“A miss, men,” he said. “Only one got through.”
“Well, what can you expect?” Scotty demanded. “After all, the position we were in!”
“Are still in!” Larry exclaimed. “Only a hundred feet! Take her to two-fifty!”
Everybody adjusted his body to the slope of the boat as it slid rapidly down in the water. In a few minutes, they knew, depth charges would be dropped in an attempt to locate them. Certainly planes would be in the air and perhaps fast small boats something like our own PT-boats would be dashing out of the harbor after them.
Larry grabbed the phone from the interphone orderly and spoke into it.
“You heard the blasts,” he said, knowing that men all over the boat would hear him. “Two into a Jap tanker. One into a troopship. Second one there was a dud. You can expect some depth charges, but I think we’ll be down away from them. Later we’ll go up for a look and I’ll tell you what we did.”
March knew that all the men appreciated that. They were tense and excited and they wanted to know exactly what was going on. Their Skipper didn’t keep them waiting long. They were part of this just as much as he was.
They leveled off at two hundred and fifty feet just as they felt the first bumping rattle of a depth charge explosion. But it was far away and hardly bothered them. In two minutes another came a little closer. Everyone gripped the nearest solid support and held on. March said to himself, “You’re going through a depth bombing. This was the one thing they couldn’t simulate at New London. Well, how do you like it?”
And he answered himself, “It’s not so bad.”
He looked around at the men in the crew. They held on and they listened, but they did not look frightened. Larry grinned at him.