From … Commander Asiatic Fleet … To Asiatic Fleet …
Urgent … Break … Japan … has … commenced … hostilities …
Govern … yourselves accordingly.
America had been in the war for only hours when Seawolf and other pioneering Pacific submarines were ordered out on their first patrols. Mel Eckberg had been preparing for this a long time. He couldn’t help reflect back on how he—and his beloved Seawolf—had gotten this far.
USS Seawolf.
USS SEAWOLF (SS-197)
This story has 80 heroes and one heroine. The heroes are the officers and men of an American submarine. The heroine is the ship herself. More than 80 feet long, with eight torpedo tubes and a surface speed of better than 20 knots, she was commissioned December 1, 1939. Since that day, she has led an exciting and secret life.
—Office of Naval Records and History
Ships’ Histories Section
Navy Department
“ ‘Kid, why don’t you come into this outfit? We could use you.’ ”
Mel Eckberg had been eighteen when those words from his brother Paul spurred him to join the US Navy Submarine Service; in the thirteen years since, Eck hadn’t regretted his choice.
“We know we’re different from other services of the armed forces,” he reflected. “Most of us went into the Navy as soon as we were old enough—seventeen, eighteen, nineteen.
“With all due modesty we know we’re picked men, paid 50 per cent more in our jobs than men in any other branch of the service, and that few of us will be in it actively after we’re forty—because it’s so tough…. Submarines are our lives and our careers.”
Eck first set eyes on the Seawolf in August 1939 as the boat was nearing completion at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, a major submarine construction yard in Kittery, Maine, and near the city of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He and his wife, Marjorie, had moved to Portsmouth so Eck could be part of the Seawolf’s shakedown crew—the group of highly qualified men tapped to put the new submarine through her paces and work out any kinks. They’d become her “plank owners,” members of the crew when the ship was placed in commission, or active service.
“Yard workmen were laying the Wolf’s teakwood decking, riveters were assembling her periscope shears, painters were daubing a thick black coat of paint on her sides, which swelled outward so gracefully at the waterline,” Eck recalled. “Her heavy bronze bell was being rigged. Under the scaffolding I could make out her clean, trim lines. She was pretty.”
Not only would Eck be on a beautiful new boat, he’d be serving under Lieutenant Commander Frederick Warder, a respected skipper with an engineering background and unwavering moral compass. Warder would later become known by a nickname he didn’t much like, but which stuck nonetheless: “Fearless Freddie.”
Frederick “Fearless Freddie” Warder.
Eck, who handled radio and sound duties, explained his job this way: “I’d be her eyes and ears under water. A submarine is blind below periscope depth, and her only contact with the world is by sound. She feels and gropes her way along the bottom of the sea, between shoals, over reefs—all by sound. She recognizes the enemy’s approach by sound and measures the success of her attacks by sound.”
Once the Seawolf was finished, her crew assembled. The men spent long hours studying blueprints so they knew the boat inside and out. “A submarine such as the Wolf needs … three complete crews each on an eight-hour shift, and specialists all. Officers, electricians, machinists, radiomen, firemen, signalmen, torpedomen, fire-controlmen, cooks, mess boys,” Eck explained.
Serving on a submarine required more than just understanding one’s own duties, Eck explained. “Each of us had to know as much as possible about every other man’s job. Every submarine man is a specialist, but he must be prepared to take over any other post at a moment’s notice, whether it be frying eggs or firing torpedoes.”
The Seawolf’s crew learned to take the boat apart, and put her back together again. Eck figured his job wasn’t much different from being a surgeon who has to know each and every bone and muscle of the human body. In wartime conditions at sea, that depth of knowledge might just save a submariner’s life.
The Seawolf was “glory itself,” and easily the most impressive boat Eck had ever encountered. “I’d seen a lot of submarines, but the Wolf topped them all. More than 308 feet long, weighing 1,480 tons, built to make over 20 knots surface speed, air-conditioned and equipped with every modern device, she combined the best we knew in submarine construction.
