War Beneath the Waves (3 page)

Like other warriors leaving home to face a vicious triumvirate of opponents, Lucas and his crew hardly had time to contemplate their fate. Like their skipper, few of them beyond XO Selby had any combat experience to speak of. Nor did they have any idea of how they might perform under the most intense pressure a human being could ever be required to endure. Those were not thoughts on which to dwell, though. Battle was inevitable. They enthusiastically prepared for it.

Their job assignment was clear. They were to kill.

Submarines were supposed to attack and sink warships, cargo vessels, tankers, or anything else that floated and flew the enemy flag. They were quite aware that there was a crafty, inspired war effort aimed right back at them, a navy that had a similar assignment. The crew of
Billfish
knew they might not live to make a return trip through the Panama Canal.

They were quite aware that many of their fellow submariners were already gone, on what sub sailors term “eternal patrol.”
Billfish
docked in Pearl Harbor, on her way to Brisbane, Australia, for her first war patrol, in the summer of 1943, a year and a half into the war. By that time, sixteen American submarines—and more than a thousand American submarine sailors—had been lost.

Soon the crew of
Billfish
and her commander would face the enemy for the first time. Their suspicions about the tenacity of the Japanese, thoughts that went mostly unspoken, were to be confirmed quickly. It would not take them long to be tested in the most intense and telling way.

In three short months, on only her second war patrol, many of those men would find themselves in the midst of one of the most intense depth-charge attacks experienced by any vessel in World War II. Amid the unforgettable sounds, the soup of smells, and the stark reality of impending death, in that fifteen hours spent somewhere south of hell, heroes would be made and pretenders would be revealed.

There, beneath the waters of the Makassar Strait near Borneo, helplessly sealed inside a steel tube hovering hundreds of feet below a relentless enemy, the best and worst traits of those men would be exposed by the incessant
click!,
half a heartbeat, and
whoomp!
of the depth charges.

In the fetid, smothering air, in that incessant swirl of awful danger, the bravery and leadership of a dedicated group of young men became the difference between death and survival, while others, charged with leadership, were not up to the task.

For a number of reasons that I will make clear, this inspiring story remained untold for over sixty years. Indeed, that six-decade delay is another incredible facet of the tardy account of
Billfish
’s saga.

Now, finally, we can learn of another shining example of how hellish war so often makes true heroes of otherwise common people. It is one of the most inspiring stories of courage to emerge from World War II, one well worth the wait.

It is unfortunate that most of those who lived it are no longer alive. One key performer in this play did not live to see the final act, the formal recognition that finally came his way sixty years after it happened, an award for bravery that was finalized about a month after he passed away.

As you read, though, keep this in mind: Regardless of how we might view the actions of some men with the luxury of safe, secure retrospect, it is important that we not judge any of them harshly. Regardless of the incidences in question, all of these men were still part of an amazing record. Whether it was aboard
Billfish
that thunderous night or not, to a man they made a contribution to an effort that resulted in eventual victory.

No, this story is not being told to point fingers at those who failed. Instead, let us use this platform to honor those who stood up, who did their duty, who performed so valiantly in the harshest, most daunting circumstances anyone could imagine. Circumstances most of us could never imagine.

These men did what they trained to do. In the process, they won the war.

The war beneath the waves.

—William Shakespeare

C
harlie Rush came to submarines—and eventually to USS
Billfish
—because he got tired of eating his meals while standing up and was weary from only three or four hours’ sleep each night.

That and the fact that the shotgun marriage between a ship’s commander and a young officer on his first assignment turned out to be a stormy one.

Rush never regretted his choices—choosing the Navy over the Army, the military over civilian college and career, going from the surface Navy to the Silent Service—even though he experienced the best and the not-so-best of skippers along the way, regardless of what environment in which the vessel was designed to steam.

Rush was a bright young man, his potential obvious from an early age. He was Southern-born in Greensboro, a small farming town in west Alabama. He went to elementary and high school in Dothan, in south Alabama’s “Wiregrass” area, after his family moved there when he was seven years old. He finished high school at the Gulf Coast Military Academy in Gulfport, Mississippi, not far from the big water of the Gulf of Mexico.

The Academy, founded in 1912, primarily prepared students for an Army career and specifically for admission to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Like many military academies, it had its share of troubled youngsters who did not do well in public school and were placed there for discipline and structure. That was not the case with Charles W. Rush Jr. He was there to prepare for a life as an officer.

Though Rush had the Army and West Point as an early goal, he took a decidedly different turn when he graduated Gulf Coast. Maybe it was the smell of salt water, borne on the southerly breeze off the Mississippi Sound, that changed his direction. He went to Annapolis instead of West Point, to the U.S. Naval Academy, to become a midshipman and eventually a naval officer.

Rush enjoyed life at Annapolis and looked forward to his service as an officer in the United States Navy when he graduated as an engineer. However, his time there was cut short by the Japanese sneak attack—the first by any foreign enemy on American soil—in Hawaii in December 1941.

The events of that awful Sunday reverberated throughout the Academy. War was something they studied in the classroom. History class and tactics class. Suddenly, with the reports on the radio, in the newspapers, and even in the newsreels at the movie theater down next to the piers in Annapolis, it was no longer an abstract subject. It was very, very real.

Rush’s class went on immediate hurry-up, cutting the usual four-year matriculation to three. Naval officers were desperately needed, especially in the Pacific, and the academy did all it could to provide a steady supply of them. They double-timed classes, canceled leaves, and required students to show up for lectures and labs on weekends.

So it was that Charlie Rush found himself a commissioned naval officer almost a year short of his scheduled graduation date from the academy. Even more jarring, before the ink was dry on his diploma, he was immediately on his way from the classroom in Maryland to the Pacific and to war.

