Trapped
‘It is said that an expert makes the difficult look easy.’
—Lieutenant Max Shean, HMS XE-4
At 4.00pm, just five minutes before Tich Fraser ordered Kiwi Smith and Charlie Reed to drop the XE-3’s side charges beneath the Takao, Jack Smart was ready to begin his final run in to attack the exact same heavy cruiser.
Smart knew that he was close now; just ten minutes on half power would bring his submarine alongside the Takao’s starboard flank.1 Then it should be a simple operation to release his side cargo and head for home.
The XE-1’s diver, Leading Seaman Walter Pomeroy, gripped his stopwatch and consulted his slide rule. Harold Harper was at the hydroplanes, while ERA Henry Fishleigh monitored the electric motor. Their brows were all furrowed in concentration, beads of sweat running down their faces.
‘Nine minutes, sir,’ announced Pomeroy.
‘Very well,’ replied Smart. ‘Up periscope.’ Every time Pomeroy called out a minute, Smart had him raise the attack periscope so that he could take a quick look around and make any slight course changes.
Smart thought that things looked good topside. The Takao sat impassively, looking massive, solid and very menacing in the harsh tropical glare. The number of small Japanese motorboats seemed to have thinned, and after the close calls that the XE-1 had suffered on the approach, Smart was thankful. He could now concentrate on moving his submarine into a position midway along the Takao’s hull ready to release his side cargo.
‘Depth?’ asked Smart.
‘Twenty-five feet, Jack,’ replied Harper. The shallowness of the water was a concern, as it had been for Fraser in the XE-3. Its clarity also made everyone very nervous as it made effective defensive manoeuvring should they be seen almost impossible. Smart knew from his detailed Admiralty chart that the XE-1, like the XE-3 before her, would shortly strike the shallow bottom of the Johor Strait. The plan was to remain at maximum available depth and slowly crawl across the bottom like a cat approaching its prey until his submarine passed into the Takao’s great shadow. Smart licked his dry lips and ordered the periscope lowered once again.
‘Stand by to touch bottom,’ he said, waiting for the grinding sound that would indicate their close proximity to the target. He switched over to the night periscope for a quick look but they were still too far away from the Takao to make anything out.
Smart had no idea that the XE-3 was close by, having just laid her charges, and was about to depart for home. He assumed that she was long gone. With a sudden shudder the XE-1 started to drag along the stony seabed, Harper fighting to control the submarine’s trim.
‘Depth?’ Smart demanded.
‘Eighteen feet, skip,’ replied Harper over the din.
They were close now, very close. Smart issued another flurry of orders, his voice tense and direct in the cramped and hot interior.
For Jack Smart, this moment had been a long time coming. He could take satisfaction from how well his mission had gone so far. Although he hadn’t made it to the Myoko, he had managed to infiltrate his submarine deep behind Japanese lines without being detected, penetrated one of their main bases, and would shortly attack one of their last remaining major warships. The contrast to his previous X-craft mission could not have been starker. His mind slipped momentarily back two years earlier, to Operation Source, when Smart’s submarine X-8 had been detailed to act alone and attack the German heavy cruiser Lützow in Langfjord, Norway while the rest of the X-craft went after the battleships Tirpitz and Scharnhorst. His attack on the German warship should have gone off like that on the Takao, but Smart’s role in the Norway attacks had been an epic of endurance rather than a triumph of audacity. He had managed to keep his crew alive for 37 agonising hours after his leaking and damaged submarine had lost its tow and one of its side cargoes had exploded prematurely.2 He had shown everyone that he was a tough and inspirational leader, but he hadn’t been able to demonstrate his ability to close with the enemy and sink him. The Takao was an even more impressive target than the Lützow; at 15,500 tons, she was over a thousand tons heavier than the German ship. At this moment, deep inside the Johor Strait, Jack Smart knew that he would shortly make his mark on naval history after his false start in 1943 – and it guaranteed to be a spectacular show.
*
‘Bloody well done, Magennis,’ declared Fraser, as the diver crawled through the open W&D compartment door and back into the XE-3’s control room. He looked all in. He lay in a wet pile on the floor panting for air, his mouthpiece hanging in front of his face, the diving visor open. They all knew what he had been through outside and what he had just achieved, in spite of his faulty equipment and the evident onset of oxygen poisoning.3
Though Fraser was in awe of Magennis’s efforts, he couldn’t afford to give a long congratulatory speech; that would have to wait until later when they were all, God willing, safely back aboard the ‘mother’ submarine HMS Stygian. For the time being, more pressing matters concerned the diminutive lieutenant.
