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Six hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Admiral Harold R. Stark, then-Chief of Naval Operations, ordered U.S. forces to initiate unrestricted submarine warfare against the Empire of Japan. The result was the most successful guerre de course—war on trade—ever waged. Months before the Pacific Fleet dropped anchor in Tokyo Bay, U.S. submarines had achieved the aim that had eluded Germany’s U-boats in both world wars: the emasculation of the merchant marine upon which an insular enemy depended for survival. Exactly how many ships and tons they sank remains uncertain. The Navy’s wartime calculations added up to roughly 4,000 vessels and 10 million tons; the immediate postwar Joint Army- Navy Assessment Committee survey reduced these totals to 1,314 vessels and 5.3 million tons, plus a quarter-million tons of “probables;” but historians have long been aware that the committee’s scoring (although used herein) is not entirely accurate. On the whole, however, it is clear that the submarine force, at 50,000 men less than 2% of the Navy’s strength, destroyed approximately 55% of all Japanese vessels lost to all causes. Included in its bag were the battleship Kongo, 8 carriers, 11 cruisers, and at least 181 other combatants. U.S. losses amounted to 52 submarines (3 in the Atlantic) and 3,500 officers and men, slightly more than one-fifth of those who went on war patrols.
The submarine force’s success appears all the more remarkable in that it entered the struggle armed with a grossly defective torpedo, the infamous Mark XIV, mention of which is apt to raise the blood pressure of men who wore dolphins between 1941 and 1945. These torpedoes had an aggravating habit of running deeper than they had been set; their magnetic exploders tended to explode prematurely or not at all; and when these were deactivated, their contact exploders proved equally unreliable. To add to the problem, the Bureau of Ordnance insisted that nothing was wrong with its torpedoes; their failures must be the fault of their users. It was September 1943—21 months into the war—before the submariners themselves remedied the last of the Mk XIV’s defects. By then, the electric-powered Mk XVIII, which, unlike the steam-driven Mk XIV, did not leave a bubbling wake, had begun to enter service. It, too, experienced teething troubles, but they were negligible in comparison to those that plagued its predecessor. Had U.S. submarines been equipped with an effective torpedo at the start of the war, they probably could have come close to doubling the number of ships they sank before they received one.
Two other events in 1943 also increased the lethality of the U.S. underseas offensive. These were the cracking of the maru code used to report Japanese convoy routes and movements, and the deployment of the first three U.S. wolfpacks. The latter, small by German standards, consisted of three boats apiece. None proved particularly satisfactory, but the Pacific Fleet learned some valuable lessons. Another important advance, the outfitting of the submarine fleet with surface-search radar, had begun late in 1942.
While these and other developments greatly enhanced the U.S. attack on enemy trade, Japanese provisions for the defense of trade remained rudimentary. Imbued with the spirit of the offensive and dedicated to the cult of the “decisive battle,” Japan’s seagoing samurai displayed scant interest in protecting lowly merchantmen. Not until November 1943, when it established the Combined Escort Fleet, did the Imperial Navy make a serious attempt to coordinate convoy operations, and even thereafter construction of escort vessels remained barely sufficient to replace losses from an already inadequate supply. Fairness demands noting that, in contrast to the war in the Atlantic—where the Allies could concentrate solely on countering Germany’s guerre de course—in the Pacific the Imperial Navy was confronted simultaneously by both a guerre de course and the largest guerre d’escadre—fleet operations—in history. The combination posed a challenge the Japanese lacked the resources to meet.
The pay-off came in 1944, when U.S. submarines sank 603 ships, totalling 2.7 million tons, more than they had in the entire war to date. Together with the vessels claimed by planes and mines, these losses slashed Japan’s bulk imports to 60% of the previous year’s. In December, submarines found the enemy’s erstwhile convoy routes deserted. What little Japanese shipping that still moved did so by hugging coastal waters too shallow for submarines to enter.
