Dive! World War II Stories of Sailors & Submarines in the Pacific

by Deborah Hopkinson

  No one spoke. At the periscope, Warder reported, “ ‘He apparently doesn’t see us, he’s not zigging at all. This will be a big day if we can get him. Sound, can we pick him up yet?’ ”

  Eck could. “ ‘Yes, Captain, I have him now.’ ”

  “ ‘This is a 5,000 to 7,000 ton freighter,’ ” said Warder. “ ‘The decks are loaded with what looks like invasion barges. We’ll plunk him.’ ”

  And so they did. As the fish left Seawolf, Eck heard the captain call out: “ ‘I can see them … One’s going to hit … !’ ”

  There was a terrific blast. Seawolf went deep. Sinking three ships on his last patrol, Fearless Freddie Warder had once again earned his nickname.

  Not long after, the submarine changed course, heading east. Immediately, Eck noticed the shift. “It suddenly dawned on me: home was in that direction,” said Eck.

  “I got so excited I left my station for the first time in my navy career and rushed out into the control room. The first man I saw was Lieutenant Deragon [the executive officer].

  “ ‘Where are we going, Mr. Deragon?’ I asked him.

  “ ‘You’re overdue, Eck,’ he said with a grin, ‘I knew as soon as we changed course you’d be out here. We expect to go home. How’s that?’ ”

  It was all right with Eck. He’d been dreaming about home for months. In their letters, he and his wife, Marjorie, had been planning his first night back. “We’d settled on dinner in some quiet little restaurant, candles on the table, a full-course meal, topped off by a bottle of expensive wine that had to rest in a bucket of ice.

  “We wouldn’t discuss the war. Marjorie wouldn’t talk to me about the Wolf. No questions about the ships we sunk, or the escapes we had. We would talk about ourselves and about Spike, and about the home we intended to build after the war…. The last time I saw Spike he was twenty-six days old.”

  Seawolf hadn’t been back at Pearl Harbor since the attack nearly a year before. Nor had her weary crew gotten much rest since the first day of the war. They’d endured seven and a half hours of depth charges at a time and pursued the enemy into tight harbors. They had patrolled vast stretches of the Pacific, sinking ships and carrying out dangerous special missions such as ferrying ammunition through enemy waters for the relief of beleaguered troops on Corregidor.

  “For many weeks I hadn’t seen sunlight or tasted fresh air,” said Eck. “I knew I had lost weight. My pants hung so loosely. I had to use new holes in my belt to keep them up…. We weren’t the same men who had left Cavite a year ago.”

  Now these veterans of successful torpedo attacks, long submerged cruises, and depth-charge beatings were about to get their first look at postattack Pearl Harbor.

  “I climbed topside, emerged from the conning tower, and stood transfixed,” said Eck. “The Seawolf was slowly gliding into Pearl Harbor. But what a different spectacle than when we had last been here.”

  The destruction from the battle was visible everywhere, but so were the efforts to rebuild and repair. “The harbor on both sides of us was a staggering scene of destruction, as though a tornado had twisted across it, overturning ships, snapping crane booms like matchsticks, splitting buildings in half,” said Eck.

  “We passed piled-up fragments of planes, their wings jutting out grotesquely; ships splotched with huge holes, keels and hulls of nameless vessels. There was the screeching of moving derricks, the scream of air hammers, a bedlam of engines roaring, machines pounding, men at work.”

  Seawolf’s stay at Pearl Harbor would be brief—she would head to Mare Island in California for several weeks of overhaul and repairs before her next patrol in the spring of 1943. Eck wouldn’t be on her. Like some of the other old-timers, he was due for some rest. He would leave Seawolf after this patrol to brush up on new radio skills. Captain Frederick Warder was leaving for a new assignment too. It felt like the end of an era—and it was.

  “When it came time for me to open my locker and take my personal belongings on shore, I knew I was saying good-by to the Wolf,” Eck said. “It had been more than just a steel structure to me. I’d lived and died a thousand times on this ship. Men whom I admired more than any others I know, had lived and worked with me on this ship. I knew every bulkhead, every odor. She held no secrets from me.

