by James Scott
As Japan foundered, America strengthened. The vast Pacific gains had opened up new fueling depots and advance bases where crews could refit submarines and sailors could unwind closer to the fight. No longer did boats need to travel thousands of miles back to Hawaii and Australia. Saipan opened as a fuel station at the end of July while Guam would host a submarine refit and rest camp in November. The war moved so fast that some bases became obsolete within months. The Australian town of Brisbane that the Silversides crew so loved proved little more than a ghost town. One hundred and fifty-six subs—an increase of thirty-three from the previous year—now operated in the Pacific, serviced by fourteen tenders. So heavy was the concentration at times that two submerged boats off the coast of Indochina would actually collide in February 1945. That unlikely accident seemed only to reaffirm a common expression—reported by an enemy prisoner of war—that a person could walk from Singapore to Japan on the tops of American submarine periscopes.
One consequence of America’s success: a lack of worthwhile targets, a frustrating reality now faced by Rindskopf and other young skippers who had waited the entire war to take command. Even mediocre captains could earn solid records early in the war while the best of skippers in late 1944 were left with little more to shoot at than trawlers and sampans. Postwar records would show the devastating toll America’s submarine force exacted on Japan’s merchant and naval fleets. Submarines in 1942 sank fewer than two hundred Japanese naval and merchant ships compared to two years later when the boats destroyed 526 merchant ships over 500 tons and 105 warships ships, including one battleship, seven aircraft carriers, nine cruisers, and thirty-two destroyers. But those days neared the end. By January 1945, fighters and bombers would sink more ships than submarines as targets vanished and the war moved from the sea to the air. Postwar records showed that many of the warships destroyed by American submarines and planes in early 1945 were little more than 800-ton coastal defense frigates while many merchant ships ranged from 500 tons down to twenty-ton sampans.
Against these deteriorating odds, Rindskopf felt pressure to succeed. He knew the rest of his career would hinge on the record he produced now. Command of a wartime submarine alone would not guarantee future promotions and success. He needed to demonstrate that he was a competent, determined, and aggressive fighter. The Navy quantified such attributes one way: ships on the bottom. Drum’s eleventh patrol so far had not offered Rindskopf a chance to seal his future. He had just missed an opportunity to attack three destroyers on October 22. The warships had steamed at more than twenty-five knots and zigzagged three times in just eight minutes. Rindskopf had been unable to set up a shot in time and dove as the closest one passed just 200 yards astern. The skipper had fumed. “These were the first targets worthy of torpedoes that the Drum has seen since November 22, 1943,” Rindskopf wrote in his report. “The epitome of frustration!”
He hoped the night of the 23rd would be different.
• • •
One of the empire’s last major sea routes ran through the South China Sea from the Philippines past Formosa to Japan. Japan’s war machine depended on shipping from Hong Kong, Singapore, the East Indies, Manila, and Formosa. Ships that steamed this backdoor route often would pass through the Luzon Strait, which separated the Philippines from Formosa and the Formosa Strait, which divided that island from mainland China. This route had grown increasingly vital in recent months as Japan struggled to reinforce the Philippines in advance of America’s invasion and now as a way to pull its few precious merchant ships from harm’s way. Submariners relished assignments in this target-rich environment, which had earned the nickname “Convoy College.” The seas throughout September and October had crawled with submarine wolf packs, boasting colorful names like Donk’s Devils, Ed’s Eradicators, and Ben’s Busters. Rindskopf’s orders directed him to patrol the waters off the Luzon Strait with the submarines Icefish and Sawfish to form a wolf pack led by Commander Alan Banister, Banister’s Beagles.
The Japanese knew the dangers American submarines posed in these waters, a fact confirmed at 6 a.m. on the 23rd when convoy MATA-30 first detected signals from American submarines. More intercepts followed three hours later. The convoy commander ordered five of the faster ships to steam at top speed through the Luzon Strait. Sawfish first picked up convoy MATA-30 hours earlier when mast tops and smoke appeared in Banister’s periscope. The thirty-nine-year-old skipper had chased down the convoy and set his sights on the last ship, the Kimikawa Maru, loaded down with bauxite, crude oil, and aviation gas as well as some 300 passengers. Banister fired five torpedoes. An explosion ripped open the port side aft of the tender, flooding the No. 7 cargo hold. The skipper ordered abandon ship as Kimikawa Maru sank by the stern, disappearing beneath the waves in just two and a half minutes along with eighty-one passengers and twenty-four crewmembers. Escorts hunted Sawfish with depth charges. The sonar operator on Drum heard eleven explosions at 5:32 p.m. Icefish sailors detected three. By the time Sawfish escaped the escorts, surfaced, and fired off a report to the wolf pack, Drum had already found the rest of the convoy and picked up the hunt.