“I ducked into her conning tower and let myself down the narrow perpendicular steel ladder leading to the control room directly under it. I turned around—and whistled. I’d never seen so many instruments—dials, valves, gauges, controls—in one control room. The room was white, glistening white, and the instruments shone and gleamed. Here was the glittering ‘Christmas Tree,’ a small panel of green and red lights which gave the legend on every hatch of the Wolf, and whether it was open or closed…. I almost swelled with pride as I stood there and drank it all in.”
The most exciting part, of course, was Eck’s own station, his “shack,” a space of about six by eight feet. The panel rising from a glass-topped table reminded Eck of the control board of a radio station. Overhead were the familiar wires and cables of a submarine ceiling space.
Sailors working on a submarine.
“Seated at this table—my desk—I had before and behind me the last word in submarine radio and sound gear, an instrument of electrical echo-ranging and sonic devices so sensitive that when the Wolf was submerged I would be able to detect the beating of a ship’s screws when she was still far away. On the surface I’d switch from sound to radio, and send and receive with an antenna strung topside.”
Once crew members had become thoroughly familiar with their new boat, they began to move in. “The first thing I did was to paste a photograph of Marjorie on the panel of my sound gear, and fix another above my bunk,” said Eck.
“My locker was built into the bulkhead next to my bunk, and I packed away my clothing: four suits of blue dungarees; four changes of underwear, one set of gray wool, one heavy all-wool with double back and chest; a dozen pair of socks, six wool, six cotton; two pairs of black shoes; dress and undress blues; sandals; six hats (blue and white, and one warm blue knitted watch cap for cold nights on deck).”
His crewmates put up photos of loved ones, and brought in books, magazines, dice, and decks of cards. (Cribbage was a favorite game on submarines, as well as poker and backgammon, sometimes called acey-deucey.) Eck recalled that one machinist’s mate, “a wizard softball player, came in lugging a sackful [sic] of bats, balls, and mitts. We were making the Wolf our home.”
By February of 1940, the Seawolf and her crew were ready for her first test dive. Despite the thorough preparations, tension hung in the air the day Marjorie Eckberg drove her husband to the dock. And for good reason.
Less than a year before, on May 23, 1939, another new submarine, the USS Squalus (SS-192), had met with a tragic accident during a dive off the coast of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Twenty-six members of the crew of fifty-nine perished. (The submarine was recovered and later renamed the Sailfish.) Eck had known many of the victims.
USS Seawolf submerging during a test dive.
Now as they rounded a turn, Eck caught a glimpse of the Seawolf: “Black, shining black, in the cold morning sun, long, sleek, and black…. The deck force was scampering about, chopping the ice clear from our lines, and even in the distance the orders echoed crisp and clear…. The flag was blowing at the stern. I got out of the car.
“ ‘Well, here goes, honey,’ I said.
“ ‘Oh, Mel,’ she said.
“I leaned down and kissed her. She turned the wheel sharply and drove off. I came aboard the Wolf as a voice boomed through a megaphone from the bridge: ‘Preparations for getting under way!’
“There was a terrific roar from deep within the Wolf; then a series of sharp, ear-sp
litting reports … Her powerful Diesels were turning over.”
As Eck hurried to his station in the radio shack, the “familiar odor of burned fuel oil came to me, and the old excitement swept over me…. I put on my earphones; the intercommunication system was switched on, and all through the Wolf’s compartments little grilled loudspeakers awoke and chatted.
“When the Captain went into the conning tower, not a whisper but his echoed through the ship. We were all one family, all wrapped together in that extraordinary intimacy of men who go down to the sea in the sealed steel chambers of a submarine.”
The Seawolf sailed through her shakedown with flying colors.
Eck loved the Seawolf, but after shore leave in November of 1941, it was harder than usual to say good-bye to Marjorie. Their baby, David, nicknamed Spike, had been born just five weeks earlier in San Diego, where they’d been living since that spring.
