At the time of the Flier’s loss, no skipper had faced court-martial under similar circumstances. Even so, Crowley had good reason to fear that his career as a submarine commander might be over. The captain was ultimately responsible for the loss of a ship, even if he was not directly at fault. Following the sinking of the submarine USS Squalus during training exercises on 23 May 1939, a court of inquiry found that a faulty main engine induction valve was to blame. Despite being praised for his efforts to save many of the crew, skipper Oliver Naquin would never command another submarine. Even after the outbreak of war, Naquin would serve only on surface ships.27
Crowley's career withstood this second formal inquiry, and he would eventually receive another submarine command. With the expanding submarine war, qualified skippers were in demand, and they were unlikely to see their careers ended prematurely. Whereas nearly a third of American submarine skippers were replaced during the first year of the war, the ratio later fell to one in seven.28 Daubin's investigation would take its toll, however.
21
Report Incognito
Admiral Freeland Daubin departed Perth on 21 September 1944, flying on Australian National Airlines. The precise content of Daubin's report on his inquiries at Fremantle remains a mystery. Under the terms of the investigation, he reported solely and confidentially to Admiral Ernest J. King. No extant copy of Daubin's report can be located at the National Archives, Library of Congress, Naval Historical Center, Naval War College, or Office of the Judge Advocate General. Everything currently known about the report's substance is secondhand.
Admiral Ralph Christie would later claim, “Daubin had nothing but praise for the way we conducted our operations.” P. G. Nichols, his chief of staff, also recalled receiving “a clean bill of health,” though he conceded that neither he nor Christie actually saw the report.1 Nevertheless, Christie would later go even further and claim that Daubin's investigation worked to his advantage, stating that he had received not only “complete exoneration” but also a “strong commendation.”2 Christie certainly used the investigation as an opportunity to beat his own drum. In a written statement submitted to Daubin, Christie emphasized the enemy ship tonnage sunk under his command, claiming that Fremantle-based Task Force 71 ran more patrols and sank more ships than its Task Force 72 counterpart in Brisbane.3
In contrast, Herb Andrews, acting as counsel for John Crowley, got the impression that Daubin had been trying to develop a case against Christie. Daubin's line of questioning, he believed, suggested that Christie had been negligent in assigning routes to the submarines under his command. Andrews even got the idea that Daubin might be after Christie's job.4 These views, however, may have been formed in hindsight after a chance encounter with “Dusty” Dornin about six months later.
Robert E. “Dusty” Dornin was one of the legends of the submarine service. Originally from San Francisco, he had been an all-American football player at the Naval Academy, graduating with the class of 1935. Slade Cutter would later recall Dornin as a hard worker at the academy who “studied all the time.” Despite the distractions of sports and young women, Dornin finished near the top 10 percent of his class.5
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dornin served on the first U.S. submarine patrol of the Pacific war. Only four days after the attack, the USS Gudgeon departed Pearl under Lieutenant Commander Elton “Joe” Grenfell. Dornin was the submarine's fire control officer, operating the all-important torpedo data computer. On 27 January 1942 the Gudgeon sank the Japanese submarine I-173 some 200 miles west of Midway. It was the first enemy ship of the war sunk by an American submarine.6
Dornin would go on to serve as the Gudgeon’s executive officer and then to command the USS Trigger. But after making nine submarine war patrols, his career would change course. Admiral King, chief of naval operations, wanted a successful submarine skipper as his aide. A number of the submarine service's outstanding talents would be drafted into administrative posts, causing Charles Lockwood to lament, “Possibly after we get the entire Navy manned by submarine personnel we will be allowed to retain a few of our good men.”7
Admiral King, designated commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet on 20 December 1941, certainly had an acute appreciation of the submarine service. Although he never formally qualified as a submariner, he assumed command of Submarine Division Eleven in 1922 and commanded the submarine base at New London from 1923 to 1926. King had even submitted a design for the submarine insignia, influencing the twin-dolphin motif adopted in 1924. In September 1943 he visited Pearl Harbor and Midway, getting a firsthand look at submarines operating in the Pacific. King was a great admirer of the service, crediting submarines with sinking more than half the Japanese shipping lost during the war. It was U.S. submarines, he acknowledged, that made it difficult for the enemy to reinforce and consolidate its forward positions.8
