Clear the Bridge! Page 6

  “The officer of the deck reports that the sun has set, Captain,” he said, pronouncing each word carefully, as if he had memorized the report. This was probably the case, for he held a small slip of paper at his side. The important thing was the conciseness of the report. He would soon be at ease and would need no prompter. To help this along, I thanked him for his report and sent back word to man the SJ (surface-search) radar now, and to secure the SD radar and high periscope search at dark.

  Blessed darkness would follow sunset in less than a half hour at this latitude, and then a submarine could feel almost as secure as when submerged. We would follow the night cruising routine we had used along the Mexican coast. The evening meal, movies, and other activities would most likely continue uninterrupted.

  About 2000, the OOD requested permission to open the messroom hatch to dump trash and garbage. It was a good opportunity for me to go topside into the cool night air and judge for myself if the hatch should be opened. Though the seas were from the starboard quarter, they were barely rolling into our superstructure, and I nodded to Ed Beaumont, who had the deck. The hatch was opened, the weighted sacks went up and over the side, and everything was secured again in seconds. Somewhat envious of Ed with his topside watch, I went below for a game of cribbage with Fraz and then my stack of reports.

  On the second day out, we checked Bill’s compensation with a midmorning dive. He held the boat up at periscope depth with negative still flooded by keeping an up-angle on the submarine. Then he blew negative slowly until we were leveled off at one-third speed and thus established a new mark on the gauge, which would serve as a guide to whoever dived during the next few days. Our routine would now include daily dives, though at no scheduled time.

  When two days from Wake Island, we were within possible range of enemy search planes, so our lookouts had to cover the sky as well as the water to the horizon. This they did in horizontal sweeps above the horizon, then searching a triangular area to overhead. As before, after each sweep the glasses were lowered to permit a rapid view of the whole area with the unaided eye. We thus expected to sight any plane while it was still many miles away, before it saw us. Should a plane get by the field of the binoculars, the rapid search with the unaided eye must spot it in time for us to dive before it could attack.

  Instead of the formal position slips that had been required when I was in the navigator’s shoes, I had requested that Fraz bring his chart to the wardroom after supper. At other times I would see it on the chart desk. On the evening of January 26, the exact 2000 position, run ahead from his evening star fix, showed that we were 20 miles ahead of the position laid down on our track. We had gained a little each day in spite of our recent dives. This fitted in well with converting safety tank back to its normal function, for the diesels had now used somewhat more fuel from our regular tanks than safety held. The oil was transferred without incident, but before flushing safety we changed course to north. Any oil slicks that we might leave while flooding and blowing safety to rinse it out would lie on a north-south line and would not disclose our track. After an hour’s run and half a dozen blows, Tang came back to the course for Wake.

  Taking a tip from the “remarks” section of two patrol reports that discussed radar detection, we kept our SJ radar trained clear of the bearing of Wake Island as we moved in on the night of the 27th. Frazee’s navigation was exact and we needed no range to the atoll, so why take the chance of advertising our approach with radar signals? At the crack of dawn, Tang dived five miles northeast of Wake.

  2

  Frank took the dive as we slid under the sea and leveled the boat off at 64 feet. He soon requested one-third speed and reported a satisfactory trim. On the first periscope observation it was still too dark to distinguish any details. Then, just as darkness had come quickly, so did daylight. I made a fast sweep in low optical power, with its wide field, for a submarine never knew what might have moved in during darkness. All was clear. Then I flipped the handle to high power and made a slow search. The tops of structures on Peale Island popped above the horizon, as if coming up out of the sea. Everyone was quiet. “Bearing—mark. Down scope,” I called. “Zero zero six,” said Jones, as he read the relative bearing from the azimuth scale on the scope housing and lowered the scope simultaneously.

