The skipper had the periscope up when they came to depth. Lieutenant Mendenhall was at the TDC and plugged in the information as Chappell called it out: speed, 10 knots; range, 3,700 yards. They were at the outside edge of the torpedoes’ capabilities, but fired three fish at four-second intervals. Once again the stopwatches came out as they waited to hear the results. Chappell raised the periscope again to see the torpedo wakes streak out from the ship, confirming the soundman’s report that they were running hot, straight, and normal. While he was watching, the target made another change of course, and the stopwatches pegged out well past the time when the torpedoes should have hit the ship.
Chappell reloaded the tubes and surfaced to try to make an end-around before dawn, but the target ship was still too far away by daybreak. It was useless to try to beat it to Staring Bay because the sub would surely be spotted on the surface during the daylight hours. They swallowed their disappointment and submerged to continue the search for the aircraft carrier or any other ships that might come their way.
The next day they chased two contacts that didn’t develop into attacks, and were submerged at about 4:00 P.M. when Sculpin spotted a pair of ships on the periscope. They were a heavily laden cargo ship with a destroyer escort, bearing down on them as though wandering straight into a trap. Chappell called battle stations and slowed the ship down to make occasional periscope observations. If the Sculpin was going too fast, the periscope would trail a long, white wake behind it—what they called a “feather”—as the skipper watched the ships. The ships were coming along at a pretty good clip—Chappell estimated about 12 knots—and soon came within range to have a good look at them. The destroyer’s guns and torpedo tubes were missing. Chappell thought the ship may have been damaged in a previous battle and converted to the less glamorous task of escorting convoys. The cargo ship, however, was a good size, 7,500 tons maybe, and so loaded down that the water practically came over her freeboard.
“Bearing, mark!” he called to Mendenhall on the TDC, who made note of the reading and entered it into the machine.
“Range, one-five-oh-oh yards. Angle on the bow, nine-five degrees. Set torpedo depth ten feet. Down scope.”
“Torpedo depth ten feet, aye aye.”
“Down scope, aye aye, sir.”
Chappell had them dead to rights and everyone knew it. This was no long-range shot, and the ships above still had no idea what was coming to them.
“Up scope.”
“Up scope, aye aye.”
Chappell rode the scope up and watched as it peeped up above the water so that he wouldn’t have too much of it exposed. Even though the tip was about as thick as a broom handle, alert lookouts would spot it on a clear bright day.
“We’ll fire three torpedoes, at four-second intervals. Spread, two degrees.”
“Two degree spread, aye aye, sir,” Mendy replied as he dialed in the numbers. The first torpedo would go to the middle of the target, and the other two would go 2 degrees left and 2 degrees right, so that if they misjudged the speed of the target, at least two of the torpedoes would meet the mark.
“Bearing . . . mark! Range, one-three-five-oh yards. Down scope.”
“Down scope, aye aye, sir.”
Mendy checked the spinning dials on the TDC: They matched perfectly with Chappell’s figures.
“It checks out, Captain. You can fire when ready.”
The men in the control room tensed.
“Fire one!”
The ship shuddered, and some of the men’s ears popped as the air impulse shot the torpedo out, then the water shoved it back into the boat through the poppet valve. They heard the engine on the torpedo sing and start to fade before the second and third torpedoes left.
“Torpedoes running hot, straight, and normal, sir,” the soundman reported.
“Up scope!”
It was a beauty. Chappell watched as all three torpedo wakes drew toward the cargo ship. They were now so close that he could see individuals on the deck. They’d spotted the torpedoes! They were running back and forth, yelling. The torpedo wakes were lining up perfectly; they were so close now, the ship was so big it was like hitting the broad side of a barn. The ship was just too big to evade the torpedoes, and now they were hailing the destroyer with their signal lights. The men on the destroyer evidently saw the torpedo wakes as well and followed them back to their source, and now the destroyer sped up and turned in the Sculpin’s direction. One last look at the cargo ship: There was pandemonium as men came out and ran around on the deck. There was nothing they could do now—stop, turn, go full reverse. They were doomed.
