Final Patrol

by Don Keith

  “Battle stations,” Lewellen ordered. “Clear the bridge!”

  On August 6, an astounding new weapon called the atomic bomb was loaded aboard a B-29. The bomber carried the nickname Enola Gay. With Colonel Paul Tibbets in the pilot’s seat, the plane left the island of Tinian in the Marianas at 2:45 in the morning, bound for the Japanese Home Islands. Less than six hours later, the bomb bay doors were opened and the atomic weapon was let loose over the city of Hiroshima, a communications center and staging area for Japanese troops. It was also a location in which it had been determined that there were no prisoner of war camps.

  As it was designed to do, the bomb detonated at an elevation of two thousand feet. An estimated seventy-two thousand people died. Another sixty-eight thousand were wounded. The Japanese would later estimate total casualties from that single blast at more than a quarter million. Tibbets and the Enola Gay were back on Tinian by mid-afternoon, their mission a success.

  President Harry Truman announced the use of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima, calling the city a “military base” in his speech. He told the world that it would be the last time such a weapon would be used, providing the Japanese would immediately begin negotiating a peace settlement.

  “If they [the Japanese] do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air the likes of which has never been seen on this earth,” the president warned.

  At the same time, Russia, a country that had remained neutral in the war with Japan (primarily because they were involved on the European front with Germany), declared war and began marching into Manchuria and northern Korea.

  Still there was no hint of surrender from Japan.

  Three days later, in a B-29 named Bock’s Car, Major Charles Sweeney led his crew toward a second designated target, the city of Kokura. The target was covered with thick clouds that morning. The poor weather spared Kokura.

  Major Sweeney, running low on fuel, turned away and went to his secondary objective, the port city of Nagasaki. At a few minutes before 11 a.m. on August 9, the second atomic bomb fell from the B-29’s belly. As many as 100,000 eventually died as a result.

  The argument rages to this day as to whether such mass destruction and loss of life were necessary. Some say the Japanese were already preparing for surrender and the end of the war was inevitable. Others argue that there were plenty of indications that they would have fought on as long as they could, that a costly invasion would have been necessary to end the war. That segment maintains that the two atomic blasts actually saved hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides of the conflict, not to mention those thousands of people who were wasting away in POW and work camps around the Pacific.

  Either way, the second bomb did what it was intended to do. It ultimately brought the Pacific Ocean part of World War II to an abrupt end.

  The day following the Nagasaki conflagration, Emperor Hirohito, the Japanese leader, told his cabinet to accept the unconditional surrender terms that the Allies were demanding.

  Nothing had changed for the submarines patrolling the waters all around the Japanese islands. They received the radio reports of the two bombings. Many reacted with disbelief. How was such a weapon possible? And if their own country had been able to develop such an awful bomb, could others now do the same?

  With no peace treaty yet signed, and with a frightening number of the planes and warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy continuing to shoot in anger, Admiral Charles Lockwood, the Pacific submarine commander, ordered his boats to continue as they had been doing, to sink any vessel flying a rising sun flag.

  That was all Bafford Lewellen and the crew of the Torsk had on their minds as they prepared to engage whatever new targets were now dimpling their radarscopes. It did not take them long to determine that these latest interlopers were small coastal defense frigates, about eight hundred tons each. They were warships and did pose something of a threat—if not to the Torsk, then to other Allied vessels.

  The submarine and her crew did exactly what the boat was designed to do and what the men had trained for, and what Admiral Lockwood had told them to do. They attacked and promptly sank both of the Japanese ships.

  Interestingly, the final torpedo fired by the Torsk was one of the new acoustic Mark 27 weapons. The sub did not have to be on or near the surface to shoot those weapons. The torpedo was designed to seek the sound of a ship’s screws and chase it down. Both the conventional torpedo that was fired initially and the new acoustic fish, fired from a depth of about four hundred feet, hit their targets and sent the frigates for which they were intended to the bottom. The crew of the Torsk clearly heard both explosions on impact and the sweet sound of a vessel breaking up from the pressure of inrushing water.

  “Good job, men,” Lewellen said over the boat’s communicator. “Let’s stay alert and ready.”

  But first they had to keep their heads down. Enemy planes and patrol craft from the nearby Japanese mainland kept them under for over seven hours after their successful attack.

  Of course the skipper had no idea that he and his torpedomen had just launched the last torpedoes of World War II. Or that they had just sunk the last Japanese combatant vessels of the conflict.

  Simply by aggressively doing their duty, they had made history.

  Late on the night of August 14, 1945, Admiral Chester Nimitz, the naval commander of the Pacific theater, sent the simple, straightforward message to all of his units:CEASE OFFENSIVE OPERATIONS AGAINST JAPANESE FORCES. CONTINUE SEARCH AND PATROLS. MAINTAIN DEFENSIVE AND INTERNAL SECURITY MEASURES AT HIGHEST LEVEL AND BEWARE OF TREACHERY OR LAST MOMENT ATTACKS BY ENEMY FORCES OR INDIVIDUALS.

  Admiral Lockwood reiterated the message to his submarine commanders. Be careful. Keep up your guard. Keep the tubes loaded. But the war with Japan was apparently over, three months short of the fourth anniversary of its fiery beginning at Pearl Harbor.

