It shouldn’t have happened. To bring torpedoes pushing on toward 5,000 miles, and to have six in a row, six out of our first 12 fail us. That wasn’t quite fair; only four had been faulty, but the surface runners had spoiled two others. The thoughts took but a minute, a minute wasted. Our task was ahead.
“What was the last sound bearing, Caverly?”
Ogden read from the Quartermaster’s Notebook, “Three five zero true, Captain.”
That required notebook, with its thousands of entries, had saved ships from grounding, exonerated or convicted skippers when they had, and served as evidence in collisions, all of this beyond its everyday service to navigators. Now this single bearing could well be a million-dollar entry, spelling the death of an enemy ship.
“All ahead full. Come right to three five zero.”
We would work on up to full power once we were rolling and the engine temperatures were normal. Fraz secured the crew from battle stations, and a belated chow was piped down for all hands. It was 2030 in a long, exciting, frustrating day, but this June 29 was not over, for we were heading down the last true bearing of the enemy, just as we had done time and again west of Saipan.
The odor of frying steaks was permeating the boat. Wixon had done it again, changing the menu without authority, or did Fraz have something to do with it? In either case, I would not complain, and one or both of them knew it. The steaks were the best, but the usual camaraderie was lacking. After the meal I found my molars still grinding and with Fraz, Dick, and Frank proceeded to take it out on a cribbage board.
Deep-running torpedoes were not new. At the start of hostilities, it had been assumed that our torpedoes, with warheads of about the same weight as our exercise heads, would keep the depth set. They ran too deep, and the magnetic field of many ships did not set off the exploders. While the bureaus fiddled, some submarine captains, including Mush Morton, commenced setting the torpedoes shallow, to explode on impact; then came the late prematures, drenching the enemy. By comparison, who were we to complain? Wasn’t blaming the torpedoes now just the easy thing to do?
Hank and Mel joined us, having withdrawn two torpedoes to check the actual depth set on them. Hank was shaking his head slowly, contemplating his steak it would seem, but this was a habit of his when searching for the right words. In a moment he said it as it was.
“The depth set on both torpedoes is ten feet, Captain, and the depth mechanisms check out, too.”
I thanked them for the report, and then Dick posed a question: “Could it have been a Q-ship, sir?”
The thought had certainly been entertained, especially after she counterattacked, but had been dismissed due to her length and clumsiness. Still, we should give her another look. Dick chased aft and returned with 20SJ, opened to page 215. Those of us who had observed her examined the four photographs and the draftsman’s broadside drawing. The Q-ships, a class of five ships, had been built in America during 1918 and 1919 and had a loaded draft of 24 feet. But how much cargo would the Japanese be sending to China? Probably she carried only enough to give her good stability at sea. The unladen draft of these ships was only eight feet. There was our answer, for though not appearing particularly high out of the water, she might quite conceivably be drawing only ten or 12 feet. Our two torpedoes had probably scared the barnacles growing along her keel, for if they had run much deeper, the wakes would not have been visible right up to her side.
Knowing instead of fretting is half the battle. Hank and Mel went after their steaks, and we resumed our four-handed cribbage game. Dick cut a four, a poor card for all of us, and then the phone buzzed to my left. Hank picked it up and repeated the message: “Radar contact bearing zero zero zero.”
The change of mood in the wardroom was immediate and most likely reflected that throughout the ship. There was no rush; we finished the game and then Frank accompanied me topside. The dark shape of the enemy was just visible out on the fuzzy horizon, made the more indistinct in the spume of the riled-up sea. Another half hour would pass before we would be able to make a positive identification, but there was little doubt that this was the same ship. Section tracking first had her on course north, then 040, and finally on 070, heading for Ko-To and the ten-fathom curve off the Korean coast. Cutting inside this arc shortened our chase, and Tang, now 7,000 yards on the enemy’s beam, slowed to plan the attack.
