The War Below

by James Scott

  Guadalcanal gave America the runway needed to achieve one of its great symbolic victories two months later. Yamamoto had come to Rabaul to oversee a series of unsuccessful raids on Allied forces in the Solomons, announcing at the operation’s end his plan for a one-day tour of frontline bases to help boost troop morale. An encrypted radio message went out the afternoon of April 13, listing Yamamoto’s itinerary down to the hour. Many senior officers objected to the trip, particularly after seeing the wide dissemination of the plan that included the precise number of fighter escorts.

  Yamamoto’s itinerary had an unintended recipient—the United States. The multiple addresses signaled American intelligence that the message was important. IBM machines at Pearl Harbor spit out a rough decryption. Marine Lieutenant Colonel Alva Lasswell and a small team set to work, figuring out crucial details such as geographical codes. The thirty-eight-year-old Lasswell, who had spent several years in Tokyo studying Japanese, soon stared at Yamamoto’s complete itinerary. He couldn’t believe America’s luck. “We’ve hit the jackpot,” Lasswell exclaimed. The Marine officer wasn’t the only one who saw the unique opportunity Yamamoto’s itinerary presented. Commander Edwin Layton, Nimitz’s intelligence officer, strode into the admiral’s office at 8:02 a.m. on April 14, clutching a translated copy of the intercept. Layton blurted out just four words as he handed the message to Nimitz: “Our old friend Yamamoto.”

  “What do you say,” Nimitz asked. “Do we try to get him?”

  “He’s unique among their people,” Layton told Nimitz. “Aside from the Emperor, probably no man in Japan is so important to civilian morale.”

  Nimitz hesitated, questioning whether assassinating Yamamoto might lead to a more effective replacement.

  Layton ticked off a list of Japan’s senior admirals, none of whom he felt would ever rise to Yamamoto’s stature. To hammer home his point, the intelligence officer made it personal. “You know, Admiral Nimitz, it would be just as if they shot you down,” Layton concluded. “There isn’t anybody to replace you.”

  Nimitz gave the order. “It’s down in Halsey’s bailiwick,” he said, referring to Admiral William “Bull” Halsey. “If there’s a way, he’ll find it.”

  Layton drafted the dispatch for the mission—dubbed Operation Vengeance—that authorized and directed Yamamoto’s termination. “There were some qualms of conscience on my part. I was signing the death warrant of a man whom I knew personally,” Layton would later write, having served as assistant naval attache in Tokyo in 1937. “It was impossible for me not to feel for Admiral Yamamoto with a certain amount of fondness.” Nimitz initialed the dispatch, scribbling a few words of encouragement: “Best of luck and good hunting.”

  American pilots planned to target Yamamoto over the island of Bougainville as he flew from Rabaul to Ballale on the first leg of his day-long journey. The admiral woke early the morning of April 18, swapping the white dress uniform he had worn in recent days for a green khaki one with airmen’s boots. He pulled on a pair of white gloves—the missing index and middle fingers of his left hand tied off with thread—and slipped on a sword given to him by his deceased older brother. In preparation for a long day, Yamamoto pocketed toilet paper, a luxury long missing among the frontline troops. He and his entourage climbed aboard two medium bombers at 6 a.m.—Allies referred to these common planes by the code name “Betty”—lifting off ten minutes later from Rabaul’s east airfield. Six fighters followed, just as his itinerary outlined. The sun climbed in the clear morning sky an hour and a half later as Yamamoto’s plane flew south along the west coast of Bougainville. At an altitude of some 6,500 feet, the dense jungles of palm and banyan trees appeared below.

  Eighteen twin-engine U.S. Army P-38 Lightnings roared to intercept at 210 miles per hour, skimming just thirty feet above the whitecaps. Guided by only a compass and air-speed indicator, the Lightnings reached the projected rendezvous and began to climb.

  “Bogey,” one of the pilots crackled over the radio just thirty-seconds later. “Ten o’clock high.”

  Yamamoto was right on time.

