The Conquering Tide

by Ian W. Toll

  Kennedy maneuvered the Wahoo into the target’s expected track and searched with all three dimensions available—sonar, radar, and lookouts on the bridge peering into the darkness through powerful binoculars. A passive sonar search obtained a “weak echo ranging on a broad front to the north.” The SJ radar returned a range of 18,000 yards bearing 62 degrees. The tanker was headed for the Bougainville Strait, and the Wahoo was in good position to intercept her. But this promising opportunity was again missed, due to a simple error. The sound operator cried out, “Echo ranging on our starboard quarter!” He had read the wrong bearing. Morton shouted, “Reciprocal!” but it was too late: Kennedy had ordered, “Flood negative and take her deep.”28 From several hundred feet below, the crew listened to the tanker’s screws pass overhead. The target continued out of range.

  After another run of missed opportunities, the Wahoo apparently scored one extremely valuable kill. On December 14, shortly after noon, Forest Sterling was operating the sonar gear. He detected propeller noises. A quick periscope observation revealed a large enemy submarine 3,000 yards away, heading directly toward them. The Wahoo had just enough time to swing around and fire three torpedoes from her stern tubes. They were only 800 yards from the enemy’s track. Kennedy raised the scope ten seconds ahead of the expected hit. As he described what he was looking at, a deep explosion was heard throughout the ship. The first torpedo appeared to hit just forward of the conning tower and threw up a spout of water and debris. Kennedy attested that he saw “I-2” painted on her tower, and men on her bridge leaping into the sea as she went down. The Wahoo crash-dived, though no other enemy ship had been seen. Several members of the Wahoo’s crew believed they heard sounds of the enemy sub’s compartments crumpling and breaking up as they reached crush depth. Being submariners themselves, the sounds made their blood run cold.

  Postwar analysis did not find any evidence of a Japanese submarine sinking at this location and date. “I-2” was sunk a year and a half later, in the Bismarck Sea. It is possible that the torpedo had exploded prematurely, and Kennedy had misunderstood what he saw in the scope. As for the sounds heard by the crew, the mystery will never be solved.

  Two more missed opportunities followed in the final week of the patrol. A large ship was observed through the periscope two days later, within a radar range of 10,000 yards. The angle on the bow was large, but O’Kane strongly believed the Wahoo could have overtaken the target with four hours of running fast on the surface. The captain refused and retorted, “Don’t be stupid; you can’t attack a ship from here!”29 That response left O’Kane infuriated and speechless. The exchange was made within earshot of several members of the crew.

  On December 21, while the Wahoo was en route out of her patrol area and headed “for the barn” in Brisbane, the lookouts sighted smoke on the horizon. O’Kane wanted to go after it, but Kennedy refused on the grounds that the Wahoo was passing into another submarine’s assigned patrol area.

  ON THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS, a smell of vegetation advertised the loom of Australia off the starboard bow. The lookouts caught sight of the Cape Moreton Light, which sat high on a bluff and could be seen as far as fifty miles out to sea. After passing through a controlled minefield and antisubmarine nets, the Wahoo lay to in Moreton Bay and took a local pilot aboard. No member of the crew could fail to take in this man’s unforgettable getup—he wore a black suit and a bowler hat, and carried a folded umbrella under his arm. The chain-smoking pilot conned the Wahoo up the brown, muddy, dramatically serpentine Brisbane River. A bucolic Queensland landscape unfolded on either bank, and oystermen and swimmers waved at the passing submarine.

  Gradually the outskirts of the city came into view—graceful neighborhoods of small, close-built homes with red tile roofs—until a last bend to the left revealed a steel bridge ahead and brought the office buildings of downtown Brisbane into view on the right bank. The Wahoo slid into its berth at New Farm Wharf, adjacent to the sub tender Sperry. A gangway was pushed across and officers and sailors of the relief crew came aboard. Among the visitors was Admiral James Fife Jr., the new commander of Task Force 42.

  New Farm Wharf was undergoing rapid expansion and would soon rival Pearl Harbor as the largest submarine base in the Pacific. Squadrons Eight and Ten were serviced by the tenders Fulton and Sperry, each of 9,734 tons’ displacement, and each fitted with cranes, machine shops, and enough spare parts to act as a self-contained repair facility for a large squadron of submarines. The base had taken over the waterfront facilities of the Brisbane Stevedoring Company, and its wool sheds, once stacked to the rafters with Australia’s prime export, had been converted into warehouses. A barracks and a new headquarters building were under construction.