A glance at the chart, and the ideal approach was obvious. In the lee of Daikokusan Gunto, we could set our torpedoes to run shallow without too much fear of their broaching, and an attack after moonset would let us move in to a range at which the enemy could not avoid them if they did. That was some hours away, and again someone had to be cool, calm, and collected.
“Fraz, stay with her here, about seven thousand yards abeam. At moonset, move to five thousand, thirty degrees on her starboard bow, and call me. Take Mort off the watch list for any help you may need, but remember, you’re second in command on this boat.”
Again Fraz accepted the responsibility with a ready “Aye, aye, sir.”
There were really two other reasons for turning this intermediate task over to my executive officer, each based on my own experience. The first but not the more important involved a former skipper of mine who had a special bunk built in the conning tower. Every fish that gnashed its teeth, every spurious bit of static that showed as a possible pip on radar, brought him upright in his bunk. He was soon frazzled and getting the rest of us in about the same condition. Fraz and the tracking party could handle this phase just as well without me, probably better. The second reason was obvious: It had worked before, west of Saipan. I went to my cabin and kicked off my shoes. The only sounds were the seas beyond the ballast tanks.
“The moon has set, Captain.” It was Walker with another heavy coffee mug, which he had confiscated somewhere. It took a moment for the meaning of the report to sink in. All white lights had been turned off, so I needed no red mask. A quick turn forward, and I stopped at the wardroom for another cup before going topside.
“We going to get her this time, Captain?”
“That’s right, Walker, one pickle right in her middle.” For a moment I wondered what made me say that, then I recalled my thoughts before I had dozed off: a feeler torpedo and then a spread of four if that single shot didn’t do the job. With this cup of coffee down, it made a lot of sense. An accurate shot into her middle, especially if she had great, drum-type Scotch boilers, would give an extra explosion, too.
The seas were still kicking up topside, and the enemy’s navigation was a little off, the track passing 15 miles north of the islands. As firing from a lee would now be impossible, we would close to a range that would insure hits even with broaching torpedoes. Now, in a pitch-black night, Fraz had to point her out to me, for even with deep ruby-red lights below, a brief period topside was still required for maximum vision. She was there, exactly where we wanted her.
“Let’s go to battle stations. I want five tubes ready forward and all four aft. Set all torpedoes to run at six feet. I’ll take the con.”
Fraz ducked below, and the melodious bong, bong, bong of the general alarm carried up to the bridge. In a minute all was quiet.
“Left twenty degrees rudder. Steady on course three four zero.”
Tang was 2,500 yards from the track as we turned. The freighter’s angle on the bow had opened to 40 starboard when we steadied and stopped 1,500 yards from her track. The seas and wind from aft carried us closer, and we backed two-thirds to kill some of our headway. It would be nearly impossible for her lookouts to spot us looking into this spume. TBT bearings went down on Frank’s request; there was no reason for extra ones.
“Outer doors open. Ten degrees to go. Range seven fifty, speed nine, TDC angle seventy-three.” Fraz was making doubly sure; it checked with what I observed.
“Constant bearing—mark!” She was coming on fast.
“Set!” Her stack was already in the field, coming on the luminous wire.
“Fire!” A slight
jolt, and the torpedo’s phosphorescent track was visible, as if skipping through the whitecaps.
“Torpedo run thirty seconds” came over the speaker.
The wake was heading for the freighter’s bow but falling aft as she came on, now at her superstructure.
“Five seconds to go.”
The wake led to her middle, right to her stack. The 500 pounds of torpex detonated with singular fury, instantly breaking the freighter’s back. Her bow and stern sections tilted sharply toward one another under an incandescent cloud of fire, smoke, and steam.
Her gun crew had guts, however, for from her canting bow came a half dozen well-aimed rounds. How they pointed and trained their gun on that tilting platform will long remain a wonder, and their dedication in keeping up the fire until they went under would be a matter of pride to any nation.
Before going on below, I wrote the briefest of night orders and recorded the data on the enemy ship:
Tazan Maru class 5,464 tons Lat. 35° 03′ N.
