Hellcats

by Peter Sasgen

  Unlike the Germans with their vast fleet of submarines, ComSubPac, hampered early on by having too few submarines to form effective wolf packs, relied instead on freedom of action by individual subs for success against Japanese convoys. Unlike Allied convoys, Japanese convoys were smaller and consequently easier for a single submarine to attack. Whereas Allied convoys often consisted of eighty or more ships, the Japanese convoy commanders, lacking sufficient escorts, formed convoys of six to eight ships and sometimes as few as two. American subs didn’t often encounter large convoys of fifteen to twenty marus and when they did, they usually had insufficient torpedoes to deal with such a large group of ships on their own. An American sub skipper in this situation had no choice but to pick out one or two ships to attack, knowing full well that as soon as the first torpedo went off the convoy would scatter all over the ocean, effectively ending any chance the submarine might have had to attack the other ships. Enter the wolf pack.

  In the Pacific, two or three submarines operating together would attack by hitting the main convoy body from different locations, then, after pulling back, pick off the stragglers one by one. How effective U.S. wolf packs were was never fully decided. One problem was that U.S. wolf packs were too often hampered by poor voice radio communications between subs. Lockwood and Voge struggled to improve communications so as to better coordinate wolf pack attacks and, incidentally, to make sure the subs didn’t torpedo one another. Submarine command organized about 120 wolf packs consisting of between three and seven submarines. In the main their operations succeeded, sinking more than a hundred Japanese ships. To prove that wolf-packing worked, early on the USS Steelhead (SS-280) and the USS Parche (SS-384) attacked a fifteen-ship convoy, sank five ships, and damaged many more. Yet as impressive as this action was, the USS Rasher (SS-269), acting alone, tore into a twenty-ship convoy in the South China Sea off the Philippines, sank four ships—including the twenty-thousand-ton escort carrier shepherding the convoy—and badly damaged four more. The Rasher’s amazing feat proved once again just how potent a single submarine captained by an aggressive skipper could be.

  The Germans often utilized as many as twenty U-boats in wolf packs that relied on an unwieldy but effective shore-based communications net to coordinate their attacks on Allied convoys. The Germans sank a lot of ships using this method but lost a lot of U-boats and men. After all, a pack of twenty U-boats swirling like wolves around a convoy in the North Atlantic presented a juicy target for Allied antisubmarine forces. The lesson ComSubPac learned from the wholesale destruction of German U-boats was that small wolf packs made for a more compact and survivable weapon able to nibble away at Japanese shipping despite the ever more effective antisubmarine measures the enemy employed as the war progressed.

  The Bonefish arrived in her patrol area on September 21. Patrolling the Tablas Strait south of Luzon, she once again encountered dozens of sailboats and small craft, mostly local fishing vessels and luggers. They were far too numerous to board and inspect either for cargoes destined for the Japanese or for submarine-spotter radios. After spending several unproductive days in this area Edge moved westward into Verde Island Passage. So far, other than sailboats, the area, reputedly teeming with Japanese freighters, looked pretty desolate.

  Past midnight on September 27, Edge received orders from Fremantle to join the Flasher and Lapon off Luzon for a wolf-pack operation two days hence. Both subs had reported sighting targets off the southwestern Philippine coast, a major north-south Japanese shipping route. Fremantle had orchestrated the wolf pack’s moves based on intelligence gleaned from decrypted Japanese radio messages that included valuable information on the routes convoys tended to use and the makeup of the convoys themselves and their cargoes.

  Based on this information Edge shaped a course through the Verde Island Passage north of Mindoro into the South China Sea, and on four engines headed for the area he’d been assigned. Entering the South China Sea, radar contact!

  Edge altered course to begin tracking the target. Two hours of hard running at flank speed brought the Bonefish into torpedo-firing range of a large zigzagging northbound ship and two echo-ranging escorts. Fighting the clock—dawn’s arrival and, with it, air patrols out of Manila—Edge, ready to launch an attack, tucked in behind the ship and her escorts. In position downwind of them, Edge smelled fuel oil, a tip-off that he had a loaded tanker in his sights.

