Ireland lost some good friends that day.
He tipped the blinds with one finger and sipped at his coffee as he scanned the pier just below his window. The waterfront below was frantic with activity. A dozen submarines sat at their moorings while water and supply trucks drove up and down the pier providing their services like busy ants. Sailors worked everywhere and speckled the pier and the submarines with their blue dungarees and white “dixie cup” hats.
Ireland focused his attention on one of the submarines, halfway down the pier. Even from this distance, he could see the holes in her conning tower, left there by a Japanese heavy caliber machine gun. A sign loosely draped across the submarine’s brow identified her as the USS Mackerel SS-244. Ireland sighed and took another drink. This boat was his current problem and he had to fix it before things got out of hand. He had dealt with these kinds of things before but the solution he was about to enact made him uncharacteristically uneasy and he could not understand why.
Captain Steven Landis Ireland came from a navy family with a heritage as old as the navy itself. Several distant ancestors served on the old American frigates that the British feared so much in the War of 1812. His grandfather sailed with Farragut at the Battle of Mobile Bay and supposedly heard the admiral utter his famous “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!” His father was with Dewey when he sank the Spanish fleet in the Philippines, which he recounted to young Ireland not less than once a week for every week of his childhood. And when young Steven Ireland came of age, he dutifully followed the call from his family’s naval tradition and accepted an appointment to Annapolis in 1906. Ireland’s first submarine assignment after graduation placed him aboard the USS Skipjack, captained by Lieutenant Chester W. Nimitz. Nimitz had been quick to note young Ireland’s ability to solve problems and had commended him on several occasions. On Ireland’s successive sea tours on other submarines, this quality was noted by all of his commanding officers. However, as he rose in rank, his problem-solving ability became less and less admired and more and more a nuisance to those above him. When he stepped on the toes of some of the senior navy leadership, they blackballed him, and his career quickly became somewhat less than extraordinary.
Several years later, in 1937, the review board grudgingly acknowledged him to be “a trustworthy and skilled, if somewhat eccentric and manipulative, leader of men” and they eventually gave him command of his own boat. His command tour was highly successful and his boat won several unit citations, but when his tour ended in 1939, he was far behind the rest of his academy classmates and had no chance of receiving a higher command. So the navy sent him to a quiet desk job at the War Department in Washington D.C., where Steven Ireland was expected to spend the rest of his naval career.
Those plans, along with many others, changed on December 7, 1941, when the United States entered the war. After the devastating blow to the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, the navy department quickly determined that submarines would be a major factor in holding the “front lines” in the Pacific — until replacement ships and fleets were constructed to start America’s counter offensive. Commanders with submarine experience were desperately needed. Thus, Ireland was pulled from his desk job and sent to Pearl Harbor to take command of Submarine Division Seven.
Submarine Division Seven was a newly formed division. It had been created, along with several more divisions, to accommodate the arrival of newly constructed replacement submarines that were supposed to be arriving “soon.” For his new division’s headquarters section, Ireland had been given some of Submarine Division Three’s office space until a new building could be constructed. Three offices and a small waiting room were all Division Three could afford to give up. Despite the grumblings of his headquarters staff, Captain Ireland had gladly accepted the offices and reminded his staff that their submarine brethren at sea were serving under far worse conditions.
Now Ireland had a far more serious problem to worry about than office space. He walked over to the great chart spanning most of the adjacent wall. Sipping his coffee, he shook his head. The chart showed the current patrol zones of his deployed boats. Of the six boats in his division, three were deployed. One of those boats was missing and presumed sunk. Of the three boats in port, one was in retrofit, one was two weeks away from its next patrol, and one was… his current problem.
He did not like this part of the job but it was perhaps the only part of his job that mattered. He had a problem in his division. A “problem child” so to speak. A boat with an unusually high number of “hard luck” occurrences. Using his keen problem-solving ability, Ireland had done the only thing he could do. He had determined the “root cause” of the problem and eradicated it. Unfortunately, the “root cause” of any large problem on any ship was almost always the ship’s commanding officer.
There was a knock at the door and an enlisted yeoman entered the room in the customary white “cracker jack” uniform of sailors assigned to shore jobs.
“Lieutenant Commander Tremain is here to see you, sir,” the yeoman said.
“Very well. Send him in, will you please.”
Ireland took a deep breath and sat his coffee cup on the desk. He hated being the bearer of bad news. This would be the second time today.
There was another brief knock before a smiling but worn-looking officer entered the room in service dress khakis. Jack Tremain held his hat under one arm. He looked youthful and inexperienced but Ireland knew better. If one missed the insignia of a lieutenant commander proudly displayed on his uniform, one would certainly not miss the Navy Cross above his left breast pocket. Both marked him as a seasoned veteran of naval combat. Tremain had jet-black hair swept loosely to the side. His eyes bore the crow’s feet brought on by many tours of duty spent squinting into the sun. He was trim, the result of extreme physical discipline and many years of physical exertion.
Ireland smiled and met Tremain in the center of the room with a heart-felt handshake.
“Hi, Jack. How are you? How was the flight in?”
“Good, Captain. Pretty uneventful. One helluva layover in New Guinea, though.”
“Two weeks, wasn’t it?”
“Something like that, sir.”
“And how’s Judy? Been able to get through since you hit Pearl?”
“No, sir. Lines were tied up this morning. I’ll try again later. She was doing well in the last letter that caught up with me.”
“Good, good. Go ahead and have a seat, Jack.” Ireland motioned to the chair in front of his desk while he walked to the sidebar.
“Coffee, Jack?”
“Yes, sir, thank you.”
Tremain’s face immediately became stone. He had been in the navy long enough to know a “butter-up” treatment when he saw it.
“You’re probably wondering why I asked you to come by, Jack. I know you have a flight scheduled back to the States tonight. Leaving from Hickam, isn’t it?”
Jack took the steaming cup of coffee from Ireland. He did not answer the leading question but instead changed tack.
“I just assumed you wanted to say hi to an old shipmate, Captain. I was hoping this was a social call.”
“It’s not. You know me better than that, Jack.”
“I most certainly do, sir. So why’d you send for me? And before you begin, might I point out that I have not seen Judy for over a year now. Also, may I remind you that I’ve been ordered to take command of a pre-commissioned submarine fitting out in New London. That’s two damn good reasons I’m determined to be on that plane tonight!”