The son of a dedicated Navy officer, Ned had the sea in his blood. He’d entered the Naval Academy in 1935 at just seventeen, graduating in 1939 with honors. Ned hadn’t started out as a submariner. In fact, he wasn’t sure he even wanted to become one. After all, his dad’s advice had been, “ ‘Stay in the big ships, that’s where the real navy is.’ ”
Ned’s previous post was on a “tin can,” an old destroyer named the Lea (DD-118), which he’d grown to love in the two years he served on her. (Ned called her the “leaning, leaking, lopsided Lea.”) New submarines were being built every day, though, and there was a dire need for talented officers to serve on them. Despite his best efforts to avoid the assignment, Ned had been tapped to take part. For his introduction to the silent service, he’d been sent to an intensive three-month course at the Naval Submarine School in Groton, Connecticut, graduating at the top of his class just weeks after the war began.
Ned wasn’t exactly bowled over by his first glimpse of the Trigger that January day. “To me, she certainly wasn’t impressive, beautiful, or anything at all but an ugly chunk of steel.”
What he couldn’t know then was that “two and a half of the most crowded and thrilling years of my life were to be spent with her. She was to become the ruler of my life, and the most beautiful and responsive creature I had ever known: a hard, exacting mistress, but loyal, generous, and courageous.”
Ned already knew that the experience and attitude of the crew was an important part of the equation for success. “If they lack judgment and initiative, so does the ship. If they lack the indomitable spirit, the absolute determination to succeed, so will the inanimate steel. But if they possess these attributes, they and their ship are unbeatable.”
“All ships have souls, and all sailors know it, but it takes a while to learn to commune with one,” he later wrote. “It took me a long time, for Trigger had to find her own soul, too.”
Just as Frederick Warder, Mel Eckberg, and everyone on the Seawolf had done, Trigger’s crew put the new submarine through the shakedown process—numerous tests, dives, and training exercises—before leaving California in the spring of 1942 for Pearl Harbor.
Ned described the final preparations: “Fill her up with torpedoes, diesel oil, food, and spare parts. Make any necessary repairs and take care of the many last-minute items which always come up. Then, one May afternoon about two o’clock, good-by—this is it! The Admiral comes down to the dock, shakes hands with the skipper, wishes him good luck and good hunting. The ship backs into the Mare Island Slough, twists gracefully, and is gone, through Carquinez Strait, past Alcatraz, and under the Golden Gate Bridge.
“Trigger probably had a soul already,” Ned reflected later, “but we were too new to each other, too much taken up with the details of operating her complicated mechanism, to appreciate it.”
Trigger had a spirit of go-ahead.
“Our chance came suddenly,” Ned said. He’d expected that once at Pearl Harbor, the crew would receive more training as part of the normal routine. A major battle looming on the horizon changed all that. Trigger’s first assignment was not a full-fledged war patrol, but an urgent dispatch for action.
Thanks to intelligence obtained by code breakers, the US learned that Japan was preparing an early June attack on Midway, the closest island atoll to Hawai’i. Midway held significant strategic importance. If Japan gained control of Midway, the island could be used as a base to launch air raids on Pearl Harbor itself.
Japan’s Isoroku Yamamoto, architect of the December 7 attack, saw this as a way to finish the job begun then, and completely annihilate the US Pacific Fleet. “The success of this battle was central to the entire Japanese strategic concept of the war,” observed historian Samuel Morison.
For America, it was do or die. After what happened at Pearl Harbor—and the recent, heartbreaking loss of the Philippines after the surrender of Bataan and Corregidor—letting Hawai’i fall to the Japanese was unthinkable. Admiral Chester Nimitz (who had replaced Husband Kimmel as commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet) was not about to be caught unprepared.
Advance knowledge of the attack was one of Admiral Nimitz’s greatest assets as he developed a battle strategy in May, especially since the US fleet wasn’t back at full strength. Japan’s forces included more than 162 ships. The US could scrape together about 76 vessels, not counting Navy, Marine, and Army Air Force planes.
