Hellcats

by Peter Sasgen

  Unlike the Flying Fish, the Bowfin encountered plenty of mines. Some of them had been planted less than sixty yards apart. Inching the Bowfin between them proved a tricky affair. In the conning tower Alec Tyree, eyes locked on the PPI scope, ears pricked for bell tones, searched for openings in the mine lines wide enough to conn the Bowfin through without snagging a cable. Tyree found them, but the stress it caused left him and his watch standers “mentally and emotionally exhausted by the experience.”

  Close calls by the Bowfin and the Skate proved simply a prelude to the Tinosa’s skirmish with what must have seemed to her skipper, Richard Latham, and his crew to be a deadly jungle of mine cables intent on trapping the submarine in an entangling embrace.

  Ahead of the Tinosa’s penetration, Latham said he was feeling the effects that lack of sleep had brought on by long hours spent on the bridge. He agreed to a plan proposed by his exec, Lieutenant Commander Harvey J. Smith Jr., to spell each other during the most arduous part of the run. Several miles into the western channel, and while Latham slept, the Tinosa ’s hell’s bells started ringing just as the PPI’s screen began throbbing with green pear-shaped blobs.

  “Mines!” Smith and the FM sonarman huddled around the PPI screen, shoulders touching in the narrow space.2 Green blobs had blossomed on either side of the Tinosa’s bow. As she approached the string, the blobs’ shapes on the screen sharpened into deadly-looking pears. Smith knew from training at Guam that these were definitely mines, not schools of fish, patches of kelp, or anything else. Just big, solid mines.

  Sailors ran sweaty palms over dungareed pant legs, licked dry lips. “Steady as she goes,” Smith ordered. Every man knew that death danced unseen at the end of a cable just a few yards away, and that even a gentle brush against a mine’s fragile horns would doom the Tinosa. But the Tinosa advanced and the mines slipped safely astern until at last the hideous green blobs faded from the screen and hell’s bells stopped ringing. Even so the men at their stations heard blood pounding in their ears. No one spoke except for the duty telephone talker, who in a calm, steady voice gave the anxious men in other parts of the ship a running description of the action. “Mines are passing abeam. Signal’s getting weaker by the second. Sonar’s tracking the mines while Mr. Smith’s conning the boat between them. Mines are astern now.... Everyone can relax.”

  But no sooner had they penetrated the first row than hell’s bells started their frightful ringing again. The PPI scope displayed a seemingly impenetrable wall of green pears dead ahead. Smith voiced what they had learned during training exercises: Mines are never sown in solid rows.

  Hearing a sailor’s croaked, “There’s always a first time,” Smith counseled, “No, there’s always a space between them. Keep looking for it.”

  The Tinosa inched forward. Smith felt the Kuroshio Current pushing hard from astern and knew that it would have the sub up against the mine wall in less than a minute. Too late to sheer away and start another approach, Smith was about to give the order to back down emergency when a gap appeared on the PPI scope.

  With adroit manipulation of screws and rudder, Smith put the Tinosa ’s bow into the gap between two mines. She squeezed on through, gingerly, like a person feeling for an open doorway in a dark room. In a few more minutes the mines would pass clear on either side. The men cheered and slapped one another on the back—

  “Pipe down!” someone bellowed. “Listen.”

  Abaft the conning tower, the squeal of steel on steel began working down the Tinosa’s port side. It sounded like a sea monster clawing at the sub’s hull. Mine cable! Men froze in their tracks. Would the welded-on clearing lines prevent disaster? If the cable snagged on something—a cleat, a diving plane, a propeller—the Tinosa’s forward motion might set the mine off or drag the mine ball down against the hull, breaking the dreaded horns, setting off the acid-filled detonators. Either way the Tinosa was a goner.

  The young sailor coolly describing the action to his shipmates had lost his voice. Slack-jawed, he pivoted his head in the direction of the horrid, squealing sound like fingernails on a blackboard. His gaze had fixed, as had his mates’, on the sub’s curved pressure hull and its tangle of pipes and valves, where the mine cable seemed within arm’s reach.

