Submarine! (19 page)

By the summer of 1942 she was not quite half finished. This super-battleship with two sisters
Yamato
and
Musashi
, was bigger than any war vessel ever before constructed in the history of the world. Bigger than
Bismarck
, the German behemoth of 50,000 tons. Almost three times as big as
Oklahoma
, lying bottom up in the mud and ooze of Pearl Harbor. Armor plate twenty inches thick. Engines of 200,000 horsepower. Guns throwing projectiles eighteen inches in diameter.

Then at the Battle of Midway, in June, 1942, the flower of the Japanese naval air force met destruction.
Akagi, Kaga, Soryu
, and
Hiryu
—all first-line carriers—were sunk. The attack on Midway was turned back, a complete failure.
The Naval Ministry met again in secret session, and decided that completion of new aircraft carriers was paramount. So
Shinano
was redesigned. Some of the tremendous armor plate was removed from her side. Her huge barbettes, turrets, and eighteen-inch guns were never installed, and the weight thus saved was put into an armored flight deck made of hardened steel four inches thick. Under this flight deck were built two hangar decks, and below them another armored deck, eight inches thick. She was capable of storing 100 to 150 planes, and could land them and take them off simultaneously from an airfield nearly one thousand feet in length and 130 feet in width.

But all this took time, and as 1944 drew to a close, the need of the Japanese Navy for its new super carrier became increasingly acute. Finally, in November, 1944,
Shinano
was nearly completed. The commissioning ceremonies were held on November 18; a picture of the Emperor in an ornate gilded frame was ceremoniously delivered to the vessel, and she was turned over to her commanding officer.

Then the bad news arrived. Japanese strategic intelligence reports indicated that air raids on the Tokyo area would become increasingly severe, with a good possibility that the brave new ship would be seriously exposed at her fitting-out dock. There was even a possibility that United States Forces would discover the existence of the huge vessel and make a special effort to destroy her before she could get to sea. This could not be permitted. The Tokyo area was too vulnerable. The ship must be moved to the Inland Sea.

Now the Inland Sea is the body of water formed between the islands of Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu. It has three entrances: two, the Bungo and Kii Suidos, into the Pacific, and one, Shimonoseki Strait, into the landlocked Sea of Japan. It is an ideal operating base for an inferior navy which must depend upon being able to hide when it cannot fight.

But
Shinano
is not ready to go to sea. True, she is structurally complete, her engines can operate, and she floats, but she is not quite ready. Her watertight integrity has not
been proved. Air tests have been made of only a few of her hundreds of compartments. Many holes through various bulkheads have not yet been plugged. Watertight doors have not been tested, and it is not known whether they can be closed; furthermore, even if they can be closed, no one knows if they are actually watertight. Electrical wiring and piping passing through watertight bulkheads have not had their packing glands set up and tested. Cable and pipe conduits from the main deck into the bowels of the ship have not been sealed. The pumping and drainage system is not complete; piping is not all connected. The fire main cannot be used because the necessary pumps have not been delivered.

Most important of all, the crew has been on board for only one month. They number 1,900 souls, but few have been to sea together. Many have never been to sea at all, and
none have had any training whatsoever on board Shinano
. They do not know their ship.
They are not a crew. They are 1,900 people
.

But it is decided, nonetheless, that
Shinano
must sail to safer waters immediately. To do so she must pass out of Tokyo Bay, steer south and west around the southeastern tip of Honshu, and enter the Kii Suido, a trip of only a few hundred miles. But about half the trip will be in waters accessible to United States submarines. That risk she must take. Give her an escort of four destroyers, and send her at high speed so that the submarines cannot catch her. Make the move in absolute secrecy, so that there will be no possibility of an unfortunate leak of information.

The die was cast, and on the afternoon of November 28, 1944,
Shinano
set sail with her four escorting destroyers. Sailors and workmen crowded about her decks, and the gilded frame glittered in the late afternoon sunlight on the flying bridge. From within the frame, the image of the Son of Heaven beamed happily on this mightiest of warships.