  Fraz had already converted the relative bearing to true and was laying down the line as I stepped over to the chart desk. The line bisected the high point of the island, the northernmost part of Wake Atoll. I sketched in very lightly the track we would follow past the islands. It would keep us three miles off the reef but still close enough for the reconnaissance we wanted. Fraz smoothed out my sketching with sharp, straight lines and entered the course to be steered on each leg. I brought Tang to the first leg.

  “Will you take the con and call me when we reach here,” I said, indicating a point where we would change course in about a half hour, and then gave search instructions. We would expose no more than three feet of periscope and would take looks every five minutes. In this manner we would not be surprised by a plane that might take off and be overhead were the interval much longer.

  I went below, for I had a reason for wanting my executive officer to close the island. It hearkened back to an experience I had had in Wahoo as Mush Morton’s exec. We were both on the bridge closing a promontory at dawn and dived a little too early. Before we could do anything about it, a fine ship whipped around the point and was gone. I remember Mush’s exact words when we discussed our failure later. “With two of us up there we’re just too cautious. From now on you’ll take her in, dive, and call me when you’ve got a ship in sight.” I might not go quite that far, but there were bound to be many times when Fraz would have to carry the ball, and a good place to start was right here.

  Fraz and I took turns on the periscope that morning, changing at about two-hour intervals. First came Peale Island, which had once held the Pan American Hotel in the China Clipper days of the mid-1930s. It had apparently burned during the Japanese assault; at least we could not see it. Continuing our clockwise course around the atoll, we then passed the northern arm of Wake Island, which is shaped like a big V, open to the northwest. Before the Japanese had taken the island from us, most of the facilities and landing strips were located near the apex of the V. We saw the buildings but no signs of activity. Finally came Wilkes Island, originally an extension of Wake’s southern arm but now separated from it by a dredged small-boat channel.

  By midafternoon Tang had examined all of the atoll except where the lagoon opened to the sea at the mouth of the V. From three miles out we had not seen any activity, but neither was there anything that would warrant altering the strike date. We moved off to the southwest, where we would surface at dark. This seemed to be the most likely place to intercept any ship or submarine supplying Wake from the Empire and a secure spot for us to charge batteries.

  It had been a long dive, and since the seas were calm we took a suction through the boat shortly after surfacing and as soon as the charge was started. Opening the forward torpedo room hatch and the doors to the engine room brought a true gale through the ship to feed those diesels. In three or four minutes, the air in the boat was completely changed, and any slight headaches disappeared instantly. The hatch was closed, and we commenced our night surface routine, changing it in one respect. We had no place to go, so we remained stopped for most of the night. This had two advantages: Our sound gear was effective now that it was not blanked out by our own screw noises, and we saved fuel.

  On the following day we moved in submerged toward the open roadstead off the boat channel between Wilkes and Wake. That was the only anchorage, and should any ship have slipped by us, she might be there for our torpedoes. This was not our luck, so we proceeded submerged to our designated position for the first strike by the Coronado bombers.

  In the forward engine room, the troops had a project with a deadline this very evening. Tang had to supply a suitable beacon light, but since we would be on the horiz
on as viewed from Wake, the light had to be screened from the atoll. Our signal searchlight was ideal, but rigging a suitable light-tight screen from the materials at hand was something else. That is, until someone thought of the yeoman’s circular fiber wastebasket. The diameter of the bottom happened to be the same as that of the searchlight. With the bottom out, the fiber cone made a perfect screen, secured neatly with a band of the pharmacist’s mate’s wide adhesive tape.

  We surfaced during midevening twilight, while there was still a sharp horizon for the navigator’s star sights. Fraz’s position lines lay neatly through a needle point, and Tang had to move but a short distance to be right on station. The navigator continued to get good star sights from our stationary position, and on a horizon that would have been deemed fuzzy and worthless in peacetime. Our position remained good.

  “Radar contact, bearing zero three eight, range thirty-six thousand.” Ed’s voice came over the bridge speaker. The contact could only be the Coronados, for planes had to be flying low to be picked up by our SJ.

