On November 27, a radio dispatch from SubPac headquarters reported that there would be no more B-29s over Japan for forty-eight hours. That meant that the Archerfish and the other lifeguard submarines were free to resume the hunt for enemy shipping. Enright took his boat in close to the coast of Honshu, running submerged during daylight hours and making frequent high periscope observations. The great cone of Mount Fuji often passed through the crosshairs of the scope’s circular field, but Enright saw no vessels except trawlers and other assorted small craft, which he considered “too small for torpedoes.”45
Enright, born and raised in Minot, South Dakota, had graduated the Naval Academy with the class of 1933. Earlier in the war he had captained the Dace, but after a disappointing forty-nine-day patrol in the fall of 1943, Enright had concluded that he was not cut out for submarine command and had asked Lockwood to relieve him.*
For eight months he had performed shore duty at the Midway submarine base. In August 1944, he had felt the urge to try again, and Lockwood had granted Enright the rarest of gifts: a second chance as a submarine captain. Even more than the average Pacific submarine skipper, therefore, Enright was under pressure to score. Thus far in the patrol, he was empty-handed. The Archerfish had not yet fired any of her twenty-four Mark 18 electric torpedoes.
At 8:48 p.m. on the twenty-seventh, the Archerfish’s SJ radar revealed a contact at 24,700 yards, bearing 28 degrees true. A lookout climbed to the periscope support platform and trained his binoculars toward the northeast horizon. Conditions favored a visual search: the weather was clear and mild, and the moon nearly full. Enright first assumed that the contact was an island, but radar sweeps soon indicated that it was moving closer, and the lookout reported a “dark shape on the horizon two points off the starboard bow.”46
Through binoculars, Enright soon made out a slight “bump” on the sea horizon. Comparing the visual fix to the range given by radar, he could deduce that it was a big ship, perhaps an oil tanker, which would make it a top-priority target.
Archerfish remained on the surface and took a westerly course, hoping to circle around to the “down-moon” side of the target. About an hour after first contact, a lookout called down from the shears to say that the distant shape had the rectangular profile of an aircraft carrier. At first Enright was skeptical, but after taking a long look he was persuaded. The shape grew more distinct as it approached, and the carrier’s huge island and funnel stood out on the horizon. She was on a base course of 210 degrees with a speed of 20 knots.47
THE MYSTERIOUS FLATTOP WAS THE SHINANO, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, a 65,000-ton behemoth built on a hull originally intended as the third Yamato-class battleship. She had been built in the shipyard at Yokosuka Naval Base in Tokyo Bay, launched on October 8, and commissioned just eight days earlier. Since the previous June, when Japan had lost three carriers in the battle for the Marianas, her crew and 3,000 yard workers had been working fourteen hours a day, seven days a week. Upon this huge new ship rested Japan’s last and only hope of resurrecting her once-formidable carrier striking force.
The Shinano was bound for Kure, where she would complete her fitting-out and embark her air group. Her skipper, Captain Toshio Abe, was concerned about her readiness for sea. Under the strain of impossible deadlines, many shortcuts had been taken. Much of her vital inboard works had not yet been installed and tested, including watertight hatches, pumps, fire mains, and ventilation ducts. Abe had warned his superiors that the ship and crew were not yet ready for sea, even for an overnight run down the coast. But headquarters was unyielding, all the more so after that week’s B-29 raids. They had to assume that the big aircraft carrier had been sighted and photographed, and the high-flying enemy bombers might return at any time to hit the shipyard. The Tokyo admirals overruled Abe’s request for a postponement and ordered the Shinano to sea no later than November 28.
As in the case of her half-sisters Yamato and Musashi, the ship’s existence during construction had been wrapped in a shroud of fanatical secrecy. On the waterfront at Yokosuka, ambitious measures were taken to hide the project from prying eyes. Towering fences made of corrugated tin panels stood around the perimeter of Dock No. 6, where the Shinano was built. Thousands of shipyard workers were sequestered on base, and never permitted to leave for the duration of the project. Military police would arrest, imprison, interrogate, and torture any worker who so much as uttered the ship’s name.