As for submarines, Robert “Bob” English, Charles Lockwood’s counterpart in charge of the Pacific Fleet boats stationed at Pearl Harbor, set about mustering every sub he had available for one of the most crucial encounters of the Pacific war.
Even new, untried boats like Trigger.
By June 3, Trigger was in her patrol area, some twenty miles east of Midway. That night, the submarine got orders to move in to within two miles of the island. Ned knew the Japanese fleet was expected the next morning, “and maybe—maybe—we’d get a shot at it!”
“All night long we raced through the darkness,” said Ned, “and shortly before dawn sighted the lights of Midway, dead ahead.”
Then the lookout shouted a warning. Midway wasn’t just dead ahead—Trigger was plowing right into it.
Jack Hayden Lewis, the skipper, had either miscalculated the location of the atoll’s reefs or missed them entirely on the charts. The error was compounded by poor communication between the captain and officers. And what a mistake it was.
Said Ned, “There were great black rocks dead ahead, waves splashing violently upon them! The captain and navigator dashed up on the bridge beside me.
“ ‘All back full!’ roared the captain.”
Ned could feel the boat respond as the propellers stopped and began to reverse.
Next the captain shouted, “ ‘Sound the collision alarm!’ ”
Ned heard not just one, but all the alarms: collision alarm, general alarm, even the diving alarm. Later he learned that the chief of the watch had been so startled he’d rung every alarm in sight.
“Disaster was on us. The rocks were huge, and so were the waves splashing over them,” Ned said. “Helpless, having totally lost control, we on the bridge saw our boat drive full speed onto the rocks. We struck with a horrendous clang.
“I was looking dead ahead, right over the bow, and saw it rise irresistibly out of the water, reaching heavenward in a desperate, agonized leap. I actually thought that, somewhere behind me, we must have broken in half. I saw our bow slammed sideways to starboard, and then several more diminishing bumps as we slid forward.
“Finally, and very quickly, all forward motion stopped. The ship lay half out of the water at an improbable angle…. We had driven our ship aground at full power, and Trigger was stuck fair…. There was nothing we could do to help ourselves, let alone fight them.”
Crew members rushed to assess the situation, taking soundings to determine the shape of the coral mass. The reef was steep, a good sign. They might be able to reverse and get the boat cleanly off without scraping her too much against the coral.
It didn’t work.
“We backed … no luck. We were much too firmly aground,” said Ned, after the first attempt failed. “Only one thing to do: lighten ship, and this task we feverishly began.”
Trigger sent out an emergency call to submarine headquarters at Pearl Harbor and to US forces based on Midway. There was no way to know if rescue would come in time. If the Japanese arrived first, Trigger would be an easy target.
“And then came dawn … and here poor Trigger lay, bruised, battered…. At any moment we expected to see the enemy fleet, and high and dry as we were, our complete destruction was inevitable,” Ned wrote later.
When help did arrive, it wasn’t quite what Ned and the others expected. “We hoped for a regular Navy tug, a big seagoing ship with powerful engines. Instead, a tiny tug appeared, so small it resembled a toy.”
Men on the rescue vessel connected a hawser (a thick rope or cable used for towing) to the stern of the submarine and beg
an to pull. No luck. Trigger didn’t move. Then the hawser broke.
“At this point,” said Ned, “I felt sure our brand-new Trigger was doomed to spend the rest of her days on the reef.”
Nerves frayed. Then it seemed as if maybe the tug’s efforts, along with a rising tide, had helped. Suddenly, a lookout shouted, “ ‘She’s moving!’ ”
Ned described what happened next. “Incredulously we look over the bow at the reef, and if you look hard enough, the slightest movement is discernible. No time to figure it out.
“All back emergency! Maneuvering, make maximum power! The four faithful diesels roar. Clouds of smoke pour out of the exhaust trunks. The reduction gears whine in a rising crescendo and the propellers throw a boiling flood of white foam over our nearly submerged stern.
“Line up your eye with the bow and the reef. She trembles. The water foams along her sides and up past her bow. Her stern is now completely submerged. She feels alive! Is that a slight change? Yes—yes—she moves! She bounces once and is off the reef. She is free!”