Long. 125° 08’ E.
The time was 0130 of July 1, and we headed west for a submerged patrol after daylight and a day of rest.
8
Our dawn position, 40 miles west of Ko-To, lay halfway between the 40-fathom curves to the east and west. This was as good a depth for security as would be found and was also far enough from our attack to be immune from probable enemy countermeasures. Tang lolled on the surface with lookouts alert while Larry and his engineers completed the battery charge, then pulled the plug. It was 0540, an hour and a half after the crack of dawn, and the whole ship’s company looked forward to a day of relative rest.
Rest we did until 0900, when Hank reported a sailing junk closing from the west. They are stately craft, at least in the eyes of those who have sailed, and perfectly suited, through evolution I suppose, for their tasks. Our leisurely attempts to avoid were unavailing, and rather than use up our battery, I succumbed to Mel’s wishes. We would use the junk for pointer drill. It would be a sailor’s holiday. Tang would not shoot her up, just bring her to and determine, if possible, whether she had passed any sizable ships to the west. The compartments buzzed even though the troops knew this would be nothing like their shoot at Fais Island. Preparations for a battle surface were never completed more quickly.
Fraz explained our hold-down procedure to Larry, as this method was a holdover from peacetime and not taught in submarine school. To us, it was half the fun. Larry reviewed the steps with the planesmen and auxiliarymen who would be carrying out his orders and reported all in readiness. A somewhat belated “Battle stations—gun!” went out over the 1MC, followed by the general alarm lest someone might still be asleep. Then from a safe distance, well outside any possible small arms fire, we went through the procedure.
Larry kept Tang down admirably, first with safety tank dry and then at full speed, with a healthy blow to main ballast.
“Battle surface! Battle surface!” What Chinese word would describe the dismay of that junk’s crew to see this monster rear up out of the deep?
Mel and the gun crew held pointer drill until the junk regained her courage, tautened the sheets, and commenced moving off quickly in spite of the calm following the previous day’s blow. As prearranged, a half dozen well-placed shots close across her bow brought her to. When we closed, with the 4-inch gun trained on her middle, she doused her great battened sails, probably expecting the worst.
Our attempts to communicate were not proving too successful, though the junk’s crew was trying to tell us something. But our crow’s nest made further “talk-talk” unnecessary, with a salty “Smoke ho!”
A shower of canned goods that had become wet and lost their labels sailed over to the junk as a parting gift, and Tang continued her day of rest by closing the real enemy. It was 1015. The single puff of smoke soon developed into two columns of it, and as we worked up to full power the masts of two ships came over the raised periscope’s more distant horizon. Tang was on the quarter of this two-ship convoy, now tracked by Ed and the watch section as steaming on course 260. We must have been living right, for had we not surfaced to query the junk, these ships would never have been sighted.
No end-around was routine, but this I believe would be singular in submarines. Tang was not called to battle stations; rather, the duty sections were conducting the maneuver, which otherwise would have been trying on all hands. Of course, direction came from Fraz, Mort, or me, another advantage of having a PCO along. It brought to mind some of my patrols in other boats, when battle stations were manned for hours, one time for 12 hours straight, quite unnecessarily. We had come a long way, and perhaps so had this war toward its inevitable conclusion.
High periscope observations could not identify the ships, for just their tops remained in view. The maneuvers of the leader marked her as an escort, however. The second ship, plotted a thousand yards astern, zigged at intervals of from three to 12 minutes, quite orderly, like an unalerted freighter. Only an air patrol could prevent our gaining the desired position, and even then the planes would have to spot us first. To guard against this possibility, two lookouts manned our front porch. We could take as much time as necessary, for the whole Yellow Sea was our battleground. Still, it would be to our advantage to attack before antisubmarine forces could sweep this way.
