had his eyes in place in a fraction of a second. All the others watched him intently. He swung the ’scope a little to the left, then to the right. His voice came sharply then, giving the target setting for the forward tubes—all six of them. The men knew that was for the carrier.
Then March swung the ’scope clear around a hundred and eighty degrees and focused. “Troopship!” he called, and then gave the target setting to be relayed to the after torpedo room.
“Down ’scope!” he called. “Stand by to fire!”
The shaft slid down. Everyone in the boat knew that the periscope might have been seen even in those few seconds it was up, even though most lookouts on the convoy were keeping their eyes chiefly on the seas beyond the group of ships. The sound man would know if a destroyer came racing toward them. But March was not going to wait.
“Fire one!” McFee pressed the button that fired number one torpedo.