World War 2: Submarine Stories: True Stories From the Underwater Battlegrounds (Submarine Warfare, World War 2, USS Barb, World War II, WW2, WWII, Grey wolf, Uboat, submarine book Book 1)
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When he returned the admiral back to Australia, it was suggested to Dealey that he retire from combat command and allow a younger man to take over his sub. While Dealey knew he was pushing the odds, he asked to take Harder out on one more patrol to train new crewmen who had never seen combat.
Dealey's sixth war patrol began on August 5, 1944 with Dealey in command of a five submarine wolfpack. The son and namesake of Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, one of the great leaders of World War II, commanded one sub, the USS Haddo. At Paluan Bay in the Philippines, Dealey's wolfpack sank four merchantmen to no losses, but Harder did not score any of the kills herself.
Dealey and Nimitz then split from the other three subs and headed towards Manila Bay, where they picked up three survivors of the convoy they had attacked shortly before. Both commanders racked up one kill each and shared another, sending more ships and supplies to the bottom.
The two commanders then moved north along the Philippines' largest island of Luzon and were to rendezvous with another sub, the USS Hake, when they ran across the destroyer Asakaze. Nimitz slammed two torpedoes into the Japanese ship and turned for base, out of ammunition. Dealey, met by Hake, remained outside the bay where they believed the destroyer had been towed waiting for it or other Japanese ships to emerge.
The next morning, August 24 1944, a Japanese destroyer and minesweeper emerged from the bay. As Dealey's comrades on the Hake pursued her as she turned back into the bay (and escaped), Harder was left to deal with the minesweeper that was unusually aggressive and was pinging her sonar madly in apparent pursuit of Harder. The Commander Frank Haylor and the crew of the Hake heard the sonar pings as the Japanese ship moved out of the bay towards Dealey and his boat. At 647am, Haylor caught sight of Harder's periscope – the last trace anyone ever saw of Dealey and his crew. A bit more than a half hour later, Hake heard fifteen explosions as the minesweeper dropped depth charges near where Harder had last been seen. Evading Japanese ships through the day Hake stayed in the area and surfaced at night to look for any trace of the Harder or its crew and found none. Over the next two weeks, Hake patrolled the area, hoping that somehow members of Harder's crew had made it to shore, but no one was ever found. After the war, the report of the Japanese minesweeper was found and her captain reported oil, wood and cork floating in the area where Harder had been.
Captain Dealey and his crew had been lost forever. Harder had been responsible for the sinking of 18 Japanese ships making Captain Dealey the fifth ranking US Navy submarine ace of the war.
Chapter 6: The Sculpin, John Philip Cromwell and the Choice-less Choice
In William Styron's 1979 novel, “Sophie's Choice”, the title character, a prisoner in Auschwitz, is given a choice: pick one of her children to live and the other to die. Should she not pick one, both will be killed. This, Styron calls the “choice-less choice”.
The responsibility of a ships' captain is often similar. In wartime, he (and now she) may call upon one of their crew to do perform a duty which will likely end in their death. Those readers familiar with the movie “K-19: The Widowmaker” (2002), an accounting of a real incident, will understand this the captain of the Soviet submarine K-19 had to send eight men to their deaths in order to both save his ship, the majority of his crew, perhaps save the world from the greater catastrophe of a nuclear meltdown far beneath the waves. This scenario has played out countless times since men went to sea. It happened yet again on November19 1943 off of Truk Island in the Pacific Ocean.
The ship's captain in this case was Lt. Commander John Philip Cromwell, who like Commander Dealey of the Harder was born in a state far from the ocean, in this case Illinois in 1901. Like Dealey a graduate of the US Naval Academy, Cromwell graduated in 1924 and served on a in a number of capacities, including on the battleship USS Maryland. For most navy men in the pre-war years, being assigned to a battleship was the best that life in the navy could offer, but Cromwell was drawn to the submarine fleet and served aboard a number of them before being given command of USS S-20 in 1936.