Some claimed that King had an ulterior motive in seeking an unmarried submariner as his aide: King had six daughters, so a bachelor aide might prove to be a useful escort. This story seems dubious, however, since one of King's daughters was married as early as 1927, and the youngest, Mildred, had already tied the knot in September 1942.9 In any case, Dornin was initially unenthusiastic about the appointment. Admiral Chester Nimitz tried to induce Dornin to accept the job by telling him that there were probably 700 women for every man in Washington, D.C. What neither King nor Nimitz knew, however, was that Dornin was already secretly married. Following a number of double-dates with Ned Beach, his Trigger executive officer, Dornin had married a young woman named Ellie.10
When Herb Andrews encountered Dusty Dornin at Guam some six months after Daubin's investigation, he got Dornin's version of events from inside Admiral King's office. King was well known for his quick temper and lack of patience, and one of his daughters sarcastically described him as the most even-tempered man in the navy—“always in a rage.”11 A frustrated Brigadier General Dwight Eisenhower once dubbed King a “mental bully” and declared that if someone shot him, it “might help win this war.”12 According to Dornin, after receiving Daubin's report, King complained that he had sent Daubin out to get the facts—not to get into a “pissing contest” with Christie. King allegedly stated, “I ought to order both out of their jobs.”13
King's comments were, of course, off the record and therefore impossible to verify. But despite having more than 3 million men under his command, King was not averse to becoming personally involved in sorting out personnel matters. He was a strong believer in the tenet that when something went wrong, someone should be held accountable. For example, King personally intervened to ensure that the skipper of the USS Queenfish, Charles E. Loughlin, faced a court-martial after he mistakenly torpedoed a Japanese ship that had been given clearance to carry supplies for American prisoners of war. And King later overrode the recommendations of admirals Nimitz and Spruance, insisting on the court-martial of Charles McVay following the loss of the USS Indianapolis.
At the time, however, King may have had bigger fish to fry than Christie and Daubin. In October 1944 King received the report from the court of inquiry investigating the attack on Pearl Harbor. After the Japanese attack, Husband Kimmel had been summarily removed as commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet and forced into retirement. King had long believed that Kimmel was merely a scapegoat to assuage the popular outrage caused by the attack.14 The debacle over the loss of the Flier was small beer by comparison. In King's personal memoirs, neither Christie nor Daubin rated a mention.
Regardless of whether King had a hand in events, both Christie and Daubin would be out of their jobs by the end of the year. Both men were appointed commandants of navy yards, typically regarded as the last posting for rear admirals before their retirement. In mid-November 1944, Admiral Louis E. Denfeld informed Lockwood that orders had been issued to relieve Daubin as commander of submarines in the Atlantic and make him commandant of the New York Navy Yard.15 Daubin remained in that post until December 1945, when, following administrative reorga
nization, he became commandant of the New York Naval Base.16
For Christie, the news that he was being replaced as the commander of submarines, Southwest Pacific, came as a shock. Even worse, his successor would be his old adversary James Fife. Although Christie accepted his appointment as commandant of the Puget Sound Navy Yard at Bremerton, Washington, reluctantly, he would later put a positive spin on it. Christie cast himself as a troubleshooter charged with lifting the morale and production of the 36,000 civil employees under his authority. The posting did, in fact, suit Christie's talent for efficiency and public relations. He remained at Bremerton for three years.17
Precisely why Christie lost his command at Fremantle remains debatable. It is possible that he was simply caught up in the general reshuffling of positions by the Bureau of Personnel at the end of 1944.18 Most commentators, however, perceived a darker purpose. According to Christie, in a conversation with Admiral Edwards, former commander of Submarine Squadron Two, about why he had been relieved, Edwards “evaded” his questions. Christie linked his detachment to a quarrel with Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid over a Medal of Honor for Sam Dealey, skipper of the Harder. Christie had nominated Dealey for the nation's highest combat award after his highly successful fifth patrol, but Kinkaid had knocked back the recommendation, partly on the grounds that General Douglas MacArthur had already awarded Dealey a Distinguished Service Cross. Kinkaid apparently took offense at Christie's persistence in the matter.19
