U.S.S. Seawolf: Submarine Raider of the Pacific

CHAPTER II The Wolf Strikes Back

MONDAY MORNING, December 8, 1941, the Seawolf lay in Manila Bay, anchored 600 yards from Cavite. We had been there for two weeks, waiting our turn to be overhauled. The port was as busy as a beehive with submarines. Two of them, the Sea Lion and Sea Dragon, our sister ships, were undergoing a complete yard overhaul. That meant removing all engines, tearing down the electrical systems, and then rebuilding the ship—a six- to eight-weeks job. The Dragon was almost completed, but the Lion’s engines were still lying on the dock. The Wolf was scheduled to go in for repairs on Thursday. We had quite a gathering there that day. Most of our Asiatic fleet, under Admiral Thomas C. Hart, was based in Manila Bay, its home port, and I should judge that at least thirty submarines were almost within shouting distance. Three submarine tenders—the Holland, the Otus and the Canopus—were on hand, too. They carried torpedoes, submarine spare parts, provisions, and stores. Admiral Hart himself was in Manila that day.

Jim Riley, an old shipmate of mine, and I were celebrating our reunion that weekend, and Monday morning found us in the outskirts of Manila with big heads. We needed a lot of black coffee. We climbed into a cab and made for the Plaza Café.

Around the corner of the restaurant we could pick up a bus for Cavite, twelve miles away.

We sat down at the counter. The Filipino boy looked as though he was going to bawl. “Hell, boy, what’s the matter with you?” Jim demanded. He looked around. “What in hell is the matter with everybody? They’re jumping around like a bunch of jitterbugs.”

He was right. The place seemed to be seething with excitement.

The boy looked at us, startled. “You no hear Japs bomb Pearl Harbor?”

Pearl Harbor? U.S. soil? Jim and I stared at each other.

“You crazy?” I asked, turning to the Filipino. We glanced out the Plaza’s big plate-glass window. People were hurrying by.

And suddenly we felt the tension, too. We dashed outside. A cab screeched to a stop. The driver poked his head out. “Going to the docks, sailor?” he asked.

“You hear anything about a bombing?” I demanded.

“Sure,” said the driver. “You boys better wake up. I’ve been carrying Marines back to Cavite all morning.”

“Well, hell!” I said. “Let’s get going!” We piled into the cab. When we got to the dock everyone was rushing about. My heart leaped when I saw the Wolf. I caught a ship’s boat out to her. On the way I saw the aircraft tender Langley, her helmeted gun crews manning anti-aircraft guns on her flight deck. Most of the Wolf’s crew was below when I finally got there. We were all a little punch drunk by the suddenness of it. Captain Warder, looking preoccupied, was already there. I was due topside for my watch, and I was pulling on my dungarees when Sousa walked through, his chin jutting out about an inch from where it should be.

“Come on, you guys, there’s a war on,” he growled. “Get moving!”

I climbed up the ladder fast. The air was mild, the sun shone.

War seemed impossible. Suddenly, in toward Manila, a light began blinking. It was our tender ship, the Canopus, signaling with her searchlight. She was about three miles away. I read the flashes, and with each word my blood pressure shot up.

There it was, officially. From Admiral Hart himself.

Frank Franz, one of the signalmen, was on the bridge answering the Canopus, but I wanted to give the message to the Skipper immediately. I ran to the conning tower and shouted down, “Below!”

“What do you want?” boomed back.

“Tell the Captain urgent message came in from the Admiral. Japan has commenced hostilities.”

The Canopus’s searchlight was blinking again. All sub captains were to come aboard at once for a conference. The Skipper hurried off. Lieutenant Deragon’s high-pitched voice ran through the boat: “Preparations for getting under way.”

I kept the watch on deck. I thought: Those yellow sons of bitches. They’re going to rate everything I can give them. Why haven’t they shown up here? Those sons of bitches, those sons of bitches… and then a surge of rage so strong I felt myself tremble:

“What are we waiting for?”

I sensed the tension below. Everything depended on the orders Captain Warder brought back. Most of the men came up on deck.

We crowded the deck waiting for him. A few minutes after 9 a.m., a launch sped out toward us. The Skipper was in it. He carried a large white official-looking envelope in his hand, and I saw him limp slightly as he climbed over the rail. His knee was still bothering him. He turned to the coxswain who had helped him over. “Thank you,” he said quietly, and went below. The officers followed him. I trailed behind. “Willie,” I heard Captain Warder say, “what I want…” And then: “We’re going to take on more fish.”

A moment later Sousa boomed the order to load stores and ammunition. We set to work. Another launch roared up from the Canopus. She carried torpedoes. We rigged our booms. The huge warheads began to swing over. More launches raced out to us from the Canopus, loaded to the gunwales with dry stores and fresh provisions. A hand-to-hand brigade was set up on deck, and as boxes were hauled up we passed them along and down into the hatches. Launches scurried back and forth over the waters of the bay, their wakes crisscrossing each other, supplying torpedoes to the submarines, food for their men. The entire crew of the Wolf worked like beavers. We stocked up on milk, canned ham, canned chicken, sacks of beans, sacks of coffee, sacks of rice. We had no room for fresh vegetables now. We began throwing overboard cans of paint, bright-work polish, and useless tools—everything not essential to the business of war. The Wolf’s spit-and-polish days were over.

We took lunch on the run—sandwiches, and coffee. Gus Wright, the cook, and our three Filipino messboys were all over the boat. As I stopped for a moment topside to gulp down my coffee, I could see Cavite’s three giant radio towers piercing the blue sky. How long would they be standing there, I wondered? What messages were going out from them to the world right now? Just after lunch an oil lighter drew alongside. We loaded to capacity with fuel. Supper came at 7 p.m. Thick steak, french fried potatoes, asparagus, and ice cream. The crew was almost light-hearted now. “Let’s get going!” you’d hear, and then a burst of swearing, and someone saying, “What are we waiting for? Time’s awastin’, ducks on the pond, let’s be away!”