  The Lightnings jettisoned the belly fuel tanks to improve agility and speed. The tanks refused to drop from one of the four attack fighters, forcing the pilot and his wingman out of the action. That left just a single pair of Lightnings to kill Yamamoto, one piloted by twenty-seven-year-old Captain Thomas Lanphier, Jr., the other by Lieutenant Rex Barber, his wingman and junior by two years. Lanphier and Barber climbed ahead and to the right of the Japanese bombers while the cover fighters zoomed up to 20,000 feet to battle the enemy Zeros. Japanese fighter pilots spotted the Lightnings. The admiral’s bombers dove, tickling the treetops in a frantic rush to evade the fighters. Lanphier opened fire on the fighters while Barber pursued Yamamoto. “I was right behind the lead Betty,” recalled Barber. “I started shooting across the tail into the right engine. Pieces of the cowling flew up and hit me. The Betty slowed up so much I almost hit it.”

  Lanphier joined the attack on the admiral. “I spotted a shadow moving across the treetops. It was Yamamoto’s bomber. It was skimming the jungle, headed for Kahili. I dived toward him,” Lanphier would write in a newspaper article published at the end of the war. “I fired a long steady burst across the bomber’s course of flight. The bomber’s right engine, then its right wing, burst into flame.” Vice Admiral Matome Ugaki, Yamamoto’s chief of staff, watched the attack unfold from his cockpit seat in the second bomber. Black smoke and flames engulfed Yamamoto’s plane. “My God!” Ugaki said, grabbing the shoulder of an air staff officer. “Look at the commander in chief’s plane!” Lanphier continued his dogged pursuit of Yamamoto’s plane, the belly of his Lightning brushing the treetops. “Just as I moved into range of Yamamoto’s bomber and its cannon, the bomber’s wing tore off. The bomber plunged into the jungle. It exploded,” Lanphier later wrote. “That was the end of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.”

  Hacking through the tangled jungle of palms, banyans, and rattan vines, Japanese rescuers confirmed Lanphier’s observation the next day at dusk. Operation Vengeance was a success. No one had survived the crash of Yamamoto’s plane. The second bomber ditched in the sea. Three people, including chief of staff Ugaki, survived. The ambush had cost Japan some twenty lives, including about a half dozen important staff officers. America in contrast had lost only one Lightning. Yamamoto’s stopped watch recorded the moment of impact at 7:45 a.m., a crash so violent that it threw the admiral clear of the wreckage. Rescuers found the mastermind of the Pearl Harbor attack strapped in his seat among the trees, ribbons adorning his chest and the three fingers of his left hand curled around his sword. An autopsy later showed that either a bullet fragment or shrapnel had dug into Yamamoto’s left shoulder while another piece passed through his lower jaw and exited his temple, killing him in all likelihood before the bomber crashed.

  Yamamoto’s death was prophetic. The admiral had long resisted war with the United States, believing his nation’s limited resources would run out in eighteen months. He voiced those concerns in 1940 to then Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe when pressed for Japan’s chance for success. “If we are ordered to do it,” Yamamoto had answered, “then I can guarantee to put up a tough fight for the first six months, but I have no confidence as to what would happen if it went on for two or three years.” The war had only realized Yamamoto’s fears.

  • • •

  The culture of the Silversides, as with many submarines, changed as the war evolved. With workers in Maine, California, and Wisconsin hammering out new submarines each week, the Navy aimed to rotate sailors after several patrols, sending experienced submariners back home to join new boats. Many Silversides crewmen, who had remained longer, had recently departed, leaving a dwindling core of veterans. At the end of the previous patrol, officers Don Finch, L. J. Gibson, and Jerry Clarke transferred. All three stood on the pier at dawn to watch Silversides depart. Only a handful of men who had joined the Silver Lady at the start of the war remained, including John Bienia, T
om Keegan, and executive officer Bob Worthington. Those left on board felt the absence the moment the pier vanished in the submarine’s frothy wake. “We all had lumps in our throats,” Bienia wrote to his wife. “One really gets attached to fellows that have been through hell and deep water together.”

