by James Scott
O’Kane welcomed the assignment. His patrol to date had been a bust. He had gone forty-five days without a single attack. Despite a similar lackluster start, O’Kane’s first patrol had been a stunning success. In just forty-one days at sea the skipper had more than lived up to the expectations set by his mentor, Mush Morton, putting five ships on the bottom. O’Kane had arrived at Midway without a single torpedo left: a clean sweep. He had hoped his superiors would reward him with a patrol in Japan’s home waters, where the enemy’s dependence on maritime commerce guaranteed a wealth of targets. The skipper had enjoyed such prime missions when he served under Morton, but O’Kane’s assignment this patrol in the waters off Palau and now Truk showed that he still ranked low in the skipper hierarchy. Time and fuel now dwindled. No submariner wanted to come home empty-handed.
Especially not O’Kane.
Tang’s patrol in the Palau and Caroline islands, while not the assault on the enemy’s homeland O’Kane coveted, supported America’s drive across the Pacific. The United States had captured Kwajalein, Majuro, and Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands in February, punching a hole through the center of Japan’s defensive perimeter. Those victories had planted American forces 2,200 miles west of Hawaii. New anchorages and airfields coupled with a new forward submarine base at Majuro—1,300 miles closer to the fight than Midway—gave the United States a strategic staging area for the march toward the Marianas and Japan. America could amass amphibious forces for future advances, conduct photo reconnaissance, and target enemy forces within range. That success in the Marshall Islands had rendered Truk a liability, prompting the Japanese to pull major naval ships from the Gibraltar of the Pacific back to Palau in the western Carolines some 500 miles southeast of the Philippines.
The United States had chased Japan west, planning a March 30 carrier strike on enemy forces in Palau, dubbed Operation Desecrate. With Douglas MacArthur poised to capture Hollandia along the northern coast of New Guinea, war planners had wanted to pummel Palau to eliminate any threat to the general. Unlike the battles of the Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal, Japan had chosen not to challenge America’s fleet in a sea battle in either the Gilbert or Marshall islands. Strategists suspected the Japanese would not risk a confrontation at Palau and instead would order naval and merchant ships out of port. Submarines Tullibee, Blackfish, Bashaw, and Archerfish had joined Tang to sink escaping ships. Tunny, Gar, Pampanito, and Harder would pluck downed fliers from the waters.
O’Kane had soured at the Palau mission: 3,500 miles was a long haul for what he viewed as a possible one-shot attack. Furthermore, the skipper knew that fleeing ships made tough targets. Japanese skippers would expect submarine attacks and therefore steam at top speeds while zigzagging and echo ranging. The critical element of surprise was lost. But O’Kane’s gripes ran deeper than just the Palau mission. Simply put: the skipper didn’t like wearing a leash. The push to involve submarines in fleet actions, O’Kane felt, diminished the combat potential of the undersea service. Submarines operated best alone, offensive machines capable of penetrating enemy-controlled waters. The mission off Palau, he predicted, would prove a waste. “There might be torpedoes fired, but it would not be the precise kind of attack that could coldcock the enemy,” O’Kane wrote. “True surprise came days into a voyage, or when the enemy least expected attack, not in a situation like this.”
The two-day strike on Palau validated O’Kane’s concerns. While carrier-based planes put thirty-six ships on the bottom—a total tonnage lost of 129,807—submarines contributed little other than rescuing downed aviators. Not until the end of the war would America learn why the submarine mission had failed. One night on the eve of the strike Tullibee had stalked a three-ship convoy guarded by several escorts en route from Formosa to Palau. The submarine had fired two torpedoes only to be rocked moments later by an explosion. One of the fish had circled back and hit Tullibee, sending the submarine to the bottom. Tullibee’s loss had left a hole in the submarine net around Palau through which the Japanese ships escaped. The Navy learned of Tullibee’s fate only when the lone survivor, who treaded water all night in a raging storm, walked out of Japan’s Ashio copper mine at the end of the war, finally a free man.
