BANG!
“Sir! The Christmas Tree—”
Two of the green lights now flashed red—some of the valves leading to the outside of the boat were now open. It was the outboard vents for the batteries—special tubes that drained hydrogen gas away and out of the boat when they charged the batteries on the surface. If those didn’t hold, water would siphon directly into the batteries themselves, causing the chlorine gas and explosion they all dreaded. The skipper guided the boat away from the scene as quietly and quickly as he could as they ascertained the damage all around the boat. It was a mess: The water distiller had broken loose, the pump room was flooded, there were electrical shorts throughout the boat. The drain pump wouldn’t work, hydraulic fluid was in the bilge, but still the Sculpin held, and despite the high anxiety of seeing the hull open up on the Christmas Tree, the valves didn’t leak seawater to the batteries. After an hour and a half they were able to shake their pursuers and finally stop the leak in the officers’ head. Mendenhall gave his report that the bucket brigade had moved the water forward and secured the leak, and when he turned to go Chappell noticed a dark splotch on the seat of his pants. The skipper asked him what he’d been sitting in, and Mendenhall realized that for nearly two hours he’d been sitting in glass shards from a broken lightbulb. Steward Eugenio Apostol was on his first patrol and had helped in the bucket brigade. He asked the exec, “Now we go up and shoot the destroyer, maybe?”
When they got back to periscope depth two hours after the initial attack, there was thankfully nothing on the surface. They stayed down because it was daylight now and spent the next couple of days repairing everything. It was the worst beating Sculpin had ever taken, extensive but manageable. One of the two periscopes was damaged. The fridge had shorted and spoiled 500 pounds of meat, and they lost sugar, flour, and coffee when it was submerged in the saltwater. To top it off, the labels on the canned food had gotten wet and slipped off, which made for an odd smorgasbord at meals. Despite all the destruction, Chappell determined that with repairs they could continue their patrol, and after a couple of days’ rest and repair, they were ready to go back on the hunt.
During the next week Sculpin drifted eastward toward the bottleneck approaches of the Japanese fortress of Rabaul, which the quartermasters had taken to calling the Slot. Most of the Japanese shipping in the area funneled down to this point before going through the strait leading to the operations at Guadalcanal. They were able to spot several distant ships on the horizon, and even get in close enough to a troop transport to set up an attack, but this was foiled by a nervous destroyer captain who started dropping depth charges on what they could only assume was a school of fish. The destroyer was too far away to hit them, but even a blind dog gets lucky sometimes and finds a bone. While Chappell tried to determine how best to attack, the transport got away.
Days went by before a periscope sweep revealed smoke on the horizon again—the sign of approaching ships—and Chappell laid a course for a convoy. Although Sculpin was submerged, they were able to close on three ships, which quickly developed into a destroyer, then a small transport, and a large transport going about 14 knots. Incredibly, despite the submarine attack just a few days ago, the convoy wasn’t zigzagging. Chappell rang up two thirds speed on the annunciator and put on a track to intercept the three ships. During his periscope observations, he was careful to look for planes so that he wouldn’t have any nasty surprises as on the previous attack.
At three minutes past one, the skipper rang up general quarters. The approach was developing nicely, and he even had a shot at the destroyer leading the pack. Though he was sorely tempted to have a go at it, the troop transport was the more valuable target and he held off until they got to within 1,200 yards. Once again he had the ship in his crosshairs, dead to rights, if only the torpedoes would work properly. He also hoped that the destroyer wouldn’t give them too much of a working over; the conning tower door was still leaking and he didn’t know if it could take much of a shock. At twenty past one he fired all four fish from the bow and raised the periscope to track their progress when the diving officer took on too much ballast to compensate for the loss of the torpedoes’ wake.
“Depth! Keep your depth!”
