Piper it seemed to me, was an unconscionably long time in getting back from patrol. She had drawn an unproductive area, and though she beat the bushes pretty thoroughly she remained at sea the full scheduled sixty days and brought back almost a complete load of torpedoes. All the while I stayed in Midway, assisting with the refits of other submarines as they came and went, and chewing my nails in exasperation. We could sense the war drawing to an end, and felt pride that the United States Navy had brought Japan to her knees almost singlehanded. We argued whether Russia would enter the war in the Pacific. It was obvious that the war would shortly be over. I had to get to sea in Piper soon.
The messages I read daily were not calculated to make the wait any easier. Tirante, seemingly the only submarine able to find anything worth shooting these days, had entered another harbor — submerged this time — and had torpedoed a collier alongside a dock. To cap it, George had come out of the place with full motion-picture coverage! When I read his ensuing message, I would gladly have given up Piper to have been along.
Finally the long-awaited notice came, and I flew to Pearl Harbor to take command of my ship. But then came more delays. Piper was being fitted with special equipment to penetrate the Straits of Tsushima, between Japan and Korea.
Ever since Wahoo had failed to return from the Sea of Japan, back in October, 1943, that area had not seen an American submarine. Mush Morton had entered via La Perouse Straits and had intended to exit through the same. We didn’t know how the Japs had caught him, but suspected they had drawn a noose around Wahoo from which she could not escape. Tsushima was mined — that we knew. Tartary was too shallow to pass through submerged, and was denied to us by the Russians; Tsugaru was shallow, and had swift currents, besides being heavily patrolled; La Perouse was deep, not too long, although also heavily patrolled. All in all, La Perouse seemed to be the best place for a submarine to make passage into the Sea of Japan, but once the enemy knew there was a submarine in it, trapping her there seemed a distinct possibility.
Then in June, 1945, in Operation Barney, nine American submarines passed through the mined Straits of Tsushima into Morton’s old patrol area in the Sea of Japan. They lay doggo for a few days, and then suddenly exploded into action. Twenty-eight ships they sank in twelve days, and Japan knew that her last lines of physical contact with the rest of the world were doomed.
Operation Barney was named after Commander W. B. (Barney) Sieglaff, who had been skipper of Tautog and Tench before going to Admiral Lockwood’s staff. He did much of the work of readying and checking out the first nine boats. But the whole deal could have been just as appropriately called Operation Charlie, after the Admiral himself, for the Boss had gone after that project with the same drive he had used in fixing up the torpedoes for us — and with equally effective results.
Worming our way through the mine fields would be tricky business, but nine boats had shown it could be done, and Piper was eager to be off about it. It was a big honor to have been selected, but we were the last of the second wave of seven boats scheduled to go through singly — and there was a strong possibility that we would be too late. When we were ready to leave Pearl, Admiral Lockwood came aboard to give us a final once-over. The special equipment which had just been installed didn’t work well enough to suit him, so we had to lie over two days while the electronic experts adjusted it. Finally Piper got underway for Guam.
I had found, during the past few weeks, that being a skipper was far different from being an exec, no matter how much responsibility the Old Man had left you. Now I had all the responsibility, no matter to whom I delegated a specific problem. Now I had to be able to dispose of widely differing problems out of hand, sometimes without much consideration. Where before I had made suggestions and then loyally carried out the skipper’s wishes, now it was up to me to make the decisions. Frequently they were hard to make, and harder to stick to. In all of them I held the sack if anything went wrong.
One decision I made, and clung to tenaciously: we were going to get Piper into action or break our necks trying.
At Guam two doses of bad news awaited us. Admiral Lockwood, who had preceded us by plane, decided that our new secret frequency modulated sonar was still not up to snuff, and held us over for more tinkering by a different crew of experts. Then, when number three main engine developed leaks in the fresh-water cooling system, inspection disclosed that seven of the ten cylinder liners were cracked and would have to be renewed. More delay.
There wasn’t much time left, for it was already August. As soon as Admiral Lockwood was satisfied our equipment simply couldn’t or wouldn’t perform better, and that it was reasonably satisfactory as it was, I threw normal caution over the side and ordered Piper underway without the fourth engine. We would finish repairs at sea, and in the meantime could be gaining distance toward Jap-land. At 1700 on August 5, 1945, we backed away from our berth in Apra Harbor and set out for Japan at last, with all the speed our three good engines could give us.
We had not been long underway when a rather peculiar message came in describing some kind of bomb which had been dropped on Hiroshima and had done a lot of damage. I hardly gave it a second thought. Jerry Reeves, my exec, and I were busily planning the quickest way to get to Tsushima, and were considering the idea of running all the way on the surface. It could be done, we decided, even within sight of land during daylight — something no submariner would have considered a few months ago — but it seemed safe enough now until we got close to the Straits.
Repairs completed, number three engine was also put on the line, and Piper raced on four big diesels for the war zone. Somehow I felt it was slipping away from us — receding faster than we approached it. My emotions at this period I’ve never completely analyzed: rather than joy at the approaching end of the war, I felt an overwhelming impatience to be back in it before it ended. It was something like the feeling of the hunter who has been held out of the woods as the season draws to a close and finally is given a few fleeting hours to go out and find himself some big game. Certainly thoughts of pity for the Japs whose names were written on the twenty-six warheads we carried, and what would happen to them if I had my way, never entered my head. I think Piper and her skipper were as near to a remorseless engine of destruction as you could find. Now that the enemy was down, I wanted to stomp on him, kick him in the groin, destroy him completely if I could, just as he had Trigger, Wahoo, Harder, Gudgeon, and so many others.
At this juncture the blower lobes on number one main engine started to strike each other, and the engine had to be shut down. Once more our speed had to be reduced while it was dismantled and repairs effected. Furious, I put down the suggestion that we reduce speed further and take some of the load off the engines. We stayed on the surface and continued running, sighting neither planes nor ships belonging to the enemy, although we did see several of our submarines. After two days number-one engine was back in service, and our speed increased again.
Our plan was to transit Tsushima and enter the Sea of Japan on August 12. On the 11th a message from ComSubPac told us to patrol the Yellow Sea awaiting further orders. That night we vented our disappointment by destroying two fishing boats which had the misfortune to be caught in water deep enough for Piper to float. The surface fire-power of a fleet submarine with everything shooting is frightening to watch. But we felt no pity for them, for they were the enemy. Sometimes these inoffensive-looking boats carried concealed radio transmitters and warned of the presence of submarines — this was our excuse for cutting up these two with our concentrated fire. I’ve since been somewhat ashamed of the episode, for obviously these particular fishermen were interested only in fish.