Run Silent, Run Deep

by Edward L. Beach

  But the worst was alongside Ford Island, to port as we came through, and it slowly unfolded itself as America's one-time battle line came into view. I had been prepared, but not enough. The pictures had showed a lot, but they could never show the hopeless, horrible desolation and destruction, the smashing, in an instant, of years of tradition and growth.

  California's cage masts had seemed canted a bit peculiarly when we first caught sight of them, now we could see why.

  Her bow was under water. Only a few feet of her stern were exposed. Clustered about her were boats, a small tug or two, and there was considerable activity going on alongside. repair work evidently. Astern of her lay the bulging side and bottom of a great ship with one huge propeller sticking out of the water. I knew from pictures that this was Oklahoma.

  Some kind of a structure had been erected on her slanting belly and a few men seemed to be working around with hoses and other paraphernalia. I could see one large hole in the heavy plates, and remembered what we had heard about men trapped inside.

  A little distance away from Oklahoma another shattered, sunken hulk showed its gaunt sides: West Virginia, once the pride of the fleet; winner of the Marjorie Sterrett trophy for excellence in battle practice more times than any other; and the Iron Man trophy for athletics likewise. A grimy, dirty waterline, now high out of water, showed how far she had sunk.

  She was obviously now afloat again, but horribly mangled.

  We could see some of the shattered side, gaping above the cofferdam built around it.

  Abaft West Virginia, a single tripod mast stood in the water.

  Below it a silent gun turret, water lapping in the gun ports and around the muzzles of the huge rifles. Nothing forward except a confused, jumbled mass of rusty junk. A flag floated from the gaff of the tripod mast, symbol that the United States Navy would never surrender. Arizona's forward magazines blown up by the uncannily accurate Jap bombing, nothing left of her except her iron will she could still serve as a reminder of the sacrifice war had demanded on its first day, and the huge reckoning we would someday exact in return.

  Dave Freeman by this time had given permission to open deck hatches and some of the crew had come topside to get our mooring fines ready. But no one touched a line. All stood staring in awe at the spectacle of destruction. Here and there I could see some of them pointing. Perhaps they recognized something, a ship they had once served in-some recognizable bit among the twisted, shattered remains. We had been forewarned of this and yet the full realization of what the Japs had done to us that day last December had not struck home until now. Except for a few commands given by Dave as he conned us through the harbor, not a word was spoken for several minutes on Walrus' bridge. This was death, un- varnished. This was the holocaust; this the destiny of three thousand U. S. sailors and officers.

  Jim broke the silence. "Good lord!" pointing to the California. "I heard she was not seriously damaged."

  "Depends on what you figure is serious, I guess," I answered. "It looks pretty serious to me all right."

  "Serious! Hell I think she's sunk!"

  "We'll get her back up and in commission." I was repeat- ing what I had been told in the briefing before leaving New London.

  "Maybe so." Jim's voice was dubious. "What about that one?" He pointed to the Oklahoma. "I suppose she's not very badly damaged either?"

  I felt myself distinctly on the defensive. The newspaper accounts we had read and the official briefings I had received were all to the effect that the Oklahoma also would be returned to service.

  "Well," I said, "we'll turn her right side up again, clean the mud off…" I paused, realizing haw ridiculous I was sounding. Jim looked at me with a strange expression, exhibit- ing puzzlement, amazement, and disbelief all at the same time. Then the corners of his mouth quivered and he almost laughed. He pointed to the Arizona.

  "Nothing wrong with her either, much. Just no hull!"

  The comment was so spontaneous, comical, and, so true that I would have laughed myself, except that it contradicted all the feelings of the past few moments. These ships had been the Navy's backbone for twenty years. As a boy I had had pictures of all of them posted on the wars of my room. Some- day, I had dreamed, I would be Captain of one of them. Now here they lay shattered, twisted, destroyed. Powerless to have defended themselves, powerless now, even to take revenge.