The submarine Snook, which had just wrapped up a wolf pack patrol with Pomfret and Cobia, radioed the Beagles. Commander George Brown wanted in on the action. He ordered his submarine to run at three-engine speed to close the seventy-five-mile distance. Like sharks following the scent of blood, four submarines zeroed in on the convoy’s eleven remaining ships. The moon would set at 11:20 p.m., making an ideal time for a surface attack. The submarines would have much of the night to work. Snook approached from the bow, Drum the starboard flank, Sawfish and Icefish the port. Wolf pack commander Banister studied the radar at 10:43 p.m. Despite the destruction of Kimikawa Maru, convoy MATA-30 remained well organized. The radar showed a tight cluster of ships that steamed north between six and seven knots. A single large ship lagged behind while escorts swept across the dark water. Banister fired off a message at 10:59 p.m. to the wolf pack: “Attacking from port flank.”
For the second time, Banister closed the convoy. The skipper had only five fish left. He planned to fire four at the last ship in the convoy and save his last one in case he needed to escape. Sawfish crossed astern of one of the destroyers and charged what Banister surmised was a tanker. The skipper fired four torpedoes at 11:21 p.m., watching as the second and third breeched the surface. The third launched so high out of the water that Banister feared it might land back on deck. The frustrated skipper had come too far to botch this attack. He immediately fired his last torpedo, then put the convoy astern at flank speed. Banister heard a single explosion followed by a string of depth charges. His radar confirmed his fear that his attack had failed. The pip still glowed on the screen as the target steamed onward. Banister fired off a message to the rest of the wolf pack. “Attack completed,” the skipper radioed. “All torpedoes expended trailing until Snook joins.”
Snook and Icefish moved in to attack. Commander Richard Peterson in Icefish fired six torpedoes at 12:52 a.m. His one hit on Shinsei Maru No. 1 proved a dud, but it forced the 5,878-ton passenger cargo ship to slow so damage control crews could repair a hole. Commander Brown in Snook, hoping to draw the escorts off of Icefish, charged the convoy’s starboard quarter. He set his sights on the closest and largest ship he could find, the 7,369-ton Kokuryu Maru, a passenger ship with a roster this night of 1,357. Brown fired four torpedoes at 12:56 a.m. Three minutes later, the first torpedo hit, ripping open the starboard side of No. 2 cargo hold. Water flooded inside and the ship listed. A second torpedo crashed into the engine room seconds later. Brown watched flames dance beneath a cloud of smoke that rose into the dark night. Passengers hustled into lifeboats and rafts as the ship’s list worsened. Half an hour after the first torpedo hit, Kokuryu Maru capsized and sank bow first, taking with it 392 passengers and crew.
The submarines returned to the convoy again and again, probing for weak spots. One would attack from the port side, the next the starboard or the bow. The tightly c
lustered convoy began to unravel as ships scattered, hoping to make it hard for the attackers to pursue. The convoy’s five escorts, unsure of where to depth-charge, plucked survivors from the cold sea. Rindskopf, now operating on battery power to increase Drum’s stealth, seized on the chaos and charged the convoy’s port flank. The young skipper fired tube seven at 2:03 a.m. at a range of almost two miles. The electric torpedo streaked toward the target. Rindskopf fired again ten seconds later. Then again and again. Up on the bridge in the dark, he struggled to watch. A minute passed. Then two. All four of his torpedoes had missed. The skipper dropped back behind the convoy to allow Snook another attack.
