Clear the Bridge! Page 8

  We were now close enough for a distinct presentation on the PPI-scope (plan position indicator) of the SJ. There were two good-sized ships; a somewhat smaller one, perhaps a destroyer; a small escort close ahead; an escort on either beam; and two wide flanking patrols. It looked more like a small task force than a convoy, and the high ratio of escorts to merchantmen showed what had been happening: Japan’s merchant fleet was being sunk at three times the rate of its escorts.

  Tang went to battle stations, the Bells of St. Mary’s from the 1MC chiming throughout the ship. Compartments reported in record time since all stations had long since been manned voluntarily. This was not purely a case of dedication on the part of the troops, for it was at their stations that their own telephone talkers could provide a running account of everything that was going on—almost everything anyway, for at this moment a call came from radio. We had an Ultra from ComSubPac. This one was addressed for action to Tang and just for information to Skate and Sunfish. Fraz sent Mel on down since he would not be needed at the angle solver of the TDC for some time yet. Shortly, his voice came over the speaker:

  CONVOY WILL DEPART GRAY FEATHER BANK AT

  TWENTY TWO HUNDRED FEBRUARY SIXTEEN FOR TRUK

  NOTE SKATE AND SUNFISH THIS IS THE CONVOY

  YOU WERE TO HAVE ATTACKED BUT ONE OF YOU

  WAS SIGHTED AND CONVOY ORDERED TO RETURN

  ONTO GRAY FEATHER BANK

  Well, this was our convoy all right, but we did not regret our search, for otherwise we might well be playing catch-up instead of being in position out ahead. I did not like the part about being sighted. Not so much because it was quite obviously referring to Tang, but because the somewhat slurring statement had been written behind a calm desk ashore. Sometimes a submarine did get sighted when doing its damnedest to make contact or press home an attack, but not through any sloppiness on the submarine’s part. After all, bullets, bombs, or depth charges were the usual result.

  The thoughts had taken only seconds, but they were an unnecessary distraction. I put them aside, for we had a man-sized task right astern of us.

  I wondered why the convoy commander had chosen nighttime to make this dangerous passage, especially in sufficient moonlight for a submerged submarine attack. I was to have the answer within the next few minutes. It was 0219, nearly two hours after our initial contact. The range to the convoy was 15,000 yards, and we were about to move in for the attack. Suddenly, a dark, narrow shape appeared astern and seemed to be crawling up our wake. I dropped down to the conning tower for a moment. There she was on the SJ at 7,000 yards, her pip neatly blending in with the luminous cursor line, which was trained like the hand of a clock on the convoy’s center. Back topside, in spite of our flank speed, the enemy ship was still closing. She was a radar-equipped destroyer or fast escort, for she would not have been able to see a submarine at that range on any night. The convoy commander was apparently counting on her to take care of us.

  Our business was certainly not with her; two blasts slid us down. We paused at scope depth to see if she would give us even a slight port or starboard angle on the bow. That would tell us which way to turn so as to be farthest from her track. Her silhouette remained sharp, however, and now her bow wave made a perfect V. It was no time to dally. We turned left toward the convoy and went deep. The bathythermograph showed a 6-degree gradient at 375 feet, and depth charges commenced as we were passing 450. There were only five of them, and though their whack was disturbing, we were not shaken up. The fact that we were busy leveling off at 500 feet and getting on with the approach had its compensations.

  Tang was now in the enviable position of being immune to echo-ranging because of the gradient and able to use any submerged speed without fear of detection. Propeller noises come from cavitation, the partial vacuum that normally forms around the blades and then collapses; under the sea pressure at this depth, 250 pounds per square inch, the props could not cavitate.

