Submarine! (9 page)

A bull's-eye! The wake heads straight for the target, now looming big in the periscope field, and passes harmlessly beneath him. No explosion. Morton grimly orders another fish fired. It follows the path of the first, but this time the depth mechanism does its job, and the torpedo goes off right under the tall, sooty stack of the doomed vessel. A blast of water momentarily hides his amidships section from view, reaching up higher than the top of the stack itself. Then it subsides, showing the ship broken in half, sinking rapidly by the bow, with men clad in olive drab jumping off into the water, or trying desperately to lower the lifeboats they should have gotten ready long ago.

Two down out of three, and time out is taken to get a few pictures. Besides, the remaining torpedoes have to be loaded into the tubes and checked, a job much better accomplished submerged than on the surface. It is now noon, and
Wahoo's
crew is sent individually, as they can be spared, to get what food the harried cooks have been able to get up on short notice. In the conning tower, Morton and O'Kane continue to watch the fleeing ship, munching sandwiches and drinking coffee between looks.

Suddenly, a pair of heavy masts is sighted over the horizon. This is beginning to look like old-home week for the Japs—and for Davy Jones, too, if the instantly laid plans of
Wahoo
bear fruit. This fellow looks like a warship. So much the better!

There are a few more torpedoes left, and his name is on one of them.

Wahoo
proceeds at maximum sustained submerged speed in the direction of the unidentified vessel. Unfortunately, she has so badly depleted her storage battery during the morning's action that she cannot chase at high speed, and hence cannot get into position to attack the new arrival. In the meantime, the crippled freighter has been staggering away from the scene as rapidly as his engines can drive his battered hull. The plotting parties check his speed at about six knots, quite respectable for a ship with two torpedoes in him. You really have to hand it to that Jap skipper.

It is soon obvious that
Wahoo
cannot hope to catch either vessel. She continues to watch through the periscope, and sees the newcomer revealed as a large tanker, instead of a warship. He joins up with the cripple, and the two proceed away at the maximum speed of the latter, black smoke pouring from stacks of both ships. All this time the undersea raider watches helplessly, too far away to interfere and too low in battery power to give chase.

There is a hasty council in the conning tower. Morton, O'Kane, and Paine do some rapid figuring. Then, their computations completed,
Wahoo
changes course and proceeds directly away from the fleeing ships as rapidly as her waning battery power will permit. A continuous watch is kept on the quarry until finally the tops of their masts have disappeared over the horizon. Then
Wahoo
commences some maneuvers which are rather strange for a submarine anxious to avoid detection in enemy waters.

The periscope rises higher and higher out of the water as the submerged vessel comes closer to the surface. As the height of the tip of the periscope increases above the surface of the sea, O'Kane and Morton can see farther over the horizon, and sight is thus kept on the escaping ships as long as possible. Finally, with the hull of the submarine only a few feet below the water and the periscope extending a full fifteen feet into the air, contact is finally lost. The periscope twirls around rapidly, scanning the horizon and the skies for any sign of other enemy activity. Then, swiftly, it starts down.

There is a moment's hiatus, and suddenly a long black shadow, visible beneath the waves, becomes sharper and more distinct. A moment later a sharp bow breaks the surface of the water at a large angle, plowing ahead through the waves like the forehead of some prehistoric monster, and within about ten seconds the whole low dark hull, cascading water from her decks and through freeing ports along the sides, has appeared.

Up on the bridge there is sudden activity. The crash of metal on metal is heard as the conning tower hatch is flung open. The head and shoulders of a man appear, shortly to be joined by another.

Morton's robust voice: “Open the main induction!”