Thirty minutes later we were called to quarters. The skipper had a message for us. We lined up. Captain Warder, not much older than many of us, looked us over quietly. The smallest vestige of a smile was on his lips, but it was a grim smile. It was as though he were saying to us, without putting it into words, “Well, boys, here it is. You and I are going to be damn busy. It’s serious as hell because it’s war, but we’re ready for it. We’re the Seawolf and now we really begin the job we got to do.”

What he said, was: “Men, we’re leaving here tonight. We are escorting a convoy made up of the Langley, the oil tanker Pecos, and the U.S.S. Black Hawk. The Sculpin and the Seawolf will escort these ships south.”

He paused. His left hand closed and opened and closed and opened again at his side—a habit of his when he was deeply moved. “Needless to say, you all know we’re not playing any more. We’re out after them now. Let’s get them.”

The Wolf left Manila at 10 p.m. The words on Captain Warder’s orders were clear and precise: “You will sink or destroy enemy shipping wherever encountered.”

We had no chance to cable our families that we were all right. We’d have to wait for that later—somewhere, somehow. We knew we had our work cut out. Philippine waters are dangerous for submarines. Coral reefs, treacherous rocks, shoals, and in many places little depth to maneuver in, all add up to trouble. And the waters themselves are so clear that planes can easily spot submarines. We moved swiftly, but carefully, through the mine fields in Manila Bay, and then opened up to the best speed the surface ships could maintain. We were constantly on the alert. The night lookouts kept their eyes glued to their binoculars. Any moment we expected a wave of Jap bombers overhead. We strained every sense watching and listening for Jap submarines. We knew they must be racing toward us. News bulletins sputtered over the radio. The Japs had bombed Davao on the island of Mindanao. They had bombed Zamboanga on the southern tip of the Philippines. They’d landed on the north coast of Luzon. They’d bombed the important airfield at Aparri, 250 miles from Manila on the northeast tip of Luzon. They’d seized the International Settlement in Shanghai, bombed Hong Kong and even Singapore. Huge invasion forces had been sighted headed for the Philippines. Don Bell, the Manila news commentator, an honest, straight-from-the-shoulder broadcaster, was on the air without rest, giving additional details of the bombing of Pearl. And after Pearl, Cavite was their logical target…. But we saw the surface ships safely through the narrow and dangerous Verde Island passage south of Corregidor, and left them at dawn the next morning. As the sun rose on the ninth of December, we made our first day-long dive. We were on our first mission of the war; and from now on, unless we found ourselves in the safety of our own ports, the Wolf would never show more than her periscope in daylight.

My watches were 4 to 8 a.m. and 4 to 8 p.m., and at any other time of the day or night in emergency. As soon as my first watch was over, I stepped out into the control room. I wanted to know where we were headed. I asked the first man I saw—Chief Machinist’s Mate Carl Enslin, a 200-pounder called “Swede,” although he always insisted he was Pennsylvania Dutch. He was standing his watch as diving officer, his eye on the Christmas Tree.

“Don’t you know?” he asked, surprised.

“I just came off watch,” I explained. “I haven’t heard a damn thing.”

He pointed to the chart table. “It’s all plotted out there,” he said.

I squeezed past him to the small desk covered with charts of the Pacific waters. A thin red line had been drawn from Manila south through the San Bernardino Straits, up around the east coast of Luzon, up to the northeast point—to Aparri itself. We were going straight into the heart of hell. Aparri was under fire, the area was swarming with Jap ships, and it was the nearest point to Formosa.

“Oh, oh,” I said. “We ought to see some business up there.”

“We’ll probably be in the thick of it in a couple of days,” said Swede, keeping the Christmas Tree in view in the corner of his eye. As long as all the lights were green, all was well. A red light meant a hatch open somewhere.

I was due to get some sleep. I still wasn’t altogether over my big head. I climbed up and threw myself in my bunk. We dressed for comfort on the Wolf—sandals, shorts, and undershirt—and I kicked off my sandals and lay down as I was and tried to sleep. But I was too geared up. The Wolf’s powerful electric motors kept up a steady, high-pitched whine, and I thought of Marjorie and Spike, and how worried Marjorie must be, and how I could get word to her that I was all right. I finally dozed off.

My second watch was nearly over that night when Don Bell’s voice came in again. He said he was standing on the roof of the Manila Hotel.

“I have been here most of the day watching the methodical destruction of Cavite,” he said. He sounded tired. “Right now Cavite is a mass of smoke and flame. The Japs have been very accurate today. There has been no opposition in the air. I have seen wave after wave of heavy bombers and dive bombers concentrate on Cavite. The destruction is complete. God knows how many men have been lost. The Japs haven’t left the water front untouched, either. They have continuously bombed piers and water-front installations. So far they are leaving the ships in the harbor alone. They are probably waiting, knowing they will have plenty of time for that.” And then a brief halt in his words. “Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know when I shall be back on the air, but I shall be back, God willing.”

We had missed being caught by less than forty-eight hours. Later we learned that the Dragon got away safely, but the Lion was so badly damaged she had to be destroyed to prevent her falling into the enemy’s hands.

My second watch over, I tried to sleep again. All at once someone was shaking me. “Eck! Eck! They want you in sound.”

I jumped out of my bunk, ducked through the hatch and down the passageway to the sound shack. Maley was there, hands pressed over his phones. He shook his finger for silence and listened for ten seconds more. His face was strained.

“Here,” he said, and pulled off the phones. “I can’t figure it out, Eck. I got something here, and I don’t know what in hell it is.”

I sat down and took over. Maley stood by.

There was a soft chatter in the phones. Two detectors transmitting to each other, conversing with each other? Jap submarines? Our first contact of the war? I listened intently. I adjusted my dials to hair-like accuracy. I turned on the intercom system after a minute and reported:

“Captain, I have something on the sound gear that sounds like two Jap subs talking to each other.”

“Give me a bearing, Eckberg,” came back Captain Warder’s voice.

I turned my wheel carefully, trying to find the point on 360-degree dial where the chatter was the loudest. I tried to pin it down to a definite spot in a definite direction from the Wolf, but I couldn’t.

“They’re all over the dial,” I said. “I get them everywhere.”

