by Mark Felton
In the Absaroka’s radio shack the operator had picked himself up off the floor where he had been flung by the force of the Japanese torpedo impact and had sent an SOS distress call and details of the submarine attack to the shore. On deck, the remaining crew had already begun to make the ship’s lifeboats ready as the Absaroka settled lower and lower in the water. Responding to the Absaroka’s distress call, US Army Air Corps planes soon arrived at the scene, dropping bombs into the sea close to the I-19’s last reported position. The USS Amethyst steamed defiantly up to the Absaroka, taking off the crew, and then spent several hours’ depth charging the area in the vain hope of destroying the elusive Japanese submarine. It was all to no avail, as none of the thirty-two depth charges found their target. As time passed it became apparent to Captain Pringle that his ship, although with her main deck awash, was not in any immediate danger of foundering. Perhaps the Absaroka could be salvaged, and with this in mind a US Navy tug tied up to the freighter ready to haul her to land. Pringle and seven volunteers re-boarded the Absaroka to assist with the salvage operation. With great care the freighter was taken into shore and beached below Fort MacArthur. The great hole in the Absaroka’s hull made by the Japanese torpedo became a useful propaganda tool for the American home front. In a similar tone to the British slogan ‘Careless talk costs lives’, movie actress Jane Russell was photographed standing in the gaping hole holding a poster emblazoned with the slogan ‘A slip of the lip may sink a ship.’ The photograph appeared in LIFE magazine in January 1942.20 The press speculated on the possible involvement of Japanese-Americans in assisting enemy submarines in finding their targets, all of which was completely unfounded and further demonstrated the fear and paranoia gripping the west coast.
By Christmas Day 1941 the Japanese submarines assigned to interdict American coastal shipping had begun to break off their attacks and plot a course for their home bases. Originally, all of the submarines were to have moved even closer inshore, and were supposed to have expended their deck-gun ammunition against shore installations along the west coast before heading home. Admiral Osami Nagano, Chief of the Naval General Staff in Tokyo, had countermanded Vice-Admiral Shimizu’s original shore bombardment order. It has been surmised that Nagano feared that American submarines would retaliate by bombarding Japanese coastal installations and towns. Only Commander Nishino and the I-17 would go against his wishes and conduct a coastal bombardment sortie against the United States before departing across the Pacific.
Notes
1. I-26 – Cape Flattery, Washington; I-25 – mouth of Columbia River, Oregon; I-9 – Cape Blanco, Oregon; I-17 – Cape Mendocino, California; I-15 – San Francisco, California; I-23 – Point Arguello, California; I-19 – Los Angeles, California; I-10 – San Diego, California
2. Data derived from Bob Hackett & Sander Kingsepp’s http://www.combined-fleet.com
3. Bert Webber, Silent Siege III: Japanese Attacks on North America in World War II: Ships Sunk, Air Raids, Bombs Dropped, Civilians Killed, (Medford, OR: Webb Research Group), 1992
4. The Attack on the SS Emidio, The California State Military Museum, California State Military Department, http://www.militarymuseum.org
5. ibid.
6. Data derived from Bob Hackett 8t Sander Kingsepp’s http://www.combined-fleet.com/I-23.htm
7. The Attack on the SS Dorothy Phillips, The California State Military Museum, California State Military Department, http://www.militarymuseum.org
8. Donald J. Young, ‘West Coast War Zone’, World War II, http://historynet.com
9. ibid.
10. The Attack on the SS Montebello, The California State Military Museum, California State Military Department, http://www.militarymuseum.org
11. Young, op. cit.
12. ibid.
13. Lord Russell of Liverpool, The Knights of Bushido: A Short History of Japanese War Crimes, (London: Greenhill Books, Lionel Leventhal Limited), 2005, p.213.
14. Data derived from Bob Hackett & Sander Kingsepp’s http://www.com-binedfleet.com/I-21.htm
15. Young, op. cit.
16. ibid.
17. Data derived from Bob Hackett & Sander Kingsepp’s http://www.com-binedfleet.com/I-25.htm
18. Data derived from Bob Hackett & Sander Kingsepp’s http://www.com-binedfleet.com/I-19.htm
19. Young, op. cit.
20. ibid.
Chapter 4
The Empire Strikes Back
The submarine made violent maneuvers [sic] to lose contact, with the EDSALL trailing and attempting to make a good approach.
