Hellcats (15 page)

The steady thrum of four diesels signaled that this was serious business. For hours the
Bonefish
sped up the coast. Heading to the rescue she passed two burning ships in a harbor. Edge surmised that they'd been bombed by the airmen he was hunting for. Shortly after midnight, as the
Bonefish
approached the aircrew's reported position not far from the harbor with its burning ships, a red flare arced across the night sky. Americans or Japanese? There was no way to tell. It was too dark to see anything except black sky and black water.

Exercising caution Edge closed in, mindful that Japanese ships often used red flares to signal other ships at night. Even so, Edge gave the okay to fire an answering flare from the
Bonefish
's Very pistol, which was answered immediately by another red flare. Still on guard, Edge eased the
Bonefish
toward the dying flare. The Navy fliers in their rubber boat saw the shadowy outline of a submarine approaching, heard her sputtering diesels, and fired another flare. This one brought the
Bonefish
within shouting distance of them, fifty yards off her starboard bow.

Happy
Bonefish
sailors hauled aboard the pilot and enlisted aviation gunner's mate of a Navy SB2C Helldiver from the USS
Bunker Hill
(CV-17). They'd been shot down during a skip-bombing attack on the burning ships Edge had spotted earlier. The Helldiver had caught a burst of antiaircraft fire from the ground and went down with a shot-up engine. The two airmen had rowed toward land all afternoon against strong currents that eventually pushed them back out to sea. With the men safely aboard the
Bonefish
, Edge turned her nose south for Australia.

 

 

Edge's sixth patrol report received
glowing endorsements from Admiral Christie and from Edge's squadron and division commanders. They praised Edge for his excellent coverage of the patrol area, his aggressive attacks, and the rescue of two airmen. For this outstanding patrol Edge was recommended for the Navy Cross, the
Bonefish
for a fifth Navy Unit Commendation. Flush with success Edge and his crew received new orders via the commandant of the Twelfth Naval District, San Francisco, California:

The men were ecstatic. A return to the States meant extended shore leave to spend with family and friends. For Lawrence Edge it meant that he'd be reunited with his beloved Sarah and Boo, whom he'd yearned for so passionately during those long, lonely, grueling months at sea when all he could do was dream of a far-off day when he would return home to shower them with all the love he'd kept pent up in his heart.

 

 

Per standard procedure, Edge's sixth
war patrol report worked its way through the Navy's chain of command, ending at the top with Cominch Admiral King. Edge's performance had caught Lockwood's eye back in Pearl Harbor and garnered ComSubPac's glowing endorsement. Lockwood directed his flag secretary to draft a private message for Edge's eyes only that would in time catch up to him in the States. Edge was a skipper to watch, a skipper who would be a perfect choice for the top-secret operation Lockwood had been planning and which he intended to spring on the Japanese before next summer was out.

A
round the time that the
Bonefish
was standing out from Fremantle on her sixth war patrol in September 1944, Lockwood received the news he'd been hoping for: Eleven FM sonar sets assembled under a contract let to Western Electric by the Navy had been approved for shipment to ComSubPac. Lockwood was not only thrilled that his request for sets had been fulfilled so soon, but also that Admirals King and Nimitz had plowed past the Navy's nearly impenetrable wall of bureaucracy to ensure that the sets got into the hands of the sub force. Still, getting them installed in the boats was going to be a slow process, what with the production delays affecting electronic equipment destined for the fleet. FMS, as it was now being called, was no exception.

In late September and early October two FMS units arrived in Mare Island. One set was installed in the recently overhauled USS
Tinosa
(SS-283), a veteran of seven war patrols and skippered by her new CO, Commander Richard Latham, from New London, Connecticut. The other set went aboard the USS
Tunny
(SS-282), skippered by Commander George Pierce, who was born in Colón, Panama, and graduated from the academy in 1932. These two subs were the first to have retractable sonar transducers installed below their keels under the forward torpedo room.

Certain that delivery of FMS units to the sub force would accelerate, Lockwood began to lay plans for an important first step toward the mission that would eventually culminate in the raid on the Sea of Japan: detailing an FMS-equipped submarine to map the outer boundaries of minefields guarding that sea. A mapping operation might accomplish two things: Demonstrate under actual combat conditions FMS's ability to locate enemy mines, and produce the first-ever accurate plot of the extent and location of the outer reaches of the actual minefields that the subs would have to penetrate to reach their targets. Of course, one sub working alone could map only a small portion of the minefields, but it was a start. And as more FMS units became available other subs would follow this pioneering effort. Once an accurate map had been compiled it should then be possible to enter the sea by steering an FMS-plotted course through the minefields. The sooner Lockwood had the mine plots for study, the sooner he could prepare a mission prospectus for presentation to Nimitz and King.

As the FMS units in the
Tinosa
and
Tunny
underwent rigorous static testing by UCDWR technicians, their crews, like the
Spadefish
's before them, received instruction in their use by Dr. Henderson himself. Tests aboard the
Tunny
off San Diego showed once again how effective the sonar system could be when it was properly tuned and in the hands of a trained operator who understood its peculiarities. Nonetheless, the
Tinosa
's Richard Latham, who himself had serious doubts about the effectiveness of FMS, discovered that to a man, his crew shared his feelings. No one had to explain what was in store for them on a future war patrol. Worse yet, more than half of the men in Latham's crew wanted off the submarine. And who could blame them? Torpedoing Japanese ships was one thing; toying with live mines was something else. Rather than try to win them over, Latham simply had those men who wanted off transferred to other submarines. Latham would not be the only skipper to face this problem, one that would soon loom large in Lockwood's thinking as well.