“Does it sound like the Japs?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

Silence for a moment. Then the Skipper’s voice, very calm: “Well, keep giving me information, Eckberg. Keep it up.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. I didn’t like it. Submarines can ram each other underwater, and if one locates the other by sound, it can even send a torpedo after it. If two Jap subs were closing in on us from either side… But if the sound did come from another submarine, the bearings must show a change over a period of time, and these did not. Since it was impossible for another submarine to be gliding alongside of us, at the same speed, at the same distance, never varying in angle, the noise must come from something else.

It might be caused by the water striking the coral reefs. That produces a whistling sound. Or by porpoises breaking the surface of the water. Yet, as I listened, Maley beside me, I knew it was none of these. I racked my brains. What were the peculiarities of these waters… Suddenly I had it. Reef fish! Small, green-bellied “croakers” which emit a blubbering, bullfrog-like grunting under water that can deceive the most expert ear. I told it to Maley, and he grinned. I reported to the Captain, feeling a little sheepish.

“Fish, Eckberg?” Over the intercom came a chuckle. “Better go back and finish your sleep. You need it.”

We surfaced as darkness fell. As soon as the hatch was opened, we started our Diesels to recharge batteries. Captain Warder, always the first man on the bridge when we surfaced, climbed up, and after him the Officer of the Deck, a duty taken in rotation by the officers. Then came the night lookouts; then the signalmen; later the mess cooks with the garbage of the last twenty-four hours, which they cast overboard. Of the sixty-five men in the Wolf, these were the only ones who went topside day or night without special permission. If more were permitted, a crash dive would catch them like rats. Groups of the men below crowded about the ladder, breathing deep gulps of the fresh air coming down from the bridge and sucked aft by the Diesels. The smell of baking bread came to me as I lay in my bunk. The cooks had begun their “hot cooking”—meats and fish and baking—because the odors could escape now, and the blowers were wafting these tantalizing smells into every compartment.

Maley took over the radio watch to receive and transcribe messages now that we could use our antenna. The sea was choppy and the Wolf rolled considerably. I was alternately asleep and awake, and finally gave up altogether, wandering into Kelly’s Pool Room in time to hear a tinny jazz band playing “It’s Three O’Clock in the Morning.” It was Radio Tokyo, and Tokyo Rose was on. She was a female Lord Haw Haw who had sold out to the Japs, and she opened her program with old-fashioned sentimental songs. The idea, I suppose, was to make us homesick. She was taunting us now about Japanese victories and Allied defeats. She sunk the U.S. fleet as we listened, night after night. “Where is the great United States fleet?” she began in her phony Oxford accent. “I’ll tell you where it is! It’s lying at the bottom of Pearl Harbor.” She went on to tell us all the details. Her voice rose hysterically:

“Why don’t you give up, you fools out there? You can’t stand up against the power of the Imperial Fleet!”

Some of the men were playing cards on the mess tables, two of the mess cooks were peeling potatoes, and our retorts were unprintable.

There were all sorts of stories about Tokyo Rose. One was that she was an Englishwoman who’d married a Jap. We listened; amazed at the statistics she reeled off to prove we were being licked. She gave names and tonnage of the ships she said we had lost, and the dates and the places. This might have worked on us after a while, if it weren’t for John Street, a slow-spoken, casual, six-foot Machinist’s Mate from Colorado. John loved figures. He liked to read them, write them, and add them up. A crack accountant was lost when he went into the Navy to take charge of No. 2 engine on the Wolf. He was always armed with the “book”—a combination dictionary and encyclopedia—and under his bunk he’d packed away Jane’s Fighting Ships, the latest edition of the World Almanac, and a Universal History in one volume. Street would take out a carefully sharpened pencil, wet the point between his lips, and as Tokyo Rose cited the destruction of the American fleet, he took down the names of the ships. Then he looked them up. “She’s all wrong,” he’d say, mildly. “We didn’t have that many ships in the fleet in the first place.”

After she signed off we tuned in Station KGEI, the short-wave station in San Francisco. Now we heard the list of Jap ships the U.S. had sunk. John listened to this as carefully, and as methodically looked up the record. He said sadly, “Hell, there’s no more navies left in the world.” We knew the Frisco radio was broadcasting for Jap consumption.

Now the Wolf was moving cautiously. We were cruising off the northeastern coast of Luzon, off Aparri itself. The Japs had landed here within the last twenty-four hours. This was the spearhead of their attack, their toughest job. Luzon was more heavily protected than any other Philippine island, and the Japs had to take Luzon if they wanted a base for planes. They’d hit Aparri hard, roaring up to the beach in armored barges and streaming ashore by the thousands, falling in front of withering fire, yet pouring in until by sheer weight of numbers they gained a foothold. If we could get a crack at one of those transports… If we could send a fish into the guts of one of those big babies…

These were very dangerous waters. We dove at 4:30 a.m. I completed my morning watch at 8 a.m. and fell asleep in my bunk, in shorts and sandals this time. About an hour later I was awakened by a shout. Something on sound again! It looked as if I’d never catch up on sleep. I took over the sound shack. I searched. I sent up my message to the conning tower: “Sound has something, sir.”

Lieut. Holden’s deep voice came back: “Very well. Control, what’s your depth?”

“Eighty-five feet, sir,” came from the man at the depth gauge.

“Bring her up to periscope depth, and we’ll have a look.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” The word was relayed to the bowplanesman:

“Bring her up and be careful. We may have something up there.”

The Wolf rose silently through the dark waters.

“Here we are, sir,” from the bowplanesman.

“Up periscope.” Holden’s voice was almost casual. We heard the drone of the periscope sliding upward in its channel. A moment later: “Down periscope!” Holden’s voice had a new note in it. “Call the Captain.”

A messenger hurried to Captain Warder’s stateroom. In less than two minutes the Skipper, in shorts and sandals, was climbing up the ladder. His sandals made a slapping sound. His deliberate words came over the intercom: “What do you have, Mr. Holden?”

“A Jap destroyer, sir. Portside bearing three one zero relative.”

“Good!” said Captain Warder. “Up periscope.” He held it up there less than fifteen seconds. “Down periscope. Battle stations.”

His voice had scarcely faded away before the raucous aaaap! aaaap! of the battle-station alarm blared through the boat. Half-naked, their bodies gleaming in the yellow light, the men tumbled out of their bunks. The narrow passageways were suddenly filled with men and then as suddenly cleared as each man fitted into his assigned position.

