War Beneath the Waves (24 page)

Then, despite not hearing even a hint of turning screws or sonar pinging to indicate the presence of any surface vessels, about eight depth charges exploded around them. Fortunately, none of them was close enough to bother anything other than the crew’s already frayed nerves.

They could only surmise the airplane dropped the charges.

In the “Remarks” section at the end of his official patrol report for
Billfish
’s second run, Captain Frederic Lucas devoted two long sentences to the summation of his joint patrol with
Bowfin
.

The only other comments about the joint patrol dealt with the effectiveness of the new VHF radio system that they used to coordinate.

Though she had steamed almost thirteen thousand miles on her second patrol, and burned over a hundred thousand gallons of diesel fuel in the process,
Billfish
returned to squadron headquarters with twenty of her initial twenty-four torpedoes still on the racks and in the tubes in the aft and forward torpedo rooms.

Regardless, Admiral Ralph Waldo Christie, the commander of Task Force Seventy-one, said in his endorsement of the patrol:

John Meade Haines, the commander of Task Group Seventy-one Point Three, was equally as understanding of the lack of results by
Billfish
and her crew. In his remarks, he said:

So his bosses were fine with how Captain Lucas ran war patrol number two aboard
Billfish
.

If they were satisfied with Lucas and
Billfish
, they were absolutely thrilled with
Bowfin
and Griffith. Christie termed that submarine’s second run “the classic of all submarine patrols.” She received credit from the squadron commander for sinking a total of fourteen vessels, the largest haul for any patrol up to that point in the war. After the ultraconservative postwar estimates were completed, the run still ended up with five official kills, and tied for sixth-most-productive patrol based on number of ships sunk.

That’s not all: Christie awarded Griffith a Navy Cross. He also gave his XO, William Thompson, a Silver Star and proclaimed him ready for command of his own boat. But to top it off, when Christie’s cocker spaniel had puppies, the admiral named one of them “Bowfin.”

When
Billfish
arrived back in port, Charlie Rush did not stick around to see if Lucas kept his promise to resign from submarines. He promptly put in for two weeks’ leave. He bought a ticket for Adelaide, over twenty-five hundred miles away from Fremantle and Perth. He knew there would be no Navy people there on Australia’s southern coast and that was precisely what he wanted. He dreaded facing the question “So, how was your last run?”

While Rush was half a continent away, Frederic C. Lucas Jr., class of 1930, U.S. Naval Academy, turned in his resignation from submarine command and requested surface-ship duty. According to some accounts, Lucas requested a private talk with Christie. He told his commander that he had never felt comfortable at the helm of a submarine and that was compounded many times over in a war situation. He also confessed that his discomfort had adversely affected his ability to do his duty.

While admitting no loss of control or failure to lead, and not sharing any of the details of the just-completed patrol, Lucas told Christie that he felt he was not doing justice to his submarine or its crew. He suggested that his command be given to one of the several experienced officers then in Fremantle, anxiously awaiting the opportunity to assume the helm of a boat.

Christie shared the conversation with no one, but wrote of it briefly in a diary he kept.

“I am obliged to detach Lucas from command of
Billfish
at his own request. He is convinced that he is temperamentally unsuited for submarine command. I have been quite well satisfied with him although he has had two unproductive patrols. However, based on that, I would not have removed him.”

Lucas went directly to Brisbane for a staff position at Squadron Eight. Ironically, he did briefly helm another submarine during the war. USS
Caiman
(SS-323) was on her first war patrol in late November 1944 when her commissioning skipper became ill and put into Saipan. Lucas was dispatched to complete the patrol and bring the boat and crew to Fremantle, arriving in mid-January 1945. Despite two attempted attacks,
Caiman
did not damage or sink any enemy ships on that patrol and the squadron commander stated that “results were not successful for purpose of award of the Submarine Combat Insignia.”

Lucas went on to serve as commander of two surface ships, the USS
Graffias
(AF-29), a supply or “stores” ship, and USS
Shenandoah
(AD-26), a destroyer tender. He later had tours of duty at the Bureau of Naval Personnel and Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, then went back to sea duty in 1956 as captain of USS
Los Angeles
(CA-135), a World War II-era heavy cruiser. He and his crew aboard
Los Angeles
received a letter of commendation for their work with the Regulus missile project. After a tour of duty as group commander, fleet training group, San Diego, he retired from the Navy in 1960.

As skipper of
Billfish
, he held the rank of lieutenant commander. He later received promotions to commander, then to captain.

From all indications, he served with distinction at each post after leaving
Billfish
. According to all reports, those who served with him liked and respected him and considered him a fine officer.

Captain Frederic C. Lucas passed away in February 2000 and was interred in Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C., on March 9 of that year.

When Charlie Rush returned to Fremantle from his two-week leave in Adelaide, he learned that
Billfish
had a new skipper, Vernon Clark Turner, a native of Brownwood, Texas, and a graduate of the Naval Academy class of 1933.

