By March 1942, the Japanese army had conquered Singapore, and Japan's navy had vanquished surface forces from the United States, Great Britain, Australia, and the Netherlands in the Battle of the Java Sea. From that point, no non-Japanese surface ship was safe in the waters of the East Indies. Practically unopposed, the Japanese transported a substantial army as well as sea and air forces to their base in Java—Surabaya. From there they reportedly planned to invade Australia, and it appeared nothing could stop them.
Except that someone at Pearl Harbor with authority and foresight, Pacific Fleet Commander-in-Chief Admiral Chester Nimitz, ordered a squadron of submarines to western Australia. One of those boats is the subject of this story.
On the surface of the Indian Ocean west of Australia, the U.S. submarine Thresher (SS-200) drove her bow through the waves as fast as four huge diesel engines could move her. Steering a sinuous course northward, she approached the barrier islands of the East Indies. The sun disappeared below the horizon, darkness set in, and there was no moon. The submarine drove on without lights, her black hull becoming part of the darkness.
On the bridge, three lookouts and myself, the officer of the deck (OOD), searched the surrounding sea with light-gathering binoculars and saw only the dim image of the horizon. Below in the conning tower the captain, Lieutenant Commander William J. "Moke" Millican, and the navigator, Lieutenant Bill Post, studied the chart one more time. The captain ordered us to steer zero-one-zero and make two-thirds speed. As OOD, I responded with an aye-aye and made it so.
The captain came up to the bridge to emphasize that the course we were on was to take us through Sunda Strait, between Sumatra and Java. It was a very narrow pass. He then told me to warn my lookouts to be alert for patrol craft. He would be in the conning tower, he said, and if we detected any, we were to call him immediately.
"Moke" Millican Leads the Way
This was my third war patrol with the captain, and I had absolute faith in the "Old Man" (he was about 35 years old). During these patrols I had seen the captain's intelligence, foresight, and calm actions prevent dangerous situations from becoming fatal. In the conning tower during attacks and counterattacks, the captain always seemed to be one move ahead of the enemy. It was no wonder his leadership inspired his crew to perform with alertness, enthusiasm, and determination.
The Thresher made the transit of the strait on the surface at two-engine speed. At first light the next day, with batteries fully charged, we submerged and patrolled at periscope depth. Our only sightings were sailboats, which we carefully avoided. At night we surfaced in the Java Sea and proceeded at one-engine speed toward the approaches to Surabaya, passing small vessels in the dark. A neophyte might have thought the captain was avoiding contact with the enemy, as other submarine commanding officers were known to do at that time in the war. We knew better. From decoding classified messages and from the haste shown in welding a steel plate over the mouth of the damaged number one torpedo tube to get the Thresher under way quickly, we knew the captain was on a vital mission, and timing was important.
At dawn on Christmas 1942, the submarine submerged to periscope depth. The diving officer, Lieutenant James Bryant, would go no deeper, because the Java Sea is shallow. The Thresher moved silently eastward, toward the seaward end of the Surabaya Strait, a narrow passage between Java and Madura Island. In the conning tower, Bryant and Post alternated making periscope searches every seven or eight minutes. Bryant sighted a red navigation buoy dead ahead and told Post to call the captain. Post, a man of few words, nodded. He ordered a ten-degree change of course to miss the buoy and also to move into slightly deeper water.
Battle Stations Torpedo!
The captain came up and confirmed that the buoy marked the seaward end of the Surabaya Strait and instructed us to keep it in sight. At 1216, the watch sighted smoke, probably from a ship far up the channel. At 1340, a column of transports guarded by destroyers and Zero fighters appeared. The ships were in line on the only course they could take, toward the sea buoy.
On board the Thresher, the alarm sounded. "Battle stations torpedo! Make ready five tubes forward," the captain ordered.
The forward room reported five tubes ready. We knew the course of the targets and entered it into the Torpedo Data Computer (TDC). The range, estimated at 1,500 yards according to the periscope, was also entered in the TDC. The target's angle on the bow was 45 degrees. The captain ordered the periscope down, while the closest destroyer, echo-ranging, passed ahead of the Thresher. Then he suddenly ordered "Final bearing and shoot. Up periscope!" The captain put his eye to the scope as it was rising. "Bearing, mark!" went in the TDC. "Fire torpedoes!" Five torpedoes plunged out at eight-second intervals. A minute later came a series of explosions; it was hard to tell how many. The captain ordered up scope and reported the first ship sinking, her superstructure on fire. Second ship sinking, bow under and stern up, props turning in the air. Third ship turned and moving slowly. All other ships heading back into port.
At this moment, BANG! An aircraft bomb exploded over the submarine. "Take 'er down!" the captain ordered. Lieutenant Bryant got a depth-finder reading: 140 feet. He stopped the descent at 130 feet.
With the submarine's position marked by aircraft, the destroyers approached, echo-rangers pinging loudly. One destroyer dropped eight depth charges in a line. They missed, causing the submariners to believe the echo-ranging had reverberated off the nearby shallow bottom. The captain decided to attack the destroyers rather than give them a second chance. Again, he ordered "Battle stations torpedo! Bring me up to periscope depth." After his first look through the periscope, he announced, "They are going back to Surabaya at high speed." At that point, Lieutenant Commander Post said, "Too bad they got away.
