Final Patrol

by Don Keith

  The park did sustain considerable damage from Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. The battleship—on which a number of park employees and their families rode out the deadly storm—was left listing at an obvious angle, the gift shop and ticket area were heavily damaged, and the aircraft pavilion and many of the planes inside were also seriously damaged.

  And the submarine? The Drum, which took all that pounding in the Pacific and bounced back to fight some more, was not harmed in the least during the vicious hurricane.

  The park was reopened to the public in January 2006.

  USS SILVERSIDES (SS-236)

  Courtesy of the U.S. Navy

  USS SILVERSIDES (SS-236)

  Class: Gato

  Launched: August 26, 1941

  Named for: a small fish marked with a silvery stripe down its sides

  Where: Mare Island Navy Yard, Vallejo, California

  Sponsor: Mrs. Elizabeth H. Hogan

  Commissioned: December 15, 1941, eight days after the attack on Pearl Harbor

  Where is she today?

  Great Lakes Naval Memorial and Museum

  1346 Bluff Street

  Muskegon, Michigan 49441

  (231) 755-1230

  www.silversides.org

  Claim to fame: Nicknamed “the Lucky Boat” because of her amazing record of survival, she was also one of the most successful submarines of the war. She was the scene of what was undoubtedly the most publicized medical procedure of the war.

  She was a West Coast boat, born within sight of San Francisco, named for a flashy little fish with a fashionable racing stripe down its sides. But she had a catchy nickname, one that fit her well.

  The moniker “the Lucky Boat” did not come easily. The USS Silversides (SS-236) earned it the hard way—by surviving a long series of close calls while building the war’s third-best record among all submarines for enemy vessels destroyed, then by sticking around so we could all stop by and take a look at her. The first two subs on the elite list are no longer around for us to see.

  One’s life ended tragically early. The USS Tang (SS-306) was sunk by one of her own malfunctioning torpedoes in October 1944. Miraculously, nine men survived the freak event. Enemy vessels subsequently picked them up. As prisoners of war, they were brutally tortured, often by survivors of ships they had previously sunk, but they made it through the war. Though those men were lucky to have survived, their boat and the rest of her brave crew did not.

  The number-two boat in number of vessels sunk was the USS Tautog (SS-199). Though she survived the war and served as a training vessel until 1959, she was eventually scrapped.

  That leaves the Silversides as the most successful surviving submarine of World War II. And, on many counts, she’s lucky to still be around.

  Her commissioning skipper, Lieutenant Commander Creed Burlingame from Louisville, Kentucky, was a classmate of Bob Rice, the first skipper of the USS Drum. Young Mr. Burlingame quickly gained a reputation as a swashbuckling, devil-may-care submarine commander, a captain who preferred cruising on the surface as much as he could manage, driving right into the middle of trouble before blasting away and wreaking havoc all around him and his boat. Central Casting could not have devised a more flashy, daring character than Creed Burlingame.

  The first executive officer (second in command) on the Silversides was Burlingame’s polar opposite, though. Roy Davenport was a teetotaler, which put him in a distinct minority among submariners. He was also a devout Christian Scientist. That made him the constant butt of jokes from his captain, but everyone aboard agreed the juxtaposition at the top of their boat’s command structure made them a good team.

  On her first patrol, Burlingame took them almost all the way to the Japanese Home Islands on the surface, cruising along at top speed as if they had cargo overdue in Tokyo, before running into the last blustery remnants of a typhoon. That’s when the lookouts and radar spied a Japanese trawler.

  If the new crew of the Silversides had any doubts about the aggressiveness of their skipper, they immediately faded. With a quick, decisive order to man battle stations, Burlingame launched a surface attack, using their deck guns. A trawler would have been hard to hit with torpedoes while submerged. The surface attack was their best strategy, even if it was daring and even more dangerous than submerging. Still, it was an enemy warship and they had been sent out here to sink anything that carried the rising sun flag.