The approach party—the men who had to plot the maneuvering to place the Wolf in the best possible position to fire, taking into account her course and the enemy’s course and speed—grouped themselves about the plotting table in the control room. They were Ensign Mercer, Ensign Casler, Frank Franz, and one H. H. Thompson, called “Hard-Hearted Henry” simply because of his initials. Maley hurried in to stay with me in sound. Rudy Gervais, an exuberant Frenchman, just twenty-one, his face shining, his dark brown eyes alert, took over as helmsman.

Everyone was at his post.

In sound, Maley and I, with our phones on, listened hard. As from a great distance, I heard a gentle Ping!… Ping! as though someone had plucked the E string of a violin. This was the telltale sound of the enemy’s sound-detection apparatus. He was searching for us—sending out electrical sound waves—and we were listening for him. We waited.

Over the intercom, Captain Warder’s even voice: “She’s a Jap, all right. Akasaki class. Big destroyer. Guns mounted fore and aft. Multiple torpedo tubes midships. Depth charge racks. Estimated course, zero seven zero. Estimated speed, fifteen knots. Range, 3,000 yards. Seems to be patrolling outside a cove.” Pause. “Down periscope.” Then, in a satisfied tone: “We’ll wait a couple of minutes. Then we’ll make another check.”

Zero seven zero meant the enemy was on a course 70 degrees from true north. Zero zero one, for example, would mean one degree; three five nine would mean 359 degrees. Thus we could plot our approach, having the enemy’s course from a fixed point on the horizon.

The crew of the Wolf waited, silent. Slowly we slipped into position. The sea was rough now; we rolled and pitched. I had the Jap propellers in my earphones: whish—sh… whish-sh… whish-sh… and now and then a suddenly weakened fluff… fluff… whish… sh! The enemy destroyer was pitching so heavily that every few seconds his propellers cleared the water altogether and churned the air.

“Ah!” Captain Warder’s voice was eager. “She’s heading directly for us. Probably en route to the homeland. We won’t attack until we get in a more favorable position.” Then a change in his voice: “Wait a minute, wait a minute!… If the Japs have a destroyer out here, they must have something inside that cove.” Silence. Then, as though debating with himself: “Sea conditions are against me. Fish might broach. On the other hand, this is a man-of-war. He’s enemy shipping. I’m ordered out here to destroy him. But if I attack, successful or not, they’ll know I’m here, and then they’ll pull whatever they have inside that cove away from here.”

The Wolf marked time. Captain Warder was thinking it through. Was it to be this Jap destroyer, sitting before us, a fat, inviting target, or was it wiser to ignore him and set our sights for bigger prizes inside the cove? Two full minutes dragged by. No one spoke. I heard men coughing, clearing their throats, shuffling, making the small noises men make under pressure. Deeper in the boat, men stood and watched the loud speakers, waiting. I heard the Jap’s screws over sound. I spun my dials, kept him clear, and gave the Captain his bearings:

“Screws bearing zero two zero, Captain.”

“Very well, Eckberg.” Still preoccupied.

“Target seems to be drawing aft, Captain.”

“Yes—ss, that’s right. He’s staying on the same course. Let me know if the pattern changes.” Then, with sudden finality:

“Secure battle stations. We will not attack. We’re going to look inside that cove.”

The whole crew relaxed. But the tension was gone only momentarily. The Wolf was going into that cove and make the Japs like it, too. We’d see action quickly enough. Kelly’s Pool Room became crowded with men off duty drinking coffee and talking things over. Captain Warder and Lieutenant Deragon pored over their charts in the control room: slim men both, one big, the other small, both in khaki shorts and sandals, their bodies glistening with perspiration under the subdued light. Circumspection was the word now.

All that day we patrolled carefully, waiting for cover of darkness. With nightfall, the seas grew mountainous. We drew away from the bay: Captain Warder wanted his men to catch some sleep during the night.

A few of us tried to doze off, but we were too tense. Some of the boys were seasick. Most of us stayed at our stations, checking and rechecking our gear. Langford and his torpedo crew toiled over their fish. It takes six strong men to move a torpedo on its rollers and bring it out for inspection. At Squeaky’s command, the men seized a heavy line and tugged. The great, twenty-foot torpedo slid out on its tiny rollers from the loading rack. They went over it as a diamond cutter goes over his diamond, then slowly they slid it noiselessly back into place.

We submerged at dawn and started into the cove. The approach was a delicate matter. We spent four hours negotiating the short distance, making periscope observations every few minutes. The order would come, “Up periscope.” The glistening metal pillar—for all the world like a huge, shining perpendicular piston—would glide up with a soft drone, up out of its well until the periscope lens was above the surface of the water, far overhead. Captain Warder would place both arms over the two crossbars protruding more than a foot from either side of the periscope base, and, half-hanging on them, his forehead pressed against the sponge-rubber eyepiece, he would rotate with it like some strange acrobat in slow motion. I knew what it was like to look through that eyepiece: the sense of shock you had when you saw the brightness of daylight, the sun sparkling on the blue waters of the sea. Looking through a periscope is like looking through a high-powered binoculars: almost under your nose the sea heaves and tosses, so near that you almost pull back from the spray. The droplets of water roll down with amazing speed from the elliptical object glass, and the image is framed and clear. If the sun were too bright, a twist of the wrist—and a green filter fell into place. I knew that with a flick of his right hand Captain Warder could reduce his magnification to 75 percent of normal—this if he found himself so near a target that it occupied the entire field of vision and a lesser magnification would give him a more complete picture of target and surroundings. With another flick of his hand he could sweep the sea from horizon to sky; a glance downward at the periscope base, and he knew almost instantly how far away, in yards, the target stood; and all these infinite calibrations could, with a single press of his right thumb, be transferred into the very torpedoes themselves so that, once fired, they became all but human flashing toward their victim at such a rate of speed, with such a change in direction, set to explode precisely at contact.

