by Lynn Vincent
The fleet had imposed this restriction in order to conserve fuel.
“I don’t know,” the lieutenant said.
McVay hoped to arrive early morning at Homonhon Island at the entrance to Leyte Gulf, he explained. He wanted to meet planes towing target sleeves and, he said, “shoot our way in.”
The captain watched as Northover checked the distance, made a quick calculation, and announced his findings. If McVay wanted to reach Leyte in forty-eight hours, he would have to make twenty-four or twenty-five knots.
“If you take three days, 15.7 knots will be your SOA,” the lieutenant said. SOA means “speed of advance,” or the speed over the ocean bottom made good toward a ship’s destination, taking into account wind, currents, and weather. Having just made high-speed runs from Mare Island to Pearl and then from Pearl to Tinian, McVay said he’d prefer to run at the lower speed to reduce wear on his engines. Northover said he would prepare the routing instructions accordingly and give them to McVay’s navigator, Commander Janney.
McVay remarked he would prefer to travel in company with another ship. He had never felt that a ship without underwater sound detection equipment should travel alone, but sometimes escorts weren’t available and a skipper had to accept the risk.
At Okinawa, heavy damage to destroyers and destroyer escorts had required Pacific Fleet commanders to rethink the deployment of escorts so that damaged ships could rotate into the yards for repairs. So by the time Indianapolis was ready to sail, escorts were being used mainly for merchants, for troopships—as with the Underhill escort—and for vessels traveling in the most exposed areas. Route Peddie was not considered one of these. The routing officer told McVay he would not be afforded an escort.
McVay had traveled solo many times, so he didn’t give it another thought. He thanked Northover and Renoe and left the Quonset hut to return to Indianapolis. Still, after McVay was gone, Waldron called the offices of Captain Oliver Naquin, surface operations officer for Guam, to see whether an escort was available. Waldron was told that no escort was necessary. Given Indianapolis’s size and number of personnel, Waldron was a little surprised, and he said as much to Northover, adding, “At least we went through the motions.”
9
* * *
ON THE SAME MORNING that McVay called at the Guam routing office, Japan’s Supreme Council for the Direction of the War was also going through the motions. The council met to discuss its position on the Potsdam Declaration issued by the Big Three powers demanding Japan’s surrender. In the end, the council decided not to release a position. Instead, Prime Minister Suzuki and Foreign Minister Togo of Japan agreed that the Empire would “mokusatsu” the declaration, which meant to “remain in wise and masterly inactivity,” or to “treat with silent contempt.”
Tokyo newspapers took this inaction to mean that the emperor and his government rejected the Allies’ demand for surrender, and the world received it the same way.
Potsdam therefore had no effect on Mochitsura Hashimoto, who had pointed his boat toward an enemy shipping crossroads where he planned to lie in wait. There was a sector in the central Philippine Sea where American lines of communication out of Leyte, Saipan, Okinawa, Guam, Palau, and Ulithi converged. The area could prove a fruitful lair from which to ambush the Allied fleet, Hashimoto thought. The intersecting routes covered a broad expanse, however, and he realized it was a geographic gamble. He might miss altogether a chance to attack.
Indeed, by the time I-58 arrived on the Okinawa-Saipan route, the ocean seemed empty of targets, so Hashimoto steamed southeast to the Okinawa-Guam route. Night fell, and a lustrous vanilla moon created for a time excellent conditions for attack. But the lunar glow soon melted away and with it, opportunity. Hashimoto ordered his navigator to turn south and proceed at speed to the east-west American sea lane that connected Guam with Leyte. Then he walked aft and slipped into the boat’s Shinto shrine to pray.
• • •
In Apra Harbor, whaleboats whisked about, ferrying food, mail, and supplies out to the anchored ships. Aboard Indianapolis, the duty crew that was stuck aboard gazed longingly past the whaleboats toward a primitive beach dotted with coconut palms and banana trees that shimmered in the wind. Some hoped to get a glimpse of one of the exotic native girls they’d heard lived on the island. Those not ogling the beach muscled food and supplies from the whaleboats and loaded fuel from a barge, worried that this port visit might be truncated at any moment, as their port call had been at Pearl. Despite the activity, the port was strangely hushed, with ships mooring and sailing without signal, this still being a war zone.
