U-Boat Scourge
The Naval Odyssey of
Professor James Brand
J. Eugene Porter
U-Boat Scourge:
The Naval Odyssey of Professor James Brand
© J. Eugene Porter, 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
For permission requests, email the author at:
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First Edition
This is a work of fiction. All the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally.
ISBN: 978-1719593786
Design: Vivian Freeman Chaffin, Yellow Rose Typesetting
Printed in the United States of America
Dedicated to
Kenneth E. Porter
USMC 1938-1941
and the Marine Detachment
aboard the USS Chicago CA-29
Author’s Note
This book is a work of fiction but is based on the real events of World War II. It is a story of the underappreciated side of the war which involved science, engineering and the experimentation of new ways to wage war. It looks at this subject from the viewpoint of a young scientist and his team who fight with ideas as well as with weapons. It also deals with the challenges that new ideas encounter when confronted with years of complacency, inefficiency and tradition. The Second World War made the careers of many men, but it also ended the careers of others, not just through the carnage of battle but by the harsh realization that some men were not capable of dealing with new types of warfare.
This novel begins with the events leading up to December 7, 1941, and ends in March 1942 when America was facing its darkest days of defeat in the Philippines and the challenge of stopping the Japanese advance towards Australia. It focuses attention on the U-boat war waged with great ferocity along the Atlantic coast of the United States. Caught totally unprepared by the evolutionary nature of the German submarine attacks, the United States Navy stumbled to halt the destruction of the Allied merchant fleet just miles off its coastline. Starting in early January 1942, the United States and its Allies lost hundreds of ships, some of them within sight of land and only managed to sink three U-boats. This tragic event has been chronicled in many great non-fiction works in the past twenty years, and most of them point to the inability of United States commanders to identify and then deal with the threat posed by this German scourge. It would take most of 1942 to push the German submariners away from their “second happy time” along the American East and Gulf Coasts. These efforts were slow to become a reality as documented by many sources including the seminal work by Rear Adm. Samuel Elliott Morrison in his History of the Naval Operations of World War Two, as well as the many later studies conducted on both sides of the Atlantic.
This story is just that, a story. It is set in a time of terrible events, which changed the world and changed the people who witnessed it. The fictional characters are not designed to emulate real persons from this era, but as you will see, they interact with the real leaders in government, military, science and production to achieve a better understanding of the issues and problems faced in those dark days. The conversations and actions taken by the real persons are based upon various writings by the participants themselves and by how history now views many of these individuals. Time has changed the image of some of these people; some for better and some for worse, but it does not change how they managed the war, led their people and in some cases, how the leaders of two great nations provided leadership to the world.
The book is divided by date, with each section beginning with the daily information about what was happening in the war. My hope is this device will provide additional context for the events unfolding in the book and will help the reader better understand the scope and immensity of the war effort. This daily information comes from two sources:
• The United States Naval Chronology, World War II, published on March 17, 1955, by the Naval History Division of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations.
• Chronology: 1941-1945, published on February 21, 1958, by Chronology Section of the Historical Division of the Office of the Chief of Military History, United States Army.
Prologue
A letter dated August 2, 1939, signed by Albert Einstein was given to Alexander Sachs who arranged a meeting with the addressee on Octo-ber 11. Things in the world were changing rapidly. Much of the world was now at war with Germany after they had invaded Poland on September 1. Sachs knew these tectonic shifts in world affairs would cause a great upheaval and the contents of the letter needed to be seen by clear-eyed realists without other distractions. The meeting Sachs had was with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the letter discussed something called an atomic bomb.
In part the letter stated,
In the course of the last four months it has been made probable—through the work of Joliot in France as well as Fermi and Szilárd in America—that it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium, by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium-like elements would be generated. Now it appears almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future.
This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable—though much less certain—that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory. However, such bombs might very well prove to be too heavy for transportation by air.
It also specifically warned about Germany:
I understand that Germany has actually stopped the sale of uranium from the Czechoslovakian mines which she has taken over. That she should have taken such early action might perhaps be understood on the ground that the son of the German Under-Secretary of State, von Weizsäcker, is attached to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institute in Berlin where some of the American work on uranium is now being repeated.
President Roosevelt’s reaction was positive and gave the scientists the approval to expand their research. He summed up the conversation, “Alex, what you are after is to see that the Nazis don’t blow us up.”
This famous letter and FDR’s reply are enshrined in history as the beginning of the atomic age and development of the atomic bomb as created through the Manhattan project.
