Silent Warriors: Submarine Warfare in the Pacific

Preface

This novel, a work of historical fiction, is mostly about diesel-electric submarines. More specifically, it is about a particular fictitious diesel electric boat named USS Orca (yes, submarines are boats and not ships.)

It is also a novel about the War in the Pacific, waged by the United States against the Empire of Japan, from December 7, 1941, though September 28, 1945.  As such, the story occasionally deviates from the role of the submarine force in prosecuting the war.

Just hours after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Harold Rainsford Stark, unleashed unrestricted submarine and air warfare against the Empire of Japan.  (It was never clear that Stark had the authority to issue such an order, which was, nonetheless, never countermanded.)  Thus began an all-out, no-holds-barred campaign by the U.S. Submarine Force against all Japanese maritime assets.

Shortly after the United States declared war on Japan in response to Pearl Harbor, Japan’s Tripartite Treaty allies, Germany and Italy, declared war on the United States. Suddenly the United States found itself in a two-theater war. President Franklin Roosevelt placed America’s first priority on the defeat of Nazi Germany, and elected to wage a more-or-less holding war in the Pacific.  In the Pacific, Japanese forces rampaged unchecked across China, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Southeast Asia, the Netherlands East Indies, New Britain, New Guinea, Singapore, Burma, Guam, and even the western Aleutians. 

In the beginning, the only force opposing the Japanese onslaught in the Pacific was the U.S. Submarine Service.  The Pacific submarine force at the beginning of the conflict numbered just fifty-one boats, and a dozen of these were the older-type S-boats. More alarming still, these boats went to war equipped with defective and unreliable torpedoes. Even as the force was slowly supplemented with new construction or fleet-type boats, the problem of defective torpedoes lasted through 1943.

Nonetheless, in the course of the war, U.S. Submarines sank 214 warships, totaling just under 600,000 tons, and 1,178 merchant vessels, totaling over 5,000,000 tons.  This accounted for almost half of the number of Japanese vessels, and 55 percent of gross tonnage, sunk during the war.  And all of this was accomplished by just 1.6% of the total of all naval personnel.  In addition, the boats conducted clandestine surveillance, rescued fliers, laid mines, stood picket duty, and landed and extracted commandos.

By the end of the war, Japan had been brought to her knees, starved of the material required to wage war, and bereft of fuel, raw materials, weapons, ammunition, and foodstuffs.  Relentless unrestricted submarine warfare was in no small way responsible for that state of affairs.

Also by the end of the war, 52 of 288 submarines in service were lost, along with 3,484 lives, or 11.6 percent of all those volunteers who served in submarines.

The story of the U.S. submarine in the Pacific is the story told here, the story of Jacob Julius Lawlor, USN, 1933 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. At the beginning of hostilities, Lawlor is serving as Executive Officer in S-49, stationed at the U.S. Naval Base in Cavite, in the Philippines. 

The fate of S-49 is borrowed from an actual incident in the war, as are many of the submarine incidents narrated throughout the book. 

Jake Lawlor moves on to the command of the newly commissioned USS Orca, and the story proceeds from there.

Most of the characters are, of course, fictional.  But, whenever possible, and wherever it helps to tell the story, real people are depicted.  In all cases, where such depictions are used, every effort was made to stay true to the character and demeanor of the actual person.  Where words have been put into their mouths, the attempt was made to make them the words they very well might have said under the circumstances described.

Some liberties have been taken in deploying Orca and the way the boats were actually deployed.  In order to develop the story’s characters, Orca stayed in port between patrols far longer than was the actual practice. Unless going into overhaul or for extended maintenance, typical turnaround period between patrols was about two weeks. Further, Jake Lawlor serves as Orca’s commanding officer through eleven war patrols, whereas boat commanders were typically relieved after three, or at most four patrols.

In writing this story, I have also drawn from my experiences and memories serving aboard USS Angler (SS 240) in the early 1960s.  Long before I served aboard her, Angler made seven war patrols.

Any errors and miscalculations in the book are entirely mine.  My thanks to my friend and shipmate the late Tom Burke for his editing, advice, and encouragement.

Gene Masters

Knoxville, Tennessee

2018

Chapter 1

USS S-49: 9 December 1941 to 19 January 1942

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A billion pinpricks of light lit up the dome of the moonless night sky.  The waters of the Makassar Strait stretched out before the boat like a gently swelling sheet of pure onyx, the only visible disturbances in the water the boat’s bow wake and the phosphorescent gray foam of its following trail.

For the first time in recent memory, both power trains were working, and the submarine was making maximum speed on the surface—just over fourteen knots—so when she struck the reef, she struck hard. 

Nobody knew exactly what had happened when the boat suddenly shuddered, stopping dead in her tracks with that awful crunching, tearing sound of metal rending against unyielding rock.  Lieutenant Junior Grade (Lt. j.g.) Stetson had the deck and enough presence of mind to sound the collision alarm immediately.  Automatically, the watch section and men ripped from their bunks in panic buttoned up the boat, isolating each compartment from the next throughout the boat.  All watertight doors between the compartments were secured, as were all bulkhead flapper valves between compartments, effectively shutting down all ventilation in the boat. Only the closed-cell ventilation in the battery remained active.

It was immediately reported to the control room that the door between the torpedo room and the battery compartment was sprung, probably from the force of the grounding, and could not be secured.  The crewmen forward reacted quickly to the sudden flooding of the torpedo compartment, forming a damage control (DC) team under the direction of Chief Torpedoman Floyd Sweat, and going to work immediately to staunch the flow of seawater with whatever was at hand.  The rip in the pressure hull was not only huge, it was also almost inaccessible because of the large upright impulse air tank right in the way, and because of the tight spaces between the torpedo tubes. The DC team stuffed the hole as best they could with mattresses held in place by whatever was available—a length of pipe, a crowbar, anything.  And while the flow of seawater into the boat was significantly slowed, it could not be staunched.  Seawater continued to flow into the torpedo room.

