Looking back, the Japanese attack should not have been a surprise to submariners operating out of Pearl Harbor in 1941. Unknowingly, we had been preparing for this contingency for months. But the USS Thresher's (SS-200) indoctrination under fire came early and from an unexpected source.
The Thresher, under the command of Lieutenant Commander William L. Anderson, was commissioned in August 1940 at New London, Connecticut. The following May, after an extended training period involving innumerable dives and maneuvers, we joined the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.
When we put to sea on 21 October 1941, it seemed to be yet another training mission; we suspected nothing unusual. But this one would be different. We were assigned to conduct a simulated war patrol in the northern approaches to the island of Midway. The southern approaches to Midway as well as the islands of Wake and Guam were patrolled similarly. Our mysterious sailing orders puzzled the crew; we were to maintain radio silence and remain submerged throughout the daylight hours, surfacing only after dark to charge batteries. We were to maintain two fully armed torpedo tubes ready for firing fore and aft at all times. If we sighted any Japanese, we were to make an urgent, plain-language contact report. Then, regardless of any further orders, if we detected any offensive action against Midway, we were to sink anything we could. In October 1941, such action was unthinkable.
Four days later, we arrived on station and commenced all-day dives. As tedious days lapsed into monotonous weeks, fresh provisions ran out and dehydrated substitutes, bland and unappetizing at that stage of development, took their place on the menu. Fresh water showers were terminated as primitive evaporators struggled ineffectually to keep up with demand. Fresh water was for cooking and drinking only.
On 4 December, after 40 consecutive all-day dives, with food, fresh water, and fuel critically low, a wave of relief swept through the boat as Commander Anderson announced that the submarine Trout (SS-202) was relieving us. The Thresher turned eastward toward Oahu. But an angry sea had been running for several days, and surfaced submarines do not handle heavy winds and mountainous waves easily. As our bow plunged into the swell, green water climbed the conning tower and cascaded over the bridge and periscope shears. On one such immersion, Grover, the port lookout, was washed from his perch high on the shears to the small deck on the after end of the conning tower known as the “cigarette deck.”
On captain’s orders, Grover was carried below and laid in the captain’s bunk. In considerable pain from a broken leg, he could not be left alone and Doc Millis, the pharmacist’s mate, maintained an around-the-clock vigil at his side. In his lucid moments, Grover talked of home and shore leave. And then he made a strange prediction: he said he would never live to see dry land again. He seemed particularly sad that he would never go on liberty again. Doc Millis made light of the remark, but when word of the prediction reached the crew the reaction was that maybe Grover was just a little bit gutless.
No one knew it at the time, including Grover, but he had also sustained a fractured skull in the fall. Slowly his vital signs deteriorated as his brain began to swell and Doc Millis administered more and more morphine to ease his pain. The date was 7 December, the day we were to make port, but then word came of the Japanese attack.
As we approached Oahu, air and surface contacts increased and all of them were menacing. U. S. forces never gave us time to establish recognition, but treated all submarines as enemies. The mine fields around the channel had been activated, but we were given a rendezvous point with the destroyer Litchfield (DD-336), which was assigned to escort us through the channel. We did meet the Litchfield, but upon news of the attack on Pearl Harbor, she set off to join the departing U. S. cruisers. But she was ordered back to escort us and, about an hour later, sent us a message that she was in our area. We later learned, however, that the Litchfield had run off to respond to a false contact, leaving us on our own.
Approaching the channel submerged, we sighted a destroyer that we identified as the Litchfield, and Commander Anderson ordered a recognition signal transmitted by sonar. To reinforce this, we sent up a smoke flare from periscope depth; however, gunners on the destroyer could take bearings on the flare. And as we broke the surface, we heard machine gun fire and a 5-inch shell whistled across our bow. A row of dents laced the Thresher's conning tower. We later determined that the projectiles did not penetrate because they had bounced off the water before striking. Our flooded condition made the Thresher's descent rapid and we dove to 287 feet in 37 seconds. Although a wave of irritation over being attacked by our own forces had been building among the crew, all this was put aside that night. As Doc Millis sat helplessly by his side, Grover died—just as he had predicted.
