When an inquiry into the losses of the Robalo and the Flier was subsequently appointed, some detected the hand of Lockwood and Fife in the background. But Christie was adamant that he had requested the inquiry on his own initiative. Furthermore, he insisted that the investigation be carried out by an officer unconnected with his organization who possessed submarine experience and was senior in rank to himself.16 Subsequent events suggest that this may have been Christie's undoing.
19
Bend of the Road
The man appointed by Admiral Ernest King to investigate the losses of the Robalo and the Flier was Rear Admiral Freeland Allan Daubin. Born in Lamar, Missouri, on 6 February 1886, Daubin came from the same landlocked county as Charles Lockwood. By some freak of fate, Daubin was destined to become commander of submarines in the Atlantic, while Lockwood served as commander of submarines in the Pacific. Lockwood described Daubin as “one of his closest personal friends.”1
Daubin initially attended the University of Missouri with the intention of studying law, but in 1905 he entered the Naval Academy. He graduated with the class of 1909 and received his first submarine command in 1913. His service during World War I included stints with the navy's Bureau of Steam Engineering, the Atlantic Fleet Submarine Force, and the chief of naval operations. Daubin attained the rank of rear admiral on 26 November 1941, and when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, he commanded Submarine Squadron Four as well as the submarine base at Pearl. In March 1942 he became commander of submarines, Atlantic Fleet.
Compared with the war in the Pacific, U.S. submarines played a relatively minor role in the Atlantic. Only 112 of the total 1,682 patrols carried out by U.S. submarines during the war were in the Atlantic, a ratio of one to fifteen. The submarine command in the Atlantic served mainly to train crews and shake down new boats before they were dispatched to the Pacific. German U-boats dominated Allied strategies in the Atlantic; not until after the war were submarines regarded as an important counterweapon to enemy subs.2
On 8 September 1944, while en route to the forward base at Majuro in the Marshall Islands, Lockwood wrote to Daubin, filling him in on the new base at Apra Harbor on Guam and noting that submarines continued to get “nice bags” in Luzon Strait and the Yellow Sea. Lockwood closed the letter with the news that, although not yet announced, the submarines Robalo and Flier had been reported lost due to mines.3 Ironically, Daubin was already on his way to Australia to investigate those very losses.
When Daubin arrived in Perth on about 12 September, he was initially lodged at the Weld Club. The exclusive men's club, founded in 1871, was named for former Western Australian governor Frederick Aloysius Weld. The spacious two-story brick building still occupies a premium location at the corner of Barrack Street and The Esplanade. The veranda and front windows provide views of the adjacent Supreme Court gardens and the Swan River. Inside, the ambience is one of mahogany and chandeliers, plush armchairs, card rooms, and fine dining. In the 1940s the all-male membership spent much of their time smoking cigars, drinking French wines, and playing billiards.4
With the outbreak of World War II, many of the Weld Club regulars enlisted in the Australian armed forces, leaving both its membership and its finances depleted. The loss of membership fees, along with wartime austerity, put pressure on the club's amenities and its shrinking menu. In an attempt to strengthen its finances, the Weld Club began extending honorary memberships to visiting American officers. Similar arrangements were made by exclusive clubs in other Australian cities, such as Tattersall's in Brisbane.5 An occasional enlisted man managed to penetrate the sanctity of the Weld Club. According to one bit of club lore, an American sailor was discovered in the early-morning hours having sex with a woman on the tiger skin that graced the tiled foyer.
In April 1943 the Weld Club hosted Admiral Ralph Christie and his senior staff at a luncheon. Christie apparently found the notion of a club too British for his taste and rarely visited its premises. Daubin was similarly unimpressed. Even at age fifty-eight, he considered himself out of step with the Weld Club's aging residents, the oldest of whom was a veteran of the Boer War. A former club president, the man was prone to imagining that he was driving a horse-drawn carriage while sitting in bed, calling out horses by name and cracking an invisible whip over his head.6 On top of this, there was a critical shortage of bathrooms and hot water at the club. Within a couple of days Daubin begged Christie to find him alternative accommodations.
