Submarine!

by Edward L. Beach

  For an hour this cat-and-mouse game keeps up. Finally, a powerful searchlight beam is sighted over the horizon. An escort vessel or destroyer, probably sent to succor four vessels who had reported being under attack by submarine. Wahoo had better do something to end this stalemate fast! Again Morton puts on his thinking cap. What would he do, if he were the skipper of the Jap freighter?

  “Well,” thinks Mush, “there’s no doubt at all what I’d do! I’d head for that destroyer just as fast as ever I could!” And he heads Wahoo toward the destroyer, full speed.

  Sure enough, the lumbering hulk of the wounded cargo vessel is soon sighted, headed in the same direction. Only Wahoo has preceded him, and now lies in wait for him, and two torpedoes come out of the night to put finis to a gallant defense.

  Four ships sighted and four down was Wahoo’s record for January 27, 1943. The whole one-sided battle lasted thirteen hours, and after its conclusion one Jap destroyer was left fruitlessly searching the area with his searchlight.

  Like everything else she did, Wahoo’s entrance into Pearl was dramatic, for lashed to her fully-extended periscope was—a broom!

  On her next patrol, which she spent in the Yellow Sea between China and Korea, Wahoo ran the entire distance to the patrol area, deep in the heart of Japanese-controlled waters, on the surface, diving only for necessary drills. When the patrol was completed she surfaced, still in the middle of the Yellow Sea, and headed for home, digressing only to track and sink one lone freighter sighted on the way. Only this attack, incidentally, prevented her from making the same “no dives” boast on her return trip as well. During the patrol, which covered nineteen days in the assigned area, Wahoo sank nine ships, one trawler, and two sampans, and again expended all her ammunition. Once again the broom was lashed to the periscope.

  And again, in April, 1943, Wahoo and Morton made their third war patrol together, sinking three ships and damaging two.

  But she fell upon bad days, and Morton was a stubborn man; to these circumstances, and their unfortunate combination at just the wrong time, we may lay the responsibility for the sad loss of USS Wahoo and her fighting skipper.

  After Mush Morton’s third war patrol in command of Wahoo, an inspection of the ship showed that an extensive overhaul was needed to replace the worn-out battery, to repair damages, and to install new apparatus. So the vessel was ordered to Mare Island Navy Yard for two months. While there, the fine team Morton had built up suffered serious injury with the detachment of Dick O’Kane, who received orders to command the brand-new submarine Tang, then under construction at the Navy Yard. Roger Paine moved up to the position of Executive Officer. Mush Morton, though he regretted the loss of his very capable second officer, was overjoyed to see him finally get the command which he had longed for, and for which he, Morton, had repeatedly recommended him.

  In late July, 1943, Wahoo arrived back at Pearl Harbor, after the completion of her overhaul. Then bad luck struck, for Paine developed appendicitis, and had to be removed to a hospital for an operation. Morton had been deprived of the two officers he depended upon most, but, nonetheless confident, he proceeded on his fourth patrol.

  Now Dudley W. Morton was a man of original ideas and independent thinking. Submarine doctrine called for shooting several torpedoes at each target, in a spread, in order to take into account possible maneuvers to avoid, errors in solution of the fire control problem, or malfunction of torpedoes. No quarrel could really be had with this procedure, so long as a submarine was apt to see and be able to shoot only a few ships per patrol. But in three successive patrols Wahoo had returned before the completion of her normal time on station, with all torpedoes expended. Morton knew he had the knack of searching out targets where other men could not find them.

  If you know you are going to see plenty of targets—so ran his argument—why not shoot only one torpedo at each ship, and accept those occasional misses? If a submarine fires three fish per salvo, and sinks eight ships with her twenty-four torpedoes, is that as effective in damaging the enemy as a submarine which fires single shots and sinks twelve ships with twenty-four torpedoes? Yet in the first case the sub should be credited with 100 per cent effectiveness in fire control; in the latter, with only 50 per cent. The problem, according to Mush, lay simply in the number of contacts you could make. So he asked for, and received for his fourth patrol, the hottest area there was—the Japan Sea!