The pressure hull let out an unnerving, grating shriek with each gentle swell of the surrounding sea, as her pierced plating ground itself against the razor-sharp coral of the reef.  With each swell, the boat shifted, and the gash in the grounded hull opened just a little wider, just a little longer, and more seawater gushed into the USS S-49.  The upward angle of the boat allowed seawater to enter the battery compartment through the sprung doorway, and the 120-cell Exide battery was slowly flooding, releasing chlorine gas into the living spaces.  The gas would eventually drive the crew out of the boat and onto her deck, heaving in time with two-foot swells. 

Lieutenant Harry Loveless, commanding officer of S-49, thought at first that the boat might have struck a submerged wreck, but the chart showed hundreds of feet of water beneath S-49’s hull.  Further, the Admiralty charts for this part of the Makassar Strait showed no underwater obstruction within a hundred miles, and while submerged reefs this far from any shoreline were not unheard of, they were hardly common. Yet here it was. It was painfully obvious that S-49 had struck an uncharted reef, had struck hard, and was now held fast by it.  For the second time on this, the boat’s first war patrol, her Captain ordered life preservers issued to all personnel.

All efforts to back off the reef using the ship’s propulsion failed.  All the backing succeeded in doing was enlarging the hole in the pressure hull, and disturbing the damage control patch, such as it was.

Loveless ordered the radioman, 27-year-old, second-class petty officer Hal Wentworth, to send an urgent encrypted message to Pacific Submarine Command, or COMSUBPAC, giving S-49’s position, and describing the boat’s predicament:

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1901421812Z. AT 1901421740Z, STRUCK UNCHARTED REEF MAKASSAR STRAIT 04.57.17S, 18.33.04E. BOAT HELD FAST, ATTEMPTING TO FREE. NO PERSONNEL INJURED.  SITUATION CRITICAL.  LOVELESS.

Twelve hours of useless struggling later, Loveless realized the situation was completely hopeless.  All crew not actively engaged in damage control were already on deck, and seawater had completely compromised the battery.  The battery compartment and the torpedo room were inundated with chlorine gas.  Loveless ordered all hands still below to secure any belowdecks activity and to lay topside.  Last out, just before Loveless himself, was Wentworth, whom Loveless had just ordered to send a Mayday in the clear.  Then they both scrambled out of the boat through the bridge access trunk, securing the bridge hatch behind them.  All the hatches were shut, thus trapping as much air inside the boat as possible, but that only delayed the inevitable.  S-49 was sinking.  Eventually, the only thing holding her on the surface would be the reef, but when the boat got heavy enough, or the sea violent enough, even the reef would have to let her go. Hopefully, she would stay on the surface long enough for the thirty-six officers and men on deck to be safely evacuated.  If the Mayday had been ever received.  And if whoever received it was friendly.

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Lieutenant Jake Lawlor, U.S. Naval Academy, ’33, served as Executive Officer aboard the USS S-49, which was home-ported in Cavite, Luzon, U.S. Commonwealth of the Philippines. Now he sweltered on her deck, witnessing her death throes, and his biggest disappointment was that the old girl had barely begun to bloody the nose of the enemy. And now she was dying, not because of any enemy action, but because of an unmarked reef on an outdated chart.

Jake was not a tall man; at five feet, nine inches, he wasn’t exactly short, but he was certainly not, he felt, tall enough to impress anyone with his height.  That is, of course, until you saw that Jake was powerfully built, with a barrel chest, and muscular arms and legs. 

Jacob Julius Lawlor was born in Des Moines, Iowa, on May 8, 1911, the youngest child of five children born to Ezekiel and Sally Lawlor, and the only boy.  Jake was more or less a surprise; Sally Lawlor thought surely she was past having children.  Her last daughter had been produced a full five years earlier. 

And Zeke Lawlor was delighted to at last have a son.  Zeke was a talented machinist, who managed to work steadily, even through the Great Depression that gripped the country through the 1930s.  The Lawlors were hardly wealthy by any measure, but they lived simply, there was always enough to eat, and Zeke and Sally were loving parents.  The Lawlors were also devout Presbyterians, and the entire family attended services every Sunday.

Why, despite being raised in a house full of them, Jake became painfully shy around all other females was a complete mystery to his parents and his sisters.  Although far less withdrawn when dealing with other boys, he was still socially awkward overall, and compensated with his studies, and especially with sports. He excelled at both. He was an A-plus student, a creditable guard in basketball, and eventually the starting halfback for the West High School Dragons.  As his peers grew more and more interested in, and confident around, the opposite sex, Jake shared their interest but never matched their confidence.  He was simply insufficiently courageous, for example, to ask a girl out to his high school senior prom, so he just stayed home.

Jake had wanted to go on to college, but there was no way his parents could afford it. An education at the Naval Academy or at West Point, however, was free.  Jake wrote an appeal to his Congressman seeking an appointment to one of the academies. He was overjoyed when he received an appointment, applied to, and was accepted at Annapolis.  He had never seen an ocean, could barely swim, but he was going to join the Navy!

His Academy classmates were surprised that despite his physique and boyish good looks, Jake wasn’t cutting large swaths through the field of young women that visited the Academy regularly.  But their classmate seemed oblivious to the admiring stares from the ladies.

After graduation, and his commissioning as ensign, USN, Jake was assigned duty aboard the destroyer USS Adrian Long out of Norfolk, Virginia.  It was on the Long that Ensign Lawlor volunteered for, and was assigned to Officer’s Submarine School, in Groton, Connecticut.  The USS S-12, one of the six Sugar-Boats home ported in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, was Jake’s first boat right out of Sub School.  It was during his year in S-12 that he qualified in submarines and pinned on his gold dolphins.  There then followed two years aboard the USS Blem, one of the sixteen newer fleet-type Sargo-class boats also operating out of Pearl. In Blem he served first as Engineering Officer, and then as Navigator. Jake then received his assignment as XO aboard S-49. 

