The Conquering Tide (48 page)

On a long walk into the countryside on the second day, Morton and O'Kane plunged into a long conversation about submarine tactics. They found themselves in agreement: Kennedy had to go. O'Kane primly avoids the subject in his memoir, but it seems likely that he communicated his criticisms to Fife, either directly or through other officers. Morton, in a
loose remark that may or may not have been made in earnest, had vowed to report Kennedy for cowardice. Several officers and enlisted men had filed requests for transfer off the
Wahoo
. Whatever Fife was told about Kennedy's performance, he apparently gleaned enough information to make his decision. In his brief endorsement of the
Wahoo
's patrol report, Fife noted that the ship had had eight enemy contacts but made only two attacks, and “at least” three more of those contacts should have developed into attacks.
³¹
He relieved Kennedy and sent him back to the States.

Kennedy took the news bitterly but later attested that he realized the decision was correct. Like many peacetime skippers, he was slow to adjust to the more audacious and hazardous tactics required of a wartime submarine. Nor was he a coward, however—he would receive a second Silver Star later in the war, for his performance as a destroyer skipper in the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

On the last day of the year, Mush Morton took command of the
Wahoo
. When the crew gathered on the ship the day before she was to sail, he spoke to them briefly. “
Wahoo
is expendable,” he said. “We will take every reasonable precaution, but our mission is to sink enemy shipping.” The next patrol, accordingly, would be much more dangerous. Any man who did not care to risk his life was invited to see the yeoman and ask for a transfer—it would be granted automatically, and “nothing will ever be said about your remaining in Brisbane.”
³²
Sterling waited in his yeoman's shack, but there were no takers. Instead, the crew felt a surge in confidence. Morton told the men to pull down every Japanese ship silhouette that had been mounted on bulkheads by Kennedy's order. They were replaced by the new captain's collection of pinup girls, which he had obtained at a Hollywood studio. He had Sterling type up a stack of placards with the message “Shoot the Sons of Bitches.”
³³
These were likewise mounted throughout the interior of the ship. Morton reduced the number of lookouts from four to two, both to be stationed on the shears. In order to make the watches less monotonous, and keep the men on their toes, the watches would rotate every hour—from lookout, to radar, to sound, to the helm, to messenger duty in the control room. Any lookout who spotted a ship, if that ship was subsequently sunk, would receive a spot promotion. Morton quietly requisitioned extra supplies of medicinal brandy and grain alcohol for the ostensible purpose of “cleaning periscope lenses.” He believed in the morale-building ritual of an occasional round of shots, particularly after a depth-charge attack.

Morton also pioneered a radical innovation. It had always been the skipper's duty and prerogative to make periscope observations while directing attacks. Morton instead chose to make O'Kane his “co-approach officer,” and to keep the executive officer on the periscope while Morton employed all the other data at his fingertips to maneuver the
Wahoo
into an optimal attack position. The captain would need a heavy dose of self-discipline to keep his hands off the periscope. In a moment of high tension, his natural instinct would be to shove the XO aside and seize the handles. The most critical input, in setting up a torpedo attack, was the target's “angle on the bow.” Under Morton's scheme, O'Kane would be trusted to make the all-important observation accurately.

Some of the crew continued to worry that their new skipper was reckless and would throw their lives away in an unwise attack. According to Sterling, the sailors often asked one another, only half in jest, “Do you think he's crazy?”
³⁴
He was an eccentric character. Even as captain he continued to roam around the boat in his red bathrobe and slippers. He told lurid stories in his glutinous Kentucky accent, and roared at his own jokes with almost maniacal laughter. Grider worried that the new skipper would find the transition from “camaraderie to authority” to be awkward and difficult, but that was never the case—Morton's authority was “built in, and never depended on sudden stiffening of tone and attitude.”
³⁵

T
HE
W
AHOO
COMMENCED HER THIRD PATROL
on January 16. After sound tests and practice torpedo runs on her escorting destroyer, she set course at two-engine speed for the eastern end of New Guinea. Her orders would send her up the north coast of New Guinea, through the Vitiaz Strait between that island and New Britain. She was to reconnoiter a little-known Japanese seaport known as Wewak.

