Dust on the Sea by Edward L. Beach Page A

commander met for their first formal conference. Blunt had decided, he said, that the first submarine to detect a convoy would not attack. It would instead trail the enemy and send position reports to help the other two boats to make contact also. The second submarine to make contact would be the first to attack. Then it would fall astern to perform the trailing duties. Not until at least one other sub had attacked and had fallen behind, out of the immediate vicinity of the convoy, was the original “trailer” released to make an attack of her own.
    Attacks were to be made on the surface at night as a matter of preference, with due regard for the location of the trailer, who would presumably be keeping station from a sufficiently great distance that no one could mistake her on the radar for a patrolling enemy escort. In addition, narrow sectors directly ahead and directly astern of the convoy center were designated as safe sectors. No submarine could attack another ship in such a sector without positive visual identification. Other larger sectors were designated as unlimited attack zones, where attack on any target was permitted no matter how it might have been detected.
    Whenever possible, day or night, Blunt stressed, all submarines should stay on the surface in order to facilitate both communication and positioning for attack.
    Richardson found that the ideas of the other two skippers as to how to carry out night attacks in the surfaced condition were quite at variance with his own. Les Hartly of the Chicolar , a rotund and very intense officer, the senior of the three submarine captains, had only one method, to which he held strongly. At the beginning of the war he had commanded an S-boat in the Asiatic Fleet, undeniably an experience to confirm anyone’s latent qualities of self-sufficiency. Lack of a TDC in the S-boats had led to development of more rudimentary approach techniques, based mostly on time-honored concepts of the “seaman’s eye.” Even though Les had later commanded the more modern Porpoise for several patrols, the presence of an early TDC in her control room had not caused him to modify his notions. After three runs in the Porpoise he had been granted leave, to which all Asiatic submariners were clearly entitled, and had then been sent to Mare Island to commission and bring out the new Chicolar .
    Hartly by consequence had been more than a year away from thewar; but his ideas were nonetheless positive. He spent far more time expounding on their advantages than in listening to those of others. Blunt was the only one who might have commanded his attention, but even the wolfpack commander, with no war patrols to his credit, was at a disadvantage. Only Keith, with eight, topped Hartly’s record of seven war patrols, and Hartly quickly disposed of all suggestions differing from the conclusions he had already fixed on.
    The way to handle a convoy, he said many times, was to attack instantly, if possible as soon as contact was made. In this way the risk of counter-measures would be least. He thought of Chicolar as a huge torpedo running on the surface which he would steer at high speed directly for the enemy, continually altering course to keep bows on to the ship he had selected for primary target. Hartly’s attack course was thus always a long sweeping curve. At the last minute he would shoot his torpedoes and then put the rudder over hard in whatever direction looked best.
    Since Hardy wasted no time in preliminaries, other than seeking a feasible attack position, his method had the undeniable advantage of being finished very quickly. Another strong point was that Chicolar never exposed more than a bows-on silhouette to her intended victims.
    Vainly, Richardson stated the counter arguments. The curved attack course deprived Hartly’s plotting parties of a reasonable opportunity to determine the enemy course, speed, and zigzag plan. The emphasis on immediate attack compounded