And now, almost two years later, his boat was stuck on a reef in the middle of nowhere.  Serving as XO on S-49 had put him in line for command of a boat of his own, but now, with S-49 running aground and most likely lost, chances looked bleak that Jake would ever get a command, certainly not in submarines.  The Navy was, if nothing else, unforgiving of a major screw-up—such as losing a boat to what appears to be simply lousy seamanship. He was sure he could also kiss goodbye that next half-stripe, and possibly even his career in the Navy.  What Jake did not fully realize was that the peacetime Navy was not the same service as the wartime Navy.

S-49’s Captain, Lt. Harry Loveless, USNA ’31, was a tall, gaunt, man, with a serious-looking face, one that was a perfect clue to his nervous disposition and an almost complete lack of a sense of humor.  Jake’s association with his skipper was one of mutual respect, and Loveless frequently consulted with his XO before deciding on a particular course of action.  Jake and the crew of S-49 regarded Harry Loveless as an extremely competent submarine commander, a person who was also very cautious, and who would never subject his boat to unnecessary risk.  And so, nobody in the crew, including Jake, would ever question any order Loveless gave, and every man aboard S-49 had confidence in his ability to lead them into battle. 

When Loveless received S-49’s orders in port in Cavite, on December 9, 1941, to put to sea at the earliest and to proceed to the East China Sea shipping lanes off Okinawa, there to seek out and destroy all shipping flying the flag of the Empire of Japan, or that of any of its allies, he regarded them with both exultation and trepidation.  He was eager to defend his country’s wounded honor.  But S-49 was an old boat; her keel had been laid in 1919 and she had been in commission since the ‘20s.  Keeping her ancient Busch-Sulzer diesels running was a continuous challenge, and the seals on both propulsion shafts had a tendency to leak on the surface—never mind when she was submerged. 

But orders are orders, and Loveless immediately dispatched S-49’s Chief of the Boat, or COB, Chief Boatswain’s Mate Wendell Buckner, to the two sub tenders USS Holland and USS Canopus, and to the base shore facilities. There, Bucky was to scrounge whatever extra niceties he could beg, barter, or steal (this function usually described as the ability to cumshaw).  Other crewmen and officers saw to expediting repairs.  Both the starboard engine and all the seals—as always—badly needed attention.  Crew, base, and Canopus personnel labored around the clock.  Submarine-qualified, Torpedoman Chief—TMC (SS)—Floyd Sweat and his team set about loading S-49’s full complement of fourteen, Mark-10 torpedoes and all the ammunition the boat could carry for her 4-inch, 50-caliber forward deck gun, and her little 20mm Oerlikon gun, which could be set in a mount aft of the bridge. 

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The Japanese invasion of the Philippines and Guam began on December 10, 1941, the day after S-49 received her orders.  Two nights later, as the boat was still being readied for sea, Japanese planes bombed and strafed Cavite, mortally crippling the submarine USS Sealion.  There were also reported troop landings elsewhere in Luzon and Mindanao.  For S-49, and the other twenty-six boats capable of leaving Subase Cavite, it was time to get out of Dodge.

Five days after receiving orders, on Saturday, December 14th, with two men short of her total complement of thirty eight, a full load of water, fuel, torpedoes (twelve forward and two aft), and a full magazine of shells for her guns, S-49 set out for her patrol area.  The boat had barely passed muster on her trim and test dives in the waters just outside of Manila Bay only the previous day.

In transit to the patrol zone, and after clearing the Philippines, the crew settled into the boat’s at-sea routine.  Watches were in three sections of twelve men each, four hours on and eight hours off, with only the Captain not standing watches.  And life aboard a boat at sea, moreover, was not exactly comfortable.  Space was at a premium, filled with equipment and material of every sort, and living spaces appeared to be an afterthought for the boat’s designers.  Sleeping racks for crew forward were wedged between torpedoes.

Water was in limited supply, and the boat’s distiller unit, which made fresh water from seawater, was there mainly for providing distilled water for the batteries. Only then were the crew’s needs for drinking water and cooking met. There was a little water for shaving and brushing teeth, but none for bathing (excepting for the cooks), and certainly none for washing clothes.  After two days at sea, bodies were ripe—never mind by the end of a patrol. Luckily, the stench of diesel fuel and stale cigarette smoke permeated the boat at all times, and helped cover up the stink of unwashed bodies.

Arriving on station a week later, S-49 began her first—and last—war patrol.  There were two Japanese airfields on Okinawa, so any close approach to the island on the surface was dangerous at night—and suicide during daylight.  But for S-49, remaining submerged for any length of time was a challenge.  The shipfitters at Cavite had done their best to repack and tighten down her propulsion shaft seals in the limited time they were allotted, and they had held during her test dive back off Manila Bay.  But, at her 200-foot maximum operating depth, the seals once again began to ship copious amounts of water.  Loveless was therefore not inclined to spend much time going deep.

At periscope depth, the seals were fairly tight—the ship fitters had been able to accomplish at least that much.  At periscope depth, however, in these waters, and in most sea conditions, the boat was very detectable from the air as a slowly moving dark shadow, 266 feet long.  So Loveless, on Jake’s advice, compromised by cruising during daylight at 90 feet.  There the boat’s drain pump could mostly stay even with the incoming seawater, and she had to be less visible from the air.  He would routinely surface the boat after dark each night, well out of sight of land, and run the diesels to charge the battery.  Only when the can (battery) was fully charged, would Loveless venture his boat near land.

The Japanese on Okinawa were apparently unconcerned about any Allied attack.  As far as Jake could tell, they had made no attempt to hide themselves from seaward, and while the principal port of Naha was hardly as brightly lit as a major port in the States, it was still very easy to distinguish its location over the horizon as a gentle glow in the night sky.  Furthermore, no attempt whatever had been made to extinguish lighted navigational aids.

