The War Below

by James Scott

  Rindskopf felt an awesome responsibility. The American government had trusted him with one of the most sophisticated and expensive submarines ever built, to say nothing of the lives of some eighty young men. The fate of Drum’s original officers would illustrate the danger Rindskopf faced as skipper. Of the seven men who had joined him each night for dinner at the wardroom table, the war would claim two, including Manning Kimmel. The former Drum engineering and executive officer had died just three days earlier when the submarine he commanded, Robalo, struck a mine two miles off the coast of Palawan island in the Philippines. Drum’s original communications officer, John Harper, would die in late October as the executive officer aboard the second submarine Shark when a depth charge attack sent it to the bottom.

  Rindskopf felt confident he could handle the job in part because he enjoyed the support of his men. Unlike Drum’s older and rigid previous skippers, all of whom had come to the ship with a wealth of experience earned elsewhere, Rindskopf was homegrown. He had stood watches with the enlisted men, was the first to pick up the basketball with the crew at the Royal Hawaiian, and had left his door open for anyone who needed to talk. The crew felt a unique sense of connection and ownership over Rindskopf, who came of age as a warrior alongside many of the sailors who now saluted him. Rindskopf’s rise to become the Pacific war’s youngest fleet boat skipper not only reflected his hard work, skill, and determination, but that of the entire fighting crew, from the lookouts and torpedomen to the cooks and quartermasters. “He never appeared superior to us,” recalled Robert White, a machinist’s mate who served eleven patrols. “He was just another man doing his job the best he could.”

  That job had proven a challenge this patrol. The skipper had dreaded Drum’s mission off Palau, as much of the fight now focused around the Marianas. American forces had invaded the strategic island of Saipan in June. The Japanese fleet had failed to challenge the United States for control of the Gilbert and Marshall islands, but American war planners knew the Marianas would prove the pressure point to trigger a fight not seen since the Solomons slugfest in Ironbottom Sound. Japanese naval leaders, who still clung to the unrealistic idea that a single decisive battle could destroy America’s Pacific Fleet, had hoped to set a trap. The Japanese reinforced the Marianas and Carolines with several hundred land-based planes while the fleet’s carriers, battleships, and cruisers converged at Tawi-Tawi in the southern Philippines. The Japanese plan called for luring the Pacific Fleet to the waters off Palau in the western Carolines. There the combined carrier- and land-based planes would overwhelm America’s superior forces.

  But Japan misjudged America’s next move. Rather than drive west and strike Palau, the United States turned north and invaded Saipan, forcing Japan to modify its plan. America had grown much stronger since the two navies last tangled, boasting fifteen carriers, seven battleships, twenty-one cruisers, and sixty-nine destroyers. Japan in contrast could muster just nine carriers, five battleships, thirteen cruisers, and twenty-eight destroyers. America’s 956 fighters, bombers, and floatplanes doubled Japan’s airpower, already handicapped by inexperienced pilots. But Japan enjoyed several advantages, including planes based on Guam, Rota, and Yap. The easterly trade wind allowed Japanese carriers to launch aircraft en route to battle, while the lack of armor and self-sealing fuel tanks gave the enemy’s lighter planes a greater reach. One of Japan’s biggest advantages in this operation, however, came down to focus. Unlike the American Navy, which had to protect the invasion force, the Japanese had one mission: annihilate the Pacific Fleet.

  In preparation for the Marianas invasion, America called up twenty-eight submarines. The United States wanted no surprises. About a dozen boats patrolled around Tawi-Tawi and Mindanao and in the Luzon, Surigao, and the San Bernardino straits, covering all possible approaches from the Philippines. Five more submarines lurked north of the Marianas to guard against forces sent down from the empire while nine other boats west of the Marianas blocked the route up from Palau. The heavy investment of boats paid off. Submarines Harder, Redfin, Flying Fish, Seahorse, and Cavalla tracked the departure of Japan’s forces from Tawi-Tawi en route to battle. America now knew what to expect. Admiral Raymond Spruance, commander of the Marianas operation, postponed the invasion of Guam, ordering his fleet to assemble June 18 in the waters west of Tinian. “Our air will first knock out enemy carriers, then will attack enemy battleships and cruisers to slow or disable them,” he directed. “Action against the enemy must be pushed vigorously by all hands to ensure complete destruction of his fleet.”

