Gerold Frank - U.S.S. Seawolf - Submarine Raider of the Pacific

I started copying code, and after about half an hour I realized we were headed in an easterly course. It suddenly dawned on me: home was in that direction. I got so excited I left my station for the first time in my navy career and rushed out into the control room. The first man I saw was Lieutenant Deragon.

“Where are we going, Mr. Deragon?” I asked him.

“You’re overdue, Eck,” he said with a grin. “I knew as soon as we changed course you’d be out here. We expect to go home. How’s that?”

That was all right with me. At last we were headed home. We still had Palau to go by, and that was tough, but we were headed home.

The next three days were uneventful. We spotted nothing.

Near dusk of the fourth day, the periscope officer picked up an island. We closed in to run a patrol in front of it. Conditions were in our favor. We had a nice chop, it was a cloudy day, and just enough rain was falling to make our periscope almost invisible to the enemy and yet permit us to look around.

We moved in carefully and spotted a patrol boat. He was too far away to be dangerous. Captain Warder, scanning with the utmost care, picked up the masts of a ship coming in our general direction. The Jap—it turned out to be a destroyer—was making tremendous speed. The Skipper sounded battle stations. But as we maneuvered, we realized that from her speed and the angle on our bow it would be impossible to launch an attack. The weather conditions had turned bad. The rain, which had aided us at first, now poured down in sheets, making our visibility almost nil. We were in the midst of a typical tropical squall. The Captain peered through and saw two more destroyers come charging by.

“Well, we have to let that first baby go by,” he said… “But these two— What in the hell is their hurry? Maybe they are heading for the Gulf, to clean us out of there. I think I’m going to tackle this one.” He studied the sea. “This will be a terrific shot if I can make it,” he said, almost under his breath. “He’s really making speed.” He ordered: “All ahead, full right rudder. We have to go like hell to get this fellow.”

The Wolf quivered with the speed. We veered to our left to get into position. We were on this course for about five minutes, the Skipper taking sweeps with his periscope, when he exclaimed:

“Well, I’ll be goddamned! At my age, too! To think I would fall for a trick like that! Here is an aircraft carrier, and I’m out of position! I’ve been sucked in by this goddamned destroyer, and now it’s impossible to make the attack. Look at that big beautiful bastard! She’s really spinning! Looks new to me. The length of that flight deck looks to be about six hundred feet.” I think he could have bawled.

None of us believe that the Captain was at fault. We had been closing to run our patrol, and it wasn’t his fault if the Jap ships chose this time to make their appearance. We were not out of position because we had not left our original course long enough to make any difference. Had we stayed on a course that would have brought us up to the patrol point, we still would have missed the carrier because she was traveling at such high speed. Captain Warder was too cagey to be sucked in by anyone.

We surfaced. It was near dusk. By this time the carrier was out of sight. It seemed apparent that the destroyers and the carrier were rushing to a rendezvous. Captain Warder wanted to find that rendezvous.

The Japs were probably meeting there preparing for an attack on the Solomons. We could be of damn good use if we walked in on them.

The Wolf was put on 100 percent power—to go as fast as she could. The speed indicator in the control room spun around like mad. It vibrated all the way up to a point that we hadn’t seen in eight months. We swept that surrounding ocean like a broom.

Suddenly, as I sat in sound, I realized something had changed.

Something was missing. Then I had it. The high-pitched endless whine of our electric motors was gone. I peered into the control room. There were Captain Warder and Lieutenant Deragon, looking glumly at a chart.

“Hell,” said the Skipper, disgusted, and vanished in the direction of his stateroom, Deragon with him.

I hurried out and looked at the chart. The Wolf had a new course laid out, taking her to Pearl Harbor. I went back to my shack, wondering what this all meant, and a moment later Captain Warder came in. His face was expressionless. He had a message to send. I turned the transmitter up and contacted an Allied Command.

Our message was brief. We had sighted the carrier. This was her course and her apparent destination. And something I had not known—the Seawolf was having serious electrical trouble. That’s why we were going to Pearl Harbor. It was the main motor generator cables which had gone bad. They grew so hot we feared a fire. A bad fire in the batteries would cripple us. We’d be unable to dive. And in these Jap-infested waters, it would mean the finish for all of us.

By morning the electricians had fixed things well enough for us to resume our patrol. Captain Warder now set our course for another island. This was next on our schedule, and the Skipper felt the Wolf was in good enough shape to make it before going into Pearl Harbor for complete repairs. It was a small island boasting an airfield, bristling with gun emplacements. We reached it before dawn.

Captain Warder studied the island through the periscope. “Nice beach here. Wouldn’t mind going in for a swim,” he commented. “This is a pretty little place. I see barracks, lots of them, on top of hills. I can see what looks like gun emplacements. I can see radio-antenna towers. There is a ship in the harbor. She’s only a sailing vessel, though. This is a typical South Pacific island.”

We spent several days hunting for trouble. No luck. Then, finally, we set an easterly course for Pearl Harbor. On the way Captain Warder spotted ships. The Wolf prepared to attack—an attack that was to prove one of the most dangerous she ever tried.

“Seems to be a whole mess of ships,” the Skipper said. “This one Maru looks big enough. We’ll plunk him… Wait a minute. Of all things to blunder into! Look what we got this time!”

We had a pretty good idea down in sound. Maley and I had a number of sets of screws going in our ears.

“We’ve got screws all over this damn place,” I called to the Skipper.

“I’m not surprised, Eck,” he said, a little ruefully. “We’re barged into a floating cannery and her brood of fishing boats.”

Fishing boats! And thick as flies! That was bad. Fishing boats meant deep, heavy nets hanging down; and if our propellers struck a net, we’d have to surface—in the face of gun batteries that could blast us out of the water.

“Well, see if you can get me a range.” Captain Warder’s words were easy.

I tried. There were too many ships.

“Make ready the bow tubes,” came a moment later. “This will be a difficult attack.…” A few minutes went by… “Fire one! Damn it, we missed!… Damn that bastard!”

We dove deep. On sound I heard the ship and her brood scuttling away. She dropped two depth charges as a parting salute, but they were mild.

The next day we sighted two more ships, one heading south, one north. They were not alone. Jap bombers roared overhead, and patrol vessels played sentry on either side. The Wolf tried for the ships anyway. They were racing along at twenty-five knots or better. We could not close the range sufficiently to launch an attack. We gave it up, finally, knowing we had not been detected, and pushed on for Pearl.

We were less than five days out of Pearl when the shout came, “Plane above the port bow!”

We stood by to dive.