This trip was sheer, high adventure. Bougainville loomed above us, one shade darker than the night. A faint damp breeze raised riplets which idly lapped the submarine’s sides. Lying motionless on the surface, we made ready for a night’s work somewhat removed from our usual fare of hunting torpedo targets. A scant thousand yards away, others were, we hoped, waiting. Eyes must have been straining seaward— straining to detect our silhouette which, to them, meant escape from hard-pressing Japanese patrols.
That one of the precious few submarines allocated to the Coral Sea area could be diverted from offensive patrol for rescue work was eloquent testimony to the value of the services rendered by the refugees. Giving up an opportunity to flee as the Japanese occupied the island in 1942, a staunch few Australian planters had taken to the bush. There, assisted by loyal natives, they had scouted Japanese forces and had transmitted invaluable intelligence reports on aircraft and ship movements by portable radio. The tide of the entire Solomons campaign might well have turned against us but for timely advance warning of strikes from these “coast watchers.”
The inscrutable Japanese mind, sometimes brilliant, sometimes dull, had finally tumbled to the damaging espionage and had launched a determined drive to rid the island of the offenders. For the past three months, the last remaining pair of Australians and their band of natives had been slowly losing a grim game of jungle hide-and-seek. Constantly on the move with no time for food or rest, harried beyond endurance, they had, only four days before, reported their plight and requested succor. It was now to be our privilege to spirit them away from under their pursuers’ noses.
The previous morning, I had lost a good deal of the awe of German competence which was prevalent at that time. The only charts of Solomon Islands available to us were British Admiralty reprints of pre-World War I German publication. They were slightly more interesting than blank plotting sheets, but hardly more helpful. The entire west coast of Bougainville was plotted some five miles out of position, and the coastal configuration shown was anything but faithful to the facts. Bays, coves, points of land appeared in the field of the periscope where none was indicated on the chart and the reverse was equally commonplace. Soundings were utterly unreliable. Presumably, the west coast of Bougainville had held so little interest for civilized humanity before World War II that no one had bothered to chart it accurately.
Imagine, then, the navigator’s dilemma when he was called upon to place his submarine at a pre-dawn diving position within the limited submerged radius of a rendezvous vaguely described in terms of a useless chart. Conditions for celestial observation had been good at morning twilight; and, after we had submerged for the day, I had allowed myself a moment to revel in the navigator’s enduring delight—a point fix of a half-dozen star sights. When the sun rose, however, and periscope navigation became possible, my troubles began. Most landmarks were unidentifiable, and bearings upon those which were identifiable refused to cross on the offending chart. By mid-morning, my burning purpose in life was to castigate the Germans for their inept hydrography. By noon, I was beginning to wonder if the poor wretches we were to pick up could hold out another day. With each periscope sweep of the lifeless jungle, my misgivings grew. Even if we reached the spot by sea, how on earth could our Australian friends reach it overland? The Aussie is a resourceful fellow, however, and reach it he did. Around 4 p.m. we spotted his signal—a white blotch of cloth draped over some underbrush at the water’s edge.
At this juncture, the skipper took over control of the boat. Piloting by periscope from the conning tower, he chose a spot to his liking, then sang out to the diving officer in the control room, “I’ll take the dive, Don.”
He placed himself before the conning tower depth gage and inclinometer (a sort of level to indicate the tilt of the boat, ’fore and aft).
To the helmsman, “All stop. Rudder amidships.”
Silence came over us. With screws stopped, the boat lost way.
To the control room below, “Diving planes on zero. Pump 1000 pounds from forward trim to after trim.” He was shifting water ballast among the trimming tanks.
“Pump 500 pounds from auxiliary to sea” —removing ballast to check downward momentum.
The ship was now dead in the water, with a slight angle down by the head, and settling slowly. The needle of the depth gage crept past 100 feet.
“Sounding!”
The acoustic fathometer clicked.
“Eight fathoms under the keel, sir,” came the report.
In a moment, an easy lurch and a motionless depth gage told us we had bottomed.
“Hold her down with about twenty thousand pounds in auxiliary, Don.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
A skeletonized watch was posted and the rest of the crew turned to books, games of cribbage or bunks, according to their tastes, to while away the hours until we were to surface after dark.
