The Battle of Midway (52 page)

Lieutenant Commander William H. Brockman, Jr., was the skipper of the American submarine
Nautilus
(SS-168) at Midway. His prolonged duel with Commander Watanabe’s destroyer
Arashi
proved crucial. (U.S. Naval Institute)

At exactly 6:58, the topside lookout on the
Nautilus
reported a northbound flight of six aircraft. They were flying low, he reported, but aside from determining that they were friendlies, the lookout could not identify the airplane type. They were, in fact, the six new Avenger torpedo planes of VT-8 under “Fieb” Fieberling, en route to make the first of five attacks on the Kid
ō
Butai by Midway-based aircraft. Minutes later, the lookout reported black puffs of antiaircraft gunfire bursts in the sky to the north, and what looked like smoke from falling bombs. Clearly the American planes had found a worthwhile target. Brockman ordered his crew to general quarters and altered course to approach what could only be a Japanese surface force.
³

At the time, the Kid
ō
Butai was still steaming southward toward Midway and was therefore on a converging course with the northbound
Nautilus.
At five minutes to eight, with the
Nautilus
now at periscope depth, Brockman spotted the masts of big ships “dead ahead.” He had little time to study them, for at almost the same moment, a Japanese Zero, spotting the shadow of his sub just below the surface, began a strafing run, and Brockman had to dive. As he maneuvered underwater, he could hear the ominous pinging sound of echo ranging—what the Americans called sonar—which meant that enemy surface ships were searching for him. Nevertheless, he crept back up to periscope depth to have a look. Through his viewfinder,
he saw “a formation of four ships.” He was pretty sure that one of them was a battleship and that the other three were cruisers. They were, in fact, the battleship
Kirishima
, the cruiser
Nagara
, and two destroyers—the advance screen of the Kid
ō
Butai. Deciding to attack the battleship, which was on his starboard bow, Brockman maneuvered to obtain an angle on the bow. As he did so, however, the wake created by his periscope breaking the surface—called a feather—was spotted by one of the circling Zeros and he was again forced to dive. After that, a ship that Brockman identified as a cruiser of the
Jintsu
class closed on his position and began to drop depth charges. That attacking surface ship was actually the destroyer
Arashi
, skippered by Commander Watanabe Yasumasa, and at that moment Brockman and Watanabe began a duel that would last almost two hours and have a profound effect on the outcome of the Battle of Midway.
⁴

Between 8:00 and 8:10, while Nagumo was contemplating his response to the news that there was at least one American carrier to the north of him, and while his Zeros fought off the attack by Joe Henderson’s dive-bombers, Watanabe and the
Arashi
dropped five depth charges on the
Nautilus.
Japanese depth charges were smaller than the American version, with a 220-pound charge (American depth charges had a 290-pound charge), but they were deadly enough to the fragile hull of a submarine. The real weakness of Japanese depth charges, however, was that they had only two depth settings: forty feet and two hundred feet. Since Watanabe knew that the American boat had not had time to go deep, he almost certainly set the charges for forty feet. Brockman went to ninety feet and stayed there, but while that protected him from the worst effects of the depth charges, it also meant that the valuable targets above him had a chance to speed past him at 25 knots or more. Even if Watanabe did not destroy this pesky American sub, he would be doing his job if he simply kept it underwater, where its top speed was only eight knots, and where it could not fire any torpedoes, until after the Kid
ō
Butai had moved on.
⁵

This was the first time that anyone on board the
Nautilus
had experienced a depth-charge attack, and it was a particularly unpleasant experience. First of all, it was impossible to fight back. “Once you have to go down,” one sub skipper recalled, “you don’t have any offensive weapon. You just feel like
you’re a sitting duck.” Second, the aural and physical sensations were terrifying. When a depth charge exploded, the concussion hit the boat twice. First came the shock wave, which made a sharp metallic clang, “like a hammer hitting the hull.” Then, a second or two later, came the sound wave. That was much louder—a giant wham—but if you heard it, you could breathe out, because it meant the shock wave had not opened the hull of the boat. Indeed, as long as there were two distinct sounds for each detonation—the metallic bang of the shock wave, followed by the much louder boom of the sound wave—the charge had exploded at a relatively safe distance. It was when the two sounds came close together that there was cause for worry. And if they occurred simultaneously, it was probably the last thing anyone on board ever heard. In this case, the two sounds were separate and distinct, and Brockman estimated that the Japanese were dropping their charges about 1,000 yards away.
⁶

After the explosions stopped, Brockman again heard the pinging sound of underwater echo ranging as Watanabe continued to search for him. The Japanese skipper waited seven minutes to see if any debris floated to the surface or if his echo ranging could locate the American sub, and then he dropped six more depth charges. During this second attack, the concussion from one explosion sheared off the retaining pin on one of the torpedoes on the
Nautilus.
The torpedo’s propeller began spinning, generating a loud, high-pitched whine that Brockman feared would be picked up by Japanese sensors. At the same time, bubbles of escaping exhaust gas left a telltale mark on the surface. There was also a chance that the spinning propeller would arm the warhead, which had a magnetic exploder. No one on board the
Nautilus
knew for sure whether the sub’s own metal hull would trigger the detonator. There was nothing to do but wait it out. As it happened, the warhead did not explode, though Brockman continued to worry that the whine of the spinning propeller would betray their position.
⁷

