Hellcats (26 page)

Lockwood had remained silent during the presentations. Now he rose to address the Hellcats and give them his personal “blessing.” The conference just ended, he said, had brought their plans to a climax. It was “the day we have lived for.” He praised their professionalism, determination, and deep-down courage, adding that with their spirit, Operation Barney could not fail. Finally, he asked one favor of them: He had been a submariner since 1914 and had never fired a torpedo in anger. He asked that they fire plenty of them for him in the Sea of Japan, as he would give a “right hind leg to go with them on their mission.” Then it was “God bless you and good hunting!”

After the meeting Lockwood returned
to his stateroom to read a report he'd received earlier that day from SORG. It was a response to the Operation Barney prospectus that had been forwarded to SORG by Dick Voge for an evaluation. Late arriving, SORG's report was not what Lockwood had hoped for. SORG warned that Operation Barney entailed great hazards and that ComSubPac should expect heavy losses of men and ships. For SORG, the mission didn't appear to be justified by the probable damage, light damage at that, that the Hellcats could inflict on the Japanese. Those observations troubled Lockwood, but not nearly as much as SORG's comment that unless the strategic situation demanded its execution,
Operation Barney should not be launched
(emphasis in original).
⁸

Lockwood trusted the judgment of the men who had made this evaluation. They were men he knew and respected, officer and civilian alike. They had vast experience in submarine tactics and operations and knew what worked and what didn't. They were fully cognizant of the losses so far sustained by the sub force and had worked hard to find ways to eliminate the gross dangers sub crews faced on patrols by helping develop tactics that would accomplish SubPac's goals while minimizing risks. SORG's board understood that war patrolling was not risk-free. But Operation Barney was more than just another war patrol and SORG knew it. Understandably, Lockwood was reluctant to disregard the advice and counsel SORG had offered. Sure, there was no way to know how many ships were still afloat in the Sea of Japan—intelligence estimates of their numbers varied wildly. And there was no way to know how many of them the Hellcats could sink. Yet whatever the number, it would weaken Japanese morale. There would be no way they could ignore the fact that their island fortress had been penetrated by submarines capable of destroying the emperor's lifeline to the Far East. As for the risks entailed in under-running minefields, there was no question that there was a good chance one or more of the subs might be lost. Losing subs was a risk Lockwood had to take. If it happened he'd take full responsibility and accept the consequences, just as he had for each of the subs lost so far in the war.

Despite FM sonar's shortcomings and the risks posed by Operation Barney, Lockwood decided that he had to put SORG's conclusions aside. “Wars are not won that way,” he said, meaning wars were not won by fearing to take risks when so much was on the line. That belief strengthened Lockwood's resolve as he contemplated the unknown. That and a voice calling to him: the voice of Mush Morton expressing thanks that Lockwood hadn't wavered in his hunger to exact revenge on the Japanese for the death of the
Wahoo
.

T
he Hellcats trained for their mission day and night right up to the date of departure. The exhausting schedule gave Edge very little time for letter writing. The only opportunity he had was late at night when the blackout on Guam and its strict enforcement forced him under a blanket with a flashlight. Somehow Lawrence found time to compose one last letter, which he dropped into the Pacific fleet mailbag on May 25, two days before shoving off on Operation Barney.

 

 

When it came time for
the big send-off on May 27, Lockwood spared no effort to put his skippers in a relaxed mood. He had the
Holland
's Filipino mess boys lay on a lavish luncheon buffet in one of the tender's spacious staterooms. As promised, a bevy of good-looking Red Cross girls and Navy nurses joined the party.

Lockwood felt that Operation Barney called for a send-off that would ease the strain and self-consciousness of bidding farewell and good shooting to the young Hellcat skippers. It also eased Lockwood's own mind, too, as the Hellcats prepared to depart. Notwithstanding his belief that SORG's estimate of losses was exaggerated, if not wrong, he still suffered deep misgivings and anxiety about the wisdom of sending men into the teeth of Japanese minefields with little to guide them but a fancy electronic device that wasn't always reliable.

Inevitably the clock ticked down; the party broke up. At three p.m., the traditional hour of departure on war patrols, Earl Hydeman indicated that he was ready to go. Diesels rumbling impatiently, the
Sea Dog
,
Crevalle
, and
Spadefish,
now moored alongside the
Holland
, cast off their lines and, with Lockwood and his people watching and waving good-bye, backed clear of the tender. Escorted by a destroyer, Hydeman's Hepcats departed Guam for empire waters.

Lockwood bade good luck and good hunting to Pierce's Polecats and Risser's Bobcats on May 28 and 29, respectively. As each group departed, he felt the familiar tug of apprehension and no small measure of doubt. But this was it; they had all departed, and Lockwood, stuck on the beach, could only wait impatiently for the first reports of action from the front lines to arrive after Mike Day, June 9, when the Hellcats were slated to begin their attacks.

 

 

Under way, the men aboard
the nine Hellcat subs got about their business. The enlisted rates already knew what they were in for and needed only to have it confirmed by their COs, who a day out from Guam sketched in the broad outlines of the mission for their crews, filling in the details only as needed for the men to do their jobs.