Christie's version of events is supported in some respects by Fife, who had joined Admiral King's planning staff in Washington, D.C., in March 1944. In early November 1944, personnel in Washington became aware of “a rather insubordinate message” from Christie to Kinkaid involving the latter's rejection of the former's recommendation of Dealey for a Medal of Honor. Fife suspected Kinkaid of asking that Christie be relieved of his command. In any case, a few days later, King informed Fife that he would be sent back to command submarines in the Southwest Pacific.20
Some believe that the loss of the Robalo and the Flier also contributed to Christie's transfer. There are even claims that in the case of the Robalo, Kinkaid had personal reasons for going after Christie: Manning Kimmel, the Robalo’s commander, was Kinkaid's nephew. After the loss of the Robalo and the Flier, Lockwood wrote to Kinkaid to express his sympathy, noting, “I know how deeply you are personally concerned.”21
The relationship between Kinkaid and Kimmel serves as a reminder of the strong family networks within the navy—and within the submarine service in particular. In the upper echelons, the sons of admirals often followed the career paths of their fathers. These family ties could be an important aspect of the often harsh politics of command. So it is plausible that Kimmel's death played a role in Christie's downfall. What is certain is that the loss of the Robalo and the Flier left a wake of grief and despair.
22
Back in the USA
Before leaving for the United States, John Crowley traveled to Brisbane on 26 September to give a firsthand account of his evacuation from Palawan to the Seventh Fleet command.1 Along with executive officer James Liddell, Crowley was also debriefed at Pearl Harbor in early October 1944. Each man was interviewed about the Flier’s two war patrols, and a verbatim transcript was made of their comments.
There are few clues as to how the loss of the Flier affected Crowley. Even during a routine war patrol, submarine commanders were under enormous stress. Decorated skipper Slade Cutter recalled having severe stomach trouble on his patrols and sleeping only a couple of hours a day while in enemy waters. He would drink up to thirty cups of coffee a day and smoke heavily to keep going, no doubt aggravating his stomach problems. A sense of responsibility for the submarine was frequently accentuated by letters from the crew's family, pleading with the skipper to bring their loved ones home alive.2
Before his assignment to the Flier, Crowley had experienced the extreme conditions of the Aleutians, where the climate, isolation, and boredom could take a heavy toll on mental health. Cases of clinical depression were endemic among servicemen there; one military physician claimed that any man who spent more than six months in the region developed a vacant “Aleutian stare.”3 Some submariners did not realize how badly they were affected by the stress of war patrols; only after extended periods of leave did they become fully aware of their mental states. Some, for instance, were afflicted with nightmares years after their service; others developed a lifelong aversion to loud noises.4
Psychiatric studies of World War II veterans indicate that although men could be hardened by situational stress, they could also be broken by it. During the war itself, however, there was little appreciation of how war survivors reacted to traumatic events. The diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder was not fully recognized by the American Psychiatric Association until 1980.5 In part, reactions to stress and trauma are culturally determined. Whether the combatants of World War II responded to the horrors of war in the same way as Vietnam veterans, for example, is debatable. Reactions to combat stress among World War II veterans were most often characterized by emotional reticence and repression.6
It is possible that Admiral Daubin's inquiry in Perth helped Crowley to process and cope with the Flier’s loss. As a rite of passage, the inquiry marked a moving on from the disaster, especially since it apparently absolved Crowley of any blame. Psychiatric studies of veterans suggest that the morale and performance of the unit play an important role in maintaining mental health. Crowley took obvious pride in the Flier’s achievements on its first war patrol, and the status of the submarine service as an all-volunteer elite force within the navy may have played a significant role in maintaining sanity under extreme conditions.7 In any case, Crowley and his comrades showed remarkable resilience. Only one of the Flier survivors required medical treatment for trauma after their return to the United States, and they all apparently made quick recoveries.8
On 11 October 1944, Crowley reported for temporary duty at the Bureau of Naval Personnel in Washington, D.C.—or BuPers, as it was generally referred to. Liddell was also assigned to temporary duty at the bureau, which was situated on a small hill near both the Pentagon and Arlington National Cemetery. It is likely that their main responsibility was to verify the men lost on the Flier and write to their families. The general practice, according to Charles Lockwood, was for the navy to write to the families of missing submarine crewmen “only after the loss has been admitted.”9 Even then, the official details released were likely to be extremely sketchy, and the men's relatives were advised to maintain secrecy for security reasons.
