They had. All at once, the Wahoo was shaken not by depth charges but by “a mighty roar and cracking, as if we were in the very middle of a lightning storm,” said Dick O’Kane. “The great cracking became crackling, and every old salt aboard knew the sound—that of steam heating a bucket of water, but here amplified a million times. The destroyer’s boilers were belching steam into the sea.”
From where Yeo sat, he could hear shouts erupt from the conning tower and control room. Someone burst out, “ ‘It’s a hit!’ ”
Mush Morton ordered, “ ‘Bring her back up to periscope depth, George.’ ”
Once again, Mush let executive officer Dick O’Kane do the honors. Dick took a long look through the periscope. “ ‘There she is. Broken in two.’ ”
“Bedlam broke loose on the Wahoo,” said George. “I waved to Hank to take over in the control room, grabbed my Graflex [camera], and shot up the ladder. Mush had named me ship’s photographer, and I was going to get a shot of that target one way or another.
“It wasn’t easy. Even Mush wanted to take a look at this, and every man in the crowded conning tower was fighting for a turn by the time the skipper turned aside. But at last my chance came. Somehow I got a few pictures and moved out of the way.
Photograph of the Japanese destroyer Harusame in Wewak Harbor taken through Wahoo’s periscope.
“And now Mush, who was almost a tyrant when it came to imposing his will on us in emergencies, returned to the democratic spirit he always showed when something good happened.
“ ‘Let everybody come up and take a look,’ he called.”
When the loudspeaker crackled with the invitation to head to the conning tower on the double, Yeo Sterling sprang to his feet and followed the crowd into the control room.
“A line had formed at the foot of the ladder [to the conning tower] and I crowded in,” said Yeo. “My turn came and I looked quickly, seeing the blur of broken destroyer hull and its slighted slanted deck near the water line. Black and white smoke was pouring from amidships, and the rigging was polka-dotted with white uniforms.”
Someone yanked the periscope handles away and Yeo stepped back. He saw Mush grinning and thought Dick was having a hard time concealing his triumphant mood.
The only one not caught up in the glory of the moment seemed to be the cook, John Rowls, who complained to Yeo that the excitement was wreaking havoc with getting out the next meal. “ ‘Chow will be spoiled by the time anyone’s ready to eat.’ ”
For once, no one seemed to care about food as the crew absorbed the impact of Wahoo’s daring attack and their narrow escape. “ ‘The war is one Japanese destroyer shorter,’ ” someone said.
In fact, although the men on the Wahoo believed they’d sunk the destroyer, later found to be the Harusame, it had only been damaged. If the attack had been at sea in deep open water, perhaps the Harusame wouldn’t have survived. But since the ship had been struck close to land, the Japanese were able to beach it and make repairs. The destroyer returned to action by the end of 1943. Not for long, though. The Harusame was sunk by US planes eighteen months later.
After a little while, Mush Morton appeared in the crew’s messroom, a wet towel pressed to the back of his neck. “ ‘All my nerves are tied up into a knot at the back of my neck.’ ”
Mush asked pharmacist’s mate Leslie Lindhe to pass out what he called the depth-charge medicine.
Lindhe brought out a large carton with a lid on it. “ ‘Get your depth-charge medicine here,’ he announced. ‘Anybody don’t want theirs, let me know.’ ”
Depth-charge medicine? Yeo had a sneaking suspicion what that might be. Peering inside the carton, his eyes widened as he spotted several dozen miniature bottles of brandy.
It was another of Mush’s new (and popular) ideas.
It had been a long day for everyone. But it wasn’t over yet. Wahoo still needed to backtrack nine miles to open sea.
“We were still celebrating when a bomb went off close,” said George. “Down we went again to ninety feet, realizing there was an airplane up there on lookout for us.”
The Wahoo made her way cautiously out of the harbor. Mush ordered the sub to run submerged half an hour past the point when the sound man could pick up any beach or surf noises. By then, it was after seven and growing dark.
