by Peter Sasgen
Exercising caution Edge closed in, mindful that Japanese ships often used red flares to signal other ships at night. Even so, Edge gave the okay to fire an answering flare from the Bonefish’s Very pistol, which was answered immediately by another red flare. Still on guard, Edge eased the Bonefish toward the dying flare. The Navy fliers in their rubber boat saw the shadowy outline of a submarine approaching, heard her sputtering diesels, and fired another flare. This one brought the Bonefish within shouting distance of them, fifty yards off her starboard bow.
Happy Bonefish sailors hauled aboard the pilot and enlisted aviation gunner’s mate of a Navy SB2C Helldiver from the USS Bunker Hill (CV-17). They’d been shot down during a skip-bombing attack on the burning ships Edge had spotted earlier. The Helldiver had caught a burst of antiaircraft fire from the ground and went down with a shot-up engine. The two airmen had rowed toward land all afternoon against strong currents that eventually pushed them back out to sea. With the men safely aboard the Bonefish, Edge turned her nose south for Australia.
Edge’s sixth patrol report received glowing endorsements from Admiral Christie and from Edge’s squadron and division commanders. They praised Edge for his excellent coverage of the patrol area, his aggressive attacks, and the rescue of two airmen. For this outstanding patrol Edge was recommended for the Navy Cross, the Bonefish for a fifth Navy Unit Commendation. Flush with success Edge and his crew received new orders via the commandant of the Twelfth Naval District, San Francisco, California:PROCEED HUNTERS POINT LAND TORPEDOES X AWAIT ARRIVAL OF STATION PILOT TO PROCEED TO BETHLEHEM STEEL FOOT SIXTEENTH STREET DOCK SAN FRANCISCO FOR OVERHAUL X CONSULT ASSISTANT NAVAL INDUSTRIAL MANAGER SAN FRANCISCO FERRY BUILDING RE WORK REQUIRED X COMTWELVE SENDS5
The men were ecstatic. A return to the States meant extended shore leave to spend with family and friends. For Lawrence Edge it meant that he’d be reunited with his beloved Sarah and Boo, whom he’d yearned for so passionately during those long, lonely, grueling months at sea when all he could do was dream of a far-off day when he would return home to shower them with all the love he’d kept pent up in his heart.
Per standard procedure, Edge’s sixth war patrol report worked its way through the Navy’s chain of command, ending at the top with Cominch Admiral King. Edge’s performance had caught Lockwood’s eye back in Pearl Harbor and garnered ComSubPac’s glowing endorsement. Lockwood directed his flag secretary to draft a private message for Edge’s eyes only that would in time catch up to him in the States. Edge was a skipper to watch, a skipper who would be a perfect choice for the top-secret operation Lockwood had been planning and which he intended to spring on the Japanese before next summer was out.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Long Road to Tokyo
Around the time that the Bonefish was standing out from Fremantle on her sixth war patrol in September 1944, Lockwood received the news he’d been hoping for: Eleven FM sonar sets assembled under a contract let to Western Electric by the Navy had been approved for shipment to ComSubPac. Lockwood was not only thrilled that his request for sets had been fulfilled so soon, but also that Admirals King and Nimitz had plowed past the Navy’s nearly impenetrable wall of bureaucracy to ensure that the sets got into the hands of the sub force. Still, getting them installed in the boats was going to be a slow process, what with the production delays affecting electronic equipment destined for the fleet. FMS, as it was now being called, was no exception.
In late September and early October two FMS units arrived in Mare Island. One set was installed in the recently overhauled USS Tinosa (SS-283), a veteran of seven war patrols and skippered by her new CO, Commander Richard Latham, from New London, Connecticut. The other set went aboard the USS Tunny (SS-282), skippered by Commander George Pierce, who was born in Colón, Panama, and graduated from the academy in 1932. These two subs were the first to have retractable sonar transducers installed below their keels under the forward torpedo room.