By the time the war broke out in late 1941, Cromwell had served as the captain of a boat, and in a variety of staff positions in Washington and then became the Engineer Officer for the submarines of the Pacific Fleet. He was widely known as a capable and devoted officer with an attention for detail, and after the war began, he was placed on the staff of the commander of submarines Pacific fleet and oversaw operations for two submarine divisions (a division was usually five submarines). By late 1943, Cromwell was placed in charge of Submarine Division 43 and was on board the USS Sculpin as the officer in charge of coordinating the actions of the submarines of his division. In command of Sculpin was Commander Fred Connaway an experienced submariner who had sailed the world before the war. A brief excerpt from a letter sent by Connaway to his mother in 1931 while he was sailing across the Atlantic to Copenhagen will give the reader an idea of the intense training undertaken for submarine duty and the level of devotion of the men that formed their crew and command:
Dearest Mother,
You should see me now. I wish I were back home or someplace where I could sleep again. For three weeks I am an engineer. Besides having two lectures a day and having to sketch the entire engineering plant and electrical system, and having to write up the lectures, and having to stand eight hours’ watch every day at the most unearthly hours in the fire room, temperature 130 degrees F, I don’t have very much to do except try to find time and a place to sleep. I always have the inclination. Well the first twelve weeks are the hardest, and then maybe we can all enjoy September leave. We have been gone a week and in only twelve more days we should be in Copenhagen. I have one consolation; the days seem to pass quickly.
The Sculpin's crew consisted of 5 officers and 54 crewmen, and they were ready for their ships' ninth war patrol, which began on November 5 1943 as part of the same effort that included Commander Dealey on the Harder – to secure the waters around Tarawa in preparation for the invasion of that island. The Sculpin’s war record was outstanding – eighteen Japanese ships, including a cruiser (http://www.pigboats.com/ww2/sculpin.html). Not all of the men aboard had been with Sculpin since the war began, but many were and their experience helped the greener men become familiar with life aboard a sub at war. Experienced non-coms helped Captain Connaway on his first war patrol as well. Though he had served in the submarine fleet for many years, this would be Cromwell's first war patrol too.
In company of twelve other submarines, Sculpin took position northeast of Truk in the Caroline Islands on the approach to the Gilbert island chain where Tarawa is located. For more on the Battle of Tarawa, see my “World War 2 Soldier's Stories Part VII: The True Bloody Stories from the Pacific Theatre”, http://www.amazon.com/World-War-Soldier-Stories-Part/dp/1503354814/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420314010&sr=1-3.
By November 16, Sculpin and the submarines under Cromwell's command had taken station around Truk and ready to engage the enemy. A secret possessed by Captain Cromwell and no one else in the sub division under his command might provide the location of any Japanese ships that happened by.
Cromwell was in possession of a significant amount of knowledge about the Allied efforts that had broken both the German Enigma codes in the Atlantic and the Japanese naval code (called JN-25, or “Purple”). This knowledge, along with knowledge of the effort to build the atomic bomb, was perhaps the most closely kept secret of the war. This secret, code-named ULTRA, gave the Allies a significant tactical and strategic advantage, the loss of which would prove a very significant setback or even cost the Allies the war. Captain Cromwell was also in full possession of the details of the coming Tarawa invasion.
The American submarine crew did not have to wait long before they spotted a large and fast moving convoy of Japanese warships. During the night, Captain Connaway raced across the surface of the sea, parallel to the convoy, in order to get ahead of it and lay in wait submerged.
At dawn, he surfaced the boat to begin his attack, but was soon
spotted by the Japanese, who sent a destroyer his way. Diving deep, Sculpin, Connaway and Cromwell listened to the sounds of the convoy passing through the water above. Raising the sub to the surface in order to get a shot at the convoy before it disappeared, Connaway looked through the periscope only to be met with the sight of the Japanese destroyer Yamaguno heading straight for him. Sculpin once again dove deep to try to evade the attack that was sure to come.
Veteran submariners will tell you that the waiting is the worst part of a depth charge attack. Water is a superb carrier of sound, and the men aboard the Sculpin heard the splashes of the first Japanese depth charges to drop nearby – now they just had to wait helpless and hope that the subs' dive would take them beyond the range set by the Japanese for their depth charges to explode.