She was a titan: 872 feet long, 119 feet on the beam, with a full-load displacement of 71,890 tons. Like the two superbattleships, the Shinano was powered by four gigantic steam turbines that drove 150,000 horsepower to her propellers, giving her a peak speed of 27 knots. Her flight and hangar decks were armored, designed to withstand hits by 1,000-pound bombs. Her island, starboard amidships, was the size of an office building. It was integrated into an immense smoke funnel that was canted sharply outboard, giving the ship an idiosyncratic profile. The Shinano was fitted with hundreds of antiaircraft guns, more than had been mounted on any other aircraft carrier. “When I stood at the stern on the paved flight deck, the people standing at the bow looked as small as peas,” recalled Oshima Morinari, a yard worker at Yokosuka. “I remember crying out in admiration. The Shinano was the greatest aircraft carrier in the world.”48 If by “greatest” he meant largest, Morinari was not wrong—none larger would exist until 1954, a decade later, when the first Forrestal-class aircraft carrier was launched by the United States.
True to her orders, the Shinano departed Tokyo Bay shortly after sunset on November 28, accompanied by three destroyers. She had about 2,475 men on board, including her crew of 2,175 officers and men and about three hundred shipyard workers. She carried no airplanes. In her hangar were fifty Oka guided suicide missiles, of the type designed to be dropped from planes, and six Shinyo suicide speed boats. It was intended that she would put the suicide crafts ashore in Kure, or perhaps deliver them to Okinawa at some point in the future.
After conferring with his superiors, Captain Abe had plotted a roundabout, offshore course. This would simplify navigation somewhat, and also (it was hoped) evade waters known to be infested with American submarines. The first stage of the passage would take the carrier and destroyers well south, out to sea. Before dawn the next morning they would turn west and make a dash for the Inland Sea. The final stretch would occur in daylight, without air cover, but there was nothing Abe could do about it; Tokyo had given him no choice. He believed he had chosen the safest possible route in the circumstances. The Shinano and her escorts surged through the calm, moonlit sea, making twenty knots and zigzagging erratically to foil enemy submarines.
THE U.S. NAVY’S RECOGNITION MANUAL did not have any silhouette matching the profile of the Shinano. Enright and his officers concluded that the stranger must be a Hiyo- or Taiho-class carrier. They did not suspect that their quarry was twice the tonnage of an Essex-class fleet carrier. No one in the Allied camp had a clue that such a ship existed.
Three escorting destroyers emerged on the radar scopes, and as the range closed they became faintly visible from the Archerfish’s periscope platform. Enright assumed, mistakenly, that there was probably a fourth on the far side of the target.
Attempting a surface approach against an enemy carrier escorted by four (or even three) destroyers would not do, especially under that bright moon. Such a thing had never been done. To attempt it, Enright believed, “would be practically suicidal.”49 But diving would deprive the Archerfish of most of her speed, rendering it impossible to maneuver into an attack position. The situation was not promising. Enright turned south, about nine miles ahead of the Shinano on a nearly parallel course, and raised speed to 19 knots. He would need a stroke of luck. The enemy ships were traveling at 20 knots, slightly faster than the Archerfish. The sub would have to dive once the range had closed to three or four miles, or risk detection. The firing window would be narrow, and it would not open at all unless the Shinano and her escorts happened to “zig” toward
the Archerfish.
Enright radioed a contact report. Perhaps another submarine could be guided into position to intercept the unknown carrier, or Halsey’s Third Fleet could take care of her. He had not given up hope for the Archerfish, but he was not sanguine: “Our only chance was to maintain our best surface speed, keep running on a parallel track, and pray for the carrier to make a course change in our direction.”50
Aboard the Shinano, radar-finding instruments had detected the Archerfish’s probing surface search radar. Its frequency and pulse rate indicated that it was American, but the Shinano’s radar technicians were unable to establish a bearing. The radio signature of Archerfish’s contact report was also picked up aboard the Shinano—but again, no bearing was obtained. Captain Abe inferred that at least one enemy submarine was in the vicinity, but he had no idea of its location. An intelligence bulletin that week had reported that a group of U.S. submarines, perhaps as many as seven, had departed Guam together five days earlier. Putting one and one together, Abe concluded that an American wolfpack was stalking his ship. He passed the word to his lookouts—twenty-five had been posted around the flight deck and superstructure—and urged them to look for submarines running on the surface.