  Sidestepping both escorts Edge made his run-in. He fired the bow tubes at the target’s broadside, then spun the Bonefish on her heel to fire the stern tubes. Before he could work a new setup, an explosion erupted near the target’s stern. An instant later a blinding flash and a huge ball of flame topped by boiling black smoke rolled into a sky now tinged with dawn. The flash and ball of flame momentarily turned night into day and made the Bonefish and the Japanese escorts stand out like yachts at a regatta. g Scorching heat from the fireball whipped over the Bonefish. To the men on her bridge it felt like a dragon breathing fire on them. For Edge, his vow to make amends for his failure to sink that ship off the coast of Zamboanga during the Bonefish’s last patrol had been fulfilled.

  With morning light spreading fast in the east and the sure arrival of planes imminent, Edge didn’t hang around to inspect his handiwork. He rang up flank speed for the wolf pack area and retired westward, away from the smear of black smoke lying low on the sea.

  Early the next day a radar contact off Mindoro developed into another oiler and two escorts, one of them a sleek destroyer. With her low freeboard and hidden Plimsoll mark the oiler looked fully loaded.

  Once again Edge worked in and fired six torpedoes. This time torpedo gremlins attacked in force but couldn’t save the doomed target. One of the torpedoes tore off on an erratic course; three others missed the target completely. Two evaded the gremlins and crashed into the ship. One of them hit just aft the MOT—middle of the target—sending hot debris and sparks pinwheeling skyward. The other one hit just forward of the MOT with the same effect. Hull ripped open, oil gushing from ruptured bunkers, the tankerh vanished from the Bonefish’s radar screen.

  Three days later Edge made contact with the Flasher-led wolf pack. After an exchange of information, including details of his attacks on the two tankers, Edge began patrolling off the west coast of Luzon, where he found plenty of targets.

  Convoys hugging the Philippine coast, some of them containing as many as ten ships, lit up the Bonefish’s radarscope. But Edge was driven off by echo-ranging escorts, which, alerted to the presence of submarines, intermittently dropped patterns of warning depth charges. Planes patrolling out ahead of the convoys dropped bombs whenever their pilots thought they had a submarine in their sights. In addition to the enemy’s antisubmarine efforts, a persistent and heavy overcast interfered with celestial navigation. Without accurate position fixing, conning a submarine in and around coastal convoy routes trapped with shoals, reefs, rocks, and bars was pure guesswork and also dangerous.

  It wasn’t until October 10 that Edge’s luck changed and the weather moderated. Patrolling submerged off Cape Bolinao, the westernmost point of land midway up the coast of Luzon, the sound watch reported echo ranging from escorts. A careful search by periscope revealed thin columns of smoke from ships hull-down over the horizon. As the smokers plodded over the horizon toward the Bonefish, Edge got a good look at a ragged eight-ship convoy protected by four echo-ranging escorts and a low-flying plane. “Battle stations torpedo!”

  Men leaped to their stations as Edge started an approach. Though the Bonefish wasn’t far off the convoy’s base course, the approach was hampered by heavy swells that made depth control difficult and necessitated high and prolonged periscope exposure to keep track of the convoy. If the escorts were alert they’d spot the raised periscope and its white feather streaking through the sea. But Edge didn’t worry about that or the plane buzzing over the convoy like a mayfly. Should the pilot spot the Bonefish’s dark hull moving underwater in the direction of the convoy, Edge would go deep.
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br />   He worked the Bonefish between the two columns of ships. He did it confident that the pilot of that plane was napping or, more likely, that the ruffled, leaden sea had camouflaged the Bonefish sufficiently to allow her to get close enough to count nine freighters and a lone tanker. With an eye on the nearest escort, Edge picked out a fat, juicy target and ... All of a sudden he saw an escort change position from starboard to port, crossing the Bonefish’s bow less than a thousand yards away! Edge also saw the escort two-block a flag, a warning to the convoy that it had a sub contact! Edge ignored him for now; he had that fat, juicy target at the end of a long, two-thousand-yard torpedo run. Fire One!