Though we were following the circumference of a moving circle, making our path a great arc, our 14-knot speed differential was easing Tang around the enemy. Three hours had now passed, and the convoy’s tops were back on our starboard quarter, nearly in line. The extra lookouts went below, and then on cue came Mel’s “Clear the bridge!” and the blaat, blaat of the diving alarm. Aft in the conning tower, I heard the reassuring thud of the engine-air and main induction valves as they closed. It called attention to the many unseen men and functions connected with the dive. Now, with negative blown to the mark, Mel was leveling us off at 60 feet. Our trim would not have changed, so one-third speed was ordered immediately. The time was 1322, and we were on the convoy’s base course.
There would be personnel changes in several key battle stations this day. The night before, Tang had completed the firing of one half of her torpedoes, actually one more, 13 out of the 24. Certain key men had already been designated to schools, staff, or new construction, choices of their own. Starting now, they would change places with their understudies, who had stood behind them on this patrol, and would enter into their former tasks only to avoid mistakes. The object was simple; Tang would start her next patrol with these key billets staffed by men who had manned them through half a patrol, through the firing, we hoped, of 11 warshots into the enemy.
I believed that the ordered transfer of too many officers and key rates from Argonaut and Wahoo upon their return to Mare Island had been a contributing factor to their subsequent loss. Like other boats, they had held on to their most important men for as long as possible and then lost them all at once, close to a quarter of their complement. Training our own replacements on the job would permit an orderly turnover and prevent any such raid on Tang. Making this possible, of course, were the extra hands we now carried, for otherwise the exchanges could result in musical chairs, affecting billet after billet. This next hour, and possibly the hours to come, might tell if Tang had reached a top fighting level that she could maintain on successive patrols.
The enemy came on, zigging mildly and still tracked at a steady 8 knots. Fraz pressed down the short handle on the conning tower’s remote control of the 1MC. His “Battle stations! Battle stations!” went throughout the ship. At a nod, the steersman swung the handle of the general alarm, and once again the bonging commenced. This would be the third time we had manned battle stations in two days, fourth if we counted the junk. The actions that followed the first two had nothing in common. Now again, a different set of circumstances might require a whole new bag of tricks.
“Up scope. Bearing—mark!” Jones read 358 as he lowered the scope.
“That’s on the large freighter; all setups will
be on her unless I change targets. Her angle is not more than five degrees port.
“Fraz, the smaller ship is about fifteen hundred yards closer, on the freighter’s port bow. I’ll keep you informed separately, and will you keep her on your plot. I’d like two tubes ready forward and aft.”
That was one of the beauties of the navigational plot; it was not limited to a single target ship as was the TDC. For the present, we would do nothing but let the enemy come on until the decks came over the horizon. Five minutes passed. With our combined speed as we headed for one another, the enemy would be 3,000 yards closer.
“Up scope. Bearing—mark!” Again Jones read the bearing, this time 350, and I called the angle, 8 port, then stepped over to the chart desk, where Ogden was plotting under Fraz’s general supervision. With a finger, I showed the new path of the small freighter, which had zigged and was crossing to the large freighter’s other bow. No words were necessary as Ogden drew in the track.
Observations every four to six minutes followed. The convoy was continuing to zig mildly, and plot showed that its base course would carry it nearly through our position. The range closed, bringing their decks in full view. The small freighter mounted a good-sized gun on a raised bow platform. The bridge, stack, and superstructure were all aft, but of greater interest was a fairly long, sloping, loaded depth-charge rack. We could presume that there was another one aft to starboard.
The attack we would like was perfectly clear, a salvo into each of them, but that required the cooperation of the enemy. Our plans must remain flexible and encompass several considerations: Electric, wakeless torpedoes would not be sighted and, being slower, would allow us an extra minute or so for maneuvering to attack the second ship. Should the salvo at the first ship miss, the second attack could still proceed. If the first ship was hit and the attack on the second failed, we would still have the rest of the day and part of the night to do the second job over again, assuming that any hit would take care of the escort.
Clear the Bridge! Page 27