Hellcats

by Peter Sasgen

  The next day the Crevalle showed up to exchange information with the Bonefish. In between torpedo attacks, some successful, some not, Steinmetz had been busy reconnoitering minefields. Steinmetz thought it was dangerous having three subs that were operating in one corner of the patrol area rendezvous. He disliked what he called “this dog-sniff-dog stuff” and the “mad flail,” as he put it, to make contact. The two subs parted company and moved on.

  Shortly, a grim-faced radioman handed Edge a decoded message from Fleet Radio in Pearl Harbor: President Roosevelt had died in Warm Springs, Georgia.l Details were sketchy, as was information about the new president, Harry S Truman, whom some of the sailors had never heard of. If any of the men had wanted to take a moment to reflect on FDR and what effect his death might have on the outcome of the war, radar contact with a small echo-ranging patrol boat scrambled them to action. Though it was a very dark night and the patrol boat was only a hazy blur, Edge believed that he had a target worth a torpedo.

  “Stand by tubes One, Two, and Three. Set depth four feet. Gyro angles zero-one-one, zero-one-two, zero-one-three.” The spread of gyro settings guaranteed a hit as the patrol boat advanced left to right across the Bonefish ’s bow. “Fire One!”

  The firing key operator smacked the firing plunger. “Number One fired electrically!”

  A torpedo roared from its tube, turbine lighting off like a buzz saw. Two more followed at ten-second intervals from the forward tubes—not the stern tubes the tail-end Charlies had hoped for.

  Edge pulled away at full power. Aft, in the sub’s boiling wake, the tin fish appeared to run hot, straight, and normal when suddenly all three broached like playful porpoises. Instead of warheads exploding against the enemy ship’s hull, there was only a crushing silence. Alerted by the broachers, the patrol boat turned on her heel and charged back down their damning wakes for the Bonefish. Edge, hauling out, led a merry chase until the Japanese skipper broke off. Edge decided against a follow-up attack; he couldn’t justify shooting more torpedoes at a target itching for trouble. Instead, he shaped a course to patrol an area across the southern traffic lanes south of the Tsushima Strait, where he hoped to find loaded ships bound for Japan.

  Two days passed uneventfully. The routine of a so far unproductive patrol was broken only by a parade of small sea trucks and sampans and the sound, always like distant thunder, of heavy depth charging. Perhaps it was the Spadefish or the Crevalle getting a working over by the Japanese. It wasn’t hard to picture eighty-some sweat-drenched men breathing stale air trapped inside a submarine’s hull, counting the seconds until the next drop, praying that it wouldn’t be on top of them. The thunder slowly faded like a departing storm, the outcome unknown until the next rendezvous—or unanswered call—between subs. The Crevalle showed up around midnight on the fourteenth, proving that she’d not fallen victim to the Japanese. There was no sign of the Spadefish.

  Edge took advantage of a lull in the action to start a letter to Sarah. Writing in short spurts, he had time to complete only a small portion each day and used dashed lines (- - - -) to indicate a time break between each part.

  Lovely, dearest wife,

  What can I say but that I love you with all my heart and soul? . . . That I miss you with a constantly aching heart? . . .

  The patrol is moving along but slowly. Events take place but practically none of them are encouraging. Actually there have been few dull days and too few dull moments, though I think we’ll all be glad when this patrol is over. Luckily (and I haven’t mentioned it to you before) it is to be a short one, because of a little special mission assigned. We are thankful for that, anyhow. I know you will jump to the conclusion that we’ve had a highly successful patrol when you receive my cablegram upon our arrival at base, but unless things change radically from their ways so far, it will be a false conclusion. That is one reason we’d just as soon start back now: this area is unpleasant and still there seems little opportunity even to get combat pins and stars for the boys who don’t have them.

  Angel mine, I still think and dream of you too much of every hour of every day! How the time drags! I wonder what you and Boo . . . are doing. Already I can’t help thinking how much Boo will be changed next time I see her....