  As with most other commanders, Bafford Lewellen on the Torsk was more than willing to allow those not on watch a celebratory ration of medicinal brandy. As his men up and down the length of the submarine whooped and hollered and sang bawdy songs, the skipper could not help but think back on where he had been over the last couple of years.

  He had inherited a good crew on both boats. The Pollack was an old Perch-class submarine, built before the war, and she had been stationed at Pearl Harbor at the end of 1941. She was on the way back to Pearl from refitting at Mare Island, California, on December 7, 1941. By the end of December, she was swimming in Japanese waters and shooting at anything she could find.

  Lewellen had a couple of close calls when he took over the boat. One night off Honshu, he led a surface attack on a group of freighters. They were about to dive deeper and drive away from the scene when, suddenly, the boat was shaken hard by an awful blast nearby. The explosion almost buckled her hull, brutally thrusting her out of the water like a toy. Then there was an eerie glow of fire all around the Pollack, as if they had accidentally surfaced in the midst of the fire and brimstone of Hades. Men were knocked to the deck up and down the length of the boat by the detonation, but there were only bumps and scrapes. No one seemed seriously hurt and the damage to the sub’s systems was quickly repaired so they could be on their way.

  The only thing the crew could figure might account for the near-fatal explosion was that one of the torpedoes they dispatched had failed to run. Instead it dropped straight down when it emerged from the tube and detonated. Had it happened a moment sooner, before they had moved away a few feet, the old boat would have been lost for certain.

  A few nights later, Lewellen and the Pollack were surprised mid-attack by a destroyer that had somehow sneaked up on them. Suddenly the boat was bathed in the warship’s searchlight beam. The skipper, figuring they were goners either way, sent two torpedoes spinning away, right down the throat of the destroyer. Then, seemingly in the same move, he and his men tried to take the boat deep, to run and hide.

  But suddenly the submarine cocked downward at a shockingly deep a
ngle, almost standing on her nose as she plunged toward the bottom of the ocean, thousands of feet below them. The bow dive planes, the “wings” that help control the angle of dives and surfacing, had failed.

  They were out of control!

  Of course they would never reach the bottom in one piece. As they plummeted past three hundred feet in depth, everyone heard the old boat begin creaking and groaning under the strain of the pressure. Lewellen yelled the orders to put the engines in full emergency reverse and to blow all the ballast tanks, emptying them of water so they would be more buoyant.

  All the time he prayed quietly. So did most men aboard, even as they did what they were trained to do in such an emergency.

  Later, in his patrol report, Lewellen wrote:No one could stand anywhere aboard the Pollack without support. Men were hanging on to hatches, tables, controls . . . the noise was terrific. A submarine’s equipment is stored for a reasonable down angle, but this angle was utterly beyond the bounds of reason. All over the boat a roar like summer thunder sounded as equipment fell or dropped or poured out of storage spaces.

  Ultimately, when the depth gauges read more than 450 feet—200 feet deeper than the boat’s hull was built to withstand—they were able to stop the nosedive, but the actions taken to accomplish that sent them streaking right back toward the surface in exactly the same kind of wild ride, only up this time.

  To the surprise of the sailors on the deck of the IJN destroyer, the Pollack shot out of the sea, almost from beneath their ship. Somehow Lewellen and his crew were able to gain control, though, and take her back down before the enemy vessel could come after her.

  His time on the Torsk had not been nearly so exciting. Soon, though, her skipper and crew would learn of their place in the history books. He and his boat would receive credit for sinking over twenty-four hundred tons of shipping in her second and final war patrol. She and the crew were able to accomplish that even though the run was cut short by the most awful weapon in military history, the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

  The Torsk had another spot reserved for her in the annals of submarine lore. By the end of September 1945, she was through the Panama Canal again, this time headed eastward once more for New England. She had a job to do at the navy’s submarine school at New London, Connecticut. For the next ten years, she was part of Submarine Squadron Eight, serving as a “school boat” for young would-be submariners. For most of that decade, she went out into Long Island Sound and the Atlantic waters, even spending time in the Caribbean and Mediterranean seas, and in the process of teaching sailors how it was done she dutifully performed dive after dive, almost every day of her service. Since the submersions were all logged and since they could be added to those dives already recorded in the accounts of her war patrols, someone was ultimately able to calculate and compare and make a final declaration.

  Before she was even a teenager, the Torsk became the “divingest” submarine in naval history. And her service was only half complete. By her final decommissioning, she had made over 10,600 dives, easily more than five times as many as the average boat. And, as submariners love to point out, she also surfaced an equal number of times.

  There were other milestones in her long career. She underwent her snorkel conversion in 1952. In 1959, she made a rare excursion for a submarine when she took part in the ceremonies marking the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway. From there, she steamed down the St. Lawrence into the Great Lakes and made much-heralded stops at Milwaukee, Chicago, and Buffalo. Thousands came down to the piers to visit and tour the historic boat, most of them getting their first look at a real, live submarine.

