by James Scott
There was nowhere for Drum to hide. The escort let go four more depth charges. Throughout the boat, men braced themselves. Rindskopf heard the click of a depth charge detonator and knew the blast would be close. The explosion rocked the submarine. The lights flickered as more blasts followed. Chief Petty Officer George Schaedler, who operated the hydraulic manifold in the control room, turned to address the diving officer just as one hit. Insulation blew off the hull and struck him, cutting and bruising his face. Had he not turned away, Schaedler felt certain he would have been blinded. A finger-sized stream of water suddenly shot across the conning tower. Rindskopf looked back to discover the explosion had cracked the after bulkhead between the hinges of the door that led to Drum’s main deck. Water streamed in at a rate of three gallons a minute. The water was not the problem as much as the structural integrity, given the incredible sea pressure at 300 feet. One crack could collapse the conning tower.
The battle station auxiliary man appeared, armed with a wrench. Depth charges could loosen glands and cause leaks, problems easily resolved with a few turns of a wrench. This was different. There was nothing the men could do to fix this leak at sea other than head to the surface and decrease the pressure. Rindskopf prepared to evacuate the conning tower. He ordered the quartermaster to grab the chronometers—sensitive clocks—and navigational gear and haul them below to his cabin. Three more depth charges exploded, all distant. Had the escort lost the Drum? The men waited, but no more charges followed. Williamson couldn’t risk raising his scope too early only to be spotted. Another strong blast might doom Drum. The skipper waited. Three hours after the last explosion, he ordered Drum up to periscope depth. The freighters and escorts had vanished. Williamson had gotten lucky again. He surfaced Drum and began the long trip back to Pearl Harbor, the patrol now over.
9
SILVERSIDES
“The sixteenth depth charge just exploded with no results except to our nerves.”
—Robert Worthington, May 22, 1942, diary
John Coye paced the bridge of Silversides. It was 12:58 a.m. on December 29. The skipper, officer of the deck, and lookouts were dressed in waterproofed canvas clothes on this dark and overcast night as Silversides cut through the swells on patrol off Palau, a white frothy foam in its bow wake. Unlike some commanders who micromanaged a submarine’s operation, Coye preferred to delegate to his junior officers. He didn’t meddle with watch schedules, galley menus, or personnel squabbles unless absolutely necessary. Even then he did so only reluctantly. Coye’s job was to sink ships. That often meant he spent his downtime in the wardroom or his cabin. “My own personal attitude was that I should try to remain rested, so in case something came up I would be fresh,” he once commented. “I spent probably more time in my bunk on patrol than anybody else.”
Tonight was different.
The radar had picked up a contact thirteen minutes earlier at a range of more than eleven miles. That initial contact had since developed into nine pips that glowed a soft yellow on the conning tower’s green radar screen. The fire control party estimated that those pips represented a six-ship convoy accompanied by three escorts. The southbound ships would reach Palau at daybreak. Silversides had only until then to sink them. Coye hungered for an attack. He had been on patrol now for twenty-five days without much luck. Three days earlier, the skipper had fired four shots at a loaded freighter that had just departed a bauxite pier, only to be driven deep by an escort as the torpedoes exploded on a reef, his only reward a depth charge attack that rattled the boat.
Coye felt anxious to follow up on his earlier success. During his previous patrol, he’d sunk four ships in just thirty-four days, half of what the beloved Burlingame had sunk in five patrols. In a private critique, Vice Admiral Lockwood noted that Coye needed to learn to finesse his shots. But that was a minor flaw in an otherwise excellent patrol. Coye’s attacks showed that the new skipper seemed still to be a bit anxious, unsure of his relationships with his officers and crew, and rough, a style that mirrored his rumpled appearance. But Coye boasted what some submariners lacked: determination. Plus he learned fast. Lockwood recognized Coye’s potential and had high hopes. “This short patrol was aggressively and successfully conducted,” the admiral wrote in his endorsement. “Silversides carried out two tenacious pursuits of convoys, one of which was sixty four hours duration, and the other eighty five hours. Both of these pursuits and the successive attacks inflicted severe damage on the enemy.”
