The War Below

by James Scott

  • • •

  Silversides spent the next week hunting, cruising some 138 miles north to prowl the waters of Saipan, where enemy planes too numerous to count crowded the skies. Despite the dense air traffic, the seas remained largely empty, minus the occasional sampan or patrol. The one viable target Coye encountered on May 17—what appeared to be a 4,000-ton freighter accompanied by four escorts—he passed on firing, as the two-mile range meant enemy lookouts would spot his torpedo wakes and take evasive measures. The skipper circled back to Guam. There he picked off the 998-ton converted gunboat Shosei Maru on May 20, but the small boat came with a big price. “Four escorts and planes turned on us with a vengeance,” he wrote. “Sixty one charges were dropped, which included one salvo of twenty four dropped in rapid succession.”

  At 5:24 on the morning of May 28, lookouts spotted a Mavis at a range of eight miles, a Japanese flying boat often used for patrol. Coye surmised the plane was guarding a convoy and ordered Silversides to close. When the plane finally vanished two hours later, Silversides surfaced and lookouts spotted smoke on the horizon. A convoy steamed southeast at seven knots from the home islands to Saipan. Coye tracked the convoy through the calm sea, diving after lunch when the Mavis returned. He closed before sunset to inspect the convoy, which consisted of the 1,949-ton cargo ship Shoken Maru and 1,999-ton freighter Horaizan Maru, guarded by four escorts that patrolled off the bow, each beam, and astern. The skipper decided he would attack that night, when the moon had set and the enemy lookouts had relaxed.

  Coye ordered all ten tubes made ready to fire at 1:15 a.m. as the torpedomen in both rooms wrenched open the outer doors. The escorts blocked Silversides from approaching too close but Coye slipped in to about 3,400 yards. He fired six fish, three at each freighter—the iconic torpedo whine signified that the eighteen-hour-and-seven-minute hunt neared its completion. The quartermaster ticked off the time. Two minutes and twenty-five seconds later, Coye saw the first explosion, followed by three more. The torpedoes hit with such violence that night turned into day—even for the men below deck. “The explosion lit up the whole conning tower as if the sun had suddenly moved right over the hatch,” recalled Malone. “There was a bright yellow, orange, fire-color illumination—incredible—a blast of heat and the god-awfullest noise you ever heard.”

  The two vaporized freighters—along with fifty-nine passengers and crew—vanished from Silversides’ radar. Coye ordered Silversides to clear out, the four engines roaring. The skipper remained on the bridge and watched the enemy escorts close, dropping a total of twenty-six erratic depth charges that proved no threat to the sub. “Escorts were probably blinded by the holocaust which was now raging astern,” Coye speculated in his report. “It is doubtful that any of the crews survived. Ships were apparently loaded with gasoline and a million or so gallons burning is truly an awe-inspiring sight.” The crew secured from battle stations at 2:10 a.m., but up until daybreak—and even from a distance of more than thirty miles—men watched the flames tickle the sky. “Every 4th of July I am reminded of this attack,” Coye would later write, “but I have yet to see any fireworks that surpass it.”

  14

  TANG

  “There will be widows in Tokyo tonight.”

  —Donald Sharp, June 30, 1944, diary

  Tang let out a prolonged blast of its whistle, turned in place, and headed out into the channel at Pearl Harbor. It was 1:30 p.m. on June 8, 1944, two days after American and Allied forces stormed the beaches at Normandy for the D-Day invasion. The twenty-four days in port had proven hectic—and not just in preparation for patrol. The submarine force’s steam-driven fish ran off alcohol—dubbed torpedo juice—to which the Navy wisely added the purgative croton oil to dissuade thirsty sailors. Some figured out how to strain out the obtrusive additive with a loaf of stale bread. Other more crafty sailors constructed makeshift stills, boiling the alcohol, then capturing the steam. Once in port sailors cut the potent booze with pineapple and grapefruit juice. The homemade cocktail proved so strong that it would not only burn lips, but would eat the wax lining out of a paper cup, forcing the bottom to drop out after just a few drinks.

  Sailors guzzled it by the gallon.

