Clear the Bridge! Page 7

  The night was quiet, especially after we had stopped. Men coming on watch moved silently and talked in low voices and whispers. It was really not necessary, but I certainly would do nothing to alter their seriousness. Dawn came and we continued our search, now augmented by the search periscope, with Tang still on the surface, lying to and maintaining quiet.

  This was a far cry from accepted submarine doctrine, which dictated having way on the boat, but what is doctrine anyway? I believe it is a set of procedures, established through experience, that provides a guide. But doctrine should be flexible, never rigid, for circumstances often dictate complete departures. Our situation that day was an example of such circumstances.

  In order for us to utilize speed in searching, it was first necessary to know the general direction of the enemy’s movement. We could then proceed on a very wide zigzag ahead and thus cover a broader front as the enemy overtook. But we were presently in an open-sea area, and enemy ships might be on any track, though the northwest-southeast courses passing through the western part seemed more likely. No amount of running around at our available speeds would increase the probability of sighting the enemy. In fact, to do so would only make us a target for a submerged enemy submarine and would blank out our sound gear with our own screw noises.

  Tang was lying to in the center of a circle some 20 miles in diameter that we had searched by radar and sound during the three hours before daylight. It was clear of any enemy. The only planes that could reach our position were patrol bombers. We could sight them and dive before they sighted us, for our diving time when lying to was only five seconds longer than when proceeding at 15 knots. The only real danger was from a submarine, but she would first have to come into the area undetected by our sound, radar, scopes, and lookouts. Then she would have to conduct a many-mile submerged approach. This would call for considerable submerged speed. Our soundman, with no interference from our own propeller noises or from other machinery, would detect her screws before she reached an attack position. The foregoing was not just conjecture or we would not be staking our lives on it.

  In addition, lying to while in this open-sea area would use only the diesel fuel necessary for normal living, just a fraction of that consumed when cruising at one-engine speed. The oil we saved would be available when it might really be needed in pursuing the enemy.

  There were, of course, the alternatives of a submerged patrol with high periscope searches or of periodic surfacing. Neither of these would insure the coverage we wanted, nor would they save the fuel, as we would then be charging batteries nightly.

  We shifted our patrol station about 20 miles each evening so that if we were detected, shipping could not just be routed clear of a single spot. At the same time we were working south near the western boundary of our assigned area. During the forenoon of the third day, February 11, we dived for an unidentified plane, which I strongly suspect had feathers. At least a lazy gooney, its wings just touching the crests of the small waves, was the only thing in sight when we returned to periscope depth. Tang remained down the usual extra few minutes and then in general support of the lookout headed south, away from the reported plane.

  At about 1130, “Fire in the galley!” came over the 1MC. The fire party from forward arrived immediately, but extinguishing the flames was another matter. The culprit was the large commercial deep-fat fryer, now loaded with salt but still blazing since the heating element could not be turned off. Fire parties from aft were called when the paint and cork on the bulkheads burst into flames. Fortunately, the spike on an old-fashioned fire ax ripped the armored electrical cable out of its junction box, effectively turning the machine off. The fire was on its way out until someone opened the hull ventilation clapper valves to get rid of the smoke. The rush of fresh air rekindled the flames, and acrid smoke filled every compartment. It took freshwater hoses and fire fighters wearing air-supplied diving masks to get the flames out. All hands except those with masks had been forced topside by the smoke, and they carried with them every available weapon as defense against a possible enemy plane.

  On my next turn below to control, however, I found Fireman Anthony still manning the SD radar, with the thick glasses he always wore practically glued to the screen. We switched off the SD and I followed his heels topside. An SD contact would only add to our problems, for we couldn’t dive anyway.

  With the last ember out, our diesels gobbled up the smoke with a suction through both torpedo room hatches. In minutes Tang was again buttoned up and heading south, but with a blackened galley and messroom to remind Fraz and me to work over our Fire Bill. After an extra hour’s run to put bad memories and the slight pall of smoke well over the horizon, we stopped and continued our search.