  The Japan Sea is a nearly landlocked body of water lying between Japan and the Asiatic mainland. It can be reached from the open sea in only three ways—through the Straits of Tsushima, Tsugaru, or La Perouse. The only other possible entrance is through the Tartary Strait, between Sakhalin Island and Siberia, which is too shallow for seagoing vessels and, anyway, under the control of Russia. It was known that the Japanese had extensively mined all possible entrances to “their” sea, and that they were carrying on an enormous volume of traffic in its sheltered waters with no fear whatever of Allied interference.

  If Wahoo could only get into this lush area, Mush figured, she should find so many targets that she would have an ideal opportunity to try out his theory. He knew the entrances were mined but he also knew that it takes an awfully good mine field to completely close up such a large passage as La Perouse or Tsushima, and that his chances of running through on the surface above the anti-submarine mines (which, of course, would be laid at depths calculated to trap a submerged submarine) would be good. He also was banking on probable laxness and inattention on the part of the Japanese defenders, and on taking them by surprise.

  So on August 2, 1943, Wahoo departed Pearl Harbor for the Japan Sea, carrying with her a determined Captain and an entirely new team of officers, some veterans of her previous patrols, but practically all of them in new jobs as a result of the drastic changes at the top.

  On August 14 Wahoo transited La Perouse Strait, on the surface at night, at full speed. Though detected and challenged by the shore station on Soya Misaki, she remained boldly on her course, ignoring the signal, and having done his duty the watcher in the station went back to sleep, leaving all navigational lights burning as though it were still peacetime.

  Mush Morton was certainly right about one thing. He entered the Sea of Japan on August 14; that same night Wahoo sighted four enemy merchant ships, steaming singly and unescorted. In all, she carried out four separate attacks, three of them on the same ship, firing only five torpedoes in all. And here Fate dealt Morton her most crushing blow! Faulty torpedoes!

  There is nothing in the world so maddening as to bring your submarine across miles of ocean; to train your crew up to the highest pitch of efficiency and anticipation; to work for weeks getting into a good fertile area; to assume heavy risk in arriving finally at an attack position—and then to have the whole thing vitiated by some totally inexplicable fault in your equipment.

  Time after time Wahoo sights the enemy’s vital cargo carriers and tankers. Time after time she makes the approach, goes through all the old familiar motions which have previously brought such outstanding success—and time after time there is nothing heard in the sound gear, after firing the torpedoes, save the whirring of their propellers as they go on—and on—and on! Once, indeed, the sickening thud of a dud hit is heard, but most of the time the torpedoes simply miss, and miss, and miss!

  Desperately, Morton tries every conceivable trick in his book. He does not lack for targets—that he had foreseen correctly—so he has plenty of time to try everything he knows. But he is still stubborn, and mutters savagely something to the effect that there is no use in firing more than one torpedo at any target until he has found out why they don’t go off.

  For four days Wahoo valiantly fought her bad luck, and made, in all, nine attacks upon nearly as many enemy ships. Results achieved, zero! Heartbreaking, hopeless, utter zero!

  And then Mush Morton finally broke down. After four nightmarish days in the area, during which he became increasingly silent, moody, and irascible, sometimes venting the smoldering fury whic
h possessed him with outbursts of a fantastic, terrifying rage, Morton decided that there was only one thing left to do. Characteristically, it took him only four days to reach this decision and to implement it. Fate had been able to make him do something no Jap had ever succeeded in doing—cry “Uncle.”

  A message was sent to the Commander Submarines, Pacific, informing him of the complete failure of the torpedoes of his most outstanding submarine. The reaction from Admiral Lockwood was instant: orders to proceed immediately to Pearl Harbor, and Mush Morton’s action was equally decisive: Wahoo’s annunciators were put on “All ahead flank,” and were left in that position until the submarine reached the entrance buoys off Pearl. The only exceptions to this performance were caused by appearance of a neutral merchant ship, which was identified as Wahoo maneuvered in for an attack; and two Jap sampans, whose captured crews found their final destinations to be somewhat different from what they had expected.