Coye hoped to visit such fury again on the enemy, this time with the aid of new tools. During a recent refit, Pearl Harbor technicians had installed a new high-power transmitter for the radar along with what was known as a plan position indicator. The primitive radar Silversides had used up until now would only provide a range and bearing of a target, a challenge to interpret in cases of multiple ships and changing speeds and courses. The plan position indicator in contrast displayed radar returns as a two-dimensional picture presented on a circular scope in the conning tower. Silversides occupied the center of the scope surrounded by a web of lines and circles that denoted bearings and increased ranges. The plan position indicator allowed its operators for the first time to use radar to analyze the entire scene in real time, a perfect device for nighttime and foul weather attacks that Silversides officer Eugene Malone later wrote would “change the course of submarine warfare.”
But the new technology had met with mixed results from some in the submarine force, due in large part to the tendency of the radar to fail. Burlingame had captured that frustration in repeated patrol reports, citing long stretches of radar failure, including his entire third patrol. “It is obviously useless to install such equipment unless it can be made to function properly.” Burlingame’s harping drew a sharp rebuke from his superiors. Captain John Brown, Jr., who served briefly as the acting commander of the submarines Pacific fleet before Lockwood took over, countered that the new radar technology “must not be belittled.” “It is hoped that this will not keep the Silversides from becoming radar minded. Many submarines of this force have already used this equipment very successfully. One submarine made a night attack on a convoy in a snowstorm using radar during the entire approach enabling him to get in to advantageous range with subsequent sinkings,” Brown wrote. “It is far too valuable a military weapon to overlook.”
Six years Burlingame’s junior and the son of a scientist, Coye embraced the promise of this new technology. He had shanghaied Malone off S-31 for just that purpose. The twenty-two-year-old lanky lieutenant, who stood six feet, four inches tall and weighed just 135 pounds, had already enjoyed success with the new plan position indicator, thanks to an unorthodox acquisition. One afternoon in New Caledonia while still the radar officer on S-31, Malone had spied crates of cargo—including a plan position indicator—on a wharf designated for Admiral William Halsey’s flagship. Malone reasoned that the admiral would no doubt prefer to see his radar installed on a fighting sub than on the flag bridge of a crowded battleship. His skipper agreed. Under the glare of moonlight, Malone and his radar crew hacksawed the scope into several pieces so it would slip through the aged submarine’s narrow hatch. Armed with screwdrivers, needle-nose pliers, and soldering irons—not to mention luck—the men reassembled the scope.
It worked.
Malone manned Coye’s new scope in the conning tower. Malone relished the newfound comfort of a modern fleet boat compared to his previous World War I–era submarine. “Gosh, this big boat life is wonderful,” he wrote to his mother. “A shower we got, even. Of course, the head must perforce be complicated by the usual number of valves and that’s a nuisance. But we have staterooms, a wardroom and everything. Wonderful. Such luxury, for a change.” But the skinny Malone found his youth soon drew ribbing from Silversides’ older officers. “Since I made lieutenant I’ve been absolutely raging most of the time with anger,” he wrote. “Everyone insists on calling me to perfect strangers to whom I’m about to be introduced ‘the boy lieutenant.’ ”
Malone and other sailors itched for action tonight, now sixty-six days since the last sinking. Unlike the sixth patrol, which had failed to garner a combat insignia award, the previous run had merited a pier-side ceremony at Pearl Harbor on a warm November day. “Dished out combat insignia to all hands,” Malone wrote his family. “Lots of fun. Something else to fill up the front of the uniform with. Be a regular signpost by the time this bloody war is over.” That awards ceremony was followed a few nights later by the wedding of communications officer Tom Keegan, a welcome celebration in a time of war. “His in laws had a wondrous reception, with people passing out all over the place, most enjoyable,” Malone wrote in a letter. “We all wandered around with our shoes off, danced in fish ponds and had a beauteous time. Best party since the war so everyone said.”
The last month at sea had proven largely uneventful for Silversides, ordered to patrol the waters around Palau. The United States and its Allies, having blocked Japanese expansion in the battles of the Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal, now battled the enemy in New Guinea. The second largest island in the world after Greenland, New Guinea stretched some 1,500 miles east to west with some 300,000 square miles of tangled jungles and menacing mountains that had blocked construction of overland roads, requiring that Allied forces execute amphibious land jumps up the coast. Troops slogged through stagnant swamps and fields of razor-sharp kunai grass while battling pythons, rats, and crocodiles that on occasion devoured bathing soldiers. “To die in front of Japanese guns,” wrote one war photographer, “sometimes seems easier than to go on living in this strange battlefield where Nature has joined the combat as a vicious third antagonist.”
