Submarine!

8 Harder

Hit ’em again, Harder! No one in the Submarine Force will ever forget that battle cry. It is ringing still in the halls of Dealey Center, New London; at deserted Camp Dealey, on Guam; and at the submarine base, Pearl Harbor. For the USS Harder was a peer among peers, a fighter among fighters, and, above all, a submarine among submarines. And when she and her fighting skipper were lost, the whole Navy mourned, for her exploits had become legendary. It was characteristic that she gave her life to save one of her fellows, for she interposed herself in front of an attacking ship to give another submarine an opportunity to escape, and in so doing received the final, unlucky, fatal depth charge.

Harder’s record, after only three patrols, was already one to conjure with in the Pacific Fleet. Built in Groton, Connecticut, at the Electric Boat Company, she first appeared at Pearl Harbor in June, 1943, and for uniformly outstanding results, dogged courage, and brilliant performance, soon had few equals in our Submarine Force. Her record speaks for itself: First patrol, three ships sunk and one damaged; second patrol, four ships sunk and one damaged; third patrol, five ships sunk.

On Harder’s fourth patrol Sam Dealey carried off an exploit unprecedented in submarine warfare, an operation epitomizing the competence and daring of the magnificent ship he had molded. Harder was detailed “lifeguard” submarine for an air strike on Woleai Atoll, one of the hundreds of small Pacific islands taken over by the Japs after World War I. To save a downed aviator, Dealey deliberately ran his ship aground, sending three men, including Lieutenant Logan, his torpedo officer, ashore in a rubber boat to effect the rescue. Since the flier was only exhausted and not injured, Sam assigned him a bunk in Officer’s Country, and Harder continued on patrol.

When Dealey brought Harder into Fremantle, he had sunk one destroyer and one freighter and damaged and probably sunk a second destroyer. As he indicated in his patrol report, his ship now had the pleasure of seeing her total tonnage record of enemy ships exceed the 100,000 tons’ mark — a distinction attained by only a few of our undersea fighters. That it was due entirely to his own efforts, Sam would have indignantly denied, pointing to the outstanding officers and men who served with him, who, he said, were responsible for making Harder what she was. Frank Lynch, his executive officer, and Sam Logan, his torpedo officer, were his two mainstays, and to them he invariably tried to shift the credit. Frank, a behemoth of a man, had been regimental commander and first-string tackle at the Naval Academy. He combined qualities of leadership and physical stamina with a keen, searching mind and a tremendous will to fight. Sam, slighter of build, less the extrovert, was a mathematical shark and had stood first in his class at the Academy. Under pressure of the war years, he had discovered a terrible and precise ferocity which always possessed him whenever contact with the enemy was imminent. To him, operation of the torpedo director was an intricate puzzle, to be worked out using all information and means at his command, divining the enemy’s intentions and anticipating them, working out new techniques of getting the right answer under different sets of conditions.

“With those two madmen pushing me all the time,” Dealey would say, “there was nothing I could do but go along!”

It was, however, Harder’s fifth war patrol which fixed her position, and that of Sam Dealey, in the annals of the United States Submarine Force for all time.

On May 26, 1944, Harder departed from Fremantle, Australia, on what many have termed the most epoch-making war patrol ever recorded. It must be remembered that Sam Dealey, Frank Lynch, and Sam Logan were by now experts who had long served together. Their ship was a veteran, and organized to the peak of perfection in fighting ability. Who can blame Dealey, with this sort of help, for deliberately selecting the most difficult of accomplishments?

