Most try not to show that they are afraid, even when they accidentally piss themselves, inadvertently pray aloud, or whisper for their mothers when there is an especially close blast. Personalities change. Tough guys become weak. Meek men stand up and do heroic things.
Exceptional men assume command and lead the others.
They are all afraid, every last one of them. They are human. In most cases, they try not to judge those who do not hold up well during the attacks. Men who face death understand how small a distance it is from hero to coward. They are more tolerant of one another than someone who has not experienced it would be.
Deep below the surface of the ocean, they depend on one another when the depth charges fall and drift closer and closer to their hull.
Enlisted men, as they go about their jobs, assume the officers in the wardroom, the control room, and the conning tower know what they are doing. They take it for granted that the officers will make the right moves at the right time, give the best orders they can, and do whatever it takes to slip to safety before the enemy gets lucky, sneaks an ash can beneath them, and disembowels them. Before a charge rips off the sail and unleashes a horrendous flood from above. And it goes without saying that they trust their other shipmates to do their jobs, do them right, and go above and beyond when called upon.
Officers—from the skipper to the newest wet-behind-the-ears lieutenant right out of sub school—pray that their crew knows what to do to try to keep the boat in one piece until they can find a way out from beneath the rain of charges. They have to trust their men to do what they were taught in sub school, to hold firm, to not crack. Especially the chiefs, the most experienced among the enlisted men. The ones who will keep the youngsters in line with a glance, a word, a fistful of shirt under the chin, or an arm around the shoulders.
All of them—officer and enlisted man alike—hope the destroyer captain up there runs out of charges or patience before the submarine runs out of luck.
EARLY IN WORLD WAR II, the Imperial Japanese Navy had little success with their depth charges when used against a slippery American submarine force. There were other miscalculations. They had greatly underestimated the tactical power of the submarines, even as early as the attack on Pearl Harbor, when bombers concentrated on the battleships and left the submarine docks unscathed.
The United States had its own set of troubles—torpedoes that did not run true or explode when they were supposed to—so targets were scurrying away undamaged after a surefire attack. Still, through the first year of the war, U.S. submarine losses to depth-charge attacks were minimal. That was because the Japanese were arming them to blow up while they were still too shallow to do major harm. Most of the damage was to the crew members’ nerves, not to their submarines.
Depth charges generated the greatest destruction when the drums blew up beneath the submarines’ bellies. Skippers learned early to go to a safer depth, to at least 250 feet below the surface, and drive away using their relatively quiet battery-powered motors. Meanwhile, drums of TNT blew up nothing more than seawater and fish at a depth much shallower than where the submarines used to be.
Then, in June of 1943, the old adage about loose lips sinking ships proved tragically true. Congressman Andrew Jackson May, a Kentucky Democrat and a member of the House Committee on Military Affairs, was briefed on how the war was going by Navy brass during a trip to Pearl Harbor. That briefing included some sensitive information related to the submarine war.
Later, at a press conference, Congressman May divulged that the Japanese depth-charge tactics were not working. He did not stop there. He went ahead to tell reporters precisely what the enemy ship captains were doing wrong. The Japanese needed only to read the next morning’s newspapers to learn exactly how they could more effectively pummel American submarines.
The commander of the Pacific submarine fleet at the time, Vice Admiral Charles Lockwood, later estimated that Congressman May’s breach directly led to the loss of ten submarines and the lives of eight hundred men. May suffered no repercussions from his speech other than some bad press. However, the government later convicted him of an unrelated charge, accepting bribes from munitions suppliers.
In the summer of 1943, with the Japanese quickly becoming more effective in at least one phase of its antisubmarine warfare, a newly commissioned submarine named
Billfish
made her way to the Pacific and to war. Born at the naval shipyard in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, she was one of the new
Balao
-class ships that were being launched at a rate of a little better than one per month. Some observers at the time described this class of submarine as the most advanced war machine in history.
Balao
boats had a thicker hull and thus the ability to go deeper than previous submarines, well below four hundred feet.
Billfish
could dive deeper, travel farther and faster, carry more powerful deck guns, and be more effective against enemy shipping than any other submersible vessel ever built. Her radar and radio systems and her torpedo data computer (TDC) represented the very latest technology.
She was the perfect hunter and killer.
Her commissioning skipper—the captain who oversaw her construction and eventually took her to war—was a handsome Naval Academy graduate, class of 1930, from Chicago, Illinois, named Frederic Colby Lucas Jr. His résumé appeared to confirm his readiness to helm a state-of-the-art submarine. He had already been an officer on a surface ship—USS
Saratoga
(CV-3), an aircraft carrier launched in 1920—then went to submarine school in Groton, Connecticut. He eventually commanded USS
R-2
(SS-79), an old World War I-era submarine, built in 1917 and commissioned in 1918.
However, in reality, Lieutenant Commander Lucas had little actual submarine command background, and certainly not in wartime. Most of his experience was at the staff level, a desk job. In peacetime, that involved much more theoretical work than practical training for warfare. Even his lone submarine command—on
R-2
, which was a training boat by then—was very limited. He had trained for the proper way to mount a torpedo attack on an enemy target. He had trained for the procedures necessary to rig for silent running, how to maneuver a submarine during a depth-charge attack.
But he had never actually experienced any of it.
As with many others who received command of ships, squadrons, and other groups of soldiers and sailors, politics played a major role in Lucas’s being chosen to helm
Billfish
. Any naval officer who wanted to work toward the rank of admiral had to know with which senior officers it was most advantageous to align himself, and Lucas knew how to play the game.
