Escape From the Deep (14 page)

8

Blow and Go

T
HE SKY BEGAN TO LIGHTEN. Dawn beckoned. Bill Leibold alternated between swimming the breast stroke and floating on his back. The minutes, then hours, had passed slowly. Leibold had lost sense of time. The water felt cold. “No doubt about it,” he would recall sixty-three years later, “the thought of my wife during that long swim was a strong factor in surviving.”
¹

It had been ten months since Leibold had last seen his nineteen-year-old wife, Grace. She was a funny, spirited blonde, the sweetest woman he had ever met. They had attended the same high school. She had been serious about getting good grades while Leibold had been far more interested in submarines and the navy. After the war broke out, they had written to each other frequently. They dated just two or three times before they were married and had spent only four months together as man and wife. But those months, sharing a three-bedroom apartment with another newly married couple in navy housing on Mare Island, had been pure bliss.

Grace had been under the impression that he would stay ashore as master of arms in the shipyard administration office at Mare Island. To avoid upsetting her, Leibold had “fibbed” to her about joining the
Tang,
saying he had been drafted when in fact he had done all he possibly could to get aboard.
²
She had returned to live with her parents in Los Angeles when the
Tang
left for the Pacific on its first patrol on January 1, 1944, and now worked as a stenographer in the Probate Department of the Los Angeles Superior Court. It was a good job and kept her busy. Maybe keeping busy would help her deal with the news that the
Tang
had disappeared, presumed lost with all hands. . . .

Leibold heard the sound of splashing and spluttering.

Floyd Caverly could also hear someone or
something
splashing about. He looked around. Like Leibold, he couldn’t see anything, but he knew he was in shark-infested waters.

“Who’s there?” cried Caverly.

“Leibold.”

“Come on over here,” said Caverly.

“Over where?” replied Leibold. “I don’t know where you’re at.”

Caverly kept talking and Leibold moved toward his voice. It wasn’t long before they found each other.
³

Leibold could see that Caverly was struggling to keep his head above water as he tried to float on his back. He was gasping for air and being swamped by each wave.

“You’re not going to leave me out in this dark ocean all alone,” Leibold told Caverly, trying to encourage him.

Caverly said he was having trouble keeping his head above water.

Leibold watched him for a few moments.

“Cav, when you feel your head come up and then start down,” Leibold instructed him, “you’re through the wave. Your head is then out of the water—that’s when you take a breath of air.”

Caverly followed Leibold’s advice.

“Hey, that works pretty damn good,” said Caverly. “Are you doing it?”

“No. But now that I’ve explained it to you, and it works, I think I’ll do it too.”
⁴

Leibold and Caverly stuck close together, helping each other. Every now and then, Caverly swallowed a mouthful of water and then spat it out. Both felt increasingly cold. They knew they were losing precious body heat when they began to shiver. The first stages of hypothermia were setting in. The water was probably no more than fifty degrees Fahrenheit in this part of the Formosa Strait in late October. Men had been known to die in as little as three to four hours in similar conditions.

This time it was Caverly who had the smart idea: He told Leibold they should turn into the current and then urinate. Their urine would warm them. Caverly was right. It wasn’t long before they were urinating regularly to fend off the cold.
⁵

Leibold and Caverly decided to wait until daylight and then try to get to the exposed bow of one of the ships sunk by the
Tang
. There was bound to be something there that they could latch onto, and then they could use the current to wash them toward an island or the coast of China. Just before the
Tang
had gone down, Caverly had gotten a range reading—the nearest land had been an island off the coast of China called Fouchow, some twenty thousand yards away.

Dawn was nigh. Light soon streaked the sky. As day broke, Leibold and Caverly spotted what they thought was land. When they looked again, they realized it had been a mirage—it was only a cloud.

IN THE
Tang
’s forward torpedo room 180 feet below, Hank Flanagan, the last remaining officer, decided to take charge of a second escape attempt. It was around 4:15 a.m. when he started to organize the next party. This time, the rubber boat would be jettisoned to make room for a fourth man.
⁶

Determined to try again, Bill Ballinger asked for volunteers to join him and Flanagan.

“I’m going to go,” said Ballinger. “I need volunteers.”

Clay Decker stepped forward. He knew Ballinger was the most experienced submariner among the survivors. He had completed six runs on the USS
Tunney
before he had come aboard the
Tang
for her first patrol, and had been the main conduit between O’Kane and the crew. More than any other man still alive, he had a natural authority that inspired confidence.

Ballinger also had a salty sense of humor. He cursed royally, drove the crew hard, but could also be great fun when he was relaxing, which was rare given his responsibilities on the
Tang
. He had grown up in California. About five foot ten inches, with “dark hair and strong features,” Ballinger had earned the crew’s respect as chief of the boat but also as the
Tang
’s leading torpedoman, responsible for the men in both forward and after torpedo rooms.

Already, at least half of the mostly teenage boys under his charge were dead: Phillip Anderson from Grand Rapids; Fred Bisogno, an Italian from Brooklyn; Wilfred Boucher from Rhode Island; John Foster from Detroit; Texan William Galloway; and Charles Wadsworth from California. At least none of them had been married.

Decker stepped toward Ballinger.

I’m going to get on his shirttail,
thought Decker.
He knows where he’s going.

“I’m with you, Bill,” said Decker.
⁷

Soon, five men had gathered at the steps leading to the trunk: Ensign Basil Pearce from Florida, Bill Ballinger, Hank Flanagan, Leland Weekley, and Clay Decker.
⁸

Decker picked up his Momsen Lung and ripped open its celluloid packaging. His close friend, George Zofcin, helped him put on the lung. In the flickering light, Zofcin noticed that the clip on the lung’s discharge valve was still attached. He removed it, not knowing then that this simple action probably saved Decker’s life.