Still, one potential hunting ground remained: the Sea of Japan, also known as Hirohito’s Lake, the wedge-shaped body of water, approximately 900 miles long and at most 250 miles wide, between the Home Islands and the Asian mainland. U.S. submarines had penetrated this sheltered sea in the fall of 1943, but it had been placed off limits after the legendary Dudley “Mush” Morton’s Wahoo (SS-238) was lost attempting to exit via La Perouse Strait in October. Vice Admiral Charles A. Lockwood—revered by his subordinates as Uncle Charlie—Commander, Submarines, Pacific Fleet, was convinced that, alerted by these operations, the Japanese would mine the entrances to the Sea of Japan so heavily that further incursions would
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Proceedings/June 1995
i be impractical until a means had been devised to deal with
r mine barriers.
t In late 1944, Lockwood believed that he had such a
J means at hand. It took the form of Frequency Modulated
t Sonar (FMS). Originally intended for minesweepers, FMS
- showed the location of mines on an electronic screen and,
t at contact, emitted a clear chime that submariners named
) “Hell’s Bells.” The first FMS-equipped boat reached Pearl
- Harbor in June 1944. Training and trials, in which Lock) Wood involved himself deeply, followed as other FMS
- boats became available, and at the turn of the year the
i Tinosa (SS-283) successfully made the first FMS patrol,
i In January 1945 Lockwood directed his staff to begin
planning for a thrust into Hirohito’s Lake. Spearheading i the task was Commander William Bernard (Barney)
Sieglaff, who joined Lockwood’s staff that spring after : sinking 14 Japanese ships in 7 patrols as commanding of
ficer of the Tautog (SS-199) and Tench (SS-417). Operation Barney was named in his honor.
Sieglaff’s plan called for nine boats to make the breakthrough. Placed under the command of Commander Earl F. Hydeman, they were code-named “Hydeman’s Hellcats.” The force was divided into three wolfpacks, each with its own area of operations: “Hydeman’s Hepcats,” consisting of the Sea Dog (SS-401), Crevalle (SS-291), and Spadefish (SS-411); “Pierce’s Polecats,” commanded by Commander George E. Pierce and consisting of the Tunny (SS-282), Bonefish (SS-223), and Skate (SS-305); and “Risser’s Bobcats,” commanded by Commander Robert D. Risser, consisting of the Flying Fish (SS-229), Bowfm (SS-287), and Tinosa.
With Hell’s Bells pealing, the Hellcats crept through the minefields blocking the Tsushima Strait, southernmost °f the three entrances to the Sea of Japan, on 4-6 June. Inside they discovered a submariner’s dream: unescorted nterchantmen steering straight courses with running lights aglow and aids to navigation burning brightly. Skippers Were sorely tempted to disregard orders to delay attacks until sunset on 9 June, but discipline prevailed. Between the “commence firing” and 20 June, the Hellcats conducted
The powerful U.S. submarine offensive against Japan, which culminated in “Operation Barney,” included Commander Eugene Fluckey’s USS Barb (SS-220), here, in a night attack off the China coast in early 1945.
one of the submarine war’s most productive patrols, sinking 27 Japanese merchant vessels and 1 submarine, the 1-122, for a total of 54,786 tons. They also sank a big Soviet freighter for an accidental 11,000 tons more. Hydeman’s Sea Dog emerged as the top scorer, with six ships sunk. One boat, Commander Lawrence L. Edge’s Bonefish, was lost. As prearranged, the other Hellcats ran through La Perouse Strait under cover of darkness on 24 June. Elated by the outcome of Operation Barney, Lockwood promptly sent seven more subs into the Sea of Japan, where six were on patrol on V-J Day.
Lockwood viewed Operation Barney’s real objective as psychological rather than material: to convince the Japanese that, having lost control of the Sea of Japan, their last avenue to the outside world, further resistance would be futile. In the event, two atomic bombs jarred Japan into capitulating before the effects of the Home Islands’ economic isolation could be felt with maximum severity; but by August 1945 their isolation had been completed. In view of the enormous contribution the submarines of the Pacific Fleet and Southwest Pacific forces had made to victory, it was appropriate that Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz arranged for Uncle Charlie Lockwood to have a place in the front row at the surrender ceremony on the deck of the battleship Missouri (BB-63).
For further reading: Clay Blair, Jr., Silent Victory: The U.S. Submarine War against Japan (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1975); Charles A. Lockwood and Hans Christian Adamson, Hellcats of the Sea (New York: Greenberg, 1955); Theodore Roscoe, United States Submarine Operations in World War II (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute, 1949).
Dr. Sweetman is a military and naval historian.