High adventure!—lying on the bottom in 25 fathoms of the Coral Sea, a third of a mile from the shoreline of Japanese held Bougainville. Adventurous appetites of a homelier form had now to be satisfied and the fragrance of broiling steaks soon aroused the most inveterate of sleepers. Reports of the excellence of submarine fare were, you see, well founded.
At the time of sunset, red lights replaced the white ones in the conning tower, the control room and in the two end compartments, the forward and after torpedo rooms. Officers, the prospective bridge watch, and rubber-boat crews donned red night adaptation goggles. A perceptible increase in wisecracks and friendly banter was the only other sign that an unusual operation impended.
The last half-hour before surfacing after a day’s submergence is inevitably the worst. One gets short of breath in the diminishing oxygen, and the cigarettes which are reluctant to burn never taste quite right. It was with relief, therefore, that we went to battle stations and heard the skipper order, “Pump out your excess ballast, Don.”
The pump whirred for a time and stopped. “Boat’s compensated, captain.”
“Very well, blow safety!”
High pressure air whistled into the waist ballast tank, and, lightened, the ship began to rise. As we passed 125 feet, the skipper’s easy tones were heard again.
“All ahead two-thirds. Steady on course three-five-five. Open safety vents!”
The hydraulically operated flapper valves at the top of the ballast tank clanked open, allowing the air in the tank to escape. Water gushed in through the flood valves at the bottom and relieved the boat of her positive buoyancy.
“Safety is flooded, captain,” the diving officer reported.
“Very well, shut safety vents. Make depth six-oh feet and make all preparations for surfacing.”
Instantly, orders were being barked through the boat, turning valves rattled, hatches banged shut. The “organized confusion” that is a submarine diving or surfacing was in full swing.
The diving officer peered up into the conning tower from the control room ladder. “Ready in all respects to surface with the exception of the lower conning tower hatch, sir,” he said.
“Very well, Don. Shut the lower hatch.”
The hatch followed the head down with a slam. The securing dogs clunked into position to hold it closed against internal pressure.
“Surface!”—three honks on the diving alarm and more compressed air. The ship broke out of the water and settled on a flat sea. The upper conning tower hatch was flung open and the quartermaster of the watch scrambled to the bridge, the skipper hard on his heels.
As the radar commenced its search, we in the conning tower waited, knowing that the two on the bridge were sweeping the horizon with their binoculars. These moments just after surfacing are, perhaps, the submarine’s most vulnerable. She has shed her cloak of invisibility (this was before the days of snorkel), but with exhausted batteries and full ballast tanks, she has not yet regained her surface mobility. She has, perforce, relinquished the initiative and is restive in a sluggish defensive attitude.
In good time, after the two pairs of eyes and the electronic Cyclops established our solitude, the main air induction was opened, equalizing the excess pressure in the boat with atmospheric in a great, sighing exhalation. The lower conning tower hatch was then opened, and blowers forcing air into the ballast tanks whined up to speed.
The skipper maneuvered to a spot favorably located with respect to the white cloth which we had plotted on the chart before bottoming. At his command, the forward and after torpedo room hatches lifted and dark figures commenced to mulehaul up bulky, uninflated rubber boats—eight in all, four at each end of the ship.
The radar ground relentlessly in its bearings, keeping watch as the work on deck progressed. Careful planning had placed equipment so that it was passed up in just the proper order—knives, flashlights with dim red lenses, carbines, oars. Every few minutes there would be a sharp hiss, and an eerie black form would spring up from the deck gratings—another rubber boat inflated.
As executive officer, or “second,” I was in charge of activities on deck, and before long I was able to report to the bridge, “All boats inflated and equipped, sir. Ready for launching.”
“Very well,” the captain responded, “Launch boats.”
The rafts (calling them boats was unduly generous) smacked the water and the crews scrambled aboard.
“Cast off and make for the beach. Don’t forget your signals if you get into trouble.” Trouble!—we would be able to provide them little help. They were as much on their own as the inky night and a forbidding shoreline could arrange—and that was considerable.
Off they went on that endless 800 yard trip, weird and ungainly as they passed out of view in two little groups of four. Adventure, yes, but give those boat crews credit. As one cocky Irish seaman put it, “My shipping-over papers didn’t say nothing about this. Next time I’ll read the fine print!”