Commander J.J. Nix, USS Edsall, 31 January 1942
HMAS Deloraine was a minesweeper of the Bathurst-class. Although officially designated a minesweeper the vessels of the class were actually known as corvettes. The Deloraine was one of sixty such vessels constructed by Australian shipyards during the Second World War. Twenty were ordered built by the Admiralty in London, but their crews were to be from the Royal Australian Navy and the vessels were commissioned in Australia. A further thirty-six Bathurst-class corvettes were specially built for the Royal Australian Navy, with another four constructed in Australia but serving with the Royal Indian Navy.
HMAS Deloraine was commissioned into service at a ceremony conducted in Sydney on 22 December 1941, after having been officially named and launched on 26 July by Dame Mary Hughes, wife of the Australian Navy Minister. The vessel was placed under Lieutenant-Commander Desmond Menlove of the Royal Australian Naval Reserve. The eighty-four officers and men under Menlove lived aboard a vessel 186 feet in length, and which weighed only 650 tons. The Deloraine was powered by two triple-expansion diesel engines that generated 2,000 horsepower, and which gave the anti-submarine corvette a maximum speed of 15 knots. At the time of the Deloraine’s entanglement with the Japanese submarine I-124 her main armament consisted of a single 12-pounder gun (later beefed up with the addition of a 4-inch gun). She also boasted three Oerlikon cannon and machine guns, although later in her career this armament configuration was modified by the removal of an Oerlikon gun and its replacement with a more powerful 37mm Bofors gun. The Deloraine’s anti-submarine capability was expressed by the depth charge chutes and throwers located in her stern.
On 26 December 1941 HMAS Deloraine sailed out of Sydney and headed north, bound for Darwin in the Northern Territory. She would begin her career by undertaking a period of antisubmarine patrol duty in the Arafura Sea. She arrived in Darwin on 7 January 1942 and immediately began work patrolling the entrance to Darwin Harbour. The Australians rightly suspected that Japanese submarines were operating in the area around Darwin, and by January 1942 the Japanese were pushing their southern flank virtually into Australian coastal waters. The submarine I-124 was lurking close to Darwin, dropping mines and hoping for a chance to torpedo an enemy ship entering or exiting Darwin, Australia’s most important northern port. The boat was an I-121-Class minelaying submarine. Only four vessels of this class were completed, and the Kure Naval Shipyard had constructed the I-124 in 1928. Each of the four vessels measured 279 feet in length and displaced 1,383 tons. They were powered by diesel engines that generated 2,400 horsepower, and for submerged travel the boat was powered by electric motors of 1,200 horsepower. They were roughly equivalent in size and power to the German Type IX U-boat, though slightly slower and with a bigger crew. The I-124 had a maximum surface speed of 14 knots, or a respectable 9.5 knots when submerged. A complement of eighty officers and men crewed the boat, under Lieutenant-Commander Kouichi Kishigami.
The I-124’s armament consisted of four torpedo tubes, a 150mm deck-gun, and forty-two mines. Although the submarine was more than capable of interdicting Allied shipping using torpedoes or deck-gun bombardment, her primary task, and the role for which the vessels of her class had been designed and constructed, was to lay mines along enemy shipping channels. Throughout January 1942 the sister ships of the I-124 (the I-121, I-122 and I-123) were all active in mining Australian inshore waters. The I-121 had laid thirty-nine mines arou
nd the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf area 125 miles south-west of Darwin on 12 January. The I-122 dropped thirty mines in the western approaches to the Torres Strait around 15 January, and her sister submarine, the I-123, deposited a further thirty mines in the Dundas Strait off Cape Don on the Coburg Peninsula. The I-124 herself had deposited twenty-seven mines close to Darwin before her terminal encounter with HMAS Deloraine. The mines that the Japanese submarines sowed were German, a type known as the TMC. The TMC had first appeared in 1940, originally designed for use on land with influence fusing, but later adapted for use at sea. The naval version could be placed in waters up to 37 metres in depth, and each mine had an explosive charge of between 1,896 and 2,050 pounds of TNT. Some of the mines laid by Japanese submarines were still being washed up in Australia during the mid-1960s.
On 20 January 1942 Commander Kishigami discovered the American fleet oiler USS Trinity close to the port of Darwin. The Trinity was accompanied by the destroyer escort USS Edsall. Kishigami was a bold commander, but he was perhaps also aware of the eyes of his own commanding officer judging his actions. Along for the patrol of the I-124 as an observer was Kishigami’s division commander, Captain Keiyu Endo. Port Darwin at this time contained over forty Allied ships, and the presence of Captain Endo suggests that the operation was high-priority, and perhaps intended to interdict trade in and out of Darwin. It is also suggested from the later reports of one of the ships involved in the sinking of the I-124 that another Japanese submarine may have also been present, perhaps forming a small flotilla under Endo’s overall command.