Thus was set the stage for the greatest catastrophe yet to befall the hapless Japanese Navy. Work for four years building the biggest ship of its kind that has ever been constructed
by man; put 1,900 men on board; install a picture of the Emperor on the bridge, and send her out through a few miles of water exposed to possible operations of American submarines.

There was nothing particularly portentous about the laying of the keel of
Archerfish
. She displaced 1,500 tons, or one-fiftieth the tonnage of the huge vessel fated to be her adversary. She was only one third the length of
Shinano
, and her crew of eighty-two men and officers was about one fortieth of the 3,200 estimated full designed complement of the Japanese ship.

Leaving New London,
Archerfish
zigzags southward through the center of the broad Atlantic, in waters infested by her enemy sisters. Do not think that a submarine is not afraid of other submarines. We are probably more afraid of them and more respectful of them than any other type of vessel would be. A submarine cruising on the surface is a delicious morsel. It almost always travels alone, and its only defense is its own vigilance. Zigzag all day and even at night, if the visibility is fairly good. Keep a sharp lookout and radar watch. Tell yourselves over and over again, “Boys, don't relax. We are playing for keeps now.”

The weather becomes perceptibly warmer. Finally, land is sighted, and
Archerfish
slips through the Mona Passage into the Caribbean Sea. Here the waters are even more infested with German submarines than are the wide reaches of the central Atlantic.
Archerfish
puts on full speed and dashes across the Caribbean to Cristobal, at the Atlantic end of the Panama Canal. She arrives early in the morning and proceeds immediately through the great locks, and through Gatun Lake to the submarine base at Balboa on the Pacific end of the Canal.

No danger here from German subs. No time, either, for any rest for the tired crew, for they have lost the edge from their training and must be brought back “on the step” again. One week is all that is available.
Archerfish
is issued nine practice torpedoes, and fires them again and again. Target
convoys are provided. Day and night exercises are conducted. Rarely does the crew turn in before midnight, and all hands are always up at 0500.
Archerfish
does not even stop for lunch, but instead distributes sandwiches to all members of the crew, making up for it with a good breakfast and a good dinner.

One week of this; then, her crew once again in fine fettle,
Archerfish
sails across the broad Pacific, on the final and longest leg of her journey to Pearl Harbor. She and her crew have had a pretty steady go of it. They have been training strenuously and incessantly for the past two months with practically no rest, but they cannot be allowed to relax.

They know that the competition in the far western Pacific is mighty tough, so they drill steadily, on every maneuver of which the ship is capable, except the actual firing of torpedoes.
Archerfish
cannot fire torpedoes, because she is transporting a full load of “war shots.” One of the most convenient ways of getting torpedoes to Pearl Harbor was to send them by submarine.

Finally land is sighted. A PC boat signals through the early dawn to
Archerfish
, “We are your escort,” and swings about to lead the submarine to Pearl Harbor. This is the last stop. Below decks all hands are feverishly cleaning up the ship and themselves. They intend to make a good entrance into Pearl; they are proud of their ship, and will not willingly allow her to suffer by comparison with any other in looks or efficiency.

Finally
Archerfish
gently noses into a dock at the submarine base, Pearl Harbor, where a small group of officers and enlisted men await her. Admiral Lockwood, the Commander Submarines, Pacific Fleet (also known as “Uncle Charlie”), is on hand to greet this newest addition to his forces. With him is an array of talent: the squadron commander, the division commander, the officer in charge of the repair department, the submarine supply officer, a submarine medical officer, an electronics officer, and a commissary officer.

The enlisted men are evidently a working party. As
Archerfish
approaches the dock, they scamper to catch the weighted heaving lines thrown by members of her crew. Pulling in swiftly on the “heevies,” they haul heavy hawsers from the deck of the submarine to the dock. Others stand by with a narrow gangway and, when the submarine finally comes to rest alongside the dock, bridge the gap between dock and ship with it.

