Читать книгу The USS Flier - Michael Sturma - Страница 8

The Aleutians

Lieutenant Commander John Daniel Crowley had paid his dues. Before being given command of the newly minted USS Flier, he had spent nearly two years in charge of an antiquated S-boat, popularly known in the navy as a “pigboat” or “sewer pipe.” Conditions on the S-boats were atrocious. There were no showers on board and only one head for nearly fifty crewmen. Without air conditioning, the boats accumulated an incredible stench during prolonged dives. Once the submarines surfaced, the sudden burst of oxygen could render the crew giddy. Even so, the sailors who served on S-boats took a certain pride in having the grit to withstand such discomfort for extended periods. As one writer put it, “An S-boat was a great leveling agent; all suffered equally.”¹ To add to Crowley's suffering, he was assigned to some of the most inhospitable waters in the world.

Born in Springfield, Massachusetts, on 24 September 1908, John Crowley attended local schools before entering the U.S. Naval Academy in 1927. A classmate described Crowley's passage through the academy as “fairly easy sailing,” and he loved sports.² When he graduated four years later, commissioned an ensign, Crowley became part of a group renowned for its social as well as military exclusivity. Nevertheless, it was a career characterized by relatively low pay and slow advancement. Like most new graduates, Crowley served on a succession of ships, including the battleships Maryland and Arkansas and the cruiser Minneapolis. On 25 June 1934 he was commissioned a lieutenant junior grade, and two years later he began instruction at the Submarine School in New London, Connecticut. It is possible that Crowley, like many other naval officers, viewed the submarine service as a shortcut to early command. After a period of postgraduate study at Annapolis and service on more surface ships and submarines, that ambition was finally realized.³

On 26 July 1941 Crowley assumed command of the S-28, built by the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Company at Quincy, Massachusetts. At the time, the S-28 was nearly twenty years old and was one of twenty-six S-boats still in operation. As a lieutenant with some ten years’ experience, Crowley was typical of the men given command of such boats.⁴

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the S-28 was undergoing a much-needed overhaul at the Mare Island Naval Yard north of San Francisco. After the work was completed on 22 January 1942, the S-28 headed for the Underwater Sound Training School at San Diego. Several months later the S-28 was ordered to the less salubrious latitudes of the Aleutians, and it left San Diego on 20 May in the company of three other S-boats, headed for the American base at Dutch Harbor in Unalaska Bay.

The S-28’s deployment was in response to an anticipated Japanese attack on U.S. bases at Midway and in the Aleutians. The Aleutian Islands, extending southwest from Alaska in a forbidding necklace of rocks and shoals, became American territory when the United States purchased Alaska from the Russians in 1867. The ultimate Japanese strategy was to occupy the Aleutians and thus block an Allied advance in the northern Pacific and prevent the islands from being used as a base for long-range bombers. The more immediate objective was to create a diversion from a planned attack on Midway, an island group in the central Pacific. The Americans were well aware of the Japanese plans, however. A signals intelligence team at Pearl Harbor under Commander Joseph J. Rochefort had managed to crack the Japanese Fleet's general-purpose code used to transmit operational orders.⁵

Even with this knowledge, service in the Aleutians proved to be frustrating. Because of the anticipated Japanese strike, the S-boats were diverted from their original destination at Dutch Harbor and ordered into attack mode. On 2 June the S-28 received a directive to attack enemy forces approaching Cold Bay on the Alaska Peninsula, but it was unable to make contact. The following day a Japanese task force under Vice Admiral Hosogaya unleashed its carrier aircraft on the American base at Dutch Harbor; more than a dozen fighters strafed the harbor and shore, followed by bombers.⁶ Several days later, on 6–7 June, Japanese landing parties took possession of Attu and Kiska at the western end of the Aleutian chain. Although these islands were barely populated, they constituted additional losses for the Allies, who had already seen the fall of Singapore, Hong Kong, and the Philippines.

Still making their first patrol, Crowley and his crew encountered a Japanese destroyer on 18 June 1942 off the twenty-two-mile-long island of Kiska. They had been searching that morning in heavy seas for a tanker reported to be sailing from Attu to Kiska but had not encountered it. Near noon, however, through the patchy fog, they spotted a destroyer about a thousand yards away. The destroyer apparently detected the submarine minutes later and charged toward it. The S-28 optimistically fired two torpedoes, using the destroyer's sound bearing, but the Japanese ship escaped unscathed and pursued the S-28 for the next eight hours. This would be one of the few attacks made by the S-28 under Crowley's command. He later described the remaining four patrols in the Aleutians as “principally reconnaissance patrols and notably lacking in targets.”⁷

