The journal from which I excerpted these notes describes my late father’s service as engineering officer and executive officer on the submarine S-30 (SS-135) in the Asiatic Fleet from 1927-30, and his time on “The China Station"—which included the Philippines, the China coast, and Japan. This helped to prepare him, after surviving the attack on Pearl Harbor, to command the 6,000 officers and men on the 40 gunships of Landing Craft (Support) Flotilla 4 during the final, bloody assault on Japan.
One spring, our division of six submarines and the tender started north from our winter home at Manila to our summer base at Tsingtao, Shantung Province, China. We were to stop at several Chinese ports on the way up. After a few days at Hong Kong, on a rainy morning the submarines cast off and formed column astern of the Beaver [AS-5] and put out to sea, en route for Amoy. It was a foul day, raw, with the drenching rain followed by fog when we reached the sea. The entrance to Hong Kong harbor is not a nice place in a fog, with an eggshell submarine and with steamers and junks about.
By noontime, a wind came up and cleared off the weather and began whipping up the water. Things became rougher in the afternoon, and at 1800, when I went to get dinner in our little wardroom (which resembled a Pullman section) I had to drink my soup from a teacup and to eat the solid food with very little gravy and with the plate held in my hand.
After dinner, I lay on my bunk and read a book until [it was] time to go up on the bridge and take the 2000-0000 watch. The sub was rolling so badly that I had to brace myself with my feet to keep from rolling out of the bunk. I was almost glad when 1945 came and it was time to start bundling up to go on the bridge.
I put on a lot of heavy clothes and an overcoat, with oilskins and a sou’wester hat as an outer layer. Not letting go [of] one firm object until I had got hold of another, I stumbled from the stateroom into the COC (Central Operating Compartment). All the crew who weren’t on watch or in their bunks were gathered in this compartment—the only place where smoking was allowed. They were sprawled everywhere, hanging on to keep in one place, talking, playing cribbage, or reading magazines that had become grimy from use.
With all the people and the tobacco smoke, the air was foul and the electrician (who had a weak stomach) on watch at the controllers was sitting on a camp stool, bent over a bucket which he had wedged between his feet.
I climbed the narrow brass ladder that led from the COC up through the conning tower to the bridge, and took over the watch from Jimmy Hicks, who quickly slid below. There was really nothing to do except keep a bright lookout for junks and steamers, and to send down word to the engineroom for a change in speed of so many RPM when we got ahead or astern of our position in the column of ships. I let the quartermaster go below, since I had to stay on the bridge anyhow and there was no use both of us getting wet. The helmsman was steering in the conning tower, which was fitted with a gyrocompass repeater—so I was alone on the bridge with my discomfort.
It was the roughest watch I ever had. The waves were nearly abeam, and they came so close together that the ship could not always rise out of the trough of one before the crest of another came on. Usually we rode far enough up the side of an oncoming wave for the crest merely to break against our superstructure and send a sheet of bitterly cold water flying over the railing and into the bridge. Occasionally, though, we were caught in a trough between two ugly waves, and the crest of the oncoming water would rise unbroken up our sides, leer for a second over the bridge railing, and then come down on me like a ton of ice.
My duties then were twofold: to hang on hard so as not to be washed overboard and use my feet to close the heavy steel cover of the hatch, and to stand on it so that the spring-weight would not cause it to fly open and allow the water to go tumbling down into the ship. As soon as practicable I would step off the hatch cover, so that the spring could lift it open and let the air stream flow down to our diesel engines.
Though it was a clear night—so far as the sky was concerned—the spray fouled the visibility and made impossible anything but glimpses of the ships ahead of us in the column. I had only one comfort: on such a night all junks would probably have gone into port.
The ocean-going junks are built of heavy timbers and are massive enough to be a menace to a thin-skinned submarine on such a night—particularly since they are poorly lighted, if lighted at all. It is marvelous, however, to see the way such clumsy-looking craft can get clear when the crew suddenly wakes up and finds their ship in close quarters.
Well, of course on this particular watch I had got entirely wet, and I was shivering with cold before 15 minutes had gone by. The wind was increasing and the waves were breaking over the bridge, until I was jumping on the hatch cover to close it about every 30 seconds. Most of the time I was standing in very cold water that reached anywhere from ankles to waist. Sometimes I couldn’t get the hatch closed quickly enough to keep water from falling below—most of it hitting the helmsman, whose post at the steering lever kept him almost under the hatch opening.
Once, a tremendous sea hit us and the ship heeled over until, if I had not been hanging on with all my strength, I could have reached over the bridge rail and have dipped my hand into the swirling black water. I was near the voice tube, and faintly I could hear coming up it the yells of surprise, and then as the ship righted, the whoops of laughter of the crew in the COC. The loungers, smokers, and cribbage players had been hurled together, along with two large chests full of blueprints, into the corner of the control room among the Kingston-valve levers.
