It is still fairly light, though too dark to see effectively through the periscope. There are only four torpedoes left in the ship, all aft. A moment’s reflection, and Morton gives the command to carry the fight to the enemy.
“Surface!” Three blasts of the diving alarm, the traditional surfacing signal, sound raucously in the confined interior of the submarine. Up comes Wahoo, ready to try her luck on the surface, under cover of what darkness there may be.
In this she has the advantage of a much lower, darker hull, and, since there is as yet no moon, the shadows of night grow progressively thicker, concealing her more and more from the Japanese lookouts. Another advantage lies in the fact that the two damaged ships choose to stick together instead of separating. But having torpedoes in the after tubes only is a tremendous disadvantage in a night surface attack and Wahoo maneuvers unsuccessfully for two hours, trying to get lined up for a shot.
In desperation Morton even tries to back into attack position, but is frustrated by the submarine’s poor maneuverability while going astern. So he must outguess the enemy, despite his radical zigzag plan. Wahoo gets directly behind the tanker, which in turn is behind the freighter. Then, as the two Japs zig to the right, Wahoo stays on the original course, and when they zig back to the left, the submarine is about a mile on the beam of the unfortunate tanker. Suddenly Wahoo’s rudder is put full left, and her port propeller is backed at full power, while her starboard screw is put at ahead full. In this manner Morton is able to twist his ship, get her end on to the broadside of the now-doomed Jap, and let fly two torpedoes.
One hit amidships. The sound of the explosion cannot be heard, but its effects are spectacular. The vessel folds in the middle and plunges from sight almost instantly.
“All ahead full!” Now for that freighter! Wahoo has played around with him long enough.
But the skipper of the lone remaining Jap ship has other ideas. He keeps up a continuous fire with his guns and steams in even more radical and haphazard fashion than before. Now and then he sights the ominous shape of the sea wolf stalking him, and places a few well-aimed shells alongside, forcing her to turn away and once even forcing her to dive.
For an hour this cat-and-mouse game keeps up. Finally, a powerful searchlight beam is sighted over the horizon. An escort vessel or destroyer, probably sent to succor four vessels who had reported being under attack by submarine. Wahoo had better do something to end this stalemate fast! Again Morton puts on his thinking cap. What would he do, if he were the skipper of the Jap freighter?
“Well,” thinks Mush, “there’s no doubt at all what I’d do! I’d head for that destroyer just as fast as ever I could!” And he heads Wahoo toward the destroyer, full speed.
Sure enough, the lumbering hulk of the wounded cargo vessel is soon sighted, headed in the same direction. Only Wahoo has preceded him, and now lies in wait for him, and two torpedoes come out of the night to put finis to a gallant defense.
Four ships sighted and four down was Wahoo’s record for January 27, 1943. The whole one-sided battle lasted thirteen hours, and after its conclusion one Jap destroyer was left fruitlessly searching the area with his searchlight.
Like everything else she did, Wahoo’s entrance into Pearl was dramatic, for lashed to her fully-extended periscope was — a broom!
On her next patrol, which she spent in the Yellow Sea between China and Korea, Wahoo ran the entire distance to the patrol area, deep in the heart of Japanese-controlled waters, on the surface, diving only for necessary drills. When the patrol was completed she surfaced, still in the middle of the Yellow Sea, and headed for home, digressing only to track and sink one lone freighter sighted on the way. Only this attack, incidentally, prevented her from making the same “no dives” boast on her return trip as well. During the patrol, which covered nineteen days in the assigned area, Wahoo sank nine ships, one trawler, and two sampans, and again expended all her ammunition. Once again the broom was lashed to the periscope.
And again, in April, 1943, Wahoo and Morton made their third war patrol together, sinking three ships and damaging two.
But she fell upon bad days, and Morton was a stubborn man; to these circumstances, and their unfortunate combination at just the wrong time, we may lay the responsibility for the sad loss of USS Wahoo and her fighting skipper.
After Mush Morton’s third war patrol in command of Wahoo, an inspection of the ship showed that an extensive overhaul was needed to replace the worn-out battery, to repair damages, and to install new apparatus. So the vessel was ordered to Mare Island Navy Yard for two months. While there, the fine team Morton had built up suffered serious injury with the detachment of Dick O’Kane, who received orders to command the brand-new submarine Tang, then under construction at the Navy Yard. Roger Paine moved up to the position of Executive Officer. Mush Morton, though he regretted the loss of his very capable second officer, was overjoyed to see him finally get the command which he had longed for, and for which he, Morton, had repeatedly recommended him.
In late July, 1943, Wahoo arrived back at Pearl Harbor, after the completion of her overhaul. Then bad luck struck, for Paine developed appendicitis, and had to be removed to a hospital for an operation. Morton had been deprived of the two officers he depended upon most, but, nonetheless confident, he proceeded on his fourth patrol.
Now Dudley W. Morton was a man of original ideas and independent thinking. Submarine doctrine called for shooting several torpedoes at each target, in a spread, in order to take into account possible maneuvers to avoid, errors in solution of the fire control problem, or malfunction of torpedoes. No quarrel could really be had with this procedure, so long as a submarine was apt to see and be able to shoot only a few ships per patrol. But in three successive patrols Wahoo had returned before the completion of her normal time on station, with all torpedoes expended. Morton knew he had the knack of searching out targets where other men could not find them.
If you know you are going to see plenty of targets — so ran his argument — why not shoot only one torpedo at each ship, and accept those occasional misses? If a submarine fires three fish per salvo, and sinks eight ships with her twenty-four torpedoes, is that as effective in damaging the enemy as a submarine which fires single shots and sinks twelve ships with twenty-four torpedoes? Yet in the first case the sub should be credited with 100 per cent effectiveness in fire control; in the latter, with only 50 per cent. The problem, according to Mush, lay simply in the number of contacts you could make. So he asked for, and received for his fourth patrol, the hottest area there was — the Japan Sea!
The Japan Sea is a nearly landlocked body of water lying between Japan and the Asiatic mainland. It can be reached from the open sea in only three ways — through the Straits of Tsushima, Tsugaru, or La Perouse. The only other possible entrance is through the Tartary Strait, between Sakhalin Island and Siberia, which is too shallow for seagoing vessels and, anyway, under the control of Russia. It was known that the Japanese had extensively mined all possible entrances to “their” sea, and that they were carrying on an enormous volume of traffic in its sheltered waters with no fear whatever of Allied interference.