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S-49 was into her third week on patrol.  The crew had spent Christmas Day submerged. New Year’s Day came and went, practically unnoticed, just another uncomfortable day on patrol.

Mechanical and electrical problems quickly began to plague the boat.  Lubrication failures became common, particularly on the starboard drive train. The Sugar-Boats had no air conditioning, and humidity levels inside the boat while submerged were unbearable.  Despite cork insulation, the pressure hull bulkheads were constantly dripping with condensation.  Worse than the crew’s discomfort, the humidity was causing frequent electrical shorts, and blown fuses.

Naha was a fairly busy port, but thus far any tempting target presented no firing solution.  Ships were always too far away, or traveling either too fast or on the wrong course for Loveless to maneuver S-49 into firing position.  Invariably, had the potential target passed just a half-hour—or even a few minutes—earlier, or just a thousand yards closer, the boat would have been in perfect position to take a shot.

The Mark-10 torpedo was the only torpedo currently in the Navy’s arsenal that S-49 was able to fire, since her tubes were too short to accommodate the newer Mark-14s.  The Mark-10 was gyroscopically controlled, but unlike the Mark-14, it could only travel in straight line.  So Loveless and his firing team, headed up by his XO Jake Lawlor as Assistant Approach Officer, had to attain a firing solution, and then maneuver S-49, actually aiming the boat so that its course coincided with the torpedo track required for the weapon to intercept the target.

S-49 had no radar. Radar equipment, newly perfected by the British, was an installed innovation on the new fleet boats, and some air defense SD radar sets had been back-fitted onto other, older boats, those that had actually been given names instead of numbers.  But, at this point in the war, none of the enemy ships had radar either; in fact, right up to the end of the war, only Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) capital ships and some escort vessels were ever radar-equipped. 

Unlike most of the boats in her class, S-49 was equipped with passive sonar.  Her JK hydrophone provided good underwater listening capability.  But the boat had no active sonar capability, that is, she could not project and receive returning sound signals (ping) to locate targets. Her sonar operator could, with the boat submerged, say if he heard another ship out there, and provide its general direction.  But without an active sonar capability, he could not give any accurate estimate of bearing or range.  However, even that small amount of crude sonar gave S-49 an edge, since IJN ships also had little sonar capability at that point in the war.  IJN ships were equipped with excellent passive sound gear, but the sound operators were poorly trained, and most of their commanders oblivious to its utility.  (Active sonar capability came to the IJN later in the war, but, again, commanders of escort ships so equipped were never well versed in its capability or usefulness.)

On a submerged approach, it was up to the periscope operator—at general quarters, always Loveless himself acting as Approach Officer—to provide a range to the target.  This was done on later boats using a stadimeter, a device built into the periscope.  Unfortunately, S-49’s periscope had no such device, and Loveless could only estimate the range based on his experience.  The Approach Officer would also estimate the target’s angle-on-the-bow (AOB), which was the angle between the target’s bow and, left or right, to the line of sight.

Using his estimates, the fire control team, headed up by Jake with the assistance of the boat’s navigator, Lt. j.g. Joseph Stetson, and his quartermaster used relative bearing worksheets (known as maneuvering boards), a position chart, and a hand-held, slide-rule-like device known as an Is-Was, to compute target course and speed. The solution was checked and rechecked each time Loveless made an observation.  Jake acted as liaison between the Captain in the conning tower and the fire control team in the control room.  When Stetson had some confidence in his solution, and Lawlor had evaluated the team’s efforts and confirmed Stetson’s confidence, then, and only then, would Loveless bring the boat onto final firing course.  One last observation, a quick 360-degree look-around to insure there were no surprises from any other surface contacts, one last quick check of the firing solution, and a torpedo was launched at the target.  Given the operational range of the torpedo, the ideal firing position was from between 750 and 1,500 yards from the target.  The shorter the distance, the less time the target would have to maneuver away from the torpedo.

Surface attacks were simpler, if only because S-49 was far more maneuverable on the surface.  Bearing to the target was determined from the bridge, using a pelorus, an optical device with a bezel-mounted aiming telescope.  It could be swiveled around and brought onto the target, giving the target’s relative bearing.  Without radar or active sonar, range estimates were still judgment calls, as were angles-on-the-bow, and this information was conveyed to the fire control team belowdecks in the control room.  Otherwise the procedure was the same, with the fire control team providing a calculated course for the boat so that the torpedo would be on track to hit the target.

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On January 4, 1942, S-49 was cruising on the surface with her battery fully charged.  According to a fleetwide report intercepted that evening, Japan had captured Manila two days earlier.  But on this particular night, outside the Port of Naha, Okinawa, S-49 was presented with a sitting duck.  Loveless could hardly believe his good fortune.  A fully-loaded Japanese cargo ship, about 5,000 tons displacement, was moored near the breakwater, apparently awaiting transit to the port loading docks the next morning.  Oblivious to any danger, she had her anchor lights lit and clearly visible.  Loveless had only to line the boat up with the target, and, making bare steerageway, launch a torpedo straight ahead from 1,500 yards—actually a long torpedo run.  But Loveless was leery of venturing too close to shore, and a 1,500-yard run was within the torpedo’s advertised capability.

The night was overcast, and while the moon had been full only two nights earlier, now it shed little light.  Loveless sounded general quarters, surface action torpedo, and brought the boat around to head 009 degrees, the target’s compass bearing. He cautioned the four lookouts, each on his perch alongside the masthead: Forget what I’m doing.  Keep a sharp eye out.  Make sure we don’t get any unexpected company.

Aye, aye, Sir, the lookouts answered in unison, and they continued to scan the horizon with their binoculars for any contacts, either on the sea or in the air.