“Marjorie and I did little that last night but sit around and ogle Spike,” Eck recalled. “We couldn’t get our fill of him. We put him on the carpet, and he lay on his back gurgling … Then we put him to bed and began to pack.”
Following a brief stop at Pearl Harbor, the Seawolf traveled across the Pacific to her home base with the Asiatic Fleet in the Philippines. Hours after the news of the Pearl Harbor attack reached him, the new father was ready to put his long years of training and preparation to the test.
US Navy submarines are categorized by the class, or type of boat. Often the class is named after the first boat to be built in that category. World War II submarines fell into several classes.
At the outset of the war, a number of older submarines, known as S-boats, were still in service, some dating back to 1916. These boats had shorter cruising ranges and no air-conditioning, which made them ill-suited for long patrols in the Pacific.
Between 1935 and 1939, so-called fleet-type submarines were built, including P class (sometimes called Porpoise class), as well as Salmon and Sargo class boats. As Navy historian Theodore Roscoe explained, planners gave priority to improvements in “diving speed, cruising range and torpedo power.” These submarines could cruise for longer periods, remaining on patrol for about seventy-five days, and could cover ten thousand miles at normal cruising speeds before being refueled. Salmon and Sargo class submarines built in 1938 and 1939 had eight torpedo tubes and were 308 feet long with a machine gun on deck. In 1940, the Tambor class submarines were built; these had ten torpedo tubes as well as a three-inch deck gun and two machine guns.
In 1941, Gato class boats became the standard for mass production during the war years. Like the Salmon and Sargo classes, the Gato boats were named after marine creatures and, Roscoe noted, “embodied the best features of the previously built long-range submarines—all-welded construction, all-electric drive, oceanic cruising range, ten torpedo tubes … length 307 feet … surface speed 20 knots. This was the submarine produced by American builders throughout World War II.”
Submarines have hull numbers as well as names. (And to make things even more confusing, the “names” of submarines were also sometimes numbers.) Hull numbering for submarines is consecutive, dating back to the Holland (SS-1), launched in 1897. The Seawolf was SS-197 (ship-submarine 197); the USS Diablo, a Gato class boat, which set out on her first patrol days before hostilities ended in August 1945, was SS-479. (The abbreviation for battleship is BB; for a submarine tender, it is AS.)
While the practice is in decline today, traditionally, ships were considered feminine. This may date back to the Latin word for ship, navis, which is feminine; to female figureheads on boats; or to the fact that male shipowners named boats after women in their lives. In any case, most of the submariners in World War II (including the official Navy Ships’ Histories) considered boats feminine and I have done so here as well.
Even in the tiny galley of a submarine, a good cook could work miracles, and Seawolf’s Gus Wright was no exception. At seven p.m. on December 8, Wright served up a tasty dinner of steak, french fries, asparagus, and ice cream.
Mel Eckberg had just finished his meal when he began to sense restlessness in the men around him. Crew members murmured:
“ ‘What are we waiting for?’
“ ‘Time’s a wastin’, ducks on the pond, let’s be away!’ ”
Thirty minutes later, Captain Frederick Warder called everyone together. Just as they’d guessed, the Seawolf would be heading out from Cavite Naval Station that night. Admiral Thomas Hart, and his second-in-command for submarines, John Wilkes, had divided responsibilities among the twenty-nine submarines of the Asiatic Fleet. Some would remain close to help defend the Philippines.
The Seawolf, along with the USS Sculpin (SS-191), would escort a convoy, or group, of three ships being sent south to safety, out of the range of Japanese aircraft based in Formosa (now Taiwan). One ship, the USS Pecos (AO-6), was a valuable oil tanker carrying much-needed fuel for the fleet. The two subs would act like herding dogs, protecting defenseless sheep from marauding wolves.
That wouldn’t be Seawolf’s only job on her first patrol. Once her escort duties were done, she’d join other Asiatic Fleet submarines out on the high seas as a raider, searching for Japanese ships—especially oil tankers and cargo freighters crucial to supplying the Japanese military expansion.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, restrictions on submarines attacking merchant ships such as oil tankers had been abandoned. The submarines would be deployed to target freighters and tankers and destroy Japanese shipping. Until the Navy’s battleships could be repaired, submarines would be taking on this challenge pretty much on their own—becoming lone raiders in a vast ocean.