Slowly we crept up on our still-unseen prey. In the silence, above the steady whine of the Wolf’s motors, we could hear overhead the gurgle and splash of the sea itself. The Skipper gave way, after a little while, to Lieutenant Holden, and with each “Up periscope” Holden took his navigation fixes, using points of land for reference. Stationed at sound, I heard the rough sea. The water noises were deafening, a roaring, snapping, crackling bedlam blaring through my phones like static in a terrific electrical storm. To hear the beating of a ship’s screws above this scratching inferno of sound meant listening with such intensity that often you mistook the pulsations of your own blood for the enemy.

Suddenly Holden’s deep voice rang out: “Call the Captain!”

The Skipper raced up the ladder. “What have you got, Mr. Holden?”

“I don’t know, sir. I saw the mast of a ship.”

“Can you make him out at all?”

“No, sir.”

The Captain took over the periscope. He studied the sea for a full minute, then pulled the periscope down again. “There’s a ship in there, all right. Looks like a big baby. Hmmmm.” Silence. “Mr. Mercer”—he was turning to Ensign Mercer, standing over his charts on a tiny desk less than three feet away—“how’s the depth of that water?”

“We can’t go in far, sir,” said Mercer. His voice had a different timbre. “It’s pretty shallow. But I think we can get within firing range.”

“Good!” said the Captain. “Up periscope.” A moment later: “Jap seaplane tender at anchor. Looks about 12,000 tons…”

Down below, in the sound room, Maley and I looked at each other.

“Seaplane tender!” Maley pursed his lips in a silent whistle. “Now wouldn’t that make a nice Christmas present for the boys!”

Captain Warder’s voice was even. “Bearing three five five relative. Guns fore and aft. Two stick mast cranes. Might be a sub tender. Something alongside of her that might be subs or seaplanes. Down periscope.”

Maley scratched his head. “Funny we don’t patrol in a little closer.”

“Hell,” I said, “there’s that Nip destroyer right around the corner. He can get here in ten minutes.”

Maley looked at me almost scornfully. He was young, and he wanted action. “He won’t help her if we get her first, will he? Let’s sink the damn thing now and worry about him later.”

I said nothing. Silence in the conning tower. I had a pretty clear idea of what was taking place up there. Captain Warder, brows knit, was at his chart desk, checking carefully through his confidential papers, trying to type the Jap ship we wanted to attack. Apparently he was satisfied, for a minute later:

“Battle stations!” sang out the tinny voice of the intercom.

“Battle stations!” echoed from bow to stern of the Wolf. Before the words died out, the aaap! aaaap! aaaaap! of the battle alarm rang through the boat.

The emergency lights were snapped on. A dull reddish glow suffused the interior of the Wolf.

“Up periscope… Make ready the bow tubes. Down periscope.”

Behind the Captain, Signalman Frank Franz stood with phones and chest telephone. He was the Captain’s talker and relayed his orders. He repeated: “Forward torpedo room, make ready the bow tubes.”

The Wolf slowed down so that when her periscope was raised again she would not cause a noticeable wave.

“Open outer doors,” ordered Captain Warder.

Talker repeated: “Open outer doors.”

In the control room below a man worked feverishly spinning a huge control wheel by hand… ten revolutions, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen… Far forward in the bow, two great steel doors in the Wolf’s hull swung slowly open, exposing the blunt heads of the torpedoes…

“Forward tubes ready, Captain,” Franz reported. “Outer doors open.”

“Up periscope!” said the Skipper. A few moments later: “Stand by.”

Then: “No, no, wait a minute! Rudy, come left a little more, little more… there! Hold her, Rudy… Fire one!”

There was a sudden whoosh! as though the safety valve of a radiator had blown off. Then a gentle kickback, as though the Wolf coughed, suddenly alive. I felt the pressure on my eardrums.

Torpedoes are fired by an impulse of compressed air. The air pressure within the boat goes up correspondingly.

The crew was on its toes: water had to be flooded into tanks to compensate for the change in the boat’s weight and center of gravity. The Wolf had to be trimmed, placed in balance again, or she might bounce to the surface like a rubber ball.

On the phones I picked up the sound of the torpedo, a high-pitched whine as she tore through the water. Captain Warder, I knew, had his eyes glued to the periscope. His orders came crisply.

“Stand by to fire two… Fire two!”

Again the hiss, the jar, the gentle kickback, again and again.

As each fish left, I picked it up on sound. The first whine died out, then the second came into my phones. It died out. I waited tensely for the explosions. The skipper kept his eyes glued to the periscope. I listened hard. I had to keep my ears on those torpedoes. An erratic fish can circle about and come back to blow you into Kingdom Come.

Captain Warder’s voice was sharp: “I can see them…. They’re running hot… Jesus! They missed the target! Oh, hell! Make ready the aftertubes. Open outer doors in after-room! Hard right rudder!”

He ordered the Wolf full speed ahead. “All ahead, full! Eckberg, hear those fish run?”

Yes, I had heard them run. But I’d also heard dull thuds. They were like knife thrusts into my heart. I knew what had happened. The torpedoes had missed the target, continued on, and exploded on the beach.

I reported heavily. “Yes, sir. All ran hot and missed the target.”

“Hmmmm,” said the Captain. Then: “Rudy, come to course two seven zero. Let me know when you get there. Sound, do you hear any propellers?”

I searched intently. “No screws, sir.”

“Good!” said the Skipper. He was as disappointed as a man can be, but he hadn’t given up hope yet.

Rudy’s voice came over the intercom: “Steady on course two seven zero, sir.”

“Very well, all ahead one-third,” replied the Captain.

“One-third, sir,” said Rudy.

The Wolf, her speed reduced to one-third, moved slowly forward.

The Captain said: “Up periscope. Are the after tubes ready? Okay. There’s a lot of activity up here, as far as I can see. They are trying to get under way. Come right a little, Rudy… Hold it there, Rudy…. Stand by to fire…. Fire!”

Again I picked up the high, thin whine of the fish.

“Easy now, Rudy… Close the outer doors… All ahead, standard. I see him now…. They’re running straight again—”

I was listening to the fish with all my ears. They were running straight and hot, all right. Then ka-boom! The Wolf shuddered. Then again, and again, and again. This time our torpedoes had run straight and home. The concussion shook us each time.

“Explosions, Captain!” I barked into the mike.