  After some minutes to put a little more distance between us and the destroyer, we slowed so our soundmen could get bearings. The convoy was drawing to our right; it had changed the base course to its left. A right turn and full speed would intercept. Unlike previous submarines, our boat did not throb at high submerged speeds; only the increased water noise and the Bendix log told those of us in the conning tower that Tang was making knots. Then came the long climb toward the surface, slowing on approaching cruising depth. A periscope sweep, and the ascent was resumed to expose the SJ’s reflector. A moment was all the operator needed, for the range of 9,000 yards fitted our solution. Tang was again ahead of the convoy, and we would now concentrate on individual ships.

  At 4,000 yards the leading freighter was giving us a starboard angle on the bow. We would fire from forward if she did not zig. At 3,000 the angle was 20 port; she had come right and would cross our stern. “Open the outer doors aft.” The leading escort, which was patrolling back and forth, conveniently crossed to the freighter’s starboard bow, clear of us. With water lapping the scope, I watched the port escort cross our bow about 100 yards ahead. We were on the inside; nothing could stop us! The freighter came on, less than two ship’s lengths from crossing our stern. I swung the scope’s wire ahead of the point of aim, her after deckhouse.

  “Constant bearing—mark!” I said, now leaving the scope absolutely stationary. Jones read the bearing.

  “Set!” called Frank as he held that bearing constant on the TDC; both its analyzer section and angle solver were now static, as were the gyro angles on the torpedoes. The freighter was continuing across the field.

  “Fire!” I barked the instant her after deckhouse touched the wire. Fraz hit the firing plunger simultaneously, usurping Ed’s job.

  There followed a slight shudder, the momentary zing of the torpedo’s propellers, and the slight pressure on our ears as the poppet valve vented the residual air in the torpedo tube back into the boat.

  The second torpedo went to the after edge of her midships superstructure, aimed and fired with exactly the same procedure. Another was sent to the forward edge of the superstructure, and the fourth to hit under a king post about 50 feet inside her bow. The whole firing, four individual shots, had taken 20 seconds.

  “All hot, straight, and normal,” called Caverly on sound.

  “What’s the time of run?”

  “Fifty-eight seconds, Captain,” Fraz replied, checking the table he had prepared against the range of 1,500 yards. Chief Jones was calling off the seconds as the torpedoes raced at 46 knots to intercept the enemy. “Thirty-five … forty ….” I raised the scope at 45; the seconds dragged. “Fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three, fifty-four, fifty—” WHACK! The exact sound of a depth charge. Her stern disappeared. Six seconds brought another whack; seven seconds later there came a third. The rest of the freighter practically disintegrated. While escorts milled around, she seemed to capsize toward us and sank stern first.

  Again we did not dally. Tang went deep, leveling off at 575, and slithered away to the northeast. There were three reasons for this depth: the same security from detection that we had enjoyed on the approach; a reasonable working area on the depth gauge, which hit the pin at 612; and the unlikelihood of getting any close depth charges. Depth-charging is three-dimensional bombing. If the Japanese even possessed a depth charge with a hydrostatic exploder capable of operating at this depth, the chance of getting one close enough was extremely remote.

  Distant depth-charging continued as I tried to relax over a cup of coffee. Before the first cup was finished, Fraz reported another contact. In the conning tower, Caverly, who was still at his station, flipped on the small speaker that carried the same sounds he had in his earphones. The faint thump-thump-thump of heavy screws came through the background noises.

  We checked with the after torpedo room. Hank and his reload crew were just pulling the last torpedo home. A moment later the big bronze bayonet ring had secured the torpedo tube’s inner door, and Tang’s bow rose. Swimming up, like a guppy, seemed to tak
e longer than it had during the approach. But then we had known that the enemy was coming our way and all hands were occupied. Now, we could only wonder at what lay topside and listen to Bill’s frequent orders as he flooded the auxiliary tanks from sea. So many operations appear simple when they go smoothly, and it would not be impossible now to overlook crucial details such as the vertical component of Tang’s movement. If it became excessive, there might be no stopping her at 60 feet. Without the urgency of a pending attack, we paused at 100 feet to check the trim.