In the afternoon, McVay’s navigator, Johns Hopkins Janney, called at the routing office and was presented with the routing instructions prepared by Waldron’s team. Janney and Waldron huddled over the plotting chart and discussed the route. Indianapolis would depart Apra Harbor at 9 a.m. on Saturday, July 28. She was to proceed at 15.7 knots and arrive off Homonhon for antiaircraft gunnery practice on the morning of Tuesday, July 31, a distance of 1,123 nautical miles. After that, it was just under fifty miles to Leyte, where Indy was to arrive at 11 a.m.
Janney perused the printed instructions: Commanding Officers are at all times responsible for the safe navigation of their ships . . . may depart from prescribed routing when, in their judgment, weather, currents, or other navigation hazards jeopardize the safety of the ship. . . . zigzag at the discretion of the Commanding Officer.
Zigzagging was an antisubmarine warfare (ASW) tactic in which surface convoys and ships sailing alone frequently altered course to port or starboard. This standard maneuver was meant to confuse enemy sub commanders as to the true course, and also make it harder for subs to score torpedo hits. Some ASW experts argued that the maneuver had become so standard that enemy sub skippers figured it into their firing calculations.
The zigzag language and the rest of Indy’s routing instructions were boilerplate, and Janney had seen it all before. He had also seen at least a portion of the attached intelligence report, which included a trio of reported submarine contacts. Janney reviewed the contacts with Waldron. All three were within 150 miles of Route Peddie, one to the north and two to the south. Janney wasn’t worried about them. If additional intelligence were obtained, he knew he would receive it via the FOX schedule, a series of encrypted messages broadcast directly to ships at sea.
Back at the ship, Janney briefed McVay on the routing orders. Confirmation that there would be no escort prompted the usual banter: “Here we go again.” Apart from his success with previous solo passages, McVay had sound reasons to be unperturbed about this one. Before taking command of Indianapolis, he headed the Joint Intelligence staff in Washington, D.C. In that post, McVay would likely have known about ULTRA and its near-real-time intel on enemy movement, and that Carter’s office was privy to ULTRA’s limited distribution. If Carter said things were quiet, McVay had reason to believe him. That Northover offered McVay a speed of advance as leisurely as 15.7 knots buttressed what Carter had told him—there was nothing to worry about.
• • •
At 9:10 a.m. on July 28, Kasey Moore ordered his sea and anchor detail topside, where they weighed anchor and cast off lines. On the bridge, McVay rang for steam, and Indianapolis sailed out of Apra Harbor. Waldron, the routing officer, transmitted a standard departure message—date-time group 280032—to his counterpart, Lieutenant Stuart Gibson, at Tacloban, Philippines. According to the message, Indianapolis would sail from Guam to Leyte via Route Peddie at 15.7 knots, and would arrive off Leyte on July 31 at 8 a.m. About three hours after that, Indianapolis would pull into port.
The Philippine Sea was so vast a territory that it fell under two naval authorities: Commander Marianas Area, Vice Admiral George Murray, headquartered at Guam; and acting Philippine Sea Frontier Commander, Commodore Norman C. Gillette, headquartered eleven hundred miles almost due west at Leyte. Gillette, an old hand who had also served in World War I, had been the Philippine Sea Frontier chief of staff
since October 1944. Now, he was acting commander because his boss, Vice Admiral James Kauffman, was away on leave.
According to Guam’s departure message, Indianapolis would, sometime on July 30, cross the “Chop” line. “Chop” was an acronym cobbled together from pronounceable letters in the term “CHange of OPerational Command.” This was important. When a ship crossed that line, it was said to have “chopped” from one officer’s responsibility to another’s. Geographically, the Chop line was the 130-degree east line of longitude that ended Murray’s jurisdiction and began Gillette’s.
• • •
The day after Hashimoto intercepted the American shipping route between Guam and Leyte, an enemy aircraft popped up on radar and forced him to dive. Hashimoto wasn’t worried. Radar had improved, and he no longer felt as if he were fighting blind.