“Down scope! Take her down!”
Chappell glimpsed the quartermaster holding the stopwatch.
“Come to two-oh-oh feet. Rig for depth charge.”
“Two-oh-oh feet, aye aye, sir.”
All along the length of the boat the watertight doors banged shut.
“Left full rudder. Come to one-oh-oh degrees.”
Some of the men heard two distant explosions, but the skipper hadn’t heard them. Neither did the soundman or the other men in the forward torpedo room. It couldn’t have been the torpedoes detonating—that would have been unmistakably loud. Had the torpedoes failed again? The soundman tracked the destroyer going across the Sculpin’s wake, but it didn’t drop any depth charges. The cargo ship’s screws seemed to stop, and the soundman never heard the ship again, but he didn’t hear breaking-up noises either. When they surfaced, neither ship was anywhere in sight.
The Sculpin patrolled uneventfully for the next few days. Having come this far beyond enemy lines with no success, the men’s nerves were fraying. The torpedomen redoubled their maintenance efforts on the fish by opening them up, checking measurements, and overhauling them day after day. The strain was telling on all of them but mostly on Bill Dowell, who had been supervising the tests when one of the torpedomen sent the torpedo through the closed tube. At precisely midnight on April Fool’s Day 1942, the lookouts spotted a smudge of smoke northward on the horizon and Chappell once again began the painstaking process of determining the course of the target while maneuvering them into position. Luckily, the moon was in their favor, backlighting the target’s silhouette while obscuring the Sculpin’s low profile.
It was another supply ship, this time a little smaller at about 5,000 tons. Chappell got the Sculpin in position 1,000 yards away. The data on the TDC matched closely with his observations. He had a solution and fired three torpedoes: the first at the middle of the target, the other two at 3 degrees on either side. It would be difficult to have more favorable conditions short of rowing out to the target with the torpedo and detonating it in the captain’s quarters. Chappell watched in anticipation as the torpedo wakes lined up perfectly with the target’s track. The soundman noted that the screws’ speed hadn’t changed. Chappell saw that the target didn’t change course. Fifty seconds after firing, they lost trim and the periscope dunked. When they got back up for a look, the cargo ship was chugging merrily along, though with a change in course. The lookouts had probably come to their senses and seen the torpedo wakes, though they were so close that they probably would have heard them as well. But there were no explosions.
Chappell gulped and looked at the men around him. He’d led them thousands of miles, deep into enemy territory, and survived depth charge attacks with them, only to fire nine duds in a row. It made him sick at heart that he and the rest of them could do everything in their power to put their lives on the line and make a textbook-perfect attack approach only to have the torpedoes fail, and he wrote in his report:
It would have been impossible to gain position ahead of enemy for a second attack before enemy fetched Staring Bay and, if the truth must be told, the Commanding Officer was so completely demoralized and disheartened by repeated misses that he had little stomach for further action until an analysis could be made, the finger put on the deficiency or deficiencies responsible, and corrective action taken.
Chappell wen
t over the firing data over and over again, rubbed his eyes, checked the torpedo tubes and equipment. The torpedoes met the target. He saw it with his own eyes. Only two things could have happened: Either the torpedoes ran too deep, or the Mk VI exploders didn’t work.
Whereas the Sculpin dealt with engine failures and torpedo troubles, fortune shifted favorably for a time to the Sailfish under Dick Voge, though at first it didn’t seem so. Like the previous captain, Voge, whose name rhymed with “Yogi,” was straight as a ruler. But the day-to-day sense of tension and anxiety throughout the boat was notably absent.
Just as the Sculpin had, they refueled in the Dutch East Indies and went directly on patrol after a brief rest period while the rest of the combined navies retreated under the relentless Japanese assault. Their patrol area was north of a string of islands—Java, Bali, Lombok, Sumbawa, Flores, and Timor—that formed a natural barrier between Australia and the rapidly expanding Japanese sphere of influence. Between the islands were straits that formed a series of bottlenecks where the American subs could set up ambushes for the Japanese ships passing through.