The XE-3 was, literally and metaphorically, in a hole. Fraser needed to exit that hole as fast as possible. As the tide in the Johor Strait ebbed away the Japanese warship sank lower and lower on to the trench in which the XE-3 rested. Delay his exit for too long and Fraser and his crew would be trapped in the space beneath the Takao, unable to move until the tide rose again in several hours’ time. The mines were ticking down to destruction and couldn’t now be stopped.
The flooded limpet mine carrier was sure to add to their difficulties. With that amount of extra weight hanging off the starboard side, the XE-3 would be hard to manoeuvre, to say the least. But they would give it a go. If they could just get clear of the Takao they could worry about the limpet mine carrier afterwards.
‘Group down, half ahead together,’ ordered Fraser, ‘and let’s get the hell out of this hole!’
‘Main motor, half ahead, skipper,’ replied Kiwi Smith, the propeller engaging with a muffled whir. ‘May I start the fan, Tich?’4
During the time that they had spent sitting on the seabed beneath the Takao Fraser had switched off the motor and the air conditioning to prevent detection by underwater hydrophones. Fraser gave his consent and the little fan started up, providing some relief from the heavy, stifling heat.
Magennis slowly struggled out of his DSEA rebreather and diving hood, partially recovered after his exertions outside. But he still had the look of a man who had been through a very trying experience and had only escaped by the skin of his teeth.
Fraser switched on the sounding machine to monitor the depth. He then returned to his usual position at the night periscope. He would oversee the XE-3’s exit from the hole beneath the Takao. But it was apparent that something was wrong, very wrong.
*
HMS XE-4 had been running at schnorkel depth for 40 minutes without mishap. It was a testament to the professionalism of Max Shean’s crew that the schnorkel head had remained above the waves during their withdrawal to deeper waters for a rest. They had managed to avoid the sudden depressurisation and ear pain caused when the head was submerged by a wave. No one had fallen sick from the experience, and in Shean’s book that meant they were using the equipment properly. With the boat open to fresh air, the crew started to feel much better. After hour upon hour stuck inside the sealed submarine, the psychological uplift from being connected once more with the surface was almost as important as the clean, salty air that poured inside the boat. The batteries were being charged and the air pressure cylinders used to blow the ballast tanks filled.
After motoring for three miles Shean ordered a stop. He had a decision to make. In consultation with his first lieutenant, Beadon Dening, they looked at the charts and discussed their options. First and foremost in Shean’s mind were his secondary orders – to attack Japanese shipping in the Mekong River. It was for this reason that XE-4 was loaded down with twelve limpet mines in two side cargoes. But Shean was averse to pushing his luck. His two divers had managed to cut both submerged telephone cables off Saigon without undue trouble. He would return to HMS Spearhead and see what the intelligence boys had to say regarding fresh targets in Saigon. Unlike Tich Fraser and Jack Smart, Shean had not been given any specific targets. British Naval Intelligence had little idea of what ships were in Saigon harbour, if any. If Shean were ordered to attack Saigon, it would be a case of sailing into unknown waters and perhaps spending a long time searching for something worthwhile to attack. But Shean was prepared to follow his instructions, whatever they might be.
Shean considered his divers. Ken Briggs and Jock Bergius were both exhausted. Each man had completed two short though physically gruelling dives, both reaching the limit of their endurance working at man-killing depths breathing pure oxygen. He could see that they had both had enough for one day.5 Shean knew that if he was ordered to attack shipping in the Mekong River, both men would immediately volunteer, regardless of their fatigue. It was in their makeup as XE-men to do so. But Shean also knew that to send these brave men on third and even fourth missions might tip them over into very dangerous ground indeed. He could conceivably lose one or both to oxygen narcosis. Were the potential targets even worth risking either of these men’s lives? he wondered. As far as everyone knew, there was no Tirpitz or Takao moored on the Mekong, perhaps just a few rusty Japanese tramp steamers or oilers.
Shean announced that they would take the boat down to the bottom so that everyone could have a rest. Once it was dark they would leave the area and rendezvous with HMS Spearhead.6 It was a decision that was greeted with great relief by the other members of the crew. Everyone was exhausted.