It was July 28, I-58’s tenth day out of Kure. The sub’s innards felt hot and dank. The stale air smelled of pickled fish from the galley, diesel fuel, and sewage. Except for onions, the vegetables had run out, leaving only tinned food. The canned sweet potatoes, which most sailors agreed tasted like sand or ashes, were particularly unpopular. At an evening meal shortly after departing Kure, Hashimoto had dined with his kaiten crews and explained I-58’s orders. The boat was to move into the Philippine Sea west of the Marianas, eventually positioning itself on a vector line of 160 to attack enemy ships off the eastern coast of the Philippine Islands. During the meal, Hashimoto and his officers toasted the kaiten crews, wishing them success.
Each time Hashimoto deployed the special attack boats, he found it painful. Now, though, the war was going so badly that the number of men lost in battle was increasing across the whole Japanese Navy, not just special attack units, and the sub fleet was getting the worst of it. With the possible exception of destroyers, more submarines had been lost by the Japanese Navy than any other type of craft. Losses in 1942 and 1943 had been relatively light, but in 1944, the Americans gathered themselves with the cataclysmic power of a killing storm. Since then, more than a hundred Japanese submarines had been sunk, a dozen this spring alone in U.S. attacks in the Ryukyus and, most brazenly, in the Sea of Japan itself.
Hashimoto had watched as many of his submarine school classmates were sent into the breach, never to return. With young and old alike dying in great numbers, his kaiten pilots’ fate seemed in some ways inevitable. Perhaps their sacrifice would turn the tide of war. Or perhaps at the end of this war, everyone he knew would be dead, including his crew.
Like most Japanese, he had been trained since birth in Shinto, “the way of the gods.” But he had perhaps a stronger tie to the faith than others since his family had been caring for the Umenomiya Taishya Shrine in Kyoto. Hashimoto’s father was kannushi, the priest of the shrine, which was known for its great stone lanterns, blossoming plum trees, and towering spruce. For more than thirteen hundred years, the shrine and its stewards had honored the kami, or spirits, of the emperor and empress. The land and buildings had now been in Hashimoto’s family for centuries. In caring for the shrine, the family maintained its links with the spirits of their ancestors, stretching back to ancient times.
Hashimoto’s eldest brother had been a full colonel in the Japanese Army. He would likely have taken over the shrine after the war, but he was killed during a battle in North China. Since then, succession had been in doubt. Certainly, one of Hashimoto’s older brothers—he was the fifth and last son of nine children—might take over priestly duties from their father one day. But that was a worry for another time. For now, Hashimoto sailed west along the Guam-Leyte route, hunting Americans.
• • •
When Indianapolis sailed from Guam, her departure message listed three “action” addressees—recipients who had some responsibility to act: Lieutenant Commander Jules Sancho, the port director at Tacloban; the Marianas shipping control office at Guam; and Rear Admiral Lynde McCormick, commander of Task Group 95.7. This time, McCormick received the message. But not having received CincPac’s July 26 message about arranging training for Indianapolis, the admiral was confused about why Captain McVay would be reporting to Task Group 95.7.
The group had been in existence for only a few days. All the other ships that had reported to McCormick had performed strenuous duty in Okinawa and were being sent back to rest and refit for the next large amphibious operation. Indianapolis, on the other hand, was Spruance’s flagship. McCormick thought it strange that Indy should report to him—though he supposed that the Pacific Fleet commander could send his ship anywhere he wished. McCormick would be at sea with a training group around the time Indy was to arrive at Leyte. On the other hand, he wouldn’t be surprised if she were diverted to Okinawa, where the fleet was short by one cruiser.
Indy’s 280032 departure message included several “information” addressees—commands with interest in, but no required action on, Indy’s movement. Among them were Task Force 95 commander Vice Admiral Jesse Oldendorf, as well as Spruance, Murray, and Gillette.
On each side of the Philippine Sea, surface operations staffs were charged with tracking Indy’s passage using her “PIM”—pronounced “pim”—her Plan of Intended Movement. In the Philippines, Captain Alfred Granum’s operations staff entered the ship’s movement data in a memo record and on the Philippine Sea Frontier’s plotting board. At Guam, the Marianas surface operations staff entered Indianapolis’s departure on their plotting board. At that moment, responsibility for her progress passed to Captain Oliver Naquin.