  And that is precisely what they did. They managed to quickly send the IJN vessel down in smoke and flames for their off-the-showroom-floor vessel’s first confirmed kill. But the win came with a heavy price.

  During the skirmish, a young enlisted man named Michael Harbin, who was manning one of the deck guns, was struck by returned gunfire. The sailor died instantly. He was the first submariner in the war to be killed in submarine gun action.

  Three days later, Burlingame and his lookouts in the shears spotted a Japanese submarine on the surface. In one of the forward torpedo tubes rested a torpedo with the name “Michael Harbin” scribbled in chalk on its side. That’s the fish the skipper ordered launched in the direction of the enemy sub.

  Captain Burlingame reported an explosion and claimed a kill, but postwar records failed to confirm the loss of an enemy submarine. The Japanese documentation had no submarine listed at that place and time, though the captain and his crew clearly saw it and watched it disintegrate.

  Confirmed kill or not, they had exacted a small amount of revenge for Torpedoman Third Class Mike Harbin.

  A few weeks later, the Silversides was patrolling off the coast of Japan when she encountered a small convoy of enemy vessels working their way precariously through a large number of sampans, fishermen laying out nets. That was a typical strategy for the Japanese navy, assuming American warships and aircraft would be hesitant to attack when innocent fishermen might be hurt in the cross fire.

  They underestimated Creed Burlingame.

  He immediately ordered his maneuvering room to proceed at top speed, to do the best they could to miss the small fishing boats, but not to worry if they shoved any of them aside to get to the fat, juicy targets that hid among them. Then, as they lined up for an attack, the skipper took them down so they could draw close enough to get some of the enemy ships within range. The crew prepared to launch torpedoes at one particular freighter the captain decided would be the first to meet its demise.

  As they arrived at about sixty feet deep, Burlingame lowered the periscope from its enclosure, snapped down the handles, turned in the direction of the enemy vessel, and took a long look.

  “What the . . . ?” he asked no one in particular, the surprise evident in his voice.

  “What is it, Captain?”

  “It looks like . . . well . . . we have a Japanese flag tied to our periscope!”

  “Sir?”

  It was true. A small rising sun was somehow tied to their shears, riding along with them as they prepared to attack.

  Only then did Burlingame realize that they had gotten entangled in a fishing net. A small glass ball attached to a bamboo pole had buoyed the net. And atop that pole was a Japanese flag.

  The captain swung the periscope around and it seemed to be moving freely, not bound by the netting. The flag was not blocking his view either. There was no report of any mechanical problems with the boat. The screws were turning. The dive planes functioned smoothly.

  Fishing net or not, the attack was still on.

  Their first torpedo hit the freighter amidships and there was a massive, reverberating explosion. Flames and smoke seemed to fill Burlingame’s field of vision. More of their torpedoes damaged another freighter and a tanker before a destroyer appeared in the scope sights and headed their way. That new arrival chased them deep, raining down over a dozen depth charges.

  Thankfully, the fishing net tangled all around her sail did not inhibit the boat’s external systems. She was able to dive to avoid the attack.

  After a while, the Silversides surfaced, then too
k a long look around to make sure there were no other warships or enemy airplanes about. Then they emerged on deck to cut away the nets and the enemy flag.

  After modest success on her second and third war patrols, the Silversides pulled out on her fourth run from Brisbane, on Australia’s eastern coast, in mid-December 1942. Her crew had long since adopted their skipper’s rather raffish demeanor. As they powered away from the wharf, each man on deck wore nonregulation Aussie “digger” hats. Even their sober XO, Roy Davenport, got into the mood, playing an off-key version of “Waltzing Matilda” on the dented old trombone he always carried with him.

  Such a bizarre beginning foretold one of the most storied events in submarine lore. It was appropriate that it occurred on “the Lucky Boat.”

  About a week into the fourth patrol and after they were well at sea, far from the nearest sizable point of land or civilization, Pharmacist’s Mate Tom Moore went to the captain to report a rather serious development. One of the enlisted men was complaining of a serious stomachache.

