Hellcats (4 page)

The force suffered its first loss on December 10, 1941, when Japanese planes attacked the navy yard, Cavite, Philippine Islands. The USS
Sealion
(SS-195), commanded by Lieutenant Commander Richard G. Voge (who would later serve as ComSubPac operations officer; his last name is pronounced
Vouge-E
), was undergoing repairs when it was hit by bombs and sunk. The attack killed five members of her crew. The last U.S. submarine lost in the war, the USS
Bullhead
(SS-332), commanded by Lieutenant Commander E. R. Holt, was bombed by a Japanese plane and sunk with all hands while patrolling in the Java Sea near Bali on August 6, 1945, the same day that the B-29
Enola Gay
dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Lockwood, who had vowed that the Japanese would pay a heavy price for every submariner killed, eventually kept his promise, which he regarded as an almost sacred obligation.

Charles Andrews Lockwood was born in Midland, Virginia, on May 6, 1890. Raised in Lamar, Missouri, Lockwood was a self-described country boy steeped in the lore of rural turn-of-the-century America. Though far from the sea, he knew even as a youngster that he wanted a career in the United States Navy. Appointed to the U.S. Naval Academy by Missouri senator William Stone, Lockwood entered the academy as a plebe with the class of 1912.

An average student, Midshipman Lockwood ranked academically in the lower half of his class. That ranking, plus his experiences at sea along the eastern seaboard of the United States during his class cruise aboard the old armored cruiser USS
Chicago
(CA-14), would, it seems, hardly have prepared him for a future career in submarines. Like most midshipmen of his day, Lockwood was determined to serve in a modern surface warship, preferably a battleship, certainly not a submarine, which, at that time, it was thought no self-respecting naval officer would want any part of. His first encounter with a sub, a primitive
Holland
-class boat, really not much more than a riveted sewer pipe of a vessel, left him shaking his head in disgust. Little did he know.

After graduation Ensign Lockwood served, first, in the old battleship USS
Mississippi
(BB-23), then in the newly commissioned USS
Arkansas
(BB-33). To Lockwood, a tour of duty aboard the new 562-foot-long, 26,000-ton-displacement
Arkansas
, with her twelve 12-inch guns in six turrets, personified the real spit-and-polish Navy. This assignment turned into a serious and eye-opening experience for the young officer, for when he was thrust into the
Arkansas
's wardroom, filled as it was with high achievers, it put Lockwood's desire to succeed as a naval officer to the test. He passed the test, though not without having to overcome a few rough spots along the way, he said. He also said that this singular tour of duty had not only helped him mature, it had also formed his character and lifelong commitment to excellence.

As for the submarine service, Lockwood more or less stumbled into it. Transferred to Manila, Philippines, in 1914, he was talked into applying for submarine duty by a fellow officer who enticed him by pointing out that subs, with their less structured organization than that of the Navy's surface fleet, offered a speedier path to command at sea. Lockwood took the bait (every naval officer dreams of being addressed as “Captain” on the bridge of his own ship) and seemingly in no time at all had qualified for command of a so-called “pigboat,” the gasoline-powered submarine
A-2
. Commissioned in 1903, the
A-2
was a cranky old tub in need of constant repair. And with its gasoline-fume-fouled atmosphere, it was a bomb waiting to go off. More than one sub had blown up or caught fire, with disastrous consequences for its crew. Yet for all of the problems Lockwood encountered as CO of the
A-2
, it was that old sub that set him on the path that, while it meandered from time to time, he would follow for the rest of his career.

In 1918, just as World War I drew to a close, Lockwood, who had seen no action in that war, received orders to Japan. While there he took note of the continuing emergence of Japanese imperialism, which had gained momentum with Japan's earlier acquisition of territory in Korea, and, during the First World War, the annexation of German-controlled Shantung, China. Further acquisition by Japan of the German Pacific island mandates of World War I emboldened Japan's leaders to pursue their unfettered imperialist aims in East Asia. Lockwood claimed to have had a premonition that in due time Japan would pose a serious danger to the United States that would one day lead to war between the two countries.