  Smith faced a dilemma. If he tried to turn the Tinosa away from the cable she might get driven sideways by the current into the other mine cables hanging in her path up ahead. There was nothing Smith could do but wait for the squealing outside the crew’s berthing compartment to work down the hull, where, a hundred feet aft, the submarine’s stern diving planes and slowly turning propellers were waiting to snag the mine cable, to drag it down. The men trapped inside the Tinosa’s hull hardly dared to breathe as they prayed for the squealing to stop.

  The cable crawled past the after engine room, where the hull tapered toward the stern and the diving planes and props. Time stood still. The cable was only inches away, little more than the thickness of the Tinosa’s hull, from sailors who expected at any moment to hear the explosion of a Japanese mine sending them to eternity. Instead they heard an eerie silence as the cable cleared the planes and props and disappeared into the Tinosa’s wake.

  When Latham’s head and shoulders appeared above the hatch coaming in the conning tower, it was all over; the sea monster had retreated. “Everything normal?” Latham asked Smith.

  “Just a few mines, Captain. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll turn in.”

  When the Tinosa surfaced in the Sea of Japan, the submariners all agreed that they’d survived the worst of it and that from now on whatever they might encounter would pale by comparison. Young, resilient, in no time at all they had resumed their cocky, profane banter, even needling the cooks ladling out hot food. With the smoking lamp relighted and spirits high, someone broke out a worn acey-deucey board and a deck of greasy playing cards.

  Latham sensed how eager his crew was, despite the restrictions on opening fire too early, to start sinking Japanese ships. They would, and soon. But before setting course for the Tinosa’s patrol station, Latham undertook some needed voyage repairs. With seas building, two men crawled forward onto the ship’s plunging bow to free two mine cable clearing lines that had come adrift, fouling both bow planes. It was dangerous work that had to be carried out as cold seawater exploded over the main deck, soaking the huddled men fighting to untangle the thick, twisted cables that had carried away from their welded moorings. They also had to rig a homemade clearing cable in place of one that had been looped across the two forward deck cleats and which had also been carried away. Work completed, the exhausted, shivering men went below to hot showers, dry clothes, and warm food. Latham pulled the plug and took the Tinosa down to 120 feet to flee the now gale-force winds and give the crew a rest. Mike Day was two days hence. The Tinosa had a full load of torpedoes, and, like his men, Latham was eager to start shooting.

  Meanwhile, in Guam the days since the Hellcats’ departure hung heavy for Lockwood as he waited for a radio message from Hydeman about the status of the Hellcats.

  Lockwood had outlined his plans for future attacks in the Sea of Japan in a letter dated June first and stamped TOP SECRET, which he sent to Frank Watkins in Washington. Before getting down to the business of his letter, Lockwood first thanked Watkins for the gift of six boxes of his favorite cigars, Crema Quintero. Lighting one up, he wrote:Our first pack of 9 FM boats left here on 27-28-29 May, and we should be hearing from them on 9 June. I have absolute confidence in their ability to make it and my only regret is that we have not a second wave to put through about 1 July. I expect to meet them on their return at Pearl about 6 July and get the dope straight from the horses’ mouth.... Recent developments and plans indicate that a very heavy concentration will be needed in the new hunting ground as soon as we can get it there.... The big thing to stress in placing pressure on the FM program is just that we need the maximum number which can be produced in the minimum time.3

  Watkins wrote back on June 9, 1945:According to yo
ur letter you should hear from your FM Packs today. We have had our fingers crossed and a good grip on our left one, pulling for you. I too am confident that you will get good news.4

  Lockwood, savoring the fat Crema Quintero, blew a trumpet of smoke toward the ceiling in his office as he viewed the magnetic deployment board covered with submarine silhouettes. Yes, any minute now he might hear something from Hydeman. If the news was as good as Lockwood expected it would be, then he and Watkins—and everyone else, for that matter—could let go of their nuts.

  PART THREE

  Operation Barney

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The Death of an Empire

  June 9, 1945. Aboard the Wakatama Maru off the coast of Korea.

  She’d been battling heavy seas all afternoon. As the weather slowly moderated, the navigator shot sun lines to get an accurate fix. The Wakatama Maru had an hour’s steaming to make port at Bokuko Ko, Korea. For her crew it meant a good meal and, after loading the cargo awaiting her arrival, a decent night’s sleep on a straw-filled mattress, not a hammock tossing like flotsam on a heaving sea.

