Open the main induction! We are answered by the clank of the induction valve and instantly the starting song of the engines. Four clouds of blue-white smoke pour from Trigger’s exhaust pipes and are whipped away by the wind. We are up to 13 knots by this time, and mingled with the whistle of the wind, the splashing rush of the waves, and the deep bass of the diesels, we hear the screaming of the low-pressure blower down in the pump room, completing the job of emptying the main ballast tanks.
A jumble of discordant noises — but to us they are Trigger’s eager battlecry.
Without slackening our speed, the diesels are connected to the motors and the battery taken off. Trigger continues to accelerate, and two minutes after surfacing she is making 18 knots. As her tanks go dry she increases speed to 20 knots, angrily burying her snout in the waves as she hurries heedlessly through them or over them.
We pick course 160 because this was the base course of the convoy. Before we dived our impression was that the Japs had scattered, but common sense indicates that they’ll probably try to continue in the same general direction.
Sure enough, one hour later we find a lone merchantman. In a hurry now, we bore in and fire immediately. One hit, but he’s a tough customer, and that’s not enough for him. He opens up with two deck guns, tries futilely to stay on Trigger’s low, dark form.
Furious now, Trigger rushes past him, turns on her heel, and comes charging back. She really bores in this time. To hell with his guns — he’s all over the ocean with them! In we go, till his side looms as big and broad as a barn. WHAM!.. WHAM! That finishes him, and he goes down like a rock.
Course 160 once more, and we run for another hour, pick up another ship, a tanker this time. Once again we hardly alter course. He steams across our bow at 1000 yards, and is greeted with three crashing torpedo hits, sinking so fast that as we, without changing a thing, pass across where his stem used to be, all we see is his tall stack sticking out of the water, slightly canted forward, smoke still pouring out of the top of it for all the world as though nothing had happened.
We looked around for more ships, but dawn broke, and none were in sight. The sequel to the story was not told till later, when patrol reports were submitted. The second radar-equipped escort, which we had so neatly avoided in our initial attack, was our good friend the USS Seahorse, herself the nemesis of many Japs, who was even then in the process of drawing a bead on the same chap we’d sunk.
That Seahorse was somewhat disturbed at our intrusion on a convoy she had tracked for nearly twenty-four hours is putting it mildly. But she kindly verified the sinking of two ships plus the probable sinking of a third from our attack, then went on to sink three more herself. In the meantime another United States sub, having trailed the convoy for two days, finally caught up and knocked off one for herself. Totaclass="underline" eight sunk, nine left, probably all escorts.
Wonder what that escort commander told Tojo?
12
Tang
On July 20, 1943, USS Wahoo completed her overhaul in Mare Island Navy Yard, and departed for Pearl Harbor, carrying her skipper, Mush Morton, into his last action with the enemy and to his final resting place somewhere in the Sea of Japan. But before Wahoo left, her Executive Officer, whom Morton had once characterized as “the bravest man I know,” was detached and given command of the uncompleted Tang, then building at Mare Island. The two men separated with visions of meeting in the not-too-distant future — perhaps to carry out combined operations together. Less than three months later Mush Morton and his Wahoo were dead.
Now, O’Kane was not an oversentimental man, and he was as ready as the next to accept the trials of war and the losses that inevitably must come with them. But only one who has experienced the extinction of a whole unit of comrades without trace can fully appreciate the icy fingers which must have clutched around his heart when he received the grim news back in the temporary safety of Mare Island. The effect, perhaps, was not fully evident, since he simply went on with his preparations to ready Tang for war. Only O’Kane himself — and perhaps even he did not fully realize how deeply the iron had entered into his soul — could have given a hint of his dedication. For Tang and Dick O’Kane had a mission of vengeance to carry out.
They finally headed for Pearl Harbor, impatient to complete their training, and on January 22, 1944, six months after O’Kane had bid farewell to Wahoo, three months since that ship had become overdue, Tang set her prow westward to seek revenge.
Tang had only one skipper and her whole life was encompassed within the short span of one year—1944. During this period Tang and O’Kane reached the top of the Submarine Force Roll of Honor, and the most outstanding record of damage and destruction to enemy shipping ever credited to one submarine was established. The Joint Army-Navy Assessment Committee has the officially documented and incontestable proof of twenty-four vessels sunk. It is well known that Tang’s total score was much higher than even that imposing figure, and that a round sum total of thirty would be nearer the truth, for the Japanese tendency to save face resulted in concealing or minimizing many losses, and the confusion into which their merchant marine was thrown by the continuous depredations of United States submarines upset their whole accounting system, until they themselves had not the slightest idea which of their ships remained afloat.
It is early morning, February 17, and Tang draws her first blood. Radar contact! Man tracking stations! Tang stops zigzagging, steadies on course at constant speed while the well-trained though as yet unseasoned plotting parties go to work.
The problem has been gone over many times in drill after drill, and O’Kane’s insistence for perfection now bears its first fruit. Within a matter of minutes, Plot has the answer: enemy course, 100, speed 8, zigzagging about forty degrees every ten minutes. This is all that is needed for the moment. All ahead full! Obediently the electrician’s mates on watch in Maneuvering signal to the engine rooms to start the two idle diesels and at the same time increase the loading of the two diesel-generator sets already in operation. Tang’s easily turning propellers increase their beat as the rheostats are turned up, and soon she is making full speed for the two engines. When the ready signal for the other two engines is received, the electrician’s mates bend over their main control board and pull and push the control levers back and forth in rapid succession — seemingly haphazardly but actually in strict accordance with certain rules of procedure — for what they are doing is simply bringing two more generators up to voltage, paralleling them with those already on the line, and then increasing the loading on all four to the maximum rated power output. Sounds simple, but an error might result in burning out one or more motors, or arcing sufficient to cause a bad fire — and there goes your submarine! The nonchalance of these young men — most just boys in their early twenties, some still in their teens — as they unconcernedly race through the motions they have learned, belies the significance of the whole thing.