  The sun rose at 5:42 a.m. on June 19, climbing into a sky almost free of clouds that boasted unlimited visibility and fourteen-knot winds. American commanders suspected the Japanese planned to use Guam-based planes in battle—just as the United States had used Midway—and organized an air strike that morning on the Marianas island. American carrier pilots bagged some thirty-five planes over Guam when radar detected an inbound strike 150 miles west. Japan’s flattops had joined the fight. General quarters sounded as the American carriers turned into the wind, sending fighters into the skies to intercept the enemy while bombers pounded ground-based planes on Guam and Rota. U.S. pilots shot down forty-five of the sixty-nine inbound planes, then destroyed ninety-eight of the 130 planes in a second Japanese strike. American pilots continued to chew up waves of Japanese planes—346 by the day’s end. Aviators dubbed the aerial slaughter the “The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot.”

  Unlike at Midway where submarines had proven woefully ineffective, the Battle of the Philippine Sea represented a reversal as the undersea boats claimed some of the biggest prizes. Albacore skipper Lieutenant Commander James Blanchard stared through his scope at 7:55 a.m. at two flattops, an embarrassment of riches. The skipper zeroed in on the second, the 29,300-ton flagship Taiho or “Great Phoenix.” Commissioned less than four months earlier, Taiho was Japan’s newest and largest carrier, designed with an armored flight deck to allow the flattop to better withstand aerial attack. Despite problems with the torpedo data computer, Blanchard fired six fish, then dove deep. One torpedo tore into Taiho, flooding the forward aircraft elevator pit with water, gasoline, and fuel oil. Efforts to ventilate the ship only spread the dangerous fumes, triggering a massive explosion that afternoon that crumpled the armored flight deck and blew the hangar’s sides out. The flaming Phoenix capsized and sank.

  Albacore wasn’t the only submarine to score such an impressive kill. Cavalla skipper Lieutenant Commander Herman Kossler peered through the periscope at 10:52 a.m. at the 29,800-ton Shokaku, a veteran of the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Coral Sea. “When I raised my periscope at this time the picture was too good to be true,” Kossler wrote in his report. “I could see four ships, a large carrier with two cruisers ahead on the port bow and a destroyer about one thousand yards on the starboard beam.” Several planes circled above the carrier, then landed. No fewer than thirty, Kossler counted, crowded the flight deck. The skipper fired six torpedoes; several tore into the carrier. Japanese destroyers turned on Kossler, dropping 106 depth charges over the next three hours. But the enemy’s fury could not save Shokaku. The carrier’s bow settled so low that waves rushed over the flight deck and into the hangar. Shokaku’s stern rose into the air as the carrier dove bow first, taking down more than 1,250 souls.

  The battle continued the next day as three of America’s four carrier groups hunted the retreating enemy. A pilot spotted the Japanese the afternoon of June 20 at a range of 275 miles, right at the limit of how far American planes could fly. Ten carriers turned into the wind. In the span of just ten minutes, 216 planes roared into the sky. The planes closed in at sunset, sinking the 24,140-ton carrier Hiyo with two torpedoes and damaging the flattops Zuikaku, Chiyoda, and Junyo. Planes returning that night faced the dangerous prospect of landing in the dark until Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher, commander of the Pacific Fleet’s fast carrier forces, ordered all ships to ignore antisubmarine doctrine and light up. The two-day Battle of the Philippine Sea
cost America 130 planes. Japan in contrast had lost three aircraft carriers and almost 500 planes. America’s victory in what many describe as the greatest carrier battle of the war destroyed Japan’s naval air forces and paved the wave for the July invasions of Guam and Tinian.

  The focus on the Marianas meant that Rindskopf’s assigned area in the waters off Palau would be void of targets. America had guaranteed that with strikes against Japanese positions in the western Carolines, where he now hunted. The most excitement Rindskopf had seen in his thirty-five days at sea had come watching American Liberators pummel Yap while he performed lifeguard duty. Japanese fighters had chased twenty-three bombers before one peeled off and strafed Drum as the submarine dove. Rindskopf surfaced to find that projectiles had hit the deck, the conning tower fairwater, and the submarine’s three radio antennas. Fortunately the nicked antennas still worked. The skipper had celebrated Independence Day with a thirty-five-minute gun attack on Fais island, pouring 1,530 rounds into shore installations. His only torpedo attack had come just five days earlier against a 700-ton oiler. He had set up the perfect shot only to watch as his four torpedoes ran right under the shallow draft target.

