The bow planesman spun his wheel to counteract the tilt that the stern planes had already given to the boat, and the chief, his voice urgent, ordered all hands to the rear. Men from the forward torpedo room began hustling one after another past Jacobson’s chart table, stepping through the high, oval, watertight door at the forward end of the compartment and climbing out through the similar door at the rear. Those who couldn’t leave their posts—men like the green ensign—froze in anticipation. Miles of pitch-dark ocean lay beneath them, and Flier, with no help from the enemy, was headed there.
Among those moving to the rear was one sailor who raced around the rest. His job was to find out what was wrong in the after torpedo room. The planes, attached to the boat outside that final sausage link, were operated by a hydraulic system. A pump might have gone or a hose might have ruptured. Whatever the problem, it needed to be fixed immediately.
In the control room, the chief waited for his man’s report. But without any explanation, the hydraulics suddenly began working. Then, just as quickly, they once again failed, and the stern planesman strained at his crank. Behind him, young Jacobson had a ringside seat to the struggle, but no immediate job to do. It was clear to the ensign that this was a serious matter, but if he felt fear, he also felt confidence in the boat, its crew, and the skipper—a sense of the rightness of things, an assurance, perhaps connected to his god, in the outcome. Finally, at 2:18 p.m., power mysteriously returned to the stern-plane controls. After six minutes of uncertainty, the stern planesman returned from his crank to his wheel, and Flier resumed a steady, level course.
Crowley now discussed strategy with Liddell, Ed Casey, and the other senior officers. The convoy they were stalking was within a mile of the lush jungle coast of Luzon, and between those ships and the submarine were the half-dozen escorts. An attack clearly would not be successful if launched from offshore. There were too many escorts protecting the convoy’s flank. The alternative, Jacobson heard the officers say, was to speed across the convoy’s path ahead of the lead ship and, a half-mile from the coast, launch an attack on the long, unprotected steel of the cargo ships. There would be no escorts on that side . . . until the first torpedo hit.
Crowley was cautious no more. Bristling with a warrior’s courage, he gave the order to race across the convoy’s path, the naval equivalent of running down a dead-end alley.
At just before three o’clock, with Flier facing toward shore, Crowley ordered all four stern torpedo tubes fired. One by one, the fish were blown out of the tubes by compressed air and began running toward the 10,000-ton tanker that was just passing on its southern voyage. As soon as the torpedoes were fired, Crowley ordered the ship turned around so that the forward torpedoes could be aimed. A small freighter was less than 100 yards off Flier’s bow when the sub completed its turn. That was too close for an attack, so Crowley shifted his aim to a ship less than a mile away in the convoy column closest to shore. Before the skipper, using the periscope to aim, could give a bearing to the sailor manning the torpedo arming and aiming device, the sonar man in the conning tower, wearing headphones, heard two hits on the tanker, followed immediately by a huge explosion. The word was relayed throughout the submarine—Score!
In the haste to get set up for the next target ship, the diving officer, misunderstanding an order, ducked the periscope. Blind under the ocean’s waves, Crowley ordered a deep dive without firing the bow torpedoes. He knew that the escorts would be heading to where Flier was backed against the shore, and he knew there were not even seconds to spare. Behind him in the conning tower, Crowley heard the voice of the sonar (or sound-) man. Escorts were approaching from several angles. Then more bad news. The stern planes had failed again. Down in the control room, the stern planesman wrenched his crank, struggling to pull the boat from its dive as the first depth charges fell. By the sounds coming from the propellers of the escorts, the soundman could tell that all six vessels were in on the attack, like a pack of dogs against one lonely cat.
The cat had to move, but it needed camouflage. The escort ships on the surface could tell where the submarine was only if it made sounds. There were no devices for “looking” at the ocean floor, only the sonar that could, like radar, read the echo from a sound wave and microphones that could listen for ship noises.