  “What’s that relative?”

  “One eight five.”

  Jones trained the searchlight just off our stern on Tang’s port quarter and gave the signal agreed upon, in the cadence of a gun salute: “If I wasn’t a gunner I wouldn’t be here, right gun fire,” with Jones giving a long dash with the word “fire” at the five-second intervals.

  And then the great flying boats were there, looming out of the darkness just above the horizon. Seconds later they were passing over our periscope shears, only a hundred feet above, their blue exhaust flaming at us and marking a line toward Wake.

  It was perhaps just as well that I had to give no orders, for I felt my teeth clench and my eyes mist up as I wished those men Godspeed.

  Flashes and flames on the atoll showed that their bombs were hitting, but there was no way for us to estimate the damage. Tang remained on station for 20 minutes so that any damaged plane would know where to find her and then headed down past Wake for possible rescue. About an hour after the strike, two enemy planes commenced dropping flares and searching the area, but neither came close to us.

  It was not until after midnight that we received the good news that none of the bombers had come down and only one was damaged. To our surprise, the message further read:

  TANG RELEASED FROM LIFEGUARD

  PROCEED TO NEXT AREA

  Apparently the second Coronado strike was off, so we presumed Operation Flintlock had been a success. Three engines went on the line for propulsion, one on charge, and we were on our way. Our elation was short-lived, however; three hours and 60 miles later, the second part of the message was cancelled, and Tang was ordered back to Wake. The second strike, scheduled for February 5, was still on; someone on the staff at Pearl had just goofed.

  During the following days, Tang patrolled southwest of Wake during the night and closed the island each day. There were planes in the air during daylight, but no ships came to the atoll. We could not complain in one respect, for the air activity kept us on our toes and provided good periscope training, while the fish all about the reef gave our inexperienced sound operators conniptions with their grunting, whistling, and pseudo echo-ranging.

  The repeat performance by the Coronados was uneventful and lacked some of the zest of the first strike, partly because it was a duplicate, but mostly because the planes came over at high altitude this time. Though our reconnaissance did not disclose specific damage by either strike, Japanese planes were in the air daily, so they must have been shaken up.

  Finally, shortly after midnight, our call sign preceded a coded message received on the Fox, the nightly schedule of broadcasts from ComSubPac to his submarines. Before Mel Enos could decode it, a second diesel had fired and Tang was on her way. As expected, all planes were safe and we were released from lifeguard duties. This was no false start, and though the Fox hadn’t told us, this time we were sure that all had gone well with Flintlock.

  3

  It was now February 7, for we had crossed the date line, and our course was southwesterly, toward the Caroline Islands. This archipelago, located south of the Marianas, stretches from the Marshalls in the east and includes the Palau Islands in the west. Consisting mostly of small islands, reefs, and atolls, the Carolines would not have been of great importance except for one large island atoll in about the center of the chain. Made up of several nearly sunken mountains, surrounded by distant reefs, and with deep anchorages, it was frequently called Japans Gibraltar of the Pacific; on the charts it is called Truk.

  The progress of the U.S. offensive in the Central Pacific, through the Gilberts and Marshalls, had been too costly in its initial stages; it was still unacceptably slow. To speed this up through bypassing the Carolines and moving directly on the Marianas would still require neutralizing Truk. Tang and other submarines would participate for the present by stepping up the attrition of shipping in nearby areas, and would later be positioned to intercept fleeing ships during Operation Hailstone, a carrier air strike on Truk.

  Pending final decisions concerning the strike, Tang did have a patrol area. About the size of the state of Connecticut, it was located north of the central Carolines and was essentially a holding area until just before the strike. No logical shipping lanes passed through it, but much in war is illogical and the unexpected frequently happens. At least we were on our own, and the problem was ours.