Trigger had been luckier than Ned could have imagined. Although damaged, the submarine was able to return under her own steam to Pearl Harbor for repairs. That wasn’t all: Ned and the others had not, after all, been in imminent danger from the enemy. The Battle of Midway had taken place hundreds of miles away from where Trigger ran aground. Moreover, it had resulted in a decisive victory for American forces.
Ned had been worried about the consequences he and other officers could face for this terrible error. After all, he had been OOD (officer of the deck) at the time. He soon found that the euphoria everyone felt about the glorious and much-needed US victory was in their favor.
“When our skipper reported to headquarters to take his medicine and find out his fate, he was greeted with the jovial instruction to forget it. ‘We just won the Battle of Midway! Haven’t you heard?’ ”
Trigger and Ned Beach would soon get a chance to redeem their tarnished reputations.
“It took Trigger a long time to develop her personality,” reflected Ned Beach.
It also took a new skipper, who came on board in September 1942, to Ned’s relief. Trigger’s near-disaster at Midway in June had been followed by an unsuccessful war patrol around Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. That dreary, cautious outing had been what Ned called an absolute zero, with no enemy contacts and no attacks made.
Skipper Roy Benson (who bore the irreverent nickname Pigboat Benny) lost no time in making his mark. He threw a party for everyone to raise morale. Benson’s wit, humor, and competence, along with his “upbeat, ‘let-me-at-’em’ attitude” were infectious. “With his arrival aboard the Trigger, night turned into day,” said Ned.
Ned got a taste of Benson’s leadership style during Trigger’s second patrol (September 23–November 8, 1942), when Ned himself was at the center of his submarine’s first contact with an enemy ship.
It almost turned out to be the last.
The encounter began shortly before dawn, not far off the eastern coast of Kyushu, Japan. Ned’s first inkling of a ship in the vicinity was the appearance of a large dark shadow in the distance. The shadow moved. Trigger was running on the surface, and Ned, who once again was OOD, soon realized he was looking at a freighter, just the sort of target they were after.
A close-up of Trigger’s bridge from the port lookout platform.
“He was steaming along steadily, purring out a fair-sized cloud of dense black smoke, with not so much as a hint of a zigzag,” said Ned. Since the freighter wasn’t taking evasive action, Ned assumed Trigger hadn’t been spotted.
As OOD, Ned had control of the ship; his new captain stood beside him. With everyone called to battle stations, Trigger began pursuit, maneuvering into firing position.
“ ‘Get right astern of him,’ ” Benson told Ned, who was delighted that the captain was showing such confidence in him. The skipper could easily have decided to take “the conn” (a term meaning to control the movements of the boat) himself.
A clear protocol for control of the boat was essential.
If you’ve watched a submarine film, you’ve probably heard the expression “I have the conn.” (Sometimes conn is also used as a verb, as in “conn” the boat.)
Control of a ship follows a strict procedure. Only one officer at a time can conn or control the motions of the boat. Ned Beach described the protocol used to help avoid accidents such as running aground.
“Navy doctrine prescribes that, in emergency, either the captain or the navigator (but only these two) may arbitrarily take maneuvering control of the ship, ‘the conn,’ at any time…. The regular OOD [officer of the deck], and all others on watch, continue to be responsible for normal routine, but the OOD’s authority to handle the ship’s maneuvers has been supplanted. It remains so until the captain (or the navigator) returns it to him….
“If no emergency exists, however, normal procedure is to say formally, as in relieving the watch, ‘I have the conn,’ or ‘I relieve you of the conn.’ In any case, whoever has or takes the conn, even the captain, must keep it until he has been formally relieved, for by definition only one officer can ‘drive’ or ‘conn’ the ship.”
Daylight found Trigger still chasing her target, aiming to attack from the rear. “It would soon be time to make ready the bow torpedoes for firing,” said Ned.