  Rindskopf hoped his luck would improve as he struggled to pursue the two motor sampans through an afternoon rainsquall. While not a prized enemy warship or tanker, sampans often served as intelligence collectors. An attack would deprive the enemy of a valuable set of eyes and ears. Rindskopf radioed the submarine Balao with the news of his find, alerting skipper Lieutenant Commander Marion F. Ramirez de Arellano that he planned to leave his radar on so that Balao could track the signal while Drum pursued. Once the submarines picked up the sampans, Rindskopf would dive and attack from the target’s quarter. Balao could charge in and attack from the bow. Rindskopf spotted the sampans at 3:06 p.m., more than seven miles out. He ordered Drum down and studied the targets through his periscope. The boats resembled schooners, but without masts. Both appeared unarmed and small; too small to justify a torpedo. A gun battle would prove best.

  The skipper ordered the gun crews ready. Unlike the nighttime assault on Refinery Point, today’s attack would occur in the middle of the afternoon with ample light to aid the Japanese in counterfire. Nervous sailors strapped on helmets and climbed up into the conning tower. Others dropped down into the magazine beneath the crew mess and handed up gun shells, forming an ammunition train that ran through the submarine. The men had good reason to feel anxious. Submarines would fight 939 gun battles throughout the war, sinking 722 vessels. But many of those attacks would come with a price: ten deaths. Dozens of other sailors suffered injuries, ranging from gunshot and shrapnel wounds to compound fractures, frostbite, and even hernias from hefting heavy shells.

  Drum battle-surfaced at 4:34 p.m. still two miles from what Rindskopf estimated as a twenty-five-ton sampan. The gun crews charged out on the wet deck and manned the four-inch .50 caliber and the 20mm and .30 caliber machine guns. The gunners sighted the starboard sampan and fired the massive deck gun. The spent shell casing clanged to the deck as a loader rammed in another. The gun roared again and again. Projectiles straddled the target. Rindskopf watched the rounds splash at the sampan’s waterline as Drum continued to close the distance. Then a shot struck home, tearing into the motor sampan. Enemy crews failed to return fire. Sailors on Drum’s 20mm and .30 caliber guns joined the fight once the target came in range, the quiet afternoon suddenly transformed by a cacophony of barking guns. Four-inch projectiles smashed one after the other into the sampan’s wooden hull and deckhouse. Rindskopf watched as wood timbers flew, but the sampan kept going.

  Japanese sailors began to jump overboard. The skipper counted as many as twenty-five bobbing in the water. The shredded sampan turned toward Drum at a range of about 1,000 yards. Gunners fired again, smashing the sampan’s deckhouse with two more four-inch shells. The final shot came at a range of just 500 yards. Rindskopf and his men watched the sampan stop and erupt in flames, the dark smoke wafting skyward. The skipper ordered his men to cease fire, ending the forty-one-minute battle. Petty Officer 2nd Class John Meyer, a 20mm gunner, looked down on the sailors in the water. The nineteen-year-old Arizonan, who normally loaded torpedoes, surveyed the carnage. “That was a first time that we ever saw what we had done,” Meyer recalled. “There were Japs floating in the water as far as you could see. It didn’t mean a thing to me. They were the enemy and we were doing what we could to stop the war. They were the ones who started it and that was their tough luck.”

  Balao zeroed in on the lead sampan, raking it with gunfire as enemy sailors dove overboard. The Americans pulled up to the sampan with its bow along the target’s starboard side. Two sailors climbed aboard to search the enemy vessel. Dead bodies littered the deck. The sailors found no charts or radio gear, but grabbed all the ditty boxes, later found to contain opium pipes, pay accounts, diaries, fishing gear, and photographs of parents and family of the dead sailors. The boarding party entered the bunkhouse—described in the report as a “charnel house”—only to find more dead, a total of fourteen. The men returned to Balao. The submarine backed away before gunners fired a shell into the oil drums stacked on deck. The sampan exploded. To the surprise of the skipper, six more enemy sailors leaped out of a rear bunkhouse, bringing the total in the water to thirty-six. None would come aboard. Sailors dropped bread and a five-gallon can of water overboard before Balao pulled away.