A New Orleans, Louisiana, native, Naquin, forty-one, had seen more action than most. On May 23, 1939, he was skipper of the submarine USS Squalus, which sank during a routine training patrol. Twenty-six men drowned, but Naquin and thirty-two others were rescued after forty hours trapped on the bottom of the sea. In November 1942, he was navigator on the heavy cruiser USS New Orleans when a torpedo blew off 150 feet of her bow at Guadalcanal. Naquin, who received a Bronze Star for valor, seemed to have a talent for survival.
• • •
As I-58’s periscope lanced through the surface chop at 2 p.m., Hashimoto leaned into the eyepiece and a surge of joy leapt through his heart. A large three-masted ship, a tanker, was creeping across the surface.
At last! he thought. Face-to-face with the elusive enemy.
Hashimoto gave the order to dive and nudged his boat closer to the target. Since he could not be sure of the positions of any lurking destroyers, he decided to remain out of torpedo range and instead deploy his suicide pilots.
“Numbers one and two kaiten—stand by,” he ordered.
At 2:31 p.m., kaiten 2 launched. Ten minutes later, kaiten 1’s pilot shouted, “Three cheers for the emperor,” then slipped his securing band and was off.
Using his periscope, Hashimoto watched through a curtain of South Sea squalls until he could no longer see the tanker. Fifty minutes later, the sub’s hydrophones picked up the sound of an explosion. Ten minutes passed and then another blast. Hashimoto gave the order to surface and swept the horizon with his periscope. But he couldn’t see anything. Another squall cloaked the view.
10
* * *
ABOARD THE DESTROYER ESCORT USS Albert T. Harris, Lieutenant Junior Grade Jordan Sheperd peered off the starboard beam at lights blinking from a ship fourteen miles away. The staccato flashes were Morse code, and a Harris signalman unraveled the message: She was the merchant ship SS Wild Hunter and she’d spotted an enemy submarine, last known coordinates: 10-25N, 131-45E. The position was about seventy-five nautical miles south of the Guam-Leyte sea lane known as Route Peddie.
“Sound general quarters,” Sheperd, Harris’s officer of the deck, said calmly. “Set Material Condition Afirm.”
An alarm like a rhythmic clanging bell echoed out on the 1MC in urgent bursts. Every sailor on the ship hopped to and sprinted to his battle station, dogging down doors and hatches for maximum watertight integrity.
“Commence zigzagging,” Sheperd said. He also ordered a second boiler brought on
line to generate more speed.
All this was standard procedure. Harris had responded to many of these calls, but this late in the war in this part of the ocean, most of them were wild goose chases. Things had been quiet for Harris since June, when she supported the seizure of Brunei, Borneo, under the command of Lieutenant Commander Sidney King. The ship was then reassigned to Escort Division 77 in July and had been escorting convoys between the Philippine Islands. By now, they’d learned that merchant sailors were a jumpy bunch, and their sub “sightings” almost always a bad case of nerves.
This sighting, however, was very much real. At 4:29 p.m., Wild Hunter, under the command of reserve lieutenant Bruce Maxwell, had sighted a periscope broad on the port beam, just three thousand yards away. The ship went to general quarters and Maxwell’s gunners scrambled to their weapons, but the periscope slid quickly out of sight. Eleven minutes later, a second periscope was seen breaking the surface—dead astern and closer by a third. Maxwell’s gunners fired a single shot, which landed dead on target. The periscope disappeared.
Wild Hunter transmitted two messages, six minutes apart, reporting the action. Both were received by surface operations at Tacloban, Captain Alfred Granum’s office, the same office tracking Indianapolis. Granum’s office then dispatched Harris to the Wild Hunter scene with instructions to keep them advised. Now, on Harris’s bridge, the helmsman zigged then zagged, steering the ship at thirty-degree angles back and forth across base course. Nearby, in the sound hut, a headphoned sonarman sat at a console, sweeping searchlight sonar across suspect bearings. Still, many of Harris’s crew couldn’t help but wonder: Had another merchant skipper summoned them to chase yet another wild goose?
Near the bow, gunner’s mates climbed up to man the antisubmarine rocket projector mounted behind the forward five-inch gun. Each of the weapon’s twenty-four 7.2-inch-wide missiles slid onto its own rod, or spigot socket. When empty, the rows of rods resembled spines, earning the weapon a nickname, “the hedgehog.” Adding this newer technology had increased the Allied submarine kill rate tenfold, relegating the less-effective depth charge to a secondary weapon.