  Before the usual cribbage and acey-deucey games when the evening meal was finished, Fraz brought in the Fire Bill. Ballinger joined us, for it was he who saw to its posting in each compartment and to the corrections, too. The changes were obvious. A simple sentence added to the bill for each compartment directed that ventilation clappers be kept closed until orders to the contrary were given.

  Ballinger went aft, and Fraz was talking about an improved installation of the fryer. It was designed for operation on AC but had been installed on DC with its thermostat operating a separate relay. This should have been entirely satisfactory, but the relay, which was no part of the machine itself, had fused, leaving no way to turn off the fryer. None of our ideas seemed to offer any solutions, perhaps because our hearts were not in it. This conversation was brought to a happy conclusion by the reappearance of Ballinger, who had been discussing the same thing with some of the ship’s company. The crew’s solution was quite simple, and the chief of the boat explained it straight from the shoulder.

  “Captain, the troops would like to get rid of the goddamned thing.” This was not a profane ship, but the wish could not have been expressed more succinctly.

  When it was pitch-black topside, following the weighted bags of garbage, the deep-fat fryer went to Davy Jones’s locker.

  Time had not dragged, but we had been 20 days on patrol without even a puff of enemy smoke to reward the hours of concentration. It is difficult to inject any levity into such a deadly serious business, but neither is it possible to maintain such a taut routine without some break. Now, one of the executive officer’s fine qualities was a good sense of humor. I listened and went along with Fraz’s plan.

  While Mel Enos was on watch topside, Fraz encoded a message in the radio room addressed to Tang, Sunfish, and Skate. The other two submarines had preceded us on patrol, and our crew knew they were at Truk. With the connivance of the radiomen, the message was copied into the incoming Fox from Pearl, complete with call signs, identifiers, and the Ultra prefix, signifying that the message was based on information from a decoded Japanese operations message.

  At the appropriate time, after Mel had come off watch, he was called to the radio room just as he had been for previous encoded messages. Word came forward shortly that we had something hot. Fraz raced aft, gathered up the tape as it came out of the machine, and headed for the wardroom; but he dropped the message portion on the control room deck on his way through. After giving the duty chief just enough time to thumb it through, Fraz retrieved it and came back to officers’ country. Now for the first time I saw the completed message:

  TANG WILL JOIN SKATE AND SUNFISH AS A

  WOLF PACK TO ATTACK CONVOY CONSISTING OF SIX

  TANKERS AND ESCORTED BY SIXTEEN DESTROYERS

  TANG IT WILL BE YOUR MISSION TO EXPOSE

  YOURSELF AHEAD OF THE CONVOY TO DRAW OFF

  THE ESCORTS AND THEN EVADE AT YOUR

  SUPERIOR DEPTH WHILE SKATE AND SUNFISH

  WIPE OUT THE TANKERS GOOD LUCK

  It was just corny enough to ring true, but what surprised Fraz and me was the speed with which the dope went through the boat. Muffled comment of “Jesus Christ, we’re going to take all the bastards’ depth charges!” and “How the hell are we going to get a combat pin i
f we don’t even get to fire our torpedoes!” could already be heard from the forward torpedo room.

  I knew that the submarine combat pin, awarded only if an enemy ship was sunk, was a prestige item, but I had not realized until this moment that it was of such importance to the troops. It appeared that we might have gone a little far, but the truth soon leaked out and a message the following evening solidified things. It was a true Ultra, addressed for action to Skate and Sunfish but only for information to Tang. A convoy would leave Gray Feather Bank at 0800 the following day, heading for Truk. Three more engines went on the line, telling all hands that Tang meant to get there first.

  4

  Our Operation Order specified 2400 of February 15 as the time we could depart from our patrol area to head for Truk and then to our assigned position for Hailstone, the carrier air strike. With the Ultra developments, we saw fit to modify this. While the navigator was plotting, we were making knots. The extra distance we could travel before midnight could be critical in reaching a position ahead of the convoy. Fraz completed the true plot shortly and called his recommendations up the conning tower hatch, “Course one six five at eighteen knots, Captain.” We came left 15 degrees.