He was the son of a Harvard-educated botanist and high school teacher whose fondest hope was that his three sons would also attend Harvard. Though the younger Frederic Lucas attended the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis instead, his connection with the Ivy League stood him in good stead with many in the upper reaches of the Navy. There were many there who were impressed with anyone with ties to such a lofty educational background. That led directly to important positions and glowing reports on his service record.
Frederic Lucas was clearly on his way.
The Japanese changed the course of many things—including history and Frederic Lucas’s carefully crafted career track—with the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in December 1941. Though many in America felt that war was inevitable, considering what was going on in Europe and the clashing of swords as Japan expanded its aggression around the Pacific, the United States was nowhere near ready for hostilities on such a grand scale and across such vast distances. Nor were many in her military ready for the kind of war that would be necessary if an enemy like Japan was to be defeated.
The U.S. Navy had a relatively small fleet of submarines at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Still, their impact was felt quickly and mightily. Historians agree that the failure of the Japanese to bomb the submarine piers at Pearl Harbor was a major blunder. They concentrated on the battleships, ignoring the boats that were in port that day, as well as the big diesel tanks that held the fuel supply for them.
With the attack, America immediately entered the war. President Franklin Roosevelt, with a single order, also changed the way naval wars were fought by the United States when he declared unrestricted warfare. For the first time in our nation’s history, warships had orders to sink any vessel that flew an enemy flag—military or merchant.
Only one month after Pearl Harbor, USS
Pollack
(SS-179) sank a Japanese freighter just out of Tokyo Bay. That was only the first of many.
By the end of the war, American submarines had sunk over half of the entire Japanese merchant fleet, creating a huge logistic problem for them. Over half of all Japanese vessels dispatched to the bottom of the ocean, whether civilian traffic or warships, resulted from submarine attacks.
Submarines deprived the Japanese war effort of fuel and raw materials even as the Army and Marines recaptured lost territory and bombers pounded the homeland. With sea routes so effectively patrolled by American submarines, the Japanese economy was for all purposes strangled.
Along with many others, the war pressed Frederic Lucas into service in a position and a situation he may not have anticipated when he began his Navy career. Because he knew submarines, he found himself in the midst of what was suddenly a very hot conflict.
We have anecdotal evidence to support the notion that he was a reluctant draftee when he was called upon to put the brand-new
Billfish
into commission. It appears that he felt he could better serve the war effort in Washington or Hawaii. His evaluations indicated he had always done a fine job there. A fine job at the staff level.
Still, as a good officer must sometimes do, he accepted the commission and began preparing his new ship and crew as best he could. Besides, if a man aspired to become an admiral, a wartime combat command looked good on a résumé, too. That is, if he and his crew survived so he could make use of it.
Frederic Lucas was not the only one to find himself in a position he never actively sought. Officers with any significant submarine experience were scarce. The Navy called upon many of them to abandon their desks and take ships and men into harm’s way, ready or not. Others with relatives in high places or with other convenient connections managed to end up with important positions—some in battle, some not.
Some did fine. Others did not. It happened in every branch of the service, not just the submarine Navy.
Additionally, at the beginning of the war, the Navy greatly favored older, more conservative commanders for its ships. For its highest command positions, too.
Never mind that some of them did not even understand the role of the submarine in modern warfare. Any captains who appeared too aggressive, who wanted to try new methods, were reprimanded, demoted, sent packing by the by-the-book squadron commanders and others higher up the organizational chart. They wanted skippers who would come back from patrol safely, their boats intact. Not younger, experimenting “cowboys” who pressed the attack and placed their boats and crews in needless peril.
Frederic Lucas fit the bill perfectly. He was an experienced, capable submarine captain, fresh from behind a desk and experience on the bridge of a training vessel. During the war, the Navy attempted to assign crew members to submarines so there was a mix of qualified, experienced sub sailors and those men who had recently graduated from sub school. Officers, too, were usually a blend of experience and new blood. A brand-new skipper was, whenever possible, teamed with an experienced executive officer (XO). At the same time, most executive officers—the second in command on the submarine—were prospective captains.
The men who served aboard those submarines had no say-so in what kind of a leader they had for a skipper. Aggressive, conservative, experienced or not, they drew what they drew. Sure, that was happening in all branches of the service. Men were destined to serve under whomever blind luck and the brass gave them.
USS
B
ILLFISH
(SS-286), WITH LIEUTENANT Commander Frederic Lucas at her helm, was formally commissioned in April 1943. After completing hurried sea trials and intensive training for her new crew—including her captain—in the chilly waters of the Atlantic Ocean off New England, she made her way down the eastern sea-board, through the Panama Canal, and then across the Pacific Ocean for a stop at a quickly recovering Pearl Harbor.
By all accounts, sea trials went well.
Billfish
was a sturdy, capable ship with only minor new-boat glitches. Her crew took to her immediately and quickly jelled as a team. Her captain and his complement of officers seemed more than merely competent. Lucas knew the boat inside and out and led exercises and training with confidence and skill, challenging the crew to be precise and follow procedures exactly as the manuals dictated.
Second in command to Lucas, the boat’s executive officer, was a battle-tested submariner, Frank Gordon Selby. Selby had already made two successful war patrols on USS
Silversides
(SS-236). His skipper there was Creed Burlingame, a colorful and bold commander and one of the war’s early submarine heroes. Burlingame and his crew set records for tonnage sent to the bottom on several patrols, running his boat in an aggressive style. At the beginning of each attack, he rubbed for luck the belly of a small Buddha statue he kept close at hand. His daring assaults were a contrast to the conservative methods still being used by other commanders.
Selby absorbed much from Burlingame. He was excited about putting it to work against the enemy.