Loveless passed the word to the forward torpedo room to prepare tubes one and two for firing.  He only needed one fish, but it never hurt to have a second ace up your sleeve.  The water was relatively shallow here, and he was unsure of the cargo ship’s actual draft, so he ordered the torpedoes set for shallow running—six instead of the usual twelve feet.  He checked his heading; it was still at 009, and the boat was pointed straight at the unmoving target.  All the Mark-10 torpedo would be required to do to hit the target was go straight ahead and stay on course.  Loveless passed the word to the engine room, All stop.  Then, Fire one.  The boat lurched, and the torpedo was on its way, trailing a wake of fine bubbles behind it.

With the torpedo traveling at 46 knots or about 77 feet per second, Loveless worked out in his head that it would take just under a minute for it to travel the 1,500 yards to the target.  Exactly fifty-eight seconds later, Loveless first saw the splash and the flash as the torpedo struck the target just aft of amidships.  Just over a second later, he heard the explosion.

It was 0057 hours, January 5th.

The target ship began to sink quickly and spectacularly.  Her cargo was obviously something incendiary, and, ablaze, the doomed ship quickly lit up the harbor.  Instead of immediately clearing the area, Loveless stayed to watch the terror that S-49 had wrought. 

He had thought only of sinking a ship, and had not allowed himself to consider that human lives were lost in the process.  Now he watched, sickened, as men, some aflame, jumped over the side of their ship and into the sea. And yet, despite the horror of what he had done, he knew he would do it again, to other ships and to other men, given the chance.  As he watched, the clouds above slowly parted unnoticed, and a barely waning full moon lit up the night.

If Loveless was slow to react and clear the area, the Japanese were quick enough in their response to the violent explosion and a ship aflame in the harbor.  It was fortunate for Loveless that the forward starboard lookout had followed orders and stayed sharp.  When he reported Surface contact!  Just forward of the starboard beam! Loveless looked away from the burning hulk and could just spot the surface contact.  Like a ghost on the horizon, it was coming on fast out of Naha port, just about 5,000 yards away. 

Loveless, guessing that the contact bearing down on them was either a Japanese motor patrol boat or, worse, a destroyer, quickly ordered a course to clear the harbor and make maximum surface knots. All ahead full! Left full rudder! he shouted.  Come about to course two-six-five!

Loveless maneuvered the boat to put the contact dead astern, in position to possibly fire the boat’s after torpedo tube at his new tormentor, now clearly a destroyer, silhouetted against the burning, sinking, cargo ship.  And she was coming on very fast. 

Almost immediately, Lovelace’s boat was in trouble.  Before he could order the boat’s single, after tube to be prepared for firing, the engine room reported lubrication oil failure on the starboard engine.  Loveless had no choice but to immediately switch tactics and crash dive the boat.  Then, and only when the boat was settled out on depth, could he attempt, with the target dead astern, to fire a torpedo at the pursuing destroyer from the after tube.

Because of constant practice, the orders came by rote, quickly given and quickly executed. Clear the bridge! shouted Lovelace.  The lookouts scrambled from their perches and disappeared fast down the bridge access hatch.  Sounding the claxon and yelling Dive! Dive! Loveless followed them down, securing the hatch behind him. All hands forward!  Take her to one hundred feet!  Prepare to fire from the stern tube! 

Men at GQ (General Quarters), fleeing an enemy bent on their destruction, reacted even more quickly, their training kicking in, performing automatically.  Anyone without a critical GQ post scrambled forward to the torpedo room to put as much weight as possible in the bow. 

The moment the claxon sounded the diving alarm, the engines were shut down, the engine intake manifold was closed, and propulsion was manually switched over to battery power.  In the interim, there was no power to the screws, and only the boat’s forward momentum propelled the dive.  The starboard engine’s oil lubrication problem could be ignored for the moment.  All ballast tank vents were opened, allowing the ballast tanks, always open to sea at the tank bottom, to flood with seawater, making the boat heavy, giving it negative buoyancy.  The planesmen put both the bow and stern diving planes on full dive.  With propulsion now on battery power, the boat’s twin screws drove S-49 under.

The Engineer Officer, Lt. j.g. Bill Burke, was GQ diving officer, and, in the control room, called off the boat’s depth to the keel.  The COB was at the indicator panel showing the position of all deck hatches and ballast tank valves.  The panel indicated that all ballast tank, vent valves were open, and all hatches were shut, all in the correct position for the dive.  The ship’s crew had practiced this continually, and the boat was below the surface in just over a minute.  Jake, at Loveless’ direction, relieved Burke as diving officer and sent him aft to see to the problems with the starboard drive train.

Now, the problem was how quickly the rarely used after torpedo tube could be made ready to fire.  The after torpedo tube was almost an afterthought on the few S-boats equipped with them.  S-49’s was installed on her last refit at Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, California, three years earlier.  The tube was fitted in the aftermost compartment, known as the Stoker’s Mess, and was located on the starboard side, astern of the motor control switchboard.  One torpedo was kept loaded in the tube, and a second torpedo was stored on the port side of the compartment.

To fire the after tube, Loveless had to maneuver the boat to insure that the target was dead astern.  But as quick as the boat might have been in accomplishing this, the destroyer was quicker.  Before the boat could line up and fire its after tube, the destroyer rolled a depth charge on the spot where S-49 had last been seen, which exploded off the port quarter as the boat passed 100 feet.

Jake had known simulated depth charging in fleet exercises, grenades dropped overboard by the hunters on the surface to simulate the real thing.  But nothing could have prepared him for this.  Seconds passed, and another explosion sounded.  It seemed to be inside the boat itself, which lurched violently, first away from and then toward each explosion, as if doing some jerky, violent dance.  Jake was knocked off his feet and slammed into the chart table. He grabbed for anything to steady himself, finally finding some piping, grasping and holding on, waiting for another explosion to be the last thing he would ever hear.  He could not know that none of the depth charges was near enough to deal a mortal blow.  What damage they did do, however, was bad enough.

Immediately, the bow planesman reported, Lost power to the bow planes.  Bow planes not responding!

Getting to his feet, Jake ordered, Shift to hand control of the bow planes, and the bow planesman began switching over to the cumbersome hand control.