Christie had originally viewed putting up Daubin at his own residence, Bend of the Road, as rather like “entertaining the judge.”7 Nevertheless, Christie found Daubin a place to stay by pushing his chief of staff, P. G. Nichols, into a smaller bedroom.8 Located at 4 Crawley Avenue in the salubrious riverside suburb of Crawley, the Bend of the Road residence was owned by one of Western Australia's most intriguing women. Born in 1900 at Kalgoorlie, Alice Mary Cummins completed a law degree at the University of Adelaide and became the first woman admitted to the Western Australian bar. In 1936 she succeeded her father as the managing director of the Kalgoorlie Brewery and its affiliated hotels. A truly Renaissance woman, her interests included playing the cello, making elaborate models of Spanish galleons, and experimenting with radio transmission. When she died suddenly of a heart attack in June 1943, the obituary in the West Australian newspaper noted, “Of a kindly, but very retiring nature, she did many charitable deeds in a quiet way.”9 One of her acts of philanthropy had been to make her luxuriously appointed home available to the U.S. Navy a year earlier. She had long since retreated inland to Kalgoorlie, believing a Japanese invasion to be imminent.
Today the Bend of the Road site is occupied by a twelve-story luxury apartment. Although the views are now somewhat obscured by other high-rise residential units, Christie enjoyed a panoramic view of Matilda Bay and an expanse of the Swan River across to South Perth. A hundred yards to the rear, up a gently sloping hill, the street ended at King's Park, where the bush was thick with the sounds of magpies and parrots. One might suspect that part of Christie's reluctance to house Daubin at Bend of the Road was prompted by a desire to protect his privacy and his privileged lifestyle. Christie was waited on by stewards who had survived the sinking of the USS Houston. He also had a Packard car at his disposal, along with a personal driver, a young Dutch woman who had escaped to Perth from Java.10
Whereas gambling was forbidden at the Weld Club, it was an integral part of Christie's social life. By his own admission, Christie loved to gamble. He and his staff would bet on games of darts before dinner each night. Christie would play golf three or four times a week, inevitably wagering on the outcome. There were also regular poker games and shooting craps with skippers who were returning from patrols. The latter led to some resentment toward Christie. Lawson “Red” Ramage and Robert “Dusty” Dornin accused Christie of taking advantage of the skippers, getting them drunk on martinis and then taking their money at cards.11
Christie would later claim that Daubin's inquiry in Perth absolved his operation of any blame and actually worked to his advantage.12 Subsequent events, though, cast some doubt on this claim.
20
Inquiry
Even at the time, the terms and objectives of Daubin's inquiry were a matter of some confusion. In hindsight, Christie's chief of staff, Philip “P. G.” Nichols, was unsure whether it had been a board of investigation or a court of inquiry. Christie described it as the latter, but Herb Andrews remembered it as the former.1 A court of inquiry was the normal means of looking into the loss of a ship, but Daubin's activities could more accurately be described under navy regulations as an investigation by one officer.
Naval discipline and penalties were set out in the colorfully phrased Articles for the Government of the United States Navy, popularly known as the “Rocks and Shoals.” There was no independent naval judiciary, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice did not exist until 1951. Under the Articles, courts of inquiry could summon witnesses and punish contempt in the same way as a court-mar
tial. However, they were empowered only to determine the facts; they did not render an opinion unless instructed to do so in the order convening the inquiry.2 Like McCann's investigation of the submarines lost under Fife at Brisbane, Daubin's findings would remain strictly confidential.
John Crowley found his command of the Flier under close scrutiny for the second time. Whereas Crowley had declined representation during the investigation into the Flier’s grounding at Midway, this time he availed himself of the right to counsel. He chose Herb Andrews, skipper of the Gurnard, as his adviser. Andrews had graduated from the Naval Academy with the class of 1930, making him a contemporary of such luminaries as Dudley “Mush” Morton, Wreford “Moon” Chapple, and Sam Dealey. Finding duty on surface ships fairly unexciting, Andrews turned to submarines. He married his high school sweetheart and settled down at New London, not far from his parents’ home in New Haven, Connecticut.