*
It was beginning to look as though Tich Fraser and the crew of the XE-3, unlike their comrades in the XE-4, would not be heading home any time soon. Though Fraser had ordered the electric motor engaged at half speed, nothing happened. The XE-3 refused to budge from beneath the Takao. He had set a course of 200 degrees to clear the warship and begin their journey back to the defence boom gate.
‘Full ahead!’ Fraser barked, listening with mounting panic as the submarine’s propeller spun madly but the boat refused to move an inch. The problem wasn’t the limpet mine carrier. That would make manoeuvring difficult but would not stop the XE-craft moving completely.
‘Stop, full astern, group up,’ ordered Fraser.7 He would try backing out of the hole beneath the Takao instead. But again, the XE-3 didn’t move. Fraser glanced at Kiwi Smith. He looked very concerned. Fraser felt more than concerned, he felt virtually hysterical, and he struggled to control his panic in front of his men. He was, after all, their commanding officer, and they were looking to him to get them out of this situation. He tried to take hold of himself and think the problem through.
It was the second time his boat had become stuck beneath the Takao, but this time it was obviously a much more serious situation, with live explosives just yards from the sub and a falling tide. Fraser guessed, correctly, that the Takao’s massive keel was now resting directly on top of the XE-3, pinning her like a mouse beneath an elephant.8 It was an appalling realisation. He had only a limited number of options to play with, but his training kicked in.
‘Stop,’ ordered Fraser. ‘Full ahead, group down.’ Nothing. No major movement.
‘Lift the red,’ he ordered. This would give the motor maximum power, but even though she vibrated madly from the effort, her propeller spinning at maximum revolutions, the boat still would not budge. Fraser, his mind a riot of emotion, decided to pause for a few seconds.9
‘Stop the motor,’ he ordered, there being no sense in draining the batteries. What to do? an urgent voice in his mind repeated over and over.
Fraser weighed his options. If he couldn’t free his submarine from beneath the Takao the only realistic option was to abandon her. No captain ever abandons his ship unless there is absolutely no alternative, but this was beginning to look like one of those situations. He decided that if this was the only option after he had exhausted all others, they would remain aboard the XE-3 until half an hour before the charges were set to explode. Then, donning their DSEA breathing gear, they would flood the submarine and swim out towards the shore, approximately 200 yards away. The plan, if it could be called that, was to hide in the mangrove swamps until the British retook Singapore, whenever that might be.
Fraser glanced at the packs containing their survival kit, stored in one corner of the submarine, and inwardly grimaced. He knew with dreadful certainty that they might well make it ashore, but after the charges had gone off and the Takao had been destroyed, the Japanese would make every effort to find those responsible. Japanese divers examining the Takao’s hulk would discover the remains of the British submarine beneath her and no sign of her crew. It would be obvious that they had swum ashore.
Similar circumstances had befallen the crew of a Japanese Type-A midget submarine that had attacked the British supply port of Diego Suarez in Madagascar on the night of 30 May 1942. Like Fraser and the crew of the XE-3, Lieutenant Saburo Akieda and Petty Officer Masami Takemoto had completed their mission, severely damaging the 33,500-ton battleship HMS Ramillies and sinking the tanker British Loyalty. But as they were trying to escape from the harbour and rendezvous with the ‘mother’ submarine I-20 that was lying several miles offshore, Akieda had run his submarine aground on a hidden rock. It was too damaged to complete the journey, and Akieda had had no choice but to abandon ship. He and Takemoto had swum to shore. Each man was armed with a Nambu 8mm pistol and Akieda as an officer also carried a wakizashi, a short samurai sword.10
They had planned to march overland to Madagascar’s northern coast and attempt to signal the I-20 by lamp and arrange a rescue. In many respects the two Japanese had been in a much better position than Fraser and his crew were now, as their mother submarine had been close inshore, whereas HMS Stygian was at least 30 miles from Singapore.11
Akieda and Takemoto were hunted by British troops from virtually the moment that they stepped ashore and were cornered on 2 June after 59 hours on the run. In the resulting melee the two Japanese managed to kill one soldier and wound four others before they were in turn both gunned down and killed.12
In Fraser’s mind, should they abandon the XE-3 it would come down to a choice of being killed while emptying their Colt .45s at a Japanese patrol, becoming prisoners and enduring torture before being decapitated, or, perhaps the most depressing of all, crunching down on cyanide pills and dying in some muddy, mosquito-blown ditch thousands of miles from home. None of those options held the least appeal to any of the crewmen. A few terse remarks had been quietly made about Operation Struggle being a ‘suicide mission’ before Fraser and Smart had departed from Brunei, and Admiral Nimitz and other American officers had certainly voiced similar opinions about the XE-craft programme in general. But Fraser was not prepared to accept such a fate. In fact, given their terminal options if they left the XE-3, it spurred Fraser into making a final effort to get his boat free from beneath the Takao.