  Tensions in the city, climaxing in the “Battle of Brisbane” the previous month, had prompted the local American commanders to seek rest and recreation quarters elsewhere. The small beach communities of the Gold Coast provided plenty of towns suitable for the purpose. For the time being, however, submarine crews were still being quartered in and near the city. Houses and apartments were rented in Brisbane for visiting officers, and most of the enlisted men checked into the downtown Hotel Canberra. The majority of the crew was off the boat within two hours of berthing. They were to enjoy the perks of liberty—ice cream, mail call, sun, and fresh air.

  Most of the officers, not including Kennedy, crowded into a small but comfortable beach cottage about fifteen miles outside the city. There would be no mess attendants, so they were to do their own cooking, and were content to do so. On the second night they endured O’Kane’s “tuna delight,” with good humor. Off the ship, and in Kennedy’s absence, conversation about the recent patrol loosened up and the men aired their criticisms. With two credited sinkings, including an enemy submarine, the Wahoo had turned in the best results of any boat returning to Brisbane in months. Kennedy would receive a Silver Star. But the good results and plaudits tended to obscure the disappointments of the patrol—the numerous errors, missed prospects, and aborted attacks. Grider noted in his memoir, “The Wahoo . . . . was not making much of a record, and we knew it. We . . . had waited in the wrong places at the wrong time like unlucky fishermen. . . . We still felt really discouraged.”30

  On a long walk into the countryside on the second day, Morton and O’Kane plunged into a long conversation about submarine tactics. They found themselves in agreement: Kennedy had to go. O’Kane primly avoids the subject in his memoir, but it seems likely that he communicated his criticisms to Fife, either directly or through other officers. Morton, in a loose remark that may or may not have been made in earnest, had vowed to report Kennedy for cowardice. Several officers and enlisted men had filed requests for transfer off the Wahoo. Whatever Fife was told about Kennedy’s performance, he apparently gleaned enough information to make his decision. In his brief endorsement of the Wahoo’s patrol report, Fife noted that the ship had had eight enemy contacts but made only two attacks, and “at least” three more of those contacts should have developed into attacks.31 He relieved Kennedy and sent him back to the States.

  Kennedy took the news bitterly but later attested that he realized the decision was correct. Like many peacetime skippers, he was slow to adjust to the more audacious and hazardous tactics required of a wartime submarine. Nor was he a coward, however—he would receive a second Silver Star later in the war, for his performance as a destroyer skipper in the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

  On the last day of the year, Mush Morton took command of the Wahoo. When the crew gathered on the ship the day before she was to sail, he spoke to them briefly. “Wahoo is expendable,” he said. “We will take every reasonable precaution, but our mission is to sink enemy shipping.” The next patrol, accordingly, would be much more dangerous. Any man who did not care to risk his life was invited to see the yeoman and ask for a transfer—it would be granted automatically, and “nothing will ever be said about your remaining in Brisbane.”32 Sterling waited in his yeoman’s shack, but there were no takers. Inst
ead, the crew felt a surge in confidence. Morton told the men to pull down every Japanese ship silhouette that had been mounted on bulkheads by Kennedy’s order. They were replaced by the new captain’s collection of pinup girls, which he had obtained at a Hollywood studio. He had Sterling type up a stack of placards with the message “Shoot the Sons of Bitches.”33 These were likewise mounted throughout the interior of the ship. Morton reduced the number of lookouts from four to two, both to be stationed on the shears. In order to make the watches less monotonous, and keep the men on their toes, the watches would rotate every hour—from lookout, to radar, to sound, to the helm, to messenger duty in the control room. Any lookout who spotted a ship, if that ship was subsequently sunk, would receive a spot promotion. Morton quietly requisitioned extra supplies of medicinal brandy and grain alcohol for the ostensible purpose of “cleaning periscope lenses.” He believed in the morale-building ritual of an occasional round of shots, particularly after a depth-charge attack.

