by James Scott
O’Kane grabbed hold of what resembled a wooden door that likely had blown off a Japanese ship and used it as a makeshift floatation. The skipper, once caught between the timid Pinky Kennedy and the aggressive Mush Morton, had embraced the latter, following Morton’s creed to pursue the Japanese at all costs. That advice had paid off. In just nine months, O’Kane had sunk twenty-four confirmed ships, a tally that would make him the greatest skipper of the war by the number of ships destroyed. He had won praise, fame, and a place in history, but he now shared Morton’s tragic fate, albeit not at the hands of the enemy, but his own malfunctioning weapon. Morton had at least died with his men. O’Kane would have to live with killing his.
If he survived.
Larry Savadkin bobbed in the cold water, cut off from his skipper. When he surfaced after his sixty-foot ascent from the flooded conning tower, he spotted Tang’s bow jutting above the waves. The former college athlete swam for it but found the current too much. He gave up and floated, hoping to conserve energy. Savadkin’s waterlogged clothes weighed him down so he slipped off his shirt, socks, and long pants, tying them around his waist as he drifted in his skivvies. Somewhere in his desperate ascent, he had lost his watch. A small price to pay. The cold water forced him to shiver uncontrollably and made him swallow some saltwater. “I felt alone—screamed bloody murder—no answer,” he recalled. “I got the impression that I was the only person who had gotten off the boat.”
The engineering officer collected himself and focused on survival. He remembered his submarine school training. Savadkin removed his trousers from around his waist, tied the ends, and inflated them, creating a makeshift lifebelt. To his surprise, the trick worked, though he had to reinflate them every fifteen minutes. Then he remembered an island about ten miles away. Savadkin tried to swim for it, using the stars to head west, but he struggled to navigate and gave up. He hoped he could stay afloat until dawn and try again in the daylight. Savadkin alternated between his back and stomach. Japanese patrols hunted for Tang in the dark waters, sporadically dropping depth charges. He felt the first explosion rumble through the seas, but learned to arch his back when the bombs exploded.
Bill Leibold broke the surface moments after Tang sank. Like Savadkin, he, too, disrobed. The boatswain’s mate dropped his 7x50 binoculars and kicked off his shoes and heavy submarine coat. He slipped off his trousers, tied the ends, and tried unsuccessfully to inflate them, eventually letting them drop beneath the waves. Then he heard Petty Officer 3rd Class Darrell Dean Rector, the gunner’s mate who had survived the first successful appendectomy operation on a submarine, call out in the darkness. He heard quartermaster Sidney Jones, too. Others had made it off the bridge. The men drifted. The voices grew faint and eventually stopped. Leibold treaded water in the cold, the only landmark the bow of a sunken enemy ship that rose above the waves.
Radarman Floyd Caverly had seen only one other sailor since Tang’s sinking. Lieutenant j.g. John Heubeck swam past him, pausing just long enough to ask if Caverly knew the direction toward land. “Straight down about 180 feet,” replied Caverly. The radarman watched Heubeck swim away, never to be seen again. Hours slipped past before he heard splashing. He looked up to see Leibold swimming toward him. The men felt relief to have one another as company. Caverly had been floating on his back, swallowing water each time a wave broke over him. Leibold instructed him to time his breathing with the motion of the waves. Caverly returned the favor by sharing a trick of his own to keep warm: turn into the current and urinate.
About forty-five sailors crowded in Tang’s forward torpedo room at 3:30 a.m., roughly one hour after the sinking. The men remained upbeat, despite the circumstances. The last radar bearing showed that Tang had gone down just a few miles from shore and most felt the chances of reaching the surface and swimming it were good. Sailors parceled out the scant few life preservers. Others grabbed Momsen lungs: the escape devices strapped on much like life preservers. The four-liter rubberized bag, complete with a nose clip and mouthpiece, allowed sailors to breathe recycled air, filtered through a can of soda lime to remove excess carbon dioxide. The men reviewed how to operate the lung: more than half had long since forgotten.
