We might have known our skipper would never pass up this kind of challenge. There was a gleam in Chub’s eyes, and I, too, felt a little pleased with the Old Man.
“It’s on its way down right now,” George added.
By the time it had arrived in a specially built torpedo carrier, accompanied by a bevy of high-ranking officers and half-a-dozen photographers, and we had tucked it aboard, we realized we had carried out the most thoroughly documented torpedo loading in history. And, as Ed Campbell commented after watching the performance, if we came back from patrol without having made good with it, we had better throw our hats in ahead of us wherever we entered.
On January 8, 1945, Tirante set forth from New London for Pearl Harbor. The passage took us thirty-three days, including eight days of exercises at Balboa, Canal Zone, and we drilled every day and part of every night. We had been out of the war zone for so long that there was a lot of catching up to do, and Street and I pored over our file of war patrol reports as we sped into warmer seas and through the canal.
We were in a hurry, too, for it was already obvious that the war had not much longer to last. Our boats were crisscrossing the waters off the coast of Japan haunting the harbor entrances, or staying on the surface with impunity just offshore during daylight. One of our submarines had even entered Tokyo Bay on the surface during daylight to rescue an aviator who had ditched there during a carrier strike.
The Japanese merchant marine — what was left of it — lived in terror of the American submarines. In 1944 approximately half of the ships departing from the empire found their final destination at the bottom. Our executions at night had been the most horrendous of all. Once Admiral Lock wood had straightened out the torpedo fiasco, the heartbreaking failures and unexplained “misses” had been greatly reduced, and convoy after convoy had been wiped out in the hours between sunset and sunrise. The Japanese were now holing up at night, and running ships across the open sea only during daylight, when they figured our submarines would have to attack submerged, thus sacrificing mobility and giving them a better chance of getting their ships through.
So we worked our way through the training program at Balboa and Pearl Harbor with a vengeance and a will, finishing both of them in the minimum possible time, and then there remained only one thing before we could be on our way — the selection of our patrol area.
To us this meant a lot, for ComSubPac never gave a sign of how well or how poorly trained he considered any particular submarine. If she passed the stiff requirements he had set down, he sent her on patrol; if she did not, he held her up for more training; in extreme cases, he had been known to relieve the skipper and others of her crew. You could tell what Uncle Charlie thought of you only by where he sent you: the hottest ships went to the hottest spots, for obvious reasons. Finally our assignment came: the East China and Yellow seas — just about as hot an area as he could hand out.
Once more the luck of the Tirante had proved good. We carefully loaded our “Sharon Special” into number-six torpedo tube. Since we always fired in inverse order, with the first torpedo aimed at the MOT (Middle Of Target), this location would give it the maximum chance of hitting with our first salvo from the bow tubes. And after that particular salvo had been fired, we would all feel much better.
Exchanging the play-acting of training for the reality of bombs, depth charges, warheads, and sinking ships is probably the most massive change which comes to an individual or a ship. At the same time, it is one of those things which cannot be approached by degrees. No matter how realistic the training, there is still the comforting knowledge that all participants will eventually find their way back to harbor. It is a common phenomenon to discover that the most expert, aggressive, farseeing person during training exercises somehow never quite finds the same opportunities open to him in battle. And an individual who never made much of an impression before might rise to astonishing heights of effectiveness under the stimulus of extreme danger. So is it with ships — especially submarines.
A psychologist could probably explain why it is that the first action on any patrol so often sets the tone for the whole cruise, and why the manner in which a new submarine handles her first contact with the enemy sets the character of the entire ship from then on. George Street and I did not know why, though we used to argue the reasons, but we knew it was so.
On the southern tip of Kyushu lies a huge bay, Kagoshima Kaiwan, protected by several small islands offshore. Our information indicated that many coastal freighters used the harbor. The chart of previous patrols off Kyushu showed few submarine tracks here, no doubt because of the restricted waters, but the water was deep all the way up to the shore line. Not at all bad, if you didn’t mind fairly close quarters.
Our object was twofold: to blood the ship as quickly as possible; and to get rid (honorably) of our VIT (Very Important Torpedo). So we resolved to venture into the precarious place, right off the harbor entrance, and patrol between the offshore islands and the mainland. I stayed up all night navigating, and shortly before dawn — on the morning of March 25—dived in the spot the Captain had selected, five miles off the entrance. But this did not satisfy George; during the morning, while I caught up on my sleep, he closed the coast within less than two miles, and shortly after noon a ship was sighted coming out of the bay.
Our approach did not work out quite the way he had intended. We had stationed ourselves close to the beach, so that we would be on the shoreward side of any target coming out of the bay and heading up the coast. Thus we would be heading out to deeper water during the attack, and would be sure of firing our VIT from her bow tube. But the target, a small freighter, came by on our land side, apparently within inches of the rock-strewn shore line. Submerged, our draft was so great that we could not turn toward him for a bow shot for fear of striking the bottom. So we fired a salvo from the stern tubes. The first torpedo blew the guts out of him less than one minute after we had let her go, and the other two exploded upon striking the shore. It took about a minute for our victim to sink.
The VIT still languished in the lower port forward torpedo tube, however, so we picked out a new spot well up the coast from Kagoshima Kaiwan — a precipitous cliff called Oniki Saki — and dived within a mile of it next morning. Three days we haunted the place, and right after lunch the third day our next victim came along.
The general alarm was still sounding as I reached the control room. I jumped up the ladder and crowded into the conning tower behind Chub Peabody where I could navigate if necessary, coordinate the fire control solution, and assist the skipper as might be required. Street was already at the periscope.
“Looks like a torpedo target,” he said. “Take a look.”
I could see an object resembling a small square building with a large black chimney slightly to the right of its middle. A cloud of smoke belched from the chimney and was carried flat to the right. Shimmering haze made the lines difficult to distinguish.
“Mark the bearing,” I said, and snapped the handles as signal for the periscope to start down again. “Small, old-type freighter,” I said to George. “Angle on the bow port ten. Seems to be making all the speed he can, probably ten knots.”
George nodded. “That’s my guess, too, Ned. We’re using ten knots, and I put his angle on the bow as port fifteen.” He glanced over Chub’s shoulder to where the dials of the TDC reproduced a picture of the relative positions of the enemy ship and ourselves.
“Here’s our chance to get rid of the VIT,” I observed. Everybody in the conning tower nodded, and I checked the camera.