Clear the Bridge!

by Richard O'Kane

  Tang slid quietly toward the enemy at 6 knots, with not a ripple coming from her hull or props. The transport lay athwart the projected track, as though she had been positioned with a T square on a war-game board. There would be no ship movements involved in the attack, and neither would there be any advance or transfer of the torpedoes; the gyros need only maintain straight courses. I bisected Tang’s bullnose with the reticle, then elevated the binoculars to the horizon, asking for a TBT check.

  “Right on at zero,” Frank replied. The 7 × 50s would not be touched again until after the firing, and neither would the TDC and its angle solver be required to set the gyro angles; they were zero and would remain zero. Tang’s true alignment under Welch’s experienced hand, my quick “Fire!” when the wire steadied on, and the near simultaneous movement of Frank’s palm against the firing plunger would constitute our total fire control. It would split a degree, and even the Mark 18-1s could use nothing more accurate.

  The range was 1,100 yards as we continued toward the enemy. I had conned to the half degree, and now seldom did the wire even wander off the point of aim, the transport’s mainmast. She had been hit forward, of this we were sure, but the coming detonation would flood vital spaces aft and send her on the way to the bottom. Three knots is 100 yards a minute, and at our speed a range of 900 yards was but one minute away. Before the approach, I had informed Frank that we would fire from just inside a thousand, and the firing point was now but 50 yards ahead.

  “Stand by below!” alerted all hands. The time was 0230.

  “Ready below, Captain,” Frank replied. It merely signified that nothing had taken place to change our plan. The wire lay just a hair to starboard and then steadied on, like the wire in a hunter’s scope.

  “Fire!”

  The luminous wake streaked out dead ahead. At 900 yards the torpedo would hit in just one minute. Welch was already bringing the lubber’s line to the left, and I had but to call when the reticle reached the transport’s foremast. The wire steadied as if Tang had eyes, and in truth she did.

  “Stand by below!” brought Frank’s expected reply.

  “Fire!”

  The torpedo, our very last, broached in a phosphorescent froth only yards ahead of Tang’s bow, turned sharply left, and commenced porpoising in an arc off our port bow.

  “All ahead emergency! Right full rudder!” initiated a fishtail maneuver in a desperate attempt to move our ship outside of the speeding torpedo’s turning circle. On our bow, and now coming abeam, the torpedo continued to porpoise as it heeled in the turn, causing the jammed vertical rudder to become momentarily horizontal. In less than ten seconds it had reached its maximum distance abeam, about 20 yards. It was now coming in. We had only seconds to get out of its way.

  “Left full rudder!” to swing our stern clear of the warhead offered our only chance. The luminous wake from our screws, the black exhaust from four overloaded diesels, each told that our engineers were doing their damnedest. The problem was akin to moving a ship longer than a football field and proceeding at harbor speed clear of a suddenly careening speedboat. It would be close.

  The torpedo hit abreast the after torpedo room, close to the maneuvering room bulkhead. The detonation was devastating, our stern going under before the topside watch could recover. One glance aft told me that there would be insufficient time to clear the bridge. My order, “Close the hatch,” was automatic, and my heart went out to those below and to the young men topside who must now face the sea.

  Our ship sank by the stern in seconds, the way a pendulum might swing down in a viscous liquid. The seas rolled in from aft, washing us from the bridge and shears, and of small consolation now was the detonation of our 23d torpedo as it hit home in the transport.

  Tang’s bow hung at a sharp angle above the surface, moving about in the current as does a buoy in a seaway. She appeared to be struggling like a great wounded animal, a leviathan, as indeed she was. I found myself orally cheering encouragement and striking out impulsively to reach her. Closing against the current was painfully slow and interrupted momentarily by a depth-charging patrol. Now close ahead, Tang’s bow suddenly plunged on down to Davy Jones’s locker, and the lonely seas seemed to share in my total grief.