After the Battle of Midway, eight of the newer fleet submarines moved north and proved more successful against the enemy than the aging S-boats had been. The USS Triton sank a Japanese destroyer, the Nenohi, on 4 July 1942. The following day the USS Growler caught three destroyers at anchor, sinking one and severely damaging the others. The USS Grunion, making its first war patrol, sank two Japanese submarine chasers on 15 July but then disappeared while patrolling in close proximity to the S-28. Crowley reportedly heard no depth charges or explosions to explain the Grunion’s loss—a stark reminder of the fragility of life on a submarine even without an attacking enemy.⁸

The Aleutian Islands and Midway

Crowley's main battles on the S-28 were against the weather and the mechanical deficiencies of his submarine. The Aleutian Islands, strung out like vertebrae between the northern Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea, are infamous for their extreme weather. Crowley and his crew faced a daily round of freezing temperatures, raging storms, gale-force winds, and impenetrable fogs. On the submarine's bridge, icy winds could freeze a man's hands to his binoculars. Inside, the dank environment of the S-boat after forty days on patrol was a hazard in itself. Condensation—so-called hull sweating—saturated the crew's bedding along with everything else. On his first patrol Crowley noted that the “air was always cold and damp.”⁹ To conserve battery power, they rarely turned on the heaters.

Because of the prolonged daylight hours in the northern latitudes, the S-28 remained submerged an average of eighteen hours a day. Such lengthy dives wreaked havoc with the air quality inside the hull. Once carbon dioxide levels reached 3 percent, the atmosphere posed a serious threat to the crew, but even at lower levels it could cause headaches and other side effects.¹⁰ The main methods of countering high carbon dioxide levels were to bleed stored oxygen into the submarine or to distribute carbon dioxide absorbent, but the S-28 faced shortages of both.

The relatively brief periods on the surface also meant that the availability of fresh water was severely limited. Apart from what could be carried in storage tanks, the submarine's water supply depended on evaporators that ran off the heat of the diesel engine exhaust—and the S-28 used diesel power only when it was on the surface (running on battery power when underwater). Besides the shortage of drinking water, what little water the crew did have was apparently tainted, causing many of the men to suffer from nausea and headaches. In addition, an outbreak of scabies, a contagious skin disease caused by parasitic mites, affected about a third of the men and was almost certainly exacerbated by the system of “hot bunking,” in which crewmen shared the same beds as they rotated watches. To cap it off, there was a fire in the main port motor during the first patrol.

The S-28 departed from Dutch Harbor for its second war patrol on 15 July 1942. Milder weather meant that the crew's health improved, and shorter daylight hours meant that they could spend more time on the surface. The submarine was stationed in the area off Kiska and received a number of directives to intercept enemy ships. Although some enemy contacts were made, the submarine never undertook an attack. The physical condition of the S-28 remained a constant drawback. Among other things, the periscopes tended to fog up due to the differential between the water and air temperatures.¹¹

The S-28’s third war patrol proved equally disappointing in terms of results, with only one enemy contact. In the late afternoon of 4 October 1942 the S-28 sighted an enemy patrol vessel estimated to be 130 to 150 feet long. The submarine lost the initiative, however, and failed to make an attack. In fact, the only torpedo fired was launched by accident when a firing circuit malfunctioned.¹²

Throughout its three patrols, the S-28, like most S-boats, was handicapped by a lack of navigational equipment. Without radar, a Fathometer, or proper sound equipment, navigation was dangerous. Naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison once claimed that “navigating an S-boat was accomplished more by smell and feel than through science.”¹³ During the war, S-boats became notorious for running aground. For instance, on 20 January 1942 the S-36 struck Taka Bakang Reef in Makassar Strait. With coral penetrating the hull, the submarine had to be abandoned. The crew was picked up by a Dutch merchantman and transported to Surabaya, Java. On 14 August 1942 the S-39, sailing out of Brisbane, Australia, ran aground in the Louisiade Archipelago off New Guinea. Again, the crew was lucky to survive, being rescued this time by the Australian corvette HMAS Katoomba.¹⁴

The navigational hazards in the Aleutians were potentially as lethal as those in the South Pacific. The often overcast conditions provided little opportunity to take visual bearings to determine a submarine's position, and unpredictable currents could sweep a craft far off course. Pinnacles of rock dotted the harbors and waters off the coast, and the presence of magnetic ores affected compass needles. Added to this was the inaccuracy of many of the charts supplied; on some maps, islands might be as much as five miles out of position, and there was no indication of depth soundings for many areas.¹⁵

While carrying out reconnaissance off Amchitka Island in June 1942, the S-27 was swept onto rocks 400 yards from the coast. Fortunately, all forty-nine crewmen were able to reach shore safely. Even the Japanese were not immune to the weather conditions: the Japanese submarine I-157 ran aground in the perpetual fog and was able to extricate itself only after firing all its torpedoes and throwing overboard a large number of the battery cells needed for underwater propulsion.¹⁶