Brockman kept the
Nautilus
at ninety feet, at which depth he hoped its shadow would not be seen by circling enemy planes. Guided, perhaps, by the noise of the torpedo running hot inside the
Nautilus
, Watanabe closed in and dropped nine more depth charges. The first was fairly close, though each successive one exploded further away. When the pinging faded and
the torpedo’s propeller finally stopped running, Brockman eased back up to periscope depth to have another look. When he put his face to the rubber gasket around the viewfinder, what he saw shocked him. While he had played possum at ninety feet, the Kid
ō
Butai, still moving southward, had closed with his position. He now found himself in the middle of the Japanese fleet. As he peered through the lens, he saw an image that he had “never experienced in peacetime practices.” As one of his officers put it, “There were ships all over the place.” They were moving at high speed and signaling to one another by flag hoist and blinker signal; searchlights from several of them were aimed directly at his periscope. The battleship
Kirishima
fired her broadside at the feather of his periscope, and the
Arashi
charged in again, this time from astern. Despite all that, Brockman made a quick estimate of the course and speed of the battleship before dropping the periscope. He estimated the range at 4,500 yards, which was the maximum range for the Mark 14 torpedo at the high-speed setting. He reported the angle on the bow at 80 degrees and her speed at 25 knots. He fed that information into the boat’s torpedo data computer,
*
and when it generated a solution, he ordered “Fire one!” and then almost immediately, “Fire two!” with a one-degree offset on the second torpedo. Then he dove. The torpedo room reported that the number 1 tube did not fire, and only one torpedo was running. He did not know that as soon as he had fired, the battleship changed course away from him; in accordance with doctrine, the Japanese battleship skipper was presenting his ship’s stern to the threat to narrow the target and extend the range. And, once again, here came the
Arashi.
⁸

The sound of enemy echo ranging was now “continuous and accurate” as Brockman dove to 150 feet, and as the boat angled downward, depth charges began exploding all around him. The explosions, he reported later, “sounded like a severe hammer blow on the hull.” Nonetheless, the sub’s hull remained intact, and after waiting several minutes Brockman began once again to ease back up to periscope depth. The battleship and the other large ships were still in sight, but out of range. Only the
Arashi
remained
nearby, still echo sounding; she had clearly been left behind to hunt him down. Brockman remained submerged for ten more minutes, then took another look. The battleship was now out of sight, but almost due north and only about eight miles away he spotted the unmistakable profile of an aircraft carrier. He noted that it “was changing course continually,” and that it “was overhung by anti-aircraft bursts.” Though Brockman could not know it, the Zeros from the Kid
ō
Butai were chasing off the last of the American attackers from Midway, and the carriers were maneuvering to avoid them.
⁹

Brockman could not surface to chase the carrier because the
Arashi
was still lurking above him. He decided to take care of his tormentor first, maneuvering to fire a torpedo at the
Arashi.
Watanabe was expecting it and easily avoided it. Moreover, the wake of that torpedo gave Watanabe a guide to the
Nautilus
’s likely position, and the
Arashi
closed in to drop six more depth charges. Brockman noted laconically that “these were more accurately placed than previous charges.” Brockman ordered the
Nautilus
back down to 150 feet (her maximum depth was 300). He then changed course and ordered silence about the boat while it crept away. Watanabe guessed that Brockman had gone deep and adjusted the settings on his depth charges. Two more exploded quite near the
Nautilus;
gauges jumped, lights flickered, and deck plates rattled—but the hull remained intact.
¹⁰

This time Brockman stayed down for forty minutes. He did not know that at almost the very moment that he dove—around 9:17—Nagumo and the Kid
ō
Butai had changed course and turned north. While Brockman was submerged, the Zeros flying CAP were busy tearing apart the American torpedo planes. At five minutes to ten, Brockman could no longer hear the noise of echo ranging. He eased back up to periscope depth. As he turned the view finder around 360 degrees, he saw that “the entire formation first seen, including the attacking cruiser
[Arashi]
had departed.” “The carrier previously seen was no longer in sight.” Brockman no doubt feared that he had lost his chance to fire a torpedo at an enemy carrier, though later that day he would have a second chance. In fact, however, without knowing it he had already made his greatest contribution to American victory.
¹¹

Watanabe and the
Arashi
had persecuted the
Nautilus
for nearly two hours—from 8:00 to almost 10:00. When the Kid
ō
Butai turned north,
Watanabe had stayed behind, determined to keep his foe submerged and therefore impotent. Just before 10:00, not having seen or heard anything of the American sub for forty minutes, and with the Kid
ō
Butai well away over the northern horizon, Watanabe concluded that he had done his job. He may also have run out of depth charges. The
Arashi
carried thirty-six depth charges, and Brockman reported twenty-eight explosions, plus another attack by an unspecified number. None of those depth charges had proved fatal, but this hardly mattered, for even if the American sub was still down there, by now it would never be able to catch up to the Kid
ō
Butai. Watanabe ordered the helm over and turned the
Arashi
northward. To catch up with the main body, now steaming to the northeast at 25 knots, he would have to go at nearly full speed, which for the
Arashi
was 35 knots. At that speed, his ship generated a broad white V-shaped wake.