Harder’s record, after only three patrols, was already one to conjure with in the Pacific Fleet. Built in Groton, Connecticut, at the Electric Boat Company, she first appeared at Pearl Harbor in June, 1943, and for uniformly outstanding results, dogged courage, and brilliant performance, soon had few equals in our Submarine Force. Her record speaks for itself: First patrol, three ships sunk and one damaged; second patrol, four ships sunk and one damaged; third patrol, five ships sunk.
On Harder’s fourth patrol Sam Dealey carried off an exploit unprecedented in submarine warfare, an operation epitomizing the competence and daring of the magnificent ship he had molded. Harder was detailed “lifeguard” submarine for an air strike on Woleai Atoll, one of the hundreds of small Pacific islands taken over by the Japs after World War I. To save a downed aviator, Dealey deliberately ran his ship aground, sending three men, including Lieutenant Logan, his torpedo officer, ashore in a rubber boat to effect the rescue. Since the flier was only exhausted and not injured, Sam assigned him a bunk in Officer’s Country, and Harder continued on patrol.
When Dealey brought Harder into Fremantle, he had sunk one destroyer and one freighter and damaged and probably sunk a second destroyer. As he indicated in his patrol report, his ship now had the pleasure of seeing her total tonnage record of enemy ships exceed the 100,000 tons’ mark — a distinction attained by only a few of our undersea fighters. That it was due entirely to his own efforts, Sam would have indignantly denied, pointing to the outstanding officers and men who served with him, who, he said, were responsible for making Harder what she was. Frank Lynch, his executive officer, and Sam Logan, his torpedo officer, were his two mainstays, and to them he invariably tried to shift the credit. Frank, a behemoth of a man, had been regimental commander and first-string tackle at the Naval Academy. He combined qualities of leadership and physical stamina with a keen, searching mind and a tremendous will to fight. Sam, slighter of build, less the extrovert, was a mathematical shark and had stood first in his class at the Academy. Under pressure of the war years, he had discovered a terrible and precise ferocity which always possessed him whenever contact with the enemy was imminent. To him, operation of the torpedo director was an intricate puzzle, to be worked out using all information and means at his command, divining the enemy’s intentions and anticipating them, working out new techniques of getting the right answer under different sets of conditions.
“With those two madmen pushing me all the time,” Dealey would say, “there was nothing I could do but go along!”
It was, however, Harder’s fifth war patrol which fixed her position, and that of Sam Dealey, in the annals of the United States Submarine Force for all time.
On May 26, 1944, Harder departed from Fremantle, Australia, on what many have termed the most epoch-making war patrol ever recorded. It must be remembered that Sam Dealey, Frank Lynch, and Sam Logan were by now experts who had long served together. Their ship was a veteran, and organized to the peak of perfection in fighting ability. Who can blame Dealey, with this sort of help, for deliberately selecting the most difficult of accomplishments?
Your submarine is primarily a commerce destroyer. While it will attack any moderate-to-large warship it encounters, its principal objective is the lifeline of the enemy — its merchant carriers. The submarine will spend long hours lying in wait in sea lanes frequented by enemy cargo vessels, and her personnel will spend longer hours trying to outguess their adversaries, to determine where they are routing their ships in their effort to evade submarine attack. The submarine will, of course, similarly try to intercept enemy war vessels. But the destroyer or escort vessel is the bane of the sub’s existence, for it is commonly considered too small to shoot successfully and too dangerous to fool around with. Besides, sinking a destroyer was not ordinarily so damaging to the enemy’s cause as sinking a tanker, for example. Sometimes a destroyer would intercept a torpedo intended for a larger vessel, and sometimes you had to shoot at one in desperation — and sometimes one would give you a shot you simply couldn’t pass up. But ordinarily you avoid tangling with one.
Sam Dealey, ever an original man, had a new thought. It was known that the Japanese Navy was critically short of destroyers of all types, first-line or otherwise. Intelligence reports were to the effect that those few they had were being operated week in and week out, without pause for even essential repairs, in their desperate effort to keep their sea lanes open. Add to this the tremendous screen necessary for a fleet movement and the probability that it could be hamstrung — or at least rendered extraordinarily vulnerable — if the number of destroyers or escort ships could be substantially reduced. In short, Dealey decided that the war against merchant shipping was entirely too tame for his blood, and he asked and received for his operating area the waters around the major Japanese Fleet Operating Base of Tawi Tawi in the Sulu Archipelago. He reasoned that once he revealed his presence there, which he planned to do in the time-honored submarine manner, there would be no dearth of destroyers sent out to track him down. And if there were too many in one bunch, he could avoid them; if they came out by ones and twos, he’d deliberately tangle with them.
And tangle he did. Shortly after sunset of the first day in the area, a convoy was sighted and Harder gave chase. The moon came out during the pursuit, the convoy changed course, and events soon confirmed the submarine’s detection by the enemy. The nearest destroyer emitted clouds of black smoke, put on full speed, and commenced heading directly for her — and there was nothing left to do but run for it.
At full speed Harder could barely exceed 19 knots, and it soon was evident that the tin can astern was clipping them off at 24 or better. The range inexorably reduced to 10,000 yards, then 9000, then 8,500—at which point Sam pulled the plug out from under his ship and dropped her neatly to periscope depth.
The moment the ship was under water, Dealey called out, “Left full rudder!”
Obediently the submarine altered course to the left, drawing away from the path down which she had been running. A tricky stunt, this, fraught with danger. If the DD up there had enough sense to divine what had occurred and suspect the trap laid for him, things would be tough. He’d have little trouble in picking up the submarine broadside on with his supersonic sound equipment, and probably could do plenty of damage with an immediate attack.
But he suspected nothing, came on furiously down the broad wake left by the sub, blundered right across her stern, and was greeted with two torpedoes which hit him under the bow and under the bridge, and broke his back.
With his bow torn nearly off and gaping holes throughout his stricken hull, the Jap’s stern rose vertically in the air. Clouds of smoke, spray, and steam enveloped him, mingled with swift tongues of red flame which feverishly licked at his sides and decks. Depth charges, normally stowed aft in the depth charge racks ready for immediate use, fell out the back of the racks and went crashing down upon the now-slanted deck. Some of them, reached by the flames, went off with horrifying explosions which effectively nullified any chance survivors of the holocaust might have had.
Less than two minutes after the detonations of the torpedoes, the lone black hull of the submarine boiled to the surface. Sam Dealey was not one to give up the convoy that easily, and Harder took off once more at full speed after the enemy. But further contact was not to be regained with this particular outfit.