Bucky Buckner then reported, The gyrocompass is out. Its lights are out, and it sounds like it’s winding down. 

Then, fuses blew on the starboard lighting circuit, and first-class motorman Greg Dansforth, in the motor room, reported broken lights.

What’s the sounding here, Joe? Loveless asked Stetson, on the chart plot.

Two hundred ten feet, Captain, he replied.

Good, Loveless said, Make your depth one hundred fifty feet.

One hundred fifty feet, aye, Sir, Jake acknowledged, ordering the planesmen to Make your depth one-five-zero.  Five degrees down bubble.  The planesmen manipulated the diving planes until the bubble in the level indicator showed that the boat was on a five-degree down angle.  As the boat approached the ordered depth, they eased off on the planes, bringing the bubble back to zero degrees.

At one hundred fifty feet, Captain, Jake announced.

Very well. Loveless acknowledged.  But he worried about the increased depth’s affect on his leaky boat. 

By the time the boat reached 150 feet, the gyrocompass somehow began working again on its own.

At least something is going our way, thought Jake.

Loveless slowed to one-third speed, and began a slow turn to starboard, a conscious effort to keep the destroyer astern.  But the boat’s depth control and trim were shaky.

Then, Bill Burke reported from the motor room that the starboard motor bearing had begun to smoke, and that Dansforth was applying oil to the bearing by hand, with a squirt can. Burke also reported that the shaft seals were now leaking very badly, and the boat was taking on a lot of water, that the bilge was quickly filling, and the water was just four inches below the deck plates.  Jake couldn’t hold the boat at 150 feet, and the boat began going ever deeper.  He knew the drain pump was already running, and began pumping the trim tanks to sea.  Soon, the depth gauge read 170 feet.

I can’t hold depth at this speed, Captain, Jake reported.  And the trim tanks are almost dry.

Very well, Loveless said. All ahead two-thirds.  With the increased speed, Jake was able to bring the boat back to 150 feet.

Sonar reported the destroyer’s screws slowing, as it continued the hunt.  It dropped another depth charge, but was well astern and to port. Jake, now far less terrified, shook off the admittedly muted explosion with a defiant grimace.

About forty-five minutes into the dive, the boat began to lose depth control entirely, and it really began to sink.  Jake helplessly watched as the depth gauge indicated greater and greater keel depth.  Apprised of the situation, Loveless again asked Stetson for the sounding shown on the chart for their current position.  Two hundred fifty feet, Sir, was the answer.

At 230 feet, in desperation, with Loveless in agreement, Jake ordered, Bucky, put a bubble in number two main ballast tank.  The COB first shut the tank vent, and then released a small amount of compressed air into the tank.  The boat, now lighter, steadied somewhat on depth, but still refused to rise.

Five minutes later, S-49 started to sink again.

Captain, Jake called out to Loveless at the conn, permission to put another bubble in number two main ballast.

Loveless nodded, Do it.

Jake nodded to Bucky: Put another bubble in number two ballast tank.  The COB hit the tank with a second short blast of compressed air. The air expanded inside the tank, pushing additional water out of it.  Finally, the boat, now much lighter, began to rise, first imperceptibly, and then quickly—then, too quickly.  As the boat rose, the compressed air inside the tank expanded against the reduced sea pressure, pushing still more water out of the tank, making the boat all the more buoyant.  To avoid broaching, Jake ordered, Cycle the vent on number two ballast tank.

Now, bubbles of air vented at the top of the tank were released to the surface, indicating the boat’s exact position to an astute hunter on the surface.  And while the destroyer above continued to hunt, it apparently had not been close enough, or its lookouts astute enough, to spot the telltale bubbles. 

Finally, with the ballast tank alternatively vented and re-flooded in stages, Jake was able to eventually settle the boat out at 95 feet.  But water kept entering the boat faster than it could be pumped out, and the boat once more began to sink.

Sonar reported the sound of the destroyer’s screws alternately fading and getting louder—and the boat kept going deeper and deeper, depth soon approaching 150 feet. As a precaution, Loveless ordered life jackets and escape lungs issued to everyone. However, sonar continued to report hearing, however faintly, the screws of the hunter above.

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By 0515, January 5th, thanks to the feverish efforts of Bill Burke’s electricians and machinist mates, control over all the boat’s systems was reestablished.  Sonar reported, finally, that the destroyer’s screws were no longer audible.  The trim was still out of whack, and the lubrication system was still out.  Loveless increased speed to ahead full, and the boat slowly eased to periscope depth.  He did a 360-degree sweep with the search periscope, and saw that S-49 was alone in the sea. 

Loveless surfaced the boat, and, ordering a battery charge on the port engine, cleared the area as quickly as possible.  The lookouts were cautioned once again to keep a sharp eye out for contacts of any kind.  There were, thankfully, none for the rest of the day, and by nightfall, the lubrication system was repaired.  There was no telling, however, how well the starboard motor would function, her main bearing having been operated for hours being lubricated only by Greg Dansforth’s steady hand with the squirt can.

At last, the starboard power train was fired up, and appeared to be operating normally.  By dawn, even though the lubrication system was still working, the starboard motor bearing started smoking again, although not nearly as badly as before. With the battery charge secured, the boat submerged for the day. 

That afternoon, the entire starboard motor lubrication system failed again. 

On surfacing that night, Loveless reported his condition to SUBPAC.  Hours later, in the wee hours of January 6th, orders were received, indicating that, since Cavite was now under Japanese control, S-49 was to proceed instead to the Dutch submarine base in Surabaya, Netherlands East Indies, for repairs.  Now all Loveless had to do was figure out how to get his crippled boat to Surabaya, almost 3,000 miles away—through enemy-controlled open water. 