Splash! Splash! Then silence, perhaps followed by more splashes. Then the sounds of the sub hull and engines fade into the background as men's ears cock and their eyes instinctively look up as they wait for the telltale “click” of a depth charges' detonator being activated. Then, as was mentioned previously, the men wait and pray. If the depth charges are far away, there will be a noise and perhaps a relatively gentle rocking of the boat at the concussion from the explosion strikes the hull. However, if the explosions are too close – then the crew will be as powerless as a box full of toy soldiers shaken by a rowdy five-year-old boy - if they're lucky.
The men on the Sculpin enjoyed a modicum of luck and survived the attack of the Yamagumo, but they knew she would not give up until ordered to do so or she had found evidence that the American submarine had been sunk. This forced the Americans to stay deep for hours.
At about noon, the captain ordered the sub to periscope depth. When the sub reached a depth of one hundred and twenty five feet, the needle on the depth gauge stuck, damaged by the earlier Japanese attack. Not knowing the exact depth, the Sculpin rose to the surface like a cork. As soon as the shock of suddenly being on the surface wore off, Connaway looked out and saw the Japanese destroyer again heading right for his boat.
Screaming for the subs crew to carry out an emergency dive, Connaway closed the hatch behind him and rode into the depths with his crew. Eighteen depth charges followed quickly on the heels of the American sub, and a significant amount of damage was sustained – most significantly, the subs' ability to control her depth.
The sub continued to dive until it was past the depth at which she had been tested, three hundred feet. Leaks began along the welds and pipes inside the submarine and the increased water in the vessel made it even more difficult to control its depth. If the boat continued to dive, she and everyone inside her would crush until it and they popped. Areas of the central Pacific are the deepest areas of any ocean in the world. The nearby Marianas Trench is deeper than Mount Everest is high – 36,201 feet, or seven miles.
The sub eventually managed to slow its dive and eventually maintain its depth, but only by running at full speed, which gave the Japanese destroyer above even more sound to zero in on, but if they did not move, they would sink and die. There was only was thing to do, and that was to blow the ballast tanks with high-pressure air before the boat was too full of water to surface. Surfacing meant facing the Japanese destroyer at close range.
When the Sculpin surfaced, her main gun crew ran on deck and began to prepare their gun, but the Japanese destroyer men were too fast. The very first salvo that the Yamagumo fired was perfect, striking the conning tower of the American vessel, killing Captain Connaway, and the men nearby. The men manning Sculpin's deck gun were showered with shrapnel and they too died instantly.
The command of the boat fell to the next senior officer, who ordered the boat scuttled – rigged with charges that would sink her – and ordered the crew to abandon ship.
The Sculpin under fire
While these decisions were being made, and the Japanese were shelling the sub, Captain Cromwell was below agonizing with the greatest decision a man can make. If he chose to abandon ship and was captured by the Japanese, he would, as the ranking officer, would most likely be tortured for information, and the Japanese were very open about their use of torture. The other alternative was no less painful – going to a sure death at the bottom of the sea.
The men of the Sculpin did not know Cromwell's secret until the last moment when he informed those around him of his decision to die rather than be taken prisoner. In order to make sure the boat stayed under the waves, the ship's diving officer Ensign W. M Fielder, volunteered to remain aboard the ship, as did a couple of severely wounded men who knew they would not survive Japanese captivity. So it was that these men of the Sculpin made the choice to never again see the light of day.
For the forty-two men who abandoned ship, a new kind of suffering was to begin. Taken aboard the Japanese destroyer, they soon realized how expendable they could be when the Japanese, who did not wish to treat those who had just tried to sink them, threw one of their wounded comrades back into the sea. Taken to the Turk Atoll, these men were interrogated harshly for over a week then divided into two groups to be taken back to Japan. It was then that the irony of war made itself felt.
Twenty American sailors were transported to Japan on board the escort carrier Unyo. In Japan, they lived the lives of slaves, working in terrible conditions in mines far beneath the earth. The other twenty-one sailors of the Sculpin were put aboard another Japanese carrier, the Chuyo. Loading POW's onto warships for transports was forbidden by the unwritten rules of war, which puts the prisoners at risk of death at the hands of their own comrades.