  Tang radarman Floyd Caverly had become one of the boat’s resident distillers, setting up shop in the radio shack. The twenty-six-year-old Minnesota native and his cohorts had found all the materials and tools needed to build a still on board, from the transmitter’s output coil to the Silex coffeemaker. The men even rigged up a small fan to waft away fumes. After settling in at the Royal Hawaiian after Tang’s second patrol, Caverly and his roommate fired up the still in the bathroom. The volatile contraption exploded, shattering the full-length mirror on the bathroom door and totaling the toilet. Caverly watched in horror as water flooded his hotel room, the same one where actress Mae West had once stayed and autographed all the lamp shades. “The troops had left sex behind when we passed through the Golden Gate,” O’Kane would later joke when he learned of Caverly’s ingenuity, “but that was just about all.”

  Tang bustled this warm afternoon. Fourteen new sailors—two officers and twelve enlisted men—had reported aboard. Sailors hung additional bunks to accommodate the new crew, including one that dangled almost seven feet above the wardroom passageway that was now home to Ensign Richard Kroth. O’Kane had used the refit to manage the installation of two new antennas as well as to rest in the luxury of the Royal Hawaiian, sharing a second-floor oceanfront suite with Frazee. As O’Kane set out on his third patrol, the remains of the battleship Arizona slipped past the starboard side, a rusting reminder of the dangers O’Kane faced. “I could never give it more than a glance,” he later wrote, “and still keep the clear eye my job demanded.”

  Despite returning to port with all twenty-four torpedoes, Tang’s second patrol had been a great success, described by the New York Times in a frontpage story as “the most dramatic and productive cruise of her career.” Tang sailors had fished twenty-two downed aviators out of the perilous waters off Truk in the two-day assault on Japan’s stronghold. The Navy immediately recognized—as it had with Mush Morton and Wahoo—the positive headlines the rescue could generate. O’Kane, with Lieutenant Burns and the other rescued aviators, sat down two days after arriving in Pearl Harbor for a press conference that triggered stories and photos in newspapers and magazines nationwide. A full-page photo of the grinning O’Kane—surrounded by all the rescued fliers on Tang’s deck—even appeared in Life magazine.

  But O’Kane was eager to hunt ships, the mission of a submarine. The skipper had spent his first two patrols—much to his frustration—tethered to the fleet as carriers pounded Japanese forces at Wake, Truk, and Palau. Those patrols had supported America’s offensive push across the central Pacific, a push whose momentum would continue to build as Allied forces pressed multiple pressure points along Japan’s frazzled front lines.

  Tang’s latest set of orders promised a welcome change. No more lifeguard duty or carrier raids. O’Kane would patrol area twelve, the East China and Yellow seas—right in the heart of the empire. The second Sealion and Tinosa would join Tang in that area, though the boats would operate independently, every man for himself. “Considerable important enemy shipping passes through area twelve en route between the Japanese Empire and Shanghai and other Chinese ports, and en route between the Japanese Empire and Indo-China, Philippines, and Dutch East Indies,” Tang’s orders stated. “Traffic between Shanghai and Nagasaki and Sasebo is believed to be routed close up the China coast to about latitude thirty-three degrees north, then due east to the empire. Shipping along west shore of Chosen is believed to stay fairly close to the coast, taking advantage of shallow water and coastal islands.”

  O’Kane knew the area well. He had patrolled the same waters just sixteen months earlier with Morton. That was the patrol where Wahoo sank nine ships. The skipper knew enemy shipping might have changed since then, but the geography hadn’t. He had a tactical advantage, something he would ne
ed since two other submarines would hunt the same waters. The competitive O’Kane knew Sealion and Tinosa could affect how he conducted his own patrol. Frazee, chief quartermaster Sidney Jones, and Lieutenant Frank Springer used the refit at Pearl Harbor to feel out colleagues on the other boats for clues to how their skippers planned to operate. O’Kane had even recruited wardroom steward Howard Walker to hunt down information from fellow stewards.