After completing his tour in Japan, Lockwood received orders to the Navy's sub base at New London, Connecticut. There he took command of another gasoline-powered sub, the old
G-1
. But not for long. Now a lieutenant commander, Lockwood transferred yet again, this time back to the Asiatic Fleet in Manila to command a river gunboat. After he completed this second stint in Manila, it was on to Rio de Janeiro as a member of the U.S. Naval Mission to Brazil. The interwar years of the late 1920s and early 1930s flew by in something of a blur, for with Lockwood's promotion to full commander, he arrived in San Diego to take command of Submarine Division 13. He was never in one place for very long, in 1937; a change of orders sent him to Washington, D.C., and the office of the Chief of Naval Operations to chair the submarine officers' conference, an organization that guided the development and design of new submarines.

Lockwood had become one of the Navy's top experts on submarines and submarine tactics. As chair he fought hard to change the narrow and hidebound thinking of senior officers who resisted many of the improvements the submarine force needed to undergo to modernize and prepare for the war with Germany and Japan that was then looming on the horizon. Lockwood, in collaboration with two equally farsighted colleagues, Lieutenant Commander Andrew I. McKee and Lieutenant Armand M. Morgan, tirelessly battled Navy red tape and bureaucratic intransigence to win approval for the development and construction of what would prove to be the supremely successful wartime
Gato
-class fleet-type subs. With only a few basic design modifications introduced during the course of their deployment, the
Gato
s and their sister
Balao
-and
Tench
-class boats became the workhorses of the Pacific submarine fleet.

In 1939 Lockwood received a promotion to captain and was made chief of staff to Commander, Submarine Force, U.S. Fleet, headquartered aboard the light cruiser USS
Richmond
(CL-9). Lockwood, who wanted sea duty above all else, once again had to endure a tour of shore duty, albeit an important one. His influence on the Navy's thinking about how to effectively build and utilize modern submarines in wartime had slowly, if not reluctantly, been adopted by a peacetime sub force undergoing the changes needed to prepare for war.

In February 1941, Lockwood, fresh from his duties as submarine force chief of staff, arrived in London as a naval attaché. He immediately set out to learn as much as he could about the war now raging in Europe (in London he got a taste of the Blitz), especially the war at sea where the Royal Navy was fighting a desperate, all-out battle against German U-boat commerce raiders in the North Atlantic. He was still in London when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. All he could do was fume at being stuck on the beach out of the shooting war, while sending requests to the Navy's Bureau of Naval Personnel (BuPers) in Washington, virtually begging for an assignment at sea. His requests were denied because, said the bureau, it could find nothing for him to do, since almost all of the seagoing billets had already been filled, many of them, Lockwood noted sourly, by officers junior to him. Then things suddenly changed.

 

 

On March 5, 1942, Lockwood
received a promotion to rear admiral and orders to proceed to Fremantle, Australia. There he was to relieve Captain John Wilkes, commander of the ragtag SubsAsiatic Force of the Asiatic Fleet that had been driven out of the Philippines by the Japanese. Lockwood was ecstatic. This was what he'd been craving all along: action in subs against America's main enemy. Not
in
subs exactly, but in command of subs, which was the next best thing, as Lockwood had never fired a torpedo in anger during a real war, just in exercises for war. On his arrival in Australia, Lockwood immediately assumed two hats: Commander, Submarines, Southwest Pacific Fleet (ComSubSoWesPac) and, temporarily, Commander, Task Force 51, a surface ship command. His arrival had precipitated other shifts in the evolving submarine command structure in Australia dictated by events in the Philippines and in Java, both of which soon fell under Japanese control. These changes included the reassignment of Rear Admiral Ralph W. Christie, in charge of submarines in Brisbane, to the Naval Torpedo Station at Newport, Rhode Island. Captain James Fife, head of the administrative staff of SubsAsiatic, replaced Christie in Brisbane, while an exhausted Wilkes returned to the United States for reassignment.