Three torpedoes were fired at the Trinity in a spread, but quick evasive action by the oiler witnessed all three miss their target. The attack also alerted the Edsall, which immediately, in the words of her skipper, ‘sheared violently to port reversing course and maneuvered to screen between submarine and TRINITY’.1 At 6.37 a.m. the Edsall located a submarine at a distance of 2,300 yards, but the destroyer USS Alden chased the submarine down a sonar contact bearing, plastering the area with a barrage of depth charges while the Edsall continued to screen the Trinity. Contact with the submarine was then lost, owing to the nature of depth charging. When a depth charge exploded it disrupted the ship’s sonar equipment for up to fifteen minutes, meaning the operator was forced to wait until he could achieve a fresh fix on the target. In some cases, submarines that survived the initial depth charge attack were able to use the attacker’s resultant sonar ‘blindness’ to hastily exit the scene. The Edsall was ordered by the Trinity to take up station ahead of the convoy while the Trinity made a contact report to the local Australian Commander Base Force in Port Darwin informing him of her attack on a submarine, but the Trinity’s captain did not know whether the Alden had inflicted any damage.
HMAS Deloraine was at sea when reports came in of a contact between a US Navy destroyer and an enemy submarine. Command immediately contacted Menlove and ordered him to take his vessel on a prearranged patrol line, factoring in the position of the earlier attack that would hopefully bring the Deloraine into contact with the enemy. By 1.35 p.m. the Deloraine was patrolling the assigned area after having raced to the scene at a near maximum speed of 14.5 knots. It was Kishigami, however, aboard the I-124, who made the opening move. Lining up on the little corvette a single torpedo was fired, lookouts aboard the Deloraine spotting the torpedo’s distinctive white wake as it ploughed through the waves towards them. A shout of ‘torpedo in the water!’ followed by the bearing, estimated range and speed gave Menlove just enough time to order the helmsman to take evasive action. The torpedo rocketed past the stern, missing by just ten feet, as the Deloraine came about. If the torpedo had impacted the Deloraine’s stern, loaded down as it was with depth charges, half the ship would have been blown off and dozens of the crew killed or injured.
In the meantime the sonar operator aboard the Deloraine informed the bridge that he had a good echo contact on the submarine, allowing Menlove to manoeuvre his ship ready to launch a volley of depth charges. On board the I-124, Kishigami must have realized the terrible danger his vessel and crew were now in as his opening gambit with the torpedo attack had failed. Every man aboard the submarine could hear the Deloraine’s engines growing louder, and every man knew what inevitably would follow. Many of the Japanese undoubtedly wondered whether their luck, that had seen them through the attack by the Alden, would last out this time.
Six depth charges slowly sank into the ocean as the corvette passed over the silent Japanese submarine. When the barrels reached their preset depths their charges were fired, igniting the hundreds of pounds of TNT in six massive underwater explosions. Up on the surface, lookouts aboard the Deloraine observed huge bursts of bubbles breaking the ocean and patches of oil forming at the surface. Corvette skippers were a thorough bunch, however, and Commander Menlove was not satisfied with an oil slick as evidence of a definite submarine kill, and he ordered the attack to be resumed. The Deloraine shot forth all of her remaining depth charges, and two of her sister ships raced up to join in the hunt. USS Edsall and Alden reappeared at the scene at 7 p.m. The Edsall’s sonar operator, Radioman First Class P. W. Hegerfeldt, went immediately to work in assisting the Australian corvettes. ‘At 19.29 while searching the area of this attack we picked up a target…range 2,700 yards in Northern edge of the oil slick and separated by approximately ¾ of a mile from the initial target.’2 Commander J. J. Nix, skipper of the Edsall, gave a detailed account of his ship’s cooperative effort to confirm the destruction of the Japanese submarine with the Deloraine:
The EDSALL changed course…and speed to 5 knots, and sent ranges to the DELORAINE informing him that the target was dead ahead. At 1933 the Corvette crossed ahead at a range of 1,500 yards and laid a pattern of depth charges, signalling to the EDSALL that he was right over the contact at that time. The EDSALL then changed speed to 10 knots, commenced ranging to pick up target. We could not locate the target in the depth charge barrage so crossed middle of barrage at 15 knots…and dropped five depth charges. Two of these charges being set for 150 feet did not go off. Results of both these attacks gave indications that the submarine had been hit; a large amount of oil rising to the surface with air bubbles and evidence of violent disturbances in the water.3