  “You don’t guess he’s still feeling the effects of Brisbane, do you?” the skipper asked. He knew the answer already. And though they were rolling a bit on moderate seas, he suspected this was not a case of sea-sickness either.

  “No, sir. I’ve never seen a hangover last a week. And besides, he’s running a fever and his belly is hard as a hatch cover.”

  “Appendicitis?”

  “Yes, sir. I’d bet on it.”

  Burlingame scratched his chin and pondered the options.

  “We’re a hell of a long way from an operating room, Doc.” Pharmacist’s mates were typically called Doc, even though they certainly were not doctors. “Do what you can. We’ll take the boat down to keep her steady while you do whatever you have to.”

  Moore was twenty-two years old and trained to treat blisters, bad colds, carbuncles, and typical, minor shipboard wounds. He had no surgical instruments aboard and no serious anesthesia. His surgical experience consisted of stitching up some gashes from bar fights ashore and the usual lesions caused by bumped heads aboard the submarine. He was still the best they had. Nobody else on board who might be willing to assist in an operation had anywhere near that much medical background.

  “I will, sir.”

  The afflicted sailor, George Platter, was in an even worse condition when Moore got back to him. He was wracked with fever, tossing on his bunk. If the appendix ruptured, the sailor would surely die.

  The pharmacist’s mate quickly corralled some volunteers, procured some eating utensils from the enlisted men’s mess, and went to work. They laid the sailor out on the table in the crew’s mess. Others gathered up all the lights they could manage and trained them on the makeshift operating table.

  The medicinal whiskey every submarine carried was used as anesthesia. There, in a submerged submarine at sea, Tom Moore removed George Platter’s gangrenous appendix. All the while, Roy Davenport said prayers and the crew tried to keep the boat as stable as they could manage.

  The operation was a success. Platter would survive.

  Not until later would the crew learn that this had actually been the third time an appendectomy was performed aboard a submarine. This particular one would catch the attention of the nation, though. The story appeared in major newspapers and would eventually be reenacted in the movie Destination Tokyo and featured in an episode of The Silent Service television series. It was a great morale builder, both for those fighting the war and for the folks back home. It made a great conversation starter for the crew on the next liberty, too!

  As soon as he could, the captain brought the Silversides to the surface for fresh air and a battery charge. But almost immediately, the lookouts spotted what they thought to be a Japanese submarine. The boat was sent to battle stations and two torpedoes were launched from the stern tubes. With the fish away, Burlingame hurriedly took the boat back down, out of sight.

  Suddenly, the sub was shaken hard by a thunderous explosion and the entire ship bucked as if shaken by some mighty hand. Apparently, one of their own torpedoes detonated only a short distance from the launch tube, maybe as a result of the disturbance of the Silversides’ own wake. Whatever caused it, the detonation rocked them hard, knocking sailors to the deck and dislodging objects from their resting places. Leaks sprung up and down the length of the sub. Damage teams quickly determined that there were apparently no major problems.

  “This [explosion] blew the stern out of the water and us out of our wits,” Burlingame would later dryly recount in the patrol report.

  To make matters worse, the target turned out to not be a sub at all. It was an angry destroyer, hungry to bag the American submarine that had almost blown herself up. The warship circled overhead for hours, dropping depth charges, watching for an oil slick or debris that would indicate they had done their job. The haggard crew of the Silversides remained under far longer than was comfortable.

  Finally, at about dawn, it grew quiet on the surface above them. There were no more signs of the irritated destroyer. The captain decided he had to poke his head up and confirm whether their tormentor was gone at last.

  But as soon as they came to periscope depth and he poked the scope above the surface, another terrible explosion threw the boat violently sideways, followed almost immediately by two more blasts that were, if anything, even more vicious. Up and down the length of the Silversides, men who were lying down to conserve air were thrown from their bunks. That included George Platter, still under the influence of Tom Moore’s makeshift anesthesia. Lightbulbs shattered, pipes ruptured, and gauge covers spidered from the intensity of the concussion.