“Three blasts sent us to the surface into God’s clean air. It has a fragrance, but it takes a day submerged in a submarine before that can be appreciated,” said Dick. “Four engines were rumbling and in minutes would take over the load from our battery, which was driving Wahoo to the north. Back on our port quarter were huge fires above the harbor, probably lighted to silhouette that submarine [Wahoo], should she try to escape.”
Dick was about to lay out their next course, when Mush intervened, “ ‘George, you take over navigation for a day, and, Dick, you hit your bunk.’
“It was an order, but I offered two modifications,” Dick recalled, “a game of cribbage first, and that Krause [signalman Fertig Krause] be relieved of duties too. In the excitement we had not particularly noticed it, but we had not turned in for 35 hours.”
Later, in his war patrol report, Mush Morton noted, “The conduct and discipline of the officers and men of this ship while under fire were superb…. I commend them all for a job well-done, especially Lieutenant R. H. O’Kane the Executive Officer, who is cool and deliberate under fire.”
As for Yeo Sterling, he was treated to a magnificent tropical sunset and an equally glorious moonrise when he took the first watch. “When the sun balanced itself precariously on the earth’s horizon … it presented an enlarged blood-red, slightly distorted orb that could be viewed with the naked eye,” he wrote later.
“In the east, a darkening band of gray widened, getting ready to push the colors out of the sky as soon as the sun would be swallowed up. A dim moon took shape, becoming a brighter silver in proportion to the evening’s waning.”
Yeo pulled himself out of his reverie, knowing the safety of each man on board depended on his being alert. Still, that feeling of oneness stayed with him. “I came below decks with a deep feeling of serenity upon me.”
Why was there such a difference between the cautious attack strategies of skippers like Marvin “Pinky” Kennedy, who had been trained in the prewar era, and the new breed of leaders like Dudley “Mush” Morton and Richard “Dick” O’Kane, who embraced more aggressive tactics?
George Grider, who served with both Mush and Dick and went on to command the USS Flasher (SS-249), explained it this way: “Ideas about what a submarine should do on a war patrol had changed drastically since the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Most of our prewar training had been conducted with the idea that a sub would be a scouting vessel proceeding ahead of the fleet…. It was thought that a submarine’s major function was to proceed a day or so ahead of the fleet, make the initial contact with the enemy, maintain that contact, send back reports, and conduct attacks in conjunction with our own forces.
“After the bulk of our Pacific Fleet was either sunk or disabled at Pearl, however, it became evident that this sort of strategy would not be feasible. We had no fleet…. Our mission, then, was to proceed to our assigned area … to patrol it and to sink any and all Japanese naval or merchant ships we encountered.”
Finding qualified captains to execute that strategy remained a challenge throughout the war. Historian Clay Blair noted that in 1943 and 1944, approximately 14 percent of skippers were relieved for not producing results; the figure was higher in 1942, when 30 percent were reassigned for being unproductive. “The ‘skipper problem’ in the U.S. submarine force remained constant,” he wrote. “There was always a shortage and always nonproductivity.”
The next morning, as Wahoo headed north in the open seas toward Palau, the submarine encountered a small Malaysian fishing boat fleeing the Japanese. Adrift after its engine failed, the vessel had six fishermen on board; three others had perished from starvation and lack of water.
“Our crew p
itched up oranges, fresh and canned fruit, part of our day’s supply of bread, and filled their water breakers,” said Dick O’Kane. “Just in time came Krause’s penciled chart to go with a can opener, and we sent them on their way with a wave and a prayer.”
Wahoo assists sailors on a fishing boat.
Mush Morton’s Wahoo would not always extend mercy to individuals caught at sea in the midst of war. A few days later, Mush was at the center of the most controversial action by a US submarine commander during World War II.
Wahoo continued on its northern course toward Palau. George Grider was on the bridge on the morning of January 26, sweeping the seas with his binoculars, when he spotted smoke on the horizon.
“The great weakness of the Japanese merchant marine,” he commented later, “was that its ships could never stop making smoke. Almost every time we sighted them it was from the smoke they made—a tremendous advantage, for it meant that a ship completely out of sight over the horizon and traveling a course that would not have brought it closer could be spotted, hunted down and sunk.”
