Hellcats (30 page)

The
Spadefish
's raked bow cut toward the harbor and its moored targets. Radar swept ahead and seaward for ships and patrol boats, even as it outlined the harbor and, inland, the rugged hills south of Sapporo. As the
Spadefish
advanced she ran so close to shore that Germershausen smelled vegetation. He was grateful for a light rain that started falling, as it would mask the
Spadefish
slinking toward the harbor entrance by the breakwater. Meanwhile, planes flying into and out of Sapporo roared overhead. Their brilliant landing lights illuminated everything in their glide path, including the
Spadefish
. Germershausen and his men instinctively ducked for cover, though it was unlikely that the aircrews would realize that the sub they were overflying was American, not Japanese.

Halfway into the harbor Germershausen's plan fell apart. The ships in the roadstead turned out to be small ones. The only big one he saw was a freighter standing out to sea. She steamed right past the dark, low-lying
Spadefish
, on an opposite course, oblivious to her presence.

Germershausen had taken a huge risk and had come up empty-handed. The only target in sight on which to take out his frustration was the hapless station ship moored at the end of the breakwater. He fired two torpedoes, only to have them underrun the ship. Disgusted by their performance and by his overestimation of the station ship's draft, Germershausen issued a tangle of engine and rudder orders to spin the
Spadefish
on her heel and, at flank speed, haul after the ship standing out of Otaru.

Diesels roaring, Germershausen found the ship and charged in. Three crashing torpedoes ruptured her hull, blew her mast, stack, and cargo sky-high. She sank in less than a minute.

A half hour later radar picked up another ship, this one inbound for Otaru.

The
Spadefish
sped on, Germershausen tracking and plotting the target's blip on the radar screen. Three torpedoes holed this ship, too, which upended and, like the
Spadefish
's earlier victim, went down in less than a minute.

And yet again, “Radar contact!” By now dawn was streaking the sky; it came early in these latitudes and Germershausen didn't want to be caught on the surface by planes dispatched to find the emperor's missing ships. He tracked this one by radar, then pulled the plug to finish it off submerged. Since there were no escorts to avoid, Germershausen kept the scope raised during the entire attack. It was almost too easy. All at once he saw a bright flash of light at the ship's waterline, then another, followed by a pair of trip-hammer-like explosions that rocked the
Spadefish
at periscope depth.

“Got her!” Germershausen turned the scope over for a quick look by the gang in the conning tower, who rarely had a chance to see a ship, broken in two, head for Davy Jones's locker.

 

 

George Pierce's Polecats—the
Tunny
,
Skate,
and
Bonefish
—arrived off Honshu's west coast on June eight. The
Tunny
began working an area around Wakasa Wan, due north of Kyoto, while the
Skate
and
Bonefish
started off around the Noto Peninsula, midway up the coast.

The mountainous Noto Peninsula formed a long hook that embraced Toyama Wan, a large bay bounded by small bays and bights suitable for use as anchorages. The tip of the Noto hook, known as Suzu Misaki, lies some fifty miles northeast of the interior cup of Toyama Wan. The bay, in some places, is over four thousand feet deep
.

Ozzie Lynch in the
Skate
drew first blood for the Polecats on June tenth. Patrolling submerged off the Noto Peninsula, Lynch noted in his patrol report:

Unable to shoot at targets in those B-29-mined seaports, Lynch patrolled on the surface all night on the ninth looking for targets. In the morning he patrolled submerged along the fifty-fathom curve off the west coast of the Noto Peninsula. Around eight thirty in the morning Lynch spotted a small ship, which he avoided when it turned out to be a minesweeper. Then he saw something interesting.

Lynch's quick firing setup worked to perfection. Hit squarely amidships by two torpedoes, the big lumbering I-boat went down before smoke from the explosions had time to clear. A huge hissing bubble of air rising to the surface, followed by a glassy oil slick and breaking-up noises as she sank, signaled her end.

 

 

Lynch continued patrolling, avoiding areas
that he knew had been mined by B-29s. On the eleventh he chased a large freighter, fired four torpedoes but missed. The racing freighter sought refuge in an anchorage filled with ships near Wajima. This anchorage presented a multitude of targets for ships near Wajima. This anchorage presented a multitude of targets for Lynch, who went in after them.