At 10:45 p.m., a sharp-eyed lookout reported “an unidentified object off the starboard bow.” The visual contact was barely perceptible, even with the aid of the Shinano’s most advanced optical devices. A low-profile, black-painted submarine, five miles distant, would have been hard to see even in daylight. The curvature of the earth concealed all but the top of her bridge structure. Moreover, she was running well ahead of the Shinano on a parallel course, which shrank her profile. Dozens of pairs of Japanese eyes scrutinized the distant dark lump on the southwest horizon. The Shinano’s navigator thought it might be a “small ship.”
One of the destroyers, the Isokaze, left the formation without orders. She raced toward the Archerfish at more than thirty knots, leaving a long, foaming, phosphorescent wake behind her.
On the bridge of the Archerfish, Enright watched the enemy destroyer as she bore down from astern. He correctly identified her as a Kagero-class destroyer—one of the fastest warships in the world, capable of doing better than 35 knots. He ordered the lookouts down from the platform and the bridge cleared. He checked his watch; it was 10:50 p.m. He trained his binoculars on the oncoming destroyer, noting that she was “looming larger and larger as she closed on Archerfish. Boy, was she coming fast!”51 Enright was about to drop down the hatch and order a crash dive, when to his surprise the Isokaze turned away and returned to her station off the Shinano’s starboard beam. The Archerfish held course and stayed on the surface.
Abe had summoned the Isokaze back to her place in formation. Still assuming that the Shinano was being shadowed by an enemy wolfpack, he feared that the unknown contact to the south was deliberately attempting to lure away one of his escorts. “She’s a decoy, I’m certain of it,” he told the other officers on his bridge. He ordered a turn to the east, away from the Archerfish.52 Running at more than twenty knots, Abe knew he would have no trouble outrunning the stranger.
Enright assumed he had missed his chance, but he kept the Archerfish knifing through the sea at flank speed, on a course roughly parallel to the base course of the Shinano group. The Japanese ships were traveling at least one knot faster than the Archerfish, so there was little chance of getting into attack position unless they turned back to the west. Captain Enright fingered his rosary beads while silently praying for such a turn.
At 11:40 p.m., it happened. “Looks like big zig in our direction,” noted the log.53 The Shinano’s sharp starboard turn put her on a westerly course, crossing the Archerfish’s stern. If her “zig” was followed by a timely “zag,” the giant carrier might blunder directly into the submarine’s firing window.
For the next three hours, all concerned held their relative courses. The Shinano and her three escorts gradually passed astern of the Archerfish, from the submarine’s port quarter to her starboard quarter. It was an odd sort of chase, with the hunter leading miles ahead of her prey. The Archerfish was charging headlong toward a speculative location several miles south—a spot where, if Enright had guessed right, the paths of the Shinano and Archerfish would converge.
On the submarine’s bridge, lookouts pointed their night binoculars at the distant behemoth, whose towering island and canted funnel rose above the sea horizon astern. The Archerfish’s bow rose and fell as she sprinted south across the moonlit sea. Her long hull throbbed with the guttural power of four engines running at full bore. Flumes of spray leapt back from the bow and pelted the lookouts’ faces. Another stroke of luck was needed now, and Enright kept busy with his rosary beads.