Snook roared in again and fired six torpedoes at 3:10 a.m. Lookouts on the 3,887-ton tanker Kikusui Maru spotted wakes off the starboard side, but without enough time to evade. The first hit failed to explode, but the second ripped open the bow. The third struck the boiler room, sending the ship down in flames stern first. “The resulting explosion was only a shade less than spectacular,” Brown, Snook’s commander, wrote, “the whole after end of the target appearing to disintegrate.” The tenacious skipper refused to let up, setting his sights next on Tenshin Maru, a 4,236-ton cargo ship loaded down with bauxite. Brown fired five torpedoes at 5:59 a.m., watching from the bridge as the fish streaked toward the target. One torpedo tore open the port side of cargo hold No. 2. The ship came dead in the water just as a second torpedo exploded. The dual hits snapped the ship in half. Brown watched as Tenshin Maru—along with 6,250 tons of bauxite and fifty-two men—vanished under the swells in just two minutes.
Sawfish and Icefish had each sunk one ship while Snook had destroyed three. Rindskopf’s one attack had failed. The sun rose and with it went the other submarines. Out of torpedoes, Sawfish had quit. A plane kept Icefish submerged and Snook had bowed out. But Rindskopf refused to give up. He scanned the horizon through the periscope at 7 a.m., spotting the 4,725-ton Shikisan Maru loaded down with rubber, manganese, and general war goods. A destroyer patrolled off the target’s opposite bow while three other freighters steamed in a rough column another mile and a half beyond. Rindskopf fired four torpedoes at 7:57 a.m. Lookouts spotted wakes at 600 yards and Shikisan Maru turned to evade. The first torpedo streaked just five yards past the bow. The next three ripped the side of the ship open, from the foremast to the stern. Shikisan Maru plunged to the bottom in just a minute and a half with the loss of fifteen men. Rindskopf had sunk his first major ship of the war.
The submarines Shark, Blackfish, and Seadragon, operating as another wolf pack, waited to pick off the remnants. Seadragon skipper Commander James Ashley, Jr., watched the three freighters Rindskopf had spotted come into view through his periscope at 9:20 a.m. He fired four torpedoes at the 4,620-ton Taiten Maru. Lookouts spotted the wakes and the ship turned to evade. Two fish zoomed past the bow. The third crashed into the engine room on the starboard side while the fourth tore open No. 4 cargo hold. Taiten Maru’s bow rose skyward, plunging beneath the waves at noon. Seadragon circled back and fired again at 12:14 p.m., destroying Shinsei Maru No. 1, the ship damaged by a dud the night before. Seadragon then targeted the 1,847-ton Eiko Maru, which had plucked survivors of the other ships from the cold water. The skipper watched as a torpedo severed the ship’s bow, sending Eiko Maru to the bottom with its screws in the air. At this rate the entire convoy would soon vanish.
Drum’s attack, however, was now over. Rindskopf and his crew relaxed. The twenty-seven-year-old skipper would sink two more freighters two days later, the 6,886-ton Taisho Maru and 6,886-ton Taihaku Maru, concluding his final patrol with three kills totaling 18,497 tons. His final two victims alone took down more than 3,000 Japanese soldiers. Rindskopf would relinquish command the next month at Majuro after serving eleven war patrols, a duration matched only by two of the boat’s enlisted men. Drum would make two more patrols, but would never sink another ship, ending the war with fifteen confirmed kills for a total tonnage of 80,580. At sea when the Japanese surrendered, Drum would conclude its service as a Naval Reserve ship with the Potomac River Naval Command, struck from the register in 1968, just one year before Silversides. Like the Silver Lady, Drum, over the course of the war had logged enough miles to cover more than five trips around the earth. Rindskopf in that time had made more than 1,000 dives, helped fire 125 torpedoes, and survived no fewer than 300 depth charge attacks, one of which put a hole in the conning tower. He would return to the submarine school as a torpedo and gunnery instructor, having earned a Navy Cross, Silver Star, Bronze Star, and a Letter of Commendation.
• • •
Arisan Maru steamed onward toward Formosa. It had been a slaughter. Submarine wolf packs in less than twenty-four hours had devoured nine of the convoy’s twelve ships, tearing apart ship after ship and sending loads of bauxite, crude oil, and aviation gasoline beneath the waves along with hundreds of lives. Some of the prisoners on board surmised the fate of the other vessels from the debris that bobbed in the water. Sergeant Calvin Graef had even spotted a few lifeboats crammed with survivors, though the hellship made no effort in these submarine-infested waters to help. The slowest freighter in the convoy—the one with the Allies’ most precious cargo—had somehow defied odds and made it through the long night and morning.