The Japanese escorts still prowled above, hunting the wounded Tang. A barrage of about ten depth charges rattled the boat, but caused no damage. The sailors below, who had prepared to escape, froze and waited, sitting silently in the glow of the emergency lights. Smoke and fumes generated from the torched documents made the air thick. The heat and humidity in the overcrowded compartment climbed, coupled with higher than normal air pressure that added to the discomfort. Minutes turned to hours. When the Japanese patrols departed sometime close to dawn, Mel Enos decided the men should attempt to blow the water from the tanks and flooded compartments, a move that would refloat Tang and make it easier and faster for them to escape. The lieutenant organized a party of six men to trudge back to the control room.
The men cracked the sealed door. Black acrid smoke from an electrical fire in the neighboring compartment poured into the torpedo room. The men immediately slammed the door, but not before thick fumes penetrated the compartment. The smoke slashed visibility so that even the emergency lights appeared only as a dim glow in the haze that stank of torched rubber, an indication that the batteries now burned. Some of the sailors—throats burning—gagged and choked. Desperate for fresh air, men slipped on Momsen lungs, using them as makeshift respirators. The fire now trapped the almost four dozen survivors in the crowded forward torpedo room. All options to salvage Tang had vanished. The men had no choice but to slip on lungs, climb up into the escape chamber, and swim some 180 feet to the surface.
The men decided an officer should lead the first escape. Enos volunteered, accompanied by chief of the boat Ballinger and Petty Officer 1st Class John Fluker, a torpedoman. The threesome strapped on lungs—Enos also reportedly grabbed a couple of pistols and a bayonet—and climbed up into the cylindrical chamber mounted in the overhead at about 6 a.m., some three and a half hours after Tang sank. The sailors below then handed up a rubber lifeboat. If any of the crew escaped, the men would need it. Once sealed inside the chamber, the sailors would flood it with seawater and pressurized air. The men would then open the side door, release a buoy attached to an ascending line, and head to the surface. The last man out would tap an alert to the men below that all had left. A lever in the torpedo room allowed the sailors there to close the side door and drain the chamber so another party could enter.
Enos and his party crowded inside the chamber, just large enough for four men. The men squabbled over how to operate the chamber before successfully flooding it with water. The sailors opened the side door, but struggled to attach a rope to the buoy that would allow them to ascend hand over hand to the surface. Just below the chamber in the forward torpedo room, anxious sailors waited for the signal. Thirty minutes passed with no word. Inside the chamber, Enos grew frustrated. He gave up waiting on the buoy and dove out alone into the cold water. No one would ever see him again. The men below waited ten more minutes, then finally pulled the lever that closed the chamber door and drained the tank. Sailors unsealed the hatch and found Ballinger and Fluker still inside. The latter climbed down and announced that he would not try again.
Ballinger did, but this time without the bulky lifeboat that crowded the chamber. Torpedo officer Lieutenant j.g. Hank Flanagan climbed inside along with Leland Weekley, the chief in charge of the forward room. Ballinger asked for volunteers. Clay Decker knew the chief of the boat had survived a half dozen patrols on the submarine Tunny before he made all five runs on the Tang. If anyone knew what to do, Decker figured, it had to be Ballinger. He would ride the chief’s coattails. Decker turned to his close friend, twenty-four-year-old Petty Officer 1st Class George Zofcin. The two men’s wives and young sons had shared a small house on a hill at 67 Stoneyford Avenue in San Francisco while Decker and Zofcin roomed together between patrols at the Royal Hawaiian. Zofcin helped Decker strap on his Momsen
lung. Decker reciprocated.
“You go ahead and go with this wave,” Zofcin told his friend.
“Why, George?” Decker replied. “Come on, go with us.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I have a confession to make.”
A confession, Decker thought, what the hell? The men had to get off the boat.
“Clay,” his friend said. “I can’t swim.”
Zofcin’s confession stunned Decker, who told his friend he didn’t need to know how to swim. He could use his lung as a life preserver when he reached the surface.
“You go ahead,” Zofcin told him. “I’ll come up with the next wave.”