  We reached 60 feet within moments; it was still too dark to spot distant ships, but a quick SJ search showed one good-sized pip and some smaller ones off at 14,000 yards. We surfaced and put all engines on the line or charging batteries, then raced against the coming dawn to get ahead of the enemy and jam a charge into our batteries. It would be close, for on its course of 300 degrees, the convoy was heading nearly away from us at 7 knots.

  Like all diesels, our main engines had mean effective cylinder pressures, called MEPs, that could not be exceeded for long without inviting trouble, even piston seizures and wrecking an engine. Battery charging was guided by temperature voltage gravity curves, called TVGs. If the TVGs were exceeded, our batteries would gas and could quickly generate enough hydrogen for a devastating explosion. To prevent the accumulation of gas, a separate ventilation system was provided, fitted with blowers, flow meters, hydrogen meters, and alarms.

  To reach an approach position, Tang would have to exceed the MEPs and push the TVGs. As captain, I viewed a possible engine casualty as one of the lesser risks in going after a million-dollar enemy ship. I didn’t blame the engineers for not agreeing with me, for those diesels were their babies, but they fell in line admirably.

  A fortunate characteristic of a storage battery is its ability to store enormous amounts of energy during the first part of the charging cycle and still remain well below maximum TVG curves. The engines on charge carried their share. All of them laid down a trail of smoke, indicative of overload, but Tang’s engines were Fairbanks Morse, and if anything could get us there with enough battery capacity for an approach, it would be these rock-crushers. They did; 40 minutes after surfacing we dived well ahead of the enemy.

  The morning twilight was short here, close to the equator, and we had good details on the first periscope look. They were disappointing, however, for the ship had zigged away and was showing a 50-degree starboard angle on the bow. We knew where to go but, fortunately for the enemy ship, she didn’t. During the next six hours she presented angles around through her stern to 150 port. Our best sustained speed closed to 6,000 yards at one time, but then she drew slowly away to the south and disappeared toward an area that should now be occupied by our submarine Burrfish. An Asashio type destroyer, a Chidori torpedo boat, a PC (patrol craft), and continuous air cover kept us from trying an end-around on the surface.

  Reluctantly, we turned west for our assigned position during the first carrier task force strike on Truk. How I wished we knew a little bit about Operation Hailstone. A few details might let me judge the importance of our being on station, but we had apparently departed on patrol before the plans were firmed up. The freighter that had gone over the hill, though in ballast, was a valuable ship, and turned loose we could find and sink her.

  Tang reached her assigned position after dark of February 17. It was right back south of Ulul Island, 12 miles bearing 194 degrees true to be exact. The island is 85 feet high, so we moved south a little to try out our SJ. It gave a fair pip at 16 miles, so we settled on that as a better position. No ship would pass between us and Ulul undetected, and we could not be seen from the island, even with radar, for it was very doubtful that the enemy could get a radar reflection from the tops of our shears, which would be the only part of us above the horizon.

  Our mission was still to intercept ships fleeing the strike, and it would be novel to have ships driven to us. Fraz had plotted the positions of the other eight participating boats. Aspro, Burrfish, Dace, and Gato lay staggered to the south, at an average interval of 45 miles. Directly across Namonuito Atoll from Tang was Skate, and halfway between Skate and Truk lay Sunfish. In addition, Searaven and Darter were to the north and south of Truk as lifeguards. This disposition might let Sunfish and Skate or Aspro and Tang attack a single group of fleeing ships, but elsewhere only a single submarine attack would be possible. Considering the three boats who had come all of the way from patrols out of Brisbane, roughly 150 submarine days were going into this effort; but we wouldn’t complain, for Tang occupied the best spot.

  In the morning, numerous planes began showing up on the SD, most of them at the same range as our distance to the island. We tracked some out and others in. There was either increased patrol activity over anything we had seen before, or Japanese planes were being staged through Ulul in an attempt to counter our planes, which could now be striking Truk. Perhaps both actions were taking place. It was exciting enough to keep us on our toes, but those men off watch seemed to take it all in stride and caught up on some much needed sleep. In midafternoon a contact on the SD commenced closing. As prearranged, Scotty dived when it reached 14 miles. A half hour later all was clear on the SD and there was nothing in sight on the periscope, so we surfaced and continued our search until dark.

