Hellcats

by Peter Sasgen

  Please accept my deepest sympathies. Commander Edge was an outstanding naval officer and the Submarine Service has suffered a great loss.1

  Allen R. McCann, Rear Admiral U.S. Navy [signed]

  Japanese records disclosed that three sonar-equipped coast defense vessels armed with depth-charge throwers were responsible for the destruction of the Bonefish. According to their after-action reports, the two vessels, possibly the same two that had opened fire on the Tunny and the Bonefish near Suzu Misaki on June 17, only this time accompanied by a third unidentified ship, attacked and sank a submarine on June 18, 1945, in the area where the Bonefish had been patrolling in Toyama Wan.

  The report stated that the three ships had been attacked with torpedoes from a submerged submarine and that the torpedoes had missed their targets. The ships then counterattacked with a savage depth charging that brought diesel oil and other debris boiling to the surface. Within hours a huge rainbow-hued oil slick could be seen from the air by planes summoned to search the area for more submarines. Unquestionably the oil had gushed from the ruptured fuel tanks of the Bonefish. The Japanese reported that there were no survivors. The Bonefish went down about eight miles from the coast in waters over a thousand feet deep. What Lawrence Edge and his crew faced in those terrible last moments, they faced with bravery and courage, giving all of their skill and strength to preserve their ship and their lives.

  Before her end the Bonefish wrote a postscript to an outstanding career as a fighting ship. The Japanese reported on June 19 the loss of the 5,400-ton Konzan Maru close to where the Bonefish had been sunk. The reported date of the sinking of the Konzan Maru is incorrect, as the Bonefish, sunk on the eighteenth, had to have sunk the Konzan Maru before she herself was sunk. There is no doubt that the ship torpedoed by the Bonefish was the Konzan Maru, for no other Hellcat was in the area.

  Though the details are sketchy it’s possible to visualize the Bonefish’s final moments.

  Patrolling submerged in Toyama Wan, Edge encountered three patrol boats. He attacked, but the torpedoes missed. Alerted, the patrol boats counterattacked in force. There wasn’t time to fire another torpedo salvo—the enemy’s ping, ping, pinging sonars had the Bonefish trapped in a vise. Get her down fast—four hundred feet! Rig for depth charge and silent running! Here they come! Three sets of angry, thrashing screws swept over the descending submarine. Depth charges rained down.

  Whether by luck or fate, a hull-smashing explosion closer and more powerful than any the submariners had ever experienced caused mortal damage. In the split second it took the doomed men to grasp what had happened, the sea burst into the Bonefish like a snarling, killing beast. Sound the collision alarm! Blow safety! Blow bow buoyancy! BLOW EVERYTHING! In the confusion of anger and fear, frantic efforts to avoid disaster failed. Flooded and out of control, the Bonefish upended. Men, tools, anything not tied down crashed into the now horizontal bulkheads at the bottom of compartments. Depth-gauge needles wound violently to their stops. The water under the sub’s keel was so deep that it was beyond comprehension. Down, down she plunged until, at the limit of their endurance, her stout frames and hull, moaning and shrieking in protest, gave way to the merciless sea. Trailing skeins of air bubbles and oil, the gallant Bonefish with her gallant captain and crew dived into eternity.

  For Sarah Edge and the grieving families a part of their lives had come to an end. Yet with these words from the mother of a Bonefish sailor a new one had already begun: “You and I have never met, Mrs. Edge, but we are not strangers. We share a common anguish, and a common hope, and because we are proud of our men, we bear in our hearts high courage and the knowledge that what they are and what they have done is a shining glory that will remain with us always.”

  AFTERWORD

  When World War II ended and the Cold War began, Operation Barney and the Hellcats faded into obscurity. In retirement and with time to reflect, Lockwood accepted that Operation Barney, though a brilliant tactical success, had not brought Japan to her knees, as he had once believed it would. And while he never doubted that the Hellcats had performed magnificently, it must surely have troubled him that the mission he had conceived and worked so hard to launch had been neither the crowning achievement of the Pacific submarine war nor free of controversy.