  Dave Freeman had been tending to his business of conning us through the channel. The submarine base commenced to come into view as we reached the end of ten-ten dock along- side of which was visible the side of another rolled-over sunken ship. This would be the Oglala, an old ex-mine layer in use as Service Force Flagship, which, according to unofficial reports, had simply died of fright. She had been touched by neither bomb nor torpedo, but her seams had opened up from the concussions nearby.

  Up ahead something was going on at the submarine base, and the strains of loud band music claimed our attention. As the submarine base docks came into view suddenly my heart leaped-for there, with nearly every detail unutterably familiar, lay the Octopus, half out of a slip-with flags flying and people standing all about her decks.

  She looked different, worn, and yet terribly the same. The cigarette deck bulwark was gone and there was no plating around her periscope shears. Their steel foundation structure stood naked, like bare bones. But I would have recognized her anywhere, and at the same time I cursed myself for being a sentimental fool. Of course it could not be Octopus. It must be her sister, the Tarpon. We slowed down and waited while she backed clear, turned, and squared away past us in the opposite direction. Through my binoculars I looked over the faces on her bridge. There, sure enough, stood Tarpon's skipper, easygoing old Jim Tattnal who had been on my Qualification Board. He was wearing a cap with scrambled eggs on the visor, something I had not seen him in before, signifying his promotion to the rank of Commander. I grabbed a megaphone and yelled across the intervening water.

  "Where are you going, Jim?" He cupped his hands, shouted back: "Back where you came from! San Francisco!" He answered my upraised arm with a wave of his own as the two ships passed. He had not recognized me, didn't realize Walrus had come from New London instead of Mare Island, but that made little difference. The Tarpon had been brought back from the Southwest Pacific, was en route to Mare Island for a well- deserved overhaul. It would be a rest for her crew and a surcease from anxiety. Octopus, long ago, had received her surcease from travail in a very different way.

  So might Walrus, for that matter, except that we didn't know what our fate would be yet. I nodded to Dave, and a few minutes later we gently nosed into the same pier which Tarpon had just vacated. The band greeted us with several well-known compositions, conspicuous by its absence, how- ever, being "California, Here I Come!" a loud rendition of which we had heard a few minutes before., A delegation met us as we put our lines over: Admiral Small, ComSubPac, followed by several other officers, one or two of whom I recognized. We shook hands. Then came two dungaree-clad men bearing a huge sack of mail. This was pounced upon by Quin and dragged forward where he was immediately surrounded by a crowd of eager Walrus sailors.

  Next over the gangway came two five-gallon tins of ice cream, well frosted on the outside, and finally a crate of choice red apples. Russo was topside in a moment at Dave's quick summons, but he was too late to save the apples from the eager hands which had already removed nearly all. The ice cream, however, he preempted and carried, grinning, down below.

  Admiral Small was speaking. "Richardson," he said, "we're short of boats as you know and we've got to get you on the firing line as soon as possible. How soon can you go to sea?"

  "Right away, sir," I answered, "we have a full load of torpedoes, but well need to refuel and reprovision."

  "The E&R shop can handle any outstanding repairs."

  The Engineering and Repair Officer was one of those whom I had recognized from my times as Engineering Officer on the Octopus.

  "We're in pretty good shape material-wise,"
I began.

  "Good," said the Admiral, "all well need to give you then is a quick going-over. We want to take all your torpedoes out and check them, and we have a few pieces of equipment to install in the ship. Then you will have a one-week training period before you go."

  "We don't need any training, Admiral; we're all set," I protested.

  "Oh, yes, you do, Richardson. The training you've had has been all to peacetime standards. I know how it is in New London. It's my responsibility to make sure every boat is up to scratch before it leaves here. Besides we want to give you an SJ-radar."

  "What's that, sir?"

  "The radar you have is only the-SD-type, designed for air- craft search. This is for surface search and it will increase your effectiveness at night. After you get it, you'll have to learn how to use it. That's another reason for the training period."

  I nodded, and he changed the subject.