  Able to establish our position by radar, the navigator needed no stars this night. Neither he nor I had quite calmed down from our first attack, but cribbage always seemed a good antidote. It was competitive but not so serious as to interfere with conversation. There was just one subject, however, the details of the attack. Frank joined in, and we came to some quick conclusions: We had underestimated the enemy, for he obviously had radar. It could have been on the destroyer or another ship of the convoy that was vectoring the destroyer to us. In either case, we had assisted the destroyer by keeping our SJ’s cursor line right over her pip. We had brought this about by making too many bearing demands on our radar operator, disrupting his normal all-around search. The cursor would otherwise have been moving. The convoy commander might have been successful in thwarting attack by a shallow submarine, which would not have been able to reach the gradient at 375 feet, and possibly a deep boat if she had had to run at greater than cavitation speed for her depth on the approach. There was one other area of complete agreement: The crew had performed splendidly.

  Having squared that away, we sent for the Merchant Ship Identification Manual, ONI-208J, for another attempt at classifying the ship we had sunk. The publication was not all-inclusive, nor was it a bible, but some tended to treat it so. Wahoo had brought back pictures, house flags, and life rings painted with both Japanese characters and the English equivalent, NITU MARU, in large block letters. This older freighter was not listed in ONI-208J, so the staff substituted the Nitsii Maru, whose pictures in the book didn’t even jibe with sharp enlargements of the real ship. At a minimum, however, the manual did help in making an educated guess. On a daytime approach and attack, I would expect to provide our identification party with details that might help them narrow down the choices to a particular class, though rarely to a specific ship. In any case, the determination would be better than just “Unknown Maru.” All sinking reports required visual confirmation, and these would normally be modified by the reporting senior, who would affix an (EU) or an (EC) depending on whether, with the total information available, he considered the estimate of the class to be uncertain or certain, respectively. The tonnage listed would be from ONI-208J for that class.

  With good help from the Quartermaster’s Notebook, and my memory of fleeting silhouettes, Frank and Mel settled on a Mansei Maru class freighter, with a listed tonnage of 7,770, and it looked about right to me. With the latitude of 8° 04′ north and the longitude of 149° 28′ east handy in the notebook, I copied it all into my Night Order Book.

  The freighter that had gotten away still occupied my mind. I found myself practically brooding over her probable meandering around to the south of us while we sat here twiddling our thumb
s. Confusing dispatches on the night of the 17th did not help. One of them directed a submerged patrol. The other simply said, CRABAPPLES CRABAPPLES. There was obviously something missing from our Operation Order due to our early departure. After a dawn dive, with not even a plane in sight, we surfaced to find out what was going on. The area was clear, but not the ether waves. There was a message on the morning Fox that we normally would not have received until surfacing after dark, since our boats could not receive Fox frequencies submerged. The tape came out of the machine and Tang was on her way for Saipan, still wondering what “crabapples” was all about.

  6

  The complete dispatch had disclosed that Task Force 58, the fast carrier force that had just hit Truk, would conduct an air strike on Saipan the following week. Five of the submarines that had been at Truk, including Tang, were ordered on for this attack, with specific assignments to follow later. We had started off at one-engine speed, as that would put us there handily. The navigator laid down our track on the new chart and brought it down to the wardroom, where we could look over the situation.

  With the Marianas in front of us, the possibilities for independent hunting unfolded. I picked up the phone from its receptacle to my left and ordered 18 knots. In minutes we felt the surge of two more diesels. Fraz stepped off our new four-hour positions along the track, and we were just starting our short-range planning when Chief Jones came to the wardroom’s after door. He had heard the engine bells from CPO quarters, located next to the control room, and surmised he’d be affected.