  Her crew had been having an easy time of it. Imperial merchant marine service, especially in the Sea of Japan, was easy duty. Though air raids by American carrier-based planes and long-range B-29s posed a constant threat, none of the ports in Japan where the Wakatama Maru off-loaded her cargoes of Korean lumber, ore, and rice had been hit. Best of all, the Wakatama Maru was a new ship, a proud ship, a good ship, not one of those old rust buckets pressed into emergency service for the emperor. Displacing 2,200 tons, she was over 300 feet long. Powered by modern triple-expansion engines and Parsons geared turbines, she could make turns for twelve knots.

  The Wakatama Maru slowed as she approached Bokuko Ko. The sea bottom there rose abruptly inshore and a prudent seaman kept a weather eye on soundings for shoals. A moment’s inattention and a ship could easily run aground—

  Ba-whoomp! A tremendous explosion of flame, smoke, and pinwheeling debris erupted from the Wakatama Maru’s well deck. An exploding torpedo warhead lifted her out of the water, breaking her in two. Her amputated bow and stern halves hung suspended in midair for a brief moment before collapsing into the sea. Spewing sparks, smoke, and steam, the upended halves disappeared under a vast dome of swirling bubbles. A floating hatch cover, splintered planks, and a few struggling, oil-soaked men marked her grave.

  Richard Latham had watched her come on, steaming blindly into range, blissfully unaware of the Tinosa lying in wait. “I must not let this guy get away,” Latham thought.1 And he didn’t. He felt no remorse or pity for her crew; in submarine warfare there was room for only one sentiment: the satisfaction of the kill. The survivors were close to shore and would likely get there on their own before anyone realized that the ship was missing, as she’d gone down so fast there might not have been time to send an SOS.

  The surprise attack phase of Operation Barney was now officially under way. But Latham had jumped the gun, violating Lockwood’s orders to wait until sunset to open fire on Mike Day. Instead, he’d opened fire midday. Latham justified his action on the grounds that the other Hellcats were already in their assigned positions and that moving the deadline up a few hours and sinking a two-thousand-ton ship wouldn’t give the Japanese an advantage they could use.t

  To the east, across the Sea of Japan, Earl Hydeman in the Sea Dog inspected a harbor tucked between the two offset halves of Sado Island lying west of Honshu. Eager to sink ships, he nevertheless followed Lockwood’s orders to the letter, waiting until sunset of Mike Day to open fire. Earlier in the day he’d held fire on a medium-size freighter that had passed within torpedo range. Hydeman didn’t find any ships in the harbor, so he entered the narrow slot between Sado Island and the coast of Honshu. A high periscope trained east brought the coastal city of Niigata into focus.

  As if timed to Mike Day, while the sub was preparing to surface just after sundown the Sea Dog’s sound watch reported screws on a southwest heading. Hydeman turned the scope from its view of Niigata and saw a small freighter “running along serenely,” as he put it, “on a steady course, side lights burning brightly.”

  “Make ready all tubes,” Hydeman ordered. “Stand by forward.”

  The tracking party worked a quick, clean firing solution; the Sea Dog swung onto a ninety-degree track for a broadside shot.

  “Match gyro forward, tube One!”

  “Gyro twenty right, aye.”

  “Steady on one-one-zero!”

  “Fire One!”

  The Sea Dog lurched as the torpedo surged from its tube. Fifteen seconds into its run Hydeman motioned “up scope.” Eight seconds later—ba-whoomp! He saw a flash of light and a thick spout of water at the ship’s side. Heavily damaged, she went down in sixty seconds, leaving behind a solitary lifeboat loaded with men pulling oars, headed for shore.

  There was barely time to savor the kill before another target, a freighter making nine knots, loomed up on radar. On the surface, Hydeman followed the ship against the glow of Niigata’s lights. He saw the vessel’s blocky silhouette looking like a flat black cardboard cutout pasted on the lighter-colored horizon. “Here he comes. Stand by forward . . .” And, “Fire One!” Ten seconds later, “Fire Two! . . . Fire Three!”