Decker hustled Zofcin toward the escape trunk, urging him to join the attempt.

“No, no,” Zofcin said.

“Come on, let’s get our asses outta here, George,” said Decker.

“No, no, Clay, you go ahead and go with this wave.”

“Why George? Come on, go with us.”

“No. No . . . I’ve got a confession to make.”

“Confessions? What the hell are we talking about? We’ve got to get our butts off of this boat.”

“Clay, I can’t swim.”

Decker was dumbfounded. He couldn’t believe it. How could Zofcin not swim? If there was one thing every submariner could do, it was swim.

Back in Hawaii, before setting out on the
Tang
’s last patrol, Decker and Zofcin had shared a room at the Royal Hawaiian for two weeks; they had visited Waikiki beach in their swimsuits several times. Zofcin had never gone into the water.

Decker said it didn’t matter whether Zofcin could swim or not.

“Look, George,” added Decker, pointing to his Momsen Lung. “You can use it as a life preserver. . . . You can also hang on to the buoy that’s at the end of the line.”
⁹

Zofcin was not convinced.

“Clay, you go now,” he said. “I’ll go with the next wave.”
¹⁰

Decker felt torn. He didn’t want to leave Zofcin behind. How would he explain to Zofcin’s young wife, Martha, that he had made it but Zofcin had been too afraid to try?

But time was running out if he was to follow Ballinger into the escape trunk and stand a chance of surviving and seeing his own family again. Reluctantly, Decker turned away and climbed up the ladder leading to the escape trunk.

Hank Flanagan was standing nearby. He watched Decker get into the trunk. He also saw Zofcin walk over to a bunk and crawl into it, apparently resigned to dying in the
Tang
.

Zofcin soon appeared to fall asleep. He was one of several men who were now so terrified of the escape procedure and so drained by exhaustion and the increasing heat and toxic fumes that they were unwilling to save themselves.
¹¹

A few seconds later, Decker, Ballinger, Flanagan, and Pearce were squeezed together in the escape trunk. It was around 4:15 a.m. when the trunk was sealed from below. “It was a small space,” recalled Decker. “There was battery lighting in the escape chamber itself. It wasn’t very bright but we could see what we were doing. The four of us were standing almost nose-to-nose. There was a fathometer, which showed 180 feet, and a pressure gauge that showed the external pressure outside the hull.”
¹²

The men started to fill the trunk with water. It was soon up to their shins. When it reached above their waists, Ballinger and Decker tested their Momsen Lungs by ducking under the water briefly. The pressure became more intense the higher the water rose. The men began to lose their senses. The pressure was soon so high—ninety pounds per square inch—that they could barely hear each other; normal air pressure is six times less at fifteen pounds per square inch. When they spoke, their voices squeaked, as if they had gulped helium rather than oxygen from their Momsen Lungs.

In the forward torpedo room below the escape trunk, men again waited impatiently. There was no means of communication with the men in the escape trunk other than by tapping on the bulkhead—a major design flaw in the escape system.

Back in the escape trunk, aches and pains stabbed the men’s ears. Eventually, the water was up to their chests. Because Decker was shorter then the others, the water actually reached his neck.
¹³

The men’s heads were in an air bubble. They then bled compressed air into the air bubble and, in agony and close to passing out, watched until a gauge showed that the pressure in the trunk exceeded the sea pressure outside by five pounds. That would, in theory, enable them to open the hatch with no strain, just like opening a door to a room in a house.

Clay Decker had long since resigned himself to the inevitability of dying if the
Tang
sank. “Every night you laid your head on your pillow,” recalled Decker, “you were aware that the piece of iron that’s a submarine could end up being a tomb.” Now, with a chance at life, Decker was afraid but able to control his panic. Others in the escape trunk reacted differently, as if the gravity of their situation paralyzed them with trepidation.

Ballinger undid the hatch. It opened smoothly. Thankfully, Dick O’Kane had ordered his men to grease all such exits from the submarine in case they got jammed.
¹⁴

Decker kept his nerve as Ballinger handed him the yellow wooden buoy attached to five hundred feet of line.

Decker pushed the buoy through the open hatch and released it. The line slithered out behind.

“Clay, count the knots as they go through your hand,” said Ballinger.

Decker counted the knots on the line as they slipped through his hands: 100 feet, 110 feet, 150 feet . . .

The buoy soon reached the surface. Decker knew it because the line started to tug as the soccer-ball-like buoy was jostled by waves on the surface. The fathometer was correct. They were indeed 180 feet below the surface.

Decker now took the end of the line, reached out to the first rung of a ladder just outside the escape trunk, and tied the line off with three knots.

The four men stood together, nose to nose.

Decker attached his Momsen Lung’s mouthpiece and then its nose clamp.

Ballinger nodded.

“OK, Clay—go for it.”
¹⁵

Decker ducked down into the water and exited the escape trunk, crawling out into utter blackness. The only way he could locate his hand was to touch his nose with it. All he knew was that he was standing on the outside of the hull. In the wooden deck above him was an opening around three feet wide. He had to reach it, had to find it. He clutched the line. If he didn’t use it to guide him, he wouldn’t know where to turn and could get lost finding the opening on the underside of the deck, become disoriented, panic, and drown.
¹⁶

Decker held on to the line and followed it upward, through the blacked-out superstructure, through the opening in the deck, and then up into the cold ocean itself. He fought the urge to rise fast. Wrapping his legs and arms around the line, he looked up, but all he could see was darkness.

They were the longest seconds of his life. As each knot passed through his hands, he hesitated, inhaled, then exhaled as he moved up to the next knot. His careful ascent allowed him to equalize the internal pressure in his lungs with the external pressure. It kept him alive.
¹⁷