American submarines began World War II handicapped by unreliable torpedoes and ineffective prewar doctrine. The doctrine changed almost overnight after Pearl Harbor, but it took some 20 months before the torpedoes could be considered generally reliable. Despite these initial problems, submarines, which never made up more than 2 percent of American naval strength, would account for more than half of all Japanese tonnage sunk during the war.
The USS Cod (SS-224), a Gato-class fleet submarine built by the Electric Boat Company in Groton, Connecticut, entered service late in 1943. During seven war patrols she would be credited with sinking 14 ships, along with 26 sampans and junks. This record was about average for the submarine service as a whole, and better than that of some boats that had made several more patrols. Only the last of her three captains failed to sink any Japanese ships, a problem he shared with a number of others who made only a single patrol in the final weeks of the war.
In her seven war patrols, the Cod never lost a man to enemy action, despite undergoing several severe depth chargings, being bombed a number of times, and sometimes finding herself on the receiving end of artillery and machine-gun fire from her intended victims and their escorts. Yet what the enemy could not achieve, a simple spark, a poorly thought-out system design, and plain bad luck would accomplish.
From Offense to Defense
At 2100 on 26 April 1945, the Cod was steaming on the surface of the East China Sea. She had departed Pearl Harbor on her sixth war patrol just over a month earlier. For Commander James A. Adkins, this was also his sixth patrol since the war began, his third in command of his own submarine.
Just before 2200 on the 24th, the Cod had made a surface attack on a two-ship convoy. At the moment she fired her torpedoes, at 2253, the sub detected a third ship. Instead of streaking stealthily toward the target, the three torpedoes broached and continued downrange, leaping from the water like frolicking porpoises. Adkins had intended to fire four bow tubes, but decided to stop with three after observing the torpedoes’ erratic movements.
The target apparently also saw what was happening, for the ship avoided the torpedoes and then, firing her deck gun, came after the submarine. Adkins went to flank speed and headed away, his intended targets now giving chase. When the shells started getting close, the Cod dived. With only 270 feet of water in the area, Adkins took his boat to 150 feet and rigged for depth charge and silent running. (The next day, someone would dig a slug out of the bridge rail just behind the spot where the captain had been standing.)
Eighteen close depth charges followed. All exploded below the Cod. Adkins fired a decoy, but it didn’t work, and the submarine was soon on the receiving end of another 10 depth charges. Initially, two antisubmarine vessels teamed up on the counterattack, but after this string, one departed while the other remained to continue the attack.
Describing the damage in his patrol report, Adkins wrote, “The boat was shaken, conning tower was banged about, cork was knocked off, light bulbs shattered, overloads knocked loose, several of the crew were converted, two sea valves banged open, and one sea valve operating gear was sheared.”
At 0031, Adkins went back up to periscope depth. The remaining antisubmarine vessel, the Japanese minesweeper AM-41, was still searching. Twenty-six minutes later, Adkins fired three stern tubes. One torpedo hit, and the pinging and screw noises stopped.
For the next half hour, explosions and breaking-up noises were heard from the direction of the target. When Adkins surfaced, it was in the middle of an oil slick and debris field. The Cod picked up a survivor, who would prove to be seriously injured. It was the prisoner who positively identified the submarine’s victim.
Before daylight, the Cod made another attack on two enemy ships, but her torpedoes missed. Adkins wrote of watching two torpedoes make wide hooks, and that for a moment it appeared one of them might be commencing a circular run. When he wrote this in the patrol report it was with the matter-of-fact dispassion normally found in official documents. Considering that the most likely place for a circular-running torpedo to complete its sweep was in the side of the submarine that fired it, a reasonable assumption is that he had a few nervous moments while the torpedo was running.
The ships got away, and Adkins wasn’t having much luck calling up the USS Pompon (SS-267), the Cod’s partner in a two-boat wolf pack. The rest of the day was quiet. A couple of mines and some floating debris were encountered, but no targets worth expenditure of a torpedo.
A Burning Problem
By 2100 on the 26th, all was quiet. The prisoner was rapidly deteriorating. By now it was obvious he wasn’t going to survive, for he had sustained serious internal injuries when the depth charges carried by his own sinking vessel exploded in the water. The Cod was steaming purposefully on the surface, charging her batteries.