Shokaku Departs the Java Sea
At dark, the Thresher surfaced and headed northeast to the central part of the Java Sea. Shortly before midnight, the lookouts sighted two large, distant objects. As the submarine drew closer, making slow speed, the objects were identified as an aircraft carrier, the Shokaku, a survivor of the Battle of Midway, and a heavy cruiser. The Thresher increased speed to attack. At a range estimated at 6,000 yards, the big ships turned and headed out of the Java Sea at high speed. At the same time, the submarine's lookouts and I sighted a destroyer closing with a bone in her teeth. The Thresher made a quick dive to 120 feet and prepared to attack the rapid, closing target, but was not able to get readings to aim torpedoes. Instead, she received a good-bye greeting of 13 depth charges. After dropping those hull-busters, the destroyer made tight circles over us, then took off at high speed in the direction the carrier and cruiser had gone.
Commander Millican wasted no time chasing the surface ships; they were too fast, and wherever they were going, it was out of the Java Sea. Their departure must have meant one thing: the Japanese had canceled their plan to invade Australia. They did not make major troop movements without air cover, and that cover had just gone elsewhere.
Millican also knew that the base in Surabaya depended on the main Japanese hub in Singapore. Therefore, he would search for targets along that lifeline. The Thresher surfaced and headed back toward Surabaya. At dawn she submerged and continued on, making frequent periscope searches along the way. At mid-afternoon the watch officer sighted smoke on the horizon and called the captain, who decided the smoke came from the stack of a surface ship and ordered us to surface on four main engines. The chase began.
Dud Torpedoes and an Improvised Gun Sight
The target was fast. The submarine had enough speed to get close enough to see her masts but not so close as to be seen from her bridge. As darkness fell, the Thresher pulled ahead and turned toward the target. When abeam of the target with a 90-degree angle on the bow, we fired a spread of three torpedoes. Sonar tracked them to the ship and heard two "clunks"—but no explosions. Again the Thresher forged ahead to gain a perfect firing position abeam of the target. We launched two more torpedoes. One hit—a dud.
At this point, the captain ordered the deck gun manned. Our solitary deck gun was no ordinary submarine weapon. The small, 3-inch gun put on when the ship was built had been removed in Fremantle, Australia, and replaced by a 5-inch/51-caliber gun that had longer range and much more hitting power than the original weapon. In the impending fight the submarine would need all of that power, as the target could now be seen with binoculars to be a large transport with a flat top. In three minutes the well-trained gun crew had manned the weapon and was ready to fire. However, the pointer and the trainer who aimed the gun could not see the target in the darkness without optical sights, and there were none.
The captain came down from the bridge and ordered two sets of binoculars and some tying cord be sent to the deck. He gave the binoculars and some cord to each of the aimers and then ordered me, as the gunnery officer, to open the breech of the gun. When the breech was opened, the captain leaned over and, with his own binoculars, sighted through the barrel of the gun. He saw the target and called out, "Mark!" At that call the pointer and trainer each set their binoculars and tied them on the sights. When they reported they were ready, the captain returned to the bridge.
Attack of the 5-Inch Gun
Firing commenced. The first shot hit the target amidships and brought forth a cloud of steam as if from a boiler. The big ship could now locate us from the muzzle flashes of our gun. She turned to ram the sub and commenced firing her machine guns with tracers. Unperturbed, the gun crew continued firing while the Thresher went to full speed to get beyond the range of the ship's weapons. The big gun silenced the machine guns and did not stop until the target was dead in the water. That took 75 rounds, and ten rounds were all that remained. The Thresher came close to the big ship and blasted those last ten into her waterline. Still she did not sink. Because I was gunnery officer, I stayed on the bridge as OOD. The captain turned the sub's stern toward the transport and fired a torpedo from a stern tube into her hull. It was another dud, but it did manage to punch a 21-inch hole below the waterline. With that and the damage from the exploding 5-inch projectiles, the big ship began to sink.
We saw men in lifeboats pulling away from the sinking ship and other survivors jumping into the water—with or without life jackets—until the ship's stern went under, followed by the rest of the hull. The captain turned to me and asked, "What do you say we pick up a couple of prisoners?"
"No, sir, let's get out of here," was my immediate reply.
Without hesitation, Millican gave the orders to leave at good speed. It is well we did so. As the submarine glided away in the murk, we saw a destroyer arrive at high speed and stop at the place we had just vacated. Neither Millican nor myself had any doubt that the destroyer was answering an SOS.
Back to Fremantle
The Thresher headed for deeper water toward the sea lanes to Surabaya. While on the surface, she sent an encrypted message to report sinking the big ship and the failure of the last six torpedoes to explode. In reply, she received a dispatch from Submarine Command in Fremantle ordering the Thresher to return to port for a check of the torpedoes that remained on board.
It would take more than a year for the experts to identify the cause of the torpedo malfunction, even though it was obvious that the problem lay in the difference between the target angles of the first five torpedoes fired by Thresher, which exploded, and those of the last six, which did not.