by Jon Stafford
Goby
For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass’ed.
And the eyes of the sleepers wax’d deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!
—Lord Byron, Sennacherib
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the submarine Bluefin, May 1, 1944
Half an hour after docking, the men had left the boat. Vice Admiral Charles Lockwood, Commander Submarines Pacific, sat down in the wardroom with the sub’s commander, Lieutenant Commander “Red” Phelps.
“Red, I want you to take command of something new we’ve come up with, a wolf pack like the Germans have been using against us. It hasn’t worked for them. Our boys in the Atlantic, especially the Brits, are sinking U-boats at a furious rate, maybe a couple dozen a month. At this rate, the Germans are through at sea. Of course,” Lockwood shrugged, “we hope it will turn out better for us. It’s top secret, but no real secret, that we’ve lost thirty boats ourselves thus far. But I think this will work for us.”
The old man looked about Bluefin’s interior and smiled. He was marveling at the difference between it and his first command, the A-2, thirty years before. Phelps was content not to interrupt.
“Couldn’t stand one of these anymore, even with air conditioning,” Lockwood went on thoughtfully. “But I think about it every day.” He looked at the sub’s commander again. “What I say to you is top secret, and this time no one is to know, not even your wife.”
“There is no one else aboard, sir.”
“Good. By the way, your wife is on the dock, so I don’t want to keep you too long. I’m going to give you four subs, Bluefin, Terrapin, Cornet, and Goby. I think you know the men: Medlin, Tony Horton, and Billy Estes. Good men.”
“Yes, sir. Ah, sir? Can I have a name for my group?”
“My people are ahead of you for a change. Your command is already billed as ‘Red’s Raiders.’”
Phelps chuckled.
Lockwood continued. “Red, this is my baby and I want it to get off the ground. As we get closer in to Japan, I think there’s good logic in forming such groups for mutual support so far away from our bases, and also for pounding their convoys. Soon, the carrier groups will start to plaster the Marianas. The Marines will hit the beach as soon as possible after that.
“There’s talk of us taking over several of the islands in that group, instead of the usual ‘Island Hopping’ strategy of just one. The word I get, which is supposed to be all hush-hush, but is really pretty much known to everybody, even the newspaper guys, is that the Army Air Corps has a new Boeing super bomber, much bigger than either the B-17 or B-24.”
Phelps nodded.
“They’ve picked out Tinian. The Air Corps plans to fly all the way from Tinian with the new bomber, blow Japan from here to tomorrow, and fly all the way back in one flight. End the war in six months!” Lockwood nodded approvingly.
“That must be something like 2,200 miles round trip, sir!” Phelps said, surprised.
“Yeah, more like 2,600. My people tell me it’s 1,289 miles from the northern tip of Tinian to Mount Fuji.
“Red, we want you to take your command and bottle up the Marianas like a drum. Concentrate on the northern islands, the ones closest to Japan. From north to south, that’s Saipan, Tinian, and then Guam. Four boats, three islands. By the way, the confirmation of your promotion to commander came in from Washington a week ago. Congratulations!”
They shook hands.
“Thank you, sir!”
“Also, you won’t be the only such Wolf Pack. I’m giving one to Jimmy Blanchard. He’ll have his Albacore, plus Finback, Bang, and Stingray. They’ll be quite a ways south of you and some west. He’ll intercept any fleet the Japanese send in to deal with Marc Mitscher’s fast carriers. There could be a major fleet action coming up.
“I’ll leave the disposition to you for your Raiders. It must be obvious that the Marianas are next on our hit parade. The Japanese will try to bring in whatever they can to reinforce the group, and perhaps sneak key people out too. I want you to sink anything that comes in, if they get by Blanchard, or anything that tries to come out.”
The admiral stood up. He looked about the sub again and shook his head. “You know, I don’t usually come on board with orders. Of course, formal orders will follow. But this is big, as important as anything we’ve done.” He looked keenly at Phelps. “I had to see your face. I’ll give you Bobby Ahern, whom I think you know.”
“Yes, sir. He was in the class behind mine.”
“Of course, you’ll be able to get whatever you want. Everyone knows that Ahern speaks for me. He’ll expedite this because I want you at sea in ten days with the whole outfit. The eight boats will leave over a forty-eight hour period, so as to not attract undue attention. Only you and Jimmy Blanchard are to know now. The rest will find out at sea that they are to form into these groups. All eight must be on station by the twentieth.
