The Battle of Life

The Submarine was at periscope depth, snorting to recharge it’s batteries. We were on patrol in the Arctic Ocean. The control room was in complete darkness to aid the vision of the officer of the watch peering through the periscope into the blackness of the night, which at this time of year lasted most of 24 hours. I was stationed on the fore planes keeping the depth and noticed that I was having difficulty keeping the boat down. As I had noticed this problem the last time I had been on watch and the problem had got worse, I queried this with the officer of the watch controlling the trim, saying that we seemed to be very light at the fore end. His answer was that he had flooded as much water into the for’d trim tank as was possible. I suggested that maybe we had an air leak into number one main ballast tank, He asked the dive panel operator to check this. The panel would have been icy cold if high pressure air had been leaking through; it wasn’t. I suggested that maybe it was only a small leak over a long period which by now could have emptied the ballast tank  “I’ll prove it to you Harris” and gave the order “Open one main vent” Within seconds the boat had taken on about ten tons of water at the fore end, we went down like a brick at a very steep angle, The Captain appeared from his cabin and gave the order “Blow One main Ballast” which  cleared the water we had just taken on, at the same time the Officer of the Watch gave the order “Full astern”. With the bow now light again we now hurtled down stern first passing our safe depth of 350ft.