It was a nervy business laying a field of mines in shallow water right under the noses of the enemy, and I know that Penrod and Captain Benson were much concerned over what we should do to defend ourselves in case we were detected in the process. With our torpedo tubes full of mines, there was not much we could do until we had unloaded them and put torpedoes in their places.
Up in the conning tower, Roy Benson kept watch through the periscope. Beside him Penrod checked our course, while standing alongside me in the control room my boss, Steve Gimber, the engineer, coached the planesmen. We laid our first line of mines; all went well. Then we turned around to lay the second line. Halfway through — Benson’s voice from the conning tower:
“Bear a hand down there.”
We laid a few more mines. Benson’s voice again: “How much longer?”
Another mine went out. “About ten minutes,” Steve Mann, the torpedo officer, reported from the forward torpedo room.
“Make it as fast as you can,” from the skipper.
“What is it? Why the sudden hurry? What’s happened up there?”
I ran up the ladder to the conning tower to find out. A large ship and a destroyer escorting it had come into view and were heading directly for us. I whispered the word to Gimber, then ran forward and told Steve Mann. As rapidly as possible we pumped out our remaining mines.
Relieved of our mission, we slunk away, in the meantime hurriedly shoving torpedoes into the now-empty tubes. When that had been completed, we felt better.
Benson had been keeping a watch on the two ships. Suddenly word came down from the conning tower: “Looks like he’s going right into our mine field.”
We wondered whether he would go over one of our mines, whether any of them had had time to arm, whether they were any good anyway.
“Kerblam!” Three of our questions were answered at once. Through the periscope Benson could see the ship hoisted irresistibly upward on a sudden blossoming of white water beneath him. When it subsided, the ship lay wallowing, broken in half, bow and stern high, center section under water.
Fascinated, our periscope stared at the destruction. Then, recollecting itself, it turned to look for the destroyer, and found him racing rapidly around his broken charge like a hound looking for a scent. Over the sonar gear we could hear him echo ranging, not routinely as he had been, but purposefully, alertly. The same thought struck several of us: “Say — he probably thinks that ship was torpedoed! What if he finds us here?”
The incongruity of our being attacked for torpedoing the ship didn’t seem particularly amusing, and we had to admit that it would make little difference anyway if he found us. We could hear the destroyer’s propellers flailing the water as he sped around.
Steve Gimber leaned over to me and said quite seriously, “You know, Ned, things could be worse. That little s.o.b. is still in the mine field. If he looks hard enough, he might find another one!”
Hardly had Steve finished speaking when another huge kerblam was heard and the propellers and echo ranging frighteningly stopped.
Having gone as deep as we could in the shallow water in our attempt to evade the destroyer, we didn’t have the pleasure of actually seeing him sink; and, sure enough, when we later reported the incident, Trigger received credit for sinking one large freighter only. When we surfaced about an hour later, we could see dead astern of us a tall column of black smoke where the two ships had been.
Three more ships we sank on this patrol. One, a freighter just at the entrance to Tokyo Bay; the destroyer Okikase evidently returning from an anti-submarine sweep outside the harbor; and a large freighter loaded with seaplanes on deck farther offshore. This last ship went down on the 31st of December, 1942—with our very best wishes for the New Year.
All ammunition expended for the second time in succession, Trigger returned to Midway for refit. When we arrived, Penrod Schneider and Steve Gimber were detached — Steve to report to Manitowoc, Wisconsin, to put the new submarine Rasher into commission as Executive Officer — a nice promotion. Penrod got an even better one, for he was ordered to the Electric Boat Company, at Groton, Connecticut, as prospective commanding officer of the submarine Dorado, under construction there.
This also was good news to Steve Mann and to me, for though we were sorry to see Penrod and Gimber leave, Mann moved up to Executive Officer and I became engineer. A large party was thrown for our two departing shipmates, and a couple of days after our arrival in Midway we saw them off in the motor launch which was to take them to the airfield.
A few days later one of their replacements arrived, an Ensign fresh from the Naval Academy, John W. Sincavich by name, who unsuccessfully tried to conceal the fact that his nickname had been “Stinky.” In particular I appreciated his arrival. I had been assistant engineer for almost a full year, but now I was Engineering Officer, and, as such, rated an assistant. Stinky was it.
4
Wahoo
To tell the story of USS Wahoo, it is necessary also to tell the story of Mush Morton. More than any other man, Morton — and his Wahoo—showed the way to the brethren of the Silent Service. He was positive, intolerant, quick to denounce inefficiency if he thought it existed; but he was precise by nature, absolutely fearless, and possessed of a burning desire to inflict damage upon the Japanese enemy.
Just why Morton felt that destruction of the Japanese merchant marine was his own private job will probably never be explained, for he and Wahoo sleep forever somewhere in the Sea of Japan. But all that is immortal of both of them is indissolubly paired in the archives of a grateful (but forgetful) nation and in the minds and hearts of a few men who knew them.
Morton died, perhaps believing that his message had not been received by those for whom it had been intended, perhaps with a bit of bitterness that he could convince no one to follow where he led. But he need not have worried, for after him came a host of names which, by their very fame, proved that his ideas had fallen upon fertile soil. Trigger, Tang, Barb, Tirante, Harder—these were some of his disciples: the school of “outthinking the enemy”; the believers in the coldly logical evaluation of chances, followed by the furious, slashing attack; the devotees of the competition to bring back the most ships.
Morton believed that there was a certain way in which the job should be done. He would have nothing to do with any other way. There is no question but that his search for perfection in his science brought about his own undoing.
On the last day of 1942 Lieutenant Commander Dudley W. Morton took command of USS Wahoo at Brisbane, Australia. There was nothing particularly outstanding about the new skipper during the first few weeks of his command, except perhaps an almost fanatical determination to get the items of the refit completed and checked on time, so that there would be no unnecessary delay in starting upon patrol.
Finally, on January 16, 1943, all repairs had been completed, and Wahoo was ready for sea for her third war patrol — Mush Morton’s first in command. In company with her escorting destroyer — necessary in view of the “shoot on sight” order directed against any submarine in those “friendly” waters — the submarine got underway and headed for the open sea. At nightfall the escort turned back, a dimmed signal light blinking the customary farewelclass="underline" “Good luck… good hunting!” Perhaps the captain of the destroyer wished that he, too, could go forth on his own, like some ancient sea rover, to seek out the enemy. Undeniably there was always a strong element of romance at the sight of a small ship setting out alone for enemy waters, bravely inviting the worst the enemy could offer, confident in her ability to best him in all encounters. Perhaps the destroyer skipper sensed this as he watched his signalman flash out his valedictory; perhaps Morton knew a momentary sense of understanding, also, but his answer was an equally simple: “Thank you!”