Run Silent, Run Deep
Edward L. Beach
An American equivalent of "Das Boot," this gripping, bestselling novel of submarine warfare inspired a well-known Hollywood film starring Burt Lancaster and Clark Gable. Set in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the tension-filled story focuses on an American submarine captain given orders to destroy Japanese shipping in the Pacific. At first his missions go well, but when he takes on an infamous Japanese destroyer, nicknamed Bungo Pete, a terrifying game of cat and mouse begins. From the training of the crew right through to the breathtaking climax, this tale is absolutely riveting, and will have fans of military writers such as Tom Clancy cheering.
Edward L. Beach graduated from the U.S. Navy's submarine school just two weeks after Pearl Harbor, and fought in the Pacific for the rest of the war. "Run Silent, Run Deep" was his first novel and became an immediate bestseller.
Run Silent, Run Deep
by Commander Edward L. Beach, U S N
This is a work of fiction. There is no conscious attempt to portray any actual person or character, living or dead, and any conclusions or opinions which may appear to have been reached herein are strictly original and bear no relation to Navy Department, policy, past, present, or future. The submarine tactics and actions, while technically plausible, exist only in the mind of the author. Yet it would be accurate to state that Rich, Jim, Joe Blunt, and the Walrus existed many times over in the submarine forces during the war; that Laura Bledsoe and Hurry Kane have also had their counterparts; and that I have personally experienced the depth charges of Bungo Pete.
With the proviso that there have been some intentional gaps in descriptive information, the motivation, events, and action herein set forth are representative of that brave period between 1941 and 1945 when many of us unwittingly realized our highest purpose in life. To that extent, and with these qualifications, this book, though fiction, is true.
Edward L. BEACH.
Falls Church, Virginia,
January 26, 1955.
Deep in the sea there is no motion, no sound, save that put there by the insane humors of man. The slow, smooth stirring of the deep ocean currents, the high-frequency snapping or popping of ocean life, even the occasional snort or burble of a porpoise are all in low key, subdued, responsive to the primordial quietness of the deep. Of life there is, of course, plenty, and of death too, for neither is strange to the ocean. But even life and death, though violent, make little or no noise in the deep sea.
U. S. NAVY DEPARTMENT.
Washington, D C.
In reply refer to number N/P16/2117.
August 31, 1945.
From: The Director, Broadcast and Recording Division.
To: The Officer-in-Charge, Security and Public Information.
Subject: Commander E. J. Richardson, U. S. Navy; tape recording by
Reference: (a) Article 1074(b) Bu Pers Manual (b) Sec Nav Memo of 11 Aug. 1945
Enclosure: (A) Transcript of subject recording
1. A transcript of a tape recording made by Commander. E. J. Richardson, U. S. Navy, who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor on August 30, is forwarded herewith as enclosure (A).
2. It is not believed that subject recording can be of use during the forthcoming Victory War Bond Drive mentioned in reference (b) without severe condensation of the material. Subject failed to confine himself to pertinent elements of the broad strategy of the war, and devoted entirely too much time to personal trivia.
3. Subject to the foregoing comments, a verbatim transcript is forwarded for review. In accordance with provisions of reference (a), subject tape will be retained for such future disposition as may be directed.
S. V. MATTHEWS
1
My name is Edward J. Richardson and I am a Commander in the Navy, skipper of the submarine Eel. They said to tell the whole story from the beginning about the Medal of Honor and what led up to it, I mean-and that's a big order. The story is as much about Jim Bledsoe and the Walrus as it is about me, but it starts long before the Walrus left New London. It properly begins on the old S-16, one frigid day right after Christmas, 1941, and it includes Laura Elwood, Jim's fiancee, and Bungo Pete, a Jap destroyer skipper.
We were out in Long Island Sound making practice approaches in the freezing weather for Jim's qualification for command of submarines. The war had begun nearly three weeks before. When Jim's qualification came up, the S-16 had just started her first refit since going back in commission the previous summer.
Jim was Executive Officer of the S-16 and I was her skip- per. She was a World War I "S-boat"-though not completed until 1919 and had seen only five years' service until we came along. She had been laid up in "red-lead row" (for the red preservative paint) ever since 1924. Her main trouble had been her engines, which had been copied from German designs but which could never be made to run properly. The Navy had had enough of her and her mechanical troubles by 1924 and gave her up as a bad job, putting her in moth- balls and hoping to do better next time.
At the time I'm talking about, I was a senior Lieutenant.
S-16 was my first command. Jim was also a full Lieutenant and we had served together since the broiling heat of the Philadelphia Navy Yard the previous summer when, at the urgent request of the Navy, we had dragged the rusted hulk of S-16 from the Navy Yard's back channel and — began to put her back together.
Jim Bledsoe was tall, bronzed, and good-looking; two inches taller than my five-feet-eleven. He was a product of Yale's NROTC and had been in the Navy two and a half years-practically all of it in the Submarine Service. I had graduated from the Naval Academy six years before and had nearly three years more than Jim in submarines.
