Comedy of Errors

TAKE HER DOWN--Commander T. B. Thompson--Sheridan House ($2.50).

Like most U. S. submarines at the outbreak of the War, the L-9, 150-ft. overall, 16-ft. beam, was a crowded, smelly, temperamental craft. She could make 14 knots on the surface, but her red-enameled Diesel engines shook themselves to pieces so frequently the crew strung up nets to avoid being hit by flying parts. She had a 3-in. disappearing gun that could be coaxed up on deck after great labor, but had a disconcerting habit of vanishing into its compartment without warning, before or after it was fired. Her crew of 28 men and four officers (the hardened Captain was 31 years old) lived in a chamber "about the size of the guest bedroom in a beach bungalow," in which the smell of sulfuric acid from the storage batteries mingled with smells from the electric cookstove. Through the out-of-date, foggy periscope of the L-9, the Captain could just make out "a rather blurred image of the nearby seascape." Biggest moments in the life of theLL-9 came when the Second, or chief executive, relayed the Captain's order to dive: "Take her down." When she headed for the bottom there was always a strong chance that she might not level off at the right depth, and "a submarine but momentarily out of control may sink in a few seconds to a depth where she crushes under the pressure of the sea."

Last week this untrustworthy monster was the hero of a rambling, repetitious memoir by her onetime commander. Filled with cranky asides about war, the British, the flu, spies, religion, written with a heavy-handed humor, Take Her Down nevertheless gives an entertaining picture of submarine life. While the L-9 was being towed with seven other U. S. submarines to the Azores, en route to the War zone, during a hurricane her towline parted; a fire extinguisher tore loose, sprayed the torpedo room with a white sticky froth; both magnetic and gyroscopic compasses were smashed, most of the crew were laid out. The captain decided to turn back. For six days the L-9 was lost. The weather grew colder and the days darker, until the sun broke through, revealed that the submarine had been heading in the general direction of the North Pole.

When the L-9 finally reached Boston Harbor, an armed yacht tried to sink her. Three submarines had reached the Azores, three got to Bermuda, one ran out of fuel, wallowed in the open sea. With several new members in her crew, the L-9 headed down the coast for Norfolk, to try the Atlantic crossing again. Escorted by the monitor Tonopah, she ran into a blizzard off the Jersey coast, lost the Tonopah, crashed into an unoffending Merchants & Miners freighter like a can opener and cut a hole "the size of a double garage door" in her bow. As the stricken freighter drifted away, the Tonopah returned and her crew, thinking the L-9 had been attacked, opened fire with two semiautomatic six pounders. The freighter managed to get behind the Delaware Breakwater. But while the crew of theL-9 was surveying the damage a mysterious armed craft bore down on the submarine. This time the bewildered officers were sure they were being attacked by a German raider, were dumbfounded when the stranger closed in, hoisted the Chilean flag, and disappeared into the swirling snow. Later they learned that she was an armed transport. "Apparently," writes Commander Thompson, "she had been attracted by the sounds of battle and became so disconcerted by our bent and mangled appearance that her reckoning went wrong, for she piled up on the Delaware coast. . . ." Although the L-9 eventually reached Ireland, patrolled the North Sea, hunting for bigger, better armed U-boats, she met no such hazards in the War zone as she faced along the crowded and apprehensive shores of home.

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