Having spent the night evading “friendly forces,” the following day we successfully met up with the destroyer Thornton (AVD-11). As we entered Pearl Harbor, the USS Nevada (BB-36), aground at the mouth of the channel and down by the bow, greeted us with the first evidence of the attack. Rounding the bend, the USS Oglala (CM-4) appeared, capsized on her port side. But these did not prepare us for the shock of what came next. Nearing the Navy Yard, a spreading cloud of gray smoke hung low over the harbor, and the odor of burning oil was everywhere. Then the battleships came into view: the Arizona (BB-39), still burning, resting on the bottom; the Oklahoma (BB-37), capsized and keel up; the California (BB- 44), West Virginia (BB-48), Tennessee (BB-43), and Maryland (BB-46), all heavily damaged, some still smoking. As we slowly stood past Battleship Row, our bow cut Geanly through the layer of black, viscous battleship oil that covered the water. And motor launches, still working among the wrecks searching for bodies, wore the black coating almost to their gunwales.
On our deck, the men stood silently, staring across the water, each overwhelmed by an incinerating rage. Gone were the exhaustion, the frustration, and the monotony of six weeks at sea. We forgot the oppressive heat, the monotonous meals, and the acute shortage of water. The irritation of these discomforts was replaced by a bitter urge to get back to sea, to exact terrible retribution. Standing there, side by side, there was little conversation, because for many, like me, speaking would have erupted like a sob.
On 30 December, the Thresher got under way on our second war patrol. We explored the Marshall and Caroline islands and torpedoed our first vessel, a 4,500-ton unescorted freighter, off Agana Harbor, Guam. Otherwise, this patrol was not spectacular and, after 61 days at sea, the Thresher returned to Pearl Harbor.
The real test of boat and men came on the next run. Our assigned area was the coveted Tokyo Bay, where success was practically assured. At 0955 on 10 April, a three-ship convoy with one destroyer escort steamed out of Tokyo, past the channel buoys, headed for open water. Approach conditions were not ideal, but Commander Anderson fired a four-fish spread at the three freighters—one hit. The torpedo passed directly beneath the stacks of the 3,039-ton cargo vessel Sado Marti. As the magnetic component detonated the warhead, 600 pounds of TNT erupted upward through the ship’s keel, blowing her into two pieces. Within two minutes the water was again calm as the bow and stern slipped beneath the waves.
But her destroyer escort had seen the torpedo wakes lying like arrows on the water’s surface. Twenty minutes later, the first depth charges exploded with a deafening roar close aboard our stem. Light bulbs exploded and gauges registered crazy information as the Thresher, momentarily out of control, was driven to 410 feet, well below her test depth. Hanging as if suspended, down by the stern, the planesmen fought frantically to regain our lost trim. Slowly, ponderously the Thresher struggled back up to 350 feet. As outside pressure decreased and the hull regained its configuration, it cracked loudly as if being struck by shell fire.
Then a more ominous menace became evident. The severe concussion had knocked the port propeller shaft out of alignment, causing the Thresher to fishtail wildly as she made way through the water. This set up loud vibrations throughout the boat. In the torpedo rooms where extra food was stored in the frame spaces behind the reload torpedoes, cans of food sprang loose and clattered noisily as they rolled across the deck, bouncing off the reload racks. In the engine room, heavy wrenches suspended from hangers on steel locker doors set up a staccato, drum-like thumping before they could be removed. Eager hands pounced on each source to silence the din. But all the vibrations could not be pinpointed and when we placed power on the port shaft, the resulting racket made it impossible to escape the sensitive ears of enemy sonar. To use the shaft was to give our position away; to still the shaft made trim and depth control an extremely difficult procedure. Then our sonar picked up more screws as two more destroyers joined the attack.