Decker climbed up into the chamber, carrying a shark knife and a pistol and bullets. One of Tang’s young ensigns took Zofcin’s place. Ballinger handed the escape buoy to Decker. He told him to let it out when the men opened the door, careful to count each knot that slipped through his hands. Tied every six feet—one-fathom intervals—the knots functioned like a rudimentary depth gauge. The men flooded the chamber up to their armpits and opened the door. Decker released the buoy. He counted ten knots, then fifteen, followed by twenty. The knots still passed through his hands. When he reached thirty, he felt the rope jerk. The buoy had broken the surface and bobbed on the waves. Decker tied the rope to the top rung of the ladder, using several knots to make sure it didn’t come undone.
One hundred and eighty feet of dark water stood between Decker and survival. The motor machinist wrapped his arms and legs around the line and started up, his hands running along the rope. He wanted to let go and kick for the surface, but held himself back. Decker remembered from his training that he had to pause at each knot to exhale and inhale to equalize the pressure in his lungs. He watched the air bubbles he released race past him toward the surface somewhere above. Decker ascended, the rope slipping through his hands, the surface just striking distance away. He popped through the waves into the morning light. He unclipped his nose clamp only to find blood in his hand. He wiped his cheek and found it also bled. The pressure change had popped blood vessels in his cheek and nose.
Decker spit out the mouthpiece before he remembered to reach down and turn the valve. The Momsen lung flooded with seawater, making it worthless as a life preserver. He slipped it off and held the soccer ball–sized buoy, still tethered to the stricken submarine on the seafloor. He could feel the heavy tide trying to pull him out to sea. When Ballinger broke the surface moments later, Decker stared in horror. Blood poured from his face. The chief of the boat screamed and vomited. He thrashed in the water just a few feet away. Decker started to reach out for him, but something told him to stop. Ballinger would pull him down and drown them both. The men locked eyes. “I could hear him screaming,” recalled Decker, the last man to see the chief alive. “He was flowing with the tide then. It just carried him on out to sea.”
Inside the torpedo room, time inched past. The men grew worried. Forty minutes had elapsed with still no signal. Moans emanated from the chamber. The sailors pulled the lever to close the escape door and drain it. Men unsealed the hatch and found Flanagan and the ensign inside. Weekley had escaped like Decker and Ballinger but would never be seen again. Flanagan had become tangled in the unused ascending line, forcing the sailors to cut him loose and lower him to the deck below wrapped in blankets. The ensign floated in and out of consciousness, likely the result of his inability to withstand the high partial pressures and increased carbon dioxide. The young officer regained consciousness and announced that he would not attempt another escape, but said there was no reason why the other sailors shouldn’t try.
Depth charges once again rattled the submarine, forcing the men to halt their escape. Morale began to plummet. Escape proved far more difficult than many had envisioned. The heat and humidity inside the crowded torpedo room climbed as the smoke-and-carbon-dioxide-filled atmosphere deteriorated, sapping the energy and motivation of many sailors. The confidence and enthusiasm most felt only hours earlier faded. Some men stretched out on the bunks; others ignored protocol and chatted even as enemy patrols circled above. Defeat settled over the room. Some of the sailors bordered on unconsciousness. “Many of the men did not care whether they escaped or not,” recalled one survivor. “The constantly increasing pressure, smoke, and heat seemed to affect everyone’s thinking.”
Hayes Trukke refused to die on the Tang. The exhausted torpedoman climbed up into the chamber to lead a third escape attempt. Torpedoman Pete Narowanski and another motor machinist joined him. Even torpedoman Fluker rallied and crawled up through the hatch, ready, finally, to try again. The sailors worried that the effort to free Flanagan from the tangled line might have cut the buoy loose, prompting them to grab a life ring salvaged from the freighter Yamaoka Maru, sunk on Tang’s third patrol. The men sealed the hatch and flooded the chamber. Trukke tried the door, but found it jammed. The men pushed and it finally opened. The torpedoman then attempted to fill his Momsen lung from the air manifold only to discover there was no oxygen.