  “I walked through her before I took off my stuff, letting my mind wander over all the Wolf had done: the evacuations of men and material; the High Command, the aviators, ammunition, depth charges … a thousand places, a thousand thrills.”

  Eck and the crew gathered for the final farewell to present their skipper with a watch. “ ‘I have been very fortunate,’ ” Eck remembered him saying. “ ‘Here, I believe, is the best submarine crew ever gathered together…. Now I’m going to shake hands with every one of you.’ ”

  When it was his turn, Eck managed to choke out, “ ‘Good-by, Captain, I hope I can serve with you again someday.’

  “He gripped my hand hard. ‘Nothing would please me more, Eckberg.’ ”

  Neither Mel Eckberg nor Frederick Warder ever returned to the Seawolf. Eck’s adjustment to the world outside the hull of a submarine wasn’t easy at first. “The tension of these last twelve months was to stay with me for a long time after I came home.

  “Marjorie was to be unhappy, Spike afraid to talk to me, because I was so irritable,” he said. “For weeks, after, I’d wake up at two and three in the morning, walk around, smoke half a dozen cigarettes, and try to fall asleep again. For a long time I couldn’t sleep more than three hours at a time.”

  The family held together. Some months later, in August 1943, war correspondents Gerold Frank and James D. Horan were on their way by train to the submarine base in New London, Connecticut. They were on assignment to write a story about submarines, when they happened to meet Mel Eckberg on the train. “He was big and brawny, his giant frame squeezed into a coach seat; he had the clear blue eyes, the hawklike gaze of a Viking; and he was the most beribboned figure we had ever seen in a navy uniform.”

  The journalists asked him to share his story. A week or so later, once official clearance had been given for Eck to relate details of a submariner’s life, Eck invited the men home to look at his Seawolf scrapbook. Marjorie was busy in the kitchen, and toddler Spike sat playing on the floor. His toy: a paperweight made of teakwood, just like the deck of the Seawolf.

  The photos and scrapbook clippings, Eck said, didn’t tell the whole story. And so he told the tale from the beginning, from the first moment he clapped eyes on the Seawolf, until that last, bittersweet moment of parting.

  The Seawolf went on to fight for two more years. In October 1944, on her fifteenth patrol, she was lost with all hands in a tragic case of mistaken identity.

  The submarine was first bombed by a plane, and then attacked by depth charges dropped by a US destroyer. Seawolf’s attempts to communicate by radio were either not picked up or were not understood as the proper recognition signal.

  The loss was a grim reminder of the threats facing every man aboard a submarine in a battle zone. The Seawolf tragedy was, fortunately, rare: She was the only Pacific submarine lost in this way.

  Seawolf had amassed a proud record. “By the autumn of 1944 she had sunk 71,609 tons of enemy shipping. Few submarines had downed as many ships and as much tonnage,” wrote historian Theodore Roscoe. “Fourteen patrols and 56 torpedo battles had gone into her record since that long-ago day when Lieutenant Commander Warder took her around to Davao Gulf and poked her periscope into the vortex of the Tojo-Yamamoto offensive.

  Seawolf’s battle flag.

  “No submarine in the Pacific had fought harder in the war than Seawolf, pioneer veteran of the Asiatic fleet.”

  Mel Eckberg, who loved the ship and gave her his all, would have agreed.

  Submariners quoted in this book sometimes refer to tons and tonnage when speaking of their targets. Just what is tonnage?

  Tonnage is a maritime term. There are different methods of measuring it (and even international co
nventions and agreements about it). For merchant ships like a cargo ship carrying equipment, food, or supplies, tonnage is a measurement of volume. In other words, tonnage is an estimate of how much a ship can carry, with one ton equal to 100 cubic feet of carrying capacity. Tonnage is calculated in a different way for a ship like an oil tanker or an ore carrier. In those cases, tonnage refers to the maximum weight of cargo that can be carried safely.

  Warships, of course, don’t carry cargo, and are measured in terms of their weight. But since it’s not easy to weigh a ship, a method called displacement tons is used to describe a ship’s mass. Think of a ship at sea. It takes up space and displaces a certain amount of water. One expert explains it this way: “Displacement is calculated according to the volume of water displaced, using a standard value of 35 cubic feet of sea water per long ton (2,240 pounds).”