  Morton also pioneered a radical innovation. It had always been the skipper’s duty and prerogative to make periscope observations while directing attacks. Morton instead chose to make O’Kane his “co-approach officer,” and to keep the executive officer on the periscope while Morton employed all the other data at his fingertips to maneuver the Wahoo into an optimal attack position. The captain would need a heavy dose of self-discipline to keep his hands off the periscope. In a moment of high tension, his natural instinct would be to shove the XO aside and seize the handles. The most critical input, in setting up a torpedo attack, was the target’s “angle on the bow.” Under Morton’s scheme, O’Kane would be trusted to make the all-important observation accurately.

  Some of the crew continued to worry that their new skipper was reckless and would throw their lives away in an unwise attack. According to Sterling, the sailors often asked one another, only half in jest, “Do you think he’s crazy?”34 He was an eccentric character. Even as captain he continued to roam around the boat in his red bathrobe and slippers. He told lurid stories in his glutinous Kentucky accent, and roared at his own jokes with almost maniacal laughter. Grider worried that the new skipper would find the transition from “camaraderie to authority” to be awkward and difficult, but that was never the case—Morton’s authority was “built in, and never depended on sudden stiffening of tone and attitude.”35

  THE WAHOO COMMENCED HER THIRD PATROL on January 16. After sound tests and practice torpedo runs on her escorting destroyer, she set course at two-engine speed for the eastern end of New Guinea. Her orders would send her up the north coast of New Guinea, through the Vitiaz Strait between that island and New Britain. She was to reconnoiter a little-known Japanese seaport known as Wewak.

  With the brown hills and green mountains of New Guinea slipping by on her port beam, the Wahoo ran on the surface as long as her skipper dared—not only at night, but for an hour each morning after dawn and each evening before dusk. Morton and O’Kane agreed that the risk of being sighted from the air in those hours was worth the added forty miles or so of daily mileage. Morton even refused to dive when one of the lookouts on the bridge spotted a distant plane. He chose instead to wait, a decision that was vindicated when the unidentified aircraft turned away, its aircrew apparently having failed to notice the Wahoo. The new captain also took a more audacious approach to using the periscope. Whereas Kennedy had favored only quick daylight periscope sightings with the scope raised just three feet above the surface, Morton was content to make long midday sightings with the scope raised to high elevation, and even employed a second scope on several occasions.

  The navy still lacked decent charts for the Solomons, and nothing in the Wahoo’s inventory identified the location of the mysterious Wewak. The solution was found, by chance, in a “two-bit” Australian school atlas purchased in Brisbane as a souvenir by a member of the crew. A map in the atlas identified Wewak as an otherwise uncharted indentation about midway up New Guinea’s northern coast. By comparing the coastline to an existing aerial photo, and matching the shape of the shoreline and the islands lying close offshore, Grider and O’Kane managed to pinpoint the location. Without reliable information about the position of reefs or shoals, the Wahoo would have to tread lightly. But Morton surprised his shipmates by announcing that he intended to take the submarine into Wewak’s inner anchorage, rather than simply observe it from the offing. The operation order had directed Wahoo merely to “adjust speed, if possible, to permit daylight reconnaissance vicinity Wewak Harbor.”36 Morton chose to interpret “daylight reconnaissance” as “enter and attack enemy shipping.”

  In Grider’s opinion, the captain had “advanced from mere rashness to outright foolhardiness.”37 Penetrating into the uncharted enemy harbor seemed pure madness, a gambit that would risk collective suicide. But Morton was nonchalant, and kept the men in the conning tower entertained with a steady run of wisecracks.

  As dawn broke, the Wahoo crept around the islands guarding the entrance to the harbor. O’Kane spotted the top of a large tripod radio mast that might belong to an enemy warship, but the submarine could not enter the channel because a patrol craft or tugboat appeared to be crossing directly ahead. Morton probed the shore of some of the other outer islands, hoping to find a gap that would provide a direct view of the anchorage. But the area was dense with interlocking reefs, and the Wahoo had to take care not to run aground.

