“Scoot Bailey never will have an experience like this as long as he lives!” March said to himself. He was peering through the periscope of the submerged pigboat, looking over the tossing waters of the sea.

When the Captain had called “Up, periscope,” the long shaft had moved up by electric motor until the eyepiece and handles were at convenient height. The Skipper had a look around, and March noticed that he turned the handles to adjust the focus.

“Here, have a look, Mister Anson,” he said, standing away.

So March had fitted his eyes against the rubber cup and looked. He saw water, a long stretch of open water with nothing on it. It was not completely sharp so he turned one handle slightly, saw the image fuzz up, turned it the other way until it came sharp. Next he moved the periscope around, stepping with it as he did so, looking over the horizon in a sweeping arc.

Then he saw something! It was the shore of Long Island, almost two miles away. He stepped back and said, “I saw the Long Island shore, I think. How far can one see through the periscope, sir?”

“About two and a half miles,” the Skipper replied. “Have a look, Mister Bigelow.”

Stan stepped forward eagerly to look through the ’scope. He swung it around in a different direction from which March had moved and suddenly exclaimed, “A ship!”

The Captain took over for a look, then said, “Yes, small freighter. Just think how easily we could sink her!”

March looked at the ship. “Looks as though I could knock her down with a BB gun,” he said.

“On later trips we’ll simulate attacks on some of the ships in the Sound,” the Skipper said. “So you’ll get a chance to practice something a little more powerful than a BB gun.”

For fifteen minutes the pigboat traveled under the water. Sutherland took Stan and March around the control room, explaining the various instruments and levers, answering their questions.

“What beats me, sir,” Stan said, “is the number of different things you have to remember! I just can’t conceive of doing all that so fast and not forgetting a thing.”

“It seems like that at first,” Sutherland said. “But after you do it a few times, you get used to it. Just think—driving a car is pretty complicated if you’ve never even seen a car before. You’ve got to see the emergency brakes are on, that transmission’s in neutral, then turn on ignition, step on electric starter, perhaps choke it a little to start, then push back choke, step on foot throttle, warm up engine, release emergency brake, push in clutch, move gearshift lever, let in clutch, step on throttle, shove in clutch, take foot from throttle, move gearshift lever in another direction, let in clutch and step on throttle for a time, then shove in clutch, take foot from throttle, move gearshift lever, let in clutch, step on throttle again. And all this time, steer the car where you’re going, watch out for pedestrians, for traffic lights, for cars behind, for cars on side streets. Why, there are dozens of things you have to do, but when you’ve driven a car a little while, most of them are almost automatic.”

“I’d never though of it that way,” Stan said. “But it must take quite a while of handling a dive to get used to it.”

“Not so long as you think,” Sutherland said, “if you’re any good at all. If not, you wouldn’t be here. And don’t worry—before you leave this school you’ll be able to take her down—in three or four different ways—without worrying about it for a second.”

The executive officer then led them through the rest of the boat, giving them a quick once-over of the entire ship during their first trip. Stepping over the high door edges of the bulkhead doors leading from one compartment to another, March realized that a fat man would have difficulty getting around on a submarine. He noted how the doors could be fastened watertight and airtight so that any compartment could be sealed off from all the others.

They saw the engine room, with its two banks of heavy Diesels, now quiet and at rest as the ship traveled under water. Stan would have stayed there for the entire trip, talking to the engineers and looking over the power plants, but they moved on to the motor room where the whine of the two electric motors was loud and high-pitched. March knew that the motors could be switched to act as generators driven by the Diesels when the ship surfaced, charging the batteries.

The battery room did not hold their attention for long, although the two banks of huge cells were impressive, but the torpedo room fascinated them. Here was the real reason for the existence of the entire ship, which was nothing more than a vehicle to get the deadly TNT charges into the side of an enemy ship. It was almost the largest of the rooms they had seen, perhaps seeming so because of the additional clear space in the middle. There had to be plenty of room to swing the big torpedoes into position before their tubes.

First March and Stan saw the two racks of torpedoes along the walls. The long cylinders, twenty-one inches in diameter and about twenty feet from end to end, looked deadly. March noted the chain hoist by which they could be swung from their racks into position for loading into the tubes.

The tubes—there were four of them—stuck back into the room a little way, and March and Stan knew they were about twenty-five feet long altogether, their openings at each side just back of the bow of the boat. The tight-fitting doors closed the tubes, and the sub was ready to fire its charges at any moment.

“It must take a terrific blast of air to start these babies on their way,” Stan said, running his hand along one of the big torpedoes.

“Yes, it does,” Sutherland replied. “But the air doesn’t have to move it far. It just expels it from the tube, where there are trigger catches which trip switches here on the torpedo to set its own machinery going.”

“Wonderful piece of mechanism, aren’t they?” March mused.

“Yes, they’re really little submarines with an explosive charge instead of a crew,” the executive officer agreed. “And the TNT takes up only a small space, really. Half the length is compressed air to drive the torp. It’s got to move pretty fast, you know, to get to the target accurately. There’s about four hundred horsepower packed into that little fellow there—from compressed air, heated by an alcohol flame, blowing like fury against two trim little turbines turning the propellers.”

“The aiming devices must be very accurate,” Stan said.

“Wonderful!” Sutherland exclaimed. “You probably know there’s a little whirling gyroscope that keeps the torp on the course which can be set by the operator in advance of firing. Then there’s the compensating chamber and pendulum to keep it at its proper depth. It can’t very well get off course.”

“But don’t you have to aim chiefly with the sub itself, sir?” March asked. “I mean—doesn’t the sub have to be aimed right at the target for the torpedo to get there?”