Einstein sent other letters to FDR on the project and often communicated outside of normal channels with him. One such informal letter was sent to the president on January 6, 1942, and involved an unusual request for presidential intervention with a young naval recruit.
The letter read in part,
I realize that you are being asked to make many decisions on matters that are too terrible to ponder and which affect the lives of millions. This request involves only one person, a young man who in the estimation of many of America’s top scientists is in jeopardy of being lost to the bureaucracies of the government. He is a child prodigy, and I became aware of him some four years ago, along with a few other graduate students in physics, mathematics, chemistry and engineering. What made him unique was that he was a graduate student in these disciplines and he was a mere fourteen years old. I met him again, last year when my old friend and colleague Dr. Enrico Fermi had him accompany a large group of post-doctoral students to meet our staff at Princeton. I was ama
zed at his general brilliance, the speed of thought and the ability to think in all disciplines at the same time.
I have been informed by Dr. Fermi that this young man who had a research fellowship at Columbia University, disappeared from his post on December 10. Dr. Fermi has recently found out that he has joined the U.S. Navy and is currently undergoing basic training. Mr. President, this young man is too valuable to the nation, to science and to the future, to have him become a deck hand on a ship or perhaps even a cook. I am sure that he is hiding his name and his intelligence to fit in with his comrades. It is good that the young want to serve their country, but I believe along with many of the top scientists in the nation, that the war will be won not only by bravery but by intellect, science, mathematics, physics and engineering prowess. If you could consider this matter and find a way to have him serve his country in uniform and by using his intellectual gifts, then our future will be much brighter.
His name was James Edward Brand, and he was originally from Flagstaff, Arizona.
Part 1
1
8 December 1941
Columbia University
New York City
• United States declares war on Japan.
• Japanese aircraft in widely scattered operations bomb Guam, Wake, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Philippine Islands.
• Extensive damage is inflicted on United States Army aircraft at Clark Field, Luzon, Philippine Islands.
• Japan interns United States Marines and nationals at Shanghai and Tientsin, China.
The distinguished looking man gazed out the window at the campus below him. Students walked to class or to meetings, and all seemed to be normal. But things had changed for the university, the students and the entire country. The date is December 8, 1941, and in about four hours, President Franklin D. Roosevelt would go to Capitol Hill and ask for a declaration of war against the Empire of Japan. He held the thought of the president writing out his speech and preparing the country for the death and destruction that would surely come. Finally, he looked back into the conference room and viewed the four men sitting at the table looking at him. Three of them were middle-aged or older, but one was very young, and he knew this young man was being tormented by the thought of going to war.
Dr. Enrico Fermi left Italy in 1938 with his Jewish wife to receive his Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on a statistical formulation. His theory described the distribution of particles in systems of many identical particles that obeyed what was known as the exclusion principle. It was related to the Bose-Einstein statistic model and is now known as Fermi-Dirac statistics that help describe fermions and bosons. The young scientist sitting in front of him was one of the very few people in the world that could grasp the consequences of this work and use it to build newer and more expansive mathematical models of the concept. Dr. Fermi finally stepped away from the window and began to speak.
“Gentlemen, each of you knows the significance of our work at Columbia and the importance of your personal contributions to the projects on which you have been working. It appears that with a war being waged throughout the world, the scientific community will be called upon to aid in the war effort. I have placed a series of calls to my colleagues around the country, and with the continued support of Dr. Bush as the Head of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, I am confident all our projects will continue to be funded and provided with additional support. I would ask that you prepare a short synopsis of your activities as well as people who are critical to these efforts so that I may be able to guarantee their contribution to your project. Please get these to me within the next few days. As you can imagine, there is chaos in all circles of government which will take some time to sort out, so please, let us be the first to have our plans ready for submission.”
Dr. Fermi then went to his desk, sat down in the rigid wooden-back chair he favored and began reading a file. The assembled scientists all knew the meeting was over and it was time to leave. As they started toward the door, Fermi spoke once more.
“James, please stay for a moment. I want to ask you something.”
James Brand, Ph.D., turned and walked back to the desk of his mentor and intellectual focus for the past two years. James had turned eighteen in late November and had been working with Dr. Fermi and his team since late 1939 as he pursued his doctorate degree. He had received his Master’s in Mathematics at the California Institute of Technology at the ripe old age of fifteen and had jumped at the chance to work with Fermi and his team on applications of Fermi’s theories. Fermi had taken an immediate shine to the young genius. James reminded the older man of himself as a teenage prodigy. He knew full well the genius factor often burned brightest in the youngest years, then slowly faded. Einstein had done his greatest work in his early twenties. Fermi had most of his breakthrough ideas when he was under thirty. The problem with being a young genius is that the mind is in overdrive, but the emotions are still those of a teenager. Fermi feared James would not know how to handle the changes going on in himself and the world around him.
