A Tale of Two Subs

by Jonathan J. McCullough

  It broke his heart to see the submariners as they came back pale, tired, and frightened. Despite having the best food in the Navy, most of them were reduced to skin and bones from patrols in the tropics, where the heat from the engines made the interiors of the boats feel like a blast furnace. They’d also endured several bizarre and painful maladies while on patrol. Because of the need to conserve water for drinking and for the batteries, the hygienic conditions deteriorated, and many of the officers and crew developed painful “Guam blisters,” a pernicious skin infection also known as impetigo, which was caused by a contagious staph infection. They also developed “Catarrhal fever,” which was essentially a very bad sinus infection. Anyone who has been laid low by sinusitis can attest to the discomfort caused by slight pressure changes caused by the weather; in the submarine environment where each dive caused severe pressure changes several times a day, the effect caused searing, exquisitely excruciating headaches that reduced grown men to bedridden wrecks. There were even cases of life-threatening appendicitis. In these situations, the less-than-qualified pharmacist’s mates set up impromptu surgical suites and performed appendectomies with scalpels fashioned from the cook’s carving knives and muscle retractors made from stainless steel kitchen spoons. Despite the medieval conditions, the men survived the operations.

  For many of the men, the damage went beyond the physical. The intensely psychological nature of the submarine war began to take its toll as many of the combat-stressed men developed panic attacks and shell shock, a term that would come to be known as post-traumatic stress disorder. The stresses were especially telling on the skippers, on whose shoulders everything rested. They were often called upon to undergo the Herculean task of attacking and evading, staying on their feet for twenty-four, forty-eight, even seventy-two hours at a stretch. After reading other skippers’ patrol reports, they realized that in order to stay effective and clearheaded, they would have to trust their executive officers—their second-in-command—to act in their absence. Some refused to delegate responsibility and set up cots in the conning tower so they could be ready at a moment’s notice, but being notified for every bump, every inconsequential repair or bird sighting quickly wore them down. Between patrols, most turned to drink, to varying degrees. In Silent Running by James Calvert, one officer recalled the appalling effects of stress on a skipper he chanced to see while delivering official documents:

  Through an interior door I could see into the dining room. Sitting at the table and leaning over it was a skipper of one of the new submarines just reporting in. He was dressed only in his underwear and needed a shave badly.

  He didn’t see me in the living room, as he was entirely preoccupied. On the table was an open bottle of scotch and a tumbler full of what looked like straight whisky. A towel was draped around his neck. He had grasped each end of it and, in his right hand, also the tumbler of scotch. To get this up to his mouth without spilling it, he was pulling on the left end of the towel. His attempts were not succeeding. He was trembling so violently that, even with support from the towel, half the whisky was being spilled before the tumbler reached his mouth.

  Lockwood did everything in his power to make shore leave better than simply being off the boat. Bands playing patriotic or humorous tunes greeted them as they came in from patrol. On the dock, they automatically got their mail, as well as fresh fruits and ice cream. The sailors and technicians on the submarine tenders took over the boat while the submariners went to the best hotels the area had to offer, where they drank and caroused like sailors do.

  After dropping off Lockwood in Albany, the Sculpin underwent repairs. The ship and its men were showing signs of wear after several months of hard-pounding war patrols. The electrical motors were starting to short out and blow fuses—a catastrophic failure if they were caught dead in the water while trying to slink away from a depth-charging. The battle for Guadalcanal was raging while they waited to get back out on patrol. Guadalcanal was a heretofore unknown island off Papua New Guinea with a hastily built airstrip. Land-based Japanese planes would be able to bomb the Australian mainland and strangle shipping to the western ports, forcing cargo and war matériel to go through the much more dangerous Antarctic route. The Japanese were staging landings and reinforcements from the port city of Rabaul on the nearby island of New Britain. The situation on Guadalcanal was desperate for both sides, and the commanders sent Sculpin to do what it could to sink troop transports, supply ships, and men-of-war slipping in and out of the Vitiaz Strait. The ships were using the waterway to support the Japanese effort on Guadalcanal and resupply the Japanese landings on the northern shores of New Guinea.

