Evening Star Newspaper, February 9, 1930, Page 96

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, FEBRUARY 9, 1930, TSR I e e — “YOU GOTTA BE HARD IN THE NAVY!” $6 WOUDN'T mind the Navy so much,” said Seaman Tommy Sherman, “if these regulars didn’t think they have to be so hard-boiled.” Seaman Tommy sat up in his col- lapsible bunk agairst the white bulkhead of the battery room of the United States Navy’s sub- marine Y-27, swung his heels, and stared mood- ily at Seaman Billy Graves, the only other occupant of the room. “They're all the time letting on how tough they are,” complained Tommy. “My gosh, I'm beginning to think that they believe this war is going to be fought with fists instead of guns and torpedoes. If a man's a good sailor, and does his work, what difference does it make whether he's rough and ready in any kind of a free-for-all fight?” Billy Graves shook his head. “It beats me,” persisted Tommy. “Look, Billy, you and I enlisted together. We went through the training station, just like all the rest of them, and put up with the mean C. P. O.’s there, and learned about the Navy just the same as everybody else. But now that we're - here on this submarine—and overseas, in the war zone, at that—these old-time regulars look down on us. And why? “Why, because we're not hard-boiled. We don't get into a fight with the Limeys every time we go ashore, and we don't sit around and blow about the rows we've been in before. S0 these regulars think we're not real sailors.” THE compartment swayed slightly, rising and falling in a long, gentle roll as the Y-27, anchored in the harbor of a British port on the North Sea, swung to the ground swell. Tommy and Billy, fresh from the Middle Western town in which they had enlisted in the Navy in answer to the plea that the world be made safe for democracy, looked almost out of place in. the severe Spartan battery room. They were young, fresh, pink-cheeked, soft- voiced —especially Tommy. All of the other members of the crew were old-timers; men who had been in the ‘Navy - before the war, rough-handed and competent sdailors who thought the American Navy the only organization on earth to 'which a he-man could belong. They wore on their sleeves the red “hash marks” that bespoke former enlist- ments, they jammed their flat' hats over their eyes at rakish, defiant angles, they fought zest- fully”on the water front with the sailors of every other nation they encountered, especially the British, and they feared nothing om the - earth or on the sea. Tommy was repelled by all of this. He was glad to be in the war zone, but he did not care for fisticuffs. The other sailors knew it and treated him with a half-affectionate, haif- amused condescension, and Tommy, accustomed to geatler circles and more cordial treatment, resented it. He exploded at last: “These regulars are tough, all right, but I'll bet that if we ever get in a really dangerous spot—I mean in the war, not ashore in a mob fight—one of us duration-of-the-war men will be just as good a man as any regular.” He looked up to see a huge form blocking the narrow door. Before him stood Chief Electri- cian’s Mate Mike Donlin, czar of the engine room and the toughest egg aboard ship—some said the toughest in the Navy. A knife scar, received in some nameless Hongkong bar, deco- rated one leathery cheek. His nose sagged and had a list to port, having been broken times without number by many forgotten fists. His enormous hands looked natural only when clenched. . Mike looked down at Tommy with a meditaiive and not unkindly grin. “Listen, kid,” he said. “I want to tell you something. - You got the Navy all wrong, and yow’ll never get anywhere until you get it right. Youden't like the regulars because they're hard guys. All right. That's okay. You're used to something different, and I s'pose you're bound to feel that way. But listen, kid. Do you know what it is, when a guy’s hard? “It means that he just don't care what hap- pens—about himself or anything else. It means that he ain't afraid of being hurt. An’ if we ever get into a tight place—an’ we will, some day, because these bloody wagons always do, sooner or later—you’ll find that’s a good thing. You'll find it's the hard guy that comes through then. Am’ why? Just because he is hard— because he don't get rattled, and ain't afraid, and don’t give a damn. You'll see.” And “the chief” turned and stalked off. HE Y-27 was on patrol, looking over a seg- ment of the North Sea to make sure no German war vessel, submersible or otherwise, should slip to the open ocean. It was not