  I dropped down the hatch to look things over with Fraz. His track showed we would have Ulul Island on our beam at 0300, which was fine, as the patrols from its airfield would not be out before dawn. With everything looking good, we gave one engine back to Bill Walsh for his battery charge. Frank Springer had the deck and was followed by Hank Flanagan. This fitted in well, too, for each was an extremely capable OOD. We could not afford the delay of a dive, and it took only a word to insure that they would call me if at all possible before sounding two blasts.

  Before midnight, Frank reported a falling barometer, with seas pulling around to the south. Shortly, Tang’s bow started rising and falling slowly. With some misgivings, which a cup of coffee failed to allay, I went topside. Fraz was already there. We looked at the seas, which were building up fast, with whitecaps as far as we could see, till they blended into the darkness. They had already knocked our speed down almost 2 knots and promised to do better. Another engine would do little to make it up, most of the energy going into battering the seas. We went below to the wardroom where Walker, who had the steward’s duty, had just completed an experiment in making peach turnovers. Hot ones, right out of the oven, were impossible to resist, so with the excuse that we probably wouldn’t sleep much anyway, we scoffed a couple of them.

  “We’ll read it in the morning, Fraz. If we can’t get to our spot, then we’ll come left and head ’em off. It could be a bit woolly!”

  “We can dive faster than a Zeke, Captain,” Fraz replied. He was reading me five by five. We’d both be topside at dawn.

  Before getting some shut-eye, I took one of my frequent turns through the boat. In the forward torpedo room, Hank and his torpedomen were just completing a recheck of the final adjustments on their last torpedo. Aft, the watch standers were intent at their duties, though a note of excitement was evident. They already knew that the situation was taut but did not let that affect their confidence. In the engine rooms, where the roar of the diesels prevented the usual courteous exchange, the thumb and index finger sign conveyed their support. It was with men like these that the seeds of a fighting submarine germinated. How could any captain not do his damnedest to live up to his trust and their expectations?

  Dawn broke on a dusty sea, perfect for a submerged approach, but the navigator’s star fix showed Tang just passing Ulul. The convoy’s projected track still lay 40 miles ahead. We came left 20 degrees to head for a new point ahead of the enemy, one that we still might be able to reach. With seas moderating, perhaps due to the shoals to starboard, the fourth main engine went back on the line. The SD radar was used sparingly until we were beyond its detection range from Ulul. Even so, on many of these short observations there were distant planes. These might be near the island or they might be patrolling ahead of the convoy. We had no way of knowing, for the SD was not directional; it gave only a pip to indicate a plane and the range.

  At about 0930, a pip that had been hanging out around 18 miles commenced closing steadily. The reports came up from the control room—16 miles … 14 miles … 12 miles! Fraz was by his chart desk, next to the conning tower hatch, watching me. I turned my thumb down. “Take her down, Scotty!” he called, and the sounds of diving drowned out the next report.

  Tang slid on down to 80 feet, then slowed and listened, but there were no distant propeller noises. Back at periscope depth, all was clear. However, we had a full can and could now make a submerged run in. For the next ten miles we slowed periodically for sound and periscope searches without results. With everything clear and no contacts on the raised SD, Tang surfaced to sweep the dusty horizon with the SJ radar and to search with the periscope lens 50 feet above the sea. Then came Ed’s chilling cry, “Clear the bridge! Clear the bridge!” and two blasts of the diving alarm, and we were on our way down again. A Zeke had come out of nowhere, heading in on our port bow. Tang continued on down to 300 feet, just in case, but nothing was dropped.

  We came back up to periscope depth; again all was clear. We had crossed the convoy’s projected track, but now that we had been sighted, there would be no ships along that course—and most probably along any other course for Truk—on this day. Unintentionally, we may have convinced the Japanese that there were two submarines lurking out here. Maybe more, for Sunfish or Skate, perhaps even both of them, could be here, too. We’d worry about that some other time.