Captain Lucas had kept their gentlemen’s agreement, a pact made in a most unlikely place—on the bridge of a submarine in the middle of a surface attack. The young submarine officer was relieved. Now Rush could keep his end of the bargain. He would tell no one the details about what happened aboard
Billfish
during that harrowing run.

At least, not until almost sixty years later.

Even then it took a nagging omission, one that he felt had to be corrected, to finally cause him to break the silence, to reveal the true story of what happened that night beneath the surface of Makassar Strait.

—Retired Captain Charles W. Rush Jr.,
Billfish
officer and Navy Cross recipient, when asked to give advice to members of today’s submarine service

U
SS
Billfish
completed four more war patrols under Lieutenant Commander Vernon Turner and two more while skippered by Lieutenant Commander L. C. Farley. In her eight runs, she claimed six vessels sunk, but postwar official count lowered that to three, for about forty-three hundred tons. She went out of commission in 1946. Then, after years in mothballs, she became a training vessel for the Naval Reserve in Boston from 1960 to 1968. She ultimately was stricken from the Navy’s registry of ships on April Fool’s Day 1968, and the Navy sold her remains for scrap.

Her sister submarine, USS
Bowfin
, completed nine patrols and was preparing for her tenth when she got word the war had ended. She claimed to have sunk or damaged fifty-four enemy vessels, over 176,000 tons, though the official tally was sixteen sunk for sixty-eight hundred tons. She received the Navy Unit Citation for her service, which included all those ships sent to the bottom, laying mines, rescuing downed pilots, and supplying Philippine guerrillas.

However, this much-honored submarine was also involved— unknowingly—in one of the real tragedies of World War II. In August 1944, she sank an unmarked Japanese cargo ship, the
Tsushima Maru
.
Bowfin
’s crew had no way of knowing the ship carried over eight hundred children. The Japanese were evacuating them from Okinawa ahead of the anticipated invasion of that island by the Allies.

Seven hundred and sixty-seven of the children died in the attack.

Today, the
Bowfin
, “the Pearl Harbor Avenger,” is a museum ship, open to the public, at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, not far from the memorial for the battleship USS
Arizona
. She became a National Historic Landmark in 1986.

Today visitors to
Bowfin
have the opportunity to see episodes of the classic television series
The Silent Service
playing in the museum’s minitheater. An episode that features
Bowfin
is screened every hour on the hour. It depicts the experience of a young officer named John Bertrand on
Bowfin
’s third patrol—Walt Griffith’s second at the helm and the run just after its joint operation with
Billfish
—and is titled “The Seasick Texas Submariner.” Bertrand wrote the script for that episode, which gives visitors an excellent look at what life was like aboard those boats.

Charlie Rush made one more run on
Billfish
, then got orders to return to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. There he was to help put a new
Balao
-class submarine, the USS
Sea Owl
(SS-405), into commission. That boat went on to perform some of the early tests of a new acoustic torpedo—nicknamed “Cutie”—and had some success in sinking enemy ships before the war ended.

After a brief time at war on
Sea Owl
, Rush was assigned to the Bureau of Ordnance (BUORD) at the Navy Department in Washington, D.C. His job there was to help build a new, high-speed torpedo for submarines. He also served as executive officer on USS
Carbonero
(SS-337) from June 1948 to July 1951, and later commanded USS
Queenfish
(SS-393) from 1952 to 1954, including taking her to war during the Korean conflict.

He was a popular skipper with his crew. Cliff Hoxsey, who served under Rush on
Queenfish
, says, “In my twenty-one years in the service, I never served under any officer who came close to matching him. It’s true that we went where we weren’t supposed to be doing reconnaissance sometimes. But he was an outstanding commander.”

Later, while working in the U.S. Navy Office of Operations, he made recommendations that led to one of history’s most significant accomplishments, the successful under-ice voyage of USS
Nautilus
from the Pacific to the Atlantic by way of the North Pole in 1958. His boss at the time, Admiral I. J. Galantin, was so proud of Rush’s contribution to that historic passage that he took the unusual step of issuing a memo to be placed in Rush’s service file, to be considered when he came up for promotion. In that memo, Galantin wrote, “In late 1956 when the undersigned was Head, Submarine Warfare Branch, Office of Chief of Naval Operations, the then Commander Charles W. Rush, Jr., as Head of the Submarine Weapons System Section (OP-311E) recommended to me that USS NAUTILUS (SS(N) 571) make a transarctic passage. To the best of my knowledge, the concept of such a transit from ocean to ocean across the northern route was completely original; it had never been suggested before. After your preliminary work substantiated the feasibility of your plan, I authorized you to discuss it with Commander William R. Anderson, U.S. Navy, who was then slated to take command of NAUTILUS . . . the vision and initiative shown in your original proposal were instrumental in the successful planning and execution of this historic naval accomplishment.”

Rush was also instrumental in the development of the UUM-44 SUBROC submarine weapons system and worked on other guided-missile weapons that were specifically designed to be fired from submarines. Along the way, compliments of the Navy, he received an education at Caltech. He retired from the Navy in 1961 after twenty years of service and worked in aviation and as a consultant for ocean systems and in submarine safety.