  In 1960, she received the Presidential Unit Citation for her role during the Lebanon crisis. She helped enforce the blockade of Cuba in 1962 during and after the missile crisis, for which she received the Navy Commendation Medal. During that service, crew members actually stopped and boarded Russian ships, inspecting them, looking for missiles and parts during the most intense standoff since World War II.

  After more time as a training vessel at the Washington Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., the Torsk was finally forced into retirement. By that time, she had accumulated almost twelve thousand dives, a record that will surely stand since today’s modern nuclear submarines typically dive and stay submerged for weeks at a time.

  Fortunately, in 1972, the state of Maryland recognized the historical significance of the old girl and sought her for a submarine memorial to be built at the Inner Harbor in Baltimore. In addition to her other significant accomplishment, the Torsk is also one of only two surviving Tench-class boats. The other is the USS Requin (SS-481), now at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

  The Tench boats are very similar in size and design to the Gato and Balao submarines. The only difference is that they had stronger hulls and a better interior design for the ballast tanks and machinery.

  Only ten Tench-class boats saw action in World War II. Construction stopped on two boats that were being built when the war ended. Four others were completed as GUPPY II conversions. Of the eighty boats of this design that were planned, a total of twenty-five were finished and commissioned. Several of those were eventually sold to foreign navies, including Turkey, Taiwan, Canada, Brazil, Pakistan, and Greece.

  When the war ended, the United States suddenly had more submarines than it needed. She was able to hold a rather interesting garage sale.

  In addition to the Torsk, the Maritime Museum at Baltimore also features the U.S. Coast Guard cutter USCGC Taney (WHEC-37), the last warship active at Pearl Harbor in December 1941 that is still afloat. Also nearby is the lightship Chesapeake (LV-116), along with the National Aquarium and other Inner Harbor attractions. The USS Constellation , the last all-sail warship, and its museum are located only steps away as well. With her tall masts and array of sails, she is quite a sight to behold.

  The Torsk is blessed with a very active volunteer group. Several regular volunteers can often be found aboard on weekends, giving special presentations on the submarine specifically and silent service history in general.

  Volunteer “Work Weekends” are held regularly, usually once in the spring and again in the fall, and volunteers come in from all over the country to work aboard the submarine.

  As with some of the other museum boats around the country, the Torsk has an active amateur radio club aboard that at times operates out of the boat’s original radio room. Many of the submarine ham radio groups hold an operating event each spring in which stations on the museum boats are manned and on the air during the weekend, communicating with each other. At the same time, other amateur radio enthusiasts around the country and the world are able to talk with the submarine stations. This event is designed to raise awareness among the thousands of amateur radio enthusiasts of the museum boats while giving visitors to the submarines on those weekends a look at the radio hobby.

  USS REQUIN (SS-481)

  Courtesy of the U.S. Navy

  USS REQUIN (SS-481)

  Class: Tench

  Launched: January 1, 1945

  Named for: the requin, a sand shark

  Where: Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, New Hampshire

  Sponsor: Mrs. Slade D. Cutter, wife of one of World War II’s most storied submarine commanders—and the first skipper of the USS Requin

  Commissioned: April 28, 1945

  Where is she today?

  Carnegie Science Center

  1 Allegheny Avenue

  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15212

  (412) 237-1550

  www.csc.clpgh.org/

  Claim to fame: Though she never got to use her weaponry in combat, the USS Requin did begin her service under the command of perhaps the most decorated commander in submarine history, Slade Cutter. She also went on to become one of the navy’s first radar picket boats, a first line of defense against nuclear attack.

  Admiral Charles Lockwood once said, “Slade Cutter could find Japanese ships in Pearl Harbor!” He w
as talking about the submarine skipper who seemed to have an uncanny ability to locate enemy vessels, no matter where he was patrolling at the time. And, to make it a complete package, Cutter also had coolness under pressure and a knack for knowing exactly the best course to steer to line up for an attack on those ships once he spotted them.

  For that reason, it was something of a surprise when the submarine ace suddenly got orders during a monthlong leave back in the States to proceed to Portsmouth for a new-construction command. And to top it off, the new boat was to be sponsored by none other than his wife, Frances.

  That submarine was the USS Requin.

  The plan all along was for Cutter to return to the boat he was in prior to the R&R leave to the mainland, the USS Seahorse (SS-304). He was to resume his command for that vessel’s sixth war patrol. It was aboard the Seahorse that he and his crew sank an amazing twenty-one ships for better than 142,000 tons destroyed, and all that in only four war patrols (after the war, that total was cut to nineteen ships, 72,000 tons, by JANAC, but the tally still placed Cutter in a tie for second for the number of vessels sunk). Even the captain who took the helm of the Seahorse while Cutter was resting, Charles Wilkins, promised not to change a thing aboard the boat while he was gone.

  As Wilkins said, “I’m just borrowing the boat for one run.”

  The navy had other plans for Cutter, and her name was the Requin.

  The son of a corn farmer from Illinois, Slade Cutter became an all-American tackle and field goal kicker for the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. He was a pretty good football player and was eventually elected to the College Football Hall of Fame. It was his field goal that gave Navy a 3-0 win over Army in 1934, their first victory over their hated rivals in thirteen years.