  The skipper settled on his own plan about the time Tang entered the channel at Midway at 8 a.m. on June 12. O’Kane felt that Tinosa and Sealion would likely patrol on the surface in the vast open waters, a move that guaranteed enemy planes would eventually spot one or both. That would force the Japanese to reroute convoys close to shore. If Tang could remain undetected in shallow waters, enemy war planners might deliver convoys directly to him. To help guarantee that interception, O’Kane counted on William Leibold, his trusted chief boatswain’s mate. Known to most simply as “Boats,” Leibold had become a fixture on the bridge. The twenty-one-year-old California native, who had convinced his father to sign a waiver so he could enlist at seventeen, had hoped to become a submariner. He had landed instead on Pruitt, a World War I–era destroyer the Navy had converted into a minelayer. After a storm off the Aleutians parted Pruitt’s mast lines, Leibold braved the ice to climb atop and secure new lines. The Navy rewarded him with orders to the undersea service.

  Tang cruised northwest for almost ten days. The men executed practice and trim dives, serviced the torpedoes, and watched movies at night. The submarine passed some 450 miles off the Marianas and later the volcanic island of Sofu Gan, a giant peak known to mariners as Lot’s Wife, which marked the entrance to empire waters. The skipper used the uninhabited rock as a radar target and navigational fix. Eventually, Tang closed in on Japan and paralleled the south coast of Honshu, the enemy’s main island. Much to the skipper’s surprise, Tang encountered no planes. He surmised that enemy ships used the safer Inland Sea, but the lack of aircraft surprised him. O’Kane wondered if maybe the enemy had picked up on Tinosa and Sealion and now focused on them. The radio delivered the news that American forces had invaded Saipan and secured the beachhead, the same waters O’Kane had hunted only four months earlier on Tang’s first patrol—and a more likely explanation for the empty skies.

  Tang slipped through Colnett Strait—the passageway south of Kyushu and the Ryuku islands—the evening of June 22, cruising at eight knots so that on radar the submarine might appear to be a trawler. At 3:50 a.m. Tang rendezvoused with Sealion. With dawn just hours away, the submarines could only exchange signals and agree to meet the following night. Tang spent the day submerged, a departure from the tactic that Morton had deployed so well. It frustrated O’Kane, but was necessary. “The East China and Yellow seas held everything to be found in the open-ocean areas and the close-in Empire areas except one thing, deep water. Only in the region directly to the west of the Nansei Shoto and lower Kyushu was it possible to dive deep and evade below a temperature gradient,” O’Kane wrote. “Elsewhere our submarine would be fortunate to have 100-foot depth of water for attack and could not expect over 200 feet in which to hide.”

  The crew enjoyed a relaxed Sunday as the submarine patrolled underwater. Sailors broke open crates of oranges, napped, and played cards. Others sat through a lesson about how the Kleinschmidt stills converted salt to fresh water. The crew counted twelve distant explosions, but no one could be sure if they had been torpedoes or depth charges. A search with periscopes showed nothing. Late in the day, Tang surfaced briefly to ventilate the submarine. O’Kane scanned the horizon from the bridge when the loudspeaker crackled: an Ultra message had just arrived from Pearl Harbor. Such messages often promised news of a target. The skipper climbed down to the control room, where the men read the tape. “Damaged battleship proceeding from Ryukyus through Nansei Shoto to Kobe or Sasebo Next Thirty Hours,” the message stated. “Weiss in Tinosa position submarines to intercept Sasebo passage.”

  The skipper smarted about the message. Even 4,000 miles from Pearl Harbor, O’Kane felt under the thumb of his superiors. Though he conceded that if the information proved valid—and he could add a battleship to his résumé of sinkings—he wouldn’t gripe. Tinosa skipper Don Weiss, the senior of the three captains, contacted Tang and demanded a meeting. His coded message ordered Tang and Sealion to rendezvous at Danjo Gunto, a ninety-mile run north and farther out to sea. Tang set off shortly past sunset, much to the frustration of the skipper. O’Kane disliked abandoning his spot, feeling that each mile took him farther away from any possible action. Over cups of hot coffee, O’Kane and Frazee talked. The skipper felt that the best spot to intercept the wounded battleship would be off the Koshiki Islands.

  Frazee left Tang at 1:15 a.m. joined by Petty Officer 3rd Class Dante Cacciola—known to his shipmates simply as the Dago—in a yellow rubber raft, carrying ten movies the crew wanted to swap, infrared signaling apparatus, and the code for the coordinated attacks. Cacciola paddled across the dark, pulling alongside Tinosa for almost a half hour. Frazee disembarked and climbed down to Tinosa’s wardroom to meet with Weiss. Back on Tang, O’Kane eyed the clock and stewed. If he was going to make it south to the Koshikis, he needed to leave soon. Dawn approached. He would need as much time as possible to run on the surface or else the trip would be pointless. The skipper gritted his teeth when he finally spotted the yellow raft returning through the darkness.