  On August 29, only eleven days from the Japan Sea, Mush Morton and his Wahoo stormed into Pearl Harbor and tied up at the submarine base. This time there was no broom tied to an extended periscope, and the booming exuberance with which this sub had been wont to return from patrol was totally lacking. But such was the fame of Wahoo and her skipper that there was quite a crowd of men and officers on the dock to greet her and to tender the usual congratulations upon safe return. On this occasion there was a cloud over the normally lighthearted feelings of those present, for all knew that there was something radically wrong. One or two made an effort to say something cheerful to the obviously suffering Commanding Officer, but nothing they could say or do could allay the fact that Morton, who up to this time had been the most successful skipper of the whole force, had returned from his last patrol empty-handed. As soon as he decently could, Mush strode away from the crowd and hurried to the office of ComSubPac.

  Once there he gave voice, in no uncertain terms, to the anger which possessed him. Virtually pounding his fist on the table—after all, you don’t pound your fist at an admiral, even one so understanding as Admiral Lockwood—he insisted that something was radically wrong, and that corrective measures had to be taken immediately. The Admiral and his staff listened thoughtfully, for this was by no means the only report they had received about malfunctioning of the submarine’s major weapon, and Morton was not the first man to cry “Damn the torpedoes!” Half-formed thoughts about sabotage, inefficiency, or improper preparation hovered above this gathering, and the upshot of it was that the Commander Submarines, Pacific Fleet, gave his word to Commander Dudley Morton that he would find out what was wrong with the fish if it killed him. In their hearts, the members of his staff echoed his sentiments—for, after all, every man there was a veteran submarine skipper himself.

  The interview with Wahoo’s skipper at an end, Lockwood asked the question which Morton had been waiting for: “Well, Mush, what do you want to do?” Knowing his man, the Admiral was prepared for the answer he got, but it must be admitted that he would hardly have been surprised had Morton indicated that he had been taking a beating lately, and would like a rest.

  A rest was farthest from Mush Morton’s mind at that moment. “Admiral,” he said, “I want to go right back to the Sea of Japan, with a load of live fish this time!”

  The two men took stock of each other. Morton saw a seamed, genial face, normally weather-beaten from years at sea, now showing signs of the strain of keeping his boys going and solving their problems for them—of holding up his end of the larger scope of the war plan—of defending and protecting his operations from those who, not knowing of the phenomenal results being achieved, would encroach upon, limit, or circumscribe them. With a small shock, however, he realized that at the moment there were only two emotions showing in the Admiral’s eyes—worry, over him, and—envy.

  On his side, the Admiral saw a young, virile officer, proud in his profession with the pride that comes only from a sense of accomplishment, and which will support no criticism. A fiery man, a fighter, and a leader. But burning in his steady eyes was the shining light of the crusader, now doubly dedicated, because his latest crusade had failed.

  They shook hands. “We’ll get you ready as soon as we can,” said Lockwood. Morton stood up gravely, thanked him shortly, and departed. As he watched that straight, tall figure stride out of his office, the thought flashed across the Admiral’s mind: “I shouldn’t let him go. I ought to take him off his ship and let him cool off a bit. But I just can’t do it!”

  So Wahoo was given another load of torpedoes, which were most painstakingly checked for perfect condition, and immediately departed for the Japan Sea to redeem her previous fiasco. She stopped at Midway en route, but nothing more was ever heard or seen of her, and what information we have been able to gather, consisting of reports of losses which could only have been due to depredations made by Wahoo on her last patrol, has come from Japanese sources. According to these sources, four ships were sunk by Wahoo in the Japan Sea between September 29 and October 9, 1943. Knowing the Jap tendency to deflate records of losses, it is probable that the actual number of ships sunk was eight or more, instead of four.

  Wahoo never returned. Surprisingly, however, among the 468 United States submarines which the Japs claimed to have sunk, there was not one record, or any other information anywhere discovered which, by any stretch of circumstances, could explain what had happened to her. The enemy never got her. They never even knew she had been lost, and we carefully concealed it for a long time, knowing how badly they wanted to “get” Wahoo.

