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)

by Ryan Jenkins

  John Capes himself died in 1985, but his story was not proved till 1997. In a series of diving research expeditions aimed at the Perseus, Kostas Thoctarides and his teams found the wreckage of the vessel. Further investigation revealed that Capes’ bunker had been exactly how he had described it, down to the blitz bottle he said he had rum from before making the incredible escape. The research conducted also found that the Italian mine had been responsible for the sinking of the vessel, something that had been suspected by the British authorities, but had not been verified in the past. The only part of the story that changed was the fact that the wreck was found at 170 feet, which meant the depth gauge that John Capes had was broken.

  Still, this does not take away from the fact that the escape was incredibly brave, and something to be remembered.

  Chapter 10: The Famed USS Wahoo

  Yet another Gato-class submarine, USS Wahoo (SS-238) was launched on the fateful day of February 14th, 1942 and went on to become one of the most famous submarines associated with the Second World War. Her construction had begun even before the United States had associated itself with the World War. Her keel had been laid down over six months before that, in June 1941 at California. While initial training exercises were centered closer to California, she moved to Pearl Harbor for the next set of training exercises. This was when Lieutenant Commander Marvin G. Kennedy was commanding the ship.

  Like other vessels in her class, USS Wahoo had been complemented by 60 people, six of them were officers. Her weaponry included ten torpedo tubes, along with 24 torpedoes. She was also fitted with a 50-caliber deck gun, along with the Bofors and Oerlikon that have been previously mentioned. She had a top speed of 21 knots when surfaced, and around 9 knots when submerged, and had been tested at a depth of 300 feet.

  She set out for her first patrol on 23rd August 1942, close to the area of Truk hoping to find Japanese shipping there. This happened almost two weeks after she set out from Pearl Harbor, as she engaged in her first combat with a Japanese freighter that was not part of a convoy and hence alone. USS Wahoo launched three torpedoes towards the freighter, none of which hit the mark. This was attributed to the fact that the freighter moved towards the Wahoo during this time, with the possible intention to ram into the submarine. As commanding officer of the ship, Kennedy elected to go under and sneak away, as he was afraid of a counterattack from Japanese aircrafts.

  However, Kennedy and USS Wahoo did not leave the area completely, choosing to stay there till 20th September at least, when she decided to expand the patrol area and explore other parts of it as well – taking her towards the Namunuito Atoll. It was during a nighttime patrol during this time (along with the aid of supportive weather conditions) that she spotted a freighter along with its escort and decided to fire at it. Four torpedoes were fired in an attempt to sink the freighter; one of them hit its mark very clearly. However, soon after, three other explosions were heard from around the freighter, which eventually sunk it. This led to pursuit and counterattack from the escort whom the Wahoo managed to avoid owing to weather conditions – a rainsquall that let them escape safely.

  The next few days remained relatively uneventful, as while USS Wahoo sighted several potential targets (including some airplanes, fishing boats, and a patrol boat), she was unable to sink or fire on any of them, as she could not get the right range. Of the several potential hits and misses, one of them stands out in a very obvious manner: The first of the lot was the Chiyoda, associated with midget submarines by being their mothership. Kennedy also believed he had spotted the Ryujo, an aircraft carrier – but this proved to be incorrect as it had already been sunk in the past, at an alternate location.

  Thus, USS Wahoo did not have any hits after this time during her first patrol. Her first patrol ended on 17th October 1942 as she returned to Pearl Harbor to be refitted. During this time, certain changes were made in her weaponry system. Her deck gun was replaced by a much heavier 4-inch (100 mm) gun, and two 20 mm anti-aircraft guns were added along with this. Refitting and overhaul were completed in the first week of November, and by the second week of the month, she had set out for her next patrol (8th November, 1942).