Certain that delivery of FMS units to the sub force would accelerate, Lockwood began to lay plans for an important first step toward the mission that would eventually culminate in the raid on the Sea of Japan: detailing an FMS-equipped submarine to map the outer boundaries of minefields guarding that sea. A mapping operation might accomplish two things: Demonstrate under actual combat conditions FMS’s ability to locate enemy mines, and produce the first-ever accurate plot of the extent and location of the outer reaches of the actual minefields that the subs would have to penetrate to reach their targets. Of course, one sub working alone could map only a small portion of the minefields, but it was a start. And as more FMS units became available other subs would follow this pioneering effort. Once an accurate map had been compiled it should then be possible to enter the sea by steering an FMS-plotted course through the minefields. The sooner Lockwood had the mine plots for study, the sooner he could prepare a mission prospectus for presentation to Nimitz and King.
As the FMS units in the Tinosa and Tunny underwent rigorous static testing by UCDWR technicians, their crews, like the Spadefish’s before them, received instruction in their use by Dr. Henderson himself. Tests aboard the Tunny off San Diego showed once again how effective the sonar system could be when it was properly tuned and in the hands of a trained operator who understood its peculiarities. Nonetheless, the Tinosa’s Richard Latham, who himself had serious doubts about the effectiveness of FMS, discovered that to a man, his crew shared his feelings. No one had to explain what was in store for them on a future war patrol. Worse yet, more than half of the men in Latham’s crew wanted off the submarine. And who could blame them? Torpedoing Japanese ships was one thing; toying with live mines was something else. Rather than try to win them over, Latham simply had those men who wanted off transferred to other submarines. Latham would not be the only skipper to face this problem, one that would soon loom large in Lockwood’s thinking as well.
Meanwhile, at Pearl Harbor, Lockwood grappled with a host of problems unrelated to FMS. Though submarines were enjoying greater success than they had heretofore (improved torpedo performance and bolder tactics accounted for a good part of this success), losses continued to mount. In four months half a score of subs and eight hundred men had been lost, most of them to direct enemy action but also, Lockwood suspected, to enemy mines. Then there was the USS Tang (SS-306). Operating off the coast of China, she had apparently been sunk by one of her own torpedoes that had made a circular run and come back to kill her. Whether there had been any survivors from the Tang was not known. At night, alone in his quarters, Lockwood grumbled, “God damn the torpedoes and God damn the Japs.”
One bright spot, aside from FMS, was that with the conquest of Guam and Saipan, Lockwood now had forward operating bases thousands of miles closer to empire waters. He sent two submarine tenders ahead to refit and rearm submarines operating from those new bases. A floating dry dock would soon follow the tenders. Seabees had built a rest camp on Guam for submariners and were building one on Saipan. That Lockwood planned to set up his Submarine Pacific Advanced Headquarters on Guam in January was ample proof that the United States was rolling back the Japanese on every front in the Pacific. Admiral Nimitz planned to move his own headquarters there in January.
Nevertheless, FMS and the Sea of Japan raid were never far from Lockwood’s thinking. In late November, the Tinosa arrived in Pearl Harbor fresh from Mare Island and FMS testing. Eager to see her perform, Lockwood put to sea with Latham on Thanksgiving Day for a run at the dummy minefield off Oahu. The results were generally good. It proved that the keel-mounted transducer in the Tinosa performed better than the deck-mounted one in the Spadefish. It easily detected mines, which the PPI and hell’s bells rendered with exceptional clarity.
After completing an intensive course of FMS training under Lockwood’s personal supervision, Latham and his men, half of them a draft of replacements, received orders to patrol the Nansei Shoto, Formosa, and East China Sea areas. It was Latham’s first war patrol as a commanding officer and, it might b
e said, FMS guinea pig. The orders included a provision to explore the fringes of the patrol area for mines, especially around Okinawa, which was scheduled for invasion in early April 1945, and, if any were found, to plot their positions. This would be an important test of FMS, and Lockwood had a lot riding on its successful employment and on Latham’s skill.
On December third Lockwood watched the Tinosa stand out from her berth at Ten-ten dock at the Pearl Harbor sub base. He believed that he’d done everything he could to ensure Latham’s success. All he had to do now was wait for the results. After the Tinosa sailed, an optimistic Lockwood returned to his office to begin drafting a prospectus for the Japan Sea raid. This was it: The mission would either get the go-ahead or get the ax. The prospectus landed on Nimitz’s desk a few days later.
