A Tale of Two Subs Read online

  At the briefing with Captain John Wilkes, the task force sub commander of the Asiatic Fleet, Chappell learned some specifics about Pearl Harbor, his patrol area, and the secret new Mk VI torpedo exploder. Wilkes warned him not to divulge the patrol area until the ship had cleared Manila Bay. To evade surface and air patrols, the submarines would surface one hour after dusk and dive one hour before dawn, and remain submerged throughout the day. As for the top secret Mk VI, it was apparently a remarkable leap in technology, exploding when it detected a target ship’s magnetic signature. Skippers would no longer have to worry about whether their torpedoes would pop harmlessly against the steel-reinforced sides of battleships. The Mk VI–equipped torpedo would run under the target ship, explode at the ship’s soft underbelly, and break its keel with one shot. One shot, one ship: a battleship every time. According to the Bureau of Ordnance in Rhode Island, the Mk VI ate gunpowder and shat lightning. Tests had proved it. The device was infallible. And at the very reasonable price of $1,000 in 1941 dollars, each torpedo was surely a bargain. With the Mk VI, a handful of submarines would doubtless sink the entire Japanese navy.

  The Sculpin’s first war patrol was nearly its last when it stood out to exit Manila Bay that evening. The night sky was dark; there were no navigation lights, and the familiar glow from the city was absent. To hamper nighttime air raids and enemy ships’ navigation, nearly all of the Philippines observed blackout conditions. Along with the submarine USS Seawolf and the tankers Pecos and Trinity, the Sculpin followed the seaplane tender USS Langley toward Corregidor. As they passed through the minefields there, men in the after torpedo room heard a bump-bump-bump on the port side. The sound was probably coming from the propeller guard as it scraped against the rusty chains of a mine. Lieutenant Corwin “Mendy” Mendenhall went aft to reassure the nervous men.

  Once they’d passed from Manila Bay into the South China Sea, the Sculpin detached from the convoy and made an initial trim dive. They’d taken on new supplies, fuel, and fresh water, which had changed the weight of the boat. Although the diving officer could estimate the new weight and adjust how much water they’d have to take on in order to get compensation and trim, the only way to be sure was to make the initial trim dive. The officer of the deck cleared the bridge and gave two blasts of the diving alarm—oo-OO-gah, oo-OO-gah.

  The control room crew opened the valves on top of the main ballast tanks. The air rushed out of the tanks with a roar as they filled with seawater from the vents below and the ship began to sink. The bow plane operator pushed a button to rig out the bow planes with hydraulic pressure, then stood by at the diving station wheel to steer them downward into a dive. Men in every compartment with a hatch to the outside dogged the latches to make them watertight. The maneuvering room shut a lever overhead that turned the diesel engines off. With the flip of another switch they connected the electric motors to the batteries. The engine room gang would shut flapper valves on the exhaust mufflers and on the main induction, a tube thirty-six inches wide and 100 feet long that sucked massive quantities of air into the ship for the diesels. If the ship dove with the induction valves open, it would be the equivalent of diving with a thirty-six-inch hole in the engine room, which in turn could flood the entire ship and kill all aboard.

  In the control room, the diving officer and chief of the watch kept an eye on the Christmas Tree, an electrical panel with red and green lightbulbs. As the engines shut down and hatches shut, their corresponding red lightbulbs would glow green, indicating readiness for the dive. With the decks awash with seawater, the quartermaster would be the last down the bridge hatch, waiting carefully and holding the hatch open until the sucking action of the engines ceased. Everyone’s lives were in his hands. If the diesels were still running while the induction was closed, the diesels would suck air through the compartments of the boat from any remaining openings. If the quartermaster closed that final hatch before the engines shut down, the diesels would suck every last atom of air from the crew’s compartments. In such a vacuum, an officer would have no air with which to scream “Open the hatch,” and in any event, the hatch would be held tight by the vacuum in the boat. The crew’s eardrums might explode, and with no air pressure, their lung tissues would rip as their alveoli burst. The rapid reduction in pressure would cause the boat to fill with fog, the last thing they would see for about fifteen seconds before losing consciousness.