Like all sub sailors, the Hellcat sailors were a cocky and profane lot—fatalistic, too: They were more than willing to look death in the eye so long as there was a reasonable chance they'd survive the encounter. At this stage most of them believed that their chances of surviving Operation Barney were better than even; otherwise they'd have transferred en masse to submarines that were not toying around with mines. As the Hellcat subs bore westward to the Tsushima Strait, the men's cockiness and profane outbursts began tapering off. Training exercises and emergency drills conducted at all hours of the day—flooding, fire, collision, chlorine gas—kept the men busy and primed to perform their duties with lightning speed and sure-handedness. There were no amateurs aboard submarines. The men of the Hellcats were for the most part veterans with war patrol experience who knew what to expect from one another and the Japanese—except for the part about the minefields in the straits.

Like all sub skippers, Earl
Hydeman in the
Sea Dog
made it his business to tour his ship at least once a day to make certain that she and her crew would be ready for action when it came. In his Standing Orders Log he had posted the orders to be followed scrupulously by watch standers—especially the OOD—in all circumstances, as before long the ship would enter enemy waters.

In his standing orders Hydeman emphasized that officers of the deck “have the full responsibility for the ship and all the men in her. You should make the men on your watch feel, and act, their share of this responsibility also. As OOD, you are senior to all on board except the Commanding and Executive Officers; you are responsible, in turn, for keeping these officers fully informed.”
¹

“I desire full reports of anything observed outside the ship [he wrote]; any untoward occurrence within the ship, or anything which changes the ship's military effectiveness, maneuverability in any manner, or ability to dive or surface. I do
not
desire reports concerning the ship's normal routine, unless for some reason it is not being maintained.”

The Hellcats' normal routine got interrupted when the
Tinosa
of Risser's Bobcats made a detour to pick up the downed aircrew of a B-29, which they transferred to another submarine returning to Guam. On May 31, the
Spadefish
and
Sea Dog
received information provided by a U.S. patrol bomber and ComSubPac that another aircrew had ditched in their vicinity, east of the Nansei Shoto Islands. The two subs scoured the area but didn't find them. Hydeman ordered the pack to resume their northwesterly course to keep to their schedule.

During the northerly trek Hydeman made time to test the
Sea Dog
's FMS on a pillenwerfer target. If he expected to see the decoy's cloud of exploding bubbles show up as a sharp green pear on the PPI scope, he was sorely disappointed. The laconic Hydeman reported, “Made dive for training and test of FM gear. Not satisfactory. Commenced repairs.” Hydeman set the electronics gang to work on it, the OOD and watch standers high-stepping over parts and tools swaddled in clean shop rags on the diamond-patterned steel deck in the conning tower. Hydeman ran another submerged test early the next day. This time the retuned sonar gear demonstrated exceptional sensitivity, clear bell tones, and crisp, well-defined pears. But Hydeman's day turned sour when he learned that the SJ and ST radars had gone on the fritz.

In his patrol report Hydeman fumed over this development.
²
“This was a low for the life of the
Sea Dog
; having been plagued with many minor material problems
^r
throughout the ship since the day after departure, we now lose our radar just before a scheduled transit through the Nansei Shoto.” With two radar units out of commission, Hydeman faced a serious problem. Radar was absolutely essential to the operation; without its all-seeing eye the
Sea Dog
would be groping blindly as she approached the myriad of islands both big and small scattered throughout the Nansei Shoto, and later, as she made her run into the mouth of the Tsushima Strait.

Leaden clouds piling in threatened heavy weather when Hydeman rendezvoused with the
Crevalle
east of the Nansei Shoto to outline the radar problem he had. Steinmetz agreed to run interference for the
Sea Dog
as the two subs groped their way north through blinding rain.

Ten hours later Hydeman logged the following into his patrol report:

As planned, the next night, June 2, the
Crevalle
found the
Sea Dog
and led her to a morning rendezvous with the
Spadefish
in preparation for their Tsushima Strait run-in. Just in time the
Sea Dog
's radars came back online after a herculean effort by the radar officer and his technicians. At midnight the three subs crossed the imaginary line marking the southern approaches to the Tsushima Strait. Hydeman led his Hepcats into the western channel with the
Spadefish
in trail and the
Crevalle
off the
Sea Dog
's port beam. Small craft of all descriptions buzzed across the strait like water bugs. Hydeman estimated that the Hepcats had a three-hour run through this traffic to reach their dive points. If they didn't run into Japanese patrols, and if their luck held and they didn't hit any mines, they'd be in the Sea of Japan by late afternoon of June fourth. Hydeman reminded his skippers by radio that their submerged transit would require nerves of steel and masterful ship handling. In regard to the latter, he cautioned that the inflowing Kuroshio Current possessed sufficient strength to push a sub sideways into the rows of mines dancing at the ends of their tethers. This was the real thing, not one of Lockwood's dummy minefields.