The moment the gangway has been placed, Admiral Lockwood, followed by his train of experts, walks aboard to greet the skipper, who by this time has jumped down from his station on the bridge. Asking if there are any outstanding emergency repairs or other troubles, Uncle Charlie chats for a few moments. Like a man who has just had a new automobile delivered to him, he is interested in all the new wrinkles and gadgets on board. Then, bidding the skipper good-by until lunch, to which he has been invited at Uncle Charlie's mess, the Admiral leaves the ship.

This is the opportunity the rest of his staff have been waiting for. Each one of them searches out his opposite number on board and makes arrangements for necessary repairs. In addition, there are several last-minute alterations which must be accomplished before the ship can depart. The workmen—all Navy men—who are to perform these operations are to a large extent already en route to the dock with their tools and equipment. By this method of making alterations virtually on the fighting front, so to speak, our submarines always went into battle with the very latest and finest equipment.

Meanwhile, the enlisted men who had come on the dock with the Admiral, and who had handled lines for the ship, have not been idle. Three or four bulging mail sacks, a crate of oranges, a box of nice red apples, and a five-gallon can of ice cream were brought down with them on a handcart. These they now passed over the gangway to the eagerly awaiting crew of
Archerfish
.

On December 23, 1943, while
Shinano
was still building,
Archerfish
departed Pearl Harbor on her first war patrol. Too bad she could not have stayed for Christmas, but orders
must be obeyed, and operations seldom take notice of such things. Besides, her crew had been brought up to the fever pitch of enthusiasm. Christmas or no, she was eager to be on her way.

On January 8, 1944,
Archerfish
entered her assigned area, near Formosa. If any of her crew expected even this final lap of her 13,000-mile voyage to war to be a rest cure, they must have been disappointed, for every day of this two-week period was utilized for drill. Practice makes perfect.

To some extent a submarine is a weapon of opportunity. You cannot attack ships which do not arrive. If the seas are too rough, you have the devil's own time keeping an efficient periscope watch, for if you run too close to the surface in order to increase your effective periscope height and see over the wave tops, you stand grave danger of “broaching”; that is, surfacing involuntarily as a result of wave action.

On her first patrol
Archerfish
and her disgusted crew fought heavy weather for two solid weeks, but finally she reported radar contact with four large and five smaller ships heading in the general direction of Formosa. The leading ship was attacked and sunk and
Archerfish's
patrol report stated, “We had celebrated the first anniversary of our keel laying in right smart fashion.”

Months passed, and she was a veteran. The vast Pacific was her playground and her no man's land. Then, as Joe Enright, her skipper, recorded in the fifth war patrol report of
Archerfish
, on November 28, 1944, she was patrolling submerged to the south and west of the western entrance to Sagami Nada, or outer Tokyo Bay. No ships had been sighted. No contacts of any kind (except fishing boats) had been made thus far in the patrol, which had begun twenty-nine days before.

At 1718 she surfaced, the visibility having decreased to such an extent that surface patrolling was feasible and desirable. With no premonition of the events which were to give him an enviable place in our naval history, the Commanding Officer ordered the regular routine of nighttime functions. A radar watch had of course been established the
instant the ship broke water. Two engines were put on battery charge and one engine on propulsion at leisurely speed. Air compressors were started, and garbage was assembled, ready to be thrown over the side in burlap sacks. The crew settled down to the routine of alert watchfulness which is a concomitant part of night surface submarine operations in enemy waters.

At 2048 Fate finally uncovered her hand and brought together the characters she had been coaching for so long. Four years for
Shinano
and almost two years for
Archerfish
—time means little to the gods. How she must have sat back in her big, soft, easy chair, and chuckled. Having brought the two major characters of her play together, now she would leave it up to them, and see what would happen.