Hellcats

by Peter Sasgen

  Like all sub skippers, Earl Hydeman in the Sea Dog made it his business to tour his ship at least once a day to make certain that she and her crew would be ready for action when it came. In his Standing Orders Log he had posted the orders to be followed scrupulously by watch standers—especially the OOD—in all circumstances, as before long the ship would enter enemy waters.

  In his standing orders Hydeman emphasized that officers of the deck “have the full responsibility for the ship and all the men in her. You should make the men on your watch feel, and act, their share of this responsibility also. As OOD, you are senior to all on board except the Commanding and Executive Officers; you are responsible, in turn, for keeping these officers fully informed.”1

  “I desire full reports of anything observed outside the ship [he wrote]; any untoward occurrence within the ship, or anything which changes the ship’s military effectiveness, maneuverability in any manner, or ability to dive or surface. I do not desire reports concerning the ship’s normal routine, unless for some reason it is not being maintained.”

  The Hellcats’ normal routine got interrupted when the Tinosa of Risser’s Bobcats made a detour to pick up the downed aircrew of a B-29, which they transferred to another submarine returning to Guam. On May 31, the Spadefish and Sea Dog received information provided by a U.S. patrol bomber and ComSubPac that another aircrew had ditched in their vicinity, east of the Nansei Shoto Islands. The two subs scoured the area but didn’t find them. Hydeman ordered the pack to resume their northwesterly course to keep to their schedule.

  During the northerly trek Hydeman made time to test the Sea Dog’s FMS on a pillenwerfer target. If he expected to see the decoy’s cloud of exploding bubbles show up as a sharp green pear on the PPI scope, he was sorely disappointed. The laconic Hydeman reported, “Made dive for training and test of FM gear. Not satisfactory. Commenced repairs.” Hydeman set the electronics gang to work on it, the OOD and watch standers high-stepping over parts and tools swaddled in clean shop rags on the diamond-patterned steel deck in the conning tower. Hydeman ran another submerged test early the next day. This time the retuned sonar gear demonstrated exceptional sensitivity, clear bell tones, and crisp, well-defined pears. But Hydeman’s day turned sour when he learned that the SJ and ST radars had gone on the fritz.

  In his patrol report Hydeman fumed over this development.2 “This was a low for the life of the Sea Dog; having been plagued with many minor material problemsr throughout the ship since the day after departure, we now lose our radar just before a scheduled transit through the Nansei Shoto.” With two radar units out of commission, Hydeman faced a serious problem. Radar was absolutely essential to the operation; without its all-seeing eye the Sea Dog would be groping blindly as she approached the myriad of islands both big and small scattered throughout the Nansei Shoto, and later, as she made her run into the mouth of the Tsushima Strait.

  Leaden clouds piling in threatened heavy weather when Hydeman rendezvoused with the Crevalle east of the Nansei Shoto to outline the radar problem he had. Steinmetz agreed to run interference for the Sea Dog as the two subs groped their way north through blinding rain.

  Ten hours later Hydeman logged the following into his patrol report:Completed transit of the strait south of Akuseki [Island]. Crevalle did an admiral job of leading the blind, and is continuing to do so. We are communicating by VHF, following her signalled course changes, and managing to keep her wake in sight most of the time. Rain poured during most of the transit thru [sic] the strait. Fortunately, no [enemy ship] contacts were made by the Crevalle. Still working on the radars; have managed to get some results from the ST, but SJ refuses to revive yet. Informed Crevalle that completion of repairs by tomorrow was improbable, and asked his plans. He [Steinmetz] gave details and promised to look us up after surfacing tomorrow night and resume his duties as a “Seeing Eye dog” for us.