“James, I want to take a few minutes to discuss your future role and how you will cope with all of the stress that will be placed upon you.”
James felt very uncomfortable with this conversation. He had successfully suppressed most of his emotions for years, looking upon the childish urges of others as just that, childish behavior in which he did not need to engage. “Professor, I am not sure what you are saying?”
Fermi leaned forward in his chair and peered into the eyes of his young protégé before softly saying, “James, you are very young and very bright. The war is now starting for America, and you may be asking yourself, if not now, but soon, what should I be doing to help my country? You are a physically strong and intellectually gifted young man and your country will need you.” Fermi pulled back into his chair and decided to take another approach to the subject.
“James, what I am saying is how do you feel about what happened at the naval base in Hawaii?”
James thought for a moment in silence, which Fermi understood, although the long pause usually unnerved most everyone else. James preferred a scientific approach to all his activities and conversation was just one more activity. He was always slow to respond to questions and often overly direct in responses or when asking questions. Political niceties were not necessary in James’ world. Finally, after what seemed to be a minute or more, James looked directly at the Nobel Prize winner saying, “Professor, what happened yesterday was a great tragedy for this country. You have told me and others about the terrible things going on in your homeland and in Germany, but we have never discussed Japan. I guess we are going to have to fight the Japanese, then defeat the Germans and Italians. I fear we will be at war with all of them in a few days. The suffering will be great. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
Fermi almost smiled because the answer he received is what he expected from the Doctor of Physics, but it did not come from the red-blooded young man who must be conflicted as to what to do next.
“James, that was a well thought out answer but what I wanted to know, is what do you want to do about the war? I need you to stay here with me and help in our research. There will be other projects that need your special talents as well. I have talked to Connaught at Harvard as well as the people at Bell Labs and they want to borrow you as soon as possible. So, again, what do you want to do to help your country?”
James again looked away from Professor Fermi and considered a different part of his life, that of being a young man. He always wanted to be just one of the guys, but since his earliest days, he had spent most of his time with much older people instructing him or leading him into new aspects of mathematics, science, and engineering. His father, who worked at the Lowell Observatory in his hometown of Flagstaff, Arizona, had been on the team that discovered Pluto.
James had worked side by side with not only his father but with the lead astronomer, Clyde Turnball. They had talked mostly about orbita
l mechanics and the movement of stars. Normal boyhood things went by the wayside after his father fell to his death in January 1933 while making repairs to the roof of the family home. He had to work more to help support his mother who was a teacher at the Arizona State Teachers College. So, James did not fully comprehend what being a normal young man really meant. He felt anger at what happened at Pearl Harbor, but was more intellectually involved in the technical aspects of what had happened, such as what ordinance was used, where the planes came from and the countermeasure in place by the fleet. Instead of rage, he felt more curiosity. Instead of running to the colors, he wanted to know more about the weapons used.
James finally looked at Fermi and spoke. “Professor, I’m not too sure how I should be thinking about this incident. I know it means a full-scale war and that means many men will join the army and navy and fight somewhere distant from our shores. As to what it means to me, I would think that I should join the military and offer my skills to the country.”
Fermi had anticipated this line of reasoning from James and he was swift in his rebuttal.
“James, you can best serve your country by maintaining your position here at Columbia. There are millions of young men out there who are trying to join up to serve, but there are only a few people who possess your capabilities. I’ll be speaking to Dr. Bush to make sure you’re safe from any conscription, and you’ll find many things to work on which will contribute far more than becoming just another soldier or sailor.”
James thought for a moment, then looking straight at the Professor, agreed to his line of reasoning. “Professor, you make perfect sense, and if you don’t mind, I’ll go back to my office and finish the tables I’ve been working on which tie to your models.’
“Good decision, James. Keep me informed on your progress. I look forward to our next conversation.”
James returned to his small room, which did not overlook the walkways but looked directly next to another reddish-brown brick building. He pulled out his binder with notes, then his favorite slide rule, and began entering new calculations which would prove more of Fermi’s work. Only later in the day, did the young man inside him begin to stir and throw gasoline on the small embers of doubt that had followed him for the last twenty-four hours.
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