There is a loud clang as hydraulic mechanism opens the huge engine air-induction valve. Instantly the exhaust roar of a diesel engine starting explodes into the stillness. Simultaneously, a small cloud of gray smoke pours from a half-submerged opening in the after part of the hull. This process is repeated three times, at rapid intervals, until four streams of exhaust vapor, two from each side, are sputtering and splashing the water which attempts to flow back into the half-submerged exhaust pipes. The speed of the submarine increases through the water. A high-pitched screaming sound can be heard distinctly over all the other noises, as though a hundred cats had caught their tails in a wringer simultaneously. This noise is made by the low-pressure air blower, which is pumping atmospheric air into the ballast tanks, completing the emptying job which had been started submerged by high-pressure air.

All this time
Wahoo's
speed through the water has been increasing as the diesel engines take the place of the battery for propulsion, and she rises higher and higher out of water as the ballast tanks go dry. Soon she is making a respectable 17 knots—considering that one engine must be used to recharge the nearly empty storage battery so that
Wahoo
will be ready for further action submerged if necessary—which, of course, is exactly Mush Morton's intention.

While other members of the crew are relieved from their
battle stations, there is no rest or relaxation for the plotting parties. But not one of them thinks of being relieved, nor would he accept relief were it offered. The plotting parties are busy with a problem which, by virtue of nearly incessant drill, has become second nature to them. You have a target trying to get away from you. You have his approximate bearing, and you have a good idea of his speed. Also, you have a lot more speed available than he has. Problem: Find him. Problem: Keep him from sighting you. Problem: Dive in front of him so that, despite his zigzags, he will run near enough to the spot you select to give you a shot!

So
Wahoo
chases her prey from the moment of surfacing, shortly after noon, until nearly sunset. This is known as the “end around,” and is to become a classic maneuver in the Submarine Force. You run with your periscope up, barely maintaining sight of the tips of the enemy's masts, so that he will not have a chance of spotting you, and you run completely around him, traveling several times as far as he does, in order to arrive at a point dead ahead of him.

Half an hour before sunset
Wahoo
dives, once more on the convoy's track. This approach is much more difficult than the previous one. The enemy remember only too vividly the fates which befell their two erstwhile comrades, and consequently are zigzagging wildly. Then, too,
Wahoo
wants to attack the tanker first, since he is as yet undamaged.

Finally, one hour after diving,
Wahoo
sees the tanker limned in her periscope sights in perfect attack position. The old routine procedure is gone through. As always, there is still the same breathless hushed expectancy, the same fierce thrill of the chase successfully consummated, the same fear that, somehow, at the last possible moment, your prey will make some unexpected maneuver and frustrate your designs upon him. And you never forget that your life, as well as his, is in the scales.

O'Kane is at the periscope . . . Paine is on the TDC . . . Morton is conducting the approach, as always, blind.

Bearing! Range! Set
—
FIRE!

And three torpedoes race out into the gathering dusk. One minute and twenty-two seconds later, “WHANG!”—a single hit. The tanker stops momentarily, then gets underway again, at reduced speed.
Wahoo
spins around for a shot at the crippled freighter, but that canny Jap has already started away from there, and his change of course has spoiled the setup.

It is still fairly light, though too dark to see effectively through the periscope. There are only four torpedoes left in the ship, all aft. A moment's reflection, and Morton gives the command to carry the fight to the enemy.

“Surface!” Three blasts of the diving alarm, the traditional surfacing signal, sound raucously in the confined interior of the submarine. Up comes
Wahoo
, ready to try her luck on the surface, under cover of what darkness there may be.

In this she has the advantage of a much lower, darker hull, and, since there is as yet no moon, the shadows of night grow progressively thicker, concealing her more and more from the Japanese lookouts. Another advantage lies in the fact that the two damaged ships choose to stick together instead of separating. But having torpedoes in the after tubes only is a tremendous disadvantage in a night surface attack and
Wahoo
maneuvers unsuccessfully for two hours, trying to get lined up for a shot.

