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had apparently burned during the Japanese assault; at least we could not see it. Continuing our clockwise course around the atoll, we then passed the northern arm of Wake Island, which is shaped like a big V, open to the northwest. Before the Japanese had taken the island from us, most of the facilities and landing strips were located near the apex of the V. We saw the buildings but no signs of activity. Finally came Wilkes Island, originally an extension of Wake’s southern arm but now separated from it by a dredged small-boat channel.
    By midafternoon
Tang
had examined all of the atoll except where the lagoon opened to the sea at the mouth of the V. From three miles out we had not seen any activity, but neither was there anything that would warrant altering the strike date. We moved off to the southwest, where we would surface at dark. This seemed to be the most likely place to intercept any ship or submarine supplying Wake from the Empire and a secure spot for us to charge batteries.
    It had been a long dive, and since the seas were calm we took a suction through the boat shortly after surfacing and as soon as the charge was started. Opening the forward torpedo room hatch and the doors to the engine room brought a true gale through the ship to feed those diesels. In three or four minutes, the air in the boat was completely changed, and any slight headaches disappeared instantly. The hatch was closed, and we commenced our night surface routine, changing it in one respect. We had no place to go, so we remained stopped for most of the night. This had two advantages: Our sound gear was effective now that it was not blanked out by our own screw noises, and we saved fuel.
    On the following day we moved in submerged toward the open roadstead off the boat channel between Wilkes and Wake. That was the only anchorage, and should any ship have slipped by us, she might be there for our torpedoes. This was not our luck, so we proceeded submerged to our designated position for the first strike by the Coronado bombers.
    In the forward engine room, the troops had a project with adeadline this very evening.
Tang
had to supply a suitable beacon light, but since we would be on the horizon as viewed from Wake, the light had to be screened from the atoll. Our signal searchlight was ideal, but rigging a suitable light-tight screen from the materials at hand was something else. That is, until someone thought of the yeoman’s circular fiber wastebasket. The diameter of the bottom happened to be the same as that of the searchlight. With the bottom out, the fiber cone made a perfect screen, secured neatly with a band of the pharmacist’s mate’s wide adhesive tape.

    We surfaced during midevening twilight, while there was still a sharp horizon for the navigator’s star sights. Fraz’s position lines lay neatly through a needle point, and
Tang
had to move but a short distance to be right on station. The navigator continued to get good star sights from our stationary position, and on a horizon that would have been deemed fuzzy and worthless in peacetime. Our position remained good.
    “Radar contact, bearing zero three eight, range thirty-six thousand.” Ed’s voice came over the bridge speaker. The contact could only be the Coronados, for planes had to be flying low to be picked up by our SJ.
    “What’s that relative?”
    “One eight five.”
    Jones trained the searchlight just off our stern on
Tang’s
port quarter and gave the signal agreed upon, in the cadence of a gun salute: “If I wasn’t a gunner I wouldn’t be here, right gun fire,” with Jones giving a long dash with the word “fire” at the five-second intervals.
    And then the great flying boats were there, looming out of the darkness just above the horizon. Seconds later they were passing over our periscope shears, only a hundred feet above, their blue exhaust flaming at us and marking a line toward Wake.
    It was perhaps just as well that I had to give no orders, for I