In the after torpedo room, the Mark 18 electric torpedoes in tubes eight and ten had been partially withdrawn from the tubes to allow their batteries to be charged. The Mark 18 torpedo was developed by Westinghouse, reverse-engineering the design from a captured German G7e torpedo. Because an electric torpedo leaves no obvious wake as it runs, it was harder for a lookout to spot as it bore down on a target and it left no trail for the escorts to follow back to the firing point.
But the Mark 18 also had caused problems. Two submarines, the USS Tang (SS-306) and Tullibee (SS-284), were lost when Mark 18s made circular runs, coming back to sink them. This wasn’t known until after the war, when crew members returned from Japanese captivity. The same problem may have accounted for additional submarine losses, but without survivors that can’t be known.
Still there was no doubt in the submarine service that that sort of thing happened. More than one patrol report had related the story of a circular-running torpedo coming back for the sub that had fired it, the submerged boats avoiding disaster only because the “fish” passed over them. Surfaced, the same boats would almost certainly have been hit.
There’s no record whether anyone was thinking about that possibility as they charged the two partially withdrawn Mark 18s in the after torpedo room that evening. At 2135 the charge was completed and the torpedoman’s mates were taking their readings. As one removed a charging cable from the torpedo in tube number 8, a spark ignited hydrogen gas that had accumulated during the charge. There was an explosion, and the torpedo’s battery caught fire.
The battery blaze was extremely hot, and the boat’s CO2 fire extinguishers failed to put it out. At the same time, the after torpedo room quickly filled with dense, suffocating smoke.
Smoke lungs had been provided, but soon proved inadequate. The Cod had only two sets of rescue breathing apparatus, along with a shallow-water diving mask, which also could be used. That meant that only three men could be in the after torpedo room at one time.
With the battery burning fiercely, the torpedo was too hot to touch. The executive officer, Lieutenant Kenny Beckman, supervising the firefighting, requested permission to open the after torpedo room hatch to vent the smoke. Permission was given, but the hatch was proving difficult to open.
Quartermaster Second Class Lawrence E. Foley, who had just been relieved as quartermaster of the watch, was still in the conning tower and asked Adkins for permission to go on deck and assist in opening the hatch. Permission granted, Foley took a life jacket from the conning tower, informed the officer of the deck on the bridge what he was doing, and headed aft.
The OOD noticed that Foley was having trouble with the hatch and sent Seaman First Class Andrew G. Johnson aft with a wrench to assist. A minute later Johnson came forward, informed the OOD that the hatch was clear except for the depth-charge dogs, and then went back aft to help Foley. Moments later a wave washed both men over the side. Foley was wearing a life jacket; Johnson was not.
Adkins came onto the bridge at this time, marked the ship’s heading, made a complete circle to the left, and stopped. He then had two problems to contend with: the fire in the after torpedo room and two men overboard.
Things were getting worse in the after torpedo room, and the XO requested permission to fire the torpedo. To do so, it was necessary to tear loose a hand-hole plate, which provided access for charging the torpedo’s batteries. It had been warped by the explosion and would have prevented loading the torpedo back in the tube. This was done, the tube was fired, and the torpedo, propeller lock still in place, was ejected from the tube. In his report, Adkins singled out Lieutenant Beckman, Torpedoman’s Mate Second Class Daniel H. Krusenklaus Jr., and Seaman First Class John A. Grenner for their heroic efforts in fighting the fire, and in reloading and ejecting the burning torpedo.
Lost on a Moonlit Sea
With the torpedo ejected, the major crisis in the after torpedo room was ended. The secondary crisis, the two men overboard, continued. Adkins had a pair of life rings tied together and tossed over the side. With the torpedo fire out, the OOD was sent aft to close the aft torpedo room hatch.
The Cod commenced searching the area for the two men. Only a few whitecaps were showing in the overcast darkness, and for the most part the sea was featureless. The bridge was crowded with volunteers, all listening and searching, and every set of available binoculars was in use.
At 2300 the SD radar picked up a contact—a plane. Adkins decided that it could have one free pass at them. He was going to stay on the surface if at all possible. Soon the IFF showed the plane to be friendly, and contact was made via VHF radio. The plane, a PBM out of Okinawa, offered to help. While he was in the vicinity he dropped flares, and also a life raft.
