“You’ve had no training?
“Lennox asked, surprised and concerned.
“No, Sir,” Whittaker said.
“There wasn’t time.”
“Well, then,” Lennox said, “the question is not ;/ we do a dry run, but when.”
“I think, if it’s possible,” Whittaker said, “we should.”
Lennox looked at Whittaker.
If I hadn’t been so obliging, he wondered, would you have pulled the rank the COMSUBFORPAC orders give you?
“You told me, Jim,” he said, “that to a pilot, darkness rises from the ground.”
“Yes, Sir, it does.”
“Then I think we should do the dry run tomorrow, at dusk,” Lennox said.
“Thank you, Skipper.”
The day had been spent preparing for the dry run. This was mostly a good thing for the boat, Lennox realized, though it was risky. The morale of the crew was helped by the chance not only to do something constructive, but to get out on deck. The risk of being spotted by a Japanese patrol plane was no greater with them there, but submerging would take longer because of the people and the equipment on deck.
Lennox posted extra lookouts and ordered the manning of the machine gun and Bofors cannon. He didn’t plan to use them, but it gave their crews a chance to get on deck and to feel useful, and he decided the price, the extra forty-five or sixty seconds it would take the gun crews to drop through the hatches and close them, was worth it.
The rubber boats themselves, as Lennox had supposed they would, posed the greatest problems. If the chief of the boat, who by default became the rubber boat expert, had any thoughts about the idiocy of sending people with no training or experience with rubber boats to make a landing through the surf on an enemy-held shore, he kept them to himself.
The first problem was to get the boats from the forward torpedo room through the hatch and onto the deck. The chief of the boat considered his options and decided that because of the weight and ungainly bulk it would make more sense to uncrate them below and pass them through the hatch, despite the risk that they would be impaled and torn on something sharp on the way.
The boats, which carried their own air bottles, were designed to be inflated with the bottles. Even if the boats were thrown over the side un inflated and sank, if the pull cord for the air bottles was pulled, the boats would inflate and pop to the surface.
Although spare air bottles had been provided, the chief of the boat decided that the smart thing to do was not to use the bottles until it was necessary. He called for the air hose normally used to charge the air bottles in torpedoes, and when he had the first boat unrolled and lying limp on the deck, filled it with compressed air.
When that boat was expanded, he ran soapy water over it to check for leaks. When he found none, he opened the exhaust valves, and as they hissed and the boat collapsed, he looked at it thoughtfully.
Then he went aft and stood with his hands on his hips and spoke with Lennox and Whittaker, who were on the bridge.
“Two things. Skipper,” he said.
“Go ahead, Chief,” Lennox said.
“I think we could stow the boats aft of the conning tower,” the chief of the boat said.
“Properly stowed, we could even submerge with them.”
“Good idea,” Lennox immediately agreed.
“Second, there’s no way the boats will carry all that weight.”
“Then we’ll have to use the spares, too,” Whittaker said.
“I meant using the spares,” the chief of the boat said.
“The first time you flexed the boat in the surf, that weight’d rip the deck… or the bilge, whatever they call that sheet of rubberized canvas… free of the inflation chambers.
If it didn’t rip through before you got to the surf.”
“What do you suggest. Chief?” Lennox asked.
“We got a hundred and sixty percent of life jackets aboard,” the chief said.
“I don’t know what that means,” Whittaker said.
“It means we got sixty percent more life jackets aboard than there is people,” the chief said.