For the next few minutes Fraser ordered water ballast pumped aft and then forward, repeating the process over and over again, rocking the little submarine while also running the motor forwards and in reverse. He even partially blew the number 2 ballast tank – anything to try to shake the XE-3 loose.13 The frantic movement was designed to nudge a hole in the seabed so that the submarine could make a little space and crawl out from under the Takao.14
Suddenly, as if by a miracle, the XE-3 started to move. But the movement, though life-saving, was soon far from easy to control.
*
The XE-1’s bow connected with the starboard side of the Takao around the same time that the XE-3 was limping away from the warship on her port side. The two submarines had attacked widely separated points along the Takao’s massive hull, and Jack Smart could see no evidence of his comrades’ busy mining activities.
The XE-1 vibrated from the impact and several pieces of equipment fell from the racks and chart table with a clatter. But the submarine was not damaged.
‘Stop!’ yelled Smart. The last thing he had wanted to do was hit the Takao but it had been next to impossible to avoid contact as the little submarine ground its way slowly across the shallow seabed, control spasmodic and visibility limited due to the night periscope’s small optics.
‘Time?’ demanded Smart.
‘Sixteen ten hours, sir,’ replied Pomeroy.15
Smart had intended to slip into the long trench beneath the Takao and drop his side cargo, but it soon became clear that the Japanese warship had sunk very low with the ebbing tide, making such a manoeuvre nearly impossible without getting trapped.16
He adjusted his depth and the XE-1 slipped into the shadow of the Takao’s overhanging hull. Smart was on edge. He had no way of knowing if he was approaching a mined section of the ship. If everything had gone according to schedule, Fraser would have laid his charges hours ago. Of course, Smart had no way of knowing that the XE-3 had laid its charges only in the last hour and was at that very moment just a few hundred feet away from the XE-1 on the warship’s port side. But as far as Smart was concerned the Takao’s hull was littered with British limpets, each with its counter-mining pins fully exposed, while a two-ton saddle charge lay somewhere beneath the ship, ready to go up at any minute. He would have to be extremely careful when manoeuvring the XE-1 near to the Takao’s keel, lest he accidentally brush one of the XE-3’s limpets.
‘Right chaps,’ said Smart, his eyes red-rimmed with exhaustion, ‘prepare to flood the charges.’
*
‘Ship’s head swinging to starboard, sir,’ shouted Reed. ‘I can’t control her.’17
As the XE-3 passed out from under the Takao’s shadow, harsh sunlight flooded into the submarine through the little inspection window in her top, the crewmen all squinting in the sudden glare. The submarine crawled across the bottom of the strait like a wounded animal, its head dragging constantly down and to the right.18
‘It’s the damned limpet carrier,’ yelled Fraser as the submarine gave another sickening lurch to starboard and crunched into the seabed. The limpet mine carrier on the starboard side had only partially released when the port explosive charge had dropped off and now it was completely flooded with seawater. Weighing close on two tons it was dragging the XE-3 in a nose-down circle back towards the Takao, the very last place that Fraser wanted to go. They were in only fifteen feet of water, perfectly visible to anyone passing overhead in a boat or taking any notice from the Takao’s tall superstructure, a large dark shadow moving erratically on the seabed.19 It seemed almost certain that the XE-3 must be spotted and attacked.
Fraser ordered the motor stopped. The submarine came to a juddering halt and settled on the bottom of the strait. Fraser judged that the XE-3 was only about twenty feet away from the Takao’s port side.20 This was dangerously close. But the XE-3 could go no further. If Fraser continued trying to push the boat it would simply drive straight back into the side of the warship. There was no way the submarine could be navigated back down the strait and out through the anti-submarine boom to safety. The jammed limpet mine carrier would have to be removed before they could continue.21
The question was, who was going to go out there and remove it?