  Three chalk lines—torpedo bubble trails—shot from the Sea Dog’s bow. The first torpedo missed and so did the second one, taking off on an erratic course of its own.2 But Hydeman wasn’t denied. A solid, satisfying hit from the third torpedo started a fire around the target’s stern. Pandemonium broke out aboard the stricken ship. Panicked sailors ran to and fro while others calmly cranked out lifeboats from their davits. Though taking on water, the ship somehow managed to get under way again. “She’s one tough bitch, ain’t she, Cap’n?” said one of the sailors assisting the fire control party.

  Hydeman agreed. “Fire Four!”

  A hit forward of amidships slowed the freighter down, then stopped her dead. Her foremast toppled over, after which her bow dipped beneath the waves and broke off, leaving both midsection and stern angled skyward as they floated away in the dark.

  Hydeman headed up the coast to find more targets before the Japanese realized that two ships were missing and sounded the alarm.

  Mike Day was profitable for the Hellcats. Not only had the Tinosa and Sea Dog sunk ships, so had the Crevalle, working in an area north of where the Sea Dog had downed her two. The Crevalle had been prowling the coast as far north as the Tsugaru Strait, mindful of the mines dropped by B-29s. Like the Tinosa, she, too, had been plagued by mine-clearing wires coming adrift, which had fouled her bow planes, necessitating jury-rigging and, before dawn, the need to put men topside to effect repairs. Work completed, it was well after sunset on Mike Day when the call, “Radar contact!” alerted a crew already tensed for action.

  Steinmetz horsed up the ladder into the conning tower—sure enough, there was a target on the radar screen: “Battle stations night radar!” He scrambled up to the bridge and saw an unescorted freighter with a distinctive raked bow lumbering into view against the land background. To Steinmetz, she looked as big as a house. Though the ship was blacked out, from time to time Steinmetz saw a bright light spill from an open door in her after deckhouse, which made her easy to follow.

  Steinmetz swung the Crevalle around to bring her stern tubes to bear. Two torpedo hits flung flame and debris into the night sky. The maru staggered drunkenly, dropped her head, and went down under a pall of sooty black smoke. “Definitely sunk,” Steinmetz reported.3

  He sank another ship the next day, June tenth, an engines-aft cargo ship. He put two torpedoes into her, then watched her “turn turtle.” In a sea of debris Steinmetz and his men on the Crevalle’s bridge counted about twenty-five survivors in the water clinging to a life raft. Earlier, Steinmetz had fired a single torpedo at an old-fashioned tug towing a raft of logs, only to see the tin fish skim along the surface like a playful dolphin and pass within inches of the tug’s forefoot for a big miss. “Not
so good,” he said. This was better.

  It was even better the next day, June 11—comical, too—when Steinmetz picked up another ship early in the morning.

  0252 Target on northerly course . . . making about 7-8 kts. Manned Battle Stations. Target not seen from bridge until 5500 y. range. It’s getting fairly light but we are both in a rain squall. Decided to try to get him on the surface. Headed in at 15 kts. . . . [F] ired two torpedoes to hit at M.O.T.

  0312 Rang up all stop.

  0310 Fired tube #5 and # 6. Just a split second before firing, rain stopped and C.O. was about to order not to shoot. However, first fish was away on previous orders. . . .

  0314 Target apparently sees us or the one torpedo that broached. Swung left with full rudder and went ahead flank. We went off in a cloud of smoke. Target blowing whistle and looks as if he is backing down. Smoke pouring from his stack.

  No timed hits. Started running ahead of target at 4500 yd. range. Realize that we should have gotten ahead and submerged in the first place. . . .

  0325 Target in plain sight from bridge, binoculars not necessary.

  0328 Submerged. Will try for a last chance gamble.

  0331 At 58 ft. using ST [radar]. C.O. called angle on the bow 150 degrees port. ST called C.O. a liar as range is closing. We couldn’t believe our eyes. Nobody is that dumb. They must have seen us dive. Managed to calm down enough to get two tubes ready and swing to firing course. . . . This guy resumed his base course and kept on. He must have given the engineers hell as he is making ¾ of a kt more speed. His stack shows it.