  “In a year of being depth charged, we had never had one so close,” the skipper would later write. “I thought the conning tower was being wrenched loose. . . .”

  “Dive! Dive!” Burlingame shouted, and he felt the boat immediately assume a sharp downward angle beneath his feet.

  Much too sharp, the skipper noted.

  The bow planes were frozen, likely damaged from the sudden attack, and the Silversides plummeted dangerously, heading much too fast toward the distant, cold bottom of the sea.

  Before they knew it, they were quickly past test depth, about as deep as they could safely go, yet they were still hurtling toward what submariners term “crush depth.” That’s the point where the weight of water can squash the thick steel hull of a vessel—even one as well designed and built as the Silversides—as if it were made of balsa wood.

  Somehow the crew members were able to fight the dive and pull her out, balancing the water and compressed air in her ballast tanks and wrestling with the balky dive planes. But they were too deep for the gauges to accurately measure. The hull that protected them from the pressure of the seawater groaned and creaked as if in agony.

  They would all have been gulping in air, taking a deep breath, but there was not enough left in the submarine to do that. As they worked, they sucked in as much of the fetid oxygen as they could, but it was barely enough.

  Slowly, being careful not to make a sudden move and send the boat back into another uncontrolled dive, they eased upward—but not too far upward and certainly not too fast. The destroyer they had made mad was still up there, still dropping the occasional load of TNT onto their heads. If they weren’t careful, they could overcompensate during their ascent and send the boat suddenly bobbing to the surface like a fishing cork, popping up right there in plain sight of their dogged tormentors.

  It was no consolation when the captain shared with his officers that the big blasts that had sent them deep had most likely not been depth charges at all, but bombs, dropped from an airplane. Burlingame told them he had glimpsed the aircraft through the periscope just before its pilot tried to send them all to Davy Jones’s locker.

  No matter the cause, they had emergency repairs to complete to get the boat ready to surface. When the coast appeared to finally be clear, Burlingame tentatively brought his boat to the top.

  The ocean and the sky
above them appeared to be empty.

  “Anybody have a headache?” the captain asked those around him in the conning tower. They looked back at him, confused. “Headaches? From all that thunder? Seems like we might need some medicinal whiskey if we are experiencing any pain. Right?”

  “Yes, sir!” they all agreed, many of them vigorously rubbing their temples.

  “Then break it out. Oh, and Merry Christmas!”

  Sure enough, Christmas Day had crept up on them while they were doing emergency surgery, dodging explosions, and nearly losing their boat to the clutching fist of the Pacific Ocean.

  In his patrol report, Creed Burlingame wrote, “We added [the whiskey] to our powdered eggs and canned milk. With a lot of imagination it tasted almost like eggnog.”

  Oh, and George Platter made a complete recovery from his emergency surgery. The young sailor was standing regular watch duty aboard “the Lucky Boat” only six days later.

  The Silversides successfully completed fourteen war patrols and, in the process, sank twenty-three ships. She was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation, the highest award for a navy ship, for each of four patrols, and received twelve combat insignia battle stars for successful war patrols.

  She completed a “hat trick,” sinking three ships in a single engagement, on four different occasions.

  Creed Burlingame was on the bridge for five of her war runs, John S. Coye for six, and John C. Nichols for the final three. Along the way, she not only racked up amazing devastation against the enemy but also survived numerous depth charges, dive-bombings, and even a “hot run” in her own torpedo tube.

  A hot run was when a torpedo became lodged in the tube and failed to swim away toward the target as it was supposed to do. The weapon is not supposed to be armed until it is out of the tube, but there is no way for the torpedomen to be sure of that. In some cases, captains had to slam the door closed against the torpedo’s nose, trying to drive it back inside the tube, so it could be pressurized again and either refired or removed from the tube.