The Deloraine and the Edsall circled like wolves around the disturbed sea, attempting to gain another firm sonar contact. The Alden obtained a firm contact at 8 p.m., allowing the Edsall to run in at 5 knots and deposit a further six depth charges. Leaving HMAS Katoomba and Lithgow at the scene the Deloraine raced for the supply vessel HMAS Vigilant to rearm. Early the following morning, rearming completed, the Deloraine arrived back at the scene where the Katoomba was still busily depth charging. Deloraine’s sonar operator again obtained a contact, often described as most probably the wreck of the I-124, and the area was depth charged yet again. Examination of the Edsall’s battle report, however, suggests that the I-124 was still active that morning. Commander Nix notes in his report to the US Asiatic Fleet on 31 January:
At 0700 on January 21 the EDSALL picked up echo bearing 135°, distance 2200 yards, subsequent investigation proved contact had been made with a small submarine; as a maximum of 10° width of target was found at 500 yards distance; at 300 yards propellers were heard.4
Further to this evidence of life in the I-124 on the morning of the 21st, Nix also stated:
The submarine made violent maneuvers [sic] to lose contact, with the EDSALL trailing and attempting to make a good approach.5
At 7.50 a.m. the Edsall attacked the undoubtedly damaged I-124, dropping initially a pattern of six depth charges over the sonar contact. ‘Turning hard with full rudder to cross the original line of attack, we dropped only one depth charge. The safety fork from this depth charge dropped into the rack and jammed the rest of the charges in this rack so that they would not release.’6
The Edsall’s log notes that by 8.32 a.m. the destroyer had joined the two Australian corvettes in continuing to search for the submarine, now also joined by a US Navy PBY
Catalina flying boat. By 9 a.m., with no submarine in sight, the Edsall had rejoined the Alden intending to return to port. The Australian corvettes subsequently reacquired a target and the two American ships stood off while the corvettes plastered the target area. However, at 9.51 a.m. the log records: ‘We then examined oil slick at original contact. Seems to be two subs down in this area about ¾ mile apart.’7 The Alden was heading for port low on depth charges, and the Australians were busy bombing the main target, so the Edsall, assisted by the circling Catalina, decided to ‘hunt this cripple’.8 However, rain squalls brought the operation to an end by lunchtime, and the Edsall returned to port, her captain certain that two Japanese submarines, one large and one small, had been present.
Although a post-war investigation demonstrated that the Deloraine’s first attack had probably sunk the I-124, the Katoomba, Lithgow and Edsall were also credited with destroying the Japanese submarine. However, the evidence of Nix’s report from the Edsall appears to suggest that the Deloraine had certainly damaged the I-124, but the Edsall had been the vessel that had sunk her. The Commander of US Destroyer Squadron 29, of which the Edsall was a part, noted rather acerbically in his report of the action to the Commander of US Naval Forces in the south-west Pacific that: ‘The Naval Officer in command Darwin was inclined, naturally, to credit the large submarine [sunk] to H.M.A.S. DELORAINE.’9 An inter-service rivalry between the US and Australian navies aside, the end result was the same. The pressure waves created by the depth charge blasts split the I-124’s ballast and fuel tanks, knocked out the submarines steering and breached the pressure hull through several blown hatches, that long steel compartmentalized tube housing the eighty-one men clinging to valves, pipes and bits of machinery. High-pressure jets of cold seawater immediately found every opening made through the submarine’s fragile hull. Water rapidly filled the compartments which were not closed off with secure hatches, shorting out all the boat’s electrics in showers of sparks, killing the lights and the power to the motors. The volume of water flooding the boat rapidly overwhelmed groups of men. As the I-124 drifted helplessly along the seabed suffocation extinguished the lives of the remaining submariners inside still watertight compartments, trapped forever inside their metal coffin. Commander Menlove of the Deloraine was subsequently awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his command of the action and for his sinking of the I-124. The Royal Australian Navy conducted an investigation concerning a possible two Japanese submarines noted by many of the ships that took part in the attack on the I-124. In the light of insufficient evidence the navy decided that there had only been one target that had moved about on the seabed during the attack, and HMAS Deloraine had indeed sunk that target. The wreck of the I-124 was discovered in 1972, and today it is a protected war grave. A survey conducted by divers from HMAS Curlew in 1984 reported that the submarine was intact and upright on the seabed, showing little signs of damage. This has indicated to many enthusiasts that the I-124’s pressure hull, or section of the interior of the boat, has remained watertight to the present day and still contains the bodies of the asphyxiated Japanese sailors. HMAS Deloraine continued in service, seeing plenty of action off New Guinea in 1944–45, until she was paid off into the Reserve in November 1946. In December 1946 the ship was commissioned once more and worked until 1948 as a minesweeper, clearing up the detritus of war. She was finally paid off in Fremantle in 1948, and ended her days in a breakers yard in Hong Kong in 1956, reduced to scrap.