Jack Turner, the diving officer at the time, slowly and carefully planed them back up to periscope depth. Meanwhile, they heard three explosions—it seemed like the torpedoes had done their job. Seconds later, Chappell was able to get the scope back up through the surface of the water. The transport was sinking. The soundman reported that it had stopped and that he was hearing breaking-up noises. They would soon come close enough for the crew to hear them for themselves, but now they had to evade; the destroyer was charging up to where the torpedo wakes had started, and the other target ship had swung wide to avoid the catastrophe.
Chappell followed the torpedo wakes to just aft of the target’s stern and gave the order to go to deep submergence. Despite the fact that they hadn’t seen any airplanes, the crew heard the rumbling of an explosion aft of the boat. They made their way to the sinking transport and heard the popping, tearing noises of the sinking ship as they passed nearby, then made a course of about 60 degrees away from the target’s original course.
Tik-tik BOOM. Tik-tik BOOM.
They were relieved to hear that the depth charges were well away from them, far enough to hear the characteristic tik-tik of the detonators before the explosion, but soon another ship had come to the scene—perhaps one of the small, quick sub hunters they’d been encountering on this patrol. There were more depth charges, some so far away that they sounded faint. The second ship started the search over the next hour, and both escorts came quite close above the Sculpin. The men waited in anticipation as they listened once again to the sounds of the ships above them. There was no pinging, but then they heard a queer, unsettling sound; it was the same sound they heard the day they’d left Cavite: a chain rubbing, scraping against the side of the hull. This time it wasn’t a mine, though. The escorts above were fishing for them with a grapnel attached to a heavy chain, hoping to snag on some vent or bit of superstructure that would drag them up to the surface or at least betray their position. The crew listened intently to the horrible sound as the links clinked and slid, bumping against their sanctuary, hoping against hope that the sailors above didn’t detect anything. Finally the chain drew away from them, and the ships circled overhead for over an hour, then seemed to give up.
At half past five they went to the surface and raised the periscope, but the convoy had gone on, and their victim lay at the bottom of the sea. They had gotten away scot-free.
A week later, Sculpin received a radio message that required decryption. It seemed to be an unbelievable bit of straight dope about the noontime position of a Japanese supply ship on its way from Rabaul to Kavieng, a port on the island of New Ireland. Although Chappell could only guess how anyone could know about the convoy’s position in time with such precision, he set a course to put them on the path of the unsuspecting ships and in the early hours before dawn on October 14, the lookouts saw another large transport, then a smaller transport, and finally a destroyer leading them all.
The weather conditions had been patchy, with overcast and occasional rainsqualls. Since they’d only just spotted the target, and dawn was coming, Chappell decided to set up fast and make a surface attack rather than submerge. They quickly made observations and sent the speed and bearings down to the control room, where the TDC operator punched them up. When the moment came, they fired all four bow torpedoes and started to pull away. Chappell watched in disgust as all four torpedo tracks went ahead of the transport’s bow. They’d set up the attack too quickly, he’d gotten the speed wrong, and now the destroyer was running around pell-mell, dropping depth charges left and right. The mere sound of the depth charges was as impressive on the surface as it was while taking them down below, but it didn’t appear that the destroyer had seen the Sculpin, and for some reason it didn’t follow the torpedo tracks back
to the sub. When the torpedoes reached the end of their runs, they exploded, and Chappell thought this may have confused the destroyer’s skipper further. Another rainsquall came on, soaking the deck watch, at the same time providing ample cover for the small silhouette of the Sculpin to peel away into the gray morning rain showers pelting the sea. Chappell felt bad that he’d gotten the speed wrong—it seemed to be a recurring problem—and he would write later with his characteristic humor not often found in war patrol reports that “like a relative in jail this attack makes a painful subject for discussion.”