Joe Stetson plotted, and Loveless approved, a route passing east of the Philippines and then proceeding southwest, entering the Celebes Sea, on through the Makassar Strait, and then more or less southward to Surabaya.  S-49 carried excellent charts for the Philippines and surrounding waters, and very good charts for Okinawa.  But the charts she carried for the Celebes Sea, the Makassar Strait, and NEI waters were older British Admiralty charts.  Loveless was worried about their accuracy—but not overly so.  He was more concerned about the condition of his boat.

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It was an interesting passage, skirting around the Philippines.  Japanese activity was everywhere, and was especially intense around Luzon.  What shipping they saw was too far out of position to even contemplate an attack, which would have been foolhardy in any case, considering the boat’s mechanical problems.  Aircraft activity was especially heavy.  They apparently went unnoticed, though, as long as they stayed submerged during daylight hours.  Each day, however, presented another engineering challenge.  The starboard drive train continued to malfunction, and the leakage around the shaft seals grew worse daily.

Enemy activity diminished somewhat as the boat cleared the Philippines. The crew continued repairs to the starboard motor, but they were unable to keep it running for more than a few hours at a time.  With only the port drive train functioning reliably, the boat was averaging a mere six knots, or 144 nautical miles a day.

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It took ten days, but on the morning of January 16th, S-49 reached the Celebes Sea. Submerging, she set a course for the Makassar Strait.  Mechanical problems continued to plague the boat.  At noon, fire broke out in the starboard main motor auxiliary circulating pump, but it was quickly extinguished.  Again, the apparent cause was a lube oil circulation failure.  Still, the engine gang managed to get the starboard power train running again, and when the boat surfaced at dusk it began making good time.  At dawn S-49 submerged again after a good night’s run.

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When the boat surfaced after dark, the following day, they were entering the Makassar Strait.  Both drive trains came on line flawlessly and the boat began averaging just over 14 knots. Loveless remarked to Lawlor that they had just experienced their first 24 hours straight since departing their patrol zone without a major mechanical failure.

At 0540 local time, S-49 struck the reef.

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After a sweltering day on deck with their boat sinking beneath them, a Dutch motor patrol boat out of Makassar, NEI, evacuated the crew.  USS S-49 was then scuttled, and sank quickly behind them, finally freeing herself from the reef.

Back to TOC

Chapter 2

USS Orca: 29 January 1942 to 11 January 1943

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Lieutenant Commander Jacob Lawlor stood on the bridge of his first command, the USS Orca, a Gato-class fleet submarine.  The boat had made its way south, down the four miles along the Thames River from the U.S. Naval Submarine Base New London, Groton, Connecticut to the waters of Long Island Sound.  Orca was en route to its patrol station in the Pacific, thousands of miles away from its birthplace at the Electric Boat Company, which was just downriver from the subase.

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Jake’s XO, Lt. Clement Dwyer, had the conn.  Clem was a tall, wiry, redheaded Irishman from Milwaukee who had spent time on both a Sugar boat and one of the newer fleet boats. Both Jake and Clem were barely shielded from the driving wind by Orca’s bridge coaming. The boat had gone from keel to commissioning in just under twelve months, a record for the yard, which would eventually turn out a submarine a month before the war ended in an Allied victory. But on that frigid, blustery day, Monday, December 7, 1942, exactly one year after Pearl Harbor, the outcome of the war with Germany, Italy, and Japan was by no means certain.  And Orca was sailing into the thick of it.

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Jake was selected to take command of the new boat not long after the Naval Board of Inquiry into the loss of USS S-49 had decided that neither he, nor the ill-fated boat’s skipper, Lt. Harry Loveless, had been at fault in the loss of the ship. 

While the enemy was busy capturing and securing the port of Rabaul on New Britain in New Guinea, a Naval Board of Inquiry into the loss of S-49 had been convened on January 29, 1942, in Brisbane, Australia. 

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The Board had conducted its business with surprising alacrity (for the Navy) and determined on February 16, 1942, that ...the reef struck by USS S-49 on January 18, 1942, had indeed been missing from the British Admiralty charts in official use by the U.S. Navy for the Makassar Strait, and that the reef being submerged in its entirety, and as there was no cause for a competent mariner to have expected the reef’s existence...

The Board also found no fault in any of the subsequent actions of the boat’s commander, Lt. Harry Loveless, or any of the boat’s other officers and crew. The Board actually decided instead to award S-49 a battle star for her performance against the enemy, sinking one enemy cargo vessel, and for the safe evacuation of the crew from the stricken boat without loss of life. 

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Just eleven days after the Board reached its decision, Allied navies suffered a decisive defeat at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Battle of the Java Sea; the war was going badly for the Allies.

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Harry Loveless was promoted to Lieutenant Commander and assigned to SUBSOWESPAC staff in Fremantle, Australia.  There he would eventually serve as aide to COMSUBSOWESPAC, the Commander, Submarines, Southwest Pacific, Captain Charles Lockwood.  Harry would also eventually accompany Lockwood to Submarines, Pacific, in Pearl Harbor, where, as COMSUBPAC, Rear Admiral Lockwood would become famous as Uncle Charlie throughout the fleet (but never to his face). 

At the same time, Lt. Jacob Lawlor received orders to report aboard USS Narwhal in Pearl Harbor for a Prospective Commanding Officer (PCO) patrol. Narwhal was scheduled to leave Pearl on her first war patrol in early February.

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Jake Lawlor reported aboard the USS Narwhal, Lt. Cmdr. Charles W. Weary Wilson, USNR, commanding, for his PCO patrol on January 28, 1942.  Fifty-two days earlier, on Dec. 7, 1941, the naval base and U.S. Army Air Force facility at Pearl had been attacked by Japanese carrier-borne airplanes and miniature submarines.

In arriving at Pearl, Jake was awestruck by the extent of the devastation still visible.  Intermittent blooms of fuel oil could still be seen rising from some of the wrecks along Battleship Alley, and the last of the destroyed airplanes was still being cleared. Once-mighty capital ships remained sunk or capsized, and fuel oil was still being pumped out from the submerged hulk of Arizona.  There were no visible floating bodies, but at least a thousand souls were still inside the blasted remains left behind by the invaders.