a nice job—not any way you looked at it. In the first place, a seagoing submarine is about as uncomfortable an habi- tation as ingenious mortals have yet devised. In the second place, there are a great many little things that can go wrong on a submarine, and any one of them can be enough to bring all of the crew to death. Then, thirdly, the sea was full of American and British destroy- ers, and to a destroyer a submarine was a submarine. The destroyers always would shoot first and ask questions later, provided there was any one left to answer them. If they spotted your periscope they were apt to scoot over and drop depth bombs on you before you could come to the surface and explain, and if they saw you running on the surface they would inevitably start tossing four-inch shells at you, and if you were lucky you managed to make your identification signal before one of these shells hit you. Thus, taking one thing with another, it wasn’t a nice life. . Tommy Sherman stood at his station in the control room and meditated on these things. The Y-27 was cruising 20 feet below the sur- face. Lieut. Grifin, executive officer, was at the periscope. In front of Tommy there was an assorbment of wheels, which controlled the various water ballast tanks. It was Tommy's -, A sharp, sputtering, crackling sound came from the circuit breaker, and a bright, dazzling glow. A flame struck Donlin’s wrist with pitiless force. The Story of a Submarine That Went to the Bottom of the Ocean in War Time, and of a Chief Electrician’s Mate Who Demon- strated to a ““Green’ Sailor What It Takes to Be a Real Deep-W ater Man. By Johnl R. Williams. job to stand there and adjust these wheels as Lieut. Griffin might order. So Tommy stood motionless and in silence bewailed his fate. He did not really mind the risks of the job so much; it was the fact that there was nothing romantic or exciting about it that galled him. When he enlisted he had pictured himself, dressed in picturesque, flowing blue, standing on the deck of a snappy, four-funneled cruiser on a bright, sunlit sea, performing deeds of hefoism in the clean air, while the thrilling picture of battle spread itself before his eyes. But now—he thought, bitterly—even if they encountered a German battleship, he would see nothing; he would simply stand there and twirl his wheels as the officer directed, and he would be as ignorant of what was happening as if he were back at home. It would even be possible for him to take part in the greatest naval battle in history without getting so much as one peep at . He shook his headtr The Navy wasn't what he had supposed it. It didn't seem to care that he was on fire with youthful patriotism; instead it sneered at him because his voice and hands and skin were all soft. Why, oh why, had he ever enlisted in the Navy? And why, having enlisted, had he volunteered for submarine service? EANWHILE, Lieut. Griffin decided that it was time to blow the adjusting tank, This was a small affair used to compensate for the loss of buoyancy caused by the ir- evitable seepage of sea water into a submarine that is running submerged. They had been below the surface now for an hour; it was time to empty the tank, or the ship would begin to slip down below periscope depth. “Blow the adjusting tank!” barked the lieu- tenant in his customary abrupt manner. His voice broke in rudely on Tommy's day dreams, and Tommy, coming back to reality with a jerk, misunderstood it. In his ears the words sounded like “Open the auxiliary tank”—an order which would cause the submarine to admit sea water to its largest variable tank, so that it would dive as rapidly as possible. Mechanically, Tommmy spun’ the big wheel that opened the sea valves 'to the auxiliary tank. Lieut. Griffin had walked away from the periscope and was looking at the gauge on the adjusting tank to see if it were func- tioning properly. His brows contracted, pus- zled, as the gauge failed to indicate any change. He looked at it suspiciously, then— “Ship’s going down fast, sir!” called the sailor on watch at the diving planes. The Y-27, her auxiliary tank filled with water, was plunging rapidly for the bottom. Lieut. Griffin whirled about. He seized the big wheel, spun it feverishly, and shot a brief, malignant look at the dazed Tommy. It was too late. There was a soft, almost impercep- tible jar. The boat was on the bottom. Lieut. Hobson, the skipper, appeared in the control room. He walked quickly to the depth gauge, and as he looked at it his mouth sud- denly tensed and his eyes widened. The Y-27 was lying at a depth of 