Your submarine is primarily a commerce destroyer. While it will attack any moderate-to-large warship it encounters, its principal objective is the lifeline of the enemy — its merchant carriers. The submarine will spend long hours lying in wait in sea lanes frequented by enemy cargo vessels, and her personnel will spend longer hours trying to outguess their adversaries, to determine where they are routing their ships in their effort to evade submarine attack. The submarine will, of course, similarly try to intercept enemy war vessels. But the destroyer or escort vessel is the bane of the sub’s existence, for it is commonly considered too small to shoot successfully and too dangerous to fool around with. Besides, sinking a destroyer was not ordinarily so damaging to the enemy’s cause as sinking a tanker, for example. Sometimes a destroyer would intercept a torpedo intended for a larger vessel, and sometimes you had to shoot at one in desperation — and sometimes one would give you a shot you simply couldn’t pass up. But ordinarily you avoid tangling with one.

Sam Dealey, ever an original man, had a new thought. It was known that the Japanese Navy was critically short of destroyers of all types, first-line or otherwise. Intelligence reports were to the effect that those few they had were being operated week in and week out, without pause for even essential repairs, in their desperate effort to keep their sea lanes open. Add to this the tremendous screen necessary for a fleet movement and the probability that it could be hamstrung — or at least rendered extraordinarily vulnerable — if the number of destroyers or escort ships could be substantially reduced. In short, Dealey decided that the war against merchant shipping was entirely too tame for his blood, and he asked and received for his operating area the waters around the major Japanese Fleet Operating Base of Tawi Tawi in the Sulu Archipelago. He reasoned that once he revealed his presence there, which he planned to do in the time-honored submarine manner, there would be no dearth of destroyers sent out to track him down. And if there were too many in one bunch, he could avoid them; if they came out by ones and twos, he’d deliberately tangle with them.

And tangle he did. Shortly after sunset of the first day in the area, a convoy was sighted and Harder gave chase. The moon came out during the pursuit, the convoy changed course, and events soon confirmed the submarine’s detection by the enemy. The nearest destroyer emitted clouds of black smoke, put on full speed, and commenced heading directly for her — and there was nothing left to do but run for it.

At full speed Harder could barely exceed 19 knots, and it soon was evident that the tin can astern was clipping them off at 24 or better. The range inexorably reduced to 10,000 yards, then 9000, then 8,500—at which point Sam pulled the plug out from under his ship and dropped her neatly to periscope depth.

The moment the ship was under water, Dealey called out, “Left full rudder!”

Obediently the submarine altered course to the left, drawing away from the path down which she had been running. A tricky stunt, this, fraught with danger. If the DD up there had enough sense to divine what had occurred and suspect the trap laid for him, things would be tough. He’d have little trouble in picking up the submarine broadside on with his supersonic sound equipment, and probably could do plenty of damage with an immediate attack.

But he suspected nothing, came on furiously down the broad wake left by the sub, blundered right across her stern, and was greeted with two torpedoes which hit him under the bow and under the bridge, and broke his back.

With his bow torn nearly off and gaping holes throughout his stricken hull, the Jap’s stern rose vertically in the air. Clouds of smoke, spray, and steam enveloped him, mingled with swift tongues of red flame which feverishly licked at his sides and decks. Depth charges, normally stowed aft in the depth charge racks ready for immediate use, fell out the back of the racks and went crashing down upon the now-slanted deck. Some of them, reached by the flames, went off with horrifying explosions which effectively nullified any chance survivors of the holocaust might have had.

Less than two minutes after the detonations of the torpedoes, the lone black hull of the submarine boiled to the surface. Sam Dealey was not one to give up the convoy that easily, and Harder took off once more at full speed after the enemy. But further contact was not to be regained with this particular outfit.

“Radar contact!” another destroyer, and not far away. From the speed with which the range diminishes, it is obvious that he is heading directly for Harder!

Battle stations submerged! A few hurried minutes of tracking. No doubt about it: this fellow is a comer! Perhaps he has seen the submarine — although that seems hardly possible, or maybe he has radar information-we’ve suspected the Japs of this for some time. Or maybe he’s merely running down the most probable bearing of the submarine, based on previous information. Whatever the cause, he certainly deserves 100 per cent for effort so far, and Harder had better get out of the way.