  After a false start and further repairs to the motors, the Sculpin finally made its way into the patrol region, and went nearly a month without spotting a ship. They bided their time by conducting reconnaissance on Thilenius and Montagu harbors, where they thought they might find ships, but they weren’t able to come closer than a single sighting at 13,000 yards. Finally on the morning of September 28, they spotted a seaplane tender making 18 knots off Cape Lambert, New Britain. That was almost Sculpin’s best speed on the surface, however. Since it was now daytime they had to lurk submerged at slow speed, and watched the plum target speed away. Fortunately, the Japanese seemed to be conducting operations in the area, and an hour later a periscope sweep revealed masts on a southeasterly course; they would be able to position themselves in time to get a shot and shortly went to battle stations.

  Chappell watched closely on the periscope as the ship came closer, an oil tanker zigzagging widely, he guessed at about 60 degrees with each turn. It was escorted by a small antisubmarine patrol boat the likes of which Chappell hadn’t seen before. The soundman caught the ship with his hydrophones and started tracking it at about 10,000 yards. By listening to the screws and counting the number of turns per minute—in this case, 62—he would be able to alert the skipper if it put on steam to speed up long before Chappell would be able to observe the ship going faster. Time ticked by as Chappell popped up and down with the periscope, trying to determine the tanker’s shifting base course so that he could predict whether it would zig toward one side of the Sculpin or zag to the other.

  “Bearing, mark!”

  “Sixty degrees relative, Captain.”

  “Distance to track?”

  “One-five-double-oh yards. Track, niner-oh degrees.”

  Chappell had lined up the Sculpin to take a shot from the stern tubes.

  “Final bearing and shoot.” Chappell paused, leaning into the scope, his forearms draped over the ears. He rotated the scope back and forth, stopping on the escort.

  “The escort’s coming directly at us. He’s got a bone in his teeth. He’s seen us. Down scope.”

  “Down scope, aye aye.”

  The crewmen shifted uneasily. When an antisubmarine boat had a bone in its teeth, its bow wake loomed high and white as it cut through the water. The soundman tracked it, however, and assured Chappell that it hadn’t changed speed, and was now changing course. Maybe he hadn’t seen the periscope after all.

  “Up scope!”

  “Up scope, aye aye.”

  “It’s about thirty degrees to the left of the tanker. I think they’re going to make another zig.”

  If the tanker changed course again, it would change all the TDC’s calculations and they would have to start all over again with new observations.

  “She’s zigging toward us. Down scope.”

  “Down scope, aye aye.”

  “If he goes sixty degrees again, toward us, he’ll come too close for us to get a shot.” Chappell reversed course and rang up full speed on the annunciators. The Sculpin shifted slightly as the boat swung around to the new course. Chappell hoped it would put them right on the money. Then he slowed down the boat so that when he raised the scope it wouldn’t make a feather on the surface. The sub was so quiet with anticipation they could have heard a pin drop.

  “Up scope.”

  “Up scope, aye a
ye.”

  Chappell watched the tanker complete its zig. As he’d suspected, the escort hadn’t seen them. He called out the speed and angle on the bow to Mendenhall below in the control room so he could input the new information into the TDC, then put the periscope down again.

  “Set depth six feet. Two degree spread. We’ll shoot four fish.”

  “Depth set six feet, sir.”

  “Two degree spread, sir.”

  “Up scope. Final bearing and shoot.”

  “Bearing, mark! Angle on the bow, seven-three degrees. Range, one-eight-six-oh. Down scope.”

  The red indicator light on the TDC labeled SOLUTION flickered, then glowed brightly. They were ready to shoot. Mendenhall called out: “Set!”

  “Fire five!”

  The boat heaved. Their ears popped with the inrush of air. They waited until the proper amount of time elapsed before they fired another fish.

  “Fire six!”

