BRIDGE ON BOARD THE USS SEALION

Eli liked to play cards; acey-deucy and bridge.  So, we played cards!  In war, there is a lot of boredom and on this day we were running submerged at periscope depth.  It was around noon, I think, and four of us were in the wardroom playing bridge.  A messenger came to the wardroom and quietly said the OD wanted the Captain to come to the conning tower.

We all laid our cards on the table to wait until Eli returned so we could finish the game.  After a few minutes the same messenger came along and said, “The Captain says go to your battle stations.”  This was unusual.  In normal practice the general alarm would sound the signal for battle stations.  But we went to battle stations.

My station was in the conning tower beside Eli where I operated the torpedo data computer.  I asked him what we had here and he gave me a peek through the periscope.  It was a Japanese destroyer and he was coming almost straight at us at a moderate speed.  We quickly had a solution of his speed and track and fired two torpedoes.  The first one hit him right under the bridge and when the second one reached the target there was nothing left to hit.

We had not changed our course or speed.  The whole thing took less than twenty minutes.  We went back to the wardroom and finished our card game.