  1108-25 Commenced firing bow tubes at medium AK [cargo ship]

  1108-41 Checked fire after fourth one ... A hasty and eye-filling glance at the escort showed him slightly on our port bow with a bone [in his teeth] looking as big as he was ... and headed to pass something less than 100 yards down our port side. Could practically see their lookouts staring down the scope at us.

  1109-22 Resumed fire with the [remaining] two [torpedoes in the forward nest] ...

  1109-35 Good, loud unmistakable torpedo explosion, timed to be the first torpedo hitting the target.1

  Two more hits! The familiar sound of exploding warheads rumbled through the Bonefish. Three minutes later Edge and his crew were... hauling ourselves down to 350 feet fast when the first depth charges started going off. During the next twelve minutes, 35 depth charges exploded, none of which seemed very far away, and some of which could hardly have been closer without causing serious damage—or so it seemed! [Electrical] cables were pushed in as much as four inches; every compartment had a quota of shattered light bulbs; fuel tank inboard vents were [forced] open, getting considerable fuel oil over After Battery and Forward Torpedo room decks.... But nothing serious turned up, and we felt pretty proud of our [strong] hull.

  1125 Settled down to evading at 4 knots, pulling away from the coast to westward. Two [escorts] seemed to stay back... (picking up survivors?).2

  Forced down by the depth charging, Edge didn’t know what had happened topside, yet was reasonably certain that if they’d not sunk a ship, several had been damaged.i When it was all over Edge made contact with the Lapon and Flasher to report the convoy’s position. With luck the wolf pack might be able to intercept what remained of it.

  The next day: “Captain, echo ranging.”

  The periscope lurched out of its well. Edge snapped down the training handles, put his eye to the ocular. The exec stood on the opposite side of the scope, his hands on Edge’s gripping the training handles, and rotated the scope onto the reported bearing of the echo ranging.

  Once again Edge saw smokers, six or seven of them. Soon enough the masts of hull-down ships heaved over the horizon just as those ships had yesterday. Fifteen minutes later ten ships and their escorts were strung out in a long southbound column hugging the twenty-fathom curve off the coast near Santa Cruz. It seemed likely that the convoy was headed for an anchorage there or at Manila. The trouble was, the submerged Bonefish was so far off the convoy’s base course she couldn’t catch up to its main body. Because it was still daylight the only thing Edge could do was to intercept the tail end of the convoy as it steamed down the coast. His scheme worked until the convoy seemingly evaporated into thin air. “Lost contact,” Edge reported. A taxing periscope search turned up nothing.

  Three blasts of the Klaxon reverberated through the ship. Daylight or not, Edge was on the surface with four straining diesels to find the convoy and send a radio message to the Flasher: “Convoy. Chasing. Edge sends.”

  Despite intermittent radar contact with the convoy, it somehow slipped away. Peppered with small bays and shallow bights, the Philippine coast offered suitable refuge to small convoys but not ones made up of ten ships and escorts. A convoy that big would need a body of water almost the size of Subic Bay in which to anchor. Acting on that fact the Bonefish reached Subic Bay around midnight to discover that the convoy was nowhere in sight. At that moment Edge realized that by racing south down the coast he’d gotten ahead of it and that if he reversed course he’d run into it.

  While Edge hunted for the elusive convoy, ComSubSoWesPac was busy handing out new assignments to patrolling submarines: A radio message from Fremantle directed the Bonefish and Lapon to assume lifeguard stations off Cape Bolinao on October 16.

  Lifeguarding—plucking downed U.S. fliers from the sea under the noses of the Japanese—was an important service submarines had been providing to the Army and Navy air forces. With the advent of air strikes on Japan launched from the Marianas, lifeguarding rapidly expanded from a sideline for patrolling submarines to a nearly full-time job. By war’s end U.S. submarines had rescued 504 airmen ditched at sea. In the Philippines, the Navy had begun launching air strikes against the Japanese in preparation for the invasion of Leyte, scheduled for October 21. Lifeguarding submarines would be needed for the rescue of downed Navy pilots flying air-support missions during that operation.