  “Fire seven!”

  “Fire eight!”

  “All fish running hot, straight, and normal,” the soundman reported.

  Chappell waited a few seconds after the last torpedo left, then raised the periscope again. All was as he’d left it: The tanker was doing nothing to evade. Chappell watched the first torpedo hit the stern of the tanker. A split second later, the explosion shook the boat, letting all aboard know that their torpedo had met its mark. A small cheer went up. He watched the second torpedo hit seconds later amidships on the port side.

  “The target’s screws have stopped, Captain,” said the soundman.

  The men heard another explosion, which seemed to come from far astern.

  Black smoke billowed from the wrecked tanker as it started to list heavily to port. Chappell swung the scope around to see the escort bearing down on them, fast. It was already tossing ash cans over the sides.

  “Take her down quick. Two-five-oh feet. Rig for depth charge. Full speed. Come to course oh-four-five.”

  The boat tilted downward by the bow. They braced themselves gently on the bulkheads or whatever was handy while the floor shifted underneath amid the sound of a series of explosions. They were strongly reminiscent of bombs dropped from airplanes. Had the escort called in an air patrol? Next came a string of depth charges that seemed to come from far astern: tik tik boom, tik tik boom. They were probably the ash cans the skipper had seen. He decided to use the racket as a sonic screen to get some distance from the patrol boat; the escort wouldn’t be able to use his hydrophones while the depth charges were banging around.

  “Full speed,” he said.

  “Full speed, aye aye,” said the helmsman as he rang it up on the annunciators. Ten minutes crept by, punctuated by an occasional depth charge, then there were none. They were probably listening up there; it was time to employ stealth. The escort was no closer to getting them; they’d probably be able to slink away.

  “Rig for silent running.”

  “Rig for silent running, aye aye, sir.”

  They shifted to manual control of the helm and the planes so that the noisy hydraulic pump wouldn’t give them away. The quiet electric motors slowed to the slightest whisper—just fast enough for them to be underway and adjust their depth if necessary. The quiet minutes ticking by confirmed that the escort was probably searching in an unproductive quarter, far away.

  “Secure crew from battle stations,” said Chappell, relieved that they’d gotten away without taking too much of a beating.

  Mendenhall had been on duty for a long time and looked forward to hitting his bunk. He was elated that they’d finally been able to guide the torpedoes with his TDC skills, but if two and possibly three torpedoes had hit, why hadn’t all four? Too much spread? He may also have thought about the next class for his school of the boat. To get the coveted patch with two dolphinfish facing a submarine in the middle, their “dolphins,” they had to be qualified in submarines. This included detailed drawings of the ship’s dozens of intricate systems: air lines, tanks, electrical wires, everything. To be qualified in submarines, they also had to demonstrate that they knew how to use every single piece of equipment on the boat, no matter if it wasn’t their specialty or even in their compartment. They had to work the diving planes, demonstrate how to load a torpedo and fire it, start the engines, close hatches and valves in every compartment for a dive or to surface, move the gigantic switches and levers in the maneuvering room. The dolphins were no mere merit badges; they represented complete mastery over the most complicated vessel in the Navy, with the implication that they could all rely on one another to do any job on the boat if the circumstances came to that.

  While Mendenhall was trying to relax and get some shut-eye, the soundman reported from the forward torpedo room: “They’re pinging, sir. Bearing, about two-seven-oh degrees.”

  The soundman revolved the hydrophone through the points of the compass and heard screws coming in from the south. “There’s a second one, sir. Moving in.”

  He moved back to the pinging escort for a few tense minutes. The bearing wasn’t changing, but . . .

  “He’s shifted to short scale, Captain. I think he may have something. The second one’s getting closer. I think the first one’s guiding him in.”

  Some of the men could hear something that sounded like a tap running somewhere in a distant room that was growing louder.

  “Coming in from one-three-oh degrees.”

