by Ryan Jenkins
World War 2 Submarine Stories
True Stories from the Underwater Battlegrounds
Third Edition
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including scanning, photocopying, or otherwise without prior written permission of the copyright holder. Copyright © 2015
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Origins
Chapter 2: The Lifeline
Chapter 3: Trading Punches in European Waters
Chapter 4: Statistics
Chapter 5: The Destroyer Killer
Chapter 6: The Sculpin, John Philip Cromwell and the Choice-less Choice
Chapter 7: The Midgets
Chapter 8: The Floating Museum
Chapter 9: HMS Perseus and an incredible survivor
Chapter 10: The Famed USS Wahoo
Chapter 11: USS Tang and Richard O’Kane
Chapter 12: USS Nautilus
Chapter 13: The Phantom Submarine
Chapter 14: The German Submarine U-864
Chapter 15: USS Trout (SS-202)
Chapter 16: The Submarine with the Funny Nose
Conclusion
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Introduction
Thank you for downloading this book, “World War 2 Submarine Stories: True Stories from the Underwater Battlegrounds”.
Most people, when asked, will say that if they had to choose the way they were going to die it would be at home, in bed, surrounded by loved ones, with ample time to say goodbye.
When asked in what way they would least like to die, two of the top three are being burnt to death and drowning. As we know from the terrible events of 9/11, people will jump to their death rather than be caught in the flames of a burning building, and some people are so petrified of drowning that they will not venture in water deeper than their knees.
The men (and today, women) who serve aboard submarines are a special breed of person for whom every day at sea presents a risk, sometimes large, sometimes small) of perishing in horrible ways, yet they do their duty.
In the modern navies of 2014, technology has made peacetime service in the worlds various submarine fleets much safer than it was in 1939-45, the years of WWII, and still there are accidents from human error, flaws in engineering, etc. To be a submariner is to know fear on a level, which most people cannot even imagine, and to function despite it. This e-book will introduce you to a number of the submarine warriors of WWII, who knew the deepest fear and summoned the courage to overcome it. *
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Chapter 1: Origins
“The Great Turk having besieged Venice, the lord Leonardo DaVinci, at the head of his soldiers, cried out to him: ‘Surrender within four hours or you will be sunk!’ Yet after four hours, the said lord, the Great Turk not having accepted to surrender, sunk his galleys without the latter’s realizing how! - Leonardo DaVinci, proposal to the Doge of Venice, 15th century
Leonardo, who developed well-known ideas for what became the tank and the helicopter, also imagined a submarine and a diving suit that would allow sailors to attack the fleet of the enemy unnoticed. It would be two centuries before DaVinci's vision would be made reality, and another century before it would be constructed for the purpose of naval combat.
In 1620, a Dutch inventor named Drebbel developed a workable submarine. At least, some people believe that it was a submarine – others believe Drebbel's invention, which he displayed to King James I of England, was simply a watertight, low profile rowboat. Whether Drebbel's invention was a submarine or not, the idea was the same: a relatively hard to detect vessel for assault on surface vessels, or perhaps the unnoticed delivery of small groups of men on enemy shores.
Another attempt at submarine warfare took place in during the American Revolution. This too is surrounded by controversy. The American inventor Roger Bushnell designed a submersible craft called the “Turtle” which he proposed to use on British ships in American harbors. While American accounts describe multiple attacks by the primitive submarine in 1776 – all of which failed for one technical reason or another, British naval logs record none of these events (some of which supposedly happened in the open, like the mid-Hudson river explosion of the submarine's “torpedo”, which was actually a waterproofed keg of gunpowder). However, working replicas of Bushnell's “Turtle”, based on Revolutionary descriptions, have been built and found at least marginally seaworthy.
It was not until 1863 that the first truly combat able submarine was launched – this was the CSS Hunley of the Confederate States of America. In February 1864, the Hunley was the first submersible vessel to sink a surface ship – the USS Housatonic in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. The US Navy had effectively blockaded the major ports of the South by early 1864, and both the southern population and the army of the Confederacy was feeling the effects. To negate (theoretically) the Union advantage at sea, the Confederacy developed the first practical submarine.
The Hunley came equipped with an explosive charge, which was attached to a spar (a long beam which jutted from the front of the vessel) and equipped with a sharp point, which would be embedded in the hull of an enemy ship by the propulsion of the submarine. This “torpedo” contained ninety pounds of tightly packed black powder.
Its crew powered the ship itself. In other words, they pedaled the ship, the pedals attached to an axle that turned the propeller at the rear of the submarine. Her successful (and last of three) crew consisted of seven men and their commander Lieutenant George Dixon. These brave men were the third crew for the Hunley, which had sunk twice due to crew error and been twice recovered. Eleven of the sixteen previous crewmembers had perished. Dying with the second crew was the vessels' inventor, H.L Hunley.