  Lieutenant Commander Dudley Walker Morton also accompanied the Wahoo on her second patrol, even though he was not captaining the ship then – he was there owing to the fact that he was a prospective commanding officer. Her first location was the Solomon Islands. While she spotted a freighter with a destroyer as its escort, the first part of this patrol was unsuccessful as well, as she could not obtain a clear target for either of them and hence had to go ahead with the patrol.

  During the time that followed, USS Wahoo decided to take a slightly different route and extend her patrol area in an attempt to cover more ground as well as find more enemy ships to attack; she moved close to the Truk region again. However, when she could not sight any targets in the area, she decided to return to the Buka-Kilinailau channel. It was during this return journey that she spotted a convoy consisting of three cargo ships and one escort destroyer. She decided to target Kamoi Maru, which had been closest to her location – and fired four torpedoes in rapid succession at the vessel. Three of them successfully hit the target, even though it took two hours after the hit for the vessel to sink.

  The presence of an escort destroyer meant they were going to face a counterattack, and thus, they had to submerge quickly. Even so, some minor damage was sustained due to the resultant depth charges that had been fired.

  Even though Morton, and executive officer Richard O’Kane suggested that Wahoo launch a second attack after the depth charges ceased, Kennedy chose not to do the same. This behavior was commonly observed during early times in the war, as commanding officers struggled to find a balance between caution and aggression, and struggled to maintain that balance, which determined the direction they would take.

  On 14th December, four days after this incident, she spotted a hospital ship. Though submarines at times ignored the rules that had been set-aside during warfare for cruisers, which meant she could have fired at the hospital ship, some of the rules remained unbroken. This was the reason the hospital ship remained safe, and was not attacked. Instead, Wahoo focused her attention on a Japanese submarine, suspected to have been the I-2.

  Her second patrol ended as she returned to Brisbane, Australia. Owing to the fact that Kennedy had not been considered very effective during his patrols, he was relieved by then PCO who would have been assigned to another ship if not for these circumstances – Dudley Morton. However, Richard O’Kane was not reassigned or relieved from his post as executive officer. Together, they formed a formidable team by putting a new attacking system in place. O’Kane would man the periscope and make observations, while Morton would direct the attack based on these observations, a strategy that proved to be very effective, even though it was not adopted by other commanding officers.

  USS Wahoo left for her third patrol on January 16th, 1943. Their orders were clear; they needed to reconnoiter Wewak, a Japanese supply base located near New Guinea. However, the problem had been the fact that they had no maps to indicate the direction to be adopted to get to the place. To resolve this issue, Morton improvised a navy map from a page of a school atlas and entered Victoria Bay in order to achieve her goals.

  It was in this area that she found a convoy consisting of a group of submarines along with a destroyer, and decided to target the destroyer. She fired four torpedo shots at the destroyed and all of them missed. However, Wahoo used her last bow torpedo shot and hit her mark as she fired it from a distance of merely 800 yards, making it a throat shot, thus severely damaging the destroyer. Morton believed that the destroyer had been sunk, and moved out of the area; however, there are reports that suggest that despite heavy damage, the destroyer did survive and managed to be taken for repair.

  Wahoo headed towards Palau next. On 26th January, she spotted another convoy, consisting of a large transport, a tanker, and two freighters. Initially spotting only two of these fo
ur vessels, she fired two torpedoes at the first one, and two at the second, one of which missed the mark. The first vessel began to sink, while the second still attempted to head towards Wahoo. Having noticed the other vessels by now, she ignored the second vessel and attacked the transport instead – firing three torpedoes at it. While the first missed, the second and third did not; those shots brought the transport to a stop.

  This was when things began to get slightly chaotic. Wahoo had fired at three of four vessels – had sunk one of those, and hit two. However, the two vessels that had taken hits did not sink. Instead, one of them was still moving towards the submarine, while the other had merely been halted to a standstill. Wahoo had swerved and move away at full speed in order to avoid being rammed by the second vessel she targeted, and instead, turned to attack the transporter again. Two torpedoes were fired towards the transporter – one of them failed to explode, while the other served its purpose.