  Lockwood, justifiably proud of his accomplishments and those of the submarine force, was sensitive to this controversy. Questions, especially those regarding what he and the Navy’s senior commanders expected of Operation Barney, should be considered in light of what Admiral Nimitz and Admiral King knew about the atomic bomb. As noted earlier, King and Nimitz had been told that its use on Japan would end the war. Lockwood was not privy to this information, saying that the bomb had come as a complete surprise. Operation Barney had been planned and approved far in advance of any information about the bomb divulged to Nimitz and King. When Nimitz received his first atom bomb briefing he thought it would have little effect on the war’s outcome. He was convinced that a naval blockade and conventional bombing campaign would end it. But as the war ground on and he saw how stubborn the Japanese were, he came to the conclusion that the bomb had to be dropped because it might be the only way to end the war and prevent an invasion of Japan. But because there was no guarantee that the bomb would end the war, Nimitz couldn’t order Lockwood to cancel Operation Barney, for if the bomb was a dud or if it worked but didn’t shock the Japanese into surrendering (which it almost didn’t), or if the Soviets didn’t enter the war as promised, he and King—Lockwood, too—would be faced with a Pacific campaign that would likely drag on into the fall or winter of 1945, even the spring of 1946. Thus Operation Barney had to go forward.

  What, then, did Operation Barney actually accomplish? It was estimated that Japan still had some two hundred steel-hulled ships afloat in the so-called “inner zone” of empire waters. The Hellcats certainly nibbled away at that total, but it would have taken many more raids like Barney to sink all of those ships and to bring about Japan’s collapse. In that light, Operation Barney seems a mere pinprick, especially compared to the atomic bomb. Yet it got off and running with an irresistible force of its own that could not easily have been terminated even if Nimitz and Lockwood had wanted to. After all, one powerful force driving the mission was the huge amount of money the FM sonar project consumed every day. As in any expensive project a usable product is needed to justify the costs. Just like the invention of the atomic bomb, the invention of FM sonar predestined its use. If Lockwood can be faulted for anything, it was his willingness to risk the lives of the Hellcat submariners to prove that an experimental sonar system he’d nurtured and helped develop could guide submarines through minefields.

  With the passage of time, these issues, like Barney itself, faded into obscurity. War is war, after all, and World War II was unimaginably complicated and fought on a scale so vast that its full implications are hard to comprehend. It consumed millions of lives and billions of dollars. The commanders who planned Pacific theater strategy did so with honor and integrity. Objectivity was an essential ingredient in their planning of the multitude of operations the strategy required. The commanders had to be confident that the missions would succeed and that lives would not be squandered needlessly. When sentiment, prejudice, and emotion enter the picture they can doom a military operation to failure, to say nothing of costing lives.

  Clearly, sentiment, prejudice, and emotion played a significant role in Operation Barney. Was Lockwood’s need to avenge the loss of Mush Morton and the Wahoo the real driving force behind Operation Barney? In his writings after the war, Lockwood made it clear that even if he wasn’t obsessed by the need for revenge it was never far from his mind and that it had had a strong influence on his decisions. I believe it’s fair to say that despite the bravery and dedication of the Hellcat submariners, Operation Barney was simply not worth the risks it entailed to sink ships in the Sea of Japan and avenge Mush Morton and the Wahoo. Certainly it was not worth the loss of the Bonefish.

 
Nonetheless, it’s important to remember that, regardless of the various reasons for Operation Barney’s existence, nothing can diminish in any way the stature and integrity of Admiral Lockwood—Uncle Charlie—and his devotion to his service and his men. And nothing can diminish what the heroic Hellcats achieved during one of the most dangerous and daring operations of World War II.

  Charles Lockwood addressed many of the issues surrounding Operation Barney in a book he wrote in 1951 entitled Sink ’Em All. A memoir of the submarine war, the book provides a broad overview of that war from Lockwood’s perspective as ComSubPac. He describes Operation Barney, though not in detail, and pays a special tribute to Lawrence Edge. Four years later, Lockwood wrote the full story of Operation Barney, from its inception to its execution, in a book entitled Hellcats of the Sea. As he did in Sink ’Em All, he paid tribute to Edge, this time devoting a full chapter to the Bonefish. There are no revelations in Hellcats of the Sea, but Lockwood does admit to his desire to extact revenge on the Japanese for the loss of Morton and the Wahoo. He inscribed a copy of his book to Sarah Edge as follows: “To Sarah as a small tribute to the memory of a gallant submariner, Lawrence Lott Edge—God rest his soul.”