  Epilogue

  Though the first paragraphs will be redundant, the brief, official “Report of the Loss of the U.S.S. Tang (SS306)” is recorded below exactly as I penned it at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Aiea, Oahu, in late September, 1945. It formed the closing pages of the “Report of War Patrol Number Five,” and based on first evidence is considered the most accurate account.

  This report is compiled from my observation and the stones of the eight other survivors as related to me at the first opportunity after capture.

  The U.S.S. Tang took on board the twenty-four Mark 18 Mod 1 electric torpedoes prepared for the U.S.S. TAMBOR who was being delayed. All torpedo personnel in the Tang had attended electric torpedo school and it is assured these torpedoes were properly routined while on station. In fact, the performance of the first twenty-three in all running perfectly, with twenty-two hits, attests to this.

  The last two torpedoes were loaded in tubes three and four during the final stern tube attack. After pulling clear of the enemy escorts opportunity was available to spend an hour checking these torpedoes before closing the enemy to sink a cripple. They were partially withdrawn from the tubes, batteries ventilated, gyro pots inspected and steering mechanism observed to be operating freely.

  With the submarine speed checking at six knots and the ship conned for zero gyro, the twenty-third torpedo was fired. When its phosphorescent wake was observed heading for its point of aim on the stopped transport, the last torpedo was fired from tube number four. This torpedo curved sharply to the left, broaching during the first part of its turn and then porpoising during the remainder. Emergency speed was called for and answered immediately on firing, and a fishtail maneuver partially completed in an attempt to get clear of the torpedo’s turning circle. This resulted only in the torpedo striking the stern abreast the after torpedo room instead of amidships.

  The explosion was very violent, whipping the boat, breaking H. P. air lines, lifting deck plates, etc. Numerous personnel as far forward as the control room received broken limbs and other injuries. The immediate result to the ship was to flood the after three compartments together with number six and seven ballast tanks. No one escaped from these compartments and even the forward engine room was half flooded before the after door could be secured.

  The ship, with no normal positive buoyancy aft and with three after flooded compartments, went down instantly by the stern. With personnel in the conning tower and on the bridge falling aft due to the angle, there was insufficient time to carry out the order to close the hatch.

  Personnel in the control room succeeded in closing the conning tower lower hatch, but it had been jimmied in the explosion and leaked badly. They then leveled the boat of by flooding number two main ballast tank (opening the vent manually) and proceeded to the forward torpedo room carrying the injured in blankets.

  When the survivors from the forward engine room and after battery compartments reached the messroom, they found water already above the eye-port in the door to the control room. On testing the bulkhead flappers in the ventilation piping they found the water not yet at this height. They therefore opened the door, letting the water race through, then proceeded on to the torpedo room. This made a total of about thirty men to reach an escape position.

  During this time all secret and confidential publications were destroyed first by burning in the control room, and then in the forward battery compartment as the control room flooded. This latter seems unfortunate since a great deal of smoke entered the forward torpedo room.

  Escaping was delayed by the presence of Japanese patrols which ran close by dropping occasional depth charges. This is unfortunate for an electrical fire in the forward battery was becoming severe. Commencing at about six o’clock, four parties left
the ship, but only with difficulty as the pressure at one hundred and eighty feet made numerous returns to the torpedo room necessary to revive prostrate men.

  At the time the last party escaped, the forward battery fire had reached such intensity that the paint on the forward torpedo room after bulkhead was scorching and running down. Considerable pressure had built up in the forward battery making it difficult to secure the after torpedo room door sufficiently tight to prevent acrid smoke from seeping by the gasket. It is felt that this gasket blew out, either due to the pressure or an ensuing battery explosion, and that the remaining personnel were asphyxiated.

  Of the thirteen men who escaped, five were able to cling to the buoy until picked up. Three others reached the surface, but were unable to hang on or breathe and floated off and drowned. The other five were not seen after leaving the trunk.

  Of the nine officers and men on the bridge, three were able to swim throughout the night and until picked up eight hours later. One officer escaped from the flooded conning tower and remained afloat until rescued with the aid of his trousers converted to a life belt.