  When all the lights on the Christmas Tree went green and the engines had stopped, the quartermaster hung on the lanyard on the deck hatch to keep it shut while a crewman dogged it tight. Then the chief bled air into the boat and watched the barometer. The crewmen’s ears popped as the pressure went up in the compartments, and once assured that the boat was airtight, the chief would announce “Pressure in the boat!” The submarine would begin its descent in earnest. The diving officer took water in or pumped water out of the trim and auxiliary tanks to attain compensation and trim. Once the boat was as buoyant as the water around it, he’d note the amount of water they’d taken in for the next dive.

  On each dive, every man had a job, and every job was crucial. If any one of them failed to accomplish even a single task in the crucial first thirty seconds of a dive—or during the war patrol—the entire crew of sixty-six souls could perish. There were no second chances, no mitigating factors. They would have to be able to do this and much more at a moment’s notice, twenty-four hours a day.

  The Sculpin headed south and east through the San Bernardino Strait to its patrol area, where they would guard Lamon Bay off the southeastern shore of Luzon Island. The Commander of Submarine Forces, Asiatic Fleet (CSAF), speculated that the Japanese might stage an invasion there. Unfortunately, only about twenty or so modern submarines, a handful of rusty old S-class submarines, a couple of cruisers, and an assortment of destroyers were available against the Japanese armada that would soon come. Since there was only one radio, the signalmen could copy only official Navy transmissions, and no one had a good idea of what had happened at Pearl, or even what was happening in the Philippines. They did, however, get snippets about preposterous Japanese claims of sinking several battleships and cruisers at Pearl Harbor, then Japanese landings on the western shore of Luzon, opposite their position. Despite radio jamming by the Japanese, they analyzed every broadcast for even the smallest scraps of information, and what they heard was disheartening.

  General Douglas MacArthur lost all his bombers. The Japanese struck Cavite with an air raid. Over 200 of the sub force’s torpedoes went up in smoke. A bomb destroyed Dick Voge’s sub, USS Sealion, while it was in dry dock, and the submarine tender Canopus was a total loss. The submarines posted on the western side of Luzon had been ineffective in the face of landings there, and the U.S. Army was in retreat. There was also troubling news about the torpedoes: They ran much deeper than set, and either exploded soon after arming or not at all. Moreover, one torpedo was often not enough to sink a ship. Based on the information they were getting from the other submarines, Chappell changed the depth settings on the torpedoes shallower and shallower until they would practically run on the surface. The Sculpin also got word of Japanese landings at Aparri, on the northern tip of Luzon. CSAF sent a change of orders for them to go north and patrol there. A few days after they left, the Japanese landed at Lamon Bay, their previous patrol area. Nothing was going right for the Allies, and in conversations around the wardroom, the officers took to calling the fleet the RAF, for “Retreating Asiatic Fleet.”

  Since they were submerged all day, Chappell instituted what the men came to call the “Reversa” schedule, where most of them slept during the day and performed their duties at night. They had breakfast at dusk, lunch at midnight, and dinner at dawn. Some of the men didn’t have lookout duty, and would never come out of the boat from the time they embarked on a war patrol till the day the Sculpin tied back up at the dock. Aside from periscope observations, none of them would see the light of day for a month or more.

  The crew adjusted to the sch
edule and dug in for the long haul, keeping busy by operating the sub or doing maintenance work on the equipment. During off-hours they slept, ate, read magazines, and wrote letters, or they played cribbage, poker, and a Navy version of backgammon called acey-deucey. Strange as it seems, they also smoked inside the sub—at that time, people smoked in restaurants, buses, movie theaters, everywhere, and submarines were no exception. Each compartment had a smoking lamp to indicate whether they had the captain’s permission to light up; at the end of a battery charge, the batteries gave off hydrogen gas, which was a fire hazard, so they kept the smoking lamp off at this time. Most skippers also didn’t want to fill up the boat with cigarette smoke while submerged, though some would let the crew smoke during a particularly long depth charge attack to calm frayed nerves. After a sub had been submerged for twelve, eighteen, or twenty-four hours, sometimes there wasn’t even enough oxygen to get a match lit, let alone smoke a cigarette.

