Hellcats (20 page)

Plowing through heavy green seas
at two-engine speed, white spume exploding over her bull nose, the
Bonefish
cut through the Ryukyus for Area Nine, entering the East China Sea just after dawn on April eleventh.

Edge, alert and decisive, his submariner's sixth sense on guard for any indication that a potential problem was brewing, kept a firm hand on both his ship's and his crew's pulse as they approached Japanese-controlled waters. If he felt a quickening of those pulses it was because, operating so close to Japan, anything could happen. He made certain that the crew maintained a hair-trigger posture, ready to react instantly to an emergency or sudden contact with the enemy. The
Bonefish
rarely needed her crew's assistance to operate with complete reliability and was in fact operating as if she had no need for them at all. That wasn't completely true; every man aboard played an important role maintaining the submarine at the highest level of combat efficiency.

At night, on the surface in the East China Sea, the officer of the deck, the quartermaster of the watch, and four lookouts stationed on the bridge peered out through binoculars at the dark stretch of water, searching for enemy ships and planes. As the
Bonefish
swept toward her patrol station the radarmen studied the bright green pips blossoming on the radarscope like stars in a galaxy each time the ship's powerful SJ radar swept around. The pips indicated scores of night-fishing sampans and sailboats, while ghostly greenish background clutter called “grass” indicated small, grubby volcanic islands or fast-moving rain squalls. The radarmen, searching for targets worthy of a torpedo or two, evaluated each pip, dismissing some, keeping an eye on others.

After sampling the array of contacts on the radarscope in the conning tower, Edge backed down the ladder into the control room, where the chief of the watch acknowledged that everything was under control. Edge conferred with his executive officer over a chart of the patrol area. The exec confirmed that the
Bonefish
's present course and speed conformed to Edge's orders. He also pointed out that the steering effects produced by the strong local currents required constant course corrections. Detailed information on those currents and other essentials pertaining to navigation in waters around southern Japan had been published in the ship's dogeared copy of the
Coast Pilot
. Area Nine was strewn with dozens of small islets and rough-bottomed coastal shallows similar to those in waters the
Bonefish
had patrolled off the Philippines and that posed a potential hazard.

Moving aft, Edge passed the radio room, banked with transmitters and receivers, and entered the crew's mess, where off-duty sailors gathered to eat meals, drink coffee by the gallon, play cribbage and backgammon, whine, complain, and talk about what they were going to do when they got home after the war. Other favorite topics for discussion were the Navy, and, of course, women.

Continuing aft through the crew's berthing compartment, past snoring off-duty sailors sprawled in their bunks, Edge entered the booming engine rooms. He acknowledged the motor macs on watch and received a circled-thumb-and-index-finger status report from the engineering officer. The men used sign language to communicate; talking over the deafening roar of diesel engines running at flank speed wasn't possible.

Farther aft, in the maneuvering room, Edge chatted easily with the electricians' mates controlling and monitoring the ship's electrical load at the propulsion control console. He surveyed the console's solid wall of amp meters and gauges and checked the lineup on the main propulsion control levers. Nodding approval, he moved on to the after torpedo room. He found, as he had during an earlier tour of the forward torpedo room, a gang of cocky and profane torpedomen itching for action. Sharing their living and bunking spaces with a load of hulking three-thousand-pound, twenty-foot-long torpedoes, the sailors had developed a genuine affection for them, patting their blunt noses as if stroking a faithful dog on the head. Torpedomen assigned to the after room saw less action than their mates up forward. Regarded as tail-end Charlies, they never failed to ask Edge, whom they all admired and respected, if, when he had a target, he could try to fire the stern tubes first. The easygoing Edge would try his best.

 

 

After sunrise, as the
Bonefish
drove northwestward toward the Goto Retto, a fast-approaching plane lit up SD radar. It would be on top of them in minutes.

Edge didn't hesitate: “Clear the bridge!” The officer of the deck hit the diving alarm, honking it twice.

Seawater surging into her ballast tanks, the
Bonefish
nosed down, rigged-out bow planes on full dive. Water streaming past the plunging submarine sluiced into the superstructure's voids, chuckling up the sides of the conning tower and periscope shears and over the sealed bridge hatch.

“One-five-zero feet. Eight-degree down bubble,” said the diving officer, confirming Edge's orders. The
Bonefish
dived fast, clawing for depth and the protection it offered.

Edge called for a range estimate on the airplane before the SD mast went under. “Five miles, Captain, maybe less.” He altered course away from the telltale scar of foam and bubbles the
Bonefish
's dive had etched on the surface.

A water hammer rattled pipes and valves in the forward part of the ship. The hydraulic system moaned as the planesmen finessed the bow and stern planes just so to level the sub out exactly at Edge's ordered depth. “One-five-zero feet, Captain.” Edge acknowledged the report and nodded approval.

Though the airplane had likely come and gone without dropping bombs or depth charges, Edge ran submerged all morning, until it was time for a cautious look-see.

