by Don Keith
“Let’s go take another shot at him before he gets all the way to Formosa.”
They pulled out to five thousand yards, running all-out, trying to make an end run. Meanwhile, the torpedomen in the bow room reloaded their tubes. By midnight, they were in place, within fifteen hundred yards of the radar blip they had been pursuing for over two hours.
“I see her,” one of the lookouts in the shears called out. “Two points to the starboard of the bow.”
“I see her, too,” Clark Sprinkle said quietly.
There was no longer any doubt. It was the unmistakable profile of a Japanese submarine, possibly an I-class. Jake Fyfe pressed the bridge intercom button.
“We have visual on a Japanese submarine . . . range one thousand yards. Prepare to fire.”
In the forward torpedo room, each man stood poised, sweating, as much from the tension as from the heat in the compartment. In the conn, the firing officer calmly and deliberately fed data from Captain Fyfe and the radar operator into the TDC and relayed the results from the machine to the torpedomen up front.
“Clear the bridge!” Fyfe barked, sending the lookouts below.
There was a risk in that. Once they went below, their night vision would be ruined for a while, but the skipper wanted to be able to dive instantly should this attack go sour, or in case someone else out there in the darkness decided to crash their little party.
He ordered the torpedoes to be made ready. Fyfe could feel the gentle motion of his vessel as the doors on tubes one, two, and three opened and flooded with seawater.
“Ready to fire,” Sprinkle finally reported from below.
“Bridge to conn. Fire when ready,” Fyfe ordered.
“Fire one!” came the response from the conn.
The captain waited, but oddly, there was no recoil in response to the command. Something was wrong. A Mark 18 torpedo weighed close to three thousand pounds—a ton and a half—and had the kick of a mule when it left its tube. But this time, there was nothing.
“Hot run in tube one! Number one failed to fire, Captain! She’s stuck in the tube. About six inches of her nose is outside.”
Torpedoes were not armed to explode immediately upon being fired from their tubes. To allow the weapon to put distance between itself and the boat that fired it, a wire umbilical was snapped at launch, allowing the arming vane in its nose to begin spinning as it made its way toward the target. It usually armed itself over three thousand feet out, ready then to explode on contact with an enemy vessel.
It was certainly possible that the umbilical had been snapped already and the arming vane could be spinning away on the nose of the torpedo that was stuck in the Batfish’s number-one torpedo tube. The torpedomen in the forward compartment knew what they were up against. They had the nose of a live and potent weapon stuck out of tube one and not budging. The torpedo would almost certainly do mortal damage to the submarine should it explode in the tube.
“Fire one again—manually!” Captain Fyfe yelled into the intercom. “And fire number two when ready!”
They had the perfect setup on the enemy target. Even if they were about to be sent to kingdom come by one of their own torpedoes, they could still take the other guy down.
This time everyone on the boat plainly felt the welcome nudge as the fish whooshed away clear. Up on the bridge, Jake Fyfe kept his glasses on the target and tried not to think about the ticking time bomb still in tube one. If the Japanese happened to turn around and look, the Batfish was clearly in sight. Fyfe would have a hard time evading, what with a hot fish in one tube and two other forward doors open to the sea.
Meanwhile, in the forward torpedo room, the torpedomen had evacuated the rest of the crewmen out of the compartment and closed the waterproof door behind them. With only the two men in the room now and working quickly, they hit tube one’s FIRE button three, four, five times. Nothing happened except for a flood of bubbles. The torpedo was still there, its nose sticking just out of the end of the tube.
“Fire three!” Captain Fyfe barked from the bridge. A satisfying kick verified that this one was safely away as well.
In the conn, the assistant attack officer was staring at his stopwatch, marking time since the firing of the weapon from tube two, waiting for the boom that told him they had struck their target. Up on the bridge, Jake Fyfe was keeping his own count, an eye in the direction of the target, praying for a detonation. But he couldn’t keep from worrying about the hot run in tube one.