“I’m sorry about the short leave. It won’t sit well with the crews, but that can’t be helped. The timetable for the invasion has been set by the Joint Chiefs and we can’t change that. The hurry is that you and Jimmy will have to be in there and out before Marc Mitscher and his carrier boys roar in. My guess is that they will move in on 15 June, or a little sooner. Those hot shot pilots of his couldn’t tell one of our fleet boats from the Empire State Building, and I won’t allow any slipups. So, I want you and Jimmy to clear out on 12 June and no later. That gives you only three weeks on station. I would’ve given you more target time, but I just found out about this yesterday and we’ve been up all night with it. After it’s over, you’ll be released to different areas for the balance of your patrols. You okay with all of this?”
Phelps nodded. “Yes, sir!”
The admiral turned to go. Then he thought better of it and sat back down. “I’m going to have to take Harry Connors from you.”
Phelps smiled thinly. “Well, I knew that one was coming. So, he’s coming back?”
“My people tell me he’s on the train now. His ankle is fine.”
“That’s a relief. That was the craziest thing, that trailing wave. If he hadn’t thought fast and popped that hatch shut with his foot, we wouldn’t be here. Tons of water would have gone right down the hatch, sent us straight to the bottom. He saved this command.”
“He saved that whole mission to Nissan Island too,” the Admiral added. “I read your report myself. It read like a novel!” The Admiral smiled. “I know you think a lot of Harry, that he’s up to having his own boat.”
“Admiral, he was ready the day we fished him out of the Sulu Sea when Mojarra went down. Great guy to work with.” An idea came into Phelps’ head. “Sir, ah, since he is coming back, I would like something.”
The admiral gave Phelps his full attention, his brow furrowed. “Name it, Red, and you have it!”
“Well, since Harry is coming off an ankle break, he might not be quite up to snuff. Let me have him for one more patrol. Breaking in a new sub is a tough business; maybe he’s not quite up to it just now. Besides, I could use him as the commander of Bluefin, s
o I can coordinate the four boats.”
Lockwood thought for a moment, knowing that his carefully laid plans were about to go up in smoke. He mused. “This is just between the two of us.”
Phelps nodded.
“I had a new boat for him coming out of the Mare Island yard in San Francisco. But, okay. You rate it, so you have it.”
“Thank you, sir. If you’re going to let me have him, would you promote him to lieutenant commander?”
“You always were pushy, Red,” Lockwood laughed. “But that’s what I like about you. You’ve never asked me for anything that wasn’t good for the service. Sure, the order will be cut today. And, Red, I’m going to take Rudy Farrell soon enough. He’ll make someone a good exec.”
“I feared that too, sir. He’s the best navigator I ever saw, the best! I just hope you don’t take both at the same time.”
Lockwood didn’t answer the question, but said, “You still have Rocky Fordyce and young Danforth. We have quality replacements coming out now. But, as you know, the new boats are coming out quickly and each crew will be one-third veterans transferred from boats like yours. You have a good bunch and I must take them.”
“Thanks for letting me have them this long.”
The older man stepped out of the wardroom into the hallway, turned back and said, “You take care of yourself, Red.”
“Thank you, sir.”
At sea ten miles west of Garapan, capital of Saipan in the Marianas Islands, May 23, 1944
The radar had been down for repairs for only thirty minutes when a large Japanese freighter loomed out of the mist at about 0200. Only radical maneuvering from Harry Connors averted catastrophe. As the two ships passed only two hundred feet apart, Harry exulted over the prospects of the chase, of another “kill.”
“Captain to the bridge!” echoed throughout the boat. Within two minutes, Phelps came up through the hatch.
“We got a convoy, Red,” Harry said.
“What was that radical maneuvering about?”
“A freighter almost rammed us.”
“They see us?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, that’s no surprise. I can’t see anything myself. Where’d it go?”
“Off to the west.”
In fewer than five minutes the two veterans and close friends assumed their usual positions, with Harry moving down to the conning tower one deck below and Phelps remaining on the bridge. The big boat swung into action, as it had so many times before.
As the radar came back on, it showed an enemy convoy of six ships. Talking back and forth by intercom, the two men decided that the ship that had almost rammed them would make the best target. With the night completely black, it proved impossible to glimpse the ship, let alone see the angle on the bow.
Radar revealed the target’s direction, and the sound man calculated the speed from counting the propeller’s revolutions. He fed the information into the Tactical Data Computer, checking and reinserting the results several times, as Bluefin maneuvered into a good firing position.
They fired two torpedoes. Everyone in the crew cheered wildly as they saw two explosions some 1,500 yards off. Soon the sound man reported that the ship was breaking up. Unusually, after the flashes of the explosions, no fire followed, and the freighter sank unseen.
In another minute Phelps was on the intercom again. “All right, Harry, let’s get a setup on the other ships.”
The scope revealed the convoy proceeding north by west.
“Red, they’re fleeing Garapan, getting outta town,” Harry voiced up to his boss.
“Yeah! The radar still good?”
“Yup.”