“Sonar?”

“Nothing in the vicinity, Captain.”

“Up scope.” On haunches, Edge waited for the periscope to appear, snapped down the folded training handles, and rose with it. Arm draped over one of the handles he muscled the scope around 360 degrees, searching sky and sea for intruders or, better yet, targets. It took only seconds to make a full circuit. “All clear. Down scope.” It was time to make tracks for the patrol station. “Control, prepare to surface.”

Edge, the officer of the deck, the quartermaster, and four lookouts, with binoculars slung around their necks, waited at the foot of the ladder to the bridge.

“Surface the boat,” Edge ordered.

Three hoots of the Klaxon resounded through the ship, followed by the roar of high-pressure air dewatering the main ballast tanks. The
Bonefish
shuddered and nosed up. As the depth gauges unwound, the diving officer called out the readings until the boat had shouldered out from under the sea. Moments later four diesels, rolling on air starters, erupted, spewing smoke and cooling water from their exhaust ports. With two engines charging batteries to ensure that the ship had a “full can” for the next submergence, the staccato throb of the two on propulsion rose several octaves. The screws took a bite and the
Bonefish
swung onto a course into the East China Sea.

 

 

After sunset on the twelfth,
the
Bonefish
, patrolling south of Quelpart Island, exchanged recognition signals with her pack mate, the
Seahorse
, via SJ radar. Radar pulses keyed via Morse code allowed submarines to communicate on a secure channel. After an exchange of information, which included Edge's report that they'd encountered and destroyed several floating Type 93 mines with gunfire, Greer gave Edge permission to patrol independently, as the area they were in, laced with islands and shallows patrolled by the Japanese, would impose severe limitations on a coordinated attack. As well, the
Seahorse
would be unavailable for a few days while she conducted that mine recon for Lockwood around the mouth of the Tsushima Strait. When the
Bonefish
and
Seahorse
parted company Greer and his men had no idea what the Japanese had in store for them.

The next day the
Crevalle
showed up to exchange information with the
Bonefish
. In between torpedo attacks, some successful, some not, Steinmetz had been busy reconnoitering minefields. Steinmetz thought it was dangerous having three subs that were operating in one corner of the patrol area rendezvous. He disliked what he called “this dog-sniff-dog stuff” and the “mad flail,” as he put it, to make contact. The two subs parted company and moved on.

Shortly, a grim-faced radioman handed Edge a decoded message from Fleet Radio in Pearl Harbor: President Roosevelt had died in Warm Springs, Georgia.
^l
Details were sketchy, as was information about the new president, Harry S Truman, whom some of the sailors had never heard of. If any of the men had wanted to take a moment to reflect on FDR and what effect his death might have on the outcome of the war, radar contact with a small echo-ranging patrol boat scrambled them to action. Though it was a very dark night and the patrol boat was only a hazy blur, Edge believed that he had a target worth a torpedo.

“Stand by tubes One, Two, and Three. Set depth four feet. Gyro angles zero-one-one, zero-one-two, zero-one-three.” The spread of gyro settings guaranteed a hit as the patrol boat advanced left to right across the
Bonefish
's bow. “Fire One!”

The firing key operator smacked the firing plunger. “Number One fired electrically!”

A torpedo roared from its tube, turbine lighting off like a buzz saw. Two more followed at ten-second intervals from the forward tubes—not the stern tubes the tail-end Charlies had hoped for.

Edge pulled away at full power. Aft, in the sub's boiling wake, the tin fish appeared to run hot, straight, and normal when suddenly all three broached like playful porpoises. Instead of warheads exploding against the enemy ship's hull, there was only a crushing silence. Alerted by the broachers, the patrol boat turned on her heel and charged back down their damning wakes for the
Bonefish
. Edge, hauling out, led a merry chase until the Japanese skipper broke off. Edge decided against a follow-up attack; he couldn't justify shooting more torpedoes at a target itching for trouble. Instead, he shaped a course to patrol an area across the southern traffic lanes south of the Tsushima Strait, where he hoped to find loaded ships bound for Japan.

 

 

Two days passed uneventfully. The
routine of a so far unproductive patrol was broken only by a parade of small sea trucks and sampans and the sound, always like distant thunder, of heavy depth charging. Perhaps it was the
Spadefish
or the
Crevalle
getting a working over by the Japanese. It wasn't hard to picture eighty-some sweat-drenched men breathing stale air trapped inside a submarine's hull, counting the seconds until the next drop, praying that it wouldn't be on top of them. The thunder slowly faded like a departing storm, the outcome unknown until the next rendezvous—or unanswered call—between subs. The
Crevalle
showed up around midnight on the fourteenth, proving that she'd not fallen victim to the Japanese. There was no sign of the
Spadefish
.

Edge took advantage of a lull in the action to start a letter to Sarah. Writing in short spurts, he had time to complete only a small portion each day and used dashed lines (- - - -) to indicate a time break between each part.