In desperation Morton even tries to back into attack position, but is frustrated by the submarine's poor maneuverability while going astern. So he must outguess the enemy, despite his radical zigzag plan.
Wahoo
gets directly behind the tanker, which in turn is behind the freighter. Then, as the two Japs zig to the right,
Wahoo
stays on the original course, and when they zig back to the left, the submarine is about a mile on the beam of the unfortunate tanker. Suddenly
Wahoo's
rudder is put full left, and her port propeller is backed at full power, while her starboard screw is put at ahead full. In this manner Morton is able to twist his ship, get her end on to the broadside of the now-doomed Jap, and let fly two torpedoes.

One hit amidships. The sound of the explosion cannot be heard, but its effects are spectacular. The vessel folds in the middle and plunges from sight almost instantly.

“All ahead full!” Now for that freighter!
Wahoo
has played around with him long enough.

But the skipper of the lone remaining Jap ship has other ideas. He keeps up a continuous fire with his guns and steams in even more radical and haphazard fashion than before. Now and then he sights the ominous shape of the sea wolf stalking him, and places a few well-aimed shells alongside, forcing her to turn away and once even forcing her to dive.

For an hour this cat-and-mouse game keeps up. Finally, a powerful searchlight beam is sighted over the horizon. An escort vessel or destroyer, probably sent to succor four vessels who had reported being under attack by submarine.
Wahoo
had better do something to end this stalemate fast! Again Morton puts on his thinking cap. What would he do, if he were the skipper of the Jap freighter?

“Well,” thinks Mush, “there's no doubt at all what I'd do! I'd head for that destroyer just as fast as ever I could!” And he heads
Wahoo
toward the destroyer, full speed.

Sure enough, the lumbering hulk of the wounded cargo vessel is soon sighted, headed in the same direction. Only
Wahoo
has preceded him, and now lies in wait for him, and two torpedoes come out of the night to put finis to a gallant defense.

Four ships sighted and four down was
Wahoo's
record for January 27, 1943. The whole one-sided battle lasted thirteen hours, and after its conclusion one Jap destroyer was left fruitlessly searching the area with his searchlight.

Like everything else she did,
Wahoo's
entrance into Pearl was dramatic, for lashed to her fully-extended periscope was—a broom!

On her next patrol, which she spent in the Yellow Sea between China and Korea,
Wahoo
ran the entire distance to the patrol area, deep in the heart of Japanese-controlled
waters, on the surface, diving only for necessary drills. When the patrol was completed she surfaced, still in the middle of the Yellow Sea, and headed for home, digressing only to track and sink one lone freighter sighted on the way. Only this attack, incidentally, prevented her from making the same “no dives” boast on her return trip as well. During the patrol, which covered nineteen days in the assigned area,
Wahoo
sank nine ships, one trawler, and two sampans, and again expended all her ammunition. Once again the broom was lashed to the periscope.

And again, in April, 1943,
Wahoo
and Morton made their third war patrol together, sinking three ships and damaging two.

But she fell upon bad days, and Morton was a stubborn man; to these circumstances, and their unfortunate combination at just the wrong time, we may lay the responsibility for the sad loss of USS
Wahoo
and her fighting skipper.

After Mush Morton's third war patrol in command of
Wahoo
, an inspection of the ship showed that an extensive overhaul was needed to replace the worn-out battery, to repair damages, and to install new apparatus. So the vessel was ordered to Mare Island Navy Yard for two months. While there, the fine team Morton had built up suffered serious injury with the detachment of Dick O'Kane, who received orders to command the brand-new submarine
Tang
, then under construction at the Navy Yard. Roger Paine moved up to the position of Executive Officer. Mush Morton, though he regretted the loss of his very capable second officer, was overjoyed to see him finally get the command which he had longed for, and for which he, Morton, had repeatedly recommended him.

In late July, 1943,
Wahoo
arrived back at Pearl Harbor, after the completion of her overhaul. Then bad luck struck, for Paine developed appendicitis, and had to be removed to a hospital for an operation. Morton had been deprived of the two officers he depended upon most, but, nonetheless confident, he proceeded on his fourth patrol.