Hellcats (21 page)

On April 15, the
Bonefish
received a lifeguard assignment in waters around the approaches to the Tsushima Strait. Hundreds of B-29s flying from bases in the Marianas had been hitting targets deep inside Japan, while suffering heavy losses to enemy fighters and flak. If the crew of a B-29 went down, they stood a good chance of being captured if not killed by the crew of one of those ubiquitous Japanese sea trucks or sampans.

Patrolling near Kyushu, the
Bonefish
's APR radar-detection gear registered a marked increase in Japanese radar emissions. Earlier, Greer had reported to Edge and Steinmetz that a similar increase had been registering on the
Seahorse
's APR. The Japanese navy, despite its depleted state, had recently installed on its patrol boats a crude radar system whose emissions mocked submarine SJ radar. More than one sub skipper, decoyed into thinking he had APR contact with a U.S. sub, blundered into a waiting patrol boat. The buildup of radar emissions was a clear indication of increased antisubmarine patrols in the southern Kyushu region. Steinmetz's earlier quip that the dog-sniffing-dog routine was a prescription for trouble wasn't lost on Edge as he moved toward the Tsushima Strait to assume lifeguard duty.

The
Bonefish
patrolled a thirty-mile
triangle in the southern approaches to the Tsushima Strait,
^m
radiomen alert for any messages reporting downed B-29s. It was hard to maintain a steady guard on the lifeguard frequency, as the
Bonefish
had to bob up and down like a cork to avoid pesky patrolling Japanese planes. Toward noon, during a long, uninterrupted stretch of surface patrolling, a lookout sighted a heavy puff of black smoke on the horizon, and near it, a large flying boat that looked like a U.S. Navy PBY. The plane disappeared into the haze but the smudge of smoke lingered. Smoke on the horizon usually meant that a ship, or better yet, a convoy, might be just over the hill. Edge, eager to find out, ordered, “All ahead flank!”

The motor macs kicked the throttles wide-open, spooling up the diesels. The
Bonefish
heeled around in the direction of the smoke. Despite distant aircraft contacts on SD radar, Edge was determined to stay on the surface as long as possible to find the ship before it disappeared. With luck he could dash in, make contact, and, if he did, submerge and fire torpedoes. Yet after a half hour of hard running toward a seemingly endless horizon, there weren't any stick masts or smoke, much less ships, in sight. Had the lookout been fooled by a mirage? It happened all the time. Edge didn't blame the lookout; the sea and sun often played optical tricks on seafarers. Still, the young sailor was adamant that smoke was what he saw, not a mirage. But a high periscope search over the horizon revealed only sampans and seagulls, not ships. After an hour spent searching for a phantom in the area of the sighting, Edge was about to turn back when another lookout spotted a large oil slick a half mile off the port bow, and something floating in the water.

With the two prisoners aboard the
Bonefish
, Edge had fulfilled another mission requirement Lockwood had inserted into the op orders: “When possible, capture Japs for interrogation.”

In the late afternoon the next day the
Bonefish
closed in on a two-masted junk and began circling, 40mm guns manned. The junk's badly frightened crew, young and old alike, gathered on deck, waiting to be boarded. The
Bonefish
's photographer's mate took motion pictures as she drew alongside. A boarding party armed with Thompson submachine guns and Browning Automatic Rifles motioned for the junk's crew to put over a fender. A man from the vessel clambered aboard the
Bonefish
to meet one of the Japanese fliers who had offered to interpret. The flier identified both the junk and crew as Korean fishermen. Edge doubted this was true, since the junk looked new and well equipped and was just as likely carrying contraband to the Japanese as it was netting fish. But the forlorn appearance of her crew influenced Edge's decision to let them go.

 

 

With free time, Edge wrote
Sarah about the Japanese prisoners aboard the
Bonefish
, describing what one of them kept begging him to do.

Released from lifeguarding operations, the
Bonefish
probed for targets in waters close to the Korean coast around the Tsushima Strait, but found only sailboats and sea trucks. Seas began building on the eighteenth, forcing Edge to give up the hunt for ships and instead set a course for the vicinity of the Danjo Gunto minefields. The bad weather moving south with the
Bonefish
also deterred Edge's first attempt to map the minefields. It didn't take much imagination to picture how the heavy seas battering the sub had stirred up all those mines. The recon Lockwood had ordered was dangerous enough without adding to it the risk of colliding with a row of ugly horned balls swinging wildly at the ends of their anchor cables.

Patrolling, waiting for calmer weather, Edge worked on his letter to Sarah. He included information picked up from the daily fleet news broadcasts and more about his prisoners.