  As planned, the next night, June 2, the Crevalle found the Sea Dog and led her to a morning rendezvous with the Spadefish in preparation for their Tsushima Strait run-in. Just in time the Sea Dog’s radars came back online after a herculean effort by the radar officer and his technicians. At midnight the three subs crossed the imaginary line marking the southern approaches to the Tsushima Strait. Hydeman led his Hepcats into the western channel with the Spadefish in trail and the Crevalle off the Sea Dog’s port beam. Small craft of all descriptions buzzed across the strait like water bugs. Hydeman estimated that the Hepcats had a three-hour run through this traffic to reach their dive points. If they didn’t run into Japanese patrols, and if their luck held and they didn’t hit any mines, they’d be in the Sea of Japan by late afternoon of June fourth. Hydeman reminded his skippers by radio that their submerged transit would require nerves of steel and masterful ship handling. In regard to the latter, he cautioned that the inflowing Kuroshio Current possessed sufficient strength to push a sub sideways into the rows of mines dancing at the ends of their tethers. This was the real thing, not one of Lockwood’s dummy minefields.

  Hydeman kept an eye on the ship’s clocks and the navigator’s plot of their course into the straits. So far so good. A contact report from the Spadefish about a possible patrol boat didn’t deter Hydeman; it was too late now to alter plans. Three hours past midnight on June fourth, the navigator tapped the chart lying on the plotting table. “We’re there, Captain.”

  Hydeman had chosen a diving point assumed to lie many miles away from the first line of mines. It would give the three subs plenty of time to get into their positions in the strait before they had to run through the first line. Hydeman acknowledged the navigator’s accurate calculation, pushed away from the chart table, and went topside. Weather conditions for the transit looked ideal: A low, easy swell under a light breeze wouldn’t set the mines dancing like demons. Hydeman gave the order: “Officer of the deck, dive the ship.”

  “Dive the ship, aye.” The OOD bawled into the IMC, “Dive! Dive!” then sounded the diving alarm.

  The Sea Dog buried her bull nose in the night-black sea. On a north-easterly course, she began her run into the minefields that lay dead ahead. Hydeman called away a quick test of the FMS that returned excellent results on a pillenwerfer tracked out to five hundred yards. Hydeman felt confident that if there were any mines up ahead, FMS would ferret them out.

  “Make your depth one-one-zero feet,” Hydeman ordered. “Maintain a two-degree up angle. All ahead slow.” This is it, he could have added, but didn’t, because every sailor aboard the Sea Dog, if not fingering a rosary or saying a silent prayer, was thinking the same thought their skipper was: This is it!

  The Polecats and Bobcats weren’t far behind the Hepcats. The six had transited the Nansei Shoto without incident and were closing in on their scheduled assaults on Tsushima.

  During the long voyage, George Pierce in the Tunny had conducted training dives and mock attacks on Hepcats Skate and Bonefish to keep his crew sharp and alert for contact with the enemy. As the Hepcats stood toward Tsushima, they encountered heavy ship traffic, which called for broken-field running to stand clear. Many a juicy target had to be ignored. As Sieglaff had warned, an early attack would alert the Japanese that submarines had entered the area. Because the traffic was so heavy no one seemed to notice the three submarines in their midst, perhaps mistaking the Hepcats for small, fast steamers. The Skate and Bonefish rendezvoused with the Tunny to exchange information on the number and type of contacts they’d so far encountered, then set off on separate courses to avoid arousing suspicion, which three subs running at flank speed on the same course surely would.

  Meanwhile, the Flying Fish, Bowfin, and Tinosa closed in on their objective from the south. The Flying Fish and Bowfin, too, had spent time searching for downed aircrews along the way, but none were found. Risser in the Flying Fish, eager to get to their destination and begin the transit into the Sea of Japan, had urged his pack mates on.

  The Polecats and Bobcats, coming up behind Hydeman’s Hepcats, timed their arrival so that Hydem
an’s group would have time to clear the strait, giving the remaining submarines a wide-open lane through which to make their transit.

  The Sea Dog slowly felt her way into the western channel of the Tsushima Strait. The Kuroshio Current’s inflow, pushing from astern, gave the sub a three-knot speed of advance. While this low speed of entry allowed for reasonable depth control, the current’s push tended to crab the submarine sideways off course, as they had been repeatedly warned. The Sea Dog’s helmsman had his hands full steering the ship. Difficult as low-speed ship control was proving to be, should a mine suddenly loom up dead ahead, the submarine could be slowed and even stopped by reversing both props and backing down in time to avoid a fatal collision.