In the hours that followed, the three destroyers trailed us tenaciously, inexorably behind while we remained below 300 feet. Each time we tried to come up, the attack resumed, driving us back down. At 2330, after 14 hours of unsuccessful evasive tactics, the oxygen content in the boat was at a perilously low level and the depleted batteries were running critical. The only way to breathe was by deep, rapid gasps. An aura of futility had begun to settle over the crew.
It was then Commander Anderson made one of those decisions that can either prove brilliant—or fatal. We headed for the surface. With depth charges raining all around, the Thresher reversed course 180 degrees back toward Tokyo. As powerful searchlights played across the water, we surfaced a mere 500 yards from the depth-charging destroyers. Miraculously, none crossed our narrow silhouette. And because the sea was so filled with depth charge echoes, the sound of our screws went unnoticed. From the horizon we could still see the destroyers’ sweeping searchlights and hear the probing pings of their sonars as they echo-ranged on an empty ocean.
In the 14 hours of the attack, we had taken 26 close charges, and the Thresher’s damages precluded any thought of another attack. But we had been assigned another mission on this patrol: The Hornet (CV-8) and Enterprise (CV-6) were even then preparing to get under way to transport Jimmy Doolittle and his Army Air Forces’ B-25s for a bombing raid on Tokyo. Up-to-the-minute weather reports were essential. Therefore, Commander Anderson elected to remain on station. On the night of 18 April, the fires of Tokyo were plainly visible clear to the horizon.
Returning to Pearl Harbor, the Thresher was immediately placed in dry dock, where we learned that the hull was much more badly damaged than anticipated. The ballast tanks required replacements of a strip 100 feet long by six feet wide in the starboard tanks and a strip 60 feet long by six feet wide in the port tanks together with many supporting members. The port propeller shaft was replaced. But the pressure hull had held.
At the close of the overhaul period, Commander Anderson was relieved of command. Our new skipper, Lieutenant Commander William J. Millican, was a stocky Irishman from Brooklyn. He had commanded the S-18, a World War I-type submarine, on war patrols in the Aleutians. His first official announcement as the Thresher headed out on her fourth war patrol was that our final destination would be Fremantle, West Australia. Exuberant plans flew throughout the boat. We were not sorry to leave this area of the Pacific. Every boat entering these waters had, at some time, been attacked by our own air or surface forces, and some were seriously damaged. Submarine crews had learned to have little confidence in any force that did not wear dolphins. But had we known what was coming, our excitement would have been more constrained.
Passing the international date line, we neared the island of Maloelap in the Marshalls. On 6 July we entered Enijun Pass, submerged. Later in the morning, as a Japanese convoy zigzagged toward the pass, a 3,000-ton tanker with escorts came into periscope view. The captain ordered battle stations, submerged. As the convoy closed to our shooting range, we fired two torpedoes in measured sequence. They streaked for the tanker and then produced one loud explosion in the starboard quarter. The tanker staggered momentarily, then began to settle by the stem.
Following the torpedo wakes, the escorts stung us like hornets. The sea around us boiled with depth charge explosions as the Thresher sought deep water. The attack continued for three hours, and it was after dark before we could surface, still hotly pursued by the escorts. Sometime after midnight the chase was abandoned. The Thresher had taken 19 depth charges and sustained no damage.
With such an early success, the crew was in high spirits as we headed for our next destination, Kwajalein Atoll. We learned that an advanced Japanese Navy base was located there; the prospect of sinking a man-of-war excited the crew. As daylight dawned on a peaceful sea, we entered Gea Pass, submerged. Several ships came through the pass during the day, including three submarines, but none came within shooting range. As darkness settled over the islands, we surfaced to charge batteries but remained in the pass.