And that was exactly what Wahoo’s skipper had in mind.
Forty-five minutes later, the crew spotted the masts of two ships, which appeared to be freighters without a military escort ship. Since it was daylight, the submarine submerged and prepared to attack. With Dick manning the periscope once again, Wahoo fired two torpedoes at the leading ship, and two more at the other. Three out of the four fish hit their targets. One vessel had begun to sink; the other, a damaged freighter, started toward the submarine. Then, as Dick looked through the periscope, he reported a third ship on the scene, possibly a troop transport.
“We were entering the sort of situation in which Mush was at his absolute best—a cloudy and confused situation,” George reflected later. “Here was an injured ship headed directly at us, evidently intent on ramming us, while astern of him and still on the original course was yet another—a big one.”
Wahoo fired three torpedoes at the transport, and then two more direct, “down the throat” shots at the freighter still barreling toward them. Noted George, “Before the day ended, I was to have a higher regard for the captain of that freighter than for any other enemy skipper we ever fought.”
Wahoo dived deeper just before the freighter hit its conning tower, and turned hard to the left to avoid being rammed. Explosions sounded above them. When Mush brought the submarine up to periscope depth a few minutes later, the officers could see that the transport they’d struck had stopped dead in the water.
“ ‘Let’s finish him off,’ ” George remembered Mush saying. Two torpedoes later, Wahoo scored a direct hit and the ship began to sink rapidly, with soldiers jumping from her into the water.
At first, Wahoo turned away from the troop ship toward the damaged freighter, which was now trying to escape the scene of destruction. As Wahoo followed, Dick spotted the masts of a fourth ship on the horizon, which appeared to be a tanker.
And at that moment, Mush Morton made a fateful decision.
“Our battery was getting dangerously low,” George recalled. “We had been down [submerged] since eight o’clock, most of the time running at high speed, and it was now a little past eleven-thirty.”
So, rather than immediately pursuing the new target, a tanker, and the damaged freighter, Mush ordered Wahoo to surface to recharge batteries. When the Wahoo surfaced, Mush drew closer to the floating wreckage of the troop transport ship, later identified as the Buyo Maru, and ordered his men to demolish the small lifeboats and rafts now bobbing in the water.
The Buyo Maru, sunk by Wahoo on January 26, 1943.
Those boats, and the waters, were filled with enemy soldiers, or so Wahoo’s captain thought.
Accounts differ as to what happened next. According to executive officer Dick O’Kane, the captain’s goal was to destroy the boats to prevent enemy soldiers from getting ashore. Dick recalls Mush told him, “ ‘Every one who does can mean an American life.’ ”
Dick remained steadfast in his defense of his skipper, claiming, “Some Japanese troops were undoubtedly hit during this action, but no individual was deliberately shot in the boats or in the sea.” Other eyewitnesses disagree, reporting that Mush ordered the deck gun crew to fire at survivors. Estimates vary as to how many men died or how long the attack continued.
But there was a tragic aspect to this incident. No one on the Wahoo realized that not all the survivors were enemy soldiers.
In fact, the troopship had been carrying an estimated five hundred Indian prisoners of war, who were engaged in deadly struggles with their Japanese captors as they tried to cling to floating debris.
Yeo Sterling saw one man waving a piece of canvas and remarked on it as unusual, since he knew that normally the Japanese did not surrender. In the heat of battle, no one stopped long enough to analyze what that might mean: The man was indeed attempting to wave a white flag. Some Indian survivors later said they shouted and tried to identify themselves as captured POWs to no avail.
It’s difficult to know how many people died. One modern researcher estimates the death toll at nearly three hundred Indian prisoners of war, and eighty-seven Japanese soldiers. Whatever actually occurred, Mush Morton, motivated by an intense desire to defeat the enemy, never had regrets. He was not censured by superiors, nor was any policy issued at the time.
Still, not every skipper followed this lead. Submarines, of course, could not carry prisoners of war the way larger ships could. But most submarine captains targeted the ships, not the men on them.