  "Would you care to show me through, Richardson? I want to see what your boat looks like down below."

  The 'Admiral was an enthusiastic visitor as I took him through the ship. As I pointed out several of her internal features, he compared them to older installations of the same type and commented upon the improvement. He was especially pleased with our control room and conning tower, and spoke favorably of our two engine rooms and the four great sixteen-cylinder diesels installed there.

  He also insisted on meeting each of the officers and as many of the enlisted men as he could. Then he was off, and as I saluted him over the gangway a horde of workers, inspectors, and checkers descended upon us.

  Pearl Harbor, or at least the submarine base in It, was really well organized, I reflected a few hours later. A crew was already on the bridge installing the new radar; two cranes were on the dock hauling out our torpedoes from both ends at the same time, as rapidly as our men could get them ready.

  Another group had summarily confiscated both of our 30-caliber machine guns, replacing them with four 50-caliber models, and a gang of welders was going about the ship installing mounts for them. To my consternation I discovered another crew of men happily cutting away the bulwark around our cigarette deck and two more had climbed on top of the bridge, and were removing the plating on the sides of the periscope supports. At this I registered a protest.

  "What's the idea!" I asked my friend, Eddie Holt, the E&R Officer.

  "Relax, Rich," he said. "Admiral's orders." He went on: "We're trying to cut the silhouette down as much as possible.

  Every boat that comes in here from the States has got too much stuff on her and looks bigger than the one before, and he's out to out it down so you can get away with night sur- face attacks without being seen. Say," here Eddie's eyes widened, "weren't you the boat that was shot at by the German sub a while ago?"

  I nodded. We had, of course, reported the incident by dispatch immediately.

  "W-e-l-l, I should think you'd have had all this extra super- structure off here before this. He nearly had you, you know.

  The way I heard it, you didn't even see him until he fired the torpedo at you."

  "That's about right," I admitted.

  "We've found that pulling off the plating around the peri- scope shears lets enough light through that they can't be seen on the horizon. The difference is even more noticeable at night. That's why we're taking off your cigarette deck bul- warks, you don't need them. We'll give you lifelines to lean against."

  Three days we were alongside the dock at Pearl Harbor, during which the welding smoke, the babble of workers, and the clatter of air-operated chipping hammers never left us.

  I had thought the workmen at Electric Boat were fast, — but these, every one an enlisted man in the Navy, were faster.

  Furthermore, time apparently meant nothing to them. They worked as if their lives depended upon it, and more than one man I saw remained aboard for twenty-four consecutive hours, working, almost continually. Russo, I found, was responsible for some of this. He and his assistants always seemed to be cooking something. There was a never-ending stream of sandwiches, bowls of soup, cookies, and the like coming out of his galley. I noticed also a few private little repairs and improvements being accomplished under his direct supervision, and, having had some experience in the ways of the American sailor, said nothing. No doubt we had paid for them with a couple of extra sandwiches or perhaps a surreptitious mid- night steak.

  Toward the end of our third day alongside, exercise torpedoes once again arrived. Next day we took a cut-down Walrus to sea for our first day of training.

  It was a repetition of our time at Balboa except that we had farther to go to reach our target area, and there was plenty of help to retrieve torpedoes. We got under way before daybreak and returned after dark. Three nights we remained at sea all night-for a convoy was arriving from San Francisco and an opportunity to practice a — convoy attack was too good to miss.

  The radar, although it did not work consistently and gave us some other incidental troubles, proved to be an invaluable instrument in making a form of attack I had never thought of before. The Germans, it seemed, had done most of their destruction at night without bothering to dive. By staying on the surface they had greater mobility than the slow, closely bunched ships in the convoys, and they would race about at high speed, firing their torpedoes when opportunities best presented themselves. Apparently because they lay so much lower in the water than their huge targets, they were practi- cally never sighted. Admiral Small believed we should adopt the same tactics, and had been pushing for a radar which could assist us. The Germans, of course, had used no radar, but our convoys were so large that they hardly needed one.