That was not the prize jest, however. The cook, back in the galley, had just put two big kettles of beans into the oven to bake for breakfast. The roll of the ship had catapulted the heavy iron kettles clean through the oven door, across the room, and onto the electrician’s work bench, 12 feet or more away. Since the cook happened not to be hurt and rose with an invective as violent as the wind that had caused his trouble, slipping about his galley all gory with beans and catsup, the event was hailed as a joke of the choicest.
At midnight, my relief came up and I turned over the watch to him and slid below as quickly as my heavy wet clothing allowed. In the stateroom, braced against the bunk, I wrestled off the clumsy oilskins, soggy overcoat, and drenched under gear, dried myself with a towel, put on pajamas, and lay down not to sleep—but to hold on.
All the next day we had the same sort of thing, except that during the forenoon the submarines made a routine dive on signal from the division commander, who was embarked in the Beaver. While we were below the surface we didn’t have such rough going, even though as far down as 60 feet there was a very bad roll. The following morning we picked up Chapel Island and turned into Amoy.
[There followed a few days to refit the ships.]
Early the next morning, the division of submarines and the Beaver got under way for Tsingtao; but instead of steaming in formation, we scattered on radial courses and began our patrol runs. The weather became bad rapidly, and then an awful time set in.
The patrol run was a simulation of wartime conditions. For a few days we remained on the surface—diving only to prevent any surface ship from sighting us—but during most of the ten days the rules required us to remain submerged during daylight hours, and to come to the surface to charge our batteries only after dark. Except that the long hours submerged were tiresome, it would ordinarily have not been bad—our air purifier made things reasonably comfortable. But the weather made things hellish.
Roll, pitch; roll, pitch. Never a peaceful moment in the hunk. Never a meal except cold victuals eaten standing and braced. Never a moment’s calm, even when submerged to 60 feet. But the worst was that at night, when we came to the surface to charge batteries, the hatches might not be opened. No one might go up on deck for a breath. Everything was awash.
The ship could be aired out only through the conning tower hatch, which of course was being intermittently closed and opened as the waves broke over and rolled off. The air below was so humid that perspiration did not evaporate, but clogged the pores and caused a rash. The warm, fetid air, condensing on the cold ship’s bulkheads, caused every inch of metal to drip moisture. Flour, potatoes, and bread quickly mildewed, and even the food in the icebox spoiled. We subsisted on canned stores, usually eaten cold since it was hard to keep anything on the range long enough to cook it.
With the rolling of the ship, the engineroom and motor room bilges could not be cleaned or pumped properly, and so they filled with an oily slime that splashed on the bulkheads and stank. The rolling of the ship, together with the heat and smell in the motor room, kept the oilers on watch there always sick, even though they were old hands. The captain developed an abscessed tooth and suffered constantly.
Of course we didn’t see very much of the world except through the periscope. The watches for us officers were the same as on a normal surface run: four hours on and eight hours off. The difference was that, when submerged, we stood watch in the control room—at the periscope—conning the ship and also watching our submerged trim. The latter was done by orders to the men at the electric controllers that operated the diving rudders, to the electrician at the motor controls which varied our speed, and to the men who operated the pumps, air valves, and Kingston valves, which increased or decreased our ballast of sea water.
Most of the time on these long daylight dives, however, we ran 60 to 100 feet below the surface: too far down for the periscope to reach up to the surface and far below the hull of any passing merchantman.
On the ninth day the weather moderated, and on the morning of the tenth day there was little wind and only a moderately strong sea. When the official time for the expiration of the patrol run came around we set our course for dear old Tsingtao—our destination and our summer base—planning to arrive off the entrance just before sunset. As we approached the coast, however, a thick fog set in and we slowed to 6 knots. We were, by this time of course, running on the surface.
Things began to look bad for our chances of making port that night. Then, just before dark, a rift came in the fog and we sighted the rocky island and lighthouse, off the entrance—just where they should have been according to our calculations. This fix gave us a safe course to steer into Kiachow Bay, and we headed inside, picking up the light off the Bund of Tsingtao on our starboard hand, rounding the point, and anchoring just at dark in our old holding- ground. One other submarine had already arrived, but the Beaver and the other four subs had not yet come in.
I didn’t have the duty that night, and so I stayed on board after anchoring only long enough to inspect my engines and to set the watch of engineers that was to charge batteries. Then I clambered into a sampan with my suitcase and I was soon ashore at the naval landing. In the crowd of rickshaw coolies I saw my old boy from last year, who came charging up between his shafts giggling and ducking.
He was soon bowling me up the road to the Tsingtao Cafe. I stopped there and had a warm greeting from old Catiforis (the Greek restaurateur) and from Madame Broaduss (never knew her real name), his Russian lady friend and partner. They gave me borscht, beef a la Stroganoff burgundy, and chicken cutlets.
Stupid with food and fatigue, I then took the rickshaw around to the Grand Hotel on the Bund, where they gave me a room with a private bath. I soaked in the tub and then fell into bed, where I slept for 12 hours without, I believe, even turning over.