  Rindskopf looked down upon the two dozen enemy sailors treading water alongside Drum. Their destroyed sampan would be reduced in a matter of hours to little more than charred timbers and ash, debris Balao would find two days later when the submarine returned to investigate the attack scene. Rindskopf hoped to take a couple of prisoners for future interrogation. He ordered his men to fire machine guns over the heads of the sailors in the water, a move designed to frighten the men into surrender. Drum sailors threw a line over the starboard side and waited. “Captain,” Meyer finally called out. “We got one here.” A lone Japanese sailor paddled over and grabbed the line. The Drum crew hauled him on board. Another followed. The rest refused. Rindskopf ordered Drum to depart shortly before sunset.

  Sailors escorted prisoners Chono Natsumoro and Keiei Shimochi below. For hygienic reasons the crew shaved their heads with electric clippers—the captives had to trim their own genitalia—and dusted them with flea powder. Pharmacist’s Mate 1st Class Ralph McFadden cleaned Shimochi’s shrapnel wounds in a bunk in the forward torpedo room. The other prisoner, whom the men simply called Chono, settled in the after torpedo room. Chono confessed that he had served as a crewmember on Nissho Maru No. 1, the sampan Drum destroyed. Shimochi worked as a fisherman. The crew rotated watch over them, but the regimen soon proved unnecessary. Shimochi’s injuries kept him confined to a bunk, but Chono, despite not knowing any English, soon endeared himself to his captors, quelling the crew’s initial fear that the prisoners might attempt to sabotage the submarine. Within days, crewmembers stopped viewing the men as prisoners and practically as guests.

  The crew put Chono to work in the galley, peeling potatoes and washing dishes. The men reveled at the skinny prisoner’s ravenous appetite and his love for Drum’s ice cream machine. “Top notch chow hounds,” Hubert Wheeler wrote in his diary. “Chono finally made mess cook third class.” Sailors showed Chono pictures of family, let him flip through magazines, and set out to teach him English. He soon greeted each compartment along his route to galley with a shout of “good morning.” Another favorite the crew taught him: “Fuck Tojo.” When Drum reached Pearl Harbor on August 14, the crew felt sad to turn Chono over to the Marines. But the sailors had taught him a special song and shouted for Chono to sing it as the jeep pulled away, chuckling as he belted out the final line: “Fuck the Marines.”

  16

  TANG

  “Goodnight my sweetest of parents, pleasant dreams, say a few dozen assorted effective prayers that all Jap depth charges are distant duds.”

  —Eugene Malone, December 1, 1943, letter<
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  O’Kane hustled to prepare Tang for its fifth war patrol in late September 1944. Recently promoted to the rank of commander, O’Kane had spent the past three weeks in Pearl Harbor, overseeing Tang’s refit so that he could again return to sea. Commissioned less than a year earlier, Tang already showed the wear of America’s submarine war effort. In addition to greasing the torpedo tube rollers, checking battery cells for gravity and electrical circuits for grounds, shipyard workers dry-docked the Tang to scrape, wire-brush, and blast the marine life from its bottom before repainting the hull with anti-fouling paint, a move that would help the submarine maintain its top speed and endurance. O’Kane noted with pride that in just nine months his submarine had already logged some 40,000 miles, almost twice the circumference of the earth.

  Tang’s third patrol had been one for the record books. Though O’Kane claimed in his report to sink eight ships, postwar analysis would bump that number to ten. The thirty-six-day patrol ultimately would prove to be the greatest run of the entire war by the number of ships sunk, a particularly impressive feat since Tang spent only sixteen of those days in its patrol area. Vice Admiral Lockwood raved about the mission’s success in his patrol endorsement. “This patrol was an outstanding example of excellent judgment, expert area analysis, bull-dog tenacity, and severe damage to the enemy,” the admiral wrote. “Each attack was carefully planned and brilliantly executed.”