Submarine!

3 Trigger

There was a new idea for Trigger’s third war patrol: we were to plant a mine field in the shallow coastal waters of Japan before starting a normal patrol. So early in December of 1942 Trigger appeared off Inubo Saki, a few miles north of Tokyo. Penrod and the skipper had spent many long hours planning just how we would lay our mines, and where, so as to do the greatest damage to the enemy. We picked a bright moonlight night, so we could see well through the periscope, and selected a spot a few miles to seaward from the Inubo Saki lighthouse, where traffic was sure to pass.

One of the problems in laying a mine field has to do with the excessive air pressure built up inside the submarine. Our poppet mechanism was designed to swallow the impulse bubble made when firing a torpedo tube, and since we were to eject a large number of mines from the tubes, we would swallow lots of air. The problem came because as the air pressure built up within the submarine, the depth gauges, which measured the difference between water pressure outside and air pressure inside, would show a progressively shallower depth.

My job on the mine plant was one worthy of the assistant engineer that I was: I constantly measured the barometric pressure and calculated the change in the depth gauges so that our planesmen could maintain the prescribed depth.

It was a nervy business laying a field of mines in shallow water right under the noses of the enemy, and I know that Penrod and Captain Benson were much concerned over what we should do to defend ourselves in case we were detected in the process. With our torpedo tubes full of mines, there was not much we could do until we had unloaded them and put torpedoes in their places.

Up in the conning tower, Roy Benson kept watch through the periscope. Beside him Penrod checked our course, while standing alongside me in the control room my boss, Steve Gimber, the engineer, coached the planesmen. We laid our first line of mines; all went well. Then we turned around to lay the second line. Halfway through — Benson’s voice from the conning tower:

“Bear a hand down there.”

We laid a few more mines. Benson’s voice again: “How much longer?”

Another mine went out. “About ten minutes,” Steve Mann, the torpedo officer, reported from the forward torpedo room.

“Make it as fast as you can,” from the skipper.

“What is it? Why the sudden hurry? What’s happened up there?”

I ran up the ladder to the conning tower to find out. A large ship and a destroyer escorting it had come into view and were heading directly for us. I whispered the word to Gimber, then ran forward and told Steve Mann. As rapidly as possible we pumped out our remaining mines.

Relieved of our mission, we slunk away, in the meantime hurriedly shoving torpedoes into the now-empty tubes. When that had been completed, we felt better.

Benson had been keeping a watch on the two ships. Suddenly word came down from the conning tower: “Looks like he’s going right into our mine field.”

We wondered whether he would go over one of our mines, whether any of them had had time to arm, whether they were any good anyway.

“Kerblam!” Three of our questions were answered at once. Through the periscope Benson could see the ship hoisted irresistibly upward on a sudden blossoming of white water beneath him. When it subsided, the ship lay wallowing, broken in half, bow and stern high, center section under water.

Fascinated, our periscope stared at the destruction. Then, recollecting itself, it turned to look for the destroyer, and found him racing rapidly around his broken charge like a hound looking for a scent. Over the sonar gear we could hear him echo ranging, not routinely as he had been, but purposefully, alertly. The same thought struck several of us: “Say — he probably thinks that ship was torpedoed! What if he finds us here?”

The incongruity of our being attacked for torpedoing the ship didn’t seem particularly amusing, and we had to admit that it would make little difference anyway if he found us. We could hear the destroyer’s propellers flailing the water as he sped around.

Steve Gimber leaned over to me and said quite seriously, “You know, Ned, things could be worse. That little s.o.b. is still in the mine field. If he looks hard enough, he might find another one!”

Hardly had Steve finished speaking when another huge kerblam was heard and the propellers and echo ranging frighteningly stopped.

Having gone as deep as we could in the shallow water in our attempt to evade the destroyer, we didn’t have the pleasure of actually seeing him sink; and, sure enough, when we later reported the incident, Trigger received credit for sinking one large freighter only. When we surfaced about an hour later, we could see dead astern of us a tall column of black smoke where the two ships had been.

Three more ships we sank on this patrol. One, a freighter just at the entrance to Tokyo Bay; the destroyer Okikase evidently returning from an anti-submarine sweep outside the harbor; and a large freighter loaded with seaplanes on deck farther offshore. This last ship went down on the 31st of December, 1942—with our very best wishes for the New Year.

All ammunition expended for the second time in succession, Trigger returned to Midway for refit. When we arrived, Penrod Schneider and Steve Gimber were detached — Steve to report to Manitowoc, Wisconsin, to put the new submarine Rasher into commission as Executive Officer — a nice promotion. Penrod got an even better one, for he was ordered to the Electric Boat Company, at Groton, Connecticut, as prospective commanding officer of the submarine Dorado, under construction there.

This also was good news to Steve Mann and to me, for though we were sorry to see Penrod and Gimber leave, Mann moved up to Executive Officer and I became engineer. A large party was thrown for our two departing shipmates, and a couple of days after our arrival in Midway we saw them off in the motor launch which was to take them to the airfield.

A few days later one of their replacements arrived, an Ensign fresh from the Naval Academy, John W. Sincavich by name, who unsuccessfully tried to conceal the fact that his nickname had been “Stinky.” In particular I appreciated his arrival. I had been assistant engineer for almost a full year, but now I was Engineering Officer, and, as such, rated an assistant. Stinky was it.