  The Japanese, on the other hand, had small convoys, and a "fire-control" radar, as he termed the S J, would be invaluable.

  Finally our week's training was over. It had been an ex- hausting period. Walrus lay quietly alongside the dock at the submarine base and the torpedo trucks began returning our original load of torpedoes to us after overhaul by the Sub- marine Base torpedo shop. Apparently the Admiral had not been entirely satisfied with the performance of torpedoes in recent months and had directed that every torpedo brought in by a submarine from the States, as well as those he had in his stockpile, should be overhauled and checked before being issued for war patrol.

  Fuel we took on from a connection right in the dock, and then came trucks bringing provisions. Every nook and cranny' in the ship was crammed with food. I had a couple of extra lockers in my room, a single, relatively commodious room compared to the one I had shared with Jim in the S-16, with floor space nearly four feet by five feet and a desk all to my- self. There was more space than I would be able to use; so- Russo crammed several cases of canned food, can by can, into the unused spaces.

  Other empty corners throughout the ship were packed in the same way. Up forward on both sides of the torpedo tubes, there developed a large space, not very accessible, but ideally suited for stowage of food in cans. In the comers of the control room and behind the engines in the engine room were other such spaces. The regular dry provision storeroom and the refrigerator space, of course, were crammed to overflowing.

  Under Russo's ingenious supervision veritable mountains of canned food disappeared below, and Russo proudly reported that he had even stocked the storeroom in accordance with the menus. When I looked in I knew what he meant.

  He had crammed the shelves and the spaces between the shelves and then he had started stacking things on the floor.

  Finally food had been piled up right to the access hatch in the control room deck. It wouldn't do in such circumstances, ac- cording to Russo, to put all the beans in one place and all the potatoes in another, because if we did we would be eating beans for a week before getting to the potatoes and eating potatoes for two weeks before we got to the canned soup.

  It was the day before we were to get under way for patrol that we had what appeared to be a serious casualty, Jim and I were relaxing over a cup of coffee in the wardroom when a piercing scream came fro
m aft. With one motion we leaped to our feet and raced down the narrow passageway to the control room. Jim got there first. I was just behind him. The place was filled with choking, black smoke. Kohler was already there and Larto arrived from the conning tower at about the same time as we.

  "Fire in the control room!" bellowed Jim.

  Without saying a word Kohler reached up alongside the ladder to the conning tower, pulled the general alarm. Then he grabbed the announcing system microphone. "Fire in the control room!" he shouted.

  I could hear the word "Fire" reverberating throughout the ship. The smoke was coming out of the forward distribution panel, in the forward starboard corner of the control room near the door through which Jim and I had just entered. Larto darted forward.

  "Excuse me, Captain," he muttered, pushing me back at the same time. He reached down, grabbed a switch near the floor, pulled it. There was a loud electric "snap" and the smoke commenced to subside.

  Sitting on the floor, staring in disbelief at his right arm, was one of Russo's "mess cooks," a young, red-haired sailor known as "Lobo" Smith. I looked, too, and nearly retched.

  The arm was charred black. Great lumps of what had once been flesh hung on it. I was surprised Lobo was still conscious.

  It must have been excruciatingly painful, or completely numb with shock.

  Groups of men came pouring into the control room carry- ing various pieces of firefighting equipment. Jim waved them all aside. "Fire's out," he said.

  Russo showed up from aft. "What's the matter with Lobo?" he began.

  John Larto turned on him furiously. "You dumb bastard, who told him to stow anything behind the power panel? Look at him!" Larto indicated the hapless Lobo's right arm.

  Russo stepped forward suddenly and, before anyone could stop him, gripped his assistant by the injured arm, commenced to strip off the charred flesh. There beneath it was Lobo's arm perfectly good and sound, though minus its usual crop of red hair.

  "You jerk, Lobo," he said, "don't you have no more sense than to store powdered milk over there?"