But the desk-bound moguls in Washington and Newport, from their deep knowledge and great experience, were sure they knew the answer. Fire-control errors in the excitement of combat, or sheer lack of competent technique could only be responsible for the misses. The torpedo, a mechanical marvel of perfection, obviously could go only where it was aimed. Q.E.D., it must have been improperly aimed, “and don’t complain about faulty torpedoes until you can prove the rightful blame does not lie with your own personnel!”
So, in exacerbation, wrote the men responsible for development of our torpedoes.
Submariners are a sincere and hard-working lot of men. That is one of their innate characteristics, fostered by careful selection and training. Blandly accused of inefficiency and carelessness, they redoubled their efforts to make successful attacks. Torpedo after torpedo was fired under ideal circumstances. More often than not the only reward was the blank futility of “no explosions.”
The story of defective torpedoes is a sordid one, and it is part of the tale of the Seawolf.
Among the submarines based in Manila, during the long summer and fall of 1941, was USS Seawolf (SS197). Commissioned on December 1, 1939, she had spent formative months at New London and Pearl Harbor, and finally was assigned to the Asiatic Fleet, along with her squadron mates of Submarine Squadron Two. On December 8, 1941, east longitude date, she lay anchored in Manila Bay, scheduled to enter Cavite Navy Yard to join her sisters, Sealion and Seadragon, in their first overhaul.
That burning evening, which saw Sealion sunk by Japanese bombs as she lay helpless, unable to submerge or get under way, and Seadragon severely wounded, was Seawolf’s introduction to total warfare. From then until October 3, 1944, when the veteran warrior fell victim to a friendly destroyer which she could not counterattack and which would not listen to her frantic signals, her story is the epitome of our undersea campaign as it developed. Under four commanders, Seawolf built for herself a reputation for straight shooting and original thinking which carried through her career and won her two prized Navy Unit Commendations — the only submarine to be so honored up to this time.
Her battle with defective torpedoes began on March 31 and April 1, 1942, when she engaged three Japanese cruisers off Christmas Island. For two days her skipper, Lieutenant Commander Frederick B. Warder, remained in the area, almost the entire time under search and attack, and delivered three deliberate, well-planned torpedo attacks upon three different Japanese cruisers. Already furious, as were all his fellows, with unexplainable torpedo “misses,” skipper Freddie made all his attacks from such short range that failure to hit was nearly as impossible as it was inexcusable. In two cases the target screws were definitely heard to stop after the torpedo explosions, and all indications were that at the very least all three must have been damaged.
Certainly the working over Seawolf received from the numerous escorts present also appeared to be real enough, as any of the men on board will testify. Either of the first two depth charge attacks which lasted more than six hours should have been enough to convince anyone of the serious intentions of the droppers.
Following Seawolf’s third attack, the Japanese delivered the most impressive, sustained, uncompromising beating of the whole period, as the Seawolves well knew they could expect. It is conceivable that had the Nips stuck to it a bit longer they might have finished the submarine, for her battery was depleted, the temperature in the boat had reached extraordinary heights, and the crew — after two days and nights of virtually continuous attack and counterattack — was exhausted. Shortly before midnight of the third day, however, Seawolf managed to break away and come to the surface.
So Warder reported sinking or damaging three cruisers. But since they had been fairly well identified, it soon became known that all three ships were still very much in action.
A high-ranking Japanese naval officer was asked about this engagement after the war. His reply, as translated, was a classic understatement: “We realized that you were experiencing a little difficulty with your torpedoes.”
But the failure wasn’t from lack of trying and taking fantastic risks, and it wasn’t from lack of expert technique on the part of her crew, or of daring and skill on the part of her skipper. If Warder had been as intrepid with a pen as he was with torpedoes, his report of the two days’ action would read like the wildest fiction. And when the brethren of the undersea service heard of Seawolf’s exploit, the nickname of “Fearless Freddie” was immediately bestowed upon the skipper, much to his disgust, and USS Seawolf became renowned across the broad Pacific. And Warder redoubled his efforts to make his torpedoes pay off.
One thought was that they might be running too deep. Instructions were to set them to run beneath the hull of an enemy vessel so that the magnetic feature of the warhead exploder would function under the keel and thus blow the bottom out. If the torpedoes ran deeper than set, they might easily pass harmlessly beneath the target. Conversely, if the patent magnetic exploder were too sensitive, the torpedo might “premature”—that is, go off before reaching the target. The best guess anyone could make at this juncture was that either of these suppositions might be right.
Driven by bitter experience, the old-time skippers gradually had been learning to cope with their ineffective armament and devising means and stratagems to deal with it. Most of them simply set the torpedo running depth to zero, although this was directly contrary to instructions from the Bureau of Ordnance. Since it was generally accepted that submarine torpedoes ran from ten to twenty feet deeper than Washington said they did, a zero depth setting gave the best chance of hitting deep-riding ships. Hardly the optimum situation, since it was still largely a matter of luck if one could hit a shallow draft vessel such as a destroyer.
It was soon realized that with the most meticulous and constant care, the torpedoes sometimes increased their percentage of hits — somewhat. Although German, British, and Dutch submariners were able to take their torpedoes to sea, expose them to the most rigorous service conditions, and still expect efficient performance, our submariners were forced to baby their “fish” to a ridiculous degree. It was found necessary to give them routine overhauls every few weeks when on patrol. Any time salt water touched them for any reason, certainly if it got into any of the working parts, they had to be thoroughly overhauled. At sea and ashore our submarine torpedomen became the most efficient torpedo overhaul personnel ever known.
Although a full report of the circumstances of Seawolf’s action was rushed to the Naval Bureau of Ordnance, submariners by this time were learning the hardest of all lessons: when there is a job to be done, do it yourself. At Brisbane, Pearl Harbor, Fremantle, Surabaya, Mare Island, and New London, the work went forward. By word of mouth the warning also went the rounds: “Don’t take anything on trust. Check every torpedo you receive from warhead to after-body!” This philosophy went so far that submarines going on patrol would overhaul every one of their torpedoes before firing them. And the base overhaul crews passed no torpedoes to a submarine about to leave on patrol without the most careful and thorough preparation.
Of its own accord a sort of competition sprang up. Every submarine, upon return from patrol, reported the number of actual or suspected torpedo failures and the actions in which they had been involved. The base, or tender, with an abnormally high percentage of torpedo failures usually had some explaining to do, but this was nothing compared to the unofficial disapproval of the Submarine Force as a whole. Service reputation means much to any man, or any organization, and violent battles sometimes raged over the responsibility for a particularly bad bunch of torpedoes.