American intelligence had determined that Japan used the Palau Islands as a staging area for troops and supplies headed to repel American forces in New Guinea. Climbing out of the Pacific swells some 500 miles east of the Philippines, Palau served as a major Japanese naval base in the western Carolines. Japan had seized the 110-mile string of islands from Germany as a spoil of the Great War, recognizing that the jagged coral reef that encircled Palau would make one of the Pacific’s best fleet anchorages. Japan had worked in the years leading up to the war to convert this Pacific paradise into a fortress, building roads, concrete piers, and airfields. The Navy wanted Silversides to target Palau’s traffic. “It is believed that convoys of troop-transports and supplies are being assembled for the New Guinea area at Palau,” Coye’s orders read. “Considerable convoy movements can be expected from the Empire and the coast of China to Palau and from Palau to the new Japanese base at Wewak.”
Despite the promise of much traffic, the patrol had proven uneventful, including a reconnaissance of Wake, pummeled by American carrier forces in an October raid. Much of the patrol’s excitement instead had stemmed from battles against rough seas that sickened the new recruits, including Lieutenant j.g. Carl Heidel. “He looks green like a plant,” John Bienia wrote, “especially when the seas break over him, he sputters, coughs and blows.” Conditions proved equally as rough below deck. “Some of the crates have broken open and oranges, apples, pears etc. are rolling all over the deck,” one officer wrote. “Looks more like an untidy Greek fruit store than a submarine.”
Men hoped to remedy the patrol’s boredom on December 29 with an attack on a convoy that now steamed at ten knots toward Palau. Coye knew he had just five hours at best before dawn and the convoy’s arrival in port. He had to work fast. The skipper, the officer of the deck, and the lookouts scanned the dark horizon with binoculars as Silversides closed the distance, its engines roaring. Rainsqualls peppered the night, perfect conditions for a night surface attack. The submarine’s new radar showed the convoy’s formation: two columns made up of three ships each and protected by several small escorts. The largest ship—the one Coye planned to target first—led the starboard column. The skipper ordered Silversides to approach on the convoy’s starboard bow. Executive officer Robert Worthington manned the torpedo data computer in the conning tower just a few feet away from the lanky Malone on the radarscope.
The convoy zigzagged to the right at 1:40 a.m., leaving Silversides dead ahead of the starboard column. One of the escorts passed by eleven minutes later at a radar range of just 1,550 yards. The sonar operator heard the escort’s pings, but the enemy failed to detect Silversides. Rain poured down, obscuring visibility, but Coye could still see the escort’s bow waves and stern wake, the bright white of churned-up water standing out against the dark background. Coye judged from the silhouette that the escort was either a torpedo boat or destroyer. Three minutes later, the convoy zigzagged again. Coye surveyed the scene in amazement. Silversides now occupied the number two position of the starboard column, right in the heart of the enemy convoy. Malone stared at the radarscope below and reported that it looked like a bull’s-eye with Silversides dead center. “We were surrounded by ships,” Coye wrote. “Maximum range to any ship in convoy was about 2,500 yards, closest range under 600 yards.”
Coye struggled for several anxious minutes to extract Silversides, clearing the convoy just as enemy lookouts spotted the submarine. Signal lights flashed between the ships as enemy skippers ordered evasive maneuvers. The port column scattered east, the starboard column west. The element of surprise had vanished. Coye had to attack—and fast, before the ships disappeared in different directions. Rain reduced visibility to less than two miles, but Malone reported that the radarscope showed several ships in the line of fire. Coye hustled to set up a snap shot at a freighter 600 yards away. Silversides pulled away at full speed, firing two stern shots in twelve seconds at 1:57 a.m. Thirty seconds passed, then a minute. Then two. An explosion lit up the night sky two minutes and twenty seconds after Silversides had fired. The skipper realized from the long run that the torpedoes had missed the target but hit and damaged a ship in the far column, the 4,667-ton Bitchu Maru. The escorts circled back toward the crippled ship.
