Hellcats (47 page)

The U.S. Army Air Force from March through August 1945 lost approximately 3,000 combat air crewmen and 485 B-29 bombers in attacks on Japan.

Of the seven ships sunk by Hogan, the 4,645-ton
Suez Maru
had several hundred sick Japanese soldiers and hundreds of sick British and Dutch POWs aboard, many of them stretcher cases. The
Bonefish
torpedoed her off Surabaya, Java, on November 29, 1943. Hundreds of men drowned as the holds, crammed full of sick and injured, filled with water. Japanese escorts, after rescuing the Japanese soldiers who had survived the attack, machine-gunned the British and Dutch POWs clinging to life rafts and debris.

Unknown to Edge, his second torpedo shot sank the
Ryuei Maru
. On March 18, 1946, the office of the Chief of Naval Operations released a document entitled, “Reassessment of Damage by Submarines.” In it, the CNO stated that, regarding the
Bonefish
's attack on a convoy in the northern approaches of the Makassar Strait on July 8, 1944, “Japanese intelligence states that the
Ryuei Maru
was sunk at this time. Tonnage of that vessel is not definitely known but is estimated at 2,300 tons.”

At war's end deaths among American and British Commonwealth troops in the Pacific theater numbered approximately 108,000.

This was not the report of the attack on the
Wahoo
that U.S. intelligence teams unearthed in Tokyo after the war, as in chapter three.

Ten to twenty percent of a submarine's crew rotated ashore between patrols. They were replaced by men from a pool of submariners who had sat out a patrol while assigned to submarine repair units aboard tenders.

Despite all the explosions and the pall of smoke from the ship as she settled in the water, JANAC claimed that she had not been sunk, only damaged. Nevertheless, Edge noted in his patrol report that she'd disappeared off radar, a sure sign that she'd been sunk.

JANAC's postwar accounting confirmed the sinking of the two-thousand-ton
Anjo Maru
.

JANAC confirmed damage to two, possibly three ships.

JANAC confirmed the sinking of the 2,500-ton
Fushimi Maru.

At the end of the war the
Tautog
would claim the record for the most ships sunk, with twenty-six.

The president died in Georgia on April 12. For the
Bonefish
crew patrolling west of the International Dateline, he died on April 13.

Here Edge may have been risking an encounter with mines; if he was using the ship's FMS to detect any, it isn't mentioned in his patrol report.

The Aichi E13A, code-named “Jake,” was a three-man single-engine floatplane used primarily for reconnaissance.

Why Greer believed this to be so isn't made clear in his patrol report. Submarine radar operators were highly experienced in such matters and likely the radar watch aboard the
Seahorse
made an interpretation that Greer must have concurred with.

Fleet Radio and the Armed Forces Radio Network announced the news the day after Hitler committed suicide in his bunker on April 30, 1945. According to the journalist William L. Shirer, the announcement of the Führer's death came on Hamburg radio. It was preceded by three drumrolls followed by, “
Achtung! Achtung!
Adolf Hitler, fighting to the last breath, fell for Germany in his operational headquarters in the Reich Chancellery.” No word that he'd blown his brains out.

The AP flashed the news a day ahead of the official announcement by the Allies. Kennedy, who jumped the gun on the bulletin, was suspended by Eisenhower's headquarters.

The problems included a parted periscope hoist cable, a jittery gyro compass, a vibration in the auxiliary diesel engine, leaky lube oil coolers, noisy main motor commutators, and balky trim and drain pump motor controllers. The
Sea Dog
had undergone a refit at Guam prior to sailing. In his patrol report Hydeman pointedly remarked, “We pray for the day Sub Supply will get us working [replacement parts].”

The source of these explosions was never positively identified. One possibility was that the Japanese were dynamiting a site to install a shore battery either on nearby Iki Island overlooking the eastern channel, or on Tsushima Island itself. Another possible source was blasting in rock quarries on Tsushima Island.

The Japanese at first dismissed reports of submarine attacks in the Sea of Japan. Then, even as it began to dawn that somehow U.S. subs had pierced the minefields ringing the sea, they were slow to grasp its significance and sound the alarm. By then it was too late: the Hellcats had infiltrated and the battle was on.

The eight-hundred-tonner turned out to be the 2,220-ton
Taga Maru
, a nice bag for Risser and a rare case of a sub skipper underestimating the size of his target.

According to Lockwood the prisoner's name was Siso Okuno. Because he believed that he had dishonored himself and his family, he wanted to commit hara-kiri. He was brought to Midway for interrogation and, like so many other Japanese POWs released after the war, simply disappeared.

Exactly how these charts were recovered is not explained in the
Flying Fish
's patrol report. In
Hellcats of the Sea
, Lockwood says “Risser's diving team” recovered them from the sunken ship's still-floating charthouse, this despite darkness and waters teeming with enemy survivors. The charts were supposedly dried out in the sub's engine rooms.

A rough draft of this letter is the only letter from Sarah to Lawrence that exists. None of the hundreds of letters she wrote, which Lawrence kept, nor any of his personal effects, were returned after his death. Each submarine had a storage locker assigned to it aboard the submarine tenders, but the
Bonefish
's locker aboard the USS
Apollo
(AS-25) at Guam was reportedly empty. Lawrence most likely kept Sarah's letters aboard ship.

The movie was
Destination Tokyo
, starring Cary Grant, John Garfield, and Dane Clark. In the film an American sub penetrates Tokyo Bay for the purpose of putting agents ashore to collect weather information.

For the invasion of Manchuria the Soviets made provisions for dealing with upward of 540,000 casualties, including 160,000 killed (a mere drop in the bucket compared to the millions of Russians slaughtered fighting on the Eastern Front). The numbers were based on Soviet assumptions of Japan's intention to fight to the death, the same assumption that the United States had made from its appalling losses at Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

See Appendix Two for a tally of sinkings by each of the Hellcat submarines.

Based on intelligence developed during the raid, Lockwood warned Hydeman by radio to be on the lookout for increased antisubmarine activity as well as for minelayers sent into La Pérouse Strait to sow more surface mines.

The USS
Trutta
(SS-421) lobbed five-inch shells at Hirado Shima.

This and other extracts from the letters that follow are from some of the hundreds written by the families of
Bonefish
personnel to Sarah Edge over a period of approximately two years. This trove of letters, valuable documents in their own right, is part of the Edge family archive.