Submarines in the Pacific Fleet based in Pearl Harbor would focus on areas where high enemy ship traffic was anticipated and where shipping lanes converged. Boats like Seawolf in the Asiatic Fleet had a more complicated assignment in the early days of the war. As Japan moved aggressively to occupy islands throughout the Pacific, the submarines would patrol “a fluid front that constantly shifted with the advance of the Japanese offensive. Where opportunity presented they might penetrate this front to harry the sea lanes behind the lines or raid the harbors captured by the Japanese invasion forces.”
The Pacific Ocean was immense. No matter how you looked at it, US submarines were spread very thin indeed.
Eck noticed his captain’s left hand opening and closing again, something he’d seen the skipper do before when he was deeply moved. Frederick Warder told his men, “ ‘Needless to say, you all know we’re not playing any more. We’re out after them now. Let’s get them.’ ”
Warder repeated the directive from command headquarters: “ ‘You will sink or destroy enemy shipping wherever encountered.’ ”
That night, Warder made the first brief entry in what would eventually become hundreds of pages of Seawolf’s patrol reports: “Under way with convoy as directed.”
“We had no chance to cable our families that we were all right,” reflected Eck. By now, Marjorie would know they were at war and be wondering whether he was safe. He had no way to reassure her. “We’d have to wait for that later—somewhere, somehow. We knew we had our work cut out. Philippine waters are dangerous for submarines.
“Coral reefs, treacherous rocks, shoals, and in many places little depth to maneuver in, all add to trouble. And the waters themselves are so clear that planes can easily spot submarines.”
Moving swiftly under the cover of darkness, the Seawolf made her way cautiously through Manila Bay. “We were constantly on the alert. The night lookouts kept their eyes glued to their binoculars … We strained every sense watching and listening.”
Eck said, “As the sun rose on the ninth of December, we made our first day-long dive. We were on our first mission of the war; and from now on, unless we found ourselves in the safety of our own ports, the Wolf would never show more than her periscope in daylight.”
Whenever the Seawolf ran submerged during the day, she needed to surface at night to recharge batteri
es. Like other submarines of the time, the Seawolf was diesel engine–driven when on the surface; underwater, the boat relied on battery-powered electric motors. This meant the submarine depended on fuel supplies for its diesel engines and stored energy from batteries to propel her underwater motors.
To conserve batteries, submarine captains preferred to run on the surface as much as possible. While submarines could make faster time this way, they were also vulnerable to attack from aircraft (sometimes even from friendly planes) and from other ships. So when submarine skippers needed to avoid detection or make a stealthy approach on an enemy target, they usually ran submerged.
Even submerged, the men on the Seawolf could track news through dispatches and radio broadcasts. What they heard made them realize just how close they’d come to being caught by the Japanese.
The enemy had wasted no time. Earlier on December 8, while the crew of the Seawolf had been rushing to leave port, Japanese planes had attacked Clark Field in the Philippines, wiping out seventeen B-17s—half of General Douglas MacArthur’s force of Flying Fortress heavy bombers. In one swift move, the Japanese effectively established control of the air in the Philippines.
Not only did this clear the way for a land invasion, Japan could now send its own bombers over Manila Bay at any time, making any ships or submarines in the water “sitting ducks” as shells and bombs rained down from above. The Navy’s submarine fleet was spared at Pearl Harbor. The same would not hold true in the Philippines.
On December 10, two days after the Seawolf left on patrol, her sister subs USS Sealion (SS-195) and USS Seadragon (SS-194) were still at the shipyard at Cavite undergoing overhaul. Workers were hurrying to finish. Nearly ready, the Seadragon was being painted. Empty and half-empty cans of black paint littered her wooden deck.
Dive! World War II Stories of Sailors & Submarines in the Pacific Page 3