Yet as he stared intently through the binoculars, Ned suddenly grasped what he should have been seeing all along. “ ‘Captain!’ I yelled. ‘That’s not his stern! It’s his bow! He’s coming right at us!’ ”
Ned hollered, “ ‘Collision Alarm! He’s trying to ram!’ ”
The high-pitched screech of the collision alarm put Ned in mind of a ship screaming in fright. Walter Pye Wilson, the chief wardroom steward when the submariners weren’t at battle stations, confirmed Ned’s orders. “ ‘Watertight doors shut below! Boat’s secured for collision!’ ”
Wilson was one of the few African Americans on submarines during World War II. At the time, the Navy’s discriminatory practices placed severe limitations on black sailors. They were allowed to qualify only as stewards, working in food service or serving the captain and officers. But since in submarines each sailor learned every job, Wilson knew his boat inside and out. Whenever Trigger was in battle station conditions, he took over steering.
Wilson, said Ned, was “one of the steadiest men aboard as well as one of the most popular…. He had always been the proverbial tower of strength at his multitudinous duties; from wardroom to galley to handling mooring lines to battle station helmsman, he was never at [a] loss, his cool voice under stress helping to keep the rest of us cool too.”
Ned sent the lookouts below. That left Ned and Captain Benson alone on the bridge, with the bow of the Japanese ship only one or two hundred yards away. Trigger had survived being run aground on her first outing—this could be her last patrol if Ned didn’t act quickly to evade the freighter barreling toward them.
He yelled an order to Wilson. “ ‘Right full rudder!’ ”
Seconds later, Ned could feel Trigger’s bow swerving. Wilson confirmed: “ ‘Rudder is right full!’ ”
Ned kept his focus on dodging the oncoming attacker. “It was like driving a car in heavy traffic, with two big differences. Ships are a lot longer than cars, and they steer from the stern, not the bow.”
By now the ships were only fifty yards apart, with the freighter still coming full speed ahead, its single smokestack puffing out smoke. Ned called for Wilson to shift Trigger’s rudder to left full, hoping to squeak by the freighter charging toward them. Instantly, Wilson carried out the order.
“If Wilson’s muscles had bulged at the first command, they must have gone into hard knots at this second one,” said Ned. “We could see the rudder angle indicator on the bridge spin to the full left position, moving even faster than before. Trigger obediently stopped her swing to starboard, began to curve rapidly to the left.”
It worked!
“We wo
uld pass clear,” Ned realized with a sense of relief. “I felt a quick sense of satisfaction that I had successfully dodged his assault.”
The danger wasn’t over yet, though. Benson turned to him. “ ‘Ned, are you a hero?’
“ ‘Nossir!’
“ ‘Neither am I! Let’s get out of sight.’ The two of us dived for the hatch. As OOD I was the last man through it, and as I jumped below a rifle bullet zinged through the bridge side plating, making a neat hole a foot or two above my head.
“ ‘Take her down!’ ” Captain Benson ordered.
The crew carried out their diving routine, and Trigger slipped beneath the waves. The immediate danger was over.
Ned, however, was in for some good-natured ribbing about his rapidfire commands during the incident. Wilson teased, “ ‘If we’re going to have a collision, can’t you at least make up your mind where you want me to put the rudder?’ ”
For the first time, Ned realized what those tense moments must have been like from below, where Wilson couldn’t see the danger they’d been in. But thanks to quick thinking and seamless teamwork, they’d avoided disaster.
Over the next few days, Ned was the brunt of a few more friendly jabs about his having a hard time making up his mind, but “behind the wisecracks I sensed also a hint of approving respect. Among the crew of a submarine at war, a great deal is never put into words.
“And as for Wilson and me, nothing can ever take the place of that delicious moment.”
African Americans faced discrimination in all branches of the military during World War II. In the Navy, African Americans were initially restricted to positions related to service—usually working as cooks or stewards (often called mess attendants) who served food to the officers. Yet, they faced the same dangers as their fellow crewmen.
This restriction didn’t keep African Americans from serving valiantly in combat. During the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, mess attendant Doris “Dorie” Miller on the battleship USS West Virginia (BB-48) became the first African American to earn the prestigious Naval Cross in the war after he rescued several sailors, including the captain of the ship, then went on deck to fire a .50 caliber antiaircraft gun at the attacking Japanese planes.
Dive! World War II Stories of Sailors & Submarines in the Pacific Page 9