“Take her down! Dive! Dive!” There may still be a chance to go after the convoy, but this new fellow requires attention first. Again the approach. Not so easy as the last time. This bird is wary, and zigzagging. He’s alert, no question of it, and no doubt is fully aware of what happened to his buddy. On he comes, weaving first one way, then the other. It is now fairly dark. Broken clouds obscure the moon and deprive. Sam Dealey of the light he sorely needs to make accurate observations. The destroyer is a dim blur in the periscope. Ranges are inaccurate and estimations of enemy course difficult to make. Finally, with the best information he can set into the TDC, Sam gives the order to fire. Six torpedoes flash out toward the oncoming destroyer.

Sound listens intently for the sound of the proper functioning of the deadly fish. A white-faced operator turns to the skipper. “Can’t hear the first two!” he gasps. “Last four seem to be running O.K.!” Two sinkers! Damn those undependable torpedoes! But four out of six are still all right. They should do the trick, barring extraordinary luck and skill on the part of the Jap.

We’ve simply got to see what he’s doing. Up with the periscope again. Time stands still for the members of the fire control party — as it does, indeed, for every man aboard. You have no way of knowing what is going on except through the eyes of the Captain. From his attitude and his actions, plus what few words of description he might remember to say, you make up your own picture of the topside.

This time they do not have long to wait. Dealey’s figure stiffens. “He’s seen them! He’s turning this way! Take her down!” As the submarine noses over in obedience to the command, Sam gets a last sight of the enemy ship twisting radically as he avoids the torpedoes. Almost inaudibly he mutters, “Good work, you son of a bitch!”

And that is as far as Sam Dealey’s accolade of the enemy’s maneuvers goes, for he has much to do and a very short time in which to do it. Harder is immediately rigged for depth charges and for “silent running.”

The sound man has suddenly become the most important man in the ship. All hands hang upon his words, as he deliberately turns his sound head control wheel. “Target is starting a run!” You might have thought the sound operator was reporting a drill instead of a life-and-death battle. “Target,” indeed!

“He’s shifted to short scale.” The enemy destroyer has speeded up his pinging, shortened the interval between pings as the range closes. All hands unconsciously brace themselves, awaiting the first shock of the depth charges. It doesn’t take long.

Harder is just reaching deep depth as five depth charges explode in her face. This veteran ship and crew have received many depth charges in the past, but a depth charge is something you never get used to. The whole ship shudders convulsively as the explosions rain upon her, and the vibration of the hull swiftly fills the air with clouds of dust particles and bits of debris from broken light bulbs and other fragile fixtures.

In the control room a new man is on the stern planes. This is his first patrol and he is doing the best he can, straining perhaps a bit too hard in his anxiety to have everything perfect. The stern plane indicators stop moving. He instantly deduces that the electrical control for the stem planes has been damaged. Quickly he shifts into hand power, nervously tugging at the slow-moving change gear. Then, panting heavily and a little flustered, he rapidly spins the wheel — the wrong way! It takes less time to do than it does to tell about it. The power to the stern planes had not been lost — merely the indicating circuit. And as Harder reaches maximum submergence, she has full dive on her stern planes instead of full rise.

In a second everyone realizes that something is wrong. Instead of gradually decreasing its angle, the ship tilts down even more, as though going into an outside loop. The deck slants at an impossible angle and the depth gauge needle goes unheedingly past the 300-foot mark.

“All hands aft on the double!” The diving officer’s harsh command starts everyone moving, with the exception of those who are required to remain at their stations. In the meantime he quickly checks the situation, and reaching across the struggling stern planesman’s shoulders, flips a tiny switch which cuts in the emergency stern plane angle indicator — which should have been energized previously. The emergency indicator shows Full Dive. Grasping the wheel, the diving officer puts his whole body into countering the frenzied effort of the now-frightened stern planesman, wrests the wheel away from him and commences to spin it counterclockwise. He works silently with the furious speed of urgency. When he finally has the planes corrected to full rise, he turns them back over to the trembling sailor who has been the cause of the trouble.

