Final Patrol (5 page)

A watertight hatch from the submarine's bridge leads down a short ladder to a compartment called the conning tower. This small room is where the OOD controlled the boat when she was submerged. It contains controls for running the ship, including controlling her steering and motor speed. There is intercom equipment and the “annunciator,” the device that was used to indicate speed and direction to the maneuvering room, located below and toward the boat's stern.

There are also torpedo controls, the torpedo data computer and firing console, as well as both periscopes (one for attack and one for general observation), and the very important radar and sonar equipment. A watertight hatch leads down from the conning tower into the control room, which is accessed from above by going down a steep, vertical ladder.

The control room is exactly what its name implies. This is where the boat was controlled while submerged. Various equipment typically installed here include the submergence light panel, which is popularly called the Christmas tree because of its display of red and green lights that indicate system status; the bow plane and stern plane controls that allowed the crew to dive and surface smoothly and not too quickly; the inclinometer, which told them how well they were doing in that process; depth gauges, and more. There is other important gear here, too, such as the ship's gyrocompasses, another type of radar, and the radio room.

Below the control room, and accessed by removing deck plates, is a marvelously complicated collection of pumps, compressors, generators, piping, and blowers—the systems for keeping the boat operational and comfortable. This compartment is called the pump room.

Stepping forward through the narrow doorway from the control room, the next area is dubbed the “forward battery.” Its name comes from the 126 big lead-acid electric storage cells that rested in the space below the deck plates. Because of their danger and corrosive nature, these batteries have been removed from all the museum boats. More than one submarine has been lost because of explosions either in the battery compartments or from the dangerous gases they released during charging. The storage batteries on subs did exactly what they were supposed to do, provide electricity for the motors and boat systems, but they had to be closely monitored and properly handled or they could turn lethal.

All the boats had indicator meters hanging throughout their compartments so anyone could tell at a glance if the explosive gas from the batteries ever reached a dangerous level. When it did, no matter where they were or what irritated enemy vessels might be on the surface above them, or which airplane could be bearing down on them, the boats had to surface or remain on top, open hatches, and vent the gas to the outside before a stray spark set off a conflagration far worse than any attack by the Japanese.

The area above the batteries contains the officers' quarters and work space for the two steward's mates, which includes a coffee urn, storage drawers, food warmers, and other equipment necessary to serve food to the skipper and other officers. The captain of a submarine was the only officer who had a private cabin. His bedroom is called a stateroom, but it can hardly be compared to a stateroom on a cruise ship. Visitors today can see how small it really is.

The other officers shared rooms in pairs, and they all had use of a single toilet, sink, and shower. Also in this area is the wardroom, where the commissioned officers ate and held meetings around a small table. The yeoman's office is in a tiny room on the starboard (right-hand) side at the after end (toward the rear of the boat) of the compartment. The yeoman was the enlisted man whose duty it was to keep up with the ship's and crew's records.

Moving forward from the officers' quarters, the submarine's “business end” is found in the next compartment, at the front of the boat—the forward torpedo room. This is where a total of sixteen ready-to-load-and-launch torpedoes were stored—six inside the tubes, set to go, and ten in heavy storage racks along the sides and under the deck plates—until ready to be fired from the six tubes at the forward end of the room. Equipment for handling the torpedoes is located here as well. That was some chore, since each torpedo weighed more than a ton and a half.

There is also bunk space here for the torpedomen to sleep when they were off duty. Some of the crew's bunks are hung above and below the stacked torpedoes, others are suspended from the overhead, and the rest are on the starboard side, in the torpedo-loading pit. Regardless of where the men slept in this compartment, huge, heavy, deadly torpedoes surrounded them the whole time.

The possibility of having to evacuate the sub in an undersea emergency was always on the minds of the crew members. Here, in the forward torpedo room, is an escape hatch that the men could open, crawl into, and flood with seawater, allowing them a last-resort way out. There would typically be a supply of Momsen lungs stored there, too. Those were a rudimentary device that could be strapped on in the event the boat had to be evacuated while submerged. They could be used for breathing while rising slowly to the surface. They were not a perfect solution, and the depth at which they could be used was limited, but they were about the only hope sub sailors had if their boat should be damaged or disabled while submerged, whether by enemy fire or equipment malfunction. Sub sailors were lost to both.

Moving toward the rear of the boat from the control room, the next compartment back is called the after battery, also named for a second collection of big storage cells beneath the deck plates of this compartment. The forward end of the compartment, above the deck plates, holds one of the boat's most important areas, the galley. Cooks prepared food for both the officers and enlisted men there, serving the bulk of what they cooked in the crew's mess hall next door and taking the officers' meals forward to serve them in the wardroom. The crew's mess has four fixed tables with stationary benches along each side. In the typical configuration, they could hold two dozen men, a third of the crew, at a time.

Another thing that came out of Theodore Roosevelt's ride in the
Plunger
was the decree that submarines always provide their crews the best food available. Mr. Roosevelt felt that if the men were deprived of daylight, clean air, and open space, they should at least enjoy good meals. Submarine food is legendary in the navy, and many sailors claim to have volunteered for duty for just that reason.

Next in line in the after battery area are the crew quarters, a total of thirty-six stainless-steel-framed bunks stacked in four rows. The crew's duty assignments while at sea were typically four hours on watch and eight hours off watch. That meant that someone was always sleeping unless the crew was ordered to battle stations. Since there were not enough bunks for every member of the crew, some of the beds, known as “hot bunks,” were assigned to more than one person to use each day.