Perhaps corresponding with the relatives of his men helped Crowley come to terms with the disaster and assuage any guilt he felt as a survivor. Yet the task of writing to relatives about the death of their loved ones was no doubt a painful process. When rescue efforts failed to save the crew of the S-4 after it sank, Swede Momsen was left to answer the queries of relatives. He recalled this as the worst time of his career: “I almost quit then.”10
Alvin Jacobson's parents in Grand Haven, Michigan, were among the fortunate ones. They received a letter dated 14 September and signed by Assistant Chief of Naval Personnel L. E. Denfeld informing them that their son was “safe and well.” At the same time, they were advised to “not divulge any reports that may come to you concerning his experiences, or disclose the name of the ship in which he served.”11
After a brief stay in Western Australia, Jacobson was flown back to the United States on a Pan Am Clipper. The Clipper flight, with its china-service meals and sleeping bunks, was a rare bit of luxury against the backdrop of a savage war. Entitled to thirty days’ survivor's leave, Jacobson spent the time with his family. Although given his choice of assignments within the navy, he unhesitatingly opted to stay with the submarine service—a powerful commentary on the comradeship forged among the men of the service, partly as a result of the extraordinary dangers they faced. At the end of November 1944 Jacobson reported to the Boston Navy Yard and became part of the
crew of the newly constructed submarine the USS Ling. He had no idea where his seven fellow survivors were sent.12
Once the Flier’s loss became a matter of public record, the surviving members of the crew at last received some recognition. All eight survivors received the Purple Heart, and on 26 October 1944 Crowley was presented with a Navy Cross by the assistant secretary of the navy for air, Artemus L. Gates. The Navy Cross citation praised Crowley's “extraordinary heroism” and “gallant leadership” during the Flier’s first patrol. Liddell received a Silver Star at the same ceremony.13 The ceremonies lent a sense of finality to the Flier’s loss, but one that could not be shared by the families of the dead.
23
Next of Kin
For the families of the Flier’s deceased crew, there was initially a roller coaster of misinformation and false hope. The New York Times reported the loss of the Flier on 20 September 1944, stating that “apparently there was no loss of life aboard the submarine.” The article speculated that the Flier’s crew “might have been picked up by other American craft.” When the Washington Post reported the loss of the Flier on 29 September 1944, it claimed that “the skipper and probably some if not all of the officers and crew of the Flier are safe.” The Post made this assumption on very slender grounds, noting that although the navy had declined to respond to inquiries, it had indicated that “the next of kin of the officers and crew have been informed.” To the Post, this phraseology, contrary to the usual statement that “next of kin of casualties have been notified,” suggested that most of the men on the Flier had survived.
By 13 September the navy's Casualties and Allotments Section had drafted a letter to the next of kin, although it is unclear whether these letters were intended for the relatives of all the Flier’s crew or only those of the eight survivors. However, the letter stated in part, “He is safe, and it is likely that he will correspond with you in the near future.” The letter also admonished the recipients to keep the information confidential, for security reasons.1 By 10 October the situation for the families of those missing in action had been clarified. The commander of Submarine Division 182, Creed C. Burlingame, forwarded to the Casualties and Allotments Section seventy-eight letters of condolence for the Flier crew's next of kin, along with submarine combat insignia and citations.2
The USS Flier Page 14