  In a way I’m surprised to calculate that it has been only roughly two months since I last saw you . . . that makes Jr. only about (-)3 months old now! . . . Tell him again for me, though, that he had better take the very best care of you. . . . 2

  On April 15, the Bonefish received a lifeguard assignment in waters around the approaches to the Tsushima Strait. Hundreds of B-29s flying from bases in the Marianas had been hitting targets deep inside Japan, while suffering heavy losses to enemy fighters and flak. If the crew of a B-29 went down, they stood a good chance of being captured if not killed by the crew of one of those ubiquitous Japanese sea trucks or sampans.

  Patrolling near Kyushu, the Bonefish’s APR radar-detection gear registered a marked increase in Japanese radar emissions. Earlier, Greer had reported to Edge and Steinmetz that a similar increase had been registering on the Seahorse’s APR. The Japanese navy, despite its depleted state, had recently installed on its patrol boats a crude radar system whose emissions mocked submarine SJ radar. More than one sub skipper, decoyed into thinking he had APR contact with a U.S. sub, blundered into a waiting patrol boat. The buildup of radar emissions was a clear indication of increased antisubmarine patrols in the southern Kyushu region. Steinmetz’s earlier quip that the dog-sniffing-dog routine was a prescription for trouble wasn’t lost on Edge as he moved toward the Tsushima Strait to assume lifeguard duty.

  The Bonefish patrolled a thirty-mile triangle in the southern approaches to the Tsushima Strait,m radiomen alert for any messages reporting downed B-29s. It was hard to maintain a steady guard on the lifeguard frequency, as the Bonefish had to bob up and down like a cork to avoid pesky patrolling Japanese planes. Toward noon, during a long, uninterrupted stretch of surface patrolling, a lookout sighted a heavy puff of black smoke on the horizon, and near it, a large flying boat that looked like a U.S. Navy PBY. The plane disappeared into the haze but the smudge of smoke lingered. Smoke on the horizon usually meant that a ship, or better yet, a convoy, might be just over the hill. Edge, eager to find out, ordered, “All ahead flank!”

  The motor macs kicked the throttles wide-open, spooling up the diesels. The Bonefish heeled around in the direction of the smoke. Despite distant aircraft contacts on SD radar, Edge was determined to stay on the surface as long as possible to find the ship before it disappeared. With luck he could dash in, make contact, and, if he did, submerge and fire torpedoes. Yet after a half hour of hard running toward a seemingly endless horizon, there weren’t any stick masts or smoke, much less ships, in sight. Had the lookout been fooled by a mirage? It happened all the time. Edge didn’t blame the lookout; the sea and sun often played optical tricks on seafarers. Still, the young sailor was adamant that smoke was what he saw, not a mirage. But a high periscope search over the horizon revealed only sampans and seagulls, not ships. After an hour spent searching for a phantom in the area of the sighting, Edge was about to turn back when another lookout spotted a large oil slick a half mile off the port bow, and something floating in the water.

  Hauled aboard two Jap aviators from the middle of oil slick after watching another one get out of his life jacket and submerge, not to reappear. Questioning these prisoners disclosed that the smoke had been from their JAKE type planen as it crashed after being shot down by a U.S.N. PBY: the large plane seen from the bridge must have been this PBY. Our lifeguarding turned out differently from what might have been expected, but, anyhow, if the PBY had gone down instead, we would have been there. One prisoner’s foot was badly smashed; the other was the non-com pilot of the plane, who stated the plane was on routine [antisubmarine] patrol! Headed NW back to patrol spot.3

  With the two prisoners aboard the Bonefish, Edge had fulfilled another mission requirement Lockwood had inserted into the op
orders: “When possible, capture Japs for interrogation.”

  In the late afternoon the next day the Bonefish closed in on a two-masted junk and began circling, 40mm guns manned. The junk’s badly frightened crew, young and old alike, gathered on deck, waiting to be boarded. The Bonefish’s photographer’s mate took motion pictures as she drew alongside. A boarding party armed with Thompson submachine guns and Browning Automatic Rifles motioned for the junk’s crew to put over a fender. A man from the vessel clambered aboard the Bonefish to meet one of the Japanese fliers who had offered to interpret. The flier identified both the junk and crew as Korean fishermen. Edge doubted this was true, since the junk looked new and well equipped and was just as likely carrying contraband to the Japanese as it was netting fish. But the forlorn appearance of her crew influenced Edge’s decision to let them go.