On December 3rd, the submarine USS Sailfish, which had been pointed toward the Chuyo by the same ULTRA intelligence that Captain Cromwell died to protect, slammed torpedoes into the Japanese carrier, sinking the ship. Only one of the men of the Sculpin survived. To make a horrible situation even worse, the USS Sailfish was Sculpin's sister ship. In 1939, the Sculpin had helped rescue the crew of the Sailfish (then known as Squalus) when she sank in shallow water off New Hampshire.
The men of the Sculpin living and dead showed the highest devotion to duty. Captain Cromwell's widow was presented with his Medal of Honor. The citation read:
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as Commander of a Submarine Coordinated Attack Group with Flag in the USS Sculpin, during the 9th War Patrol of that vessel in enemy-controlled waters off Truk Island, 19 November 1943. Undertaking this patrol prior to the launching of our first large-scale offensive in the Pacific, CAPT Cromwell, alone of the entire Task Group, possessed secret intelligence information of our submarine strategy and tactics, scheduled Fleet movements and specific attack plans. Constantly vigilant and precise in carrying out his secret orders, he moved his underseas flotilla inexorably forward despite savage opposition and established a line of submarines to southeastward of the main Japanese stronghold at Truk. Cool and undaunted as the submarine, rocked and battered by Japanese depth charges, sustained terrific battle damage and sank to an excessive depth, he authorized the Sculpin to surface and engage the enemy in a gunfight, thereby providing an opportunity for the crew to abandon ship. Determined to sacrifice himself rather than risk capture and subsequent danger of revealing plans under Japanese torture or use of drugs, he stoically remained aboard the mortally wounded vessel as she plunged to her death. Preserving the security of his mission, at the cost of his own life, he had served his country as he had served the Navy, with deep integrity and an uncompromising devotion to duty. His great moral courage in the face of certain death adds new luster to the traditions of the US Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.
Chapter 7: The Midgets
The only Japanese prisoner taken on December 7th 1941 during the Pearl Harbor attack was the pilot of a Japanese midget submarine that had run aground on a beach near the naval base. Other midget subs penetrated Hawaiian waters and one is believed to have entered the harbor. Some believe that this submarine might have launched a torpedo that h
elped to sink the USS Arizona on that fateful day in United States history.
The midget submarine of WWII, like the small submarines designed by Bushell and Hunley in the American Revolutionary and Civil Wars, were designed to penetrate places that normal size submarine would find difficult, if not impossible to get into to.
One of these places was the fjord of Norway. Norway was conquered by the Germans in the spring of 1940 and its many natural ports were used both as launching points against convoys headed from the British Isles and the Western Hemisphere to the Soviet port of Murmansk.
As was mentioned at the beginning of this e-book, the German Navy did undergo a significant build-up before the outbreak of war in 1939, but still lagged far behind the British. Adolf Hitler was pre-occupied with size when it came to the weapons he approved and rather than increase the amount of submarines in his U-Boat fleet before the war, he had ordered the construction of the large battleship Bismarck, the pocket battleship Graf Spee and the battleship Tirpitz, along with some heavy and light cruisers. The main function of these ships was to engage British merchant vessels and hopefully sink unescorted warships of the Royal Navy.
By 1943, all the dreams of Hitler's surface navy were gone – mostly at the bottom of the sea, like Bismarck and Graf Spee, or hemmed into German ports by the Royal Navy. The one ship that the British still feared was the Tirpitz, and though she had not ventured forward, a small and powerful fleet accompanied her in Norway and if these ships successfully broke out of Norwegian coastal waters, the convoys heading to the Soviet Union would be at risk. As it was, they had been halted or slowed down by the U-Boats, which claimed many of the slow merchantmen in the icy waters of the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. After the disastrous (for the Allies) sinking of much of convoy PQ-17 in July of 1942, these convoys were halted, which put strain on the already tense relationship between the USSR and the Western Allies. If the Tirpitz ventured out, these convoys might never bring their much-needed supplies to the beleaguered Red Army.