Air was supposed to be supplied by a snorkel system – tubes which could be opened when the submarine was within three feet of the surface and closed below that. This device never worked correctly – but it is estimated that the crew would have had usable air for approximately two hours, depending on their exertion level. The top depth the Hunley had intentionally dived to was approximately twenty feet.
The American Civil War saw two revolutions in naval warfare. The first was the clash of the ironclad USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia (better known as the Merrimac) at Hampton Roads, Virginia on March 8/9 1862. The second was the first effective use of the submarine, in which the CSS Hunley drove its torpedo-equipped spar into the side of the USS Housatonic at the mouth of Charleston Harbor. The Housatonic, at 1,740 tons, sank in minutes, taking
five of its crew with it.
The torpedo of the Hunley was for many years thought to have been set off by a mechanical detonation within the waterproofed keg of gunpowder, but recent research on the wreck of the Hunley has turned up evidence that suggests that the weapon may have been set off by an electrical charge.
The Hunley never returned from its mission. For over a hundred years, the wreck remained undetected and undisturbed somewhere at the bottom of the harbor. In 1995, it was located, and five years later was raised from the bottom where it had been kept in relatively good condition by being encased in the cold mud of the ocean floor. Three main theories surround the ships' demise: that it was too close to its target and was damaged in the same explosion that sank the Housatonic, that the crew was knocked unconscious by the blast and never recovered – having asphyxiated while unconscious. The final theory is that the crew never opened important pumps that made the vessel both sink and the men lose oxygen – water for ballast was allowed into the crew compartment. The appearance of the hull of the ship suggests that its own weapon sank Hunley. In 2004, the remains of Hunley's crew were buried with full Confederate military honors.
The “success” of the Hunley spurred or continued interest in the possibilities of submarine warfare in other nations as well, and it was from Europe that many of the technical breakthroughs that were to make submarine warfare practicable came.
In 1863, the Plongeur (or “Diver”), developed in France, was launched. It was the first sub not to be powered by human exertion. The Plongeur was 146 feet long (much longer than the Hunley or other contemporary subs) because it was powered by compressed air stored inside the submarine. It was tested to a depth of approximately thirty feet and used the same type of torpedo as the Hunley.
In 1867, after years of work, Spanish designer Narcis Monturiol put his Ictineo II (“Fish Boat”) to sea. It was the first craft operated by a mechanical engine – an ingenious device that operated as a steam engine on the surface and similarly to the Plongeur while submerged. The Ictinieo II and its predecessor were constructed of two hulls, the outer of which was to provide a more aqua-dynamic shape, and an interior hull to provide added strength and protection. In the Ictineo II and other early submarines, the space between the hulls was also used for depth control (more on the mechanics of a submarine later).
The first submarine to be powered by steam (which turned out to be highly impractical) and to fire a torpedo underwater was a Swedish built sub in the navy of the Ottoman Empire in 1886. Some years previously, English inventor Robert Whitehead developed the modern torpedo. Understanding the danger that the spar torpedo posed to the deploying submarine itself, Whitehead developed a torpedo that was powered by compressed air and was able to hit a target nearly seven hundred yards away. The device was powered by compressed air and traveled at seven knots.
In the 1880's, British, French and Spanish inventors developed submarines that operated under battery power, and carried torpedoes and mines that were powered and detonated electrically. Though the British inventor went bankrupt and both the Spanish and French navies rejected the subs because of their limited range, the development of battery-powered submarines was a huge step.
The modern submarine was born when the electric battery was paired with the diesel engine (developed in the 1890’s) in the early 20th century. Put simply, the efficient diesel engine would be used to propel the submarine on the surface (diesels generating a lot of heat and pollution – not very practical in an enclosed space – especially in the small submarines of the early 20th century, and the electric batteries would be recharged through diesel engine operation while surfaced. This greatly increased the range of the vessel and the amount of time it could remain relatively undetected. However, through WWI and WWII, diesel/electric submarines moved far faster while surfaced than while submerged, and many of the U-Boat and submarine kills of those wars came from surfaced submarines operating at night.
The first diesel/electric US submarine (the USS Holland) joined the fleet in 1900 after three years of private trials and development. Soon she was joined by five other vessels of similar design. The US Submarine Fleet marks 1900 as its birth-date. The sub fleets of many European nations also began at about this time.
How does a submarine work?
The United States Navy's Office of Naval Research has a fantastically simple explanation for those who wish to understand the basics.