Crowley needed to keep moving and keep the stalking escorts guessing where Flier was. But this required running the boat’s motors, and that could be done only when the attacking ships were also moving, because their own movement would hide the sound of the submarine. The deadly game had begun, and once again the heat started to build inside Flier. The escorts would fall silent and every movement aboard Flier would cease. No one walked or talked. They closed their eyes and simply breathed in the thick air. Then the escorts, apparently having decided that the submarine was in a certain location, all began moving toward that point. Crowley would quietly call out orders for a course and speed, and in the bottomless ocean, Flier would make a right-angle turn and glide to a new location. At his chart table, Jacobson recorded each new course, the speed, and the length of time the boat moved, and then plotted on the chart where they stopped. He gave this information to Crowley so that when the next move came, the skipper would know how to avoid the rocks of shore, and where to head for safe, deep water.
Twenty minutes after the torpedoes had been fired, everyone on the boat heard a loud rumbling explosion from the general direction of the Japanese tanker. Jacobson listened to the conversations coming from the conning tower. The soundman reported that he heard noises similar to those of a ship breaking up, but these sounds came between continuing blasts from depth charges. Again and again the Japanese escorts—probably destroyers—swung toward Flier and rolled off another batch of barrels that sank to a predetermined depth before exploding. Sometimes they were nowhere near the submarine. Other times, they seemed to be directly overhead. Cork rained down from the ceiling then, and in each of the segments of the pressure hull—each one now sealed from the rest by closed, watertight doors on which the locking levers, called dogs, had been jammed in place—trickles of sweat, driven both by heat and fear, fell from eighty-six nearly naked men. The sweat on Crowley’s chest streamed around a chain necklace from which hung a small crucifix, etched with the words jesus nazarenus, rex judaeorum.
One of the men appeared to be unmoved by the dangers that now preoccupied the rest of the crew. John Clyde Turner needed to keep the officers fed, so he busied himself in his pantry, between the officers’ quarters and the forward torpedo room, working as if the next meal was the most crucial concern on board the submarine. In the course of his chores, Turner decided he needed something from the refrigerator. Flier happened to be motionless at the time, waiting for the next rush of the escorts. You could have heard the breath of a mouse. The sound of a refrigerator door opening was, to the men in the forward torpedo room, as loud as if the claxon had been tripped. Several of them—no doubt driven by their own inexpressible fears—opened and vaulted through the watertight door, tackling Turner. His life was theirs to take, and their intentions were obvious. Officers raced from the wardroom to restrain the attackers, whose own scrambling had probably made more noise than the opening of several refrigerator doors. In moments, everyone returned to his place to wait for the next round of depth charges that he knew would come.
The pounding continued all afternoon. Each man inside Flier could keep his own score as the number of depth-charge runs rose past twenty, thirty, forty—with no end in sight. At one point, an escort was heard directly overhead, as if running straight up the submarine’s spine. The ship unleashed its explosives only after it had passed the boat, but there was no spontaneous sigh of relief because the next swing could be the lethal one.
At 7:15 p.m., Crowley grew impatient. Flier had a dummy torpedo stored in the after torpedo room. It was filled with explosives, set to detonate after the torpedo had traveled a specific distance. It also held a tank of oil. At the s
kipper’s command, the crew fired the torpedo from a stern tube and the fish ran out a thousand yards before its blast was heard inside Flier. The concussion and the huge oil slick that soon appeared on the surface looked and sounded to ships on the surface like evidence of a sinking submarine.
In minutes, the depth-charge attack ceased. It had been five hours since Crowley had started this engagement. Now the skipper was convinced the escorts were finished, and he gave the order to surface. Once the hatch to the bridge was opened and the commander had climbed the ladder, Jacobson followed, eager to escape the stuffy confines and stinking perspiration odor of the control room. To his surprise, he found that now the scent of fresh air was actually offensive.
June 13 had ended okay. None of the 105 depth charges dropped by the Japanese escorts had found its mark.
Night fell off Luzon, and later, Flier headed south once more, hoping to pick up the convoy, which was probably headed for Subic Bay, the main shipping port near Manila. In the middle of the night, as Flier ran on the surface, lookouts above the bridge spotted smoke on the horizon. But a patrol plane flew over and Flier turned away, unwilling to risk the continued pursuit.