  New officers and crewmen reported aboard after each patrol, plopping down before the bunks cooled. The revolving door occasionally produced friction between fresh arrivals and veterans, who took out frustration over the loss of friends, shared stories, and camaraderie on the new recruits. The twenty-two-year-old Malone, raised on a California cattle ranch, suffered just that under Bienia. Despite having proven himself on three war patrols in the aged S-31—a vessel far more challenging to operate than a modern fleet boat—the 1942 Naval Academy graduate found he could do nothing to please Bienia, who described just such an anecdote in a letter to his wife. “I have a new officer under me a Lt. jg from Annapolis. He’s a long lanky kid, and when we had some practice clearing the bridge he slowed every dive up,” Bienia wrote. “I had him jumping down the hatch so many times that he became almost too pooped to go ashore tonight. But he did anyway—maybe he thought I’d have him practice all night too. So when he left, I told him he could leave some of the lead ballast out of his pants ashore.”

  • • •

  Silversides concluded five days of practice approaches, dives, and gun drills before it tied up at 11:30 a.m. on October 10 alongside the YOG-41, a gasoline barge moored in Tulagi Harbor in the southern Solomons, the submarine’s last stop before starting its seventh patrol. Coye sent for the Seabees—the Navy’s construction force—to weld a broken antenna strut as other sailors soap-tested the main induction in search of a small leak that appeared only in the deep.

  Crews wrapped up the minor repairs that afternoon and Silversides let out a prolonged blast of its whistle, cast off its lines, and headed to sea. The escort turned back at sunset and the submarine increased speed to seventeen knots, its bow slicing through the blue waves. Over the next week, Silversides cruised north, passing twenty miles off Feni island in the Bismarcks toward its assigned position between Tanga island and New Ireland. The days were uneventful, interrupted only by the occasional enemy patrol plane or the rogue tree trunk whose branches stood out of the water and appeared from a distance to be a ship’s masts. Nighttime searches under a bright full moon with a long slick turned up no targets. Coye welcomed the arrival of new orders on October 13, directing him north to intercept traffic between Japanese bases at Rabaul and Truk.

  Lookouts spotted a submarine on the surface after lunch four days later at a range of about ten miles, a submarine Coye surmised was the Balao, though he failed to raise the boat on his new radiotelephone. A puff of smoke hung on the horizon at a distance of about twenty-five miles. It appeared that Balao, which had now submerged, planned to attack. The skipper decided to track the target. The sun shone down on the calm sea as Silversides closed the distance. The sonar operator reported explosions that the skipper believed were Balao’s torpedoes. What Coye didn’t know was that the convoy had zigzagged just as Balao fired. All six torpedoes had missed, exploding at the end of each run. The sonar operator next reported a string of depth charges, the inevitable outcome of a submarine attack.

  Coye decided to join the fight, knowing the escorts would be busy hunting Balao. He could just barely see the enemy’s masts. The convoy zigzagged at 5:02 p.m. as Coye closed at six knots. The six-ship convoy had departed Palau four days earlier, October 14, bound for Rabaul. The ships steamed in three columns. Two submarine chasers patrolled off the convoy’s quarter, likely having returned from the attack on Balao. The skipper contemplated a long-range shot, but ruled against it. He ordered Silversides to surface and chased at full speed on all four engines, the mast tops in sight. Coye tried to raise Balao, but again failed. The skipper ordered Silversides to make an end run to the north around the target that radar showed remained some 14,000 yards away. The engines now roared.

  Silversides completed its end run through the calm sea at 10:34 p.m. and dove to sixty feet. Moonlight illuminated the convoy in Coye’s periscope. Silversides passed 1,200 yards abeam of the lead escort and cruised between the convoy’s right and center columns. Coye lowered his periscope and swung left, his bow tubes aimed at the lead ship. He raised his scope several minutes later only to discover that the convoy had zigzagged right and his target steamed past. The frustrated skipper hustled to set up a stern shot on the lead ship in the second column, but the range proved too small. Coye realized he was dead ahead of the second ship in the middle column that bore down on him. He ordered Silversides to swing left to avoid a collision.

  Coye had botched the attack.

  The skipper ordered Silversides to surface at 12:38 a.m. and chase at full speed on four engines for another end run around the convoy, careful to remain just outside of radar range. Silversides submerged at 12:47 a.m., nine miles ahead of convoy. The submarine’s radar failed to show the enemy ships so when Coye finally could see them he ordered Silversides back down to sixty feet. The moon remained bright—too bright—so Coye decided to wait, all night if necessary. His patience paid off at 5:35 a.m. when the convoy zigzagged, putting Silversides on the starboard bow of the lead ship in the right-hand column, the 1,915-ton Tairin Maru. “This was the shot we were waiting for,” Coye would write. “Leading ship of the starboard column was closest and the largest target. Last ship in center column overlapped its bow, and second ship in right hand column almost overlapped its stern.”