“I can see her!” he snapped back. “Wait… wait… They may have hit in the bow.” Then, eagerly: “I see white water. I see a lot of white water! Down periscope!”

We dared expose our periscope no longer. There was a murmur of conversation between the Skipper and Ensign Mercer. Captain Warder, we learned later, wasn’t sure if our fish struck the Jap or not. The crew to a man was certain that at least one had hit. But Captain Warder did not even claim this ship as damaged. He had not seen it go down. He was not positive.

“Proceed with the reloads,” he finally ordered. “We are expecting company any minute. Keep careful watch, sound.” Then, a moment later: “Send Mr. Syverson up, please.”

In a few minutes the Skipper was talking to Ensign Donald Syverson, torpedo officer, a stubby, red-headed, personable sub man from Michigan.

“I can’t understand it,” the Captain said quickly. “I don’t know what was wrong with those first fish. Got any ideas about it?”

“No, sir.” Syverson sounded crestfallen. “We readied them according to instructions, Captain. I inspected them myself.”

“I can’t figure it out,” said the Skipper, musingly.

I began hearing telltale sounds again. Ping!… ping… ping!

“Got a ship up there, Captain,” I announced.

“Propellers or pings, Eckberg?”

“Pings, Captain. I think they’re on the starboard side, well aft.”

“What do you mean, they? More than one?”

“Yes, sir. I hear two of them.”

We waited. And then, far distant, a muffled boom! The Wolf shook. Her joints creaked. The lights flickered, went out for a moment, then on again. It was a depth charge, mild because it was some distance away. Actually, no depth charge attack can be called mild, because when 700 or 800 pounds of TNT explode in your general vicinity, any number of things can happen. A depth charge doesn’t have to score a direct hit to sink you. Water is incompressible. An explosion can write your finish if it’s near enough for the concussion to place sufficient pressure on the water surrounding your boat to stave it in or crush it altogether.

The exploding charges were something special to hear. They sounded as though a giant smashed together boulders as large as houses under the water with pulverizing force. If you’ve ever heard two stones struck together under water, you know how booming and terrifying that small report can sound, intensified and expanded by the water. But this charge, and the one or two that followed, were too far away to harm us. And after a while, there were no, more explosions and no more pings.

“Hear any propellers about?” asked the Skipper. I said no, and he ordered the boat taken to the regular diving depth. We cruised back into rough water; water so rough I could hear the choppy waves rippling the surface of the sea. A few minutes later, Captain Warder ordered the periscope up again. He spent five long minutes scanning the water.

“Hell, it’s black up here tonight,” he murmured. “Damn rough, too. There’s a fire near the beach. That might be one of our ships burning. It’s so black up here I can’t see the land at all…. Well, we’ll head out to open sea and charge batteries.”

For some nights and days we made routine patrols, and then one night we began one of the most dangerous tasks a submarine can undertake in wartime—relocating our torpedoes. The Wolf had space on deck to stow extra torpedoes. Since these are massive weapons, relocating them—moving them from the deck to the torpedo rooms below—is a sizable job. Booms must be rigged, loading hatches must be opened, and the submarine is exposed to any attack. Her men are topside, live torpedoes are dangling from the booms, hatches are open, and a crash dive is impossible. Here, particularly, with Jap land all about us, we’d be a sitting duck for the first plane or destroyer to sight us.

The Skipper took every precaution. While he scanned his charts in the control room, the four men who were to take over the bridge lookouts when we surfaced lounged in the mess hall reading magazines through infrared glasses, preparing their eyes for the darkness above. Captain Warder finally decided to surface in the lee of a small island. The brassy, harsh surface horn jangled. The Wolf slowly rose.

“Open the hatch,” the Skipper ordered.

The toggle-bolts were whirled loose, the hatch was pushed open. There was a rush of air like a small gale sweeping past us.

The Seawolf bobbed gently on the surface of the sea.

Word came from topside that a radio insulator—one of the two on which my antenna was strung—was smashed. I asked permission to go topside and fix it.

“I don’t know, Eckberg,” Captain Warder said dubiously, rubbing his chin. “We’re not in a healthy place. They can ram us or shell us before we can get down. The less people I have on the bridge, the better I like it.”

But our antenna might snap, I said, and I could fix it in a couple of minutes. Okay, he said, go ahead—but fast. I climbed up the ladder and out into God’s fresh air. The clouds had vanished, and now the night was perfect. The full moon, bright as a new penny, flooded the ocean with its light. The high seas had died down; the water was calm, with only the gentlest swell running. I took a deep breath and tasted the heavy salt air. It was so heavy I felt dizzy. I could see the thin outline of a small island less than half a mile away. I breathed deeply again. I couldn’t get enough fresh air into my lungs. This was the first time since Manila that I had been topside, under the sky. It seemed a long time then, but I was to learn that it was nothing compared to what was in store for us later.

The insulator was easily fixed, and when I climbed down again, half a dozen of the crew were crowded about the foot of the ladder trying to get as near the fresh air as they could.

“It had to be you who went up, didn’t it?” complained Maley. “Goddammit, I’d give my right arm to be able to take a ten-minute walk in a park now.”

I slapped him on the back. “Nothing like fresh air to put pep into a man,” I said. I made it back into the sound room with a string of catcalls following me.

We finished relocating torpedoes and our battery charging. Now that we were on the surface, I set the radio to intercept instructions from the High Command. Messages began to pour into my phones. As fast as I copied them down, a messenger took them up to the Skipper to decode in the wardroom. We learned then that we were the first submarine to come out of the Philippines, and that our attack on the seaplane tender had been the first U.S. submarine attack of World War II.

All that night we remained in the open sea. Before dawn we dove and started back to the beach where we had made our first attack. The Skipper wanted to look for ships. We went in the same entrance and arrived at the same point where we had fired our torpedoes. I heard the Skipper at the periscope:

“I’ll never find out if I sunk that bastard or not. After the war is over I’ll come up here again and investigate.”