“Watch this,” he says, pointing to the emergency angle indicator. No time now for investigation or instruction. The angle is coming off the ship. She finally levels off, far below her designed depth, and then commences to rise again. Forty-odd men huddled in the after parts of the ship create a rather large, unbalanced weight. The stern planes in hand power are slow to turn, the bow of the ship continues to rise, and the deck now tilts again in the opposite direction. The men sent aft understand what is going on and stream forward as soon as the ship commences to rise, but it is not until she is halfway back to the surface that she is finally brought under control.

In the meantime, the destroyer has reversed course and returned to the vicinity, and lets fly with another severe hammering.

You have to hand it to this destroyer. He has taken the initiative away from the submarine and has effectively protected his convoy. Sam Dealey’s only thought by this time is to get away from him. It takes a few hours to do so, but finally Harder comes to the surface several miles away from the scene of the attack. These have been an eventful four hours.

Late forenoon of the next day Harder’s crew is still resting from the strenuous previous evening. The ship is patrolling submerged, and everything appears to be calm and peaceful, when the musical “Bong! Bong! Bong!” of the general alarm shatters the quiet of the sleeping crew. The word flashes almost instantly through the ship: “Another destroyer!”

This is a fast one. There has been a slight haze on the surface and the range at sighting is 4000 yards, angle on the bow port twenty. Harder turns and heads toward the enemy, preparing all torpedo tubes as she does so. At 3000 yards the destroyer turns and heads directly toward the submarine as though he had sighted the periscope in the glassy smooth sea. He commences weaving, first to one side and then to the other, and increases speed rapidly as he roars in. No question but that he has detected the submarine. Sam will have to fire right down his throat in order to get him. If he misses — well, he’d better not. If the destroyer catches the submarine at shallow depth, things will be pretty tough.

The range closes quickly—2000 yards; 1,500 yards — sound has been listening intently to the target’s screws coming in and speeding up as he does so, but, like all good sound men, he trains his gear from side to side to check on all sectors. Suddenly he sings out, “Fast screws bearing zero nine zero, short-scale pinging!”

This can mean only one thing, but there is no time to look now. Keep calm, keep cool, one thing at a time, this bird up ahead is coming on the range. Get him first and worry about the other later.

One thousand yards. Standby forward! Standby one! Angle on the bow ten port, increasing. Wait a second until he has come to the limit of his weave in that direction and is starting back. Angle on the bow port twenty, range, 700 yards. He stops swinging.

“Bearing — mark,” snaps the skipper. “Standby!”

Sam Logan on the TDC makes an instantaneous but careful check of his instrument and observes that the generated target bearing on the TDC is exactly the same as the periscope bearing.

“Set!” he snaps back at his skipper.

“Fire!” Logan takes up the count at the TDC, spacing his torpedoes deliberately so that they cannot possibly run into each other and so that they will diverge slightly as they race toward the destroyer. One after the other two more torpedoes stream out toward the careening destroyer.

“Right full rudder, all ahead full,” Dealey hurls the orders from the periscope as he stands there, his eyes glued to his instrument, watching for the success or failure of his daring attack.

Suddenly he shouts, “Check fire!” Almost simultaneously a heavy explosion is felt by everyone in the submarine. There is no need to pass the word to explain what that was. They have heard plenty of torpedo explosions by now.

With full speed and full rudder Harder has already started to gather way through the water and turn away from the destroyer. Dealey continues watching, however, and is rewarded by seeing the third torpedo smash into his stern. Clouds of smoke, steam, and debris rise from the stricken enemy high over the tops of his masts. He is so close that he continues coming, although his directive force and power are both gone, and Harder must get clear.

Suddenly there is a tremendous explosion, far more violent than the others. The submarine trembles from stern to stern and the noise is almost deafening. Surprisingly, there is less cork dust and debris tossed about inside in spite of the seemingly much-greater-than-usual shock. The destroyer’s magazines have let go at a range of 300 yards, and within a minute after first being hit, his gutted, smoking remains sink beneath the waves. From time of sighting to time of sinking has taken nine minutes.