The skipper noted that one of the cargo ships now fell in line behind Silversides, likely mistaking the submarine’s low profile for one of the convoy’s escorts. Coye ordered Silversides to slow down to let the freighter catch up. The cargo ship closed the distance to 1,600 yards. The skipper fired a stern shot at 2:02 a.m., followed eleven seconds later by another torpedo. The two fish now raced toward the freighter at forty-six knots. Coye watched in frustration as both missed. The skipper heard an explosion in the dark that he suspected was either a depth charge or another torpedo hit in the far column. He couldn’t be sure. Coye’s orderly attack had suddenly turned chaotic. Now that he had extracted Silversides from harm’s way, the skipper had to slow down and refocus. Coye still had darkness and the rain. He still had the tactical advantage. The convoy was his to sink.
The skipper surveyed the scene. The starboard column had fanned out. The tanker and another freighter steamed south while the one Coye had just fired on headed west. The escorts appeared confused, patrolling to the east and dropping depth charges on ghost contacts. The skipper hunted for a victim. He spotted what he believed was a tanker—though actually a cargo ship—and ordered Silversides to close. Coye fired three shots at 2:46 a.m. and watched from the rain-soaked bridge as the torpedoes sped toward the 1,911-ton Shichisei Maru a little more than a mile away. One minute and thirty-eight seconds later, the first torpedo exploded. The second one slammed home five seconds later, followed by the third. The freighter, which carried ammunition and twenty-two small craft, broke in half and plunged to the bottom in minutes, killing thirty-five. “Radar pip disappeared,” Coye wrote. “Doubt if there were many survivors.”
Coye turned on another target, the 1,970-ton Tenposan Maru, which steamed more than two miles away. The rain made it impossible for Coye to use the binoculars affixed to the target-bearing transmitter. The skipper instead had to look down the device’s vanes and estimate the target’s bearing, a challenge compounded by the fact that he was too close to take accurate readings. Coye fired anyway, unleashing three torpedoes. After several minutes, he knew he’d mis
sed. But half a minute later, Coye heard distant detonations. The skipper may have missed his target, but he’d hit something. He refocused on Tenposan Maru and fired again. This time two torpedoes slammed into the freighter, but it didn’t sink. Coye spotted flashlights through the smoke as enemy sailors abandoned ship. He opted to fire a final torpedo into the crippled freighter at 4:23 a.m. The skipper watched the torpedo race past the target’s stern. He adjusted his shot, but missed again. The frustrated skipper ordered Silversides to turn so he could fire his stern tubes. He backed down for a close range shot just as the injured freighter slipped beneath the dark waves.
Coye raced onward. He had only five torpedoes left, one in the forward torpedo room and four aft. The nearest target steamed more than five miles away. Dawn approached. He needed to hurry. Unknown to Coye, the 3,311-ton Ryuto Maru carried gasoline, coal, and food—4,300 tons of precious cargo the enemy would surely miss. The skipper didn’t have time to set up a stern shot. He needed his final bowshot to hit home. Coye charged Ryuto Maru and fired at 5:02 a.m. The violent explosion two minutes later broke Ryuto Maru’s back. Coye watched the freighter slip beneath the waves just eight minutes later. “Silversides had herself a busy night of it, firing 16 torpedoes in about three hours,” Coye wrote in his report. “If time had not been pressing attacks could have been made more deliberately and more hits obtained. Could have ‘enjoyed’ this convoy more if could have been able to spread this attack over two nights.”
• • •
Coye had made the most of a hectic night. Rather than allow the alerted convoy to scatter, the skipper had capitalized on the chaos to hunt down ships. He had sunk three freighters in three hours to put a total of 7,192 tons of enemy shipping on the bottom. “Excellent aggressive patrol,” Lockwood would later comment in a private critique, “fought all the way.” Earlier questions over Coye’s leadership among the Silversides officers now dissipated. Malone bragged about Coye in letters to his family. “I started out thinking this skipper was sort of a big fat dumb and happy guy, but I’ve been busy revising my estimate of him all the time. He’s big and fat, but he definitely isn’t dumb, far from it. He just moves slowly because that’s the best way not to get anyone excited,” Malone wrote. “He is developing into a cracker jack man on the attack. Calm as all get out which makes the rest of us that much more scared.”