At 2:56 a.m., his prayers were answered. The Shinano and her escorts turned again, this time to port, and steadied on a southwesterly course that would bring them directly into the Archerfish’s wheelhouse. The newest and largest aircraft carrier in the world was offering herself to the Archerfish as if gift-wrapped. The log noted, “Range closing rapidly and we are ahead.”54
Eight minutes after the Shinano’s “zag,” with the range closing to 12,000 yards, Enright ordered the Archerfish down. The lookouts dropped into the conning tower; the captain followed; the diving alarm sounded (“Ah-ooooooh-ga”); a sailor yanked the lanyard to close the hatch and secured it with a half-dozen turns of the handwheel. The Archerfish dived and leveled off at 60 feet. Enright raised the No. 2 periscope, the night scope, and trained it on the target. He fixed the crosshairs on the Shinano and murmured softly to himself, “Just keep coming, sweetheart. Don’t turn away.”55
The submarine crept west, maneuvering for an ideal firing position: 1,000 to 2,000 yards directly abeam of the carrier, where the Shinano would present the longest possible target for the Archerfish’s torpedoes. Several times Enright raised the night scope for a quick peek, confirming the target’s course and speed. The tracking party fed his estimates into the torpedo data computer (TDC) and planned possible angles of attack. Passive sound bearings confirmed the skipper’s periscope observations. He told the forward torpedo room crew to prepare six bow tubes. The weapons were set to a depth of 10 feet, providing a margin in case they ran deeper.
Again Enright raised the night scope and grasped the periscope handles. The Shinano was growing large in the circular field, and Enright took in details of her moonlit superstructure and distinctive canted funnel. She did not match anything in the recognition manual. Perhaps she was an older carrier that had been completely rebuilt? He made pencil sketches on a piece of scrap paper. Then Enright made out a blinker light on her bridge, apparently signaling one of the escorting destroyers. He swung the night scope until the destroyer came into the field, and noted with some alarm that she was bearing directly down on the Archerfish at high speed.
Enright now confronted the single most important decision of his career. If the Archerfish had been detected, he needed to crash dive and rig for a depth-charge attack. But that would take her out of attack position, ensuring that the Shinano would pass out of range. It seemed unlikely that the periscope could have been sighted. Enright asked his sonar man: was the destroyer sound-ranging? No, came the reply—no pinging. Since everything was riding on the question, however, Enright demanded confirmation. “Scanlon,” he told the man, “look me in the eye and tell me whether that destroyer is pinging.”56 Scanlon checked all possible frequencies, turned to Enright, and repeated his answer. No pinging.
The captain took the sub down a few feet lower, to a keel depth of 62 feet. If the destroyer passed directly overhead, as seemed likely, her keel would pass over the Archerfish’s upper periscope support with about 10 feet of clearance. Not daring to raise the scope again, Enright and a very tense conning tower crew listened to the approaching ship. Passive sound bearings confirmed she was headed directly toward the submarine. The thrum of her engines became audible, and then the swish of her propellers. The rhythmic noise grew louder. “She thundered overhead
like a locomotive,” wrote Enright. “The whole submarine vibrated and rolled from the shockwaves.”57 Then she passed over, and the noise began diminishing. The Japanese had dropped no depth charges; evidently, they had had no inkling of the submarine’s silent presence just beneath their keel.
Enright raised the night scope and centered the crosshairs on the Shinano’s great island, pale in the moonlight. “Mark, bearing,” he called; “Standby . . . fire one.”58
A rumble-shudder-hiss sounded from the bow, and the submarine recoiled as the first torpedo rocketed out of its tube. In the periscope field Enright saw the track stretch away toward the target, “hot, straight and normal.” Eight seconds passed, then: “Fire two.” Another blast of compressed air, and the Archerfish “jerked as if she had been smacked by a whale.”59 Then the third and fourth at eight-second intervals. The tracking party hurriedly entered a setup, and the Archerfish jumped again as the fifth and six torpedoes rushed out of their tubes.
The six torpedoes had been fired with 150 percent spread, meaning that four had been aimed to strike the Shinano, one to pass ahead, and one to pass astern. That was consistent with doctrine for big, high-value targets—the idea was to provide a margin of error in case the TDC solution was wrong, ensuring that at least one fish struck home. In this case, however, the Archerfish could scarcely have missed. She lay directly abeam of the 872-foot-long carrier, at what amounted to point-blank range for a torpedo attack: 1,400 yards. It was like firing at the broad side of a barn.
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