“Stand by tubes forward!”

Six torpedo ready lights snapped on below the firing plungers.

“Up periscope!”

The exec, doing a two-step opposite Lynch at the scope, eyed the bearing marker around the scope's upper collar.

“Bearing, mark!” from Lynch.

“Zero-four-nine.”

“Range, mark!”

The exec checked the data Lynch had dialed into the stadimeter repeater at the base of the scope. “Two-five double oh.”

“Down scope!”

The tube started down. Before it reached the end of its travel, Lynch motioned “up.” He snapped the handles down, steadied the scope on the targets. “Check bearing and shoot! Mark!”

“Zero-five-four.”

“Fire One!”

The familiar blast of compressed air launched a torpedo at one of the Japanese ships riding at anchor in the harbor. At ten-second intervals five more whined from their tubes. Lynch reported that:

Japanese gunners had the Skate's periscope in their sights. Hot rounds raised water spouts all around it. Then:

More shells raised more water spouts around the periscope as Lynch sprinted for deep water. Depth charges dropped from the small charging vessel rattled the
Skate
but none was close. Lynch made a clean escape.

 

 

While the
Skate
was busy
torpedoing ships, George Pierce, pack leader of the Polecats, had so far come up empty-handed. On the ninth, Mike Day, Pierce in the
Tunny
had hurriedly fired three torpedoes from long range at a steamer, only to be rewarded with a hopeless dud and two misses. Japanese sailors, hearing the dud strike the hull of their ship, Pierce reported, shined a light over the side to see what they'd hit.

On the tenth Pierce chased but lost a sub inside the B-29-mined reaches of the fifty-fathom curve where the
Tunny
couldn't go. Pierce could only hope that the
Skate
and
Bonefish
had gotten through the Tsushima Strait okay and that they were having better luck than he was.

Despite fighting heavy weather off
the coast of Ch'ongjin, Korea, Robert Risser in the
Flying Fish
was so far having a better time of it than Pierce. His Bobcats had already sunk two ships and were busy tracking others. Risser was determined to run up the score as much as he could.

On June 10, the
Flying Fish
arrived at her patrol station at Seishin, an industrial port near the border between the USSR and Korea. Risser saw smokestacks, large buildings, and what looked like a refinery southwest of town. Fleets of fishing trawlers clogged the harbor entrance. As far as Risser could tell viewing the scene from more than a mile offshore, and given the jumble of godowns, sheds, trawlers, and whatnot lining the harbor, there were no large ships moored there.

Risser decided to stand off the beach to wait for something to show up. Around noontime his patience paid off. A sea truck, an eight-hundred-tonner, according to Risser,
^u
stood out of the harbor under a sooty cloud of smoke belching from a single stack. Risser, still hoping for something better, tracked her until she was a good six or seven miles from the harbor.

Around midnight Risser heard, “Radar contact!” A small transport chuffing along on a zigzag course blew up when hit by a
Flying Fish
torpedo. Risser never saw her through the fog that had enveloped the coast until she lit up and exploded, her blip shattering into a thousand flickering stars.

Diesels burbling, the
Flying Fish
approached the target's grave.

It took two hours of searching through the wreckage and calling out to the survivors in Japanese before they coaxed a man aboard the sub.

The hen tracks Risser referred to were those the prisoner had penned in a letter to Risser and the men of the
Flying Fish
. In it he expressed his shame at being taken prisoner and how deeply he longed for death, one that would exculpate his guilt for having lived. He admitted that he was surprised and heartened by the friendship and compassion shown him by the crew. Nevertheless, because he had been made to polish the sub's bronze torpedo tube inner doors and fittings, which he knew existed for the sole purpose of killing his people, he wanted to die all the more. He believed that his life was in the hands of America and that if he did die at the hands of Americans, it wouldn't matter, since he was already dead by virtue of his shameful deeds. He closed by thanking Risser and his officers and men for their acceptance of him as a man, and wished them health and happiness.