  Coye fired tube one at 5:37 a.m. He fired again. Then again and again. Thirty-two seconds after he fired his first shot, an explosion rocked Silversides, a premature detonation. Coye refused to give up. He fired a fifth torpedo five seconds after the explosion, followed by a sixth just eight seconds later. The skipper spotted an escort 1,000 yards off the starboard bow and ordered Silversides deep. He heard an explosion at 5:39 a.m. This one was not a premature detonation. Nine seconds later, a second torpedo crashed into Tairin Maru, loaded down with 2,100 tons of trucks, gas pumps, and provisions. The hits under Tairin Maru’s bow and bridge blew the gunners off the ship into the water. The escort dumped depth charges, the first one rattling the boat at 5:42 a.m. Thirty seconds later another came. Five more followed over the next minute and twenty-one seconds.

  The sonar operator reported the grinding noises of Tairin Maru breaking up just before dawn as Silversides hid beneath a density layer at 260 feet, a change in the water’s temperature and density that helped deflect sonar. Coye’s victim had sunk by the stern in just ten minutes. The convoy’s remaining five ships had scattered. Coye waited for the escorts to quit searching. The screws faded and vanished in an hour, though sonar still reported distant echo ranging. Coye started up for a look, spotting smoke on the horizon. The skipper waited until the escorts disappeared, then surfaced, hoping to hunt down the rest of the convoy before the ships reached Rabaul. As Silversides set off at full speed, sailors discovered a surprise on deck: the remnant of a torpedo warhead case, blown back from the premature explosion. Lookouts spotted debris ahead at 10:56 a.m. Coye ordered crews to man the 20mm gun and pass out pistols and rifles.

  Silversides slowed as it entered the debris field. Oil glistened in the water. Two empty clinker lifeboats bobbed in the waves along with several small life rafts and preservers. Four landing barges poked up through the gentle swells. It was a sea of ghosts. Tairin Maru was gone. Coye surmised that the escorts had rescued survivors. To prevent the Japanese from salvaging the barges, the gun crew riddled them with the 20mm, but the wooden boats would not sink. The skipper ordered Silversides to pull alongside. Crews leaned over with screwdrivers and stripped one barge of its nameplate, boat box, anchor, steering wheel, and boat hooks. Sailors recovered two ring life preservers stenciled with the ship’s name. Several wooden kegs floated in the water. Men pried them open, hoping to find sake, but discovered only pickled onions. Executive officer Worthington’s photographs docum
ented the souvenir hunt.

  The warm afternoon bled into evening as the sun went down and the stars came out, revealing to the ship’s navigator that the submarine likely remained south of the convoy. Worthington spotted the convoy ten miles off the starboard bow at 8:53 p.m. Coye again tried unsuccessfully to raise the Balao. The Silversides radar worked sporadically and the skipper wanted to wait and use the moonlight to make a submerged periscope attack. The night proved dark and overcast. Lookouts lost sight of the convoy and Silversides made an end run around a cloud shadow. Coye fumed. He had intentionally remained far from the convoy to prevent its escorts from detecting the submarine by radar. Now he had lost sight of the convoy. That wouldn’t have happened had his radar crew interpreted the contact correctly, a fact the skipper discovered only after a pip he hunted turned out to be an ionized cloud.

  Lookouts eventually found the convoy again. The vessels emerged from a haze into bright moonlight off the submarine’s port bow at 2:57 a.m. Coye’s relief dissipated a minute later when one of the escorts turned on Silversides, firing tracer rounds. The skipper had no choice but to head deep. Surfacing an hour before dawn, Coye ordered his third end around. The convoy now steamed in two columns. Coye picked the vessel leading the left-hand column. The bright sun forced Coye to hunt with his sonar. The skipper risked a peek only for the escort to roar over, dropping six charges as Silversides dove to 270 feet. “All sounded as if they were set shallow and would have been uncomfortably close if we had been at periscope depth,” he would write in his report. “The little rascals seemed unusually persistent today and are showing improvement from the training we had given them.”