After its third war patrol, the S-28 left Dutch Harbor and arrived in San Diego on 23 October 1942 to undergo dry-dock maintenance and the installation of some additional equipment, including the newly developed SJ radar system. This surfacesearching radar, which sent out a rotating directional beam, would allow the submarine to track targets in the dark or in the poor visibility so prevalent in the Aleutians. It could detect a large ship 7,000 yards away and land up to 20,000 yards away. The S-28 would thus be able to contact a greater number of enemy ships, but the downside was that the new radar equipment required a lot of the S-28’s scarcest resource—space—taking up a large part of the conning tower area and necessitating the removal of several crew bunks.¹⁷ The S-28 also received a Fathometer, permitting accurate depth soundings, and a new Kleinschmidt distilling unit. The Kleinschmidt vapor-compression still could produce 750 gallons of fresh water a day, suitable for drinking as well as for use in storage batteries. Some considered the Kleinschmidt still one of the most important technical innovations of the submarine war.¹⁸

Departing San Diego on 9 December 1942, the S-28 commenced its fourth war patrol, terminating at Dutch Harbor on 21 January 1943. With the aid of radar, the submarine was able to make six enemy contacts, all during the hours of darkness. On two occasions the S-28 fired multiple torpedoes at targets but scored no hits. In what was becoming a recurring pattern, the patrol report endorsement by Crowley's superior officer read: “It is regretted that the USS S-28 was unable to complete its attacks with success.”¹⁹

During the S-28’s fifth war patrol in February 1943, the weather continued to be a major concern. Before going topside to man the bridge, crewmen had to dress in multiple layers of woolen underwear, shirts, sweaters, trousers, and socks. Crowley noted in his patrol report that the rubber-lined trousers and hooded jackets distributed to the crew generally provided good protection against the cold. Gloves, however, quickly filled with water, and whenever the men raised their arms, the icy liquid would pour down inside their jacket sleeves.²⁰ This time an endorsement described the patrol as “well conducted,” even though the S-28 had carried out no attacks and on 18 February had been bombed by a Japanese floatplane. In the grim conditions of the Aleutians, simply making it back constituted a successful mission.

Crowley was replaced as skipper of the S-28 on 20 March 1943. The change of command took place at the Canadian naval base at Esquimalt, British Columbia, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island. The Canadian Pacific Fleet, lacking any submarines of its own, borrowed the S-28 to practice antisubmarine training.²¹ The S-28’s new skipper, Vincent A. Sisler, had seen action with the fleet submarine Sailfish, and although he had experienced defective torpedoes and depth charge attacks, Sisler considered the southwestern Pacific a place for “sissies” compared with conditions in the Aleutians.²²

In May 1943 the Americans would retake Attu from the Japanese after a bitter fight. Under the command of Rear Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid, the Americans made their third amphibious landing assault of the war on the south coast of the island at the aptly named Massacre Bay (Russian Cossacks had slaughtered Aleuts at the site two centuries earlier). The submarines Narwhal and Nautilus played a role in U.S. operations, slipping in 200 army scouts before the main landing. Although the battle for Attu was expected to last three days, it continued for three weeks, with heavy casualties from both the fighting and the cruel weather. In the soggy tundra, the Americans’ military vehicles proved largely useless, and many of the troops contracted trench foot. Nevertheless, of the 2,000 Japanese defending the island, fewer than 30 survived to become prisoners of war.²³

Having captured Attu, the Americans turned their attention to the Japanese fortifications on the bat-shaped island of Kiska. On 15 August 1943, after a prolonged bombardment, almost 35,000 U.S. troops staged another amphibious landing on Kiska's rocky beaches. They were surprised to find the island deserted; the Japanese garrison had slipped away in the murky mists. Admiral Kinkaid described the action as “a darn good dress rehearsal under combat conditions really.”²⁴ Even so, the Americans suffered several hundred casualties, largely from “friendly fire” by jittery troops in the fog.

The S-28 made two more war patrols in northern latitudes before heading for the friendlier climate of Pearl Harbor, where it arrived on 16 November 1943. After an overhaul, the aging submarine was utilized for training exercises. By the end of 1943, all the S-boats had been relegated to training or less active patrol duties.²⁵

Despite being taken out of combat and assigned to the warmer waters of Hawaii, a grim fate awaited the S-28. Naval reservist Jack G. Campbell assumed command of the S-28 on 20 June 1944. On 4 July, while participating in sonar exercises with the Coast Guard cutter Reliance, the submarine vanished. When the Reliance lost contact with the S-28, it summoned additional ships from Pearl Harbor to join the search, but they found only a large oil slick where the submarine had last dived. In waters more than 8,000 feet deep, rescue or salvage was not a possibility. A subsequent inquiry concluded that the submarine had probably lost depth control, but there was no way of knowing whether this had resulted from mechanical failure or human error. Less than two months later, John Crowley's next command, the USS Flier, would be lost as well.