But what about this other set of screws on the starboard beam, which Sound has been nervously reporting for the past two minutes? The skipper starts to swing his periscope to that bearing but is interrupted by the sound man’s cry:

“Fast screws close aboard! He’s starting his run!”

With her rudder hard over, Harder rushes for the depths. She has not quite reached her maximum submergence when the first depth charges go off.

This new chap is pretty good, too, and he doesn’t waste many. Twisting and turning, always presenting Harder’s stern to the Jap and endeavoring to make away from the area of the attack, Sam Dealey matches wits with the enemy. After four long hours he manages to shake him loose, and the submarine returns to periscope depth. Then, for the first time in more than six hours, Dealey has a chance to leave the conning tower.

In less than an hour he was back at the periscope with two more destroyers in sight. As Dealey scanned the horizon he sighted a third one, then a fourth — then a fifth, and then a sixth! All six were in line of bearing headed for Harder!

When Sam Dealey reached this point in his patrol report, he could not resist inserting the comment: “Such popularity must be deserved.”

It is on record that Harder’s captain was now torn between two emotions: the desire to go after the enemy and tangle with them in hopes of getting one or two more, and a much more prudent and sensible decision to beat it. In the end, the latter judgment prevailed.

But all was not over yet. Two days later, shortly before dawn, Harder was detected and bombed by a plane, the bomb exploding close aboard as she was on her way down. It is strongly suspected that the subsequent sighting of two destroyers to the westward shortly before noon was a result of a report made by the pilot. Once again, what with air cover and the glassy smooth sea which existed in the locality, Harder decided to play it safe and evade.

But not so that night. Shortly after sunset, while the submarine is running on the surface off Tawi Tawi, one of the bridge lookouts sights two destroyers dead ahead. Now the conditions are a little more to Dealey’s liking, and the odds not so uneven.

The battle stations alarm is sounded again, and in a few minutes the submarine slips silently beneath the waves. The destroyers are on a line of bearing, and Dealey hopes to get them both with a single salvo.

Twenty minutes after being sighted the two destroyers pass in an overlapping formation across the bow of the submarine at a range of about one thousand yards. This is the moment Dealey has been waiting for. He plans to shoot at the nearest destroyer. Any torpedoes that miss will have a chance of hitting the second target.

“Standby forward.”

They do not have long to wait. Four torpedoes, evenly spaced, run toward the enemy. Dealey stands staring through his periscope. The first torpedo passes just ahead, and misses. The second torpedo hits near the bow, and a few seconds later the third hits under the bridge. The fourth torpedo misses astern.

At this juncture Dealey swings his ship with hard right rudder, getting ready for a setup on the second destroyer if that should prove to be necessary. The first destroyer, now burning furiously, continues on his way but slows down rapidly as simple momentum takes the place of live power from his propellers. Behind his stern Dealey can again see the second vessel, just in time to see the fourth and last torpedo crash into him. It is instantly apparent that no additional torpedoes will be needed for either ship.

Gripping the periscope handles, Dealey swings the ’scope back to the first destroyer which by this time is only 400 yards away, broadside to. He is just in time to observe another explosion take place amidships in the unfortunate ship. The destroyer’s decks buckle in the center and open up with the force of the blast, just under the after stack. Momentarily everything is blotted out, but Dealey gets the impression that the stack has been blown straight into the air.

In a moment the force of the explosion hits Harder with sufficient strength to make her heel over. But Dealey swings back quickly to the second destroyer, observes an even more powerful and, in the gathering darkness, totally blinding explosion from under his bridge. The explosion in the first destroyer had probably been a boiler reached by sea water; that in the second was evidently his magazines.