Earlier in the war, Andrews had worked on Daubin's staff in the Atlantic theater. He did not care much for Daubin, characterizing him as “old school.” Andrews conspired to get back to sea as soon as possible, and in 1942 he was given command of the USS Gurnard. Andrews proved to be an aggressive skipper. On a patrol out of Pearl Harbor during April–June 1943, the Gurnard attacked a seven-ship convoy, firing six torpedoes for clean hits. The submarine received credit for sinking five of the ships and earned a Presidential Unit Citation. They later sank a large tanker on the same patrol.3
The Gurnard had originally been ordered to pick up the Flier survivors from Palawan Island, but for reasons that were unclear to Andrews, these orders were countermanded, and the Redfin was sent on the mission instead.4 It is likely that the Redfin’s recent experience landing coast watchers in the region—negotiating the shallow water of North Balabac Strait without incident in June 1944—was considered advantageous.5 As previously noted, the Redfin also had a pair of Australian commandos on board to help with the evacuation.
Crowley first approached Andrews about representing him on a late Sunday afternoon. Andrews recalled being seated in the bathtub at the time (it was not uncommon for submariners returning from patrols to spend much of their recovery time in a bathtub or shower). He agreed to assist Crowley as counsel, but there was little time for preparation, since the inquiry was scheduled to begin the next morning. Andrews asked to see Daubin's precept for the inquiry. He believed that it was important to know whether Daubin's purpose was to simply find out what had happened or to establish guilt. He did not find Daubin's response comforting. According to Andrews, Daubin stated that he had been sent by Admiral King and did not have to disclose the precept. Furthermore, since Crowley had lost his ship, he was a defendant in the inquiry.6 Christie would later describe Daubin's interrogation of the surviving Flier officers as “brutal,” and he “objected strongly” to the manner of questioning.7
Christie also saw himself as a defendant in the inquiry, or at least an “interested party.”8 He was extremely keen to get his thoughts on the record and to defend the procedures used in framing the operational orders of submarines under his command. In a letter to Admiral Kinkaid dated 29 August 1944, Christie had already outlined the rationale for assigning submarines different routes to and from their patrol areas: he wanted to avoid a “beaten path” that might be exploited by the enemy. In addition, since the Flier and the Muskallunge had departed Fremantle at the same time, having them take different routes increased the possibility of contact with enemy ships. When prescribing routes, he stated, there were a number of other factors to consider as well, including Japanese shipping movements and phases of the moon. Finally, Christie noted that since March 1943, the pass at Balabac had been used forty times.9
In a prepared written statement to Daubin, Christie observed that when planning operations, “in each case, the hazards are calculated against the opportunity of inflicting damage upon the enemy.” He further defended the Operations Division, writing, “I do not know any better men in the submarine service for the job of Operations Officer than Captain Tichenor and Captain McLean.”10 He added that both men, like himself, had submarine combat experience.
In fact, the operational orders for both the Robalo and the Flier had been prepared by Heber Hampton “Tex” McLean because, at the time, Murray Tichenor (McLean's brother-in-law) had been on patrol with the USS Harder. Earlier in the war, while serving as operations officer under Charles Lockwood, McLean became the first senior officer to accompany a submarine war patrol.11 In a sense, Tichenor was carrying on that tradition, and as it happened, he would be present on one of the most legendary submarine patrols of the war: the Harder’s highly successful fifth patrol (see chapter 15).