TOP SECRET
From: The Commander Submarine Force, Pacific Fleet.
To: The Commander-in-Chief, United States Fleet.
Via: The Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet.
Subject: Japan Sea—Patrol of.
1. At the beginning of the summer 1944 it was proposed to establish patrol in Japan Sea. The assumptions were that La Pérouse Strait was free from mines and that Tsugaru and Tsushima Straits were mined.
2. At this point a naval prisoner of war taken by U.S.S. BARB (SS-220) gave information, which JICPOA considers to be credible, that there are three rows of deep laid mines in La Pérouse Strait. The presence of such mine fields appears to be logical in view of the fact that the depth of water is shallow and that surface or near-surface mines would not be feasible on account of the ice during the winter months.
3. The project was, therefore, held in abeyance awaiting better information.
4. In the meantime, there has been developed a FM sonar which gives promise of being useful as a mine detector. The first installation of this equipment made on the SPADEFISH has not been too successful or reliable. A second set installed on the TINOSA and just recently tested indicates that with good sound conditions mines can be detected up to a range of 600 yards.1
Lockwood explained that captured Japanese documents gave indications that the Tsushima Strait, though blocked by mines, presented the best possibilities for entry, though he didn’t give details. Lockwood revisited the loss of the Wahoo when he described attempts by her and other subs to stanch the flow of traffic from Korean ports to the Japanese homeland. Finally, he outlined for Nimitz the steps ComSubPac had been taking to assemble reliable intelligence about the true extent of minefields. This included sending a spy to Vladivostok to obtain information regarding Japanese minefields from Russian shipmasters who had used the La Pérouse and Tsushima straits; aerial reconnaissance; exploration by submarine (the Tinosa mission); decrypts of Japanese radio transmissions regarding shipping routes in and around the areas in question; the taking of prisoners by subs operating in the vicinity of the straits; even the possibility of entering the Sea of Japan through the unmined Strait of Tartary during the ice-free summer months, if the Soviets would permit it, for a look-see. This last was clearly impossible: U.S.-Soviet relations were deteriorating by the day. Moscow would never allow an American warship, much less a submarine, to enter her territorial waters to probe or possibly attack Japanese shipping. It was their neutrality that allowed Soviet ships to transit the La Pérouse Strait unmolested. As it was, Lockwood would soon have to grapple with the problems posed by the possibility that Russian naval forces might begin operations in Japanese waters controlled by U.S. forces. But not now.
Nimitz gave Lockwood his unconditional support for the mission and urged him to collect additional intelligence to prove that access to the sea was possible and that there were ships in it worth sinking. The question of whether there were any ships left in the Sea of Japan worth the risks involved to sink them had nagged at Lockwood before and nagged at him now. The only way to know for sure how many there were was for his skippers to go in there and look around as Morton, Bass, and the others had done. Lockwood didn’t doubt they’d find plenty of marus to sink.
He was thrilled to have his boss’s endorsement because it meant he could count on Admiral King’s as well. All he had to do now was get the FMS gear into the supply pipeline, install it on submarines, and train submariners how to use it. Notwithstanding Nimitz’s approval, Lockwood the optimist knew what he was up against. Making the mission a reality required overcoming the technical problems plaguing FMS, described in a flurry of reports from Gaylord Harnwell, Malcolm Henderson, and ComSubPac’s UCDWR liaison officer. Lockwood had confidence that the problems would soon be solved. He envisioned great things for his sub force, perhaps even for himself, and, of course, revenge for Morton and the Wahoo. Especially that.
As if to prove that success breeds success, Lockwood received word that the Tinosa had found and charted a minefield north of Formosa. For Lockwood, this first successful combat test of FMS proved that Emperor Hirohito’s days were numbered and that the only thing left for him to ponder, besides his and his generals’ fates, would be all the sunken ships littering the bottom of his private lake.