  Lockwood retired from the Navy in 1947. He moved to Los Gatos, California, living in a home he named “Twin Dolphins.” In retirement he devoted himself to local civic issues, writing about submarines, lecturing, and hunting. He witnessed the revolution in submarine design and technology he had anticipated with the launching in 1954 of the first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus (SSN-571), and, in 1960, the deployment of the first ballistic missile-firing sub, the USS George Washington (SSBN-598). For Lockwood, those magnificent ships were the fulfillment of what he’d envisioned back in the dark ages of submarining: true submarines endowed with unlimited submerged endurance, high underwater speed, and deep-diving capabilities, and armed with powerful torpedoes and missiles.

  Lockwood died in 1967 and is buried in Golden Gate National Cemetery, San Bruno, California. Had Uncle Charlie lived to see photographs of the sunken Wahoo and the other recently discovered subs, he might not have believed his eyes. Then again, as an old submarine sailor, he knew that anything was possible, even that with time, the sea would give up its secrets. (Photos of the wrecks of the discovered submarines can be viewed on Google Images.)

  Lockwood’s right-hand man, the brilliant Richard G. Voge, after serving as operations officer of ComSubPac, joined the staff of CNO Nimitz. Voge took on another of Lockwood’s pet projects, an official administrative and operational history of the submarine force. After completing this massive work, Voge retired from the Navy in 1946 with the rank of rear admiral. He died in 1948. The histories Voge compiled were never published as originally planned but instead became the massive volume entitled United States Submarine Operations in World War II, published in 1949 by the United States Naval Institute.

  Chester W. Nimitz, the Navy’s last fleet admiral, retired in 1947. He died in 1966 and, like Lockwood, is buried in Golden Gate National Cemetery, San Bruno, California. The Navy’s current fleet of Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carriers are named in his honor.

  Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King retired in 1945 after relinquishing his post as CNO to Admiral Nimitz. King died in Kittery, Maine, in 1956.

  Captain Earl T. Hydeman, commander of Hydeman’s Hellcats, died in 1993. He was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery.

  Sarah Edge, accompanied by her daughter, Sarah (Boo), and her son, Lawrence Jr., sponsored the Bonefish II (SS-582), launched on November 22, 1958, at New York Shipbuilding Corporation, Camden, New Jersey. The Bonefish II, a diesel-electric-powered Barbel-class submarine, was one of the last of its type in the U.S. Navy. The Navy decommissioned her in 1988.

  Sarah Edge maintained an active life in Atlanta society and wrote a biography of her grandfather, entrepreneur and developer Joel Hurt. Years later she remarried and enjoyed her six grandchildren, who now have children of their own. Sarah died in 1985.

  Most, but not all, of the Hellcat submariners are dead now. Operation Barney itself, the most daring submarine raid of all time, is largely forgotten. Though the Bonefish and her crew rest in the deep waters of the Sea of Japan, they and the men of the Sea Dog, Crevalle, Spadefish, Tunny, Skate, Flying Fish, Bowfin,ag and Tinosa are toasted, as are all the subs and submariners of World War II, but especially those on eternal patrol, whenever and wherever submarine veterans gather to remember what their comrades did when they were Hellcats.

  APPENDIX ONE

  Japanese Naval and Merchant Vessels Sunk by the USS Bonefish as Compiled by JANAC

  Comdr. T. W. Hogan

  Comdr. L. L. Edge

  APPENDIX TWO

  Japanese Naval and Merchant Vessels Sunk by the Nine Hellcat Submarines in the Sea of Japan as Compiled by JANAC (includes those sunk by the Bonefish)

  No totals are shown for the Tunny, as she sank no ships. The Spadefish sank the Russian Transbalt, an 11,400-ton cargo ship. The Hellcats also sank more than a dozen small craft by gunfire.