  As Morton chose to surface in order to recharge batteries, an attack was launched on the survivors from the transporter, who were now on lifeboats. However, what the crew failed to notice was the fact most of these troops were Indian POWs, along with a few Japanese troops. This resulted in almost twice as many Indian deaths as Japanese deaths. However, close to one fourth of the total men aboard the transporter were killed – an indicator that like Richard O’Kane stated, Morton had ordered for the sinking of the ship, but had not asked for deliberate shooting at the survivors.

  It was quite possible that his actions were an attempt at retaliating to the gunfire that those on the lifeboats had engaged in first. Leaving the boats intact would also have meant they would have reached enemy-held lands that were easily accessible around them, which gave them an upper hand with regard to resuming the fight.

  She eventually turned her attention to the two vessels that were escaping, firing her final four torpedoes at both of them, and successfully sinking both of them as well. However, on 27th January, she came across a convoy of eight ships, which included two freighters, a tanker, and a destroyer. Not only could she not get into proper attacking range for a perfect shot, she had also used up all her torpedoes by now, which meant she had to give up on targeting the convoy even though they were in sight. Instead, Morton had to give orders for the vessel to go down as the enemy destroyer, who proceeded to send six depth charges their way, had spotted Wahoo.

  Unharmed, she eventually made her way back – to Pearl Harbor as opposed to Brisbane, for a refit. This trial was one of the shorter ones in, lasting less than half the average number of days for a patrol.

  USS Wahoo left for her fourth patrol on 23rd February 1943. Passing along Midway Island on the way, she headed to the northern Yellow Sea, an area that had never been previously approached by US submarines. Surprisingly enough, she did not sight any enemy aircrafts on the way, marking yet another rare event of covering a large distance while surfaced.

  Less than a month after her fourth patrol began, she sighted two freighters and targeted them. She fired one torpedo at one of them, which met its mark so effectively that the entire vessel sank almost immediately. She also fired two torpedoes at the other freighter, but could not sink it because of the fact that one of them turned out to be a dud. Before Wahoo could fire more torpedoes at this freighter, it maneuvered and dodged them sharply, even while the vessel was damaged.

  While patrolling close to the Korean coast, two more freighters were spotted, Hozen Maru, and Nitsu Maru, within hours after each other. She fired two torpedoes at Hozen Maru, and three torpedoes at Nitsu Maru, effectively sinking both of them in a very short span of time. Though there were survivors on the Nitsu Maru, they refused to be rescued. The following day, she used a single torpedo to sink yet another freighter.

  A few days later, she sighted smoke while on her patrol and proceeded to attack a large tanker. The first four torpedoes she launched proved to be useless, as two of them exploded prematurely and two of them missed. The tanker began using its deck guns on Wahoo, who avoided these attacks, moved closer and fired three more torpedoes – and that was the end of the tanker. One day later, she sank yet another tanker – while the two torpedoes she used missed, she used her surface guns to ensure the tanker caught fire. The next day, she sank another using her deck guns. She also managed to completely wreck three other vessels, even if she did not wait to see if they eventually sank.

  USS Wahoo sunk one more freighter before concluding that patrol and returning to Midway Islands, having created a presently unbroken record for the number of ships that had been sunk during a single patrol during the time of war. She had been so ruthless and effective during this patrol that the Japanese thought a wolf pack was operating in those waters.

  Wahoo left for her fifth patrol on 25th April, from Midway Islands. Over the next ten days, she made several attacks on eight targets, including fishing boats, freighters, and a tanker, but was able to sink only three of them – this list included a large tanker, and a freighter. Soon after, she sighted two more freighters and decided to use her last set of torpedoes on them. However, she could not sink them owing to some malfunctioning in the torpedoes, and had to clear the area before the freighters launched a counterattack. Eventually, both the enemy ships escaped and Morton had to redirect Wahoo back to Pearl Harbor.