Jim was of inestimable help in turning the old rust bucket we found in the Navy Yard back into the submarine she once had been. With Keith Leone, an Ensign just out of the submarine school, and old Tom Schultz, a one-time Machinist's Mate, USN, now a Lieutenant (jg), the officer complement of the S-16 was complete-and busy. With the accent on "busy," for the ship, when we took her out of the mud, was a gutted shell. All spring and summer we worked on her madly, sweating all the time, crawling about in the filthy bilges, racing against we knew not what, for the increasing tension in the world had its effect on us, too. There was an unmistakable urgency in the air-every-particle of dirt which ground its way into our sweat pores carried its quota of haste and importance with it. There was also a pointed urgency in my orders as "prospective Commanding Officer," which said, among other things, "Report earliest when ready for sea." We did our best.
I didn't meet Laura until later, on reporting to New London, but I don't want to explain about her yet, although you will have to understand about her to know about Jim and me.
In the spring of 1941, when the Navy Department decided to-shake up S-16's old bones after all, it was with something like despair that I made my first inspection of her innards.
She had been labeled "junk" for fifteen years.
Jim and I were the first to arrive at Philadelphia; Keith and Tom came a few weeks later. We were all new at our jobs. Tom, with his. sixteen years of enlisted service as a Machinist's Mate, had just received his commission. We practically lived in the bilges and engines of our old pig of a submarine. Jim took to the job of getting, our gradually accumulated crew organized as though he had been an Exec all his life. Keith, fresh from Reserve Midshipman School and submarine school otherwise a simon-pure product of Northwestern University, became Torpedo Officer. Tom, of course, became Engineer. My last job had been Engineering Officer of the Octopus, the boat I had reported to upon grad- nation from the submarine school, and so I concentrated my spare time on finding out what the basic design trouble with the engines had been-a
nd, with a little good luck and the assistance of the Engineering Design Department of the Navy Yard, arrived at some sort of an answer. As a result, S-16 ran better after we got her back together than she had ever run before. And she had been on the run ever since, logging more miles, more dives, and more hours submerged in the ensuing six months than in her whole previous five years' commission.
You would have thought she was the only submarine in New London, the way the submarine school, to which we had been assigned, kept us going. We were not even allotted normal upkeep time, on the theory that having just come from the Navy Yard we needed none. So, when the accumulated list of urgently needed repairs began to approach the danger point, I protested to Captain Blunt, our Squadron Commander, with the result that the school at last grudgingly allotted us two weeks of "upkeep" to our disgust over Christmas and New Year's. Even this had now been interrupted for Jim's qualification.
Jim, eager, alert, and ambitious, had earned a reputation as a "natural" submariner. Normally an officer with only two years of total submarine service would not have been considered for a command billet or even for qualification for command, but the war had already changed a lot of things.
It had taken me a full year to complete my submarine notebook and qualify in submarines, and gruff old Joe Blunt, my skipper in Octopus at the time, had pinned his own dolphins on my shirt. Jim had needed no notebook, had put on his dolphins within six months of graduating from the submarine school. Three years I served in Octopus, fourteen months as Engineer, before the man who had relieved Blunt, Jerry Watson, judged me worthy of his recommendation for "Qualification for Command of Submarines." That had happened only last spring, and I had received my orders to the S-16 within two weeks. The Octopus had sailed for Manila the same day I had taken off in the Pan-American Clipper, bound in the other direction.
And here was Jim going through the same thing after only half the time in subs. This seemed contrary to the conservative submarine instinct-contrary to my reservations, too; and yet the whole thing, in this instance at least, had been my own doing.
An interview with our Squadron Commander, Joe Blunt himself, now older-looking and gruffer than ever, had kicked the whole thing off nearly a week before.
Captain Joseph Blunt was short and spare, and he looked and acted his name. Everyone in the submarine force knew that diesel fuel ran in his veins instead of blood. He was hard-boiled, but his weakness was "the boats"-and he had no use for any man who did not feel the same way. When he sent for me that Tuesday morning, I knew him well enough to climb right out of S-16's superstructure and run over in my dirty khaki. True to form, he started shouting questions at me the moment I opened the door to his office.
"Richardson," he barked, "what about your Exec? Do you think he's ready for command yet?"
The question caught me by surprise. "Why, I haven't thought much about it, Commodore," I answered. "He's an excellent officer, but still very junior."
"He's a Lieutenant, too, isn't he? Anyway, his rank makes no difference if he knows his business. I've a particular reason for asking you. He's your responsibility, you know."
I could think of nothing more intelligent to say than a noncommittal "Yes, sir!"
The Squadron Commander waited a moment, clamped a well-chewed pipe between his teeth and sucked moistly-and futilely, on it. "Did you know that our submarine production target has been tripled for next year? Does that mean any- thing to you."
I waited in my turn. This was the first time I had heard this particular piece of news, though I suppose I should have anticipated something of the sort on account of the war. "We'll need more qualified submarine personnel," I ventured.
"Do I have to draw you a diagram, Richardson?" Blunt cracked out. "Just where do you expect we're going to find the skippers for these new boats?"
"You mean me?" I stuttered, feeling as though a cold blast of air had suddenly blown on the back of my neck.