Trukke explained that the men could breathe into the lungs to inflate them, but his reasoning failed to assuage the fear that gripped the others. The oxygen-starved torpedoman began to feel light-headed and confused. He knew he teetered on passing out as he struggled to rig the buoy as a lifeline. His motor skills and thought process slowed. Fifteen minutes ticked past. Trukke had planned to release the life ring, let it float to the surface, then rise up the line, just as he would have done on the rescue buoy. But in his groggy haze, he stumbled out of the hatch, still clutching the life ring. “I felt very exhausted—like I couldn’t get any oxygen into my lungs and began to get dizzy, so I knew I had better get out while I could,” Trukke recalled. “The other men in the trunk would have escaped if only they had stepped out.”
The buoyant life ring shot toward the surface with Trukke in tow. He had gone up only about twenty feet when he felt the line jerk. Narowanski tugged the rope to slow Trukke’s ascent so he could equalize the pressure in his lungs. But the jerking caused Trukke to lose his Momsen lung, forcing him to blow out his air as he rode the ring up, his sandals lost somewhere in the furious ascent. Trukke broke the surface exhausted and sick. He vomited for much of the next half hour. The torpedoman heard Decker call out to him. Trukke spotted the motor machinist clinging to the rescue buoy about fifty yards away. He paddled over and the men tied the buoys together. The morning light illuminated the coast in the distance as well as what appeared to be the masts of two sunken ships and the bow of Tang’s final victim jutting above the water.
The three men inside the escape chamber climbed down into the torpedo room to find that conditions had worsened. The fire in the adjacent compartment raged with such ferocity that the paint on the torpedo room bulkhead had melted and had begun to run down the wall. Increased air pressure seeped into the room through the drain in the sink. Sailors tried to stop the intrusion with wooden plugs from the depth charge kits. Not only did sailors battle extreme heat and humidity but Navy calculations would later show that after only four hours—by about 6:30 a.m.—carbon dioxide had reached a poisonous level. Only those men driven to save themselves now worked. Others lay in the bunks or on the deck resigned to die. Conversation that had earlier focused on escape and survival turned toward family and loved ones.
Fluker and the motor machinist decided not to attempt another escape, but Narowanski refused to give up. He had come too close to quit. The exhausted Flanagan, who had gotten tangled in the ascending line, joined him. DaSilva worked his way over toward the ladder that led up into the escape chamber. The emergency lights in the compartment faded as the batteries died, forcing the men to switch on battle lanterns. The four-man chamber had room enough for two more men. DaSilva urged his close friend Petty Officer 2nd Class Glen Haws to go with him. Unlike the young and unwed DaSilva, Haws had a wife and a son he had never seen, born while Tang was at sea on its fifth patrol. “He had everything to live for,” DaSilva later recalled. “I h
ad nothing.”
“We need somebody else,” Flanagan called down.
“Hell,” DaSilva said. “I’m not afraid.”
The motor machinist’s mate scrambled up the ladder. DaSilva called down to Haws to join them, but he again refused. Another sailor stepped forward and climbed up in his place. DaSilva shot a glance at the clock on the bulkhead and saw it was 8 a.m., six and a half hours after Tang had sunk. The men closed the hatch and flooded the trunk. DaSilva felt the air pressure increase, making the men’s voices sound high. When the water reached the top of the side door, the men tested the Momsen lungs and opened the hatch, finding the buoy line still attached. Narowanski went first, dressed just in his swim shorts. Flanagan followed three minutes later. DaSilva waited the same, then wrapped his arms and legs around the rope and rose up ten feet, pausing long enough to count to ten. He repeated the process, watching as the water around him lightened.
DaSilva broke the surface to find Decker, Trukke, Narowanski, and Flanagan clinging to the buoy. Narowanski dry heaved, but DaSilva felt fine. The sun climbed in the morning sky. Two Japanese escorts swept the water between the buoy and the coast. Pharmacist’s mate Larson, who had cared for the injured in the torpedo room, popped to the surface about an hour later. DaSilva watched as he spit up blood and appeared to choke. One of the survivors held Larson’s head above water. Rubin Raiford, the injured mess steward, surfaced some fifty feet away. He flailed for a few seconds, then slipped beneath the water. DaSilva swam to help him, but he had disappeared. “He drowned while we watched him, floating away with his head just under the surface of the water,” recalled a survivor. “None of us could possibly have reached him.”