On March 2, twelve days out, they were at the northern entrance to Lombok Strait between Lombok and Bali when a mid-morning periscope sweep showed a destroyer seven miles out and closing fast. Voge gave the order for battle stations and called up the periscope. The sea was as calm as glass. In these conditions, with no waves or whitecaps to distract the eye, their periscope would be like a flag in the middle of a golf green, and if they got shots off, the torpedo wakes would be even more conspicuous. If he tried to press home an attack, he would have to get so close that the destroyer wouldn’t be able to avoid the torpedoes. If they missed at that range, they would be sitting ducks.
Voge decided to take the risk and maneuvered to get closer to the destroyer, making infrequent periscope observations.
“Up scope!”
“Up scope, aye aye, sir.”
“Bearing, mark! Range, four-five-oh-oh yards. Speed, sixteen knots. Angle on the bow . . .”
The TDC operator began tracking the destroyer by dialing the measurements into the machine. The black dials with white numbers and increments started rotating like the gears of a watch.
“The superstructure’s pretty far forward. Two stacks with a big rake. First one has three white stripes.”
They waited as the skipper got sonar reports from the soundman. If he heard the destroyer’s screws change speed or start off on another direction, they knew the speed and bearing would change, but the destroyer charged on, seemingly oblivious. The closer the range, the greater the danger of having their scope spotted. They consulted their ship identification charts. According to the skipper’s observations, it was a Shigure- or Hatsuharu-class destroyer bearing down on them. Although their curiosity was killing them, Voge waited until he thought they were so close now that he would be firing on the ship practically point-blank, and told them they would be firing two fish, depth six feet. There was a torpedo shortage, and by firing this close they should need only two torpedoes anyway.
In the control room, everything was silent, aside from the occasional report in hushed, clipped tones. The men sweated as the heat from the diesels radiated throughout the boat, and listened as a curious hiss slowly became louder and louder. Like a coming freight train, they heard the destroyer as it cut through the water, its screws pounding out behind it with a furious, frothy churning sound, gradually getting louder and louder. With the smooth water and the bright daylight sun, the submarine might appear like a shadow in the water as the destroyer approached. If the destroyer’s lookouts had even the slightest idea that they were there, it could turn to ram the Sailfish. Voge wouldn’t know until he made another observation. The anticipation was unbearable, but still Voge persisted. If he waited too long, the destroyer might get by.
“Up scope! Final bearing and shoot!”
“Up scope, aye aye, sir.”
Voge bent down to ride the periscope as it rose and flipped the ears down as soon as it came out of the periscope well. He rotated it as he crouched down.
“Bearing, mark!” he called as he pushed a button on the scope. A buzzer sounded as the reading went to the TDC.
“Range, one-one-oh-oh yards.”
The officer watched as the new measurements sent the dials on the TDC spinning wildly; the destroyer must have changed course or the skipper’s measurements must have been wrong.
“Down scope!”
“Down scope, aye aye, sir!”
The TDC operator called out to the skipper: “Captain, the bearing is off by thirty degrees!”
Then the TDC suddenly stopped.
“Captain, the gyro setting overload tripped.”
“Well . . . set the gyros by hand.”
“Setting gyros by hand, aye aye, sir.”
Precious seconds slipped by as they calculated the correct angles. If they missed they were as good as dead.
“Recommend thirty degrees left, sir.”
“Make it so. Fire when ready.”
The men in the forward torpedo room changed the gyro setting by hand.
“Ready to fire, sir.”
“Fire one!”
The Sailfish jerked and filled with air as the torpedo left the tube. The TDC operator busily worked on the angle for the next torpedo. They waited anxiously—this shouldn’t be taking so long. Usually there was five seconds between torpedoes. Maybe fifteen, twenty at the most. Nearly a full minute went by before they had the angle.