  With free time, Edge wrote Sarah about the Japanese prisoners aboard the Bonefish, describing what one of them kept begging him to do.

  We fished a couple of Jap aviators out of the water the other day. They were none of our doing, because they’d been shot down by one of our own planes. We just happened along . . . in time to rescue them. They assumed a little too quickly that we were a Jap sub, so came on board all too easily. Since then, one of them has been begging me to shoot him, every time he sees me! He can write English a bit; so our conversations are . . . [written down]. I have one . . . of a long-winded one I had with him: he wanting to be killed, and my trying to dissuade him! After it was all over he still said, “I [am] happy for death!” As a missionary then, I’m a poop out, but I’ll bring you the conversations as a souvenir, anyhow. Of course we shan’t kill him, but are keeping him as a prisoner, our only fear being that he’ll try to [kill] himself, so all precautions are being taken as to guarding him continuously. It’s a nuisance to have them aboard anyhow, since we really don’t have the room at all.4

  Released from lifeguarding operations, the Bonefish probed for targets in waters close to the Korean coast around the Tsushima Strait, but found only sailboats and sea trucks. Seas began building on the eighteenth, forcing Edge to give up the hunt for ships and instead set a course for the vicinity of the Danjo Gunto minefields. The bad weather moving south with the Bonefish also deterred Edge’s first attempt to map the minefields. It didn’t take much imagination to picture how the heavy seas battering the sub had stirred up all those mines. The recon Lockwood had ordered was dangerous enough without adding to it the risk of colliding with a row of ugly horned balls swinging wildly at the ends of their anchor cables.

  Patrolling, waiting for calmer weather, Edge worked on his letter to Sarah. He included information picked up from the daily fleet news broadcasts and more about his prisoners.

  Well, the boys in Germany seem . . . about ready to end things. . . . I’m impatient for the war to end.... I can’t help feeling that, far away as Europe is, the end of that war brings my eventual return to you a little closer. And that, of course, is about all any of us live for out here.

  I wish [our troops] could land in Japan itself... [that] their homeland could fall [next]. . . . Even our Jap prisoners know that Japan is losing the war. . . . But one [of them] is still disappointed that he didn’t die—die in battle so as to bring honor and happiness to his family! Now he thinks his family probably believes him dead, and he is worried about their shame and sorrow when they find out he is still living as a prisoner instead of dying gloriously on the field of battle.... No wonder it is difficult to make them stop fighting.5

  The twenty-first brought clear weather and calm seas. In preparation for the mine recon the sonarmen began tuning up the FMS gear. Edge, meanwhile, brought the Bonefish around onto a course that would intersect the northeastern end of the mine line. As dawn broke he gave the order to dive.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Probing the Line

  As Lawrence Edge prepared to carry out the mine recon off Danjo Gunto, the plans for Operation Barney’s implementation that had been in flux for months finally jelled. Barney Sieglaff and Dick Voge settled on a basic operational plan. The mission would kick off from Guam on May 27 and employ nine subs in three separate task groups, numbered TG 17.21, TG 17.22, and TG 17.23. The groups would penetrate the Tsushima Strait individually on successive days through June 4, 5, and 6.

  Once inside the Sea of Japan, the packs would operate independently in three areas. TG 17.21 would stalk along the northwestern coast of Honshu; TG 17.22 would patrol along the southwestern coast of Honshu and Kyushu; TG 17.23 would operate in an area along the east coast of Korea from Tsushima Island to the southern coast of Siberia. The mission would end on June 24, when the three task groups rendezvoused to make their exit run through La Pérouse Strait.

