Читать книгу The USS Flier - Michael Sturma - Страница 12

USS Macaw

By 4:00 P.M. the USS Macaw (ASR-11) was anchored off the Midway entrance buoys. The plan was to float a line to the Flier and tow the submarine off the reef. Unfortunately, the Macaw’s next message stated starkly: “We are aground.”¹ The Macaw had grounded less than 100 yards west of the submarine.

The 250-foot-long, 2,000-ton Macaw was a Chanticleer class submarine rescue vessel. Built in Oakland, California, the ship had been commissioned on 12 July 1942, making it about a year older than the Flier. The Macaw carried a complement of 102 crewmen, heavy-lifting machinery, and deep-sea diving equipment, including the McCann rescue chamber. The rescue bell, some ten feet high by seven feet wide, was designed to convey men from a sunken submarine to the surface. It would be of no use, however, in dealing with the Flier’s situation.²

The Macaw’s skipper, Paul Willis Burton, was well known within the fraternity of submariners. Beginning in 1929 the navy required the captains of rescue and salvage ships to have experience with both submarines and deep-sea diving. Burton had not only trained at the New London Submarine School but had also been the officer in charge of its underwater escape training tank. That 138-foot-high, silo-shaped tank near the Thames River was the most obvious landmark at New London, and the escape exercise was an ordeal that most submariners never forgot.

After first being tested in a decompression chamber, submariner candidates had to simulate a submarine escape using the Momsen lung, named for its creator Charles “Swede” Momsen. The apparatus, designed specifically to facilitate the escape from a submarine stranded beneath the surface, consisted of a black rubber bag with a nose clip and a mouthpiece. A canister of soda and lime filtered out carbon dioxide and, at least in theory, allowed the submariner to breathe as he slowly made his way to the surface. Momsen had experienced firsthand the horrible sensation of being stuck underwater. During his first command on the O-15, the bow planes had jammed during a dive, causing the submarine to burrow into the muddy bottom. The vessel managed to surface only after the crew blasted water out of the forward torpedo tubes.³

Momsen, acclaimed by some as America's greatest submariner, also had a hand in constructing the training tanks at New London. Submarine trainees descended 100 feet to the bottom of the water tank on a platform. Then, equipped with the Momsen lung, they had to slowly make their way to the top. Burton, known for his puckish sense of humor, had life-size pictures of curvaceous mermaids painted on the inner walls of the tank to mark various depths.⁴

Despite the experience of Burton and his crew, their efforts to rescue the Flier had ended in disaster. With the Macaw stranded and all hope of an immediate rescue abandoned, the Flier’s crew tried to brace for what would be a long, uneasy night. Tanks were flooded to try to stabilize the submarine on the reef and reduce the pounding it was taking from the rough seas.

By Monday morning, 17 January, the seas were a bit calmer, but there was no plan to try to refloat the Flier. By late morning, after several unsuccessful attempts, the men managed to fix a line and a wire between the submarine and the Macaw. Both vessels rode out another night on the reef as the seas continued to moderate.⁵

On Tuesday morning the Flier began transferring some of its crew to the Macaw via a boatswain chair—a daunting experience. The boatswain chair, resembling a swing, was suspended from a line between the two ships and tended to sag perilously as the crafts rolled with the motion of the sea. Earl Baumgart was among those evacuated from the submarine, and he said a silent prayer as he began the transfer from the Flier to the Macaw. With both ships rocking, the boatswain chair hit the water at one point, and Baumgart inflated his life vest, fearing that the line might snap. Eventually, he made it safely to the Macaw.⁶

On Wednesday morning the weather took another turn for the worse. The wind picked up, and it began to rain heavily. The Flier flooded the number one main ballast tank to try to prevent further drifting of the stern. At 4:00 in the afternoon the submarine received a portable high-frequency radio from the Macaw to facilitate communications.

By Thursday morning, 20 January, the Flier had drifted farther onto the reef. But again, it appeared that salvation might be at hand. At 8:30 A.M. the submarine rescue vessel USS Florikan was spotted on the horizon. Under the command of George Sharp, the Florikan had made the trip from Pearl Harbor specifically to help rescue the Flier and tow it back to Pearl.