  Tang would operate in such a manner that fuel would not be a limiting factor terminating this patrol. This very minute she was proceeding to her area at two-engine speed instead of three to make up for the diesel oil she had consumed during the false start. In the following days, when in our patrol area, Tang’s routine would also be patterned accordingly. Our first priority, however, was to reach the Carolines. Just before 0400, I was awakened by a slightly more severe voice than usual coming through the control room door. Some have called it submarine ears, but any change in the normal sounds wakens you instantly, especially if you’re in a position of responsibility. You can then either get up immediately or, if you are cool, lie there and await developments. I had a better solution for such occasions—an eavesdropping switch on the commercial Voycall intercom, which served the bridge, conning tower, control room, and my cabin. I flicked the switch at the head of my bunk and listened to Chief Ballinger. He was lecturing the on-going lookouts concerning their responsibilities and the added dangers with coming dawn, when an enemy submarine tracking us could have dived ahead.

  I sent for my Night Order Book and checked the time of morning twilight, then entered: Make trim dive at 0520.

  Tang was on the surface again at a quarter of the hour, moving over a calm sea with a crisp horizon all around. On such a day, a single light puff of smoke or the rising haze from diesel engines of any ship would be visible even though the ship herself might be many miles beyond the horizon. Such visibility was a two-way affair, however, and called for a sun lookout. His sole duty was to examine the sun through protective lenses and the area in its vicinity with clear binoculars. Only from this area could a plane have a chance of attacking, but with an alert sun lookout even that was minimal.

  The morning was uneventful, the noon meal satisfying, and then came the shout, “Clear the bridge! Clear the bridge!” punctuated with two blasts on the diving alarm. The other sounds of diving were normal, but the excitement in the OOD’s voice had told half the story; the starboard lookout told the rest: There was a distant plane a point on our bow. Tang was passing 60 feet when we blew negative to level off at 80. That was a comfortable depth, giving some room to steady down should our trim not be too good or our planesmen a bit excited. We then went up to 64 feet for a periscope observation, cautious as always, for we could never know what might have transpired on the surface.

  The executive officer gave the relative bearing, and I had the plane in sight on the first high-power observation. A Japanese patrol, probably a Betty, heading to the southeast. A few true bearings till the plane finally disap
peared confirmed the direction in which it was heading, perhaps to Ponape, about 300 miles east of Truk. After another ten minutes, with the horizon clear all around, Tang surfaced and proceeded toward her area. The remainder of the day was uneventful, though possibly a bit more taut, and darkness was welcome.

  The evening Fox schedule contained another message with our call sign, and Mel completed the decoding in a hurry. The submarine Guardfish would be passing close to our track and might be sighted the following day. Fraz suspected that the crew had a sighting pool, which was all right with both of us. In fact we would have liked a chance ourselves. If there was a pool, the crew member with the 15-minute slip won, for at 1315 on February 8, Guardfish’s periscope shears came over the horizon. We continued to close, and then unexpectedly Guardfish dived.

  Was it Guardfish? Had she received the message? Though the answer was very probably yes in each case, a submerged submarine, friendly or not, was nothing to fool around with. Tang cranked on two more engines and gave the diving position a wide berth, well beyond any possible approach and torpedo range.

  At midafternoon Tang entered her patrol area. The seas looked the same, but there was one important difference; they were now exclusively ours. No one would be telling us what we could do here, or how we should conduct our patrol. We had achieved our first objective, the next was to find the enemy. The first move was obvious. With U.S. naval operations probably still in progress some 500 miles to the southeast, there would be no Japanese shipping in that direction, so Tang headed west. Two-engine speed would take us far enough by 0300. There we would conduct our search on the following day. I wrote in my night orders: Proceeding on course 254° true at 14 knots, 80/90 [80 percent load, 90 percent speed] on two main engines, en route to our patrol station for tomorrow. The battery charge should be completed by about midnight. At 0300 stop, lie to, and man sound. If rolling becomes excessive, maneuver on the battery as necessary. Search our vicinity thoroughly, continuously, and diligently.