On the night of 7/8 October 1943 USS Selfridge, a 1850-ton destroyer of the Porter class, was engaged in intercepting Japanese destroyers carrying out a typical Tokyo Express mission, attempting to evacuate troops from Vella Lavella Island. At 2300 Selfridge engaged a group of Japanese destroyers and turned to comb torpedo tracks seen approaching from starboard. At 2306 she was hit simultaneously by two 24in Japanese torpedoes, one coming from starboard and the other from port. The entire bow of the ship was severed, and floated away down the starboard side. Her engines were undamaged, and were put full astern until she could be brought to a stop. The bulkheads aft of the extensive damage held, and Selfridge proceeded at 10 knots to Purvis Bay, some 120 miles away.
Here the damaged sections were cleaned up by a repair ship, and after it was determined that her stability remained adequate, she was despatched to Noumea, where a temporary bow was welded on in a floating dock, from where she proceeded to Mare Island for full repairs.
HOLOCAUST IN THE PACIFIC
Once their torpedo problems had been resolved, the growing fleet of long-range modern US Navy submarines, backed by small numbers of Royal Navy and Dutch boats, began a wholesale slaughter of Japanese maritime shipping. It is estimated that by the time Japan surrendered, she had lost over 4 million tons of merchant ships and tankers.
The IJN was targeted by aircraft, carrier- and land-based, when they attacked and when they holed up in their ports and bases, and by surface warships in actions in narrow waters. On the open seas, on a day-to-day basis, it was the submarines which inflicted crippling losses, and their weapon was the torpedo. Between 7 December 1941 and 15 August 1945, when the emperor broadcast his surrender speech, the IJN, as a fighting force, had virtually ceased to exist. It had taken the span of just one generation to take Japan from a backwater to dominance in the Pacific, and then back to zero, truly a ‘Morning Glory’ as author Stephen Howarth so aptly described it.
Submarine torpedo attacks had sunk no less than 300 Japanese warships: 1 fast battleship (Kongo), 4 fleet carriers (including the giant Shinano and the armoured-deck Taiho), 4 escort carriers, 8 seaplane carriers and tenders, 5 heavy cruisers and 11 light cruisers, plus 4 armed merchant cruisers (and a German raider, Michel). No less than 47 destroyers, 3 torpedo boats, 37 escorts, 9 sub-chasers and 3 gunboats had followed them to the bottom, most when vainly attempting to protect their convoys against American submarine attack; 18 submarines and 3 submarine depot ships had gone down to torpedo attack by their Allied opposite numbers; 19 minelayers, 15 netlayers and 24 minesweepers had been sunk by submarine torpedo, many when pressed into the role of escorts; 2 landing ships, 2 specialised fast attack transports and 2 aircraft transports were lost, plus the special turret transporter ship for the Yamato class.
Finally, and most significantly, 71 naval oilers and 8 naval colliers had gone to the bottom. Without fuel a fleet cannot operate, and these devastating losses effectively strangled the remaining warships. When the Yamato sailed on her final sacrificial mission, she carried only sufficient fuel for a one-way trip.
Tautog’s crew were extremely lucky to bring their battle flag home, because of a circular run incident. If a submerged submarine was the firer of a circular runner and time permitted, she could dive deeper to try to avoid her own torpedo, as was the case with USS Tautog. During her second combat patrol, to the Marshall Islands in May 1942, Tautog fired two Mark 14 torpedoes at Goya Maru. One torpedo hit, forcing the merchantman to beach herself, but the other came back in a circular run, and Tautog had to go deep to avoid it. She survived the war.
No such good fortune attended the two US submarines definitely known to have been sunk by their own torpedo.
On 26 March 1944, the USS Tullibee was accidentally sunk by a circular run of one of her own torpedoes off the Palau Islands. Of her crew seventy-nine died, and one crewman survived to report what had happened.
Tullibee departed Pearl on 5 March 1944 on her fourth war patrol. Nine days later, she called at Midway Island to top off her fuel and then proceeded to her patrol area in the Palau Islands where she was to support air strikes. On the night of 26 March she made radar contact with a small Japanese convoy of a large transport vessel, two smaller freighters and three escorts. Tullibee made several surface attack runs on the large transport but kept losing her in rain squalls. Eventually, she got a good contact at just 3000yds (2700m) and fired two torpedoes from her bow tubes.
Two minutes later one of her own torpedoes, which had run a circular course, struck the submarine. Gunner’s Mate C W Kuykendall, who had been on the bridge at the time, was knocked unconscious by the blast and thrown overboard. When he came to, the Tullibee had already sunk. He recalled hearing voices in the water in the dark, but after ten minutes they stopped and he was left alone. The following day he was picked up by a Japanese escort vessel and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner of war (PoW).