The twenty-first brought clear weather and calm seas. In preparation for the mine recon the sonarmen began tuning up the FMS gear. Edge, meanwhile, brought the
Bonefish
around onto a course that would intersect the northeastern end of the mine line. As dawn broke he gave the order to dive.

A
s Lawrence Edge prepared to carry out the mine recon off Danjo Gunto, the plans for Operation Barney's implementation that had been in flux for months finally jelled. Barney Sieglaff and Dick Voge settled on a basic operational plan. The mission would kick off from Guam on May 27 and employ nine subs in three separate task groups, numbered TG 17.21, TG 17.22, and TG 17.23. The groups would penetrate the Tsushima Strait individually on successive days through June 4, 5, and 6.

Once inside the Sea of Japan, the packs would operate independently in three areas. TG 17.21 would stalk along the northwestern coast of Honshu; TG 17.22 would patrol along the southwestern coast of Honshu and Kyushu; TG 17.23 would operate in an area along the east coast of Korea from Tsushima Island to the southern coast of Siberia. The mission would end on June 24, when the three task groups rendezvoused to make their exit run through La Pérouse Strait.

The nine FMS-equipped submarines included the
Seahorse
,
Crevalle
,
Spadefish
,
Tunny
,
Bonefish
,
Flying Fish
,
Bowfin
,
Tinosa
, and the USS
Skate
(SS-305). The
Skate
, commanded by Commander Richard B. “Ozzie” Lynch, a Naval Academy classmate from Alabama and friend of Lawrence Edge, was added to the group when she arrived in Guam. The
Flying Fish
was still in San Diego for the comparison trials between competing sonar-detection systems. The Operation Barney brain trust of Lockwood, Voge, and Sieglaff assumed that FMS would ultimately prove itself in tests against competing systems, and when it did, the Barney subs would assemble in Guam. As for the tactical aspects of Barney, fresh intelligence backed the use of La Pérouse Strait as an exit route. And to ensure that the subs didn't run afoul of Allied mines dropped in the Sea of Japan by B-29s, charts of those areas would be sent to ComSubPac for distribution to the submarines.

With everything in place, Voge submitted the plan for Operation Barney to the Pearl Harbor-based Submarine Operations Research Group (SORG) for an evaluation of the risks involved. SORG consisted of a group of civilians, all of whom were experts in the field of actuary science, among other disciplines. The group provided ComSubPac with objective evaluations derived from theoretical and statistical analysis of the tactics commonly employed by submarines, including torpedo attacks and methods of evading enemy antisubmarine patrols. SORG believed that a careful analysis of tactics would help determine which ones were effective and which ones were not. Voge assumed that if there were any glaring flaws in the plans for Operation Barney, SORG would find them and offer suggestions on how to fix them. In addition, Voge knew that SORG would offer an opinion on the mission's chances of success and its likely outcome. Lockwood had concurred in Voge's decision to seek SORG's advice. He also had no reason to doubt that Operation Barney would receive the panel's unequivocal support.

On April 18, Lockwood hopped a flight from Guam to Pearl Harbor to wrap up loose ends pertaining to Operation Barney, after which he and selected SubPac staffers would fly to San Diego for the mine-detector competition. Despite the long flight to Hawaii and with only a few hours' sleep, Lockwood went straight aboard the
Skate
to witness tests of her FM sonar, and UCDWR's pillenwerfer decoy system, the Alka-Seltzer- like noisemakers that masked enemy sonar. Several subs, including the
Seahorse
, had been similarly equipped with pillenwerfers, and this was Lockwood's first opportunity to see one at work.

With the tests concluded, Lockwood pronounced the
Skate
's FMS ready for service and Lynch's handling of it superb. The pillenwerfers, too. Departing for the States, Lockwood felt certain that Operation Barney would be a total success. What he didn't know was that while he and his colleagues were airborne over the Pacific, a Japanese hunter-killer group working around the Goto Retto had sprung a trap on the reconnoitering
Seahorse
that had Harry Greer and his battle-hardened crew fighting for their lives.

 

 

Days before the
Seahorse
was
jumped by the Japanese hunter-killer group, she had conducted a recon of minefields off the east coast of Formosa. While reconnoitering she encountered a problem with one of her mine-clearing cables that had been hastily installed at Guam and now had parted. It had taken a heroic effort on the part of the
Seahorse
's crew, working in frigid and rough water, to clear it.
¹
The episode foreshadowed problems with mine-clearing cables that would later plague more than one submarine during Operation Barney.

Greer was also plagued by the Kuroshio Current, which set the
Seahorse
to the north at a two-knot clip during the period of her submerged mine recon. It took superb seamanship to prevent the current from twisting the ship sideways into the forest of cables tethering the mines. Greer knew that the Kuroshio Current would have a similar effect on subs up in the Tsushima Strait and made note of its strength in his patrol report.
²