Within a matter of minutes both ships have disappeared, and Harder is once more on the surface, sniffing about at the scene of destruction, and then clearing the area at high speed in the event that planes might be sent from Tawi Tawi to investigate the sudden disappearance of two more tin cans.

Next morning Harder was a few miles south of Tawi Tawi, reconnoitering the anchorage. At about 0900 two destroyers were sighted, evidently on a submarine search. Perfectly willing to oblige them, Sam Dealey commenced an approach. The enemy’s search plan evidently did not include the spot where the submarine lay, and they passed on over the horizon.

In the late afternoon a large Japanese task force, consisting of several battleships and cruisers, was sighted, escorted by half a dozen or more destroyers and three or four aircraft circling overhead. Harder was out of position for an attack, but it appeared that here was an opportunity for a contact report which might enable some other submarine to get into position to trap the task force later on.

While watching the largest battleship, which appeared to be one of Japan’s two mystery ships — huge 60,000-ton monsters — Dealey saw him suddenly become enveloped in heavy black smoke, and in a few moments three distant explosions were heard. It was possible that one of our other submarines already had made an attack.

Suddenly a destroyer darted out of the confused melee of ships and headed directly for Harder. Perhaps her periscope had been sighted!

Battle stations submerged!

At maximum full speed the destroyer’s bow is high out of water. His stem squats in the trough created by his own passage, and black smoke pours from his stacks, to be swept aft by the wind of his passing. Harder turns and swings her bow directly toward the onrushing vessel; lines him up for a shot directly down the throat.

Things are deathly quiet in Harder’s conning tower. There is no problem to solve by TDC or by plotting parties, except the determination of the approximate range at which to fire. The target’s bearing remains steady. The torpedo gyros remain on zero. The target’s angle on the bow remains absolute zero, and he is echo ranging steadily, rapidly, and right on.

The range closes with fantastic speed. Dealey makes an observation every thirty seconds or so. The periscope is almost in continuous motion. The sweat peels off his face, drips off the ends of his fingers as they grip the periscope handles — everything else in the conning tower is stock-still, as though time had ceased to function, except for the range counters on the TDC, which steadily indicate less and less range.

Range, 4000 yards. Only a few minutes to go. The sound man, intently listening to the approaching propeller beats, reports, “He has slowed down.”

Through the periscope it is obvious that he has indeed slowed down. His bow wave is smaller, and he now appears to be digging his bow deeper into it as the stern rises somewhat.

From the sound man: “Turn count fifteen knots!”

Wily fellow, this. He knows he is approaching the submarine’s position, and plans to search the area carefully.

On he comes. Still no deviation in course, headed directly for the submarine’s periscope. Probably he has seen it, and he no doubt plans to run right over it as he drops his depth charges. Not being a submarine man, he probably fails to realize that that periscope has been popping up and down in nearly the same place entirely too precisely and entirely too long. Perhaps he doesn’t realize that the submarine is obviously making no attempt to escape.

In Harder’s conning tower the range dials on the TDC have reached 1,500 yards; target’s speed is 15 knots, angle on the bow zero, relative bearing zero, torpedo gyros zero.

“Standby to shoot! Up periscope!”

The periscope whines softly as it rises out of its well. At this moment another report from Sound: “Fast screws! Close aboard starboard beam!”

Another ship! Destroyer, of course! The thought flashes through Dealey’s mind with a small shock. He has been so intent on laying a trap for this fellow dead ahead that he has neglected to look about for others who might be coming.

“Too late to worry about him now,” Dealey mutters to himself, squatting before the periscope well. Aloud he says, “To hell with him! Let’s get this son of a bitch up ahead.”

“Bearing — mark!” The periscope starts down. “No change,” barks out Dealey, meaning that the situation is exactly as it should be.

“Set!” from Sam Logan on the TDC.

“Fire!” from Lynch. As assistant approach officer, Frank Lynch is responsible that all details of the approach have been correctly executed and the proper settings made on the torpedoes. The ship lurches; one torpedo is on the way. Sam Logan deliberately waits five seconds, then he turns a handle on the face of the TDC a fraction of a degree to the right and quietly says again, “Set.”