This was an experience entirely foreign to any and all things encompassed by their training. Their knowledge of getting through surf in a rubber boat was slight. Their knowledge of small arms was academic, acquired on the rifle range, not on the battle field. They had no knowledge whatsoever of how to fend for themselves had they become marooned on a hostile, tropical beach. But there was a job to do, and alert submariners were known to get jobs done. Resourcefulness is a carefully nurtured trait in submarines.
How long we waited was anyone’s guess. The imagination is a wild, unfettered thing under such circumstances. At length, however, a look-out blurted, “Here they come, captain!”
“Standby on deck.”
If you have ever paddled an overloaded eight-man rubber boat, you can appreciate the crews’ feelings as they drew near us. The water solidifies each time you dip a paddle and all you seem to get in return for your exertions is a sulky yawing from side to side. Nothing propels boats like a lusty seaman’s curses, however, and one by one they reached their respective stations alongside. Hands from the submarine’s deck reached down to help struggling bodies up the nets hung down the side for them. As they clambered over the lifelines, they were met by guides who hustled them down the proper hatch. Natives grunted as they stubbed bare toes on metal fittings in the deck.
Anxiously, I looked for two white faces. As I moved up the deck, I noticed a sailor grabbing what appeared to be a pack on the back of one climbing figure and was stupified to hear a baby’s yowl.
The sailor started as though he had been bitten—perhaps he had.
“—? What’s this?” he swore.
A moment later, I saw a gibbering Chinese hauled aboard. The word of the party’s projected escape had travelled the grapevine well.
Up forward I heard an Australian voice and found the two whites I had sought. The shorter one wrung my hand. “We gathered a bit more of a crowd than we’d anticipated,” he said, and then, apologetically, “There are still some more on the beach.” This was a blow. So far we had been completely unmolested and we did not want to push our good fortune too far. But what was there to say? Only one thing, of course, “Right. We’ll see about them. Go on below and get yourself some coffee.”
I made my way to the senior boat officer and crouched to speak to him as his crew held their boat alongside.
“Hey, Jim! How’d it go?”
“Well, pretty rugged. It was a mad scramble. These natives were all worked up —all trying to crowd in the boats at once. Finally had to wave a. ‘45’ around to keep ’em in line. Three boats capsized starting out through the surf, but nobody got hurt, thank God, and we got ’em righted and squared away. Funny thing, there was a Chinaman in one and when she upset he lost a bundle of papers he’d been carrying under his arm———, did he yowl! Must have been unpaid laundry tickets going back to 1930!”
“How many more on the beach?”
“Just about another full load.”
“How do you feel? Can you make another trip?”
“We can, but I don’t know about these—— boats! What hole in the ground did they dig these motheaten things out of, anyway? They must be some the flyboys surveyed as unsafe.” He paused, then, “Well, give me the word when the rest are ready to shove off.”
I headed for the bridge. We had expected a total of 30 men—one load. All our plans had been predicated upon a single trip to the beach.
“Waiting for the word, captain.” He understood the full import of the perfunctory phrase and replied gravely, “Very well. Shove ’em off when you’re ready.”
Once again, the little procession advanced into the night. From the last boat I heard a muffled voice, “So help me, when I get back to Altoona, if I ever paddle a canoe again it’ll be a . . .” This was a good sign. Men growling in that tone are effective men. I could not repress a silent tribute, “You said it, sailor. Give ’em hell. You’ve got what it takes to win this man’s war!”
It was past midnight by the time the boats straggled back a second time, the paddlers stroking on pure nerve and guts. Once the passengers were below, the tedious final stages of the operation began. The stubborn water-logged boats had to be dragged aboard, deflated on deck and rolled up to fit down the 22-inch circular hatches. No romance in this job, but, with Herculean efforts, the men got everything stowed below. I checked the last hatch shut from the main deck and arrived on the bridge as the control room was reporting, “Green lights (indicating water tightness) on all deck hatches, captain. Boat is rigged for dive.”
“Topside secured and rigged for dive, sir,” I reported.
“Good! Let’s get the hell out of here! All ahead standard. Left full rudder. Answer bells on four main engines.”
Starting diesels rumbled and settled down to their work. It was good to feel the ship come alive and pick up headway. Below decks, the sailors who had made up the tired, exasperated boat crews were already relaxing over coffee and sandwiches, kidding the natives and learning pidgin English. For my part, I felt the night well spent as I watched two emaciated Australians wolf the coffee, buttered toast, and scrambled eggs they had not tasted in eighteen months.