Back in the conning tower. Bearing 285, range 1,500, angle on the bow zero. Here he comes! Still no shot. Down periscope! Coming right overhead this time. The fast Thum — Thum thum of his screws is the same as before. Here it is! WHAM — WHAM — WHAM — WHAM — WHAM! Really close that time! Locker doors burst open to strew their contents on the decks running with human perspiration. One man gets sick and vomits into a slop bucket, but the bucket overturns and the slop gets all over its sides and on the deck. Someone throws a rag on the mess on deck, leaves it. A valve wheel flies off a gauge in the conning tower, bounces twice on the deck plates, ringing fantastically loud in the silence between charges, then drops into the periscope well, ringing as it caroms off the steel sides of the well until it splashes into the bilge water at the bottom. A hoarse whisper more like a cry from below, “Pump room’s flooding!” We stare at one another, aghast. “How bad?” Penrod Schneider, our Executive Officer, dives down the pump room hatch. It must not be too bad — water hasn’t welled out of that hatch yet. It never does. “Grease fitting in negative tank flood valve operating gear carried away, sir. We put a plug in it. Not much water come in.” The speaker is covered with grease, sweat, and salt water. He glares indignantly. Somebody got excited down below, panicked. Evidently not this guy. “Very well,” says the skipper.
“Screws slowing down bearing zero seven zero,” says the sound man.
“Up periscope! Yes, he’s turning. Bearing — mark! — zero six five. Angle on the bow ninety port. Range, two oh double oh. As soon as he swings toward us, we’ll swing toward him, let him have a whole salvo, set shallow, down the throat! Bearing — mark! — zero two five. Angle on the bow thirty port. He’s swinging toward. Right full rudder, port ahead full. Steady on one six five.… All ahead one third. Where is he, Sound? Keep the sound bearing coming!”
“Zero one zero, screws speeding up. Shifting to short scale!”
“Standby forward! I see him! Bearing, zero zero seven-a-half, range, one two double oh, angle on the bow five port. Here he comes again. Bearing, zero zero seven. Bearing, zero zero six-a-half. Gyro angles, one right. Standby — zero zero six — five-a-half — Fire ONE! Fire TWO! Fire THREE! Fire FOUR!”
“Forward room reports all torpedoes fired electrically, sir.”
“Torpedoes running on zero zero zero, sir. Merging with target’s screws.”
WHAM! WHAM! We look around unbelievingly. Can those have been hits? Impossible. Prematures!
What about the other two? Thirty seconds. Any time now. Thirty-five seconds. Forty seconds. Forty-five seconds. Oh, God! We’ve missed!
“He’s seen the fish! He’s turning away! That explosion dead ahead must have worried him, anyway. We’ve spoiled this run for him. Here’s a sixty-starboard angle on the bow. Chance for another shot! Bearing zero zero five. Standby forward! Bearing zero one zero. Gyro forty right. Standby… fire FIVE! Fire SIX!”
But we hear no explosions even though we see one torpedo pass directly beneath him.
“Take her deep, boys. We’re dry forward now, and there’s nothing else to do.”
Down we go and prepare for a bearing.
We got it, too, but after a while the Jap went away, and a little later so did we. No doubt he enthusiastically reported destruction of one United States submarine — for a night or two later Tokyo Rose said she regretted to inform all American submarines that off the Bungo Suido one of their number had recently fallen victim to a destroyer of the Imperial Japanese Navy. And then she played a recording of “Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep!”
Plagued with more bad fish, we sank one other ship, a large tanker, and damaged still another before running out of torpedoes and having to return to Pearl Harbor. There we found to our dismay that since we had not seen our tanker sink, we could not get credit for him. We vowed that we would not make this mistake again!
2
Seawolf
From December 7, 1941, until the end of the war, our undersea fleet operated in strictest secrecy, which resulted in the well-deserved sobriquet — the “Silent Service.” Concealment of results of submarine operations was intended to keep from the enemy knowledge of what we were doing, how it was accomplished, and who was responsible. Consequently, it was not until the end of the war that the full extent of our submarine campaign became known to the people of the United States. Only recently has it been appreciated that although we never had as many submarines as the Germans, ship for ship and man for man the United States Submarine Force was the more effective.
There were two additional reasons why secrecy was deemed desirable. Unrestricted Warfare had been outlawed by international convention. Although that rule already had been thrown out on two counts — prior violation by Axis belligerents and indiscriminate arming of enemy merchant ships — there was still a feeling that it might be desirable to protect the identity of individuals engaged in such warfare. Second, at the same time that the first successes were reported, reports of strange and inexplicable failures also were received. Without exaggeration, the effectiveness of our submarine force was approximately 15 per cent of what it should have been in the early days of the war. In the Asiatic Fleet, until its final dissolution, the percentage of failure was nearly 100 per cent. There is no question in the mind of any submariner today that if the submarines of that ill-fated fleet had had the percentage of successes that was achieved later, the outcome of the battles of Corregidor and the Java Sea, and possibly the whole Asiatic Pacific campaign, might have been much different.
It was not long before submariners knew the answer. Faulty torpedoes! Our submarines were being sent to war with defective weapons. They had not one but two enemies, and the whisper of suspected sabotage or irresponsible stupidity began to take its toll of morale. No one, even now, dares hazard a guess as to how many submarines sleep the everlasting sleep because of this insidious foe.
Time after time, in the early days of the war, our submarine skippers reported that their torpedoes were not running where they were aimed; were not exploding when they got there; were going off impotently before they arrived; or were running in circles, with consequent danger to the firing ship. Written deep into many patrol reports, pathetic now in their vehemence, can be found the bitter words:
“Torpedoes ran true, merged with target screws, didn’t explode.”
“Fired three torpedoes, bubble track of two could plainly be seen through the periscope, tracked by sound and by sight right through target. They looked like sure hits from here. No explosions. Cannot understand it.”
“Fired full salvo of stern tubes at ideal setup. Through periscope observed personnel on deck of target watching torpedo track which apparently passed under the ship. No hits. Commenced receiving depth charge counterattack.”
“Fired two torpedoes down the throat of attacking destroyer. Both prematured, enemy was not damaged. Went deep, prepared for depth charge attack.”
Letter after letter was sent to the Navy’s Bureau of Ordnance and to the Naval Torpedo Station at Newport, Rhode Island, pleading that something be done.