Island, tending preparations for the eveningâs Halfway Day dinner. Presently, Perez thought he heard a faint rasp, metal scraping on metal. 16
FOUR MINUTES AFTER Rinn called general quarters, all stations reported ready. It was time for a choice. Hold steady? Move? The fates of two hundred lives and an American warship rested on his decision. Centuries of naval tradition and the command star on Rinnâs right breast said the choice was his alone. Two thoughts came to him, shining clear and bright:he could drive that ship as well as anyone, and his well-trained crew could handle anything he could. He pondered a moment more, alone, seeking no counsel. He made his choice. I gotta get out of here .
He picked up the 1MC again. âI can see our wake,â he told the crew. âIâm pretty certain we can back down.â The captain dispatched officers to back up the enlisted lookouts. Firehammer went out to stand on the starboard wing, opposite the captain, while Eckelberry and the junior officer of the deck, Ens. Michael Infranco, headed aft to the hangar roof. It was time to move.
Rinn ordered the auxiliary propulsion units (APUs) deployed and angled to power the ship aft. Several decks down, Electrician Kolynitis toggled a switch, and the pods dropped into position. 17 The captain told the bridge helmsman to put the rudder hard left and ordered engines back one-third. This turned the shaft at ten revolutions a minuteâjust enough, he hoped, to keep a wash over the rudder and the stern in place. Then he ordered power to the APUs, and the ship began to move backward.
Less than ten minutes had elapsed since Gibson, the forward lookout, had called up to the bridge to report the first sighting of mines. Now the Roberts was backing away from danger, with trusted shipmates keeping close eyes out for new black, bobbing forms. Rinn was not terribly worried. After all, he reckoned, they had spotted the one out front, and stopped with hundreds of yards to spare. Weâre going to get out , he thought. 18 He was wrong.
DESIGNED IN 1908 for Tsar Nicholas II, the M-08/39 naval mine remains a marvel of cost-effective weaponry. It consists of a three-foot black sphere perched atop a heavy cylinder, like a tennis ball on a tin can. The sphere contains 253 pounds of the high explosive called trinitrotoluene, or TNT, and flotation voids to make it buoyant. The squat cylinder holds 360 feet of mooring cable and a 700-pound slug of iron. 19
Laying an M-08 is a relatively simple matter of taking a depth sounding, setting the cable length, and sliding the mine overboard. The iron anchor settles on the sea floor, and the buoyant sphere floats up to the end of its tether. Tide and current notwithstanding, the ball floats about a dozen feet beneath the wavesâdeep enough to be invisible, shallow enough to strike a passing ship.
The buoyant globe is studded with five triggering devices, called âHertz hornsâ after their nineteenth-century German inventor. Each is roughly the size and shape of a fat sausage and holds a glass ampoule of battery acid. When one of these lead-foil horns is crushed against a shipâs hull, the acid drains into a wet cell, whose electrical charge ignites a detonator, which touches off several hundred pounds of trinitrotoluene.
The material products of a TNT explosion are humdrum: nitrogen gas, carbon monoxide, water, and soot. Ounce for ounce, the pale yellow solid releases less energy than burning gasoline or even sugar. It is the blinding speed of its combustion that does the violence. When TNT detonates underwater, it disassociates within milliseconds into a bubble of gas. This bubble displaces water, sending a shockwave racing away at supersonic speed. The bubble, heated to thousands of degrees and pressurized to thousands of atmospheres, expands just behind the shockwave, driving water before it like a battering ram.
This one-two punchâshockwave followed by
FOUR MINUTES AFTER Rinn called general quarters, all stations reported ready. It was time for a choice. Hold steady? Move? The fates of two hundred lives and an American warship rested on his decision. Centuries of naval tradition and the command star on Rinnâs right breast said the choice was his alone. Two thoughts came to him, shining clear and bright:he could drive that ship as well as anyone, and his well-trained crew could handle anything he could. He pondered a moment more, alone, seeking no counsel. He made his choice. I gotta get out of here .
He picked up the 1MC again. âI can see our wake,â he told the crew. âIâm pretty certain we can back down.â The captain dispatched officers to back up the enlisted lookouts. Firehammer went out to stand on the starboard wing, opposite the captain, while Eckelberry and the junior officer of the deck, Ens. Michael Infranco, headed aft to the hangar roof. It was time to move.
Rinn ordered the auxiliary propulsion units (APUs) deployed and angled to power the ship aft. Several decks down, Electrician Kolynitis toggled a switch, and the pods dropped into position. 17 The captain told the bridge helmsman to put the rudder hard left and ordered engines back one-third. This turned the shaft at ten revolutions a minuteâjust enough, he hoped, to keep a wash over the rudder and the stern in place. Then he ordered power to the APUs, and the ship began to move backward.
Less than ten minutes had elapsed since Gibson, the forward lookout, had called up to the bridge to report the first sighting of mines. Now the Roberts was backing away from danger, with trusted shipmates keeping close eyes out for new black, bobbing forms. Rinn was not terribly worried. After all, he reckoned, they had spotted the one out front, and stopped with hundreds of yards to spare. Weâre going to get out , he thought. 18 He was wrong.
DESIGNED IN 1908 for Tsar Nicholas II, the M-08/39 naval mine remains a marvel of cost-effective weaponry. It consists of a three-foot black sphere perched atop a heavy cylinder, like a tennis ball on a tin can. The sphere contains 253 pounds of the high explosive called trinitrotoluene, or TNT, and flotation voids to make it buoyant. The squat cylinder holds 360 feet of mooring cable and a 700-pound slug of iron. 19
Laying an M-08 is a relatively simple matter of taking a depth sounding, setting the cable length, and sliding the mine overboard. The iron anchor settles on the sea floor, and the buoyant sphere floats up to the end of its tether. Tide and current notwithstanding, the ball floats about a dozen feet beneath the wavesâdeep enough to be invisible, shallow enough to strike a passing ship.
The buoyant globe is studded with five triggering devices, called âHertz hornsâ after their nineteenth-century German inventor. Each is roughly the size and shape of a fat sausage and holds a glass ampoule of battery acid. When one of these lead-foil horns is crushed against a shipâs hull, the acid drains into a wet cell, whose electrical charge ignites a detonator, which touches off several hundred pounds of trinitrotoluene.
The material products of a TNT explosion are humdrum: nitrogen gas, carbon monoxide, water, and soot. Ounce for ounce, the pale yellow solid releases less energy than burning gasoline or even sugar. It is the blinding speed of its combustion that does the violence. When TNT detonates underwater, it disassociates within milliseconds into a bubble of gas. This bubble displaces water, sending a shockwave racing away at supersonic speed. The bubble, heated to thousands of degrees and pressurized to thousands of atmospheres, expands just behind the shockwave, driving water before it like a battering ram.
This one-two punchâshockwave followed by
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