Narwhal was one of five submarines in port, all undergoing overhaul, when the Japanese attacked.  Within minutes of the first enemy bombs dropping on Ford Island, Narwhal’s gunners were in action.  They claimed two Japanese torpedo planes.  Among the failures of the Japanese raid was leaving the submarine base relatively unscathed.  Another was missing the carrier fleet altogether (all the carriers were at sea that Sunday).  These omissions eventually proved to be costly mistakes for the invaders.

Jake was present on the bridge when Narwhal departed Pearl Harbor on her first war patrol on February 2, 1942.   She spent two days on a reconnaissance of Wake Island, 2,450 miles later.  She still had to traverse another 2,500 miles before entering waters familiar to Jake from S-49’s war patrol, the East China Sea, in the vicinity of the Ryukyu Islands.

On February 28th, while on station in the East China Sea southwest of the Ryukyus, Narwhal’s lookouts spotted two heavily laden merchant ships accompanied by a destroyer escort. Wilson positioned his boat with an end-around run on the surface and then submerged for a shot at the larger vessel, a 6,500-ton freighter. Unlike practically all submarine commanders, who preferred to personally man the periscope throughout an entire attack, Wilson preferred to let his XO, Lt. Jerry Murphy, run the periscope while he coordinated the attack based on his evaluation of the XO’s observations, the chart plot, and passive sonar reports. 

With Jake observing, when Wilson was satisfied with his team’s firing solution, he brought Narwhal about to firing course and waited until the target had closed to 700 yards. He then fired two Mark-10 torpedoes at the freighter.  One of the torpedoes hit its mark, exploding on contact, and, according to Murphy’s periscope observations (confirmed by Jake), inflicted heavy damage. 

Reacting quickly, the escort came on hard and fast, following down the torpedo wakes.  The destroyer rolled off a depth charge in the place where the wakes converged, followed by two more along what the destroyer’s captain assumed was his prey’s escape route. But Wilson had taken the boat deep at full speed on the destroyer’s approach, and then, with the boat rigged for silent running, began to creep slowly away, continually changing course, steering to keep the depth charge explosions further and further astern. He ultimately took the boat, shaken, but not mortally damaged, to safety. 

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Six days later, still in the East China Sea, another, smaller, unescorted freighter of about 1,200 tons was sighted.  Attacking on the surface, Wilson sank her with a single torpedo. The remainder of the patrol was uneventful, and Narwhal returned to Pearl Harbor on March 28th.

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The war in the Pacific was still not going well for the Allies during the first few months of 1942.  The Japanese had taken control of the Philippines, Indochina, Thailand, Singapore, the Netherlands East Indies, Wake Island, the Gilbert Islands, and Guam. The Dutch, occupied by Nazi Germany, could do little to defend their East Indies colonies; Japan easily seized Borneo (refineries) and Sumatra (oil fields). These victories promised to make the Japanese self-sufficient in the fuel required for domestic use and for the formidable requirements of their war machine. In addition, Japan now had sources for coal, bauxite, rubber, copra, nickel, timber, and quinine, as well as needed foodstuffs such as sugar, rice, tea, and coffee.

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During Narwhal’s first war patrol, Jake learned a great deal from her captain, Weary Wilson.  He was always cool-headed and calm, even in a combat situation, and his crew seemed to adopt his demeanor, obviously confident of his leadership ability.  Wilson kept firing solutions as simple as possible, and Jake admired the way he and his XO Murphy worked as a team, with Murphy on the periscope and Wilson in overall charge of the fire control team.  Jake saw the wisdom in this approach, and determined to use it himself when he assumed command of a boat.

For his part, Wilson had been observing Jake, asking questions, evaluating his responses, and learning his capabilities.  Jake was overjoyed when he later learned that Wilson had wholeheartedly recommended him for command.  Wilson’s final wry words to Jake as he departed Narwhal for his 4,900-mile journey to Connecticut were, Remember, Jake, there are just two kinds of ships: submarines and targets.

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Jake Lawlor reported to the U.S. Naval Submarine Base New London, Groton, Connecticut, three weeks later to assume his new command: USS Orca, still under construction at the Electric Boat Company (EB).

Orca was a Gato-class submarine, and American submarine design had been frozen with the Gato-class configuration.  The design was updated in 1943 with the USS Balao and subsequent Balao-class boats, and after that, in 1944, with the Tench-class.  Those boats were built with thicker, stronger pressure hulls and could dive deeper, but the configuration remained essentially the same.  All told, 77 Gato-class boats were built by various shipyards during the war.

At the time, Gato was the finest submarine ever built, light years ahead of even the remarkably effective German U-boats that were raising hell with Allied shipping in the Atlantic.  At 1,400 tons displacement, and 312 feet long, Gato packed a formidable punch.  She carried ten torpedo tubes, six forward and four aft; space for twenty-one torpedoes; a four-inch, fifty-caliber deck gun; and two-anti-aircraft guns—one forty millimeter and one twenty millimeter. 

Gato’s propulsion was provided by four, sixteen-cylinder General Motors diesels directly powering motor generators, which, in turn, provided power to four, high-speed General Electric DC motors, two per shaft.  The diesel’s generators could provide electric power to the propulsion motors directly, or provide power to charge the batteries.  With the diesels off line, the batteries provided power directly to the propulsion motors.  In another configuration, the diesels could charge the batteries while the batteries provided power to the motors—a propulsion charge. 

A manually operated bank of large levers—switches, actually—in the maneuvering room selected each particular power configuration.  Two, 126-cell, Sargo lead-acid batteries were located belowdecks in separate compartments.  The forward battery was directly aft of the forward torpedo room, and the after battery was just aft of the control room.

Gato-class boats had two periscopes, a nine-and-a-half-inch search scope, and a seven-and-a-half-inch attack scope.  Both scopes were improvements over previous models, which were practically useless