A metal door at the after end of the bunk area is the entry into the crew's head, or toilet area. It contains two stalls with toilets, two stall showers, and two washbasins, as well as an automatic laundry machine. More than seventy men were required to share two toilets, two showers, and two sinks. That, in and of itself, may explain the closeness of the submariner brotherhood!

The next area back after the crew quarters holds the forward and after engine rooms. Each engine room contains two diesel main engines that are directly coupled to a high-powered electrical generator. Output from the engine-driven generators provided power to operate the electrical propulsion motors in the motor room when the boat was on the surface. They also charged the batteries. In the aft engine room, below deck level, there is a small auxiliary diesel engine that could be used as a low-power substitute for the main engine if need be. The forward engine room is almost identical to the aft engine room, except it has a small machine shop in place of the auxiliary engine.

Companies that built railroad locomotives typically manufactured these diesel engines. They had to be powerful and reliable, for obvious reasons. A powerless submarine was a sitting duck for enemy ships and airplanes.

Next in line is the maneuvering room and, below it, the motor room. The two large electric motors in the motor room were what actually sent the submarine forward or backward, whether she was on the surface or submerged. Each of those motors drove a screw (or propeller) that is located at the boat's stern. While the submarine was on the surface, the electric motors got their juice from the diesel-engine-driven electrical generators. While submerged, their power came from the electric batteries in the forward and after battery compartments.

Huge electrical switches were required to change over from generator to battery power or to begin charging the batteries. Those switches are located in the control cubicle, a stainless-steel box that measures eight to ten feet on a side. The cubicle is shock-mounted to isolate the switches from the shaking and rattling of depth charges or rough seas. Two men, called controllermen, handled the switching from the maneuvering panel that is located behind the cubicle. They adjusted the rheostats and levers in response to orders from the conning tower or control room.

Theirs was an interesting dance to watch. They followed orders from the con or bridge by maneuvering the levers, switches, and knobs in a complicated ballet, creating the correct combination to make the submarine do what the OOD or skipper wanted her to do. Because of the electricity that coursed through the cubicle, this area was also susceptible to fire, something feared by submariners even more than flood.

The final compartment at the far rear end of the boat is the aft torpedo room. It is very similar to the forward room, only considerably smaller. There are only four torpedo tubes here. Whenever the boat was on patrol at sea, each of the tubes had a torpedo stored in it. Four other torpedoes were stored in the room. This gave the boat a complement of twenty-four torpedoes in the two rooms. Of course, if one torpedo room ran out of “fish,” that end of the boat was out of business. There was no way to get the heavy torpedoes from one end of the submarine to the other to reload. Skippers had to always be cognizant of how many fish were left and where they were located.

The after torpedo room also has its own emergency escape hatch with a supply of Momsen lungs.

Life on a submarine could be tedious. Imagine living in such close quarters with other men, not to mention the inevitable tensions of wartime, the pressures of stalking targets for long, nervous hours while attempting to destroy them.

When leaving on patrol, their fuel tanks were filled with heavy diesel fuel, and it was necessary to constantly recalculate the effect of the weight of that fuel as it was burned away. Otherwise diving and surfacing could be especially dangerous. Also, when the boats left port on a patrol, every nook and cranny was filled with provisions for the run. Even the decks were covered with cans of food, and the crew literally had to walk around on their groceries until they were used up.

Even though they were built to run on and under the sea, water was a precious commodity aboard submarines. Seawater could not be used in the storage batteries. Only distilled water was pure enough for that purpose, so the subs carried distilling systems that could convert seawater to something the batteries could tolerate. The old joke among submariners was that if the distilled water was pure enough, it was used in the batteries. If it was not, it was used for drinking and cooking.

There was certainly not enough clean water for regular bathing. A shower aboard a submarine was a rare luxury. It was far more common for the crew to grab a quick bath while running through a rainstorm than to be able to take much more than a spit-bath. When leaving port, the enlisted men's double shower stalls were usually crammed full of potatoes and other supplies. They would not be using them for their intended purpose anytime soon after heading out on patrol.

Another old joke was that nobody noticed body odor aboard the boats. The diesel fumes pretty well took care of that.

Still, the new fleet boats had many advantages over their predecessors. They had better air-conditioning, which was a big factor in the warm climes where much of the war was being fought in the Pacific. Despite how they might seem to visitors today, they were roomier than the boats that came before them. And they were perfectly designed for what they were primarily charged to do: stalk and attack enemy vessels, either on the surface or while submerged. Of course, they also had much greater range and could move faster.

These new classes of submersibles were actually very efficient ships while running on the surface, even faster and more maneuverable than many vessels designed to ride only on the surface. Yet they were capable of virtually disappearing, both visually and aurally, when they submerged. Sometimes aircraft could spot them in the relatively clear Pacific Ocean waters but, for the most part, when they dove to several hundred feet, they were as stealthy as any warship in history. And with the quiet battery power, as long as there were no squeaking bearings or other malfunctions, they ran about as silently as was possible.

As World War II progressed, newer, more sophisticated radar was being developed and installed on the subs, sometimes while the advanced technology was still being perfected. That gave the submarines a strong tool to use in tracking the enemy, and a considerable advantage over the Japanese, whose technology was lagging by this time.

Torpedoes, too, had been problematic in the early days of the war. Skippers maintained that the fish would zoom right up to a target, smash its nose hard into the other vessel's side, and still fail to explode. Other types of torpedoes ran erratically, deeper or more shallow than set to do, and never even had a chance to hit an enemy vessel. But those troubles were eventually fixed and the success of the submarine navy improved markedly as the conflict wore on. The official numbers show it.