“Whether a submarine is floating or submerging depends on the ship's buoyancy. Buoyancy is controlled by the ballast tanks, which are found between the submarine's inner and outer hulls. A submarine resting on the surface has positive buoyancy, which means it, is less dense than the water around it and will float. At this time, the ballast tanks are mainly full of air.
To submerge, the submarine must have negative buoyancy. Vents on top of the ballast tanks are opened. Seawater coming in through the flood ports forces air out the vents, and the submarine begins to sink.
The submarine ballast tank now filled with seawater is denser than the surrounding water. The exact depth can be controlled by adjusting the water to air ratio in the ballast tanks. Submerged, the submarine can obtain neutral buoyancy. That means the weight of the submarine equals the amount of water it displaces. The submarine will neither rise nor sink in this state.
To make the submarine rise again, compressed air is simply blown into the tanks forcing the seawater out. The submarine gains positive buoyancy becomes less dense than the water and rises.”
There is more to it than that, such as an understanding of the nature of water and air pressure, but this explanation suffices for our purposes here.
Chapter 2: The Lifeline
At their most basic level, wars since the beginning of the 20th century have been won at sea. In 1914-1918, both the fighting capability of the German Army and the stability of Germany at home were greatly affected by the naval blockade imposed on that country by the Royal Navy of Great Britain.
In the famous German Ludendorff (or Spring) Offensive of 1918, new German tactics and elite troops almost achieved a great breakthrough into Allied territory, which could have affected the end of the war. Among the reasons this offensive was defeated was that many of these troops got behind schedule. Why? They were so used to being deprived of food and alcohol, that when they overran rich Allied supply depots, they drank and ate themselves silly and sick.
Lack of supply and hunger began to take a great toll on both the fighting men at the front and the people on the Home Front, increasing the dissatisfaction with the government and causing the military leadership of the country to sue for an armistice.
Of course, WWI made the submarine famous, or rather infamous. The nation that invested the most in the new weapon in money, time, effort and manpower was Germany. Not able to compete with the Royal Navy on the surface of the world's oceans, the Germans hoped that its stable of new submarines would change the course of the war.
The submarine did indeed change the course of the war. Even as millions were dying in new and horrible ways on the battlefields of Europe, many people still had a romantic notion of how war at sea should be fought. They held to the concept that it should be two fleets of ships under streaming banners firing at each other over the waves, with the captain going down with his defeated ship, but surviving sailors picked up at sea and being treated if not as comrades, then at least humanely.
The submarine changed people's idea of warfare at sea in much the same way as the machine gun; poison gas and aerial bombing changed ideas of how war should be fought on land.
When the submarine first made its presence felt in World War I, it was felt that its stealth and inability to take on prisoners/survivors (which would leave it vulnerable to other surface ships in the area and/or cause gross overcrowding) made it somehow less than “sporting”. It was not a fit way for the nations of the world to fight at sea, yet all of the major European powers employed or wished to employ them.
The first days o
f the war saw the first actions by submarines. A number of German submarines sallied out of the North Sea to find British vessels between Scotland and Norway. The first encounter resulted in a number of misses by German torpedoes, the ramming, and sinking of one sub and the sinking of another by a British sea mine – hardly an auspicious beginning.
This was a two edged sword however. Firstly, it alarmed the British that the German subs had the range to engage their fleet so far north. On the other hand, the U-Boats' ineffectiveness and seeming vulnerability gave the British a short lived and false sense of security which they would pay for dearly when they overlooked the when the Germans corrected their mistakes and took on the British Merchant Fleet and Navy in large numbers.
On September 5 1914, a German submarine sank the cruiser HMS Pathfinder killing 259 of her crew, and just over two weeks later, the Germans sank another three British warships with the loss of nearly 1,500 lives. In December, a British battleship was sunk with the loss of over 500 sailors.
One of the advantages of the submarine was its relatively low cost. Compared to a battleship, cruiser or even destroyer, a submarine in 1914-18 was cheap (for that matter, so were the subs of the 1940's), and it had the capability of sinking those larger and more expensive vessels.
During WWI, German subs were able to sink nearly half of the British merchant fleet, but that also had to contend with the merchant fleets of France and the United States.
Submarine warfare and the German desire to cow the United States and other from supplying England and France by sea was one of the main reasons for the eventual US entry into the war. A number of incidents involving American vessels or vessels carrying Americans took place in the Atlantic, causing great tension between the United States and Germany. Of course, the most famous of these was the sinking of the liner RMS Lusitania off the Irish coast on May 7 1915, which killed 1,198 people, of whom 128 were American. Though it was not the immediate cause of American entry into the war (that would come in 1917), the Lusitania incident figured large in anti-German sentiment among the US population, and government, not all of which had been anti-German when war began.