In early 1942 the submarine force, reacting to the requirements thrust upon it by the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, quickly reorganized from its original three commands into two. The SubsAsiatic force was decommissioned, putting Wilkes out of a job, and folded into the two remaining Pacific commands: ComSubSoWesPac, headquartered in Fremantle, Australia, and now headed by Lockwood; and Commander, Submarines, Pacific Fleet (ComSubPac), in Pearl Harbor, under the command of Rear Admiral Robert H. English. The two commands operating within their assigned areas of the Pacific would continue to function independently of each other but would share common tactical and technical attributes, including intelligence collection and distribution.

Thus, Pearl Harbor subs commanded by Admiral English (ComSubPac) operated in an area extending west from Pearl Harbor to the eastern coast of China, north to Hokkaido, Japan, and south to the Caroline Islands area. Fremantle subs (and for a short time those few subs still based in Brisbane with Captain Fife) commanded by Admiral Lockwood (ComSubSoWesPac) operated in an area that encompassed the Philippine Islands, the southern coast of China, all of Indochina, Borneo, Java, the Malay Barrier, and New Guinea in the Coral Sea area. Lockwood's SoWesPac area, with its far-flung conquered territories, had forced the Japanese to weave a tangled web of shipping routes. By necessity these routes were shorter and more compact than those in ComSubPac's area of operations. In either case these were immense areas in which to conduct war patrols, and submarines, whether departing from Pearl Harbor or Fremantle, had to endure long voyages to reach their assigned areas.

Despite his wearing two hats, Lockwood immediately focused his attention on reviving a dispirited force of submariners in Fremantle. Not only had they been driven south of the Malay Barrier by the advancing Japanese, but their main offensive weapon, the Mk 14 torpedo, had proven itself unreliable. Far too many Japanese ships were escaping from attacks by U.S. subs, which so far had little to show for their efforts. Even worse, the seemingly unstoppable Japanese army, after overrunning the Philippines, Malaya, and the Netherlands East Indies with their prize oil fields, seemed poised for a thrust south to Australia. Intelligence reports claimed that there were 200,000 Japanese troops in the Malay area alone. The only thing that stood between them and the Australians and New Zealanders were the open waters of the Indian Ocean. Lockwood's subs with their lousy torpedoes were in no shape to mount a robust defense. Fortunately, the threat to Australia never materialized. Lockwood and his submariners, breathing easier, concentrated their efforts on solving more immediate problems.

The introduction by Lockwood of the new sub force war-fighting doctrine and its implementation by a new breed of aggressive young skippers eager to fight the Japanese, coupled with Uncle Charlie's optimism and enthusiasm, began to have a positive effect. As noted earlier, the submarine doctrine in use at the beginning of the war was based on outmoded and conservative peacetime principles themselves founded on a strategy designed principally to sink an enemy's warships, not its cargo ships. In practice it proved useless under actual combat conditions in the Pacific, where the vagaries of geography and the wide dispersal of Japanese naval forces nullified the doctrine's effects. Moreover, its reliance on passive sonar for targeting, minimal periscope exposure, and an almost unshakable belief in the safety of deep submergence during daylight hours proved totally inadequate. Senior commanders at first failed to realize how essential it was to cut off the lines of supply Japan needed to sustain her garrisons in the Pacific, and that it wasn't the Japanese navy that had to be destroyed, but Japan's merchant marine.

Despite the meager sinkings of Japanese ships by U.S. subs early on, it didn't take long for those senior commanders and for the sub skippers on patrol to discover just how badly flawed their old war-fighting doctrine really was. With the experience gained from operating in enemy-controlled waters, submarine command shaped a new doctrine emphasizing innovative and daring tactics. These tactics were perfectly suited to the younger skippers fast replacing the older, conservative ones from the prewar era. New tactics emphasized attacks on merchant ships instead of warships; night surface torpedo attacks instead of submerged night attacks; the use of radar and sonar to track and attack targets; high-speed daylight surface patrolling to cover more territory; the use of more frequent and prolonged periscope observations; and much more.

As this new generation of skippers took command of the submarines coming off the builders ways at the Electric Boat Corporation in Groton, Connecticut; the navy yards in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Mare Island, California; the Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company in Manitowoc, Wisconsin; and later, Cramp Shipbuilding in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the tide began to turn against the Japanese. Even so, no one, least of all Lockwood, had any illusions but that it would be a long, hard road back and that a lot of mistakes would be made along the way.