“Recommend gyro angle six-four degrees left, sir.”
“Yes, make it so!”
Tick.
Tock.
Tick.
“Gyro angles adjus—”
“—Fire two!”
“—adjusted, sir . . . Two’s away, sir!”
They listened as the torpedoes chattered away toward the target, which by now was so loud it seemed that the props were beating against the sides of the hull. By this time the first torpedo should already have hit. The enemy must have seen the first torpedo. There was no way they could have missed it. And if they saw the first one, they would be ready for the second one.
“Rig for depth charge.”
“Rig for depth charge, aye aye, sir.”
“Up scope!”
“Up scope, aye aye, sir.”
The destroyer was zigging and zagging wildly from one place to the next. There was no way the torpedoes would hit now. But it didn’t seem to be closing on the Sailfish. Hoping they could get in another shot, Voge kept the scope up—they were as good as spotted anyhow—and called out the bearings as they changed. If they zigged to a new course and stayed still long enough for him to get a shot off, the Sailfish might survive.
“Bearing, mark! Range, nine-oh-oh yards . . .”
BANG!
An explosion rippled through the Sailfish. Voge was dumbfounded. The destroyer wasn’t close enough for depth charges . . . It didn’t fire one of its guns . . . He chased the periscope all around the horizon; there were no other ships in the vicinity. That must mean . . .
“TAKE HER DOWN FAST!”
BANG!
“Take her to two-three-oh feet. Fifteen degrees down bubble.”
“Two-three-oh feet, aye aye, sir.”
BANG! From the interval of the explosions, there must have been at least two planes above, maybe more. Voge didn’t wait to find out. The Sailfish dove for the cover of the deep. Fortunately, the destroyer didn’t start pinging, relying instead, perhaps, on the airplanes. While they’d been at periscope depth, the Sailfish must have stood out as clear as if they’d been on the surface. They heard another bomb go off but it sounded farther away at that depth. The soundman tracked the destroyer as it left the scene, and four hours later they came back to periscope depth—there was nothing to be seen.
There was some minor damage to the Sailfish; the force of the bomb had pushed the wires from the torpedo firing circuit on the deck into the conning tower, and they were leaking arou
nd the edges. The starboard screw shaft squealed under certain conditions, but otherwise everything was fine. They made repairs and did normal maintenance until it would be dark enough for them to surface at twenty past seven that evening. Shortly after they came up, the deck lookouts saw a large ship on the horizon, moving slowly in the path of the moon. Voge came to the deck and got a rough bearing before pulling the plug.
Like the destroyer they’d tangled with before, this ship was coming in their general direction, but luckily it was going slowly enough—about 8 knots—for the sub to maneuver into position. As it came closer and closer, the image they saw in the moonlight seemed to split apart into four separate ships. Voge still couldn’t get a definitive glimpse at them, but what he saw floating out there on the moon-dappled waves made his heart leap. The biggest ship was completely flat along the top deck, with a small island superstructure: an aircraft carrier. The other ships looked like destroyer escorts, one out in front and another two on either side of the bow. But why were they going so slowly?
Voge tentatively identified the ship as the vaunted Japanese carrier Kaga, which had participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor. He also guessed that they must have been alerted to the Sailfish’s presence by the attack that morning. The enemy formation would be much safer from subs if they went faster with a radical zigzag course, but at that speed their hydrophones wouldn’t be able to detect anything beyond the sound of the water rushing past their hulls. Perhaps they were taking a different tack by proceeding slowly and cautiously, listening all the while. If that were the case, getting past the screen of destroyers would be especially tricky, but Voge simply couldn’t give up the opportunity for a crack at one of their flattops. Japan had an estimated eight carriers, the United States only three; knocking out even one of them or sinking it could level the playing field considerably. He had to take a chance, and rang up a new course and speed to take the Sailfish somewhat outside the vanguard.
A Tale of Two Subs Page 9