“Okay, Harry, I want you and Rudy to work up the best course for interception, an ‘end around’ or whatever you think. What we got, two plus hours before daylight?”
“Yeah. Okay, Red.”
Harry called Ferrell to come up from the Control Room to the conning tower with his map. It took them only a few minutes to come up with a solution.
Harry clicked on the speaker to the bridge. “Red, they’ve definitely sped up, maybe eight and a half knots now. We recommend 270.”
“Okay.”
Harry called out the new order. “Come to new course, 270.”
In a few moments the 311-foot long Fleet boat began to take on the new heading.
“I didn’t think you would mind if we ran up to flank speed,” Harry added.
“Sure, sure, it’s your boat,” Phelps said impatiently. “The mist is lifting. How do you see it?”
“Red, it’s uphill,” Harry said. “The closest one to us looks like a patrol boat. She’s swinging around her chicks at a pretty good clip. She’s probably a destroyer, or at least a Chidori gunboat.”
“Ah, crap.”
Harry continued. “If we go around to the other flank, it’ll take maybe thirty hours before we can get in front of them. The only thing to do is to stay on this flank and get far enough out from the destroyer to do the ‘end around.’ It’ll take twenty hours at their speed and direction and put us in front of them by about 2300.”
“Okay, assume whatever heading and speed you think appropriate. I want Cornet and Terrapin in on this. Isn’t Goby too far?”
In thirty minutes, the Radio Room made contact with all of the subs. Goby, patrolling the eastern approaches to the Marianas, proved to be more than one hundred miles off—much too far away to help. Terrapin, assigned the western approaches to Guam to the south, was also too distant, some eighty miles away. But Cornet was on station sixty miles west of the convoy and in perfect position to intercept. Phelps and Harry decided Bluefin should shadow the convoy instead of doing the “end around.”
In a running battle that lasted for the next twenty-five hours, the two submarines attacked and sank three of the five enemy ships, including the large destroyer. Its crew elated, Bluefin headed back toward its station off Saipan, now almost two hundred miles to the east.
Thirty-nine hours after sinking the freighter, Bluefin was proceeding at ten knots, about sixty miles from Garapan, when lookouts reported wreckage ahead. Harry was on the bridge. First, debris appeared, scattered over a wide area, and then one of the lookouts called down.
“Sir, there are people in the water too.”
Harry ordered Bluefin to slow to crawling speed, then called for Phelps to come up. By the time Phelps came on the bridge, Harry could see much more.
“Red, there are hundreds of people in the water. A lot of them dead, but some are alive.”
“Where’d they come from?” Phelps asked.
“I don’t have any idea. We must be, what, forty some miles west of where we sank the first freighter, and well east of where we sank the others,” Harry said. Both men felt depressed at the thought of so many persons in distress.
“Lookouts!” Phelps called out. “Be very careful in identifying the people in the water. Some might be Allied prisoners of war. And watch out if there are enemy troops among them. They’ll shoot at us if they can.”
Bluefin moved closer to
the wreckage, slowing gradually. Harry, Phelps, and the others on the bridge waited tensely. Then, one of the lookouts leaned down.
“Sir, they’re civilians, women and children as far as I can tell. Looks like some old men too.”
Phelps spoke up. “If any lifeboats were aboard, maybe the crew or soldiers headed off in them.”
An idea crossed Harry’s mind. He called down to the Control Room. “Rudy, what are the currents like here?”
The young officer responded in a minute. “Harry? Ah, there’s the usual west to east current here. How strong, I need more time to come up with. I’m guessing, two knots at most.”
Harry went cold and numb as the horrible realization dawned on him. He stared at Phelps. “Red, these are the survivors from the first ship we sank!”
They looked at each other. Then, Phelps nodded grimly.
“So, now we kill women and children,” Harry said, softly. “Women and children.” He thought: In Iowa, people believe in never sending away a person in need. Here we kill them.
The silence on the bridge was interrupted by the cries of the survivors, coming distantly through the hatch.
For the next thirty minutes the sub carefully combed through the wreckage area, looking for survivors. They found no Allied prisoners of war, but approximately 250 were still clinging to wreckage, with more dead in the water. The survivors were suffering from exposure to sun and water, lack of food, and extreme dehydration.
Captain Phelps ordered the crew to bring up drinking water and any food that could be spared. He and Harry took it through the hatch. The lookouts threw the supplies to the victims on rafts, who received them with stunned looks.
Then, Phelps turned toward Harry. “You know they’ll die.”
“I know it. If a ship comes out to rescue them, we’re going to torpedo it. But we have to try. Look at our guys. I don’t think there is a man who hasn’t tried to help. I know it’s hopeless. So do they, but they’re helping anyhow.”