Submarine! (4 page)

Plagued with more bad fish, we sank one other ship, a large tanker, and damaged still another before running out of torpedoes and having to return to Pearl Harbor. There we found to our dismay that since we had not seen our tanker sink, we could not get credit for him. We vowed that we would not make this mistake again!

From December 7, 1941, until the end of the war, our undersea fleet operated in strictest secrecy, which resulted in the well-deserved sobriquet—the “Silent Service.” Concealment of results of submarine operations was intended to keep from the enemy knowledge of what we were doing, how it was accomplished, and who was responsible. Consequently, it was not until the end of the war that the full extent of our submarine campaign became known to the people of the United States. Only recently has it been appreciated that although we never had as many submarines as the Germans, ship for ship and man for man the United States Submarine Force was the more effective.

There were two additional reasons why secrecy was
deemed desirable. Unrestricted Warfare had been outlawed by international convention. Although that rule already had been thrown out on two counts—prior violation by Axis belligerents and indiscriminate arming of enemy merchant ships—there was still a feeling that it might be desirable to protect the identity of individuals engaged in such warfare. Second, at the same time that the first successes were reported, reports of strange and inexplicable failures also were received. Without exaggeration, the effectiveness of our submarine force was approximately 15 per cent of what it should have been in the early days of the war. In the Asiatic Fleet, until its final dissolution, the percentage of failure was nearly 100 per cent. There is no question in the mind of any submariner today that if the submarines of that ill-fated fleet had had the percentage of successes that was achieved later, the outcome of the battles of Corregidor and the Java Sea, and possibly the whole Asiatic Pacific campaign, might have been much different.

It was not long before submariners knew the answer. Faulty torpedoes! Our submarines were being sent to war with defective weapons. They had not one but two enemies, and the whisper of suspected sabotage or irresponsible stupidity began to take its toll of morale. No one, even now, dares hazard a guess as to how many submarines sleep the everlasting sleep because of this insidious foe.

Time after time, in the early days of the war, our submarine skippers reported that their torpedoes were not running where they were aimed; were not exploding when they got there; were going off impotently before they arrived; or were running in circles, with consequent danger to the firing ship. Written deep into many patrol reports, pathetic now in their vehemence, can be found the bitter words:

“Torpedoes ran true, merged with target screws, didn't explode.”

“Fired three torpedoes, bubble track of two could plainly be seen through the periscope, tracked by sound and by sight right through target. They looked like sure hits from here. No explosions. Cannot understand it.”

“Fired full salvo of stern tubes at ideal setup. Through periscope observed personnel on deck of target watching torpedo track which apparently passed under the ship. No hits. Commenced receiving depth charge counterattack.”

“Fired two torpedoes down the throat of attacking destroyer. Both prematured, enemy was not damaged. Went deep, prepared for depth charge attack.”

Letter after letter was sent to the Navy's Bureau of Ordnance and to the Naval Torpedo Station at Newport, Rhode Island, pleading that something be done.

But the desk-bound moguls in Washington and Newport, from their deep knowledge and great experience, were sure they knew the answer. Fire-control errors in the excitement of combat, or sheer lack of competent technique could only be responsible for the misses. The torpedo, a mechanical marvel of perfection, obviously could go only where it was aimed. Q.E.D., it must have been improperly aimed, “and don't complain about faulty torpedoes until you can prove the rightful blame does not lie with your own personnel!”

So, in exacerbation, wrote the men responsible for development of our torpedoes.

Submariners are a sincere and hard-working lot of men. That is one of their innate characteristics, fostered by careful selection and training. Blandly accused of inefficiency and carelessness, they redoubled their efforts to make successful attacks. Torpedo after torpedo was fired under ideal circumstances. More often than not the only reward was the blank futility of “no explosions.”

The story of defective torpedoes is a sordid one, and it is part of the tale of the
Seawolf
.

Among the submarines based in Manila, during the long summer and fall of 1941, was USS
Seawolf
(SS197). Commissioned on December 1, 1939, she had spent formative months at New London and Pearl Harbor, and finally was assigned to the Asiatic Fleet, along with her squadron mates of Submarine Squadron Two. On December 8, 1941, east longitude date, she lay anchored in Manila Bay, scheduled
to enter Cavite Navy Yard to join her sisters,
Sealion
and
Seadragon
, in their first overhaul.

That burning evening, which saw
Sealion
sunk by Japanese bombs as she lay helpless, unable to submerge or get under way, and
Seadragon
severely wounded, was
Seawolf's
introduction to total warfare. From then until October 3, 1944, when the veteran warrior fell victim to a friendly destroyer which she could not counterattack and which would not listen to her frantic signals, her story is the epitome of our undersea campaign as it developed. Under four commanders,
Seawolf
built for herself a reputation for straight shooting and original thinking which carried through her career and won her two prized Navy Unit Commendations—the only submarine to be so honored up to this time.

Her battle with defective torpedoes began on March 31 and April 1, 1942, when she engaged three Japanese cruisers off Christmas Island. For two days her skipper, Lieutenant Commander Frederick B. Warder, remained in the area, almost the entire time under search and attack, and delivered three deliberate, well-planned torpedo attacks upon three different Japanese cruisers. Already furious, as were all his fellows, with unexplainable torpedo “misses,” skipper Freddie made all his attacks from such short range that failure to hit was nearly as impossible as it was inexcusable. In two cases the target screws were definitely heard to stop after the torpedo explosions, and all indications were that at the very least all three must have been damaged.