For the next four days, the submarine prowled around the islands near Manila, submerged during the day and then surfacing at night. Young Jacobson was thrilled to see the silhouettes of Corregidor, Bataan, and Manila’s shoreline, knowing that the enemy soldiers there had no idea Flier was so close. He hoped with a youthful eagerness that some vessel would stray out on the water and present the submarine with a target. Having tasted the kill, he wanted to sink another ship.
He would have to wait five days.
Ed Casey was officer of the deck on June 22, standing watch in the conning tower as Flier, following its daytime routine, ran submerged. Around dinnertime, Casey spotted five columns of smoke in the southwest, about fifteen miles ahead. This was the eighth time on its first patrol that Flier had encountered enemy ships. The crew had destroyed two enemy ships and damaged another, but there had been many more missed opportunities. Listening to Casey’s report was young Jacobson, who had the duty of diving officer—the man responsible for ordering a dive should it become necessary. The ensign hoped, as he heard Casey’s description from the periscope, for better luck this time.
Casey, an agreeable family man, slender but athletic and quiet, was Jacobson’s mentor. He had bet Jacobson earlier in the day that if he saw any targets, the inexperienced kid would order a dive too quickly, ducking the periscope. Jacobson won that bet, and Casey was able to observe the changing compass bearing of the enemy convoy’s smoke. The smoke was heading right for Flier. Casey consulted with Crowley, who decided to wait for dark to make a surface attack on the convoy. Soon the soundman heard the sonar “pinging” from the convoy’s escorts as they searched for trouble. Now Crowley was handling the periscope, taking regular bearings on the convoy, and Jacobson had moved to the chart table to plot the enemy’s course.
Darkness had settled on Apo East Pass when Flier—which the day before had been directed to intercept the Japanese fleet as it sailed north from Mindanao—surfaced about seven miles behind the convoy, which was zigging and zagging four miles off the coast of Mindoro Island. On the surface, the submarine began a circular sweep, called an “end-around,” up the western side of the convoy, and Jacobson reported to the bridge and took up the post of junior officer of the deck, standing to the rear of the bridge on the after cigarette deck. Looking east, he could see the whole convoy and each of the ships’ movements.
Flier raced north, and by eleven o’clock that night had reached a position to attack the convoy, almost in front of it on its left flank, about six miles away. Crowley now turned his boat and, driving toward the leading ships, the submarine slipped inside of the destroyers escorting the convoy. Jacobson’s job during the approach was to keep the crosshairs of a set of binoculars, temporarily resting in a deck-mounted stand, trained on the target ships. The cradle supporting the binoculars could be pivoted in any direction, and there was a mechanical connection between the cradle and the “torpedo data computer”—the device that programmed the course for each torpedo. Below the binoculars was a pistol grip with a trigger. As he adjusted the bearing of the crosshairs, Jacobson’s finger rested lightly on the trigger. Crowley, standing on the bridge forward of Jacobson, had settled on two freighters out of the nine ships in the convoy—the first one large and the second one medium-size, and both at the lead of the nearest convoy column. Unnoticed, Flier moved to within a mile of those ships, scooting in front of the escorting destroyers, and Crowley told Jacobson to fire when he was ready.
If a soldier can be trained to think of the enemy as a target, rather than one or more human beings, the destruction of those lives becomes more of a mathematics problem to be solved than a moral question to be pondered. Admiral I. J. Galantin addressed this phenomenon in his reflections on his World War II submarine service: “Naval warfare had evolved to the point that sailors no longer saw their enemy as people; they saw only the steel or aluminum vehicles in which their enemy sailed or flew, trying to bring their own weapons to bear. The ships or aircraft were the enemy of one’s own ship; they were the enemy . . .
“Submarine war was even more detached, its special horror comparatively new to history, its action generally remote from human experience. Though our sinkings of enemy combat and cargo ships sent thousands of men to their deaths, this was but incidental to the real purpose—the strangling of an empire through cutting off its oil, its food, its raw materials.”