The sea turned rough and dirty. Waves as big as housetops were breaking on the surface, and I heard their steady rumbling on sound. That night we again returned to the open sea and recharged batteries. Two nights later we received a radio report of the War Department’s announcement: a flotilla of transports estimated to include many thousands of Japanese soldiers was moving into the Lingayen Gulf, escorted by planes and destroyers. And that night Wake Island fell. We knew Wake couldn’t hold out indefinitely, but were encouraged to think how long a handful of Marines could tell the Japs to go to hell.

We received orders to return to Cavite. The Japs had thrown a cordon of warships around the entire Philippine area. Japanese warships were working with Japanese reconnaissance planes, and Tokyo had actually set up a chain of ships from Corregidor to Zamboanga, on the southern tip of the Philippines, ships so spaced that no surface unit could penetrate without being seen. Two out of every three Allied ships that tried to run the blockade were sunk before they reached Manila Bay. We had to proceed with utmost caution. We turned homeward and began running south as we had run north—surfaced at night, submerged at day. The Japs were working fast. They’d moved close to Manila now, and everything that could be, had been moved to Corregidor.

Meanwhile, life had been going on as usual within the Wolf.

We had our jobs to do, and we did them. Off duty, there were long bull-sessions and games of cribbage in Kelly’s Pool Room. We discussed everything from religion to Walter Winchell. Most of us admired his courage in coming out with what he thought, but what got our fancy was how he predicted blessed events. “That guy must walk around with a keyhole,” Zerk claimed. Men lay in their bunks reading magazines. Nearly all of us subscribed to the popular ones—the Reader’s Digest, Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, Liberty—and to half a dozen colored comic magazines, and we got them regularly at Manila.

There wasn’t much we could do about celebrating Christmas, but we had our little surprise, anyway. The first inkling I had was when I strolled into the mess hall after my afternoon watch on December 24 and began reading an article on air power by Alexander de Seversky. At that moment Sully, who’d seemed pretty busy the last few days, walked in. His red face was beaming. He rubbed his hands. He looked at me reading my magazine, at Sousa, who was flipping through a deck of cards, at Zerk, thumbing moodily through an old Esquire, and he said: “Well, boys, she’s finished. Want to take a look at her?”

“What’s finished?” I asked. Now, if it was something special in a cake he’d been laboring on…

“Why, my Christmas tree,” said Sully. “Want to see it?”

Sousa looked up from his cards. “By God, it is Christmas Eve, come to think of it!”

Zerk hitched up his trousers. “That’s right,” he said, as though this was the first time he had thought about it, too.

Sully was annoyed. “Do you or don’t you want to see the damn thing?” he demanded.

We followed Sully into the forward battery and into the yeoman’s office, and there on nice green monk’s-cloth he’d set it up—his Christmas tree. It was a beautiful job. Coming down from Aparri he’d begun it. He’d started with a broom handle, drilled holes in it, then borrowed a handful of applicator sticks from Loaiza and inserted them into the holes. They became the branches. Then he’d got some red and blue flag bunting from Frank Franz. He’d made tinsel by gluing tinfoil from cigarette packages to strips of paper, and decorated the branches with that. He’d painted half a dozen flashlight bulbs green and red and silver and strung them about on a dry-battery circuit, and so his Christmas tree gleamed green, red, and silver—a work of art two feet high.

For the next twenty minutes a steady stream of men came to see and admire. Even Zerk admired it. “But it needs presents,” he said.

“Yeah,” admitted Sully, and his face fell. “I couldn’t bum those, though I bummed everything else.”

Captain Warder looked in from his stateroom a few feet away.

“What’s the excitement?” he asked.

“Take a look in here, Captain, if you want to see something pretty,” I said. Everyone moved aside so he could see the tree.

“My, my,” he said. He cocked his head to one side. “That certainly looks like the real thing. Who made it?”

Everyone looked at Sully. The red began to creep up his solid Irish face. “Aw,” he said finally, “four or five of us made it, Captain. I did the constructing, but I bummed stuff all over the boat.”

Then, suddenly encouraged: “Captain, is it all right if I take a picture of it?”

“Sure,” said Captain Warder, grinning. “We don’t want to miss that. Make some good ones while you’re at it.”

For the next ten minutes Sully perspired. He spread cotton batting about the base of the tree for snow. He made a little fireplace out of cardboard and stuck that behind the tree. He dashed to his bunk and came back with flood lights and camera, shouting directions. I had to hold a spot here; Zerk had to hold another there.

“For Christ sakes, Eck, keep your face out of this,” he shouted. “This is going to be pretty.”

He was standing up, crouching, sighting along his nose—the perfect picture of the demon stage director. Even Captain Warder got into the picture, sitting down at one side of the table, smiling, his hair neatly brushed to one side. Then half a dozen other fellows posed with the tree.

We liked that little Christmas tree. The men would look at it, and someone would say, “Jeez, isn’t that a pretty little thing,” and then you’d hear someone else’s voice, “Sure wish I was home tonight.”

Zerk and I walked back slowly to the control room. On the way we met John Street, laughing like a madman.

“What’s tickling you?” Zerk asked.

Street pointed to the after-engine room. We went in there. The noise of the Diesels was terrific, but everybody was standing around with pleased smiles. I went up to the nearest man standing at the throttle of No. 3 engine. I got right up to his ear.

“What tickled John Street so?” I yelled.

He pointed, too. I turned around, and there were two immense socks, four feet long. The foot alone was eighteen inches. One was bright red, the other white. They were made of bunting, and in those socks was the wildest collection of junk I’d ever seen in my life. A bunch of garlic; a twelve-inch Stilsen wrench; a can of oil; a pair of pink silk panties someone had got on some expedition of conquest; and on the socks were two Christmas tags.

One read, “From Mac to Snyder: Merry Christmas, I love you.”

The other read: “From Snyder to McCoy: Best Wishes for Continued Prosperity and Good Luck in the Coming Year. Be glad when you’re dead, you rascal, you.”

We got a kick out of that. When we finally got into the control room, for no reason at all Manila jumped into my head, and I said, “I wonder how many of the boats got out of Manila.”

Zerk, the supreme pessimist, sucked his pipe. “Damn few,” he said.

I bristled. Perhaps it was homesickness after the Christmas tree, or impatience, but I stood up and snapped at him. “For Christ sakes, you’re such a crepe-hanger somebody ought to punch you right in the face.”

