Hellcats (13 page)

No sooner had the
Spadefish
dived than Lockwood, elbow-to-elbow with Underwood, heard the sound of a bell, clear and undistorted, tolling from the FM sonar's speaker—the infamous hell's bells! The instant the bell began ringing, the sonar technician at the PPI console sang out, “Mine contact!”

Ahead and to the right of the advancing
Spadefish
danced a dummy mine on a deep-anchored cable.

Triumph!
thought Lockwood. The damned thing actually worked! Not only did it locate mines, but with proper handling and a studied touch of its controls it could point a sub toward an open path through them. Even now the
Spadefish
, advancing submerged at three knots, swept on through the minefield, “blobs glowing on the sonar screen not so much like pears but like big juicy lightning bugs.”
³
Lockwood was ecstatic. He'd put his reputation on the line to prove that FM sonar would work. And it did. As he slapped a still skeptical Underwood on the back, he saw with his own eyes that it was the secret weapon he'd dreamed of that would get his subs back into the Sea of Japan to finish off the Japanese.

Sure, FM sonar was only as good as the men who operated it. Both the operators and the captains of the sonar-equipped subs would need specialized training on the equipment, not just to learn how to take full advantage of its abilities and to overcome its limitations, but also to gain confidence that its employment against enemy minefields would open new horizons for the sub force. Until that moment off Oahu, when hell's bells and big, juicy lightning bugs announced the presence of mines, Lockwood, like every submariner, had accepted the fact that mines embodied an occupational hazard and that nothing could be done about it. Now, FM sonar would change everything. As operators gained experience and as the sonar underwent improvements, submariners could then embark in a great fleet of FM sonar-equipped submarines with little to fear from the great mine menace. Then and there Lockwood vowed that he would see to it personally that both captains and sonar operators received the training they would need on FM sonar before setting out on patrols.

To realize this goal, Lockwood would have to negotiate bureaucratic roadblocks and manufacturing bottlenecks. He also faced another serious problem over which he had no control. Though a prototype unit from UCDWR's labs had found its way aboard the
Spadefish
, future production units were destined not for the sub force but the Navy's minesweeper force. This despite the fact that the mine force had flatly rejected the units because their poor performance made minesweeping more dangerous than it already was using traditional methods of paravanes and cable cutters.

Fuming that the needs of the sub force had been ignored, Lockwood presented his argument directly to Admiral Nimitz for the acquisition of the unwanted minesweeper FM sonar units for submarine use. Meeting with the fleet admiral in mid-July, Lockwood made a presentation that included details of the tests conducted in San Diego and off Oahu in the
Spadefish
. While he was at it he made a pitch for getting his hands on as many sets as he could to equip submarines undergoing overhaul on the West Coast and, if possible, some of those based in Pearl. As Lockwood talked and talked, Nimitz, his pale blue eyes assessing Lockwood's effervescent enthusiasm for his pet project, listened carefully. Lockwood completed his presentation with, “Eventually, Admiral, with this new sonar, we'll crack the Sea of Japan without losing a ship or man to the minefields.”
⁴

Nimitz was a realist. Though he shared Lockwood's enthusiasm for such a mission and appreciated that ComSubPac was not a man to unnecessarily risk men's lives on harebrained schemes, he may have had doubts that a force of submarines equipped with Lockwood's magic gear could run the gauntlet without incurring losses. He may have even thought that Lockwood's chances of twisting arms at the Navy Department, which would have the final say on the diversion of sonar sets, were slim to none, and that nothing more would come of the mission. Nimitz, weighing the risks and potential rewards in Lockwood's proposal, gave it his approval. Even with Nimitz's approval in hand, Lockwood faced a tough battle. He would have to convince the Navy's bureaucracy in Washington that if his submarines were equipped with the FM sonar units destined for minesweepers, they would become one of the keys to ending the war in the Pacific sooner rather than later. To win that battle Lockwood would have to enlist the Navy's top admiral, CNO Ernest King, to his cause. The problem with this line of attack was that King in Washington and Lockwood in Pearl Harbor were based almost five thousand miles apart. A letter to King outlining the problem was impractical, and a lengthy telephone conversation over already jammed phone lines to the States meant solely for priority communications wasn't possible. How to get himself in front of King, even for a few minutes? Lockwood pondered this problem for a time until a solution presented itself via a secret communication to all commands in Hawaii: A top-level strategy meeting between President Roosevelt, General Douglas MacArthur, Admiral King, and Admiral Nimitz would take place in Honolulu in late July.
⁵
Lockwood saw his opportunity and seized it.