On that black night off Mindoro, Al Jacobson pulled the trigger once. A torpedo shot silently underwater from Flier’s bow. He pulled again. Another torpedo followed the first, speeding toward the larger freighter. Again he squeezed his hand and a third torpedo was on its way.
Now he turned the binoculars slightly south. The smaller freighter was in the crosshairs. He pulled the trigger once, twice, a third time, and Flier swung sharply away to return to the safety of the open ocean. Looking back at the convoy, Jacobson saw geysers of water rise in the blackness—two from the big ship and one from the medium-size one. The sound of a second torpedo hitting the second ship came through the warm night air. With each hit, the orange flash of an explosion lit the target ship, and, at this close range, Jacobson could see objects flying up into the air—all of it junk to his eyes.
The shooting had begun at 11:23 that night. In only a few minutes, the two target ships were dropping out of the convoy, and then the smaller one sank. Although but one part of a coordinated team, the ensign at the trigger could take direct credit for the steel and flesh that disappeared before his eyes under the waves.
The escorts, now with only seven ships in their convoy, began hunting Flier, dropping depth charges where they thought the boat was submerged. But the submarine was on the surface, stealing away in the night at high speed, just far enough away to keep the convoy in sight but not close enough to be spotted by the escorts. Having fallen to the stern of the convoy, Crowley wanted another shot, and so he did another end-around up the western flank of the seven ships and their escorts, and at one minute after midnight, the convoy zigged right toward Flier. The saltwater waves splashed over the submarine’s bow as the skipper ordered full speed ahead and the predator raced in for another kill. Jacobson was still on deck, hands on the binoculars, a wad of gum in his mouth. When the boat approached an escort, he heard Crowley order the engines slowed so Flier could sneak by. Once inside all the escorts, Crowley poured on the power and the submarine went for its next target.
There were only four torpedoes left in the forward torpedo room, and the skipper dedicated these to the ship that now led the convoy, a medium-size freighter. From the bridge, Crowley relayed the compass bearing to the freighter. At the same time, the radar operator relayed his own observations on the distance to the ship. When the submarine was in a firing position, Crowley gave Jacobson the order to fire, and the ensign
squeezed his trigger four times. Jacobson knew how long it should take the torpedoes to reach the ship, and he timed their invisible progress with the rhythm of his gum chewing.
There was silence, and like a gunslinger who learns he has fired blanks in a shootout, Jacobson began to worry. A few tense seconds passed before the flash of two explosions lit the rear of the target ship and the sound of a third blast was heard.
By incalculable luck, Flier had inflicted damage on two ships. While the skipper had been giving bearings on the lead ship, the radar operator was figuring the distance to a second, closer vessel. All of the torpedoes might well have missed the target, but two had followed a course that found the rear of that ship. The third torpedo had passed behind the ship, but here the luck came in for Flier. Seen from the submarine, another ship in the convoy overlapped the first and had the misfortune to be directly in front of that third torpedo.
Crowley swung the boat around, hoping to do more damage to the convoy with torpedoes from the stern tubes. But by now, the escorts had located Flier. Crowley called down to Liddell in the conning tower, asking where on the radar the widest space was between the escorts.
“I think course 205 degrees,” Liddell yelled back.
“Put on all the power we have and head out on course 205,” Crowley shouted.
The escorts were searching wildly as Flier raced toward them. From the deck of the surfaced submarine, Jacobson saw one looming out of the darkness, on a course almost parallel to the submarine but headed in the opposite direction. Both boats were moving at full speed, and when they passed, there was no hint that the escort had seen the submarine. Flier plowed ahead into the safety of a dark sea, and the ensign looked back to see the ships at which he had fired, smoking heavily and apparently sinking.
It was about two hours after midnight when Flier made another dash between two Japanese escort vessels for a second attack on a still-floating but burning freighter two miles closer to shore. When they cleared the escorts, the men on Flier’s deck saw their target ship sink—their fourth victim, if they were counting ships. If they were counting men, no one could guess the score.
War Stories Page 51