“Not at all,” Sutherland replied. “The sub doesn’t have to be any closer than sixty degrees in facing its target. You set the proper course on the torpedo itself and the automatic devices put it on that course right away—and keep it there!”

“Then the important thing,” Stan said, “is for the skipper to get the course right, not necessarily to line up the sub with his target.”

“That’s right,” the older officer agreed. “The skipper must determine the course to his target and call it out. If he’s good, he gets his ship.”

With a last look around the torpedo room they turned to go back to the control room.

“Later,” Sutherland said to them as they stepped through the bulkhead door, “you’ll have target practice with special torpedoes that don’t blow up what you’re aiming at. As a matter of fact, there won’t be anything you can’t do by the time we get through with you.”

In the course of the next few weeks, March remembered that statement often. He went on countless trips in the training subs, until he felt as much at home in them as he did in his own quarters. For the first few times he observed. Then he took over one position after another and executed its duties.

Stan was with him on all these trips, but often they were at different ends of the boats during their short journeys. One day, March would take his position at the steering wheel. The next he would handle the big levers controlling the Kingston valves on the main ballast tanks. Then he would work with the men in the engine room, after having studied Diesels in some of his classes. He did a stretch in the torpedo room several times when they shot the practice torps at special targets towed by a surface boat. He worked the interphone system as orderly, took over the little radio shack, spent several hours in the battery room, working the diving planes.

“I’ve done everything so far but cook lunch and cut the crew’s hair,” he said to Stan one day, as they relaxed wearily for fifteen minutes after dinner before going to their studies.

“Same here,” Stan said. “But I haven’t been assistant pharmacist yet.”

“Oh, that’s right,” March recalled. “I haven’t passed out any pills yet. And I don’t think I’ll have to.”

“Do you feel that you know the crew’s jobs pretty well now, March?” Stan asked.

“Most of them,” March replied. “I know I could take over most of them without any trouble. But I’d like another trip or two in the torpedo room, and I want to be at the diving controls for a crash dive before I’ll feel sure of myself.”

“I agree with you on the diving controls,” Stan said, “but I feel okay on the torps now. What I want is a little time on the sound-detector devices.”

“You can never have too much time on those,” March said. “Every additional hour of experience with them makes you all the better, I think. But it’s wonderful that they teach every officer to do every job on the boat—not just the work of the other officers but of every enlisted man on board.”

Not only did they handle every job of the crew on the sub, but they spent hours every day in classroom and laboratory. They studied engines and motors and navigation and torpedoes, and—above all, lately—theories of approach and attack. In addition to their work on the training subs themselves, they carried out attack problems in the wonderful “mock-up” control room in one of the buildings. Here was a real control room, with controls and periscopes complete. Standing in position at the ’scope, as if he were the Skipper of the ship, March sighted about on the artificial horizon which looked quite real to him. Suddenly he saw what seemed to be two ships appear on the horizon. First he had to identify them. Then he had to judge their speed and course accurately while they still looked like only tiny spots in his periscopes.

Calling out orders, he directed the course of the “submarine” he was commanding so that he would be in position to fire torpedoes. Then the ’scope went down, as would happen in actual combat. His “sub” was traveling under water, without even the revealing ’scope-ripples to show the enemy where he was. Then he surfaced again, looked through the ’scope to see if he and the “enemy” ships were where they ought to be in relation to each other.

If he was right, he ordered the setting of the torpedo courses and then called “Fire one! Fire two!”

Then he would go over his record with the instructors. He would find out just how well he had done in handling the complete tactical problem that had been presented to him. Had he identified the ships correctly as to nationality, type, size? Had he judged their speed and course correctly? And finally—had his torpedoes hit home? If he had handled the problem correctly, he felt almost the thrill that might have come with sinking an actual enemy ship.

Several afternoons a week, March went out on the training subs. He asked for more time at the diving controls and got it. He asked for two torpedo-room watches and his request was fulfilled. Then he began to take over the duties of the various officers. He served as communications officer, engineering officer, electrical officer, navigation officer—and finally as diving officer. The first time he gave the orders to take the ship down, his heart was in his throat, even though Sutherland was standing by his side to take over at the slightest mistake. He didn’t believe that he could possibly remember all the things he had to, but he found, as the orders started coming from his mouth, that his mind ordered them out without his thinking about them. He knew so well, by this time, the logical order of events, that his mind went straight along that path without a hitch.

What pleased March most of all after this experience—even more than the pleasant commendation of the executive officer—was the word spoken to him by Scott, the radioman. Scott had been on the training subs during most of March’s trips, too, and they had spoken to each other frequently. But on the dock after March’s turn as diving officer, Scott saluted and nodded with a smile.

“If you’ll pardon me, sir,” he said, “I’d like to mention that you handled that diving like a veteran.”

“Thanks, Scott—it’s swell of you to say that,” March mumbled.

“You know—a bunch of students is likely to get a little funny feeling when we know a new officer’s goin’ to take us down,” Scott said. “But we couldn’t have been safer with the Skipper himself than we were with you.”

March wrote about that in the letter he wrote to Scoot Bailey that evening. He had been so busy, working hard sixteen hours a day, that Scoot seemed miles and years away.

“I’m beginning to feel like a real submariner at last, Scoot,” he wrote. “For a while I thought there was so much to learn that I’d never get there. But I’m at home now, and I think I can make it all right. I suppose you’ve been feeling much the same way—despite the fact that flying is so much simpler than pigboating—and that you’re getting the feeling of being a pilot, without having an instructor in your lap every minute.”