  As the helmsman wrestled with the wheel, a sweat-soaked FMS sonarman scrutinized the sonar screen. Hydeman, watching over the man’s shoulder, wanted to see bright green pears and hear hell’s bells peal a warning that the sub had come into sonar range of the first mine string. He hoped to make contact sooner rather than later, to prove that the FMS was working. As the Sea Dog made steady progress through the strait, the glowing electronic contact beam swept around and around the PPI scope, its knife-sharp line so far uninterrupted by solid contacts. The deeper into the strait the Sea Dog penetrated, the quieter the ship became. Men exchanged inquiring looks: Was the damn thing working or wasn’t it?

  Hydeman had suggested, but not ordered, that men not on watch stay put in their bunks to reduce the confusion of having fidgety sailors with time on their hands moving about the ship. It would also conserve oxygen, as the submerged run would take at least sixteen hours.

  The men were scared. It showed on their sweat-burnished faces. If the FMS wasn’t working what chance did they have to survive their run through the minefields? None. A rumor shot through the boat: The FMS wasn’t working; it never had worked, and the captain and officers had known it since leaving Guam.3 Some men claimed they heard mine cables scraping down the sides of the Sea Dog’s hull. Others didn’t hear a thing, only the soft hum of ventilation blowers. Some men feared that the cables that they thought they heard would snag on the sub and that her forward momentum would drag the mines down onto the ship, detonating them. Two hours into the run the sound of distant explosionss rumbled through the sea. Depth charges? Or had the Spadefish and Crevalle hit mines? Then more explosions, this time heavy enough to shake the Sea Dog.4 Was the Sea Dog destined to hit mines, too? Hydeman certainly didn’t think so. Those undefined green blobs now blooming on the PPI—were they schools of fish or kelp? Could be either. It told Hydeman that FMS was working just fine and that there weren’t any mines ahead of the ship, because the Sea Dog had lucked into a clear channel for use by Japanese shipping.

  But sailors, even sub sailors, are superstitious, and to some of them on the Sea Dog, a sudden stroke of luck seemed too improbable. Gremlins—it had to be gremlins, the same ones that had attacked the ship’s radars. Hydeman, the calm, steady-handed submariner, didn’t believe in gremlins any more than he believed the ship’s FMS would fail when needed most. Nevertheless, to provide a margin of safety in case the sonar unit suddenly went haywire, and recalling Sieglaff’s stern warning to stay below two hundred feet in the event it did, he ran submerged as deep as he could, using the Fathometer to guide the Sea Dog over the strait’s scarped and heaved bottom. These waters hid Japan’s violent geologic history.

  Sixteen tension-filled hours later, Hydeman made an announcement: The Sea Dog had entered the Sea of Japan. And to prove to all the doubters that the FMS was working just fine, he fired another pillenwerfer, which the PPI followed out to eight hundred yards. Hydeman raised the scope and described what he saw: a sea truck loaded with lumber, a large Japanese flag painted on her side, standing out from Korea toward Honshu.5

  Hydeman surfaced the ship. Recharging batteries and air bottles, exchanging fresh air for foul, he set a course northeast for the Sea Dog’s patrol area off Honshu near the city of Niigata. The question the men aboard the Sea Dog were asking was, What had happened to the Spadefish and Crevalle? What about those explosions . . . ?

  As it turned out the Spadefish’s transit, according to skipper Bill Germershausen, “was hair-raising but uneventful.” The sub’s FMS picked up mines, which the unit displayed with extraordinary clarity. Like the Sea Dog, the Spadefish ran deep, clearing the mines she encountered with ease. The real surprise came when the Spadefish surfaced after her sixteen-hour run and Germershausen saw Japanese ships steaming along the coast without escorts or air cover, red and green running lights ablaze as if it were peacetime. Germershausen could only watch them go by as he sprinted for his assigned operating area on Honshu’s southwestern coast.