300 feet, and her de- signers had set 200 feet as the extreme depth to which she could go in safety. The skipper turned to Lieut. Griffin and beck- oned hastily to Mike Donlin, who was just coming in from the battery room. The two men glanced at the gauge and turned, with serious faces to their commander, “We're down 300 feet,” said Hobson. “Why the hull hasn't caved in on us already is more than I know. We've got to get up, and get up quick, and it may be a tough job. I doubt like thunder if the motors will do it.” Hobson looked blank. “Well, all we can do is try,” he sald. He raised his voice. “Diving stations!" The sailors took their places and Donlin went to his motors. “Hard rise on the bow planes! Both motors full speed ahead!” came the commander's order. The boat quivered, the motors hummed; then there was a quick, bright flash from the circuit breaker at the forward end of the compartment and the movement ceased. The circuit breaker was a large switch on the power cable supplying the motors. It was de- signed to do duly as a sort of safety fuse; it automatically flew open when too great a load was thrown on the motors, thus stopping them instantly. The chief loked at the skipper in silence. “Can we blow the main ballast tanks?” sug- gested Griffin. Hobsen shook his head. “Don’t dare,” he said. “Those tanks must be at their absolute limit right now, and then some, Shoot compressed air into 'em and instead of blowing 'em clear we're apt to explode 'em. we can do is try to pump them out with high-pressure ballast pump.” MMY SHERMAN, motionless at his sta- tion, watched in a sort of paralyzed apathy as the chief petty officer turned to the switch< board and started the high-pressure pump. The pump started—then suddenly stopped. A blown fuse. The load was too great. “No gzcod, sir,” said Donlin to the skipper, His veice, Tommy noted, was cool and dispas< sionate. He might simply have been throwing in a bad hand in a game of poker. “We'll try the regulator pump, then,” said Hobson. Donlin hurried to connect this small auxiliary pump, designed for work at high pres- sure. But he met failure here, too. The pump worked for a few seconds and then blew the fuses as the larger pump had done. There was one more chance. The adjusting tank could draw perhaps a thousand pounds of water from the ballast tank; and this, in turn, could be blown out by compressed air. Lieut. Griffin stood at Tommy's elbow—he was not going to have another order misunderstood— and the process was begun. It worked. Tommy's heart grew lighter. Then a new danger arose. When the aux- iliary tank was blown clear, its load of highly compressed air had to be released into the in- terior of the submarine. The barometer which recorded air pressure within the boat testified, very shortly, that this would not do. Its needle bent double :3ainst the stop of the instrument. Hobson and Griffin looked at one another in silence. The sailors did likewise. No one said a word. The last hope had gone. There was no way of getting the ship off the bottom. Death, in a horrible form, was at hand. The Y-27 would never reach the surface again. Tommy had never before known what it was to be afraid. It was like feeling an unbearable physical pain. He wanted to scream, to beat his hands against the shiny iron walls of his prison, to run back and forth, yet he could not move from his station. He stood there as if frozen. Oddly, Tommy remembered what Mike had said: “You'll find it’s the hard guy who comes through in a tough spot—because he don't get rattled, and ain’'t afraid, and don't give a damn.” Tommy wondered, bitterly, what the hard guy would do now. To his surprise he found himself muttering, under his breath, over and over, “Let's see you get out of this, you big gorilla, if you're so hard. Let's see you!" Donlin suddenly walked to the forward bulk- head. There on the switchboard was the open circuit breaker—that tragically efficient safety device that now was dooming them all to death 300 feet below the surface, because, with me- chanical faithfulness, it refused to permit the motors to bear too great a load. The horny paws of Mike Donlin reached up and seized the handle of the circuit breaker; seized it and jammed it shut, and remained clenched tight about it. “Start the engines again,” he called out to Hobson. “I'll keep this baby from flyin' open again.” He gestured toward the door of the motor compartment. Water, seeping in, was rising slowly there, over the deck, creeping up to the motors. In a few more minutes it would reach "’ Continued on Eighteenth Page