• • •
Parked in the waters of Truk, O’Kane put Palau behind him, hoping now to save the lives of American fliers. The first call for help crackled over Tang’s radio at 10:25 a.m., downed fliers in a raft two miles off Truk’s southern reef. Lieutenant j.g. Scott Scammell II of Pennsylvania—married less than a year earlier—had piloted his Grumman Avenger when a Japanese shell ripped a four-foot hole in his port wing. The naval pilot finished his run over Truk and turned back out to sea. Flames erupted near the shell hit. Scammell knew the proximity of the fire to his wing tank meant he had little time before the fuel exploded, which would kill him, the radioman, and the turret gunner. He had no choice but to ditch the plane, putting it down hard in the lagoon. “The indicator read 200 knots when we hit the water and we usually land at about 80,” recalled Harry Gemmell, Scammell’s radioman. “Somehow nobody was hurt.”
O’Kane ordered Tang to depart immediately at emergency speed. The submarine sliced through the waves toward the reef as American bombers dove through a hole in the clouds above. Antiaircraft fire peppered the sky. With fliers taking such incredible risks above, O’Kane felt the least he could do was rescue any in the water below. Fighters dropped low to guide Tang toward Scammell and his men. The aviators opted not to use the raft’s bright yellow sail so close to shore for fear the Japanese would target them. Instead the men—two of the three seasick—paddled farther to sea. A Tang lookout spotted the raft shortly before noon. O’Kane ordered a man-overboard maneuver—a wide circle that would place the raft upwind of the submarine. Tang then eased alongside the raft and sailors pulled the three downed fliers aboard. O’Kane ordered them to bring the raft, too. The baffled men looked at him.
“For my kid,” he answered.
The crash had rattled Scammell and his men. O’Kane ordered that his new guests each be served a shot of Lejon brandy, Tang’s depth charge medicine. He needed to calm them—so he could put them to work. Technicians at Mare Island had installed Hallicrafter radio receivers in the crew’s mess and wardroom. The radios proved powerful enough that Tang could receive news broadcasts from as far away as the United States. The addition of a microphone cable meant that Tang could do more than just listen. The skipper escorted the fliers to the wardroom, where officers had spread out a large chart of Truk atoll on the dinner table. Scammell and his men not only knew all the call signs, but many of the pilots in the skies above by name. If anyone could interpret what was going on it would be these men. The wardroom would now serve as Tang’s Aviation Information Center.
Word arrived at 3:59 p.m. of another downed aviator, this one off the east side of Truk. Tang set off again at emergency speed. Another call arrived fifteen minutes later with news of more downed fliers. These aviators were north, near the area where Tang rescued Scammell and his crew. O’Kane faced a challenge. The afternoon light had begun to fade. The skipper knew he could reach the second group of aviators during daylight. That almost guaranteed a rescue. He wasn’t so sure about the first and was not keen on the idea of a fruitless search in the dark. O’Kane ordered Tang to change course and pursue the second group. A twenty-minute search with lookouts and periscopes, however, failed to turn up the raft. Tang turned back to find the original group. The skies, crowded all day with American planes, were empty. Tang was on its own. “All planes had now been recalled,” O’Kane wrote, “leaving us a bit naked.”
The skipper didn’t have time to dive and skirt Japan’s shore-based guns as he paralleled the beach. Instead he summoned Tang’s gun crew. He planned to lay down fire that would force the Japanese to take cover rather than target his sub. The gun crew climbed atop the four-inch deck gun and unleashed a mix of common and high-explosive rounds. The first shell exploded in the trees on shore that helped conceal the
gun batteries. The shell casing clanged to the deck and the loaders rammed another one in breach. The gun roared again and again. The crew fired twenty rounds before Tang had escaped almost five miles away. That proved premature, as the Japanese now returned fire, though the projectiles splashed down more than a half mile astern. O’Kane ordered Tang to dive. The submarine remained down for forty minutes before surfacing, setting off again at emergency speed.
Night came. Lookouts had yet to spot the downed aviators. O’Kane ordered Tang to begin a zigzag search at ten knots. Sailors fired signal rockets every fifteen minutes at each turn and midway through each leg, hoping the aviators would spot the green flares and respond. But none did. The only light the Tang crew saw emanated from a distant runway on nearby Uman island. The night proved a long one for O’Kane and his navigator, neither of whom dared to grab even a few moments of sleep. Tang’s search pattern closed in on the reef each hour, forcing the skipper up to the bridge. Fortunately the Japanese, battered after the day’s air strikes, left the submarine alone. The frustrated O’Kane finally gave up on the search at 3:30 a.m. and ordered Tang to sea in preparation for the second day’s strike. He hoped for better luck at daybreak. Somewhere out there, Americans struggled on the waves.