The report of the Tinosa’s success had reached ComSubPac via a radio message from Latham.2 It caught up to Lockwood, commuting between Pearl Harbor and Guam to inspect his new digs. Use of the Tinosa’s FMS off Okinawa had resulted in bright green pears and clear, unambiguous bell tones indicating the presence of mines. Detection occurred at surprisingly long distances from the probing Tinosa, up to fourteen hundred yards in some cases. Further probing had resulted in questionable contacts and errant visual and audio signals. In some instances FMS had made contact with objects that may or may not have been mines. Latham realized that in this instance the lack of contacts didn’t mean that there were no mines present, just that they’d not been found.
Working blind, as it were, the poor Tinosa’s crew had to endure hours of stress and dread. Latham saw the haunted looks on their sweat-burnished faces. He shared their crushing fear of being blown to bits while trapped inside the ship’s hull. The work they were doing was not meant for cowards. Terrifying though it was, the mapping mission had to be completed; a lot was riding on it.
In all, the Tinosa’s reconnaissance proved a success. Even though the minefields that ICPOA believed had been planted so heavily around Okinawa never materialized, Latham found a few sparse fields—more than enough to satisfy him and his wary crew. Lockwood reviewed Latham’s patrol report and pronounced it outstanding and a genuine breakthrough in the gadget’s use against real mines, not dummies. Viewed from a purely technical perspective it proved that a submerged submarine equipped with FMS could plot mines with a surprising degree of accuracy. It also underscored how effective submarines could be when they utilized their inherent stealth and near invisibility to operate effectively against enemies in waters that were otherwise denied them. Stealth coupled to FMS would not only enhance the effectiveness of submarines against Japanese targets; it would make them virtually impervious to the enemy’s defenses.
Elated by Latham’s success, in late January 1945 Lockwood held the first of several operational planning meetings with his staff to review the intelligence developed by Latham. His report disclosed that though the mines plotted by the Tinosa had been sown in rows and in staggered depths, there was enough space for a submarine to squeeze through the gaps between them with room to spare. Of course, that was the layout of the plot around Okinawa, not the Tsushima Strait. Lockwood next wanted an accurate plot of the mines sown around the entrance and inner approaches to the Tsushima Strait. This data would then be used to create a map of the minefields for use by the raiding subs.
In his report Latham had also made note of the Kuroshio Current off Formosa and the force it had exerted on the Tinosa, especially when she was submerged. The current, he reported, was equally strong if not stronger around southern Kyushu than around Formosa. Its presence would definitely be felt in waters around the Tsushima Strait and would need to be taken into account for future mission planning. Lockwood want
ed more data, and the only way to get it was to send more FMS-equipped submarines into mined areas around the straits targeted for entry.
There was another issue looming that Lockwood and his staff would soon have to address: It was becoming all too apparent that the skippers and crews training for operations with FMS had growing doubts about its effectiveness and, with it, their chances of surviving an encounter with a minefield. But first, Lockwood had to tackle FMS production delays in order to get more subs to sea so they could probe and map the area they’d be operating in and, in the bargain, prove to those doubting sub crews how reliable FMS was. Then, despite all the success Lockwood had enjoyed so far, he suddenly ran head-on into an FMS brick wall.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Magic Loses Its Magic
While the scientists and technicians at UCDWR in San Diego grappled with the seemingly endless problems plaguing FMS, the Bonefish sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge on November 18, 1944, bound for Hunters Point in San Francisco Bay.
Lawrence Edge and his men were relieved to be home and excited by the prospect of seeing loved ones and friends. Lawrence took a part of his accumulated leave in Atlanta with Sarah, little Boo, and his parents. After the Christmas holidays the three of them returned to San Francisco for the remainder of Lawrence’s stay at Hunters Point. The crews of submarines undergoing long overhauls usually brought their wives and children to San Francisco to spend as much time together as possible, living in rented apartments or in Navy housing. This arrangement gave Lawrence, Sarah, and Boo the opportunity to be together in one place for the duration of the overhaul. It didn’t make up for the long separation that the war had imposed upon them, but for now, at least, their stay in San Francisco helped shorten the time until their lives would return to normal.