With the brown hills and green mountains of New Guinea slipping by on her port beam, the
Wahoo
ran on the surface as long as her skipper dared—not only at night, but for an hour each morning after dawn and each evening before dusk. Morton and O'Kane agreed that the risk of being sighted from the air in those hours was worth the added forty miles or so of daily mileage. Morton even refused to dive when one of the lookouts on the bridge spotted a distant plane. He chose instead to wait, a decision that was vindicated when the unidentified aircraft turned away, its aircrew apparently
having failed to notice the
Wahoo
. The new captain also took a more audacious approach to using the periscope. Whereas Kennedy had favored only quick daylight periscope sightings with the scope raised just three feet above the surface, Morton was content to make long midday sightings with the scope raised to high elevation, and even employed a second scope on several occasions.

The navy still lacked decent charts for the Solomons, and nothing in the
Wahoo
's inventory identified the location of the mysterious Wewak. The solution was found, by chance, in a “two-bit” Australian school atlas purchased in Brisbane as a souvenir by a member of the crew. A map in the atlas identified Wewak as an otherwise uncharted indentation about midway up New Guinea's northern coast. By comparing the coastline to an existing aerial photo, and matching the shape of the shoreline and the islands lying close offshore, Grider and O'Kane managed to pinpoint the location. Without reliable information about the position of reefs or shoals, the
Wahoo
would have to tread lightly. But Morton surprised his shipmates by announcing that he intended to take the submarine into Wewak's inner anchorage, rather than simply observe it from the offing. The operation order had directed
Wahoo
merely to “adjust speed, if possible, to permit daylight reconnaissance vicinity Wewak Harbor.”
³⁶
Morton chose to interpret “daylight reconnaissance” as “enter and attack enemy shipping.”

In Grider's opinion, the captain had “advanced from mere rashness to outright foolhardiness.”
³⁷
Penetrating into the uncharted enemy harbor seemed pure madness, a gambit that would risk collective suicide. But Morton was nonchalant, and kept the men in the conning tower entertained with a steady run of wisecracks.

As dawn broke, the
Wahoo
crept around the islands guarding the entrance to the harbor. O'Kane spotted the top of a large tripod radio mast that might belong to an enemy warship, but the submarine could not enter the channel because a patrol craft or tugboat appeared to be crossing directly ahead. Morton probed the shore of some of the other outer islands, hoping to find a gap that would provide a direct view of the anchorage. But the area was dense with interlocking reefs, and the
Wahoo
had to take care not to run aground.

After several hours of cautious probing, the submarine entered the main channel and began the nine-mile run into the inner harbor, creeping along at 3 knots. O'Kane took several quick, low-elevation periscope observations,
with water lapping up the lens. At 1:18 p.m., he made out the bridge structure of a large ship, which he first took to be a freighter or seaplane tender. Upon closer inspection it proved to be a
Fubuki
-class destroyer. Several small Japanese submarines were moored alongside her. There were good reasons for the
Wahoo
to turn around and make an escape. The crew were not sure of the position of reefs or the depth of the water, and the tidal currents were unpredictable. But Morton announced that the
Wahoo
would launch a surprise torpedo attack on the anchored destroyer: “We'll take him by complete surprise. He won't be expecting an enemy submarine in here.”
³⁸

The
Wahoo
went to battle stations and continued advancing into the harbor at 3 knots. The forward torpedo-tube doors were opened in preparation for firing. The intended range was to be 3,000 yards. O'Kane took one last sighting and whispered urgently, “Captain, she's gotten under way, headed out of the harbor. Angle on the bow ten port.”
³⁹
A 10-degree angle on the bow meant that the destroyer was bearing almost directly down on the
Wahoo
. Morton altered his plan immediately: “Right full rudder.” He would pass under the enemy ship and maneuver for a shot with the
Wahoo
's stern tubes. Another quick periscope sighting revealed that the destroyer had zigged, and the angle on bow had opened to 40 degrees starboard. But O'Kane did not have time to make an accurate estimate of her speed. Morton guessed 15 knots, and that figure was entered into the Torpedo Data Computer (TDC), which provided an automatic gyro angle.