  Even though the number of vessels she sank was not as high as the fourth patrol, Morton was still lauded for making this patrol equally aggressive in its approach. Owing to the fact that he employed such effective strategies in such a short period of time and was relentless in his pursuit of enemy target, he received a second Navy Cross for the fifth patrol of USS Wahoo.

  After this, Wahoo proceed to Mare Island on May 29th, 1943 for overhaul. It took close to two months to complete all forms of repair and testing, post, which she left for Pearl Harbor, reaching the place less than a week later.

  The sixth patrol of USS Wahoo started in the month of August 1943, and was possibly the most frustrating one Morton had to deal with, owing to severe torpedo malfunctioning. Over a span of four days, Wahoo located over ten enemy ships and attempted to fire at almost all of them. Close to half of the torpedoes failed to reach the vessels despite proper aim, or did not explode despite hitting their target. The vessels that they attempted to sink included seven freighters, a tanker, and an unidentified vessel. The only success that they faced during this patrol was the attack on three sampans that were left wrecked as a result of deck guns being fired – members of one of them were taken aboard as prisoners of war, but survivors from the other wrecks chose not to be saved.

  As a result of the malfunctioning in the torpedoes, ComSubPac ordered for Wahoo to return once Morton reported these issues to higher authorities. She proceeded through Etorofu Strait and returned to Midway Islands by August 25th, after which she left for Pearl Harbor and got there on August 29th.

  Morton asked for permission to return to the Sea of Japan for the seventh patrol, and was allowed to do the same. This time, however, he chose to take a new kind of torpedoes (Mark 18 electric torpedo) as opposed to taking the potentially defective steam ones. Starting from Pearl Harbor on September 13th, she headed for La Perouse Strait.

  However, she did not return on the day she was supposed, nor did she transmit the message she was supposed to, after passing the Kurils. It is believed that USS Wahoo was still continuing her patrol till the end of September, at the very last. Japanese records indicate that there had been an anti-submarine aircraft that attacked a surfaced submarine at La Perouse Straits. Enemy vessels had also joined in the attack. It is assumed that these attacks eventually sunk USS Wahoo. There are, however, other theories for how Wahoo was lost. On the sixth of December that year, she was taken off the Naval Vessel Register.

  As a result of the loss of Wahoo, which had quickly become a force to be reckoned with, further patrols in the Sea of Japan were not ordered till 18 months later, when mine detection equipment became available.

  Chapter 11: USS Tang and Richard O�
��Kane

  It seems like the Balao-class submarines really managed to chart up many tales to their name, particularly successful ones. USS Tang was one such submarine, the first to be given that name. Her weaponry was similar to that of USS Bowfin. The former executive officer of USS Wahoo, Lieutenant Commander Richard O’Kane was commanding this vessel.

  USS Tang had a top speed of 21 knots when surfaced, and 9 knots when submerged. She had been tested at a depth of 600 feet, and was complemented by ten officers, and nearly seven times that number of those who had enlisted. She was launched on 17th August 1943 – and almost ten weeks later, her command was handed over to Richard O’Kane. Training and testing had been conducted at two locations, San Deigo, and subsequently, Pearl Harbor, before she was ready to start off on her first patrol.

  Tang set out for her first patrol on January 22nd, 1944 towards the Caroline-Mariana Islands area. Close to two weeks later, she sighted a nine-vessel convoy that included two freighters and their escorts. While preparing to attack, one of the escorts appeared at a closer range, and Tang had to go under where five depth charges were aimed towards her – she was, however, unharmed. Soon after, she closed in the nearest freighter and fired four torpedoes at it, which caused the enemy vessel to sink. Before she could get ahead of the convoy and attack the other freighter similarly, it passed out of range.

  Less than one week later, she made a surface attack on another convoy after tracking them for a while. Four torpedoes were fired at a cargo ship, which sank soon after. The next morning, she used a similar strategy to get rid of yet another cargo ship, which exploded and went up in flames.