McLean had served in various posts under both Lockwood and Christie, including as Christie's chief of staff. After a stint at Pearl Harbor, McLean returned to Christie's command.12 He had a reputation as a hard worker. In Perth, McLean described the routine as working all day in the office, some darts and dinner at Bend of the Road in the evening, followed by another stint at the office. But it was not all work. According to skipper Wreford “Moon” Chapple, McLean would frequently throw dockside parties for returning submarine crews and then go off with the officers to “get boiled.”13
It is probable that Mark Jensen, as assistant operations officer, was also involved in framing the Flier’s orders. Jensen had been on the USS Puffer, which survived one of the most terrifying depth charge attacks of the Pacific war. While patrolling Makassar Strait in October 1943, the Puffer had been forced to remain submerged for thirty-one hours, and many of the crew cracked under the strain. Following the incident, Jensen was transferred from the Puffer and assigned to assist Tichenor. Nichols considered Jensen competent, but he also believed that Jensen was still affected by his experience on the Puffer.14
According to Christie, the orders warned of mines and underwater obstructions in Balabac Strait north of Mangsee Island. They also included the route previously used by the USS Crevalle to transit Balabac Strait.15 Later, however, Crowley would claim that, prior to the Flier’s sinking, it was not known that Balabac Strait was mined.16
In his statement to Daubin, Christie defended Crowley as well as the Robalo’s commander, Manning Kimmel. He declared both men to be “officers of the highest type, professionally competent, experienced and possessing qualities of leadership and character that are exemplary.”17 It is clear, however, that Christie believed that the Flier disaster resulted from circumstances at sea rather than its operational orders. Even before Crowley and his rescued crew returned to Fremantle, Christie speculated that the Flier “may very probably have been forced into shallow and mineable waters.”18 Years later, Christie continued to believe that Crowley had strayed into shallow waters. In a 1972 letter to submarine historian Clay Blair, Christie wrote that in spite of “very poor weather condition and somewhat doubtful position, he took a chance to intercept the enemy, transited Balabac out of the safe channel and in forty fathoms was mined.”19
Just how deep the water had to be to avoid mines was a matter of contention. Slade Cutter recalled being told to stay outside the 600-fathom curve whenever possible to avoid mines.20 In a letter to Thomas Kinkaid after the loss of the Robalo and the Flier, Lockwood conceded, “It looks as though the Nips are getting smarter with their mine activities, and we will have to be more cautious in future.”21
The extent of Crowley's responsibility for the Flier disaster hinged on navigation. Had the Flier strayed out of the deep-water channel and hit a mine? Or had the Japanese succeeded in sinking the Flier with a deep-water mine in the channel? These questions cannot be answered definitively until the site of the Flier wreck is verified. In the meantime, a case can be made for both scenarios.
An October 1943 study by Lieutenant K. L. Veth, the Seventh Fleet's mining expert, along with an April 1944 report by a Lieutenant Suddath, indicate that Nasubata Channel could not be effectively mined. However, the same reports warned of the dangerous tidal stream and surface current.22 Given th
e overcast conditions and the lack of navigational aids, it is possible that the Flier was swept off course. Likewise, strong currents and the inability to take star sightings were largely responsible for the Darter’s undoing. Although the current had been miscalculated by only a quarter knot, the Darter was seven miles off course when it slammed into Bombay Shoal off the west coast of Palawan.23
Even if it could be proved that the Flier had sunk as a result of navigational errors, it is doubtful that Crowley would have been formally sanctioned. When the Darter grounded in October, the resulting inquiry did not find its skipper, David Hayward Mc-Clintock, at fault. According to Christie, McClintock had merely tried to run down a Japanese target in dangerous waters and paid the price for his bravado.24 The Dutch submarine O-19 would experience a similar predicament when it grounded on Ladd Reef in the same waters. Even though the Dutch skipper, Van Hooff, conceded that he had made a mistake in plotting the submarine's course, the incident did not prove terminal for his career.25
Of the nearly 400 ships lost during World War II, only one captain would be court-martialed for losing his ship due to an act of war. He was Charles B. McVay III, skipper of the ill-fated USS Indianapolis, sunk by a Japanese submarine in August 1945. On 13 August, exactly a year after the Flier went down in Balabac Strait, a court of inquiry convened on Guam to consider McVay's culpability. Skipper Glynn “Donc” Donaho, who had delivered the keynote address at the Flier’s launching, played a role in the proceedings. He testified that even if McVay had plotted a zigzag course, it would have been of little use in avoiding the attack by the Japanese submarine. Nevertheless, the court of inquiry recommended that McVay face court-martial, a decision confirmed by Admiral Ernest King and Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal.26
The USS Flier Page 13