  The Destroyer Escort which picked up all nine survivors was one of four which were rescuing Japanese troops and personnel. When we realized that our clubbings and kickings were being administered by the burned, mutilated survivors of our own handiwork, we found we could take it with less prejudice.

  The survivors from the forward torpedo room were motor machinist’s mates Jesse Dasilva and Clayton Decker, Lieutenant (jg) Hank Flanagan, and torpedomans mates Pete Narowanski and Hayes Trukke. All of them used Momsen lungs, and they are the only Americans ever to have escaped on their own from a sunken submarine and to have lived. After pulling these men into the lifeboat from a Japanese escort vessel, P-34, the oarsmen cut the life ring free from the ascending line, which was still attached to our submarine, and took the ring aboard as a souvenir. It was from the Yamaoka Maru and so may have spurred some wonderment within Japanese intelligence.

  Escaping from the flooded conning tower after it was already about 50 feet under water and selflessly bringing a shipmate on toward the surface was Lieutenant Larry Savadkin. He did not see the shipmate after he reached the surface, but Larry resourcefully tied a knot in the bottom of each trouser leg and, swinging them above the sea, trapped air and used the inverted trousers as water wings, repeating the procedure as necessary when the air slowly leaked out. Besides me, the others swept from the bridge who were able to swim until picked up by the same pulling boat were Chief Boatswain’s Mate William Leibold and First Class Radio Technician Floyd Caverly.

  We were all taken aboard P-34 and know the time was exactly 1030 since Caverly, without thinking, leaned down to read a Japanese petty officer’s wristwatch and received his first “knuckle sandwich.” He has never forgotten the time. Though bound on deck, we were able to see to port. Our hopes rose with each succeeding rescue, but they were all survivors from the Japanese ships.

  At dusk we were stuffed into a privy-sized deckhouse fireroom used to heat the typical Japanese bath, and though only two could flake out at a time, it was a welcome change from our plight on deck. Here we exchanged accounts of the tragedy, and Narowanski’s statement verified the short interval between the firing of our 24th torpedo and the explosion that sank our ship: “I finished venting the tube, about six seconds, then stepped from between them, hit my palm with my fist saying, ‘Hot dog, course zero nine zero, head her for the Golden Gate!’ and I was flat on the deck.”

  The P-34 had speeded up and by a circuitous route reached Takao, Formosa, the following evening. Our reception included threats of beheading, as expected, but few more lumps. Far worse were the mosquitoes, described accurately in Terry’s Guide, who had a field day since our wrists were tied to rings set high in the jail walls. The morning publicity parade rather backfired. Trukke had somehow managed to keep long blond hair, but now all of the slickum had washed away, and his hair bounded down all around to the level of his mouth, giving him the exact appearance of Hairless Joe in Al Capp’s comic strip. The onlookers pointed and laughed till the whole affair took on—for them—the nature of a circus parade.

  We were issued tattered whites before going north by train, along the same valley we had observed from sea. But the Cook’s tour ended in a late medieval Spanish jail in the port city of Kiirun, and in our predicament we were truly taken back to the dark ages: The cells had great wooden bars complete with scuttle for food, a slit high on the wall for light, and another slit in the deck to serve as a head. At dusk, to our surprise, generous balls of hot rice and fish wrapped in cane husks were pushed through the scuttles for each of us. Within an hour everyone received a blanket, and after kindly dubbing our prison the Kiirun Clink, we got our first shut-eye since the tragedy.

  Sometime before dawn, the guard at the Kiirun Clink brought us popsicles, saying simply, “I am a Christian.” Within hours we were en route to Japan aboard two destroyers and a cruiser. The protocol as I boarded one of the destroyers was exact and complete with side boys. The captain, a lieutenant commander of my age, escorted me to his cabin, saying that he would be on the bridge most of the time but would be down to see me on occasion. An armed guard was stationed at the door open onto the main deck, and though my view was limited, watching ship’s drills and activities made the time pass quickly. The gun crews were exceptional, their speed telling why we had suffered setbacks earlier in the war.