  As he patrolled back to the north, Edge expected to find the convoy standing down the coast. The Bonefish pounded along, radar sweeping, lookouts stationed in the periscope shears with binoculars hunting for the white bow waves and jagged black profiles of their prey. Hours passed. The radar men peaked the SJ: Nothing out there, they reported, but the Philippine coast and a vast, empty sea. Weary lookouts just shrugged coming off watch: Nothing in sight but water, they said. Time passed and with it the prospect of a swift, hard-hitting attack on an unsuspecting row of targets slowly evaporated. Edge, convinced that the convoy had somehow slipped past them or had anchored somewhere out of sight, finally abandoned the search. The Bonefish continued north to patrol off Cape Bolinao lighthouse, which was not far from the area where she had been assigned lifeguard duties.

  Edge patrolled the area submerged, searching for targets. He didn’t have long to wait. “Captain to the conning tower!” The periscope watch reported a thin column of smoke on the horizon. Edge eased behind the scope and saw a zigzagging, smoking freighter. Minutes later a second smoking ship heaved into view behind the first one. Edge put the two 2,000-ton freighters in the crosshairs of the attack scope, then swung into action.

  Four torpedoes aimed at the trailing ship streaked from the sub’s stern tubes. A heavy explosion erupted on the target and Edge watched her go down under a thick cloud of smoke and steam. The lead ship, which he thought was another freighter, turned out to be an escort-type vessel armed with depth charges. As he watched the hapless escort from a safe distance through the periscope, Edge noted Japanese sailors struggling to roll heavy ash cans over her sides.

  1140 ... nothing visible [Edge reported] but the nearby land and one maru, definitely the one which had been leading, now dropping [depth charges].

  1145 Went back to 250 feet to evade at 4 knots.

  1156 Breaking-up noises became loud enough to be heard through the hull for the next forty-five minutes, these noises were a little like small underwater explosions....

  Between the thundering of depth charges the submariners heard the crash of collapsing bulkheads and internal compartments, the screech and groan of cargo tearing loose, the thousand other popping and crackling noises that a ship makes when it breaks up and sinks.

  1226 Back to periscope depth, all clear except land and masts of escort maru.3j

  Concluding her torpedo work off Luzon, the Bonefish arrived at her assigned lifeguard area the morning of October 16. Edge began patrolling a five-mile-wide figure eight, waiting for a call to pick up downed fliers. It was boring but important work, submariners told themselves. But after the thrill of a chase punctuated by the staccato drum of diesels at full song, booming torpedoes, cracking depth charges, and ships breaking up, playing acey-deucey and cribbage and watching the same old scratchy movies over and over again could almost make a sub sailor long for shore duty. Submerging only to dodge enemy planes and patrol boats, the Bonefish lazily churned her figure eight. What little action the
re was centered on the radio room, where the radiomen on watch... carefully guarded the assigned VHF primary and secondary HF channels [Edge wrote] ... but the only indications we ever had that an air strike or strikes may have been in progress were that on the 17th and 18th, radio MANILA (commercial) went off the air part of the day with an air raid warning. In the evening of both days, also, short meaningless snatches of a few American phrases were picked up on the primary HF channel. All planes sighted closely enough for recognition had appeared to be enemy types (float planes, etc.).4

  On the eighteenth and with night coming on, the Bonefish received a radio message vectored through Fremantle reporting the position of two Navy airmen adrift in a rubber boat about eighty-five miles north of the Bonefish. The men had reportedly been in the water for nine hours. Edge didn’t have to be told that if they weren’t picked up soon they stood a good chance of being captured by the Japanese. Edge bent on four engines to get there as soon as possible. Even so he knew it wouldn’t be easy to find two men in an inflatable lifeboat tossing around on the South China Sea in the dark.

  The steady thrum of four diesels signaled that this was serious business. For hours the Bonefish sped up the coast. Heading to the rescue she passed two burning ships in a harbor. Edge surmised that they’d been bombed by the airmen he was hunting for. Shortly after midnight, as the Bonefish approached the aircrew’s reported position not far from the harbor with its burning ships, a red flare arced across the night sky. Americans or Japanese? There was no way to tell. It was too dark to see anything except black sky and black water.