• • •
The North Carolina steamed about eighty-five miles south of Truk at dawn on May 1. Heavy rainsqualls slashed visibility at times to zero as the 44,800-ton battleship prepared for another day of strikes against the Japanese stronghold. Commissioned just six months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the 729-foot-long North Carolina carried a typical complement of more than 2,300 officers, crewmen, and Marines. The monster battleship was no stranger to the threat posed by the Japanese. An enemy submarine had put a torpedo in its port side in September 1942 in waters southeast of Guadalcanal, killing five sailors. Japanese planes still roamed the skies over Truk; radar had picked up contacts several times in the middle of the night, keeping the battleship crews alert. Private 1st Class Charles Gilbert, part of North Carolina’s Marine detachment, captured that watchfulness in his journal. “Bogies were in the area all night,” Gilbert wrote in his diary. “Every once in a while one would venture in about ten miles.”
The North Carolina’s two Kingfisher floatplanes—equipped with pontoons under the fuselage and wings—catapulted off the battleship shortly past 8 A.M. to join the rescue. With a maximum speed of barely 170 miles per hour, the Kingfishers flew toward Truk, where a downed Grumman F6F Hellcat pilot from the carrier Enterprise clung to a raft southwest of Ollan island. Lieutenant j.g. Robert Kanze of New Jersey had weathered a rough twenty-four hours. Japanese antiaircraft rounds had ripped holes in his wings and set his fighter ablaze the day before. Kanze had ditched inside Truk’s lagoon, perilously close to shore. He had climbed into his raft and put up the sail only to have the Japanese open fire on him from shore. Kanze had yanked down the sail and used it to camouflage himself and the raft until nightfall. He then raised it again and made his way toward open water, crossing the lagoon’s reef at high tide. The aviator remained focused throughout the long night. “I wasn’t thinking about being rescued,” he would later recall. “I was scared stiff I would wash up on Jap shores.”
Kanze’s all-night effort had paid off. The Kingfisher pilots spotted him soon after liftoff, now more than two miles out in open water. But in the attempt to rescue Kanze, the first floatplane capsized. One downed aviator suddenly turned into three. No one knew how many other airmen might need help that day. Neither North Carolina nor a smaller destroyer could steam so close to the enemy’s stronghold—within easy range of shore batteries and enemy fighters—to pluck downed fliers out of the water. Even the submarine Tang likely couldn’t risk such an up-close rescue. The American fighters blasting the Japanese shore batteries would return to their carriers at dark. That meant that any downed fliers not rescued by nightfall would either spend the night adrift at sea—and risk washing up on enemy beaches—or fall prey to enemy boats, venturing out when the skies cleared in search of prisoners.
The only hope for rescue fell to Lieutenant j.g. John Burns, the pilot of the remaining floatplane. The twenty-five-year-old Pennsylvania native turned his Kingfisher into the wind and dropped from the sky. He touched down moments later and taxied over to rescue the three men now in the water. The Kingfisher had only two cockpit seats, one for the pilot, the other for the radioman, so the rescued men had to sit on the wings, to maintain the plane’s fragile balance and prevent it from capsizing. But the Kingfisher could not fly with so many men aboard. The floatplane instead would have to serve as a boat. With the men now seated on either wing, Burns turned toward the open water and taxied to find the Tang.
• • •
O’Kane had received a report at 8:28 a.m. from his new Aviation Information Center of downed fliers in a raft a few miles off Ollan island. The skipper was excited about a second chance to rescue the men from the night before. Tang set off at emergency speed with its two largest American flags lashed flat on the deck along either side of the conning tower. Lieutenant Scammell had suggested the flags would make it easier for pilots to identify the submarine as friendly. When Tang arrived off Ollan, O’Kane saw something unforgettable: a two-seat floatplane taxiing toward him with men clinging to its wings. American fighters strafed the shore batteries to provide cover as the Kingfisher pulled alongside the submarine. Sailors tossed over a line. There was no need to tie it off; Burns didn’t plan to remain long.