Later that morning, at about 10:30 A.M., the body of James Cahl washed up on the beach at Midway. The senior medical officer, Ivan F. Duff, and the senior dental officer, Clement T. Hughes, confirmed Cahl's identity from dental records. The following morning at 11:00 A.M., Cahl's body was committed to the deep in a Protestant burial ceremony conducted on a motor torpedo boat. Although the specific details of Cahl's burial are unknown, the rituals were highly standardized. The body was either sewn into a canvas shroud or placed in a weighted coffin. An honor platoon was typically assembled on deck, and a service of scripture and prayers was read by a chaplain or another officer. At the appointed time, six to eight pallbearers tilted a board holding the body, sliding it feetfirst from under the national ensign into the sea. A party of seven men then fired three volleys into the air, a custom originally supposed to drive away evil spirits. The playing of taps followed. Under the direction of a chief master-at-arms, the flag was then encased and delivered to the commanding officer.⁷

Most of Cahl's shipmates were still on the beleaguered submarine when he was buried at sea. Those who had already transferred to shore were not allowed to attend the ceremony, ostensibly to avoid the risk of any further loss of life in the rough conditions.⁸ Later that day, Cahl's personal effects were transferred to the Macaw via boatswain chair. Crowley was faced with the grim task of writing to Cahl's family and explaining the circumstances of his loss. As it happened, Cahl was one of the relatively few enlisted men on the Flier who was married.

Cahl's crewmates likely found his death difficult to accept. In some ways, an accidental death was even more tragic than one that was combat related. The crew of the USS Pollack, for instance, was devastated when one of its members was crushed to death between two torpedoes while on patrol.⁹ And Cahl would not be the last submariner to drown at Midway. Only a couple of months later, on 5 March, the body of George Hepfler from the USS Archerfish would be recovered from the lagoon. Like Cahl, the waters at Midway became his final resting place.¹⁰

On Saturday, 22 January, at about 8:00 A.M., Waite Daggy was finally transferred to the Macaw and then sent to the Midway base hospital for treatment of his injured chin.¹¹ A total of twenty-three men left the submarine and were shuttled to land. There, they learned that their crewmate Clyde Gerber, last seen standing on a sand spit, was in the hospital with a fractured left arm.

By that time, the Flier had been stuck on the reef for six days, being battered much of that time by heavy seas and waves that were sometimes high enough to break over the submarine's bridge. For Crowley it had been a painful and humiliating week, especially as he watched other submarines arrive en route to patrols. That Saturday morning, for example, the USS Kingfish made its way past the stranded Flier to the Midway harbor.

At a little after 9:00 in the morning the Flier received a towing bridle from the Macaw, which was rigged around the submarine's four-inch deck gun. At around noon the Gaylord, a floating steam crane used for construction work, was towed by two tugs within a couple hundred yards of the Flier off the channel entrance. The Flier crew later hauled aboard a towing bridle from the Gaylord and cast off all lines except for a two-inch-diameter wire from the crane. The anchor was then pulled in, and the submarine lightened. With the aid of the crane, the Flier finally floated free of the reef at 2:29 P.M. By 2:45 the YT-188, the tug originally intended to lead the Flier into the Midway lagoon a week earlier, had the submarine in tow.

Once the Flier was inspected and deemed seaworthy enough to be moved, the USS Florikan took the submarine in tow at 3:50 P.M. Although the Flier’s port propeller shaft was out of commission, it was believed that the starboard shaft might be used in an emergency. The Florikan set off from Midway at 4:52 P.M., pulling the Flier along at a sluggish eight knots. The submarine chaser USS PC-602 acted as an escort, armed with depth charges, one three-inch gun, and two 20 mm guns. Since the Flier was incapable of diving, it offered the Japanese an easy target.

As the Flier was heading home to Pearl Harbor, the Macaw remained hard aground. When the submarine USS Halibut arrived at Midway on the morning of 1 February, the aftereffects of the Flier’s grounding remained all too evident. Owing to rough weather, the Midway Channel was closed, and the Halibut had to ride out the next twenty-four hours before being allowed to enter the sheltered atoll. When the Halibut’s commander, Ignatius J. “Pete” Galantin, finally conned his vessel up the channel, he passed the stranded hulk of the Macaw. Galantin and the Macaw’s skipper had been classmates at the Naval Academy and the Submarine School.¹²

Attempts to salvage the Macaw did not go well. Storms continued to rage, at times sweeping the ship with thirty-foot seas. In the early hours of 13 February, the Macaw began to list and slide back into deeper water. With the hull breached, the Macaw sank. Most of the crew managed to survive by clinging to life buoys or to the reef itself, but there were five fatalities. The dead included the Macaw’s skipper, Paul Burton.

The wreck of the Macaw stood as a grim reminder of Midway's hazards. When the USS Tang arrived at the atoll on 3 March 1944, skipper Richard O’Kane steered gingerly past the protruding masts of the sunken ship. In rough weather some submarines elected to bypass Midway altogether rather than risk the Flier’s fate. Eventually the Macaw’s hulk threatened to block the south channel, and salvage divers from the USS Shackle used demolition charges and underwater cutting to break it up. Today the twisted wreckage and the relatively intact bow still lie on the ocean floor.¹³