  Frazee had barely dropped through the hatch when Tang set off on all four engines at flank speed. The executive officer changed into dry clothes and joined O’Kane in the wardroom for another cup of coffee. The twenty-eight-year-old lieutenant appeared tired. “OK, Fraz,” O’Kane asked. “What’s our spot?”

  “Any one we want, Captain,” he answered. “We’ve got the islands and the straits all to ourselves.” Frazee explained that Tinosa and Sealion would patrol two lanes to the west, thirty miles wide. “Captain Weiss got pretty mad at my insistence, but finally told us to go to our ‘goddammned islands.’ ”

  Tang dove shortly past daybreak to avoid a Japanese patrol. The submarine would have to remain submerged throughout the day, running at six knots. If Tang continued at its present course it wouldn’t reach the strait until 10 p.m., too late to catch the enemy. Frazee adjusted Tang’s course to head farther north and use the radar to catch the ships leaving the strait at dusk. The men spent the day studying and killing time. O’Kane reviewed officer fitness reports, but struggled to focus. He wanted to attack. Tang surfaced at twilight and fired off two main engines to charge the batteries and two more plus the auxiliary to run at seventeen knots, dodging the sampans that bobbed in the waves. Tang passed the 100-fathom curve and added another engine to propulsion. Ensign Dick Kroth flipped on the bridge speaker at 9:45 p.m. to deliver the good news: “Radar contact, bearing one five zero, range twenty thousand yards!”

  The young officer’s announcement validated O’Kane’s predictions. The skipper had been confident that Tang’s position would generate targets. He believed the Japanese had no option but to run ships up the coast to Nagasaki, a congested industrial hub of 285,000 residents that was home to Mitsubishi’s steelworks and arms plant as well as a massive dockyard. But it still surprised O’Kane that he had found a possible target so fast. The skipper studied the chart in the conning tower and anxiously awaited an updated radar report on the ship’s location. Either the ship exited the strait—and headed north toward Tang—or it entered the passage and steamed south and away. The veteran skipper believed it had left the strait. The narrow passage could prove difficult to navigate at night, a fact that would prompt a cautious captain to anchor until dawn. Petty Officer 1st Class Edwin Bergman stared at the green radar screen. “A mess of ships,” he called out. “Range twenty thousand!”

  O’Kane pushed Bergman aside and stared at a jumble of pips. No single pip appeared large enough to be a battleship, but the number of them shocked O’Kane. Japanese convoys tended to be small; a couple of ships, three at
the most. This defied conventional enemy tactics. O’Kane fired off a one-word message to the other American submarines: “convoy.” Sealion acknowledged, but not Tinosa. Tang’s limited radar use made it difficult to pinpoint the convoy’s exact course and speed, but sailors determined it zigzagged northwest. Tang fired off another message. When the convoy settled on a westerly course at twelve knots, he sent a third and final report. O’Kane knew he should probably wait for his colleagues to arrive and attack as a proper wolf pack. But such patience wasn’t a part of his makeup. He would take his men to battle alone. “Tang had done what she could to bring the other boats in,” O’Kane later wrote. “This was pure business, and our business was sinking ships; we meant to do just that.”

  Tang loomed off the convoy’s port bow with a three-day-old moon about to set, ideal conditions for a night surface attack. Quartermaster Jones and boatswain’s mate William Leibold joined the skipper on the bridge. The decreasing range helped clarify the convoy’s composition, first on the radar and then through the 7x50 binoculars. O’Kane spied at least six large ships steaming in two columns, the two leaders likely large escorts. That meant that convoy boasted at least four large targets. Six escorts formed a circular screen around the convoy. Another screen also comprised of six escorts formed a second layer of protection. Additional escorts patrolled ahead and astern of the two screens. More than a dozen patrol craft guarded the convoy. No one had seen such a protective ring around a few ships. Quartermaster Jones captured the thoughts of everyone on the bridge with his one-word exclamation: “Christ!”