Lieutenant Larry Julihn was on the bridge on 8 July as the first faint light of dawn began to break over the horizon. It would soon be time to dive. The batteries were charged and the galley ovens were cooling down after the night’s baking. This reverie was shattered by the sonar operator’s cry, “Fast screws on the starboard bow!” as out of the mist loomed a large Japanese patrol craft on a collision course with us.
“Left full rudder! Clear the bridge!” shouted Lieutenant Julihn, as two blasts of the diving alarm rang out. While the lookouts dropped through the hatch, we could hear the shouts of Japanese seamen across the 50 yards that separated us. But as the conning tower dipped under, a heavy stream of salt water poured down from beneath the hatch gasket. In the race to get under, the lieutenant had lost his sandal, and it had become lodged between the gasket and the hatch. We had no choice but to surface again.
We broke the surface with the Japanese ship close aboard and were seen immediately. Although we cleared the hatch in seconds, the patrol craft was directly over us as we headed under. Depth charges straddled us as we reversed course and headed out of the pass. All day and into the night the patrol craft pressed the attack until, finally, about 0200, we eluded it and surfaced to begin a much-needed battery charge. Then, at sunrise, we headed back into Gea Pass.
The sun was just breaking when the captain sighted a Japanese ship. The first thing he noticed about her as he peered through the periscope was the snow-white brilliance of her sides. She appeared brand new. She was steering a straight course as she came through the pass with no escort. The sky above her, however, was dotted with aircraft providing coverage from above. By 0815 the captain could plainly see her decks lined with Japanese sailors all in clean, white uniforms. She was a 4,836-ton motor torpedo boat tender, the Shinsho Maru. Commander Millican ordered battle stations.
As the target neared, her course, range, and speed were systematically programmed into the torpedo data computer. We waited quietly off her track until she closed to shooting range. Then we fired two torpedoes at five- second intervals. The first passed beneath her stack, the second beneath her quarter. Two great explosions blasted her hull into three sections. Commander Millican looked through the periscope and reported as all three sections disappeared from the surface in a huge cloud of steam. Breaking-up noises were clearly audible for some time, as the Shinso Maru's watertight compartments ruptured. Where the ship had been, the water came alive with survivors and Commander Millican decided to remain close by to watch for anybody who might come out to rescue them.
Suddenly, a thunderous, earthshaking blast hit directly off our starboard bow. Light bulbs exploded with a shower of glass and dust, pieces of cork insulation fell from the overhead, men were lifted clear of their bunks, and two heavy wrenches used to open torpedo tube doors were blasted off their spindles and crashed to the steel deck, contributing to the bedlam. It was a dramatic reminder to us that aircraft carry depth charges too.
“Check for damage!” came the order from control. But we had already begun. A close check revealed no serious damage—or so we thought then.
Now the attack began in earnest and we headed for deeper water out of visual range of the aircraft. But as we inched downward, depth charges continued to fall all around. At 300 feet, sound reported destroyers’ screws bearing dead astern. They approached at high speed and unerringly homed in on our wake.
Then, mysteriously, all depth charging ceased. Why should they cut off the attack when they seemed to have an accurate fix on our position? Wherever we turned, the screws above followed. What we did not know was that the Thresher was leaving a brilliant, revealing trail on the surface.
What had happened was this: the 3,421-pound Mark XIV torpedo, which left the tube at its maximum speed, 47 knots, received its impetus from 400 pounds of air stored in an impulse bottle located in the superstructure above the torpedo room. The very first depth charge had cracked a silver-soldered connection to the impulse bottle for # 1 tube. So the Thresher was releasing a stream of air bubbles to the surface.
Then a strange disaster stuck. Since the attack began we had been rigged to run silently; hull ventilation and all unessential motors were shut down, communication was in whispers, and all movement through the boat was restricted. So we were startled when a loud, clanking noise, emanating from the starboard bow, began moving along the side. Slowly it moved aft, clanking along the hull. Each compartment reported the noise as it thumped along the side. Then it reached the after torpedo room and was gone. What now? The stem planes operator was the first man to know that trouble had not left us. Suddenly, he could no longer control the angle of the boat. Then realization dawned: a large grapnel had hooked into the stem plane guard. We were being brought to the surface—stern first.