Graef and a half dozen others topside prepared water and steamed rice for the prisoners late in the afternoon, a task Graef relished for its brief promise of fresh air. The Japanese guards would crack the prisoners over the head for looking over the rail, but Graef couldn’t resist the urge and stole glances at the rough seas that tossed below. Half of the prisoners had been fed at about 5 p.m. when some of the Japanese guards sprinted down the deck. Graef peered over the side and saw the wake of a torpedo streak past Arisan Maru’s stern. Another fish missed the bow. The ship’s general alarm rang out. Guards drove Graef and the other prisoners back into the cargo hold with rifle butts, sealing the hatch covers to prevent escape.
“What gives?” prisoners prodded.
“Submarines,” Graef replied. “School of fish.”
The submarine Shark had found Arisan Maru and Commander Edward Blakely was hungry. Shark’s thirty-two-year-old skipper, a Naval Academy classmate of Dick O’Kane’s, had yet to sink a ship on this patrol. Now he bore down on his target, unaware of the 1,800 prisoners crowded aboard the unmarked hellship, the majority of them Americans. The prisoners trapped in Arisan Maru’s cargo holds listened to the footfalls of the Japanese on deck above. The hellship’s deck gun roared again and again. To the men trapped below, liberation appeared at hand, an end to the horrors endured at the hands of the Japanese. Many of the prisoners cheered the Shark. “Sink us, Navy!” men cried. “Please God, don’t let ’em miss!”
Blakely didn’t.
A one-and-a-half-ton torpedo ripped open the starboard side of No. 3 cargo hold. Another tore into Arisan Maru’s stern. Coal dust and rust clouded the air as cold seawater rushed inside the freighter. Prisoners who only moments before had begged aloud for an American attack suddenly fell silent, their prayers answered. The prisoners recovered from the shock and charged up the ladder, shoving the hatch covers open. Men poured out onto the deck and inhaled the cool air as healthier captives helped haul up the sick. Most of the Japanese had abandoned the crippled ship, leaving the prisoners to fend for themselves. One Japanese guard, who had taunted the captives with water, had failed to escape. Prisoners pounced on him, crushing him with a hatch cover.
Graef watched as a deranged pandemonium seized some prisoners, a result of years of abuse and starvation coupled with the sudden shock of the attack. Rather than strap on a life preserver and abandon the sinking ship, some prisoners started looting. One captive appeared on deck dressed in the Japanese skipper’s tropical white uniform, the pant bottoms at his knees and the coat too tight to button. Others ransacked the ship’s galley. “They ate like savages grabbing great handfuls of rice and sugar,” Brodsky would later tell American investigators. “They even drank bottles of catsup.” One such m
an appeared on deck next to Graef, feasting on a papaya. “Want a bite?” he asked. “They’ve got vitamins and everything.”
Graef felt the explosion of the boilers and watched as the stern started to sink. The ship would not remain afloat much longer. He grabbed a life preserver and canteen and plunged over the side. He hit the water, surfaced, and started to swim toward a Japanese destroyer on the horizon. The wind and the waves carried him toward the warship. He could see Japanese sailors lining the rails, armed with long poles. The sailors throttled the prisoners in the water and pushed others down under the waves, drowning the starved and exhausted captives. Graef tried to turn back, but the waves pushed him closer. The poles soon came down on him. “They took at least five pokes at me,” he would later tell investigators, “one of them nipping off a piece of my right ear.”
Corporal Donald Meyer, who had survived the voyage by drinking dirty bilge water that had run off the coal and into the scuppers, likewise was shocked by the reactions of other prisoners. The twenty-four-year-old California native, down in the coal hold when the torpedoes hit, grew enraged when the Japanese cut the rope ladders. Rather than drown in the hold, Meyer shimmied up the stanchion. He and others found a rope, lowered it into the hold, and hoisted the severed ladder back up, tying it off so that others could climb up. Not all the prisoners shared his drive to survive. “Some felt that the end had come and appeared to be greatly relieved,” Meyer would later write. “They seemed to just want to be left alone and go down with the ship. Freedom for them had come too late. They sat and waited. A few of them smoked cigarettes.”