War Beneath the Waves (5 page)

But batteries were also undergoing changes. They now held a bigger charge and lasted longer, so submarines could hide and attack more efficiently than ever before.

By 1912, all U.S. Navy submarines used diesel engines and batteries. Diesel engines, primarily developed for locomotives, required no complicated sparking systems and produced less dangerous fumes than gasoline-powered power plants. Less dangerous fumes, but they still put off enough bad stuff that they remained a threat to submariners all the way to the nuclear era.

The United States Navy had two dozen submarines in its fleet at the start of World War I. The admirals that ran the Navy were of the opinion that they were suitable only for patrolling harbors and coastlines and, possibly, escorting surface ships when they made short runs. The consensus was that the “plunging boat” was, at its best, a defensive weapon with limited use in warfare. There was a decided surface-ship bias in the Navy of the time. The Germans and their aggressive U-boat skippers changed many of their minds.

Still, some felt the Navy should be concentrating instead on battleships and the new favorite of many of the top admirals, the aircraft carrier. Submarines, on the other hand, were still considered to be too slow and too dangerous. Even so, development and modernization of submersible vessels continued, even as peace settled over the world.

Once again, it would take war to propel the technology forward.

 

 

 

THOUGH HE WAS ANXIOUS TO make the move to submarines, Rush figured that even if his request was honored, he would have at least one more long patrol on the “tin can.” One more voyage spent bobbing alongside
Enterprise
with “Captain Steam Pipe” before he would be able to make the change.

And then he would have a stint back at the Navy’s submarine school on the banks of the Thames River in Groton, Connecticut. Even after he graduated from sub school, he would soon have to qualify in submarines. Men who have submarine duty are required to have knowledge of all duty stations on the boat and be able to step right in should another man become incapacitated. The qualification process—especially for an officer—was arduous, but resulted in a well-cross-trained crew. Success in qualifying was signified by being allowed to pin on the twin-dolphins insignia—silver for enlisted men, gold for officers.

Sub sailors were (and still are) usually required to graduate from submarine school, and often had to attend other special schools to learn more about the engines, radio operating procedures, the submarine electrical system, sonar, or whatever their specialty was going to be. They combined classroom learning with actual onboard training. When they were assigned to their first boat, they had to be trained some more, until they could qualify. The alternative for those who were not able to qualify within a reasonable time was assignment to other duty, either ashore or on a surface vessel. Incidentally, a similar qualifying procedure is still in place today, even though the jobs on the boats have undergone quite a transformation.

It is important to note that service aboard submarines in the U.S. Navy is and always has been voluntary. No one has ever been drafted into the Silent Service. The Navy recognizes that it takes a special breed of man for such duty, and not all those who volunteer make it. There are duty stations in which the failure of one man to properly perform his job could easily result in the loss of the ship and its crew. And by its very nature, not everyone is prepared for the unique nature of submarine duty. Anytime any submarine sailor wishes to “unvolunteer,” his request is honored, no questions asked, and it does not negatively affect his service record.

Rush figured he would worry about going to sub school and earning his dolphins when the time came. First he had to get the transfer, then suffer through another run on the tin can.

To his surprise, though, he immediately drew an assignment to a submarine. For once, the desperate shortage of officers—especially engineering officers—worked in his favor. Even more surprising, he would not head back to the States for sub school after all. There was one particular submarine that needed an engineering officer and it needed one right now, before she left on the next run.

Charlie Rush had never even been aboard a submarine for more than a few minutes. Now he was about to steam away on a war patrol aboard one of those odd, black, slippery vessels. He was thrilled, even if he was about to draw duty on one of the ships that the surface Navy snidely referred to as “sewer pipes” or “pig boats.”

He was, unbeknownst to him, about to get away from a less than adequate commanding officer and have the opportunity to serve with one of the very best in the U.S. Navy. He would have been even more excited about his new job if he had known who his boss would be and how great a teacher he was.

Rush was headed to the USS
Thresher
(SS-200). His new skipper was none other than William John “Moke” Millican, one of those “cowboys” about whom everybody was talking. Unlike some of the others, though, Millican was one of the “aces” who had earned the respect and admiration of even the toughest old-line squadron commanders. Yes, he was aggressive and preferred his own way of running a submarine patrol, but he brought his ship home, its crew alive.

When Rush reported for duty aboard
Thresher
, he felt an obligation to make sure his new CO knew the truth, that there had been no mistake. He confessed to him that he had not yet attended sub school. He also let Millican know that he had little experience with these complicated, diesel-electric-driven undersea predators.

“Don’t worry, Charlie,” Millican told him with a broad, welcoming smile and a slap on the back. “Come with us and you’ll get a better education on
Thresher
than they could ever give you back there in sub school.”

Millican was not exaggerating. Charlie Rush was about to get the best on-the-job training any submariner could ever obtain. Even so, Rush broke out the manuals and began studying the systems for which he would be responsible. He learned from the men who were experts already, usually the chiefs, the longest-tenured enlisted men. That was the most obvious way to get crash-course training in how the fleet boats worked—called “fleet boats” because of the long-held belief that the submarine’s primary purpose was defensive, protecting fleets of “true offensive warships” like the aircraft carriers and the battleships.

It was training that would, in only about a year, serve Charlie Rush well. What he learned at Millican’s elbow would enable the young officer to help save the lives of himself and the rest of the crew of another submarine. A submarine that would be in about as bad a spot as he could have ever imagined.