  Like so many of our lost submarines, she simply disappeared into the limbo of lost ships, sealing her mystery with her forever. This has always been a comforting thought, for it is a sailor’s death, and an honorable grave. I like to think of Wahoo carrying the fight to the enemy, as she always did, gloriously, successfully, and furiously, up to the last catastrophic instant when, by some mischance, and in some manner unknown to living man, the world came to an end for her.

  Time passed, and Trigger was a veteran. Her lean snout had explored the waters of the Pacific from the Aleutians to the Equator, and she had sunk ships wherever she went. We had also accumulated our share of depth charges, although none—for chills and thrills—the equal of our first working over.

  On the 10th day of June, 1943, at about five o’clock in the afternoon, we were once again off Tokyo. We had been there for thirty days, and were due to start for Pearl Harbor at midnight. “Captain to the conning tower!” Benson dashed past me in the control room, leaped up the ladder to the conning tower where Lieutenant (j.g.) Willy Long had the periscope watch. “Smoke inside the harbor!” I heard Willy tell the skipper. “Looks like it’s coming this way!”

  You could feel Trigger draw a deep, hushed breath, Captain Benson ordered me to plane upward two feet, to allow him to raise the periscope that much higher out of the water and thus see a little farther. Then the ’scope came slithering down and the musical chimes of the general alarm, vibrant with danger, reverberated through the ship, and started our hearts beating faster and our blood racing as we ran to our battle stations.

  A few swift observations, and the voice of the skipper: “Men, this is the jackpot We’ve got the biggest aircraft carrier I’ve ever seen up here, plus two destroyers. We’re going to shoot our whole wad at the carrier.”

  Men’s jaws slackened. This was big-league stuff. Silence answered the Captain’s announcement.

  The carrier’s escorts were two of the biggest and most powerful Japanese destroyers. And they were certainly doing a bang-up job of patrolling for submarines. The carrier was coming out of Tokyo Bay at high speed, zigzagging radically, but the tin cans were working on a complex patrol plan of their own, and they were all over the lot. Long before we reached firing position we rigged Trigger for depth charging and silent running. We knew we were going to catch it—there was simply no way to avoid it if we did our job properly.

  There was even a good chance, the way the escorts were covering the
area, that we’d be detected before shooting. For after firing, when a long, thin fan of bubbles suddenly appeared in the unruffled water—well, at the apex of the fan you were pretty sure of finding the submarine responsible.

  I can remember how the palms of my hands sweated, and how the flesh crawled around my knees, as we bored steadily into firing position. This way and that zigzagged the carrier, and that way and then the other went our rudder as we maneuvered to keep ourselves in position ahead of the task group.

  “Make ready all tubes!” Captain Benson is taking no chances, plans to have all ten tubes ready to shoot from either end of the ship. “Standby forward.”

  We maneuver for a shot. This boy is coming like hell, and no fooling! Twenty-one knots, we clock him. One destroyer on either bow, the whole trio zigzagging radically.

  We twist first one way, then the other, as the carrier presents alternately starboard and port angles on the bow. Evidently we lie on his base course. What a break!

  “Up periscope. Bearing—mark! Three five zero. Range, mark! Down periscope. Range, six one double oh. Angle on the bow five starboard. How long till he gets here? What’s the distance to the track? Control, sixty-three feet. Right full rudder. New course, zero six zero.”

  I can hear snatches of the clipped conversation between Steve Mann and the skipper.

  “He’ll be here in eight and one-half minutes. Zigged three minutes ago, at thirteen minutes. Another zig due about three minutes from now, at nineteen minutes, probably to his right. Distance to the track, five double oh. Depth and speed, Captain?”

  “Set all torpedoes depth twenty feet, speed high. Spread them two degrees. What’s the time now?”

  “Seventeen and one-half minutes.”

  “We’ll wait a minute. Sound, what does he bear?”

  “Three five one—Sound.”

  “That checks, Captain. Better take a look around. The starboard screen is coming right for us.”