  Adding to the malodorous atmosphere was the short supply of water—there was enough to drink and to top off the batteries, but that was about all. As a result, the men wouldn’t be able to shower for weeks at a time, and the sub took on a stale, musty stench. Some men took “French baths,” while others resorted to using “pink lady,” the alcohol fuel used to power the torpedoes. The Sculpin had also left in such haste that many of the men left their laundry back at Cavite and had to wear the same dirty clothes for weeks. In tropic climes this was usually a T-shirt and cutoff jeans, but sometimes even this was too much and on some boats the men went about their business completely naked. If this seems bizarre, it would be well to keep in mind that the subs were in equatorial waters with high humidity. When the sub dove for the day, the heat of the four massive diesel engines radiated throughout the boat. Even with air conditioning, the forward torpedo room—the coolest part of the boat—often went above 100 degrees. In the engine rooms, the temperature regularly went up to 140 degrees. There was nothing to be done about it but drink gallons of water and swallow handfuls of salt tablets. Under these conditions even the heartiest men would sweat off dozens of pounds by the time a patrol ended. As quoted in Silent Victory by Clay Blair Jr., one submariner wrote about the conditions while on patrol:

  The bunks beyond the wardroom are filled with torpid, skivvy-clad bodies, the sweat running off the white, rash-blistered skin in small rivulets. Metal fans are whirring everywhere—overhead, at the ends of the bunks, close to my ear. . . . I am playing cribbage with the skipper, mainly because I don’t like to wallow in a sweat-soaked bunk most of the day. I have my elbows on the table near the edge and I hold my cards with my arms at a slight angle so the sweat will stream down my bare arms . . . without further soaking the pile of cards in the center. . . . Overhead is a fine net of gauze to catch the wayward cockroaches which prowl across the top of the wardroom and occasionally fall straight downward . . . they live in the cork insulation which lines the insides of the submarine’s hull . . . we’ve killed over sixteen million cockroaches in one compartment alone. . . . The deck in the control room is littered with towels, used to sponge up the water dripping off the men and the submarine itself.

  Their only consolation was good food—probably the best in the Navy. The submariners got top cuts of meat and whatever frozen fruits were available, but any food became contemptible with routine. When the cook, or “Chief Stew Burner,” dipped into the dreaded bologna they ate so often and grew to detest, they called it “horsecock.” Chipped beef on toast was the slightly less appealing “shit on a shingle.” Everyone and everything had a nickname. Just as the skipper was “the old man,” the gunnery officer was always “Gunny,” the pharmacist’s mate “Doc.” The motor machinists—or motormacs—were the “black crew,” because the diesel fuel and crankcase oil covered their skin like black greasepaint, and electricians in the maneuvering room were “ampere hounds.”

  All of them developed “submarine ears.” Whether it was a sudden change of course, or the engines suddenly stopped and the humming, pounding noise was replaced with an eerie silence, or the normal chitchat of the control room was replaced with terse, hushed tones, the implications of a sudden change gusted up and down the length of the boat with urgency. As it traveled, the men exchanged nods and knowing glances. Conversations stopped. Men who were seated stood up and crossed their arms or held themselves steady with one hand on a bulkhead or piece of equipment, tensed and ready for orders. The hundreds of polished knobs and indicator dials glowed with new intensity. Smokers checked the smoking light to see if they could get in one last cigarette before the action started, while others might watch a crewmate as he swallowed nervously, his Adam’s apple rising, stopping, and falling. Even men sleeping in their bunks might take note of the quiet and wake up to the tension of those around them. The compartment talkers would adjust their headphones and the contraption perched on their chest that held an old-fashioned telephone receiver so that both hands were free to do work. Coming across the enemy—whether for the first time or the thirtieth—never became routine. Although it stretched the men’s nerves taut, the shot of adrenaline had a curious stilling effect, as though they’d stumbled upon a tiger in the woods.

