With the watch perhaps Jim can get some kind of line on the depth settings the Jap is using. It takes almost as long for the depth charges to go off, once you’re reasonably sure the enemy has dropped some, as it does for your torpedoes once they’re fired, with the difference that you know exactly when the torpedoes get in the water. It’s getting about that time now. The skipper is holding his watch hand more attentively…
WHAM!.. WHAM!.. WHAM!.. WHAM!.. WHAM!… WHAM!
Six beauties, evenly spaced and expertly dropped. The fourth and fifth are real humdingers. Albacore’s finely attuned steel hull shivers throughout her length with a hundred discordant frequencies. Light bulbs dance around on the ends of their short cords, and a few of them shatter. Dust and particles of cork fill the air. One or two men are flung sprawling to the deck.
The destroyer proceeds across on his run and turns for another, slowing his propeller beat not one revolution. Overhead he comes again, dead on as before, and again a string of close ones is released. Then he turns, waits for the uproar in the water to subside in order to regain a firm contact, and once again he sails in. Then another short wait, and yet another deliberate attack. There is no question about it, this lad is a graduate of the number-one Japanese antisubmarine school.
Many German submarines, in similar circumstances, simply surfaced and gave up the fight. But not United States submariners, and not Jim Blanchard. Deeply submerged, running slowly at her maximum designed depth, Albacore creeps along, hoping and looking for the opening which will facilitate her breaking contact. And, as so often happens, the break comes rather sooner than might be expected.
By noon Albacore was at periscope depth again, well out of sight of the task force. When she returned to port, she reported damage to one large enemy flattop of the Shokaku class, little knowing of the final irony.
For H.I.J.M.S. Taiho, less than two years old, the newest in a long line of Japanese aircraft carriers, a sister ship — though considerably improved — of the famous Shokaku, had indeed received one torpedo hit. The sixth and last fish fired by the American sub hit under one of the elevators. The damage was in itself slight, and Taiho reduced speed from 27 to 21 knots more from force of habit and doctrine than anything else. But the gasoline stowage for refueling aircraft happened also to be under that elevator, and the torpedo explosion started a small fire in the gasoline stowage deck. This did not bother the Japs either, for a great carrier like Taiho is well equipped to handle a small fire. Nevertheless the three destroyers were ordered to forget the submarine and concentrate on assisting the carrier.
Fighting the fire was a little difficult, as a matter of fact, because of the heavy gasoline fumes about the lower decks, and the order was given to start all blowers and fans, and to open all ventilation lines and bulkhead doors in an attempt to clear the atmosphere, or at least to reduce the concentration of the vapors. And thus it was that the Japanese skipper qualified for the United States Navy Cross, which he certainly deserved for assisting in the destruction of one first-line Japanese carrier.
For the inevitable occurred a few hours after the torpedo hit. With a sibilant swish a spark ignited the whole lower deck, and Taiho instantly became a mass of roaring flame.
So it was, eight hours after being hit by Albacore’s lone torpedo, and thirty miles from the position of the attack, that Taiho finally gave up the ghost and, mortally wounded, meekly bowed her head to the sea. Her hull seams opened by the heat within her, some of her compartments above the water line flooded in the effort to put out the fire; her decks and sides gutted with gaping holes, she sank lower and lower into the water and finally, belching great clouds of smoke and steam, disappeared beneath the surface.
Less than one hundred miles away from the spot where Taiho had been tagged, Cavalla maintained her patrol station. After many patrols as second or third officer during the earlier years of the war, Herman Kossler had been sent back to the States for a much-deserved rest and to put a brand-new submarine into commission as Commanding Officer. Now he was back on the firing line for his first patrol in command, with his new ship and a newly organized crew. One advantage he had over boats which made their first war patrol in 1942 or early 1943 was that many of his crew and officers, like himself, were already seasoned veterans. It had been merely a matter of training until they were all accustomed to working together, the inexperienced as well as the experienced.
In order to give a new boat a chance to get really shaken down before letting her in for the tough assignments, it was customary to send her on her first patrol in the less active areas — unless, indeed, her performance during the training period marked her as outstanding from the start. Such a boat was Cavalla, and so it was that Herman Kossler found himself patrolling, on June 14, between Guam and Mindanao, the route enemy task forces would probably have to take to get within carrier strike range of our forces then engaged in the campaign for Guam and Saipan.
Cavalla also made pretty heavy weather of it on the 14th, somewhat heavier than Albacore, and no doubt passed closer to the storm center. On the 15th, with the storm passed, she entered her assigned area and commenced surface patrolling. Except for USS Pipefish, also on the same mission, no contacts were made until an hour before midnight on the 16th.
At this time five ships — two large and three small — are contacted by radar. Immediately Herman mans his tracking party and begins maneuvers to close. The convoy is making high speed, and it is not until 0315 in the morning that Kossler is able to submerge on the convoy track. Through the periscope the enemy is identified as two tankers and three destroyer-type escorts. With the crew at battle stations, Herman starts in. He hopes to make his first attack with stern tubes, figuring that the convoy’s 15 knots will leave him with a better chance to whip around for a bow shot in case of a bad zig at the crucial moment.
At 0355 the convoy is getting close to the firing point. A periscope observation shows one of the escorts, a fast destroyer of the Asashio class, closing rapidly, showing a slight port angle on the bow. Thinking fast, Herman orders a slight change of course to the right, to give the Jap a little more clearance in the hope of avoiding detection, and at the same time not spoiling his shot at the larger tanker.
No luck! With the main target only five minutes from Torpedo Junction, Sound reports the destroyer’s screws have speeded up. A swift look proves the worst: Cavalla has been detected.
Herman can’t see much of the destroyer, for all the periscope shows is a huge bow boring right in, close aboard, and pushing a tremendous froth of water to either side. “Take her down?” The urgency in the skipper’s voice galvanizes the diving officer and his crew into instant action. Cavalla’s depth gauge registers only seventy-five feet as the destroyer churns overhead. A narrow escape! No telling why depth charges are not dropped — maybe he had not had time to get them ready. Evidently he was trying to ram, and nearly succeeded.