"Precisely. I've received a request from the submarine detail desk, and this is all private information, understand- to nominate officers from my squadron for the new boats under construction at the Electric Boat Company here and in the Navy Yards at Portsmouth and Mare Island." Old Joe Blunt was looking me right in the eyes, the way he did when he was really putting a man on the spot. "But also I've got to, keep this training squadron going. Now do you see why I asked you about Bledsoe?"
"You mean," I said, "if Jim can take over the S-16, I can be nominated for one of the new submarines?"
"That's about right. Rich. Of course, you'll get one anyhow eventually that is, if you want one", here old Blunt looked suddenly sardonic-"but you've been doing well with the S-16, and I think you should have your chance now. There are a number of skippers senior to you, however, who will have to take priority over you for the available replacements; so the way it stacks up, unless Bledsoe can take over the S-16, I'm going to have to hang on to you for a while longer."
This was the first time since he had left Octopus that Captain Blunt had called me by my nickname, and obviously it was not accidental. He was telling me, as clearly as he knew how, that he would back me up in giving the S-16 to Jim, but that doing so was my responsibility. That was the whole crux of the matter. I was morally sure that Jim, despite his good qualities, was not yet ready for an independent command of his own. There was a certain flippancy, — a sort of devil-may-care attitude-almost recklessness, about him. And yet Jim had shown extraordinary aptitude in certain phases of the S-16's work. He certainly knew the ship, mechanically, as well or better than anyone on board. It was just a hunch, more than anything else on my part, that somehow there was a degree of immaturity about him which needed more seasoning before he was turned loose with the responsibility of a ship and crew on his back. He had been commissioned in the Navy only slightly more than three years. His total submarine service was less than three years. This was reflected in the fact that he was not yet "qualified for command of sub- marines," a designation requiring proof of one's ability before a board of skippers and written certification of acceptance by-them, ordinarily earned some time prior to actually getting your first boat. Subconsciously, without giving the subject open thought, I had not yet been ready to recommend him.
"Bledsoe is not yet qualified for command, Commodore," I began slowly. "As a matter of fact, I had not intended to put him up for a while."
Captain Blunt slid himself forward on the edge of his chair, hands placed on its arms as though he were about to rise from it. "That's really up to you, too, isn't it?" he said. "Why don't you talk it over with him and think about it for a while.
Let me know tomorrow."
I rose, beating him to it. "Aye, aye, sir," I answered, and turned to go out.
"By the way, Rich," Captain Blunt called after me, "keep all this confidential for the moment."
This was the second time he had cautioned me. I gave him another "Aye, aye, sir" and beat my retreat. There were entirely too many things to think about. Undeniably, the idea of having command of one of the newest and most powerful submarines our Navy could build one of the new Gato class, even better than the recently completed Tambor and her. sisters-and far improved over the old Octopus-was tantalizingly attractive. The new boats carried ten torpedo tubes and a total of I twenty-four torpedoes, as compared to only six tubes and sixteen fish in the Octopus. They were bigger, built to dive deeper, and had a considerably longer cruising range.
Their fire-control system had been improved and streamlined so that it was both easier to operate and simpler than any I'd been used to. By comparison even to the Octopus, poor old S-16 was nothing but antiquated scrap iron, kept in operation for training duties only so that the fleet boats could be released for other more valuable service.
The skippers of the fleet boats were the elite of the Submarine force. When they spoke up in the squadron or division councils, or before the Admiral, their words carried weight and they were listened to. Someday, naturally, I had hoped to join their number. Now,
because of the war, the dream of a submariner s career was suddenly practically at hand-all I had to do was to turn the S-16 over to Jim.
By the time I got back aboard I had gone over all the arguments at least three times. The chance of getting a first- line command early was too much to pass up lightly, even though I could be practically assured of being given one later on. But there was also the fact that I owed something to the S-16 and her crew. It would be unthinkable to leave them in charge of anyone not fully ready and competent to be in command of a submarine.
All the way back to the refit pier alongside which S-16 was moored I wrestled with the pros and cons, and as I felt the wooden planks of the dock under my feet I was no closer to a decision than before. Stepping close to the edge of the dock, I looked over the short, angular profile of the ship to which, until an hour ago, I had felt virtually wedded. Now she looked small, puny, and tired. The only mission she would ever have in the war would be to train submarine-school students. She could never expect to go anywhere nor do anything worthwhile; just spend the war going in and out of port, carrying trainees into Long Island Sound for a days operations.
Then the deciding argument flooded my, brain. The fleet boats by contrast were going into war and danger. Suppose Captain Blunt were to misunderstand my motives for choosing to stay with the S-16 instead of eagerly taking a far-ranging fleet boat? For that matter, how could I be sure myself: Could that have been the thought prompting the peculiar expression on his face when he said I could get one, eventually, if I really wanted one?
My head was spinning as I climbed down into S-16's torpedo room and made my, way aft to where Jim was working in the wardroom. He was deep in sorting out work requests and job orders; comparing one against the other and malting three piles which he had labeled "Will be Done,"
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