  I had been provided shoes, warm clothes, and meals on time, but the captain’s first visit did not come until after dark. The discussions that followed ranged from naval tactics to literature. He correctly did not believe that a battleship confrontation was now possible but then changed the subject, asking, “How is it, Commander, that you speak no Japanese but seem to understand my English?” I answered truthfully that when I was at the Naval Academy, Japanese language was not taught, but that had since changed. The captain turned his palms up and said with feeling, “How could we expect to understand each other’s problems when you made no attempt to learn even a word of our language?” When discussing literature—and I wished I had been better read—he reached to his bookshelf and brought down a copy of Gone with the Wind, saying, “You recognize Mitchell’s Went with the Breeze,” and expressed the opinion that if most influential adults had read this book, our nations might have found a solution to the problems and avoided this war. I could not disagree, but when he returned to his bridge, my thoughts returned to torpedoes.

  The question that immediately arose was why submarine torpedoes were not fitted with anti-circular run devices, a relatively simple addition to send them into a dive should they turn beyond a specific limit. Erratic and even circular runs, though rare, did occur in peacetime torpedo exercises. In fact in wartime, then Commander Nesmith, V.C., had a circular run in the harbor of Constantinople back in 1915, but his submarine was submerged. Perhaps that was the answer. A submarine at periscope depth was well below the running depth of torpedoes set to hit a surface ship, and submarine surface operations as they evolved for certain circumstances during the war with Japan could not have been envisaged.

  Still, in Pruitt the Mark 8s and in Argonaut the Mark 15s, which were also used by destroyers, had anti-circular run devices. And then I remembered: Early in the period of Limited Emergency, some members of ComSubPac’s staff, after witnessing a demonstration of destroyer antisubmarine proficiency at the sound school, were convinced that once a submarine was detected it would have great difficulty in escaping. The submarine base was therefore directed to provide the boats with rudder clamps that could be used to make torpedoes circle as defensive weapons against destroyers that might be camped overhead. In Argonaut we had considered this to be silly, and they wouldn’t work on our torpedoes with their anti-circular run devices anyway. But the staff obtained permission from the Bureau of Ordnance to deactivate the anticircular run devices, thus doing away with this safety measure as a requirement in submarine torpedoes.

  (Tang was not
alone in such a disaster, for after repatriation Gunner’s Mate C. W. Kuykendall, the lone survivor of Tullibee, confirmed her loss to a circular run. She had been to the northeast of Tang at Palau. Given our total submarine losses, another two may have had the same fate, quite possibly including Wahoo, for on her last patrol she carried Mark 18-1s with their lethal turning circle.)

  As the destroyer approached Kobe, I returned the warm clothes and shoes, assured by the captain that we would be issued replacements ashore. On thanking him, I asked why our treatment on the P-34 had been so rough and in contrast to the courtesies his ship had extended. “That ship and the escort force are not a part of the Imperial Navy,” he answered as he saw me over the side.

  It was a dreary day, and we were thoroughly soaked and chilled by rain and sleet as we marched to the naval training station. In another hour, a tall rear admiral looked us over, stopping in front of Chief Leibold, whose teeth were chattering with the cold. “Scared,” he said, and when Boats replied that it was the cold and tried to ask for clothes, the admiral looked him up and down and said, “Of course you’re cold, stupid, no shoes.”

  That finished the inspection, and we were off for Yokohama by train. The countryside may have been beautiful, but the fast, loaded trains, the hydroelectric lines coming down out of the mountains, and the buzzing industry were depressing to us indeed. This was particularly so at Nagoya, where we disembarked for a time. It was dark, but the factories were booming like Kaiser’s shipyards, with the bluish light of arc-welding spread out through the city. Once before I had been discouraged, after Tarawa, when a stalemate in the Pacific had seemed a real possibility. And here I knew that Japan, with her routes to China quite defensible, could be defeated only by invasion.