  Everett Steinmetz had submerged the Crevalle in the strait, the Sea Dog off her starboard beam, the Spadefish astern. Steinmetz had had serious doubts all along about the efficacy of FMS, what with its inconsistency. Training on it at Pearl Harbor and Guam hadn’t changed his mind. Now, however, Steinmetz was relying on it to locate mines showing up on the PPI in double rows at regular intervals. Okay so far, but, he grumbled, some of those mines hadn’t registered until the Crevalle was within a hundred yards of them, too close for comfort.

  As if double rows of mines weren’t enough, the Crevalle passed under a pair of echo-ranging picket boats, their presence all the more sinister for a string of ship-rocking explosions, the same ones heard by the Sea Dog and Spadefish. Steinmetz said, “Although the [explosions] are not aimed at us they are close enough to cause the ‘Lifted Eyebrow Department’ to function every time.”6

  Despite mines and picket boats, the Crevalle made it on through. She surfaced surrounded by small craft, none of which seemed to notice that an American sub had, as if by magic, appeared in their midst. That they didn’t was a mistake that they and their leaders in Tokyo would regret.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Threading the Needle

  The Skate, a unit of George Pierce’s Polecats, got off to a slow start from Guam. She’d barely cleared the antisubmarine nets guarding Apra Harbor when her skipper, Richard Lynch, received a salty report from the ship’s engineering officer of a potentially disastrous breakdown. Lube oil in a reduction gear sump had dropped to zero through an open valve. After refilling the sump the motor macs saw the obvious: a port motor bearing had wiped out. The motor macs shifted power to the starboard shaft and replaced the bearing. In his report of the incident, Lynch wrote, “That very sound advice of that eminent Machinist’s Mate, Simon McWrench should never be taken lightly: ‘Don’t never start no motors unless you got plenty orl in the berrins.’”1

  The Skate, slowed but not stopped, caught up to the Bonefish and Tunny headed north. On June fourth, south of Tsushima, Lynch rendezvoused with the two Polecats to synchronize their submerged runs through the straits. Neither Edge in the Bonefish nor George Pierce in the Tunny had encountered any opposition as they approached the target.

  The Tunny went through first. Her FMS worked perfectly, locating several strings of mines, which Pierce and his crew easily avoided. When he surfaced in the Sea of Japan he saw four fat, zigzagging targets. “What a temptation,” he said, remembering that he had orders to hold fire until Mike Day.

  The Bonefish followed the Tunny. She made a safe transit, but there’s no record of how many mines she encountered and no report detailing the operational performance of her FMS. If Edge reported this information to Lynch or Pierce during one of two post-transit rendezvous, it isn’t mentioned in their patrol reports.

  The Skate followed the Bonefish, and, like the Tunny, encountered several strings of mines sown across the strait. There were so many overlapping strings that Lynch thought for a time that there weren’t any gaps in the lines for his sub to get through. Then, one appeared. Squeezing through it, the Skate’s bow brushed a mine cable. This was no phantom like the one heard aboard the Sea Dog; it was the real white-knuckle thing. Undaunted, Lynch pressed forward and somewhere between strings brought the sub to periscope depth for a l
ook around and to try to get a navigation fix from a landmark ashore.

  From his low-lying perspective, the scope just a few feet above the surface, Lynch observed a narrow and rocky coast overshadowed by sheer promontories. Massive and rugged, the western coast of Japan bore a striking resemblance to the coast of Maine. Its waters brimmed with small islands and narrow inlets. A network of lighthouses strung up and down the coast had in peacetime warned seafarers of the presence of dangerous rocks and shoals. Now, blacked out, their mute presence underscored the risks the Hellcats would have to run hunting targets along the coast. A submarine skipper audacious enough to enter these waters submerged would need skills bordering on the divine. Lynch dunked the scope and continued on, until the Skate stood clear of the strait, where it was safe to surface.

  While the crews of the Hepcats and Polecats were breathing sighs of relief after their transits, Risser’s Bobcats had yet to run the gauntlet. The Flying Fish went through first without a hitch. Early in the transit Risser became convinced that there weren’t any mines—at least until the FMS started clanging and flashing after contacting solid mine balls on the sub’s port and starboard beams. After evading this obstacle, the Flying Fish successfully dodged a patrol boat hanging around in the channel. All things considered, Risser thought it a rather routine operation.