Given that they often went days without seeing hide nor hair of the enemy, the crew was probably relieved that they would have a productive patrol when they spotted more ships a little after four that very afternoon. Unfortunately they were still submerged due to daylight and weren’t able to close to less than seven miles. But a couple of hours later, near twilight, they spotted more smoke on the horizon, crawling east. Chappell moved the Sculpin in a general direction intended to intercept, impatient for dusk and its protective cloak of darkness to set in, and a little after seven that evening they blew the klaxon three times to surface. The Sculpin’s diesels roared to life while the blower’s noisy air compressors rattled away to store air in the tanks for the next dive. Chappell plotted the classic submarine end-around, racing the Sculpin at high speed in a wide arc just at the periphery of the target’s line of sight. With any luck, the curvature of the earth would hide the Sculpin’s hull and most of the conning tower’s small silhouette from view. When night fell, the convoy of three ships—an escort, a transport, and a tanker—suddenly made a turn to starboard and took a southerly direction. The convoy had anticipated the likes of the Sculpin and intended to throw any lurkers off their path with the radical change in course.
Chappell decided on a surface night attack. If the sub got spotted, it could still submerge quickly, and if not it could maneuver at high speed and possibly make another end-around to get in a subsequent shot at a second ship in the convoy. Chappell and the officer of the deck noted the moon—it was half full but overcast—and they decided that all things being equal, it was more important to get into position quickly than to hide their silhouette. As the Sculpin drew closer, the ships drew in and out of low-lying clouds and rainsqualls that hid and revealed them. The first ship was likely an escort, the second a large transport. The last one was a medium-sized tanker. It seemed the easiest to pick off, and Chappell knew that the oil it contained was more crucial than the troops on the transport. Just as he signaled his intention to target the tanker, the sub’s lookouts noted a shape drawing out of the fog and becoming solid, moving astern of the tanker: another sub chaser.
Chappell kept a wary eye on this new development while continuing to pursue the tanker. Eventually, the sub chaser swept away to the other side of the tanker, giving him a lucky break and a straight shot. The hapless ship crawled along the horizon at about 10 knots, making no attempt to evade. When it reached the perfectly perpendicular point with the Sculpin’s nose at about 1,500 yards, Chappell gave the signal to fire. The torpedoes roared out with a burst of compressed air, raced off under the surface with their harsh metallic sewing-machine sound, and made a slight right turn to intercept. The men on deck watched with grim satisfaction as the lengthening wakes made by the torpedoes’ steam motors led straight to the tanker’s path. One of the attack party crewmen counted the time from his stopwatch.
“. . . fifty-five . . . sixty . . . sixty-five . . . seventy—”
An enormous explosion deep under the water heaved waves and smoke into the air along the starboard side of the tanker.
“Sir, that was probably the third torpedo.”
“. . . seventy-five . . .”
Bang! Another hit, this time just short of the bow.
“. . . eighty . . . eighty-five . . . ninety . . . ninety-five . . .”
It became apparent that Chappell had overestimated the speed again, or perhaps two of the torpedoes were duds. The only difference it would have made was in the amount of time it would take for the tanker to sink. The ship was holed badly, with smoke pouring out into the overcast night.
More ships that they hadn’t seen before appeared in the convoy. Two destroyers got a full head of steam and started charging around the formation, randomly casting depth charges as they went, then firing their guns. Chappell decided to change course and hightail it on the surface, and soon a welcome rainsquall enveloped them, sealing them out of sight from the advancing destroyers. Although everything had gone their way, the shifting weather could just as easily have revealed them to the wily sub chasers, and rather than making another end-around to intercept the convoy again, Chappell decided to evade for another hour. It was late by now anyhow—they’d been plotting ships since early in the morning and were exhausted. Sculpin hadn’t fully charged the batteries yet and Chappell didn’t want to make another attack where they might have to dive on low battery power, so he ordered two engines put on line to charge and the other two to maneuver.
The men were glad to have only four torpedoes left. After firing them they could count on going back to Brisbane, in Australia, and receive a hero’s welcome for sinking so many ships. Chappell continued to patrol back and forth, waiting for another ship, until four days later Emmett “Middie” Mills spotted smoke on the horizon during a routine periscope sweep. Chappell was able to steal toward what he described as a strange ship. The Japanese had been refitting old ships to plug gaps in their naval forces, and many had unusual configurations. The “odd-looking affair” seemed to have “started life as a small, coal-burning tramp.” Chappell observed that it now had guns on forecastle and deck wells, as well as a seaplane and rack upon rack of depth charges. The officers agreed that it was probably an ill-disguised Q-ship, or decoy, to lure unsuspecting submariners.