  Throughout the war, tonnage estimates of ships sunk by submarines were always approximations. And while the subject of tonnage may be complex, it’s fairly easy to understand the basic principle: The larger the ship and the more it could carry, the better target it made for submarine skippers.

  As one submarine historian commented, “A Japanese freighter of 5,000 tons was more valuable, and added more to the scorecard than a military patrol craft of 500 tons; though in each case the submarine sank one ship. The displacement or tonnage also provided a guideline to determine whether or not a target was worth expending one or more of their expensive, and in the early days of the war, scarce, torpedoes.”

  USS Wahoo.

  USS WAHOO (SS-238)

  The ship was called the one-sub wolf pack … she was called WAHOO! No one knows where she is now. Perhaps there is some Valhalla for submariners; some happy hunting ground for the men who found such good hunting under the seas.

  —Office of Naval Records and History

  Ships’ Histories Section

  Navy Department

  In the fall of 1942, as the war-weary Seawolf limped into Pearl Harbor, another submarine was just getting her start. The USS Wahoo (SS-238) was built just after Trigger (SS-237). And like Trigger, which had accomplished nothing in her first outing except to run aground on the rocks of Midway, Wahoo’s first excursions gave no hint that she was destined to become a submarine legend.

  In fact, it was just the opposite.

  Wahoo was not a happy boat on her first patrol from August to October of 1942. The atmosphere under her cautious, perfectionist captain, Marvin “Pinky” Kennedy, was strained, with frequent drills and little time for the crew to rest. There were also personal tensions, and a lack of trust between the skipper and his second-in-command, executive officer Richard “Dick” O’Kane.

  Dick O’Kane had graduated from the Naval Academy in 1936. By the time war broke out, he was a husband and father as well as an experienced, hard-charging submariner on track to command his own ship—if he could keep his temper in check, that is. That wasn’t proving to be easy on the Wahoo.

  Dick bristled over the skipper’s insistence that two officers be on watch at all times, which limited the time Dick had available for troubleshooting problems that arose. Furthermore, he chafed under Kennedy’s hesitant approach to attacking enemy ships. Dick, who’d served on the submarine minelayer USS Argonaut (SM-1) for nearly four years, had more actual experience in boats than Kennedy, who relied on prewar, textbook strategies—strategies that seemed overly conservative to his eager executive officer.

  Wahoo’s third officer, George Grider, felt much the same. “After exhausting months of drills, after the build-up of tension within each man as to how he would conduct himself in danger, it was demoralizing to creep away submerged from that first target.”

  Dick was furious when the captain let two significant targets—a Japanese aircraft tender and an aircraft carrier—get away. He assumed the captain would be relieved of duty after that, but Kennedy was given another chance. Something did change, though.

  A brash, charismatic officer named Dudley “Mush” Morton was assigned to ride along on Wahoo’s second patrol as prospective commanding officer (PCO), a dry run before being given his own command.

  “Dudley greeted each of us with a friendly smile and a hand twice the size of ours,” recalled Dick O’Kane. “His genial personality seemed contagious…. Hope replaced apprehensions concerning our coming patrol before I hit my bunk.”

  Forest J. Sterling was also new to Wahoo, coming aboard as yeoman with responsibility for the boat’s paperwork. Sterling, nicknamed Yeo on account of his job duties, remembered Dudley Morton vividly.

  When Yeo addressed the new officer formally, Mush told him, “ ‘Don’t call me Mister Morton, call me “Mush.” That’s my nickname for “Mushmouth.” It’s the name they gave me at the Naval Academy—I like it.’ ”

  The Wahoo left Pearl Harbor on November 8, 1942, on her second war patrol. Like her first outing, it was a discouraging experience for Dick. After Kennedy called off an attack on a tanker, Dick could stand it no longer. In an act of subtle defiance, he pulled out his copy of Navy Regulations to review the section on taking over command from a captain.