  The nine FMS-equipped submarines included the Seahorse, Crevalle, Spadefish, Tunny, Bonefish, Flying Fish, Bowfin, Tinosa, and the USS Skate (SS-305). The Skate, commanded by Commander Richard B. “Ozzie” Lynch, a Naval Academy classmate from Alabama and friend of Lawrence Edge, was added to the group when she arrived in Guam. The Flying Fish was still in San Diego for the comparison trials between competing sonar-detection systems. The Operation Barney brain trust of Lockwood, Voge, and Sieglaff assumed that FMS would ultimately prove itself in tests against competing systems, and when it did, the Barney subs would assemble in Guam. As for the tactical aspects of Barney, fresh intelligence backed the use of La Pérouse Strait as an exit route. And to ensure that the subs didn’t run afoul of Allied mines dropped in the Sea of Japan by B-29s, charts of those areas would be sent to ComSubPac for distribution to the submarines.

  With everything in place, Voge submitted the plan for Operation Barney to the Pearl Harbor-based Submarine Operations Research Group (SORG) for an evaluation of the risks involved. SORG consisted of a group of civilians, all of whom were experts in the field of actuary science, among other disciplines. The group provided ComSubPac with objective evaluations derived from theoretical and statistical analysis of the tactics commonly employed by submarines, including torpedo attacks and methods of evading enemy antisubmarine patrols. SORG believed that a careful analysis of tactics would help determine which ones were effective and which ones were not. Voge assumed that if there were any glaring flaws in the plans for Operation Barney, SORG would find them and offer suggestions on how to fix them. In addition, Voge knew that SORG would offer an opinion on the mission’s chances of success and its likely outcome. Lockwood had concurred in Voge’s decision to seek SORG’s advice. He also had no reason to doubt that Operation Barney would receive the panel’s unequivocal support.

  On April 18, Lockwood hopped a flight from Guam to Pearl Harbor to wrap up loose ends pertaining to Operation Barney, after which he and selected SubPac staffers would fly to San Diego for the mine-detector competition. Despite the long flight to Hawaii and with only a few hours’ sleep, Lockwood went straight aboard the Skate to witness tests of her FM sonar, and UCDWR’s pillenwerfer decoy system, the Alka-Seltzer- like noisemakers that masked enemy sonar. Several subs, including the Seahorse, had been similarly equipped with pillenwerfers, and this was Lockwood’s first opportunity to see one at work.

  With the tests concluded, Lockwood pronounced the Skate’s FMS ready for service and Lynch’s handling of it superb. The pillenwerfers, too. Departing for the States, Lockwood felt certain that Operation Barney would be a total success. What he didn’t know was that while he and his colleagues were airborne over the Pacific, a Japanese hunter-killer group working around the Goto Retto had sprung a trap on the reconnoitering Seahorse that had Harry Greer and his battle-hardened crew fighting for their lives.

  Days before the Seahorse was jumped by the Japanese hunter-killer group, she had conducted a recon of minefields off the east coast of Formosa. While reconnoitering she encountered a problem with one of her mine-clearing cables that had been hastily installed at Guam and now had parted. It had taken a heroic effort on the part of the Seahorse’s crew, working in frigid and rough water, to clear it.1 The episode for
eshadowed problems with mine-clearing cables that would later plague more than one submarine during Operation Barney.

  Greer was also plagued by the Kuroshio Current, which set the Seahorse to the north at a two-knot clip during the period of her submerged mine recon. It took superb seamanship to prevent the current from twisting the ship sideways into the forest of cables tethering the mines. Greer knew that the Kuroshio Current would have a similar effect on subs up in the Tsushima Strait and made note of its strength in his patrol report.2

  Greer radioed Pearl with the results: ninety-seven densely packed mines in a field just north of Formosa, accounted for and mapped. With his mission accomplished, Greer made tracks for his next patrol station outside the Tsushima Strait, where the Bonefish would later conduct her lifeguard assignment.

  The Seahorse arrived in the area on April 9 and within hours Greer heard distant exploding depth charges. There was, he noted in his patrol report, a heavy presence of enemy antisubmarine patrols.

  0800 Hear two “pingers” [echo-ranging] far away but getting nearer.