Such thoughts were far from his mind, though, when Rush walked across the brow and onto the deck of USS
Thresher
for the first time, ready to proudly ride her off to war as a bona fide submarine sailor.

—James A. Michener,
Tales of the South Pacific

W
illiam “Moke” Millican was the antithesis of the hesitant, conservative submarine skippers who commanded many of the boats early in World War II. A member of the Annapolis class of ’28, he was short but stocky and athletic, an Irishman from a small town on Long Island, New York. He was a championship boxer at the Academy who considered a relentless, bold attack as his strong suit when he faced an opponent in the ring.

Hesitation, he felt, only invited a strong counterpunch.

Like Charlie Rush, his new, green engineering officer, Millican was dismayed by the way many naval captains ran their boats. Dismayed but not surprised. The truth was, since the earliest days of submarines, the Navy taught captains a simple strategy. They were to avoid contact with the enemy until they were in the perfect position to launch an attack. They were supposed to use their stealth to hide, to avoid conflict that would give away their presence too early in the assault, and to strike only when success was a certainty.

Some submarine commanders took that dictum to extremes. They literally ran away from good targets. Whether that was simply following clearly defined procedure or something that bordered on cowardice is best left to conjecture.

There was also the matter of “unrestricted warfare.” By treaty, the United States was forbidden from attacking merchant ships in international waters. Captains and crews of all vessels—including submarines—were trained to target only warships. Tactics learned and practiced were to be used only against military vessels.

Suddenly, within hours of the Pearl Harbor attack, those treaties and the corresponding tactics were jettisoned like bags of garbage over the side. Ships and submarines were to engage in “unrestricted warfare” at the order of the commander in chief, President Franklin Roosevelt. The United States would be a good two years into the war before many of its naval commanders were comfortable with this new type of warfare, not only the concept but the tactics needed to be successful at it.

It was especially crucial that submarine commanders understood what “unrestricted” meant and how to conduct such fighting. Of all the Navy’s ships, their vessels were best suited for the exact kind of war that was now being fought—a war in which a tanker filled with oil or a freighter whose holds were crammed full of bauxite or rubber was an even more crucial target than a gunboat or a cruiser. Many of them never comprehended this sea change.

“Moke” Millican, on the other hand, understood all this very well. Since becoming a submarine officer, he had served on a couple of the old “S” boats, enduring the worst equipment and environment imaginable. These were primitive, World War I-vintage submarines. He commanded
S-18
(SS-123), launched in May of 1920 and based at Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. Conditions were horrible. The weather often prevented the crew from taking navigational fixes. Ice froze periscopes to the point they were unusable. Simply walking on icy decks was a hazard and many crew members were injured. Habitability aboard the boats was terrible, too, with poor heat, equipment malfunctions, and days without seeing the sun.

It was a frustrating way to try to fight a war.

So when Millican assumed command of USS
Thresher
in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in June of 1942, he took a different tack from many of his fellow skippers, regardless of the directives from higher up. He was tired of fighting his own equipment and the miserable elements. He was ready to vent some of that pent-up frustration on the enemy instead.

He was very impressed with his new vessel. It was much bigger than his previous boat, inside and out. The fact is, when afloat on the surface, most of a submarine lies below the water. They are very similar to an iceberg, with only the decks, the top of the conning tower, and the bridge and shears visible.

The shears, which gave the World War II-era submarine its distinctive appearance, are the radio and radar antennas, periscope housings, searchlight, flagpoles, and lookout stands that tower high above the decks and water. They are directly above the bridge. Height above the water was important for two reasons. First, it gave the lookouts a better view of the horizon. Second, it got the radio and radar antennas as high in the air as possible so they could launch a better signal and pull in weaker ones.

While the interior of
Thresher
was much more spacious than Millican’s old boat, it was still cramped and confining compared to surface ships. Where did all that room go? It is because diesel tanks, ballast, and many other tanks, most designed to withstand tremendous water pressure, make up a huge portion of the vessel. These boats covered a vast range with few opportunities to refuel, so they had to carry a large amount of diesel fuel. Running out of gas was not an option. A submarine out of diesel and dead in the water was an easy target for enemy ships or aircraft.

The ballast tanks were also a necessity for depth control. Flooding the tanks with seawater would force the submarine to dive or go deeper. Venting—using compressed air to flush out the water—decreased depth or surfaced the ship completely.

Thresher
and her sisters were about the length of a football field, including one end zone—311 feet from bow to stern. They were about twenty-seven feet wide at the broadest point. These submarines could safely dive to about four hundred feet, a specification termed the “test depth.” They were able to steam at twenty knots while they were on the surface but only about nine knots maximum when submerged. Depending on speed, time spent on the surface and submerged, and a long list of other factors, these submarines had an approximate range of eleven thousand nautical miles and typically stayed on patrol for up to about seventy-five days, burning over a hundred thousand gallons of diesel fuel.

These boats carried eight to ten officers and between sixty and seventy enlisted men. It was tough duty. Few of them got to climb the ladders to spend time on the narrow, slippery decks, getting sun and fresh air. The bridge was cramped and usually occupied by the captain and diving officer. Two or three younger sailors—because of their assumed better eyesight—were on the tiny perches in the shears, keeping lookout. When the deck guns were used, those crew members assigned to the gun crew came topside. But most crew members went for long periods of time without sunshine or clean air. And they did it without touching land while on patrol in enemy-controlled waters, in seas that were often storm-tossed, and while they were constantly under threat of attack from surface ships, aircraft, floating mines, and other submarines.