Certainly the working over
Seawolf
received from the numerous escorts present also appeared to be real enough, as any of the men on board will testify. Either of the first two depth charge attacks which lasted more than six hours should have been enough to convince anyone of the serious intentions of the droppers.

Following
Seawolf's
third attack, the Japanese delivered the most impressive, sustained, uncompromising beating of the whole period, as the Seawolves well knew they could expect. It is conceivable that had the Nips stuck to it a bit longer they might have finished the submarine, for her battery
was depleted, the temperature in the boat had reached extraordinary heights, and the crew—after two days and nights of virtually continuous attack and counterattack—was exhausted. Shortly before midnight of the third day, however,
Seawolf
managed to break away and come to the surface.

So Warder reported sinking or damaging three cruisers. But since they had been fairly well identified, it soon became known that all three ships were still very much in action.

A high-ranking Japanese naval officer was asked about this engagement after the war. His reply, as translated, was a classic understatement: “We realized that you were experiencing a little difficulty with your torpedoes.”

But the failure wasn't from lack of trying and taking fantastic risks, and it wasn't from lack of expert technique on the part of her crew, or of daring and skill on the part of her skipper. If Warder had been as intrepid with a pen as he was with torpedoes, his report of the two days' action would read like the wildest fiction. And when the brethren of the undersea service heard of
Seawolf's
exploit, the nickname of “Fearless Freddie” was immediately bestowed upon the skipper, much to his disgust, and USS
Seawolf
became renowned across the broad Pacific. And Warder redoubled his efforts to make his torpedoes pay off.

One thought was that they might be running too deep. Instructions were to set them to run beneath the hull of an enemy vessel so that the magnetic feature of the warhead exploder would function under the keel and thus blow the bottom out. If the torpedoes ran deeper than set, they might easily pass harmlessly beneath the target. Conversely, if the patent magnetic exploder were too sensitive, the torpedo might “premature”—that is, go off before reaching the target. The best guess anyone could make at this juncture was that either of these suppositions might be right.

Driven by bitter experience, the old-time skippers gradually had been learning to cope with their ineffective armament and devising means and stratagems to deal with it. Most of them simply set the torpedo running depth to zero,
although this was directly contrary to instructions from the Bureau of Ordnance. Since it was generally accepted that submarine torpedoes ran from ten to twenty feet deeper than Washington said they did, a zero depth setting gave the best chance of hitting deep-riding ships. Hardly the optimum situation, since it was still largely a matter of luck if one could hit a shallow draft vessel such as a destroyer.

It was soon realized that with the most meticulous and constant care, the torpedoes sometimes increased their percentage of hits—somewhat. Although German, British, and Dutch submariners were able to take their torpedoes to sea, expose them to the most rigorous service conditions, and still expect efficient performance, our submariners were forced to baby their “fish” to a ridiculous degree. It was found necessary to give them routine overhauls every few weeks when on patrol. Any time salt water touched them for any reason, certainly if it got into any of the working parts, they had to be thoroughly overhauled. At sea and ashore our submarine torpedomen became the most efficient torpedo overhaul personnel ever known.

Although a full report of the circumstances of
Seawolf's
action was rushed to the Naval Bureau of Ordnance, submariners by this time were learning the hardest of all lessons: when there is a job to be done, do it yourself. At Brisbane, Pearl Harbor, Fremantle, Surabaya, Mare Island, and New London, the work went forward. By word of mouth the warning also went the rounds: “Don't take anything on trust. Check every torpedo you receive from warhead to after-body!” This philosophy went so far that submarines going on patrol would overhaul every one of their torpedoes before firing them. And the base overhaul crews passed no torpedoes to a submarine about to leave on patrol without the most careful and thorough preparation.

Of its own accord a sort of competition sprang up. Every submarine, upon return from patrol, reported the number of actual or suspected torpedo failures and the actions in which they had been involved. The base, or tender, with an abnormally high percentage of torpedo failures usually had some
explaining to do, but this was nothing compared to the unofficial disapproval of the Submarine Force as a whole. Service reputation means much to any man, or any organization, and violent battles sometimes raged over the responsibility for a particularly bad bunch of torpedoes.

In the meantime a quieter campaign was also going on. Besides the possibility of minor errors in functioning of the fish there was undeniable evidence of something inherently wrong with their design. The submarine high command ordered a searching investigation into the minutest details of torpedo design, construction, and performance.

But it all took time. As might have been expected, the most immediate progress was made by the men of the force themselves. They became perfectionists—especially the skippers—and gradually the causes of our early troubles came to light.

On November 3, 1942,
Seawolf
has penetrated far into Davao Gulf, in Mindanao, in her search for enemy shipping. Warder and company have reasoned that their torpedoes are passing under the targets without exploding, and have resolved to prove it. Their first requirement is to find a ship which will present no fire control problem whatsoever, thus disposing of that possible cause of failure. Their second requirement is for the torpedo—if it misses—to explode after passing beyond the target. The location of the explosion should furnish conclusive proof of its path. Taken together, these requirements spell out an anchored or moored ship in a harbor, where torpedoes fired from seaward will go off upon hitting the shore after passing the target. For a clincher, Warder has taken two types of torpedoes on this patrol—the Mark XIV, recently put in service, and the obsolete Mark X. Maybe, he thinks, a little comparative performance data might be useful.