“What do you recommend we do?” he finally called down to the men in the forward torpedo room.
“Captain, I don’t think we can build up enough pressure to get it out without closing the door. And she’s sticking out beyond the mouth of the tube.”
“Can you tell if she’s armed?”
“Well, sir, we don’t think she got out far enough to arm, but we can’t be sure.”
“Then try to close the door,” Captain Fyfe said.
That might be all it took to set the thing off, but there was no choice. They had to do something.
Without even thinking about the possible consequences any longer, the senior torpedoman jabbed the button to close the door to tube number one. It clanged hard against the nose of the stuck torpedo but the stubborn torpedo still didn’t budge.
He waited a moment and then punched the button again. This time, the door clanged hard against the torpedo, somehow nudging all the way closed, sliding the hot-run weapon backward, deeper into the tube.
The two men held their breath as they forced compressed air into the tube. They had to be careful not to raise the pressure too high or the tube might rupture. That was not a good thing either. The compartment would certainly flood and the two sub sailors would drown. It would also be difficult to submerge with the front room filled with water and a tube ruptured.
Once again, as both men held their breath, the torpedoman opened the tube door to the sea.
“Here goes,” he said and hit the firing switch once again.
Whooosh!
Up on the bridge, Jake Fyfe felt the most wonderful, subtle jolt. An instant later, he heard the confirmation: “Number one fired manually!”
Incredibly, the whole episode had lasted less than a minute.
Jake Fyfe swallowed hard and then sucked in another deep breath. They still had two other torpedoes away, hopefully bearing down on the IJN submarine.
Then, a thousand yards away across the calm sea, a hellish bright sun of concussion illuminated the dark night. A column of fire climbed hundreds of feet into the black sky. Jake Fyfe felt the shock wave of the blast on his face and chest and he was temporarily blinded by the brightness of it.
The men around the radar console below watched as the single blip they had been watching on their screen suddenly disintegrated into many tiny pinpoints of light, then disappeared altogether.
“Permission to come on the bridge?” Clark Sprinkle inquired from below.
“Permission granted.”
The XO climbed up quickly and stared at the continuing explosions and smoke that had once been an Imperial Japanese Navy submarine.
Fyfe smiled broadly. He was proud of his men. Proud of how they had responded to the attack and how well they had carried out their jobs despite the near disaster of the stuck torpedo.
“Radio, tell the rest of the wolf pack we bagged a red one,” Fyfe said.
A minute later, word came up the hatch, “Scabbardfish sends her congratulations and says, ‘Welcome to the club.’ ”
The USS Scabbardfish (SS-397), under the command of Frederick A. “Pop” Gunn, sank an enemy submarine just off the main Japanese island of Honshu on November 28, 1944, a bit over three months before.
The other boats quickly radioed their congratulations as well, but Fyfe knew the fun was over for the moment. There was work yet to be done.
“Clear the bridge. Take her down and let’s reload. There’s supposed to be more of them swimming around out here. Let’s be ready for them.”
With that, the brief celebration was over. With her bridge and decks cleared of crewmen, her hatches shut and dogged, the Batfish slid smoothly beneath the surface of the dark sea. As she did, she slipped through the oil and flotsam, the remains of what had recently been an enemy submarine and her crew.
Over the next three days, the Batfish and her crew stalked and sank two more Japanese submarines. It was an amazing feat, not equaled by any other boat in the war. While sinking three submarines in three days was remarkable, it was especially noteworthy that it was accomplished by another sub. Submarines are designed to shoot at targets on the surface and can have a tough time trying to dispatch vessels like enemy submarines.
Captain Fyfe acknowledged that there was some sadness in taking the lives of fellow submariners, even if they were enemy warriors. The submarine fraternity is a wonderfully close-knit brotherhood.
Shortly after sinking the third enemy sub, Fyfe made a brief announcement on the Batfish’s intercom system, his words ringing throughout the quiet compartments of the boat.