  At my request, the exec brought the crew up to date over the 1MC. Tang would be waiting for the convoy whenever it dared to leave Gray Feather or Mogami Bank.

  We remained submerged until dusk, searching on to the south on the chance that the Japanese convoy commander might make a run for it, skirting our known position. Certainly he would consider the area to the north contaminated. Our periscope exposures were cautious for the first hour, with quick sweeps followed by short high-power searches. With no more planes sighted, we commenced continuous searching, coming up to 50-foot keel depth periodically for looks with 17 feet of scope. These high searches would more than double the distance to the horizon and increase the range at which we might spot a freighters tops accordingly. Nothing was moving, and we could only hope that the convoy had returned to the banks.

  We waited until it was pitch dark before surfacing. The situation was quite different from that in our last area, in which the enemy might have been moving along any track, for we now knew that the convoy, if it were indeed on the banks, would move east. This permitted increasing the frontage of our radar search by running on north-south legs. It was necessary to complete each leg before a convoy, previously undetected, could finish its transit of our radar’s northerly or southerly coverage. During the night we could search on the surface, and our speed of 15 knots assured us of covering a 45-mile front in this manner. With nearby airfields sporting Zeros, Tang would have to be submerged during daylight, for a sighting would send the convoy on a wide arc around her. But we would be searching with both periscopes, frequently with 17 feet exposed, while our soundmen listened continuously. The area we would search lay southeast of Ulul; this choice was not based on guesswork, for I had spent a whole patrol between the banks and Piaanu Pass into Truk Atoll. The majority of ships had then passed close to Ulul before heading across the open sea to Truk. Times had changed much, but not geography, and this still offered the safest route for the enemy.

  The night was not routine, and neither was the following day. This was a period of concentration by all hands, and we manned battle stations quietly to review our procedures and to give each individual an opportunity to ask questions if he had any doubts whatsoever. In the conning tower, our fire control party was compact but not crowded. The rest of the party surrounded Jones and me on the scope. Starting forward of us, on the wheel, was Welch, who would also handle speed changes and call log speeds as we slowed for periscope obser
vations. To starboard was Scott, who kept the Quartermasters Notebook, Tang’s complete and detailed log. Starting aft came Ogden at the chart desk, where he plotted Tang’s and the enemy’s movements on the navigational chart. Next, manning our sound gear, were Caverly and Schroeder. Across from them to port, Frank was on the TDC’s analyzer section while Mel, on his right, handled its angle solver. Assisting them, and on the firing panel, was Ed, who could also man the SJ with Bergman should I stick the shears out for a radar range. Fraz remained in general supervision, coordinating plot with the TDC, taking care of such details as getting the torpedo tubes ready, and informing me of the degrees to go till firing on the track I had chosen. Fraz’s supervisory role meant that the transition to night surface firing, when I manned the TBTs on the bridge, would entail minimal change in our procedures.

  The questions that arose in the conning tower led to a general discussion in the wardroom that appeared to help each individual fully understand the relationship between his own and others’ responsibilities. The next night we got the chance to put all this to test, for while we searched with two engines on the line and another still charging batteries, word came over the 1MC, “Secure the charge. SJ contact, bearing three zero five true, range thirty-one thousand yards.” It was 0025 of February 17.

  Photo Insert

  5

  We would not go to battle stations yet, but the tracking party’s task commenced immediately. It would solve for the enemy’s base course and the zigzag plan while Tang headed for the convoy. At the first indication of the convoy’s course, our boat would move to intercept it at a point about seven miles ahead. From that position we could counter any maneuver the enemy might make. Ranges and bearings were fed into the TDC and to the navigational plot. Frank did the analyzing on the TDC, but the navigator came down with the first good estimate of the base course. We came northeast to intercept. Continued tracking showed the convoy’s base course to be 100 degrees true, its speed 8½ knots, and that it was zigging up to 40 degrees every ten to 14 minutes.