The Thresher displaced 1,500 tons on the surface, but submerged, our buoyancy was neutral, neither heavy nor light. A small ship, therefore, could bring a 300-foot submarine to the surface. All eyes in the control room were on the depth gauges as our stem began to rise and the needle began to creep upward. The captain’s face showed no emotion, but his orders were clipped. “Hard dive on the planes! All ahead emergency!” Full amperage poured from the batteries to the motors, and the Thresher shuddered violently as the screws bit the water with a thrust of power. Seconds passed, as revolutions per minute increased in mammoth confrontation, giving new meaning to the term “tug-of-war.” But the grapnel held fast.
The energy in the batteries could not last for long with such extravagant expenditure of power, so the captain ordered, “All stop.” He decided that more weight might slow the ascent. In a series of orders that followed, we first flooded the after trim tank, followed by the water ’round torpedo tank (a tank located in each torpedo room that supplied water to fill the tube before outer doors were opened), then the four stem tubes, and, finally, the torpedo room bilges were flooded to the deck plates. But there was no perceptible slowing in the rise. A second full-power thrust was poured to the screws, but the Thresher continued to rise steadily, inexorably.
We made further attempts, but as we passed 200 feet, reluctantly resigned ourselves to the possibility of capture. But Commander Millican was not about to turn his ship over to a hated enemy. He ordered us to destroy all confidential material, to demolish the radio decoding equipment, and to place demolition charges for scuttling. There was no need for silence now. Radiomen went to work with sledge hammers. Gunner’s mates headed for the torpedo rooms.
Each torpedo room carried one 55-pound demolition charge of TNT. When these were placed between the warheads of the reload torpedoes and detonated, the Thresher would be blown out of the water and, hopefully, so would the enemy. But as we placed the charges we were sobered by the thought that for men swimming in the water, there would be little chance.
By now, the Thresher was rising above 150 feet with a severe down angle. With stubborn determination, the captain tried another approach: “Flood forward trim,” he commanded. This further increased the precipitous down angle and our total weight all over. Then he ordered, “Left full rudder! All ahead emergency!” Again, the Thresher shuddered and the bow began to drop, turning slowly to port. Then, magically, the grapnel was off! Did the cable break? Did the maneuver cause the stem to lift, slipping off the grapnel? Nobody knew the answer, but with tons of extra weight, we plummeted toward the bottom. “Put a bubble in bow buoyancy!” came the order, closely followed by, “Blow bow buoyancy!” As the high- pressure air hit the tank, the bow heaved upward with a jolt checking the descent. The Thresher was free.
In the minutes that followed, all concern for silence was abandoned as we frantically discharged water ballast overboard to regain our lost trim. Now that we were off the hook, the destroyers began depth charging with a fury. Sensing a kill, other patrol craft had joined the attack and the sea echoed with explosions. There was no relief. But gradually, the darkness that settled over the area obscured our trail of bubbles.
Finally, we lost our pursuers in the darkness and gratefully came to the surface. We had received 41 depth charges and two bombs in the previous 12 hours. We set course for Truk Atoll in the Carolines.
The remainder of the patrol took us past Truk and Palau and south across the equator through the Dutch East Indies. We conducted three more torpedo attacks, but made no hits. But this was the time of the faulty torpedoes. It would be another year before the problems were remedied. On 15 August 1942, the Thresher put into Fremantle Harbor.
Commander Millican remained in command of the Thresher for four war patrols and earned two Navy Crosses before being relieved of command. Returning to the States, he was given command of the new submarine, the USS Escolar (SS-294), which was lost with all hands on her first run.