Submarine! (13 page)

“You might have something there, Kuehn,” he says. “We ought to wait till it's a little darker, though, before we try it.”

After a few more minutes' discussion, in which several other officers and enlisted men express their views, the general alarm rings again, and the announcing system blares forth.

“Battle stations! All hands man your battle stations for gun action!”

Seawolf's
three-inch gun is manned, trained out on the starboard beam, and she commences to ease in on the nearest enemy ship. Silently she creeps toward the foe, ammunition and crew at the ready, nerveless fingers twitching the firing keys, eyes straining to pierce the gloom. At a range of approximately two miles, with the water sibilant along the thin side plating of the submarine hull, Gross hoarsely calls out:

“Commence firing!”

Six shots answer him from
Seawolf's
deck gun and six tracer streams mark the paths of the shells on their way toward the enemy. Possibly one or two hits are achieved, but there is precious little time to verify them, for all five enemy ships instantly reply with a veritable barrage of shellfire.

Comment in the patrol report: “Considered this a good idea that didn't work . . . continued tracking well clear to port.”

Gross orders another contact report to be sent to Pearl Harbor. He has not yet been able to talk directly to
Whale
by radio, though he has received word she is on her way. This is exasperating because a considerable time lag is involved in sending the message to Pearl for decoding, re-encoding, and retransmitting to
Whale
.

Some twenty-eight hours after the initial contact with the convoy, fourteen hours after sinking the vessel,
Seawolf
sights two planes approaching the convoy. Evidently these had been ordered out as air cover, and their arrival forces the submarine to dive. Five hours later she is back on the surface making full power in pursuit—and three hours after that, contact is regained. Lesson: If you drive a submarine under,
keep
him there.

0245 on the morning of January 16, nearly forty-eight hours after the initial contact,
Seawolf
is still trailing, pumping out information every few hours. Finally Gross is able to talk directly to Acey Burrows. Comment in the patrol report: “This was encouraging.”

1554, fifty-four hours after initial contact, three explosions are heard in the distance, followed a little later by a fourth.

1807: more explosions; flashes of gunfire in the convoy. Subsequently, for a period of about two hours,
Seawolf
hears sporadic explosions from the direction of the convoy. Some are identified as depth charges and some may be torpedoes. Much gunfire is visible through the elevated periscope but by this time it is night again, and nothing further can be seen.

Seawolf's
weary plotting parties now report that the convoy has stopped.

Carefully the
Wolf's
radar checks over each enemy ship. All five are still visible, but only one appears to be underway, and he is leaving the area of action at full speed. The indications are that
Whale
may have hit and damaged two of the freighters, and perhaps is occupied at the moment by the two destroyers. Under these circumstances, she will never get another shot at the last ship—unless, somehow, the fleeing freighter can be induced to turn back after a suitable interval.

Despite mute signals of exhaustion which he detects in himself and his companions, the thought, in Gross, is father to the deed. Once again the terribly fatigued
Wolf
swings into action. The plotting parties, by now quite expert, resume their interminable chore.

About two and a half hours later: “This ought to be long enough! If
Whale
is going to get out from under those tin cans she'll have pretty well accomplished it by now. Time to turn this fellow around!
Battle stations
—
gun action!”

Gross sees the answering gleam of assent in the eyes of his men. Once again
Seawolf's
tiny deck gun is manned, and the submarine ghosts in toward the fleeing enemy. The gun crew is on deck, the ammunition is standing by. The radar is giving steady ranges to the sight-setters. All is desperate readiness.

Nervelessly the low-lying sub closes her much larger antagonist. The mettle of the latter had been shown not long ago, when
Seawolf
had made her earlier attempt at gun action. When a surface ship has been alerted to the presence of a submarine, the greatest advantage of the undersea vessel—the factor of surprise—is taken from her. In this case, of course, there can no longer be any surprise, except perhaps at the temerity of the submarine skipper.

Googy Gross, for all his daring tactics, is not the man to pass up any possible advantage which he might be able to garner. He jockeys carefully for position, hoping to open fire from such a direction that the enemy's stack smoke at least partially blankets the expected return fire. The moon is about to rise, however, and Gross realizes that its additional light will enable his adversary to see him and probably reply effectively, at the necessarily short range he would have to employ should he open fire now. And so the
Wolf
glides along, keeping parallel course with, but just out of sight of, the Nipponese freighter.

Then the moon rises, and
Seawolf
maneuvers to silhouette the target against the frosty light in the east.

Unlike the previous gun attack, this time the object is not necessarily to sink the vessel—though that outcome, of
course, would be welcomed—but to cause him to reverse course and drive him back toward
Whale
. It is a gigantic bluff Gross is acting, one worthy of his well-known poker prowess. At a range of about two miles the
Wolf
commences rapid fire, pumping out her shells as fast as they can be loaded.

The reaction from the enemy is twofold and immediate. Apparently he has been keeping his guns manned for just this possibility, although he probably has not divined the ulterior motive behind this second gun attack. Instead of changing course, he instantly returns the fire with two heavy guns—both considerably larger than that of the submarine—plus several machine guns.

Noting that the Jap return fire is wild and erratic, Gross holds to his initial program, and keeps his crew at it. The hotly served gun on the submarine's deck registers several hits before the Nip gun crews manage to find the range. Then, with shells whistling overhead and plunging into the water not far away, Googy is forced to sheer sharply and break off the action.