Chappell decided to go after the zigzagging ship and got into position for a stern shot. If they didn’t sink it straightaway, it would have a chance to bring its formidable number of depth charges on them. An hour and a half after first spotting the ship, the crew went to battle stations. Chappell made quick periscope observations—at two in the afternoon, they couldn’t afford to be spotted with nighttime so far away—and waited for the Q-ship to complete a right zig before he was able to set up a shot. At a range of 1,900 yards Chappell shot three torpedoes and pulled down the scope. Sound reported no change in course, and after about a minute he put the scope up again, watching as the wakes streaked toward the unsuspecting ship. The first torpedo exploded about twenty-five feet behind the ship, then, seconds later, another torpedo hit forward of the bridge. The ship started to make a drastic turn—the pilot must have seen the wake of the third torpedo—as men scurried back and forth on the deck, manning the guns. The sailors quickly loaded the deck gun on the forecastle and one of the other deck guns, and started lobbing shells where the torpedo wakes began. The Sculpin was already well away from that position, but close enough to hear the concussion of the shells as they hit the water. The shells were unlikely to hurt much of anything after splashing down, and as the Q-ship got closer, Chappell decided to fire his last torpedo at the ship. If it had been hit by the first two torpedoes, it didn’t appear to be heavily damaged, and was even speeding up.
“Up periscope.”
“Up periscope, aye aye.”
Bang, splash. Another shell hit the surface of the water.
“Range, one-seven-oh-oh yards. Speed, eleven knots. Angle on the bow . . . Bearing, mark! Down scope.”
“Down scope, aye aye.”
“We’ll fire this last one and go deep.”
Bang, splash.
The men in the conning tower nodded, waiting for the time to pass for Chappell to make another observation.
“Up scope.”
“Up scope, aye aye.”
“Final bearing and shoot. Range, one-six-double-oh yards. Angle on the bow, five-four degrees. Speed, eleven knots. Bearing, mark!”
“Set!”
Chappell gave the order to fire and watched the torpedo momentarily to make sure it wasn’t making a circular run; it seemed to be going right, and the soundman reported that it was running hot, straight, and normal.
“Down scope!”
“Down scope, aye aye.”
Bang, splash!
“Take her down, two-oh-oh feet.”
“Two-oh-oh feet, aye aye, sir.”
Chappell changed course—if the torpedo missed and didn’t sink the tub, at least they might chase the torpedo wake again.
“One-oh-oh feet,” said the diving officer. “One-one-oh feet . . . One-two-oh feet.”
Click-click BANG. Depth charge, but not close.
Click-click BANG. That one seemed even farther away.
Click-click bang. The Q-ship was throwing ash cans in the wrong direction.
BANG! Coming sixty seconds after firing their last torpedo, they hoped that it had found its mark and sunk the Q-ship. They waited to hear from the soundman . . . nope, the ship was still up there. Seemed slower though.
“Come to course one-two-oh.”
“One-two-oh, aye aye, Captain.”
Click-click bang. Still throwing depth charges, but not many, and then the sound stopped altogether. The crew listened as the sound of the Q-ship’s screws slowly receded until late afternoon, when they ventured a peek to see what was going on up there and saw heavy smoke on the horizon. It was possible that the Q-ship was heavily damaged; they probably would have heard the screws stop and the sounds of a ship breaking up if it had gone to Davy Jones’s locker. Chappell surfaced amid heavy, intermittent rainsqualls, and the Q-ship was nowhere to be found. It was just as well because the only way to finish it off would have been to engage in gun action using the Sculpin’s 3-inch deck gun—a lopsided fight considering the Q-ship’s armament. Chappell was content to radio his results and the intention to head back to base. He was hoping that the submarine high command might finally give the crew a long period of well-deserved R&R.
A Tale of Two Subs Page 14
