When all forward movement had ceased we hurriedly took soundings. Plenty of water aft, but only six feet or so under our bow, with zero feet a few yards ahead, where the malevolent coral mass alternately glistened in the starlit blackness and gurgled as a wave washed over it. Apparently this reef had very steep sides; that was a break — maybe we could get her off. We backed emergency — no luck. We were much too firmly aground. Only one thing to do: lighten ship, and this task we feverishly began. We also sent a message to ComSubPac telling him of our trouble, and one to Midway, asking for help.
And then came dawn — the day the Japs were to land — and here poor Trigger lay, bruised, battered, and hors de combat. At any moment we expected to see the enemy fleet, and high and dry as we were, our complete destruction was inevitable.
As it grew light a pint-sized tug steamed out of the channel from Midway lagoon, put a hawser on our stern, and nonchalantly began to pull. We backed with everything we had — no luck. We didn’t budge. Then, to our dismay, the hawser broke. Surely this was the end!
But as the tug maneuvers to get the remains of the hawser to us again, Gunner’s Mate Third Class Howard Spence, one of the lookouts, suddenly shouts, “She’s moving!” Incredulously we look over the bow at the reef, and if you look hard enough, the slightest movement is discernible. No time to figure it out. All back emergency! Maneuvering, make maximum power! The four faithful diesels roar. Clouds of smoke pour out of the exhaust trunks. The reduction gears whine in a rising crescendo, and the propellers throw a boiling flood of white foam over our nearly submerged stern. Line up your eye with the bow and the reef. She trembles. The water foams along her sides and up past her bow. Her stern is now completely submerged. She feels alive! Is that a slight change? Yes — yes — she moves! She bounces once and is off the reef. She is free! Thank God!
For the second time I sensed a quick, live spirit in the Trigger. It seemed as though she responded just a little more when the chips were down.
It wasn’t until several days later that we learned the Japs had been thoroughly beaten the day before, and what was left of their fleet had been in headlong flight.
Although we knew Trigger had a gaping hole in number one ballast tank, we remained on patrol for a few days, in case some Jap ships might still be around. Finally we returned to Pearl for repairs, and after dry-docking we started the training period we should have had when we first arrived.
The Grunion had just arrived from New London, and she and Trigger went through their training together. My classmate and close friend, Willy Kornahrens, whose wedding I had attended in New London a few months before, was aboard Grunion. And when Trigger set forth on her first patrol, bound for Attu, Grunion followed a few days later. When she reached Attu, we were shifted to Kiska, and then after about a week Grunion and Trigger exchanged areas.
As we were heading back to Attu, we sighted a submarine and instantly submerged. The other submarine must have dived also; Captain Lewis couldn’t see her through our periscope.
We could not be sure whether it was a Jap submarine or Grunion, and I made a mental note to ask Willy next time I saw him. It’s one of the things I shall never find out. A week later we intercepted a message from Grunion, which I decoded out of curiosity:
FROM GRUNION X ATTACKED TWO DESTROYERS OFF KISKA HARBOR X NIGHT PERISCOPE SUBMERGED X RESULTS INDEFINITE BELIEVE ONE SANK ONE DAMAGED X MINOR DAMAGE FROM COUNTERATTACK TWO HOURS LATER X ALL TORPEDOES EXPENDED AFT… and then the message, which until that moment had decoded perfectly, turned into an unintelligible jumble.
Grunion was never heard from again. For several days we intercepted messages addressed to her, but she never acknowledged any of them.
Years later I read an account of an interview with a Japanese submarine skipper, now master of an American-owned merchant ship operating out of Yokohama. As skipper of the 1-25 he had made three patrols from Japan to California. On one return trip, when passing the Aleutians, he had torpedoed a surfaced submarine. The date he gave was July 30, 1942, which tallied exactly with our interception of Grunion’s last transmission.
We sank no ships on this first patrol, and returned to Pearl Harbor for reassignment. Upon our arrival Captain Lewis was hospitalized with pneumonia, and Lieutenant Commander Roy Benson, irreverently known as “Pigboat Benny” during his days on the Naval Academy faculty, took command of Trigger.
It took Trigger a long time to develop her personality. I felt the impact of her rowdy, brawling, fierce spirit a third and fourth time, and after that it was as if we had always been together. In a way, I suppose, I became a sort of slave to her rather terrifying presence, but she gave me far more than she received.
That third time was when I watched her first ship sink, and heard her snarl. It was on her second patrol.
A day or so after arriving off the eastern coast of Kyushu, the southernmost island of Japan, shortly after 0100, we sighted a large black shadow, blacker than the night. A few true bearings indicated that the shadow moved, and we knew it for what it was — a cloud of smoke from the funnel of a ship. So we commenced to close this unwary fellow, went to battle stations, and soon made out the silhouette of a moderate-sized freighter. Although he was darkened, Captain Benson and I could see him plainly from the bridge at about four thousand yards’ range. He was steaming along steadily, puffing out a fair-sized cloud of dense black smoke, with not so much as a hint of a zigzag, or of having sighted us.
Here was one of the reasons for American supremacy over the Jap whenever they met. Undeniably, our low black hull was harder to see than the lofty-sided merchantman, but nevertheless he was so plainly visible that his inability to see us was then, and continued to be, astounding. We turned Triggers bow toward him, and ghosted in, presenting at all times the minimum possible silhouette.
He sees nothing, steams blindly and confidently along. Closer and closer we draw. Make ready the bow tubes! Estimated range, 1,500 yards. Track, ninety starboard. Gyro angle, five left. Standby! He’s coming on — coming on—Fire One! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Fire Two!
Two white streaks leave the bow and, diverging slightly, arrow for the point ahead of the freighter where our calculations say he will be at the instant the torpedoes get there. This is the longest minute in the world. Depending on the range, of course, the torpedoes must travel about a minute before they reach a target, and during that minute a target making 15 knots goes 500 yards, or a quarter of a nautical mile. Few ships are as long as 150 yards.
So we watched our two white streaks of bubbles. “Torpedoes running all right, looks good!” Suddenly we are galvanized into action. If those torpedoes stop the target, on our present course we will run right into him! If they miss, he’ll be sure to see us passing so close under his stern and make a follow-up shot immeasurably more difficult by radical maneuvers, to say the least. Besides, he might happen to have a well-trained armed guard aboard.
Left full rudder! All ahead full! Trigger’s bow commences to swing left as she gathers speed. The ship is just crossing in front of the torpedo wakes now. Will they get there or will he skin by? All hands on the Triggers bridge watch tensely. Let’s go — what’s wrong with those torpedoes?