Zerk looked up and grinned. “Well, that’s the way I see it,” he said.

I stomped out. I felt low. I went into the galley and poured myself a big mug of hot coffee. I sat over it and began thinking. We were doing all right. This first mission of ours was damn important from more than one point of view. Here were the Japs, oozing confidence out of every pore, completely sold on the plans of their High Command, converging on a dozen different points; and where they found opposition they swiftly overwhelmed it.

They were coming down, step by step, clutching at everything within reach, eager for the petroleum-rich lands below them. The Wolf’s first attack served notice to the Jap fleet that the United States wasn’t entirely caught off guard. Some units of the Asiatic Submarine fleet were still operating. The Japs simply couldn’t cruise into any cove or harbor and think themselves completely safe from us. We were around. And because we were around, and because they now knew we were around, they dared not send unescorted merchant shipping over unprotected sea lanes. They’d have to pull warships off important jobs and assign them to convoy duty. We were doing fine. What was I glum about?

It was nearly midnight now, and I should have hit the sack, but I still didn’t feel like sleep. Men were dropping into the galley, into Kelly’s Pool Room, and everybody I passed on the way out was saying, “Merry Christmas.” That warmed me up still more. I looked in on the radio shack. Snyder and Maley were in there, Snyder with the phones on, Maley bent over a book. Snyder saw me. He pushed his phones off his ears and said, “It’s sure noisy around here. I don’t know if I got anything here or not.”

“Why don’t you go aft and get some coffee?” I said. “I’ll take over.” He went out, and I slipped on the phones. Maley looked up, grunted, and went back to his reading.

It was noisy. We were close to shore, and I could hear the soft roar of the surf rolling up the beach. I listened hard. A distant, continuous echoing roar, like a seashell at your ear: that was the sound from the minute animal life clinging to the Seawolf’s keel. And then a backyard-like chattering—the merged sound of fish whistling, croaking, sighing. All these were the familiar sounds of the sea. I heard nothing suspicious.

I pushed off one earphone and turned to Maley. “Merry Christmas, kid,” I said. He looked up and smiled. “Merry Christmas, Eck,” he said, and went back to his reading.

Outside I heard the voice of Swede Enslin, “Merry Christmas, Mr. Deragon,” and then our exec’s mild, “Same to you, Swede.”

There was a lump in my throat. I had to swallow a few times, sitting there, thinking, Here it is Christmas, and Marjorie and Spike alone at home, not knowing if I’m dead or alive, and we’re off Corregidor, and men are dying in Bataan, and we don’t know if we’re going to be dead or alive ourselves twenty-four hours from now…

Maley started to whistle softly. He had a gift for whistling. I sat there listening with one ear, my other tuned to the familiar sounds of the water, and all at once I felt better. Maley whistled pretty notes; he trilled like a bird. Well, it was Christmas. Marjorie and the little fellow were O.K. They were in a good home; they had enough food and heat. I wondered what they were doing this very minute. I’d sent her some beautiful things I’d picked up—raw silk, bolts of cloth, even a Mohammedan kriss, to decorate our home. Did the ship carrying those gifts ever get through?

I heard a man’s heavy tread. It was Snyder.

“Okay, Eck,” he said. “I’m ready to take over.”

I took off the earphones. “Nothing to worry about on the gear, Snyder,” I said, and I went forward and went to sleep.

There was a surprise Christmas Day. Gus Wright came into the mess hall and announced what we’d have for dinner that night—mince pies. He’d been up all night baking them, twenty of them. Gus was the hero of the boat that day. He was a thin fellow, about twenty-eight, with buck teeth and a pleasant way about him; and the fuss the crew made over his surprise made him so happy that his eyes got watery, and he went back into the galley and banged his pans around until he got it out of him. A Christmas tree, mince pies—well, it was a better Christmas than the boys had on Bataan and Corregidor, we thought.

All went smoothly aboard the Wolf until we approached south of Subic Bay, around 11 p.m. the night of the twenty-sixth. I began hearing pings. Captain Warder scoured the sea and horizon with his binoculars. Visibility was practically unlimited. A bright moon shone.

“I don’t see a damn thing,” he said.

But these pings could come from a Jap sub concealed under water, and we’d be silhouetted against the moon. We dove. When the moon set, we surfaced with infinite care and inched our way forward. At a point several miles off Corregidor, we picked up a small signal light. It was pointed toward us, blinking on and off, somewhere on the pitch-black shore. Someone was sending to us.

Frank Franz raced to the bridge and replied with our blinker gun, a tube-like instrument with a powerful light in it which can be aimed directly at a point miles away and can’t be seen at the right or left of the point. We established contact with the shore.

The message came through. A pilot was coming out in a FT boat to escort us through the heavily mined harbor.

A few minutes before midnight the PT boat suddenly emerged out of the darkness and unloaded a soft-spoken young man. He joined the Skipper on the bridge. The motors began to hum. I knew by the feel of the boat answering the rudder that we were going through the mine field, moving with infinite care toward the harbor. Then the Wolf halted; we had Mariveles Harbor on our port beam. The pilot left us.

Just before dawn, we pushed on again, heading farther into Manila Bay. The Skipper had orders to submerge there at a specified point. We finally found it and went down.

We marked time. Now and then a faint pounding came to our ears, as though someone were hammering on the hull of the Wolf. You couldn’t mistake that sound. The Japs were bombing Manila. These were the explosions of their bombs coming down to us through the water. We listened, frustrated and impotent. We had little or no air support left in the Philippines then, and it wasn’t pleasant knowing that our own men were being bombed on the surface and that we couldn’t help them.

We surfaced at dusk and ran awash. We made a small target, difficult to observe. At 7 p.m. a message came over my radio ordering us into Corregidor. Captain Warder looked around.

“There’s a ship out there,” he said slowly. “She’s burning.”

We finally glided alongside the dock. We tied up. I received permission to secure the sound gear and some topside. I scrambled up the ladder and out the hatch. A shadowy figure grabbed my arm. It was the deck watch.

“Don’t wander off too far,” he warned me. “They’re expecting an air raid.”

I walked over the gangplank and stepped upon the dock of Corregidor.