  After several hours of cautious probing, the submarine entered the main channel and began the nine-mile run into the inner harbor, creeping along at 3 knots. O’Kane took several quick, low-elevation periscope observations, with water lapping up the lens. At 1:18 p.m., he made out the bridge structure of a large ship, which he first took to be a freighter or seaplane tender. Upon closer inspection it proved to be a Fubuki-class destroyer. Several small Japanese submarines were moored alongside her. There were good reasons for the Wahoo to turn around and make an escape. The crew were not sure of the position of reefs or the depth of the water, and the tidal currents were unpredictable. But Morton announced that the Wahoo would launch a surprise torpedo attack on the anchored destroyer: “We’ll take him by complete surprise. He won’t be expecting an enemy submarine in here.”38

  The Wahoo went to battle stations and continued advancing into the harbor at 3 knots. The forward torpedo-tube doors were opened in preparation for firing. The intended range was to be 3,000 yards. O’Kane took one last sighting and whispered urgently, “Captain, she’s gotten under way, headed out of the harbor. Angle on the bow ten port.”39 A 10-degree angle on the bow meant that the destroyer was bearing almost directly down on the Wahoo. Morton altered his plan immediately: “Right full rudder.” He would pass under the enemy ship and maneuver for a shot with the Wahoo’s stern tubes. Another quick periscope sighting revealed that the destroyer had zigged, and the angle on bow had opened to 40 degrees starboard. But O’Kane did not have time to make an accurate estimate of her speed. Morton guessed 15 knots, and that figure was entered into the Torpedo Data Computer (TDC), which provided an automatic gyro angle.

  The Wahoo shuddered as three torpedoes were fired from her bow tubes. All ran hot, straight, and normal, but when O’Kane took another quick sighting, he saw that all had missed astern. They had underestimated the destroyer’s speed. A speed of 18 knots was entered into the TDC, and a fourth torpedo fired. But the Japanese lookouts had evidently spotted the torpedo wakes and possibly the periscope. Fully alerted, the enemy turned sharply away and evaded the fourth shot. She held the turn through 270 degrees and bore down on the spot that marked the apex of the fan of torpedo tracks.

  Peering through the scope, O’Kane now beheld that most dreaded of all images—a towering bow, looking huge in the circular field, with a surging bow wave indicating high speed. Forest Sterling felt “an almost uncontrollable urge to urinate.”40 But Morton seemed unfazed. “That’s all right,” he said, “keep your scope up and we’ll shoot that SOB down the throat.”41

  The “down the throat” s
hot was the boldest and most desperate tactic available to any submarine. It had been discussed in theory but never attempted in practice. “Down the throat is certainly not a tactic to be sought,” O’Kane wrote later. “It is rather a desperation shot.”42 The Wahoo’s circumstances were certainly desperate. She was trapped in a harbor without reliable charts, and a well-armed destroyer would very soon be in position to depth charge her into oblivion. She had only two torpedoes left in her bow tubes and little hope of maneuvering to bring her stern tubes to bear.

  O’Kane watched the enemy ship come on, growing larger in the circular field. He could see the faces of Japanese sailors looking straight back at him through the periscope lens. Her bow wave climbed up her hull to the height of her anchors. O’Kane shifted the scope to lower power—that view, he said, had the advantage of being “much less disturbing.”43

  The Wahoo did not have a torpedo to waste. If she fired too soon, the target would have time to turn away and evade. If she fired too late, the weapon would not run far enough to arm itself and would bounce harmlessly off the enemy’s hull. The effective firing window fell within a range of approximately 1,200 to 700 yards. The destroyer, traveling near her top speed of about 30 knots, would travel that distance in about thirty seconds.

  As the range closed to 1,250 yards, Morton said, “Any time, Dick.” With the crosshairs centered on the bow, O’Kane said, “Fire!”44 Keeping the scope up, O’Kane watched the track stretch away. The destroyer turned and evaded. Sterling later recalled being “calm with the cool certainty that he was going to die.”45

  O’Kane fired his fifth and last-available torpedo at a range of 750 yards, and Morton ordered a crash dive. The crew braced for depth charges, but another sound filled the submarine instead—an immense tearing sound, almost like a bolt of thunder. “Great cracking became crackling,” O’Kane recalled, “and every old salt aboard knew the sound—that of the steam hitting a bucket of water, but here amplified one million times. The destroyer’s boilers were belching steam into the sea.”46 From bow to stern, the Wahoo’s crew erupted in cheers.