  The sound grew louder so that all the men could hear it, like steam coming from the mouth of a boiling kettle, growing louder until they had the peculiar sensation of hearing a steam locomotive as it crossed a bridge above them, hissing away. The men looked blankly at the tops of their compartments, their imaginations giving form to the sound. They cast glances toward one another, half expecting the enemy’s ship gliding above them to cast a spectral shadow through the compartment.

  “Take her to two-seven-oh feet.”

  “Two-seven-oh feet, aye aye.”

  Then came a sound like a child happily splashing his hand in a full bathtub . . . bubbles rising . . . more splashes.

  “Depth charges, sir.”

  They could hear the ship above so clearly, it must have been right over them. There was no way to tell how close until the depth charges went off, and they tensed, waiting for the barrels of high explosive to sink.

  BAM!

  Everything went dark as lightbulbs all over the boat shattered and tinkled onto the green linoleum of the deck. Mendenhall was nearly shaken clean off his bunk, as though he were on a train that had sustained a head-on collision. He heard the unmistakable sound of . . . drip . . . drip . . . drip drip drip . . . sssssshhh SSSHHH SSSHHHH. He went into the hallway and ran straight into a quickly growing puddle. Men were shouting all over the boat. He traced the sound of the water coming into the officers’ lavatory. A stream of high-pressure water was coming out of the toilet: A connection to the sea had sprung a leak and it was quickly filling up the boat and letting tons of water into the officers’ quarters. If the saltwater pooled up and got to the compartment below, it would hit the batteries.

  They were now in mortal danger.

  Mixing saltwater with the sulfuric acid in the batteries would create a billowing green cloud of toxic chlorine gas that would burn their eyes, snuffing them out one by one in an unbelievably horrible death by chemical asphyxiation. If enough water got into the battery compartment, the batteries would start an irreversible chemical reaction and begin to boil, culminating in a massive explosion of battery acid.

  Men threw down bedding, pillows, anything to build a dam around the hatch leading to the batteries below. Mendenhall called for help and leaned over the toilet, trying to stop the seawater from coming in from the quarter-inch tube, but it was coming in like the blast from a pressure washer, threatening to pull the skin off his hands.

  Charlie Henderson, the exec, was running up and down the boat getting damage reports. There were leaks in the forward torpedo room, where plugs in the hull were pushed in, admitting
water into the compartment like sprinklers. Then the motors cut out; they wouldn’t be able to maneuver or change depth. After ten tense seconds that seemed like an eternity, the maneuvering room found some switches that had been jarred open and were able to start up the motors again.

  BANG!

  The men saw the outer hull push inward between the rib structure of the submarine’s walls, as though it were an aluminum can reacting to a firecracker. The disturbed water coursed through the superstructure, making a rushing roar of effervescence as millions of tiny bubbles rushed up through the deck plates and around the handrails. In the conning tower, the depth gauge reacted to the sudden increase in water pressure by pegging out—the needle indicator flew off the pin—and the gasket on the door to the exterior of the ship bulged inward and was starting to cut. A locker sprang off its welded foundation on the bulkhead and crashed on the floor of the conning tower, spilling its contents all over.

  BANG!

  The men in the forward torpedo room watched with horror as the valves in their compartment spun open with every explosion, as though turned by unseen hands. The water pressure from the depth charges was actually forcing the watertight valves open—from the other side.

  “Sir, the stern planes are jammed!” said the planesman. They were at 280 feet, taking on water, and going deeper. Jack Turner, the engineering officer, got another man on the plane wheel and together they were able to budge the wheel, but only barely. Meanwhile Mendenhall was just outside, sitting on a chair in the yeoman’s tiny office, passing water forward in the bucket brigade through the control room. Turner got the boat to two thirds speed and gradually got the boat on a 10 degree up angle. They couldn’t use the noisy pumps or they’d give their position away. The water in officer’s country sloshed aft to keep it away from the battery hatch. It pooled up against the bulkhead to about twelve inches, where the bucket brigade dipped it up and passed it forward. They still hadn’t fixed the leak in the head.