  APPENDIX THREE

  Full Text of the Letter from Sarah Simms Edge to the Families of the Crew of the USS Bonefish

  [Undated]

  The information relative to the loss of the USS Bonefish, which I have been able to obtain, may be of interest to you since so many of you have requested the details which I have learned. It is pieced together from letters from Vice Admiral Chas. A. Lockwood, Jr., Commander Lawrence L. Edge, captain of the USS Bonefish, Commander Geo. Pierce, captain of the USS Tunny, and others who were on the raid in the Japan Sea in June of 1945.

  The loss to all of us is indeed more regrettable and harder to understand since the war was all but over when the Bonefish was reported missing, for the public utterances of Adm. Nimitz say that the Japs were well defeated some weeks before the atom bomb was dropped on August 6. Comdr. Edge wrote in April while on patrol, “There is the feeling among all of us that we have been lucky enough to survive the war so far; it would be such a shame not to last for the remainder and thus live through the whole thing.”

  The Japan Sea had been secured (closed) to our subs for the past two years, after the loss of the USS Wahoo there, because it was decided by the Navy that the risks involved were too great for the gains received. It was known that during those two years the Japs had made their Sea a highly fortified and more dangerous area. Submarine high command had wished for some time to send our subs back into that Sea, so a gear to contribute to this safety of our submarines was developed and pushed. From the fall of 1944 to May 1945, ten subs were equipped with this gear after their overhauls. These were the Skate, Tunny, Crevalle, Bowfin, Flying Fish, Tinosa, Sea Dog, Spadefish, Bonefish, and Seahorse.

  The Bonefish received her gear in Pearl Harborah in March after she had completed her overhaul in San Francisco. From Pearl Harbor she went to Guam, where Adm. Lockwood made a couple of short practice runs on her to observe this equipment. In April he sent the Bonefish and the Seahorse to clear [plot] a path through Broughton [Tsushima] Strait, which is 65 miles long, so that the subs could enter the Japan Sea with relative safety as far as mines were concerned. The Seahorse was so badly damaged by enemy escort vessels, that she was forced to return to base and was unable to join the Japan Sea raid. The Bonefish, however, was able to complete that part of her “special mission” in April with much glory and the Navy Cross was won for her work, though none aboard knew of their award when they left for their June raid.

  I say “that part of her special mission,” because after the Bonefish completed the work of [charting minefields], she and the other subs with this equipment which were then out on patrol were radioed to return to port earlier than their orders originally stated. The rest periods for those of the nine subs that were on patrol were cut short of their normal two weeks. Some had only six days. “The Bonefish had a short rest period (8 days) because she had to make the schedule with the rest of us.” Comdr. Edge was much disappoi
nted that his crew would not have their usual and much needed two weeks’ rest after their “most dangerous and exhausting patrol,” during which he was continually concerned for the safety of the boat and crew.

  The nine boats made a few practice runs and started out, some felt before they were ready. The Bonefish left Guam on May 28. The boats were divided into three groups of three each. The Bonefish was in the second group headed by the Tunny. The groups went through the strait at the rate of one a day. The Tunny’s group entered, therefore, on the second day, June 13. No subs [in that group] opened fire on Jap shipping until June 9 when all boats were in their respective areas, different bays on the west coast of Honshu.

  Soon after the operations had begun the Japs radioed to their ships and planes of our activity in the sea. Our subs received this message almost as quickly as did the Japs. It was during this raid that the Japs announced the sinking of six or seven subs.

  The second group headed by the Tunny held a rendezvous out in the Japan Sea on June 16th, patrolled together on the 17th. On the 18th, they met again 50 miles northwest of Noto Peninsula. On this night, another sub reported to the “pack commander,” Geo. Pierce of the Tunny, that she had seen enemy ships entering Toyama Wan. “The Bonefish went in after them because that was her assigned patrol area.” Another sub was assigned half of this bay area for two days only and was nearby until she had fired her last torpedo. At this time the Bonefish was known to be “afloat.”