In his 1975 chronicle of WWII submarine warfare, Clay Blair observed, “To some submariners, this was cold-blooded murder and repugnant. However, no question was raised about it in the glowing patrol report endorsements…. Whether other skippers should follow Morton’s example was left up to the individual. Few did.”
Perhaps another reason the Buyo Maru incident received little attention at the time was that it was lost amid the other spectacular successes of Mush Morton’s first patrol as skipper—successes that came as a breath of fresh air after the disappointments of the first thirteen months of the submarine war.
After leaving the wreckage of the Buyo Maru, Wahoo pursued the other two ships and launched attacks, expending its last two torpedoes. While Mush thought he’d sunk both, for a “clean sweep” of the sea, postwar reports revealed that the last ship on the scene, the tanker, was only damaged. At the time, though, Wahoo’s victories made the submarine and her charismatic captain instant celebrities.
When she arrived triumphantly at Pearl Harbor on February 7, 1943, the Wahoo had traveled 6,554 miles and burned 92,000 gallons of diesel fuel (about fourteen gallons per mile). The submarine was met by a crowd, a band, and the press, all eager for some good news. A broom, symbolizing Wahoo’s apparent “clean sweep,” soon became famous.
“We made quite a stir when we slid into the dock at Pearl early in February with a broom flying at the masthead to show we had swept the seas clean—and with no more than two hundred gallons of fuel left in our tanks,” said George. “The war correspondents had a field day.”
The broom atop Wahoo proclaimed her clean sweep of the seas.
The Wahoo, noted Dick, had “put a crack in the silence of the ‘silent service.’ ” Mush and the submarine became front-page news across the country, with the now-famous skipper appearing in newsreels and newspapers.
Reporters tracked down Harriet Morton, the captain’s wife, who was quite surprised to find her husband in the news. According to George, “Mush had talked to her by phone the day before, but all he had told her was that the Wahoo had done better than he expected.”
For his part, Dick O’Kane would take to heart Mush Morton’s comment over a cribbage game one night as they headed toward Pearl Harbor. “ ‘Tenacity, Dick. Stay with ’em till they’re on the bottom!’ ”
Just before the Wahoo docked at Pearl Harbor, Yeo Sterling had been kept busy typing up Mush Morton’s first patrol report—a report that would b
e circulated within the Submarine Force as a teaching tool for how it should be done. Mush made recommendations for a Navy Cross for executive officer Dick O’Kane, and a promotion for Dalton Keeter, recognizing his role in locating Wewak Harbor in the atlas.
Mush also asked Yeo to complete leave orders for thirty days “Stateside” for several petty officers (though not for Yeo himself). Yeo countered that he was a leading petty officer.
Mush grinned. “ ‘You’re not leading enough, yet. Besides I can’t spare the best … yeoman in the submarine Navy.’ ”
Yeo would remember those words.
Dick checked the final typed copy of Wahoo’s patrol report before heading for the Royal Hawaiian Hotel to enjoy letters from home, dips in the ocean, and lots of fresh vegetables and green salads. After copies of the report were posted, Dick found himself barraged by questions from fellow officers about the attack strategies he and Mush had used, especially in Wewak Harbor.
Dick reflected on the impact that Wahoo’s success would have on the Submarine Force’s attempts to put an end to Japanese shipping. “Morton had demonstrated, in one patrol, the very tactics some of us had been urging.
“While a few other boats had used some of these tactics, it was Wahoo under Morton that had turned the corner completely from the prewar submerged vessel of opportunity to an aggressive raider, even on the surface when conditions would permit,” Dick later wrote.
Further, he reflected, the patrol’s statistics clearly demonstrated what it took to actually sink ships. “In round figures, we had been submerged over 500 hours on the second patrol [under Wahoo’s previous skipper], and just under 50 hours on our third [under Mush Morton]. This would never be the norm for submarine patrolling, but it should demonstrate to any boat that at times she can surface close to the enemy for a good, high-periscope search, and then dive again.”
Dive! World War II Stories of Sailors & Submarines in the Pacific Page 14