 

 

Admiral King arrived in Pearl
Harbor days ahead of President Roosevelt, who had embarked from the States aboard the heavy cruiser USS
Baltimore
(CA-68). Fresh from a tour conducted by Lockwood of a submarine about to sail on a war patrol, King agreed to sit down with Nimitz and Lockwood to discuss the FM sonar issue. Strange as it seems, King did not tour the
Spadefish
preparing to depart on her first war patrol from Pearl Harbor on July 23. The reason might be that her follow-up trials had not been as successful as the first one Lockwood had witnessed and that he didn't want to reveal that fact to King or Nimitz. As it turned out the
Spadefish
sailed with her FM sonar unit out of commission.

King quickly grasped the importance of Lockwood's proposal. He, like Nimitz, believed submarines could play a decisive role in the final collapse of Japan—they'd already brought Japan to the brink—and so he was eager to make it happen. The CNO, with a glance at a smiling Nimitz, nodded his assent to Lockwood's plan. Now all it would take to start untangling the red tape that had bound the FM sonar sets over to the mine force and divert them to ComSubPac's use would be a few words from King to his chief of plans. Little wonder that Lockwood felt he'd successfully moved heaven and earth to get what he needed to begin serious planning for a raid into the Sea of Japan. All he needed to make that happen were more submarines and more FM sonar sets. And one more thing, too: He needed submariners to buy into his plan.

F
resh from a two-week stay at the camps outside Fremantle set aside for the rest and recuperation of submariners, the
Bonefish
's crew
^f
reported aboard their ship, which had been refitted by the submarine repair unit of the tender USS
Griffin
(AS-13).

On September 5, 1944, the
Bonefish
, setting out on her sixth war patrol, stopped at the forward supply base established at Port Darwin on the north coast of Australia to top off with food and fuel. In addition to his orders governing the
Bonefish
's patrol, Edge had orders to operate with the submarines
Flasher
(SS-249) and
Lapon
(that veteran of an earlier patrol in the Sea of Japan) as part of a coordinated attack group, in other words, a wolf pack. The pack's operating area encompassed the waters of the Sibuyan Sea south of Luzon, Philippines, and the South China Sea west of Luzon.

The German
Ubootwaffe
had successfully employed U-boat wolf packs against Allied convoys in the North Atlantic. These wolf packs had come perilously close to severing the only supply lifeline England had. It wasn't until the spring of 1943 that the Allies, after breaking the German Enigma submarine codes, began sinking hundreds of U-boats, thus saving England from almost certain defeat by Nazi Germany.

Unlike the Germans with their vast fleet of submarines, ComSubPac, hampered early on by having too few submarines to form effective wolf packs, relied instead on freedom of action by individual subs for success against Japanese convoys. Unlike Allied convoys, Japanese convoys were smaller and consequently easier for a single submarine to attack. Whereas Allied convoys often consisted of eighty or more ships, the Japanese convoy commanders, lacking sufficient escorts, formed convoys of six to eight ships and sometimes as few as two. American subs didn't often encounter large convoys of fifteen to twenty
marus
and when they did, they usually had insufficient torpedoes to deal with such a large group of ships on their own. An American sub skipper in this situation had no choice but to pick out one or two ships to attack, knowing full well that as soon as the first torpedo went off the convoy would scatter all over the ocean, effectively ending any chance the submarine might have had to attack the other ships. Enter the wolf pack.