Feelings of bitter disappointment fill the skipper of the
Wolf
. He has exposed his ship and crew, in their badly fatigued state, for nothing gained. Yet there was little else he could do, under the circumstances-so run Captain Roy Gross's thoughts as he hears a report from one of the lookouts:

“Target has changed course!”

And so he has; but he isn't heading back toward
Whale
yet. Rather, it develops, he is steaming in large circles, apparently puzzled as to which direction to choose. Gross stations his ship to southeastward of him, vowing to have another go at him if he needs it.

But he doesn't. With the
Wolf
dogging his heels at the more respectable range of about four miles, he heads back in the direction he came from, zigzagging radically, but heading northwest for sure. Her purpose accomplished,
Seawolf
follows along, sending periodic contact reports to
Whale
. Every time the Jap edges a little too far one way or
the other, accidental “sighting” of a submarine shadowing him in that quarter sends him back in line again.

Proof that Acey Burrows is back on the surface—
Whale
replies to the first report instantly. Position, course, and speed of the enemy are radioed to her, in each case answered with the cryptic “R.” According to plot she and the remainder of the convoy are approximately fifty miles to the northwest. As Gross sends Burrows the necessary information as to enemy movements, Burrows will try to position himself for interception.

Every time the Japanese skipper zigs or zags, a new message crackles through the ether:

It is almost as if a sheep were being herded to slaughter—and indeed he is. You can imagine the Jap skipper's state of mind at this point. Everywhere he has turned he has run into a submarine. He must think there are dozens of them in the area, never dreaming that eleven of the twelve submarines are one and the same—the
Seawolf
—and without torpedoes.

0524 on the morning of January 17, 1944, three torpedo explosions, followed by the reverberations of gunfire from the Jap. Possibly one fish hit in him.

0600: plot reports the ship has stopped.

0620: in the growing light the Jap ship has evidently sighted
Seawolf
still prowling in the distance on the surface, keeping well clear of possible erratic torpedoes. Since this is the only enemy he can see, he opens fire again.
Seawolf
does not even bother to dive.

0623: one terrific explosion in the target. Smoke, spray, and steam rise high in the air, and the ship settles by the bow.

0635: the target has sunk, a victim of at least two torpedoes from
Whale. Seawolf
is on her way back to port, with the skipper, the exec, the plotting party, and the communication
department utterly exhausted after seventy-two hours on their feet under the most grueling strain.

When
Seawolf
returned to Pearl Harbor with her report of four ships sunk, plus one “assist,” she was again received with wild enthusiasm—a not unusual thing for the
Wolf
. Characteristically, Gross gave the credit for his fifth ship to
Whale
, who had actually sunk it. Acey Burrows, on the other hand, stated that the credit belonged to
Seawolf
. There was glory enough for all.

The career of the grand old submarine was just about over. She went back to San Francisco and for the second time was modernized. But progress is rapid in war, and she was an old ship—as fighting submarines go. She neither carried the number of torpedoes nor possessed the thick hull skin of later vessels. With full recognition of her valiant record to date,
Seawolf
was confined to secondary missions. She had sunk her last ship.

The remainder of the saga of the
Seawolf
is quickly told. Under the command of Lieutenant Commander A. L. Bontier she left Australia on what was to be her fifteenth patrol.

On October 3, 1944, a Japanese submarine attacked and sank USS
Shelton
(DE407) not far from
Seawolf's
reported position. Maddened,
Shelton's
comrades fanned forth in all directions to hunt the Nip submersible.

On that same day, as luck would have it,
Seawolf, Narwhal
, and two other United States submarines were also in the vicinity, in an area in which no attacks on any submarines whatsoever were permitted.

USS
Rowell
(DE403), anxious to avenge the sinking of
Shelton
, pressed her search hard, and finally detected a submerged submarine. Either not having been informed or having forgotten that he was in a “no attack” zone, her skipper immediately ordered attack with all weapons. He later reported that the submarine behaved in a peculiar manner, making little attempt to escape, and continually sending a series of dots and dashes over the sonar equipment. After several
attacks, debris and a large air bubble came to the surface. A probable “kill” was credited, and a submarine silhouette was painted on
Rowell's
bridge.

Seawolf
had been contacted by
Narwhal
at four minutes of eight on the morning of October 3. She did not answer an attempt to contact her next morning, nor was she ever heard from thereafter. It has since been established that the Japanese submarine which sank
Shelton
experienced no counter-measures, and was able to return to Japan. There is no Japanese report of attack on an American submarine which could possibly account for the known circumstances of
Seawolf's
disappearance.

Investigation disclosed what looked like certain though circumstantial proof that the submarine sunk by
Rowell
had been
Seawolf
. The fact that the trapped submarine had sent sonar signals, instead of evading, provided the final argument. Personnel of the American destroyer strenuously insisted that the signals were not in the correct recognition code, but mistakes had been made in them before.

Sooner or later it was bound to happen. There had been instances of our own forces firing on United States submarines—one of the most inexcusable occurring near San Francisco in 1942 when USS
Gato
, escorted by one of our destroyers, was bombed nevertheless by a blimp which totally ignored the frantic signals sent by the escort. There had been many other cases of United States planes attacking friendly submarines during the war, and a few of surface forces firing on them. Indeed, the whole problem of submarine recognition had long been a perplexing one. Elaborate systems for safeguarding our submarines had been built up, and those lapses which did from time to time occur could be explained, usually, as unfortunate errors in the heat of battle. A few times, however, what appeared to be a lack of the rudiments of common sense had tragic results.