The PBM departed 44 minutes later, informing the sub that its base would probably send more aircraft in the morning, if needed. Adkins continued the search, using the dead-reckoning tracker to organize the search pattern. The seawater injection temperature (temperature at the sub’s water intakes) was 74 degrees, giving him reason to hope the men would be able to survive extended immersion.
The 27th of April arrived, and 34 minutes after midnight the skies cleared and the sea was bathed in bright moonlight. Nevertheless, Adkins concluded that it was unlikely they would be able to see a man in the water at much more than 250 yards, so he altered the search pattern accordingly. At one point a dark shape appeared in one of the floating life rings as they passed, but it turned out to be a bird.
After searching much of the night, the captain heard Foley calling out to them at 0520. Lieutenant (junior grade) W. K. Smith kept Foley in sight, while Adkins maneuvered the Cod to pick him up. At 0540, the exhausted quartermaster was pulled aboard.
Foley reported that when he and Johnson had been washed overboard he had helped Johnson remove his heavy clothing. Johnson had then clung to Foley’s back as they awaited rescue.
On at least two occasions they had seen the Cod going by, once very close aboard. No one on the ship had seen or heard them at that time. Then, about two hours before Foley was found, Johnson had said goodbye to Foley and slipped down off his back. That had been the last Foley had seen of him.
‘Lookout, Shipmate, Friend’
It was logical to presume that an exhausted Johnson, without the aid of a life jacket to keep him afloat, had drowned, but Adkins wasn’t ready to give up. He decided to lie to where they were until daylight, then resume the search. This he did, with assistance from the Pompon and, early in the afternoon, from several fighters, but to no avail. He finally called off the search at 1856 on 27 April. By then there was little doubt that Johnson was dead.
Early the next morning, Adkins sent a message to ComSubPac reporting Johnson’s loss. He also conducted an investigation into the cause of the torpedo fire, but it proved impossible to determine what had created the spark. The patrol report did comment sharply on the inadequacy of the smoke lungs provided and on the insufficient allocation of rescue breathing gear. Recommendations also were made about providing forced ventilation to remove hydrogen gas during torpedo battery charges.
Later that day the Japanese prisoner died, and at 1500 he was buried at sea, with Adkins conducting the funeral service.
The final entry in Cod’s patrol report for that day was of another fire, this time in the forward torpedo room. On this occasion the fire was in the safety relay in the WCA motor generator and was quickly extinguished.
Adkins concluded his patrol report with these words:
“Andrew Gordon Johnson, 181 17 02, Seaman 1c, V6, USNR, was my lookout, shipmate and friend. He died heroically in the line of duty, in order to save his ship. The commanding officer derives no satisfaction from recording the events of the patrol, nor from the meager damage inflicted on the enemy. The only satisfaction lies in recording the acts of heroism at the time of the casualty which led to Johnson’s loss.”
Night of Fate, Night of Heroism
The story of the Cod’s torpedo fire takes on an almost bizarre aura when you consider the personal testimony of the men who were on board the sub the night of 26 April 1945.
The life jacket worn by Lawrence Foley was a souvenir removed from the dying Japanese prisoner brought aboard earlier. Within minutes of being swept overboard, Foley let go of it because it was weighing them down. It sank like a rock.
The torpedo battery “burned like a road flare,” according to torpedoman Dan Krusenklaus. Accounts vary on whether the torpedo exploded after being ejected, but all agreed its Torpex explosives were melting and running out of the tube like hot syrup. As Krusenklaus remembered, “I was certain that I’d be standing before Saint Peter at any moment.”
The Cod’s torpedo officer remembered standing inside the torpedo room passing information to the men on the other side of the door while the fire raged. The engineering officer recalled him sitting on the couch in the maneuvering room coughing badly. And Krusenklaus remembered tripping over the torpedo officer’s body on floor of the torpedo room after he was overcome by the smoke.
The strangest aspect involved the Cod’s only fatality, Andrew Johnson. The seaman confided to his shipmates that he was concerned about a “male curse” in his family: Both his father and grandfather had died at age 25. He himself would turn 26 during the patrol. Johnson promised to stay on board the Cod for the duration of the war for good luck if he broke the curse by celebrating his 26th birthday. Johnson is remembered saying, “If I live through this one [patrol], we’ve got it made!” He never saw that birthday.
The only certainty was the heroism of the Cod’s crew that night.