In the Pacific, two or three submarines operating together would attack by hitting the main convoy body from different locations, then, after pulling back, pick off the stragglers one by one. How effective U.S. wolf packs were was never fully decided. One problem was that U.S. wolf packs were too often hampered by poor voice radio communications between subs. Lockwood and Voge struggled to improve communications so as to better coordinate wolf pack attacks and, incidentally, to make sure the subs didn't torpedo one another. Submarine command organized about 120 wolf packs consisting of between three and seven submarines. In the main their operations succeeded, sinking more than a hundred Japanese ships. To prove that wolf-packing worked, early on the USS
Steelhead
(SS-280) and the USS
Parche
(SS-384) attacked a fifteen-ship convoy, sank five ships, and damaged many more. Yet as impressive as this action was, the USS
Rasher
(SS-269), acting alone, tore into a twenty-ship convoy in the South China Sea off the Philippines, sank four ships—including the twenty-thousand-ton escort carrier shepherding the convoy—and badly damaged four more. The
Rasher
's amazing feat proved once again just how potent a single submarine captained by an aggressive skipper could be.

The Germans often utilized as many as twenty U-boats in wolf packs that relied on an unwieldy but effective shore-based communications net to coordinate their attacks on Allied convoys. The Germans sank a lot of ships using this method but lost a lot of U-boats and men. After all, a pack of twenty U-boats swirling like wolves around a convoy in the North Atlantic presented a juicy target for Allied antisubmarine forces. The lesson ComSubPac learned from the wholesale destruction of German U-boats was that small wolf packs made for a more compact and survivable weapon able to nibble away at Japanese shipping despite the ever more effective antisubmarine measures the enemy employed as the war progressed.

 

 

The
Bonefish
arrived in her
patrol area on September 21. Patrolling the Tablas Strait south of Luzon, she once again encountered dozens of sailboats and small craft, mostly local fishing vessels and luggers. They were far too numerous to board and inspect either for cargoes destined for the Japanese or for submarine-spotter radios. After spending several unproductive days in this area Edge moved westward into Verde Island Passage. So far, other than sailboats, the area, reputedly teeming with Japanese freighters, looked pretty desolate.

Past midnight on September 27, Edge received orders from Fremantle to join the
Flasher
and
Lapon
off Luzon for a wolf-pack operation two days hence. Both subs had reported sighting targets off the southwestern Philippine coast, a major north-south Japanese shipping route. Fremantle had orchestrated the wolf pack's moves based on intelligence gleaned from decrypted Japanese radio messages that included valuable information on the routes convoys tended to use and the makeup of the convoys themselves and their cargoes.

Based on this information Edge shaped a course through the Verde Island Passage north of Mindoro into the South China Sea, and on four engines headed for the area he'd been assigned. Entering the South China Sea,
radar contact!

Edge altered course to begin tracking the target. Two hours of hard running at flank speed brought the
Bonefish
into torpedo-firing range of a large zigzagging northbound ship and two echo-ranging escorts. Fighting the clock—dawn's arrival and, with it, air patrols out of Manila—Edge, ready to launch an attack, tucked in behind the ship and her escorts. In position downwind of them, Edge smelled fuel oil, a tip-off that he had a loaded tanker in his sights.

Sidestepping both escorts Edge made his run-in. He fired the bow tubes at the target's broadside, then spun the
Bonefish
on her heel to fire the stern tubes. Before he could work a new setup, an explosion erupted near the target's stern. An instant later a blinding flash and a huge ball of flame topped by boiling black smoke rolled into a sky now tinged with dawn. The flash and ball of flame momentarily turned night into day and made the
Bonefish
and the Japanese escorts stand out like yachts at a regatta.
^g
Scorching heat from the fireball whipped over the
Bonefish
. To the men on her bridge it felt like a dragon breathing fire on them. For Edge, his vow to make amends for his failure to sink that ship off the coast of Zamboanga during the
Bonefish
's last patrol had been fulfilled.

With morning light spreading fast in the east and the sure arrival of planes imminent, Edge didn't hang around to inspect his handiwork. He rang up flank speed for the wolf pack area and retired westward, away from the smear of black smoke lying low on the sea.