The
Wahoo
shuddered as three torpedoes were fired from her bow tubes. All ran hot, straight, and normal, but when O'Kane took another quick sighting, he saw that all had missed astern. They had underestimated the destroyer's speed. A speed of 18 knots was entered into the TDC, and a fourth torpedo fired. But the Japanese lookouts had evidently spotted the torpedo wakes and possibly the periscope. Fully alerted, the enemy turned sharply away and evaded the fourth shot. She held the turn through 270 degrees and bore down on the spot that marked the apex of the fan of torpedo tracks.

Peering through the scope, O'Kane now beheld that most dreaded of all images—a towering bow, looking huge in the circular field, with a surging bow wave indicating high speed. Forest Sterling felt “an almost uncontrollable urge to urinate.”
⁴⁰
But Morton seemed unfazed. “That's all right,” he said, “keep your scope up and we'll shoot that SOB down the throat.”
⁴¹

The “down the throat” shot was the boldest and most desperate tactic
available to any submarine. It had been discussed in theory but never attempted in practice. “Down the throat is certainly not a tactic to be sought,” O'Kane wrote later. “It is rather a desperation shot.”
⁴²
The
Wahoo
's circumstances were certainly desperate. She was trapped in a harbor without reliable charts, and a well-armed destroyer would very soon be in position to depth charge her into oblivion. She had only two torpedoes left in her bow tubes and little hope of maneuvering to bring her stern tubes to bear.

O'Kane watched the enemy ship come on, growing larger in the circular field. He could see the faces of Japanese sailors looking straight back at him through the periscope lens. Her bow wave climbed up her hull to the height of her anchors. O'Kane shifted the scope to lower power—that view, he said, had the advantage of being “much less disturbing.”
⁴³

The
Wahoo
did not have a torpedo to waste. If she fired too soon, the target would have time to turn away and evade. If she fired too late, the weapon would not run far enough to arm itself and would bounce harmlessly off the enemy's hull. The effective firing window fell within a range of approximately 1,200 to 700 yards. The destroyer, traveling near her top speed of about 30 knots, would travel that distance in about thirty seconds.

As the range closed to 1,250 yards, Morton said, “Any time, Dick.” With the crosshairs centered on the bow, O'Kane said, “Fire!”
⁴⁴
Keeping the scope up, O'Kane watched the track stretch away. The destroyer turned and evaded. Sterling later recalled being “calm with the cool certainty that he was going to die.”
⁴⁵

O'Kane fired his fifth and last-available torpedo at a range of 750 yards, and Morton ordered a crash dive. The crew braced for depth charges, but another sound filled the submarine instead—an immense tearing sound, almost like a bolt of thunder. “Great cracking became crackling,” O'Kane recalled, “and every old salt aboard knew the sound—that of the steam hitting a bucket of water, but here amplified one million times. The destroyer's boilers were belching steam into the sea.”
⁴⁶
From bow to stern, the
Wahoo
's crew erupted in cheers.

Morton brought the ship back to periscope depth and ordered up the scope. O'Kane looked first and then yielded to the captain. The destroyer's bow had been torn off just forward of the stack. She was foundering rapidly. Sailors were climbing the masts or diving into the sea. Several photos were taken with the ship's camera, a Kodak Medalist. Then the captain described what he was seeing through the ship's loudspeaker: “There must
be hundreds of those slant-eyed devils in the rigging . . . anybody not on watch wanting a look, get to the conning tower on the double.”
⁴⁷
Dozens of men crowded into the little space and took turns at the scope, and several brought their own cameras to take souvenir snapshots.

Now Morton was willing to beat a retreat from the harbor. The channel allowed a submerged retreat at the relatively safe depth of 100 feet, navigating by dead reckoning and sonar. The
Wahoo
crept away at 3 knots, slow enough to preserve the batteries and avoid a disastrous hard grounding. The sonar operator listened for “beach noises”—the play of surf on beaches and reefs—and small steering adjustments were made to keep these warning sounds at roughly equal distances to port and starboard. When the noises were all abaft her beam, Morton and his crew knew they were safely away.