Despite the whirlwind way it happened, Rush was pleased when he tore open the envelope and saw that his orders sent him to serve as torpedo officer on a destroyer.

A destroyer is a versatile warship and can have many different duties, but Charlie Rush’s first assignment was aboard one whose primary job was to protect one of the war’s earliest hero ships, the aircraft carrier USS
Enterprise
(CV-6).

Enterprise
had been involved in a great deal of warfare before Charlie Rush arrived aboard the destroyer that constantly shadowed her.
Enterprise
, with her crew of almost three thousand men, was at sea on December 7, 1941, on her way back to her home port at Pearl Harbor. Her mission had been to deliver a squadron of Marine Corps aircraft to Wake Island, just in case the Japanese lost their senses and attacked that distant outpost.

As they neared home, some of
Enterprise
’s scout planes arrived over Oahu in the midst of the Japanese assault. Enemy aircraft buzzed around the island like a beehive, and smoke and flames were visible from far out to sea. The scout plane pilots were stunned, but they immediately saw—and heard on the radio—what was going on. They promptly engaged the Japanese in dogfights directly over the smoke and fire the attackers had set loose.

When
Enterprise
got wind of what was happening, she got all remaining airplanes on her deck airborne, sending them off in search of the main Japanese attack fleet. They never located them. The war was on, though.

The carrier was soon involved in several major battles in the South Pacific. Most notably, her aircraft were part of the massive Doolittle bombing raid on Tokyo in April 1942, only four months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. That mission, despite a tragic loss of life among the bomber crews, was a tremendous morale booster for America.

Ironically, the bombers hosted by
Enterprise
dealt quite a bit of unintended grief to American submarines, too. Only two weeks after Pearl Harbor, aircraft from the carrier mistook for an enemy boat and bombed USS
Pompano
(SS-181) not far out of Pearl Harbor. Though none of the bombs hit directly, one especially close charge damaged the submarine’s fuel tanks, and she had to limp home, trailing an oil slick behind her. She was fortunate to make it.

Enterprise
aircraft also bombed the submarines
Thresher
(SS- 200),
Sargo
(SS-188), and
Gudgeon
(SS-211) on different occasions later in the war. Fortunately, their aim was just bad enough in each case and no serious damage resulted from any of the incidents. Aircraft were especially notorious for not having the latest friend-or-foe identification codes. It was not unusual at all for submarine crews to have to deal with the added threat of attacks from friendly fire.

At least one submarine, USS
Dorado
(SS-248), was almost certainly sunk by a friendly aircraft in October 1943. Newly commissioned—and not far behind
Billfish
in traversing those same waters—she was on her way south to the Panama Canal when a patrol plane dropped bombs and depth charges on a submarine on the surface. The airplane’s crew always maintained it was a German U-boat, spotted as it passed between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

Dorado
never showed up at the Canal Zone. According to postwar records, no U-boats were lost during that time span and in that area.

A destroyer is a fast, maneuverable, and very deadly vessel. Its primary mission typically is to protect larger warships, such as aircraft carriers and battleships, or to run interference for either military or merchant convoys. The main threat to the bigger ships came from aircraft and submarines, so destroyers in World War II were equipped with radar, acoustic-detection gear, antiaircraft guns, and antisubmarine weapons, such as depth charges and torpedoes. Weaponry had to be especially adaptable and deadly, since attackers could be approaching by air, on the surface, or beneath the sea.

Destroyers, depending on their vintage and class, were about 350 feet in length, could travel very fast—35 to 38 knots (65 to 70 miles per hour)—and typically in wartime carried a crew of between 250 and 275 men.

Destroyer crews have always proudly referred to their ships as “tin cans,” and to themselves as “tin can sailors.” That is an apt name.

While not exactly expendable, the ships were designed to take ordnance intended for the battleship or carrier they protected, yet steam on, to live to continue fighting. They could have holes shot in them and still float and protect the larger ships behind them. Of course, their speed, maneuverability, and complement of weapons made them a deadly threat to enemy warships.

The quick development of the so-called DEs (destroyer escorts) by the United States and her allies, just before and during the early part of the war, made the destroyer an even more versatile warship and was a major contributor to the victory over the Germans and Japanese. The U.S. Navy really gained an advantage over the German U-boats when it began to deploy antisubmarine task groups consisting of a small aircraft carrier and a couple of DEs or cruisers. Planes off the decks of the carriers patrolled grids and spotted the U-boats from the air. The destroyers hurried to the area and, in more and more cases, successfully attacked and sank them.

Of course, the enemy had their own “tin cans” and submarine-hunter aircraft, which were more often launched from land bases controlled by the Japanese. Though lacking the range and sophistication of the American destroyers, they used their equipment and tactics very effectively against U.S. submarines in the Pacific, just as the Allies were doing in the Atlantic.

Charlie Rush was proud to be assigned to such a valuable naval asset, and he looked forward to serving his country in this way. He was especially excited to be aboard a vessel that was defending
Enterprise
.

It did not take long, however, for him to sour on the assignment.

His big worry was the captain under whom he would be serving. Certainly, as a new graduate from the Academy on his first duty, Rush had little power and no experience. There was no way, though, that he could express his reservations to anyone else concerning what he soon observed about the skipper of his destroyer and how he ran his ship. One simply did not criticize his superior officers. There is a fine line between bellyaching and insurrection.

And, after all, mutiny in wartime is a capital offense.

Still, from the very beginning of his time on the destroyer, Rush mentally questioned his new captain’s readiness and suitability for the job. He was convinced the man might get them all killed.