  It was a risky page to leave open. Yet that’s exactly what happened when Dick was called away to make a periscope search. Dick didn’t expect Kennedy to appear just then, but he did. Not only that, Kennedy idly picked up the book, still open to the section about removing the captain.

  Dick said nothing. “It was one of life’s touchy moments,” he reflected later. “No words were exchanged, but now each knew exactly where he stood with the other.”

  Wahoo’s skipper did manage to sink two enemy ships during the patrol, which helped the crew’s morale. Still, Dick had some soul-searching to do when they put into harbor in Australia. “I loved this ship and the challenge of her full potential, but could not go to sea again with my present captain when a blowup would be inevitable.”

  He needn’t have worried. When the patrol ended, Kennedy was transferred out of submarines. The coming year would bring a new skipper for Wahoo. Dudley “Mush” Morton would step into the role. Mush Morton and Dick O’Kane were about to make submarine history.

  JANUARY 2: Japanese forces enter the city of Manila, Philippines.

  JANUARY 23: Just north of Australia, the Japanese capture the city of Rabaul on the island of New Britain in what is now Papua New Guinea, and develop a military base there.

  FEBRUARY 15: Singapore surrenders to the Japanese.

  FEBRUARY 27: Japan wins the Battle of the Java Sea; prior to the battle, US submarines had been unable to make successful torpedo attacks in defense of the island (in part because of defective torpedoes and also ineffective skippers); submarines do not take part; US Asiatic Fleet submarines withdraw to Western Australia.

  MAY 3: Japanese occupy the island of Tulagi in the Solomon Islands.

  MAY 4–8: For the first time, US forces check the Japanese advance, in the Battle of the Coral Sea (north of Australia), a battle led by carrier-based aircraft; four submarines participate with one confirmed sinking of a minelayer. Parts of Papua New Guinea remain contested territory.

  MAY 14: Charles Lockwood relieves John Wilkes to command submarines in Freemantle, Australia; at Pearl Harbor, Bob English assumes command of the submarines in the Pacific Fleet.

  JUNE 4–7: US hands Japan a major strategic defeat at the Battle of Midway; although several submarines of the Pacific Fleet are deployed by Bob English, none score a hit.

  JUNE 20: Lockwood arranges first test of Mark XIV torpedoes, revealing that they are running about ten to eleven feet deeper than set.

  JULY 5: US establishes a submarine base at Midway.

  AUGUST 7–FEBRUARY 9: US and Japanese forces begin prolonged surface ship and ground conflict in the Solomon Islands, including the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal (November 12–15), which ends with Allied victory on February 9, 1943.

  NOVEMBER: Following defeat at the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, Japan goes on the defense in the Pacific, trying to hold territory gained
in its offensive actions begun in December 1941.

  The Wahoo.

  Mush was in his element. He was in danger, and he was hot on the trail of the enemy, so he was happy.

  —George Grider

  Morton feared nothing on or under the sea.

  —Theodore Roscoe

  Dudley “Mush” Morton, sometimes affectionately known as Mush the Magnificent, was built like a bear but had the playful nature of a young cub.

  “Everybody liked Mush,” said Wahoo’s third officer George Grider. “He was always roaming the narrow quarters, his big hands reaching out to examine equipment, his wide-set eyes missing nothing…. The tiny wardroom always brightened when Mush squeezed his massive shoulders through one of the two narrow doorways and found a place to sit.”

  Unlike Trigger’s Ned Beach, Dudley Morton didn’t hail from a seafaring family. He’d been born far from the ocean, in Owensboro, Kentucky, in 1907. His mother was often ill during his childhood, so Dudley was sent to live with relatives in Miami, Florida. After high school, he entered the US Naval Academy, where he wrestled and played football, picking up his nickname along the way. His Naval Academy yearbook described his famous smile, ever-ready sense of humor, and infectious charm.

  Mush brought these qualities—as well as an aggressive (and sometimes controversial) ferocity—to his leadership of the Wahoo. For Dick O’Kane, continuing in the role of executive officer, it was a welcome relief to serve a captain whose bold style matched his own. And unlike Dick’s previous skipper, Mush had complete confidence in his executive officer.

  Dick O’Kane and Dudley “Mush” Morton on the bridge of the Wahoo.