  Mendy was the officer of the deck when they spotted their first target. It was raining, and the wind howled and warbled as it licked around the antenna. The seas had kicked up with rough chops; one swell had flooded the deck and sent a torrent of water down the hatch into the conning tower. At 11:04 P.M., Cleland “Doc” Miller was standing lookout watch on the deck when he said, “Mr. Mendenhall, I think I see a ship ahead, slightly to port.” He spoke quietly, Mendenhall would recall, “as if they could hear him if he talked louder.”

  Mendenhall quickly spotted the vessel through the rain gusts: a large, heavily laden cargo ship bobbing and heaving low in the water. He sounded the battle stations alarm and pushed the button on the 1MC to give orders: “Make ready bow tubes; come to course two-oh-eight.” The crewmen on a submarine confirmed nearly every order to reduce errors or miscommunications, and the men in the forward torpedo room replied—“Make ready bow tubes, aye aye, sir”—while the helmsman (usually the quartermaster) barked, “Coming to course two-oh-eight, aye aye, sir!”

  The skipper ran from his quarters to get to the deck and popped up the hatch, breathless. He grabbed a pair of binoculars and stared out into the darkness. “Mendy,” Chappell said, “I don’t see a thing.” He had been reading when Mendenhall sounded the alarm, and his night vision couldn’t adapt quickly enough to see the ship. Now the lookouts saw another ship farther out in the distance; it looked like a cargo ship, too. Chappell couldn’t let the enemy ship get by—the standing order for all ships was to attack now that they were at war—so he made a snap decision: “It’s all yours. Do your best,” he told Mendenhall.

  Mendenhall called the target’s range, speed, bearing, and angle on the bow to the officer operating the Torpedo Data Computer (TDC) in the control room below. It was a large box with spinning dials and knobs to adjust the settings. Using inputs from the sub’s gyrocompass and speedometer (the “bendix”) as well as the target’s information from observations on the deck or the periscope, the TDC would calculate the target’s course over time. More observations made the TDC’s calculations more accurate. While this was happening, the TDC adjusted the angle the torpedoes would take after they left their tubes. Each torpedo had a gyroscope, and as the TDC tracked the target, it calculated and adjusted the gyro angle in real time through a spindle inside the torpedo. When the TDC’s predicted bearing, speed, and range matched what the crewmen observed on the deck or through the periscope, the TDC was said to have reached a “solution,” and they could fire at any time. When the skipper gave the order to fire, the spindle would pop out of the torpedo. A gush of compressed air ejected the torpedo, and its alcohol-powered steam engine started. As the torpedo made its way to the target, the gyro adjusted the course until it reached the angle preset by the TDC. Simultaneously, a poppet valve opened on the torpedo tube
. This allowed the seawater outside the sub to push the compressed air back into the torpedo tube, through the poppet valve, and back into the boat. When the seawater reached the poppet valve, it clamped the valve shut so that the sub wouldn’t take on too much water. If the ship didn’t take on the additional water through the torpedo tube, the loss of the torpedo’s weight could alter the sub’s compensation and make the ship broach.

  Mendy called to the TDC operator: “Course two-nine-oh true. Speed, twelve knots. Range, two-five-oh-oh yards. Angle on the bow, seven-five degrees.” They waited as the ship continued along its track; they were on an intersecting path and were coming closer and closer. Hopefully they could get their torpedoes off before the lookouts on the other ship saw the Sculpin’s low silhouette on the surface.

  “Set depth ten feet.”

  “Set depth ten feet, aye aye, sir.” They waited quietly in the warm rain, watching the target and the other ship for any signs that they might be aware of the sub’s presence. The torpedoman reported: “Depth set, ten feet, sir.”

  “Set gyro angles three-oh degrees right.”

  “Set gyro angles three-oh degrees right, aye aye, sir. Gyro angles set three-oh degrees right, sir.”

  “Range, one-triple-oh yards.”

  “I have a solution . . . ready to fire.”

  “Fire one!” The Sculpin shuddered as the torpedo left the tube, then shuddered as the compressed air entered the torpedo room. From the slight shaking beneath their feet and the gust of air that went throughout the boat, the crewmen knew they’d fired their first war shot.