“Within three days, we sank three enemy submarines. There were no survivors. Those men aboard the Japanese subs who died as a result of our actions were combatant enemies. They knowingly risked their lives in war, just as we do. We attacked and sank them in the course of our duty. Within our good fortune that we did not lose our boat or our lives, there is of course some sadness that these submariners have died, and by our hand. But the only way that could have been otherwise in this war, would have been for us to die by theirs. Thank you for your excellence, and congratulations on your success.”
For her amazing accomplishment, the Batfish received the Presidential Unit Citation. She completed a total of seven wartime patrols, all deemed successful, and claimed credit for destroying thirteen enemy vessels. Along the way, she earned nine battle stars, one Navy Cross, four Silver Stars, and ten Bronze Stars in addition to the Presidential Unit Citation.
In the course of her duty, she had struck a series of mighty blows against the enemy.
In the 1960s, a group of Oklahoma submarine veterans decided they wanted a sub as a memorial to their shipmates who did not return from World War II. It was a long shot at best, but those who doubted such an odd thing could be done—putting a submarine in the unlikeliest of places—did not understand the passion of the plan’s pilots.
Using some fortuitous political connections, they convinced the state legislature to create a body that would ultimately be dubbed the Oklahoma Maritime Advisory Board. The irony of a maritime board in a state best known for being a part of the Dust Bowl was apparently lost on the legislative body. Since the bill had the right people supporting it, however, the lawmakers quickly passed it and the veterans—who constituted most of the members of the board once it was established—were in business.
Of course, if anyone had bothered to read the fine print, he would have seen that the law creating the panel only specifically authorized its members to take custody of the USS Piranha (SS-389), the original boat on which the veterans had settled. The legislation purposefully and clearly failed to authorize the board to enter into contracts or spend a penny of the taxpayers’ money for anything—not even pencils and paper, much less a World War II diesel boat and all that would be necessary to bring her to Oklahoma.
The board promptly went right out into the world, signing contracts and spending money, but for another submarine, not for the Piranha.
When members of the oddly named maritime board went down to New Orleans to arrange for the delivery of the boat they thought they wanted, they spied another vessel that happened to be moored nearby. That submarine was the Batfish, and she not only had a more impressive war record, but she was also in better physical shape. The Piranha had been raided, stripped, and much of her World War II equipment cannibalized for use on the remaining few active diesel training boats. Even the Piranha’s conning tower had been removed and hauled off to a museum in Texas, leaving her little more than a headless hulk.
No worries. Like any good sub captains, the board made a midcourse correction to assure the best possible outcome. Protocol and procedure went out the window in the name of expediency. The vets promptly signed up with the navy for delivery of the 310 boat, the Batfish, instead. Without hesitation, they also began entertaining bids to prepare her for the long journey to Muskogee.
When those bids arrived, the board met, approved the selections, and signed the contracts, all without asking permission from anyone. They were confident that they would have an actual, historic submarine open to Oklahomans in short order, and they were intent on doing it without any unnecessary red tape or input from anyone back in Oklahoma City.
But bringing the boat upriver turned out to not be that easy. Some of the problems they faced were political. Others were based simply on the fact that the Arkansas River was not deep or wide enough, and that it made several critical bends that a 311-foot boat would have trouble making. The Army Corps of Engineers were busily working on the problem, not specifically for the Batfish effort but because they had been authorized to make the Arkansas navigable all the way to the outskirts of Tulsa. That was one of the ways the sub vets group sold their idea in the first place to both the Oklahoma legislature and the U.S. Navy. What better way to show off the advantages of this marvelous new transportation route than to bring a saltwater critter like a submarine all the way to the middle of the Dust Bowl?