 

 

Meanwhile, at Pearl Harbor, Lockwood
grappled with a host of problems unrelated to FMS. Though submarines were enjoying greater success than they had heretofore (improved torpedo performance and bolder tactics accounted for a good part of this success), losses continued to mount. In four months half a score of subs and eight hundred men had been lost, most of them to direct enemy action but also, Lockwood suspected, to enemy mines. Then there was the USS
Tang
(SS-306). Operating off the coast of China, she had apparently been sunk by one of her own torpedoes that had made a circular run and come back to kill her. Whether there had been any survivors from the
Tang
was not known. At night, alone in his quarters, Lockwood grumbled, “God damn the torpedoes and God damn the Japs.”

One bright spot, aside from FMS, was that with the conquest of Guam and Saipan, Lockwood now had forward operating bases thousands of miles closer to empire waters. He sent two submarine tenders ahead to refit and rearm submarines operating from those new bases. A floating dry dock would soon follow the tenders. Seabees had built a rest camp on Guam for submariners and were building one on Saipan. That Lockwood planned to set up his Submarine Pacific Advanced Headquarters on Guam in January was ample proof that the United States was rolling back the Japanese on every front in the Pacific. Admiral Nimitz planned to move his own headquarters there in January.

Nevertheless, FMS and the Sea of Japan raid were never far from Lockwood's thinking. In late November, the
Tinosa
arrived in Pearl Harbor fresh from Mare Island and FMS testing. Eager to see her perform, Lockwood put to sea with Latham on Thanksgiving Day for a run at the dummy minefield off Oahu. The results were generally good. It proved that the keel-mounted transducer in the
Tinosa
performed better than the deck-mounted one in the
Spadefish
. It easily detected mines, which the PPI and hell's bells rendered with exceptional clarity.

After completing an intensive course of FMS training under Lockwood's personal supervision, Latham and his men, half of them a draft of replacements, received orders to patrol the Nansei Shoto, Formosa, and East China Sea areas. It was Latham's first war patrol as a commanding officer and, it might be said, FMS guinea pig. The orders included a provision to explore the fringes of the patrol area for mines, especially around Okinawa, which was scheduled for invasion in early April 1945, and, if any were found, to plot their positions. This would be an important test of FMS, and Lockwood had a lot riding on its successful employment and on Latham's skill.

On December third Lockwood watched the
Tinosa
stand out from her berth at Ten-ten dock at the Pearl Harbor sub base. He believed that he'd done everything he could to ensure Latham's success. All he had to do now was wait for the results. After the
Tinosa
sailed, an optimistic Lockwood returned to his office to begin drafting a prospectus for the Japan Sea raid. This was it: The mission would either get the go-ahead or get the ax. The prospectus landed on Nimitz's desk a few days later.

Lockwood explained that captured Japanese documents gave indications that the Tsushima Strait, though blocked by mines, presented the best possibilities for entry, though he didn't give details. Lockwood revisited the loss of the
Wahoo
when he described attempts by her and other subs to stanch the flow of traffic from Korean ports to the Japanese homeland. Finally, he outlined for Nimitz the steps ComSubPac had been taking to assemble reliable intelligence about the true extent of minefields. This included sending a spy to Vladivostok to obtain information regarding Japanese minefields from Russian shipmasters who had used the La Pérouse and Tsushima straits; aerial reconnaissance; exploration by submarine (the
Tinosa
mission); decrypts of Japanese radio transmissions regarding shipping routes in and around the areas in question; the taking of prisoners by subs operating in the vicinity of the straits; even the possibility of entering the Sea of Japan through the unmined Strait of Tartary during the ice-free summer months, if the Soviets would permit it, for a look-see. This last was clearly impossible: U.S.-Soviet relations were deteriorating by the day. Moscow would never allow an American warship, much less a submarine, to enter her territorial waters to probe or possibly attack Japanese shipping. It was their neutrality that allowed Soviet ships to transit the La Pérouse Strait unmolested. As it was, Lockwood would soon have to grapple with the problems posed by the possibility that Russian naval forces might begin operations in Japanese waters controlled by U.S. forces. But not now.

Nimitz gave Lockwood his unconditional support for the mission and urged him to collect additional intelligence to prove that access to the sea was possible and that there were ships in it worth sinking. The question of whether there were any ships left in the Sea of Japan worth the risks involved to sink them had nagged at Lockwood before and nagged at him now. The only way to know for sure how many there were was for his skippers to go in there and look around as Morton, Bass, and the others had done. Lockwood didn't doubt they'd find plenty of
marus
to sink.

He was thrilled to have his boss's endorsement because it meant he could count on Admiral King's as well. All he had to do now was get the FMS gear into the supply pipeline, install it on submarines, and train submariners how to use it. Notwithstanding Nimitz's approval, Lockwood the optimist knew what he was up against. Making the mission a reality required overcoming the technical problems plaguing FMS, described in a flurry of reports from Gaylord Harnwell, Malcolm Henderson, and ComSubPac's UCDWR liaison officer. Lockwood had confidence that the problems would soon be solved. He envisioned great things for his sub force, perhaps even for himself, and, of course, revenge for Morton and the
Wahoo
. Especially that.