“Fire.” A second torpedo speeds on its way. Logan turns the handle again, this time to the left.

“Set.”

“Fire.” Harder shudders for the third time as a torpedo is ejected.

There is no time to waste looking around. Not even time to try to identify the source of the extra set of screws on the starboard beam.

“Take her down! All ahead full! Right full rudder.” If the torpedoes miss, Harder will have two minutes to gain depth before the destroyer is on top of her.

Lynch has a stop watch in his hand. Logan is intently watching the face of his TDC, where a timer dial is whirling around.

The suspense is unbearable. Harder has already tilted her nose down and is heading for the protection of the depths at full speed, but she has not, of course moved very far yet.

“How long?”

“Forty-five seconds, Captain! Should be hitting any second now!”

“Fifty seconds!” You’d think Logan was timing a track meet.

“Fifty-five seconds!” And precisely as the words are uttered there is a terrific detonation. One torpedo has struck home.

“Sixty seconds!” Logan is still unperturbed. At that instant another terrific explosion rocks the submarine.

Two hits for three fish. Dealey smiles a tight smile of exultation. That’s one son of heaven who won’t be bothering anyone for a while.

But there is no time to indulge in backslapping. Harder has reached only eighty feet in her plunge downward and is passing right beneath the destroyer. This is an excellent move, for it will confuse and interfere with the author of that other set of propellers. However, Dealey has not reckoned with the tremendous effect of his torpedoes. Just as the submarine arrives beneath the enemy ship there is the most deafening, prolonged series of rumblings and explosions anyone on board has ever heard. Either the enemy’s boilers or his magazines have exploded. In fact, the noise and shock are so terrific that quite possibly both boilers and magazines have gone off together.

But this merry afternoon is just starting, for the other set of propeller beats now joins in the game and proceeds to hand out a goodly barrage of depth charges as Harder still seeks the shelter of deep depths. He has evidently radioed for help also, and it isn’t long before Sam Dealey is able to distinguish a different sort of explosion amid the rain of depth charges. Aircraft! And soon after, two more ships also join the fray. For a couple of hours numerous depth charges and bombs were heard and felt, but, in the words of Harder’s skipper, “no one was interested in numerical accuracy at that time.”

Some hours later, after darkness had set in, the submarine surfaced. In the distance astern a single lighted buoy burned, marking the location where the fifth Japanese destroyer in four days had been sunk by this one sharpshooting submarine.

Of the beating he had taken, Sam Dealey, characteristically, said very little. One paragraph in his patrol report merely stated: “It is amazing that the ship could have gone through such a terrific pounding and jolting around with such minor damage. Our fervent thanks go out to the Electric Boat Company for building such a fine ship.”

However laconic and matter-of-fact Sam Dealey may have been about the patrol just completed, our own Submarine Force Commander and indeed the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the area recognized an outstanding job when they saw one. They had one advantage over Dealey, in addition to the latter’s natural unassuming modesty. They had been sitting on the side lines, reading the dispatches and noting the Japanese reaction. Reports had come from all sides, wondering what the Americans had turned loose off Tawi Tawi. The Jap radio had blared unceasingly that a submarine task force of unprecedented magnitude had been operating off that fleet base, that several submarines had been sunk, but that they had, of course, themselves sustained some losses. Each time a submarine sinking had been claimed, Admiral Christy and his staff had mentally crossed their fingers; each time events proved that Harder was still very much alive, they had sighed with relief. And finally, when Sam Dealey had reported “mission accomplished” and started for home, their jubilation knew no bounds.

A huge delegation met Harder on the dock when she arrived: Admiral Christy, the submarine force commander in that area, himself coming to Darwin to do honor to this ship, and embark for the trip back to Fremantle. The ship was met in Australia by another delegation, including General Douglas MacArthur, who awarded Captain Dealey the Army Distinguished Service Cross on the spot.

