Hellcats (24 page)

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t Pearl Harbor the surrender of Nazi Germany added a sense of urgency to the launching of Operation Barney. Lockwood was impatient to finish the job U.S. subs had started, and to do it without help from Halsey and Spruance, much less the Russians. The possibility that the USSR would declare war on Japan, once thought remote, might happen any day. That country's entry into the Pacific war increased the likelihood that the Sea of Japan would have to be divided up into zones of operation for both the United States and the Soviets. It also increased the possibility that a Soviet Far Eastern offensive would overrun Manchuria, even Korea. If that happened, Stalin would establish a Soviet-dominated sphere of influence as well as military bases in a region the United States expected to control. Worse yet, Stalin had the will and the necessary forces to launch an invasion of Japan through Hokkaido, from staging areas on Sakhalin Island. For now the attitude in Washington was “wait and see.”

Lockwood balked at the idea of Soviet naval forces, particularly Soviet submarines with little or no experience with war patrols, operating in the Sea of Japan. He feared that Soviet submarines would further complicate the already thorny business of identification of ships and units, which in turn could lead to disastrous consequences for U.S. sub crews, never mind Soviet ones. The only assistance Lockwood wanted from the Russians was an agreement that if an Operation Barney sub became disabled, it could seek refuge in Vladivostok. Otherwise Lockwood had no use for the Russians. Nimitz, despite his earlier aversion to this plan, was again making sounds that Lockwood should start thinking about how to divide up the Sea of Japan into U.S. and Soviet areas. Lockwood hoped that if he dragged his feet long enough, the whole stinking idea might be dropped.

 

 

The
Bonefish
arrived in Guam
the day Nazi Germany surrendered. The long-expected news of Germany's defeat, when it arrived, rather than inviting celebration among all the military personnel on Guam, evoked a mood of somber restraint. Welcome as the news was, every American soldier, sailor, marine, and airman, from the top brass down, knew that the war was only half won, and what it might take to end it.

This was the underlying mood as the
Bonefish
tied up at the sub base in Guam. Lockwood was not there to greet her, as was his custom when subs returned from patrols, especially one as important as the
Bonefish
's had been; he was still in San Diego and wouldn't return until the eighteenth. Barney Sieglaff, covering for Lockwood, and accompanied by staff and a Navy still photographer to record the
Bonefish
's homecoming, came aboard to greet Edge and his crew. As Edge, Sieglaff, and the other officers gathered in the sub's wardroom over coffee and cigarettes, the two Japanese prisoners Edge had captured were escorted topside for transfer into the custody of waiting U.S. Marines. Suddenly, in an unguarded moment, one of the prisoners, the quiet one who had not begged Edge to kill him, bolted. Diving over the side of the sub into the water, he quickly swam away from the ship and drowned himself. The Marines and sailors who witnessed this event were stunned. A small boat put out after the prisoner, but it was too late.

Ashore after all the commotion had settled down, Edge found a pack of letters waiting for him, which he hungrily dug into for news about Sarah and Boo. In an earlier letter, one that arrived before his departure on the mine recon, she told him that Mack Tharpe, the husband of their close friend, Jane Tharpe, one of Sarah's bridesmaids, had been killed aboard an aircraft carrier. Even before answering Sarah's letters, Lawrence wrote a letter of condolence to Jane. His remarks shape a perfect coda to his own life: He had no way of knowing that he and Mack would share the same fate.

Writing to Sarah, Lawrence told
her about the suicide of the Japanese prisoner he'd brought to Guam for interrogation. In another letter he told her that he'd

Edge and his crew transferred temporarily to the submarine rest camp for a few days of relaxation before returning to sea for training and FMS trials. They knew that they had been tapped to become part of a special mission everyone was openly referring to as Operation Barney, and that it would entail dodging minefields and penetrating the Sea of Japan. The details of the operation were still under wraps. Even so, Edge knew they'd soon be on the table. Scuttlebutt had it that Lockwood planned to conduct a comprehensive mission briefing and that the initial jump-off date for the first group of subs had been scheduled for May 27.

With the clock counting down to that jump-off, Edge wrote to Sarah during the little spare time he had, given the demands that training and preparation for Barney had imposed.

Lockwood returned to Guam from
San Diego. Aboard his flagship in Guam, the old sub tender USS
Holland
(AS-3), he looked out over Apra Harbor at the tender USS
Apollo
(AS-25), her fleet of nine FMS subs nested alongside. Lockwood had reason to be pleased. All of his and his staff's hard work was about to pay off. The plan they'd developed for the execution of Operation Barney was ready for presentation to the nine skippers. The increased tempo of FMS training had resulted in a marked improvement in the sub crews' attitude toward FMS. They might not all be converts, but even so, requests for transfers had petered out. As for FMS itself, the
Flying Fish
had turned in some of the best results that Lockwood and Sieglaff had ever witnessed, better even than the
Bonefish
. Robert Risser, her CO, had no combat experience with FMS, but was eager to have the opportunity to use it to get at those ships in the Sea of Japan. Lockwood noted with satisfaction that Risser's buoyant enthusiasm had infected the other skippers.

One of them was Commander Earl T. Hydeman, skipper of the
Sea Dog
, Lockwood's choice for the job of task force commander of Operation Barney. Hydeman's sub had been outfitted with the FM sonar suite removed from the damaged
Seahorse
, now undergoing battle-damage repairs in one of Guam's big floating dry docks. Lockwood had announced the skipper's selection upon returning to Guam from the West Coast sonar competition. Sieglaff and Voge knew Hydeman well and heartily concurred in their boss's decision.

Lockwood could not have made a better pick. A Midwesterner from St. Louis, Missouri, the thirty-four-year-old Hydeman had graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1932. After a typical tour of duty aboard a battleship, he reported to submarine school for instruction, then for duty aboard the
S-18
. In the mid-1930s, Hydeman, like most young submarine officers, had tours of duty in a variety of subs, both S-boats and fleet boats, including Lawrence Edge's first sub, the
Narwhal
. After a stint aboard a destroyer and then a detour ashore at BuPers, by 1944 Hydeman itched for a command of his own. To achieve his goal he spent six weeks at PCO school, after which he completed a tour as a PCO aboard the USS
Pampanito
(SS-383). He then took command of the
Sea Dog
after she had completed her second war patrol out of Pearl Harbor under Commander Vernon L. Lowrance. Hydeman skippered the
Sea Dog
on her third patrol in the Nampo-Shoto area and the east coast of Kyushu in command of a three-sub wolf pack he named “Earl's Eliminators.” Despite having sunk only one Japanese ship, a big 6,800-ton freighter, Hydeman turned in an aggressive and well-conducted patrol.

In making his decision to name Hydeman as Operation Barney's overall commander, Lockwood weighed several important factors in his favor. Hydeman, the senior CO in the group, had proven by his record of achievement that he possessed the requisite maturity, experience, and sound judgment. He also possessed something else, something special that the leader of this mission would need, and which Hydeman had in abundance: iron nerve.

Having spent a good part of the war in New London and Washington, D.C., Hydeman had had little combat experience, far less, in fact, than some of the other Hellcat skippers he would command. But he knew submariners—what made them tick and what made them successful. He'd gained this knowledge as personnel officer for ComSubLant, where, among other things, he detailed enlisted crews to new-construction subs. Therefore he understood the importance of having highly qualified sailors, not just volunteers right out of boot camp, to man the boats. Hydeman was a crusader on matters of personnel selection and training. Lockwood knew what Hydeman had accomplished and the benefits of it that had accrued to the sub force, and to the FMS sub crews themselves.
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