The Iceman by P. T. Deutermann

Author:P. T. Deutermann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

EIGHTEEN

Malachi, the exec, and the COB were in the conning tower along with the OOD, the navigator, and one plotter.

“So that’s Truk,” the exec said as he peered through the periscope. “Happy new year, Truk. Although you don’t look like much.”

“We’re on the other side of the lagoon from the main naval anchorage,” Malachi said. “Even so, I don’t much like being here. Down scope.”

“From the intel briefs I understood this was the Jap fleet’s main base,” the exec said. “Ought to be some useful targets.”

“Not our mission, apparently,” Malachi said, handing the exec the single piece of paper that had comprised their sealed, secret orders, which were to be opened upon arrival in the assigned patrol area. The exec read them, and then shook his head.

“Report, but not attack?”

“Not unless it’s a truly valuable target,” Malachi said. “Think carrier or battleship. It seems there’s some big operation coming down in the Solomons, so our job is to report any major force movements out of Truk. They don’t want us to reveal our presence, which also might explain the light torpedo load.”

The boat had left Perth with only ten torpedoes, one for each tube. It was obviously a strictly defensive loadout. The tender torpedo office had told them that the shortage was even worse than it had been, and that that was all they could have. That was one explanation, but, before he’d opened the orders, Malachi had wondered if the admiral was sending him a message: Don’t want to use the torpedoes the way I want you to use them? We’ll give ’em to someone who plays by the rules.

“Make your depth two five zero, and come to course two seven zero,” Malachi ordered. “There are three passages out of this lagoon. One’s too shallow for big ships, so our job is to watch the other two. If we see something significant, we wait until nightfall, surface and run fifty miles away from the lagoon, and then, and only then, send out the message. Apparently the Jap HF direction-finding net is improving.”

“Just like their radar detection equipment,” the exec said, remembering the pasting they’d taken off Surabaya. That news had hit the SubPac community hard and, inevitably, prompting some Doubting Thomases back at headquarters to question Malachi’s theory.

The COB had come up to the conning tower to get a periscope look at Truk Lagoon just before the exec. “I still don’t understand how us using our radar told the Japs right where we were,” he said. “All they’d get was one bearing; how’d they know how far out we were?”

“By using more than one listening device,” Malachi said. “Remember, a radar sends out a pulse of energy. If the pulse hits something, it reflects some of that energy back to the radar receiver. But since the rest of the pulse keeps going, your signal can be detected miles and miles farther out than your receiver’s range. They can’t know how far away that signal originated, but if you put

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.