The officers and crew were also subsequently recognized by suitable decorations, and when the news arrived in the United States, accompanied by the unanimous recommendations of all responsible officers, President Roosevelt awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor to Sam Dealey and the Presidential Unit Citation to Harder herself. Frank Lynch was promoted to command of his own boat, and Sam Logan moved up to the post of executive officer.

But although Harder and her skipper survived the deeds for which this recognition was accorded, the awards themselves were made posthumously. Sam Dealey’s widow received the Medal of Honor in his name, and the United States Submarine Force reverently accepted the Presidential Unit Citation in trust for the day when another ship shall be built bearing the name Harder.

For neither survived the next patrol.

Usually when a submarine fails to return from patrol, there are surmises, rumors, wild theories, sometimes a Japanese claim of a sinking, but rarely anything concrete to explain what happened. Sometimes survivors returned from the unspeakable brutalities of Jap prison camps after the war to tell what caused the losses of their ships, but these cases were very few in number. Harder was an exception, for she operated in a wolfpack during her sixth and last patrol, and another vessel actually witnessed and reported the circumstances of her loss.

On the morning of August 24, 1944, Harder dived off the west coast of Luzon, in company with USS Hake. Being the senior skipper, Dealey had decided to make a reconnaissance in this area in hopes that it might yield results comparable to those he had achieved only three days before when, as commander of a five-boat pack, he had engaged two convoys in a fierce, close-range battle, sinking in all ten ships, and driving the rest into harbor where they huddled for protection from the subs ranging back and forth before the entrance.

Shortly after daybreak on the fateful August 24, echo ranging was heard, and two escort-type vessels of about one thousand tons each were sighted. Both submarines immediately commenced approaching for an attack. However, the larger of the two ships suddenly zigged away and entered Dasel Bay. The other stayed outside, and at this time Hake broke off the attack, feeling the remaining target was hardly worth the torpedoes it would take to sink him. Harder, however, held on, and Hake sighted her periscope crossing in front, passing between Hake and the enemy vessel. Hake by this time had commenced evasive maneuvers, for the Jap was echo ranging loudly and steadily in her direction. Exactly what was in Sam Dealey’s mind is, of course, not known; his previous record indicated that he would have had no hesitancy in tangling with this chap if he thought it worth while. Furthermore, he had more or less got Hake into this spot, and may have felt that he owed it to the other submarine to get her out again. But, whatever his motives, he maneuvered Harder between the other two vessels with the result that the Jap, naturally enough, took off after him instead of after Hake. According to the latter’s report, the enemy vessel showed some confusion, probably because of the two targets where he had suspected no more than one.

Sam Dealey was perfectly capable of an act of self-abnegation such as his maneuver appears to have been. It must be pointed out, however, that the enemy vessel was a small anti-submarine type, and that Dealey had several times previously come off victorious in encounters with much more formidable ships. Of the two submarines, Harder was doubtless the better trained and equipped to come to grips with this particular enemy. It was simply the fortunes of war that, in this case, Fate dealt two pat hands — and Sam’s wasn’t good enough.

With Hake a fascinated spectator, the Jap made his run. Possibly Harder fired at him, though Hake heard no torpedo on her sound gear. The enemy came on over Sam Dealey, and suddenly dropped fifteen depth charges. Harder’s periscope was never seen after that, nor were her screws heard again.

According to the Japanese report of the incident, the periscope of a submarine was sighted at about two thousand yards, and a depth charge attack was immediately delivered. After this single attack, a huge fountain of oil bubbled to the surface, and considerable quantities of bits of wood, cork, and other debris came up and floated in the slick.

So perished a gallant ship, a gallant captain, and a gallant crew. All of Sam Dealey’s skill and daring could avail him not one iota against the monstrous fact that the enemy’s first depth charge attack, by some unhappy stroke of fate, was a bull’s-eye.