Kanze, the fighter pilot who had been the object of the original rescue attempt, and John Dowdle and Robert Hill, the pilot and radioman of the overturned floatplane, hopped from the plane’s wing tip to Tang’s deck. Burns’s floatplane now taxied across the water and took off. But O’Kane’s work wasn’t done. He still had to dispose of the wrecked floatplane to make sure the Japanese could not salvage it. He summoned Tang’s gun crew and destroyed the first target of the patrol: an American plane.
Lookouts spotted a torpedo bomber billowing smoke as it ditched into the sea seven miles to the east. O’Kane ordered emergency speed. The gun crew blasted the shore batteries as the submarine raced past. Enemy forces had removed the trees designed to camouflage their positions the night before, a move that gave Tang’s gun crew a clear shot. Fighters and two bombers joined the attack as the Japanese hunkered down, unable to return fire. Lookouts spotted a life raft with survivors at 10:04 a.m. Fighters circled overhead to mark the position. Commander Alfred Matter, Petty Officer 2nd Class James Lenahan, and Petty Officer 2nd Class Tommy Thompson climbed aboard Tang sixteen minutes later. “It appeared that the life raft was only a bridge from the bomber to our boat,” O’Kane noted. “They were wet only up to their knees.”
Meanwhile, the pilot of North Carolina’s second floatplane, Lieutenant Burns, was patrolling the skies. Fighter pilots radioed the location of downed aviators and provided cover for the lumbering Kingfisher. Burns spotted several rafts adrift off Truk’s eastern reef. Radioman Aubrey Gill dropped dye markers into the water to color each spot as Burns radioed the locations. The rescued aviators who now congregated in Tang’s Aviation Information Center relayed the reports to O’Kane. The skipper ordered the submarine to set off again at emergency speed. O’Kane couldn’t afford the added time to zigzag, so the fliers in the Aviation Information Center called for air cover. Planes returning from a bombing run dropped down and escorted the submarine. O’Kane paused only long enough to scoop up two more fliers, Lieutenant Harry Hill of Virginia and Lieutenant j.g. James Cole of Texas.
Burns worried that Tang—still some fifteen miles away—might take too long to reach the other stranded aviators. He aimed into the wind and guided his Kingfisher down into the waves. Hellcat pilot Lieutenant j.g. Robert Barbor bobbed inside a raft. The Kingfisher taxied toward him. Gill directed the downed pilot from the carrier Langley to climb up on the wing next to the fuselage and take a seat. Burns taxied toward a second rubber raft, this one loaded with three torpedo bombers, Lieutenant Robert Ne
lson, Petty Officer 1st Class Robert Gruebel, and Petty Officer 1st Class James Livingston. A strong gust of wind hit the Kingfisher, lifting one wing and forcing the other under the waves. Gill sprung from his rear cockpit seat onto the elevated wing to balance the plane. The Kingfisher slowly rolled back to an even keel.
The plane’s wing had punctured the bomber crew’s raft, which deflated and vanished underwater along with the few rations the fliers had salvaged. Gill improvised. He sized up the weight of each flier and advised the men to climb up simultaneously on either side of the fuselage. The aviators did so and took seats along the wing with Hellcat pilot Barbor. Burns had now rescued four men. Half a mile farther out at sea, he spied a third raft; this one also held several men, Ensign Carrol Farrell, Petty Officer 2nd Class Joseph Hranek, and Petty Officer 2nd Class Owen Tabrum. The men’s torpedo bomber had died mid-flight, the engine windmilling without power. Pilot Farrell had glided down and landed on the water. The plane floated long enough to allow the men time to inflate the raft and climb aboard with hardly a drop of water on them. “It was a beautiful landing,” recalled Hranek, the radioman. “I’ve landed with more force on carriers.”
Gill’s job had grown much easier. His existing passengers, equally spaced along the wings, helped to balance the Kingfisher. The remaining men could climb up without the threat of dunking the wings. Three men perched on the port wing, three on the starboard. The seventh crouched next to the cockpit and held on to the fuselage. Burns ordered the men to tie the rubber raft to the plane so the Kingfisher could tow it. If the plane sank, the men might need it. Burns powered up the engine and taxied to sea. O’Kane’s rescue of the two other fliers had delayed Tang’s arrival, but Burns radioed the skipper that he had ample fuel and the situation well under control. The morning calm gave way to higher swells that battered the floatplane. The men on the wings squirmed to adjust to the propeller blast, but no one complained. Burns taxied for some two hours before Tang appeared in the distance.