Of course, none of them counted on a near catastrophe when a big oil tanker sped by the docked submarine in New Orleans only a day or two before she was to begin the trip upriver. The massive wake kicked up by the tanker sank one of the barges that was to help float the sub. Several others were damaged. So was the Batfish, but fortunately not seriously. And it was a miracle that no one was killed or that the Batfish did not end up on the muddy Mississippi River bottom alongside the barge.
But if anyone thought the project would be abandoned, he underestimated the determination of the World War II submarine vets.
After several years of delays—in the spring of 1972, about ten years after the idea was first floated among the submarine veterans—they were finally able to begin the Batfish’s historic journey up the Mississippi River. She pulled away from the Port of New Orleans, propelled by a couple of tugboats, one in front towing, the other behind the submarine, shoving her with its snout. The ingenious method they had devised—a phalanx of barges three to a side and a series of big straps that formed a sling beneath the submarine’s belly—worked even better than anticipated. They made good time, their progress followed by local media along the way as well as by news representatives from back in Oklahoma.
Then, through some complicated navigation, they made a left turn and floated her on up the much more narrow and shallow Arkansas River, still pointing toward her new home. There, in a spot donated by the city of Muskogee, Oklahoma, they intended to have her rest, to open her for visitation “by the schoolchildren of Oklahoma,” as their charter stated.
But simply getting there was only the beginning of her long final patrol. Politics, money, squabbling, floods—they all played a role in the delay in getting the old boat into the final resting spot that had been prepared for her. There were points at which the navy threatened to reclaim the boat and send her off to the scrap yard after all. At other times, the Corps of Engineers threatened to declare her a navigation hazard, a threat to their newly navigable waterway, and to tow her away. A promised bond issue to raise money for moving her out of the river into her slip at the proposed park never materialized. Vendors, who had done their jobs but had not been paid a penny, filed lawsuits. The State of Oklahoma backpedaled from the whole mess, claiming they never authorized any of this, and that, on top of it all, the veterans had brought the wrong submarine upriver. What was this Batfish vessel, and where was the Piranha, the boat specifically named in the authorizing legislation?
The darkest time may have been the winter of 1973. That’s when heavy rains swelled the river
out of its banks and the submarine almost capsized.
But those stubborn submarine vets never gave up. The minutes of the Maritime Advisory Board meetings are filled with optimistic plans and scant few discussions of all the dire predictions about their boat. Eventually, their perseverance paid off.
Volunteers used a bulldozer to help pull the Batfish into a muddy channel that had been scooped out of a former bean field next to the river. With the help of the Corps of Engineers, who closed a floodgate downstream, the level of the Arkansas River was raised so the boat could more easily be nudged into the temporary channel. With that, she began the final three-hundred-yard portion of her journey.
In a park dedicated to veterans of all wars and services, she rests today in a moat of dirt, captured forever by a mound of Dust Bowl soil. Held in place a long, long way from the nearest sea. Half a world away from the site of her three-subs-sunk-in-three-days triumph. At the highest elevation above sea level any submarine had ever been taken.
The complete story of how a submarine came to rest in a former bean field in the middle of the Dust Bowl and Cherokee Indian territory is far more complicated than that, of course. But the bottom line is that the vets, in true submariner fashion, refused to give up on their dream.
The Batfish was unofficially opened to the public on July 4, 1972, half a decade later than originally planned. Despite some rocky times since, the boat is still a part of Muskogee, Oklahoma’s, War Memorial Park, and a fixture alongside the Muskogee Turnpike. More than a few motorists have been startled to glance across the field and see what appears to be a submarine sitting out there in the grass, over a thousand miles from the closest body of salt water. But there she is, where the Verdigris River meets the Arkansas, and she is open much of the year for everyone to see.
The War Memorial Park operates a museum with many Batfish and World War II items inside. Out its back door is a series of bronze stands, bearing the names of the fifty-two submarines lost in the war. Their plaques also include the names of each crewman who was lost aboard those sacred boats. The display is similar to the one at the submarine memorial near the USS Bowfin at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.