by Dave Bouslog
For some people, the call of the sea is an insistent one, even if they have never served on a pigboat or any other submarine. Our next author is Dave Bouslog, who was born during World War II in 1942. During the summers between his college years he worked as a photographer and reporter for WHIO-TV in Dayton before joining the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department in 1965. After serving in Dayton for twenty-six years, he retired as a lieutenant in June 1991. He has been studying submarine history for over forty-five years, and it shows in his published first book, Maru Killer, which appeared in 1996 to rave reviews from men such as Captain Edward L. Beach, Jr., Captain Ralph Styles, and Nelson Cutter. Dave and his wife, Jolene, currently live in Sarasota, Florida.
Dave chose to chronicle the exploits of the crew of one of the most celebrated submarines in the Pacific—the USS Seahorse. Under the command of four different skippers during her combat patrols, including the legendary Slade D. Cutter, she would sink dozens of Japanese ships during the last two years of the war. Although it doesn’t appear that Dave ever served in the Navy, his accuracy and attention to detail come through on every page of the following excerpt from Maru Killer, which tells of the masterful submariner Slade Cutter’s first patrol as captain of the Seahorse.
Hot skippers, those who were adept at sinking ships, could ask for and in most cases were given their choice of patrol areas. Slade Cutter was a hot skipper. Even though Seahorse’s second patrol was an unqualified success, Captain Cutter still had a bad taste in his mouth from the humiliating first patrol at Palau. He was a fierce competitor and did not take defeat well. Dick Voge, Admiral Lockwood’s operations officer, called Cutter and asked him where he wanted to take Seahorse for her third patrol. Cutter didn’t hesitate; he asked to be sent back to Palau. He explained:
I chose Palau for a couple of reasons—one good and the other vindictive. The good reason was that I knew there was good hunting in the area; the bad reason was that I wanted to show up McGregor.
Because of its proximity to several Japanese convoy routes and its naval base, Palau was ripe with targets and, therefore, a coveted assignment. Com-SubPac normally maintained a constant submarine patrol around Palau, but to honor Cutter’s request, Voge allowed the area to remain vacant for six days until Seahorse could arrive.
A vastly different Seahorse departed Pearl Harbor on 6 January 1944. Unlike the timid Seahorse of the first patrol, she was now a proven fighter: aggressive and tenacious. She respected the potential of her Japanese enemy, but did not fear him.
Slade Cutter had passed the test with his superb handling of Seahorse on the second patrol. Spud Lindon summed up the feelings held by most of the officers and crew of Seahorse:
Slade possessed a rare combination of those qualities which made him an ideal war time submarine commander. He was young and vigorous. He could operate continuously for several days with little or no sleep. At the same time he was mature and experienced. Aggressiveness was inbred in Slade, as exemplified by his tremendous athletic achievements at the Naval Academy.
Slade was also a prudent person. I don’t recall a single instance where I considered that he acted rashly. His actions were well thought out and designed for maximum probability of success, making optimum use of the element of surprise.
Slade had an uncanny ability to relate individually to every member of the ship’s company. His infectious enthusiasm and optimism were transmitted to all hands and reflected in their feelings of confidence and pride. Rarely was there a man more right for command in war.
Machinist’s Mate Eugene Carl put it simply:
Slade Cutter was different than any officer I ever knew. To the young seamen, he was a father figure we all looked up to and admired.
Seahorse was a happy ship and, although it was not exactly Navy issue, installation of a new piece of equipment during the refit made the crew even happier. Spud Lindon explains:
When the boats built in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, started to come through Pearl Harbor, some of them had brand new slot machines. Someone had talked a police department in the Manitowoc area into giving to the submarine service some confiscated slot machines for the purpose of contributing to morale and the furtherance of the war effort. It was done with the understanding that the slot machines would be used only when the sub was in international waters. Seahorse didn’t have any state-side connections, but somehow, using the submariner’s gift for ingenuity, with possibly some help from the Honolulu Police Department, the crew came up with a slot machine for Seahorse. It was, however, not a new one, it had a lot of miles on it. The fire-control technicians were given the added duty of keeping the slot machine running. As I recall, the fire-control technicians spent more time maintaining that slot machine than they did handling their normal duties.
We had an arrangement that every bit of money the slot machine made, which was considerable, was put into the ship’s recreation fund. This was for ship’s parties and the general welfare of the crew. The machine was placed in the after battery near the galley. The Chief of the Watch was given instructions that when anyone hit the jackpot, he was to give them an added amount of money from the rec fund to sweeten the pot a bit. The machine was a big hit with the crew.
I remember one of the other submarines which had a slot machine had a sign over it which read, “During depth-charge attacks, stand under this machine. It has never been known to be hit yet!”
On 6 January 1944 Seahorse stood out from Pearl Harbor for her third war patrol outfitted with a valuable new piece of equipment. Captain Cutter now had the PPI scope for which he had wished. The scope would enable him to see the complete tactical picture surrounding his submarine during approaches and attacks, giving him a distinct advantage over the enemy.
Seahorse and her crew were in peak condition when they arrived at Johnston Island. The submarine topped off her fuel tanks, then immediately sailed for her patrol area.
During the passage, Seahorse crossed the International Date Line, which according to Spud Lindon always prompted this message to be passed over the IMC: “Now hear this. Today is tomorrow!” or “Today is yesterday!” depending upon whether the sub was going east or west at the time.
Seahorse entered her patrol area on the thirteenth but encountered no enemy activity for the first three days. The drought ended on the morning of the sixteenth when a smokey maru was sighted. Captain Cutter sent the crew scurrying to battle stations and commenced an end around to get ahead of the target. After a short run, Seahorse slipped below the surface to lie in ambush. Cutter raised the periscope and watched the target draw nearer, noting that it was a freighter of less than a thousand tons. Under normal circumstances Cutter might have let this small fry pass unmolested, but the fact that the vessel was accompanied by four escorts suggested the possibility that it was a valuable target. Cutter described the scene to his officers in the conning tower. Their discussions soon centered on the possibility that this ship was a trap.
Q-ships were vessels of very shallow draft designed to lure a lurking submarine into firing torpedoes, which would usually be set too deep to hit. The escorts would then locate the submarine by following down the wakes left by the torpedoes and conduct a coordinated attack. Q-ship tactics were highly successful during World War I, but in this war had achieved few positive results.
Cutter decided that it was a Q-ship, but opted to attack anyway. Seahorse had a new weapon in her arsenal for this patrol. The new Mark 18 electric torpedo was a wakeless torpedo whose advantage lay in the inability of the enemy to track it back to the firing submarine. The downside to the electric torpedo was its slower speed. Having the electric torpedoes erased from Cutter’s mind the intimidation factor posed by the presence of four escorts.
The Mark 18s were housed in the after torpedo room, and it didn’t take Seahorse long to maneuver into excellent firing position for a short-range stern tube shot.
All four of the freighter’s escorts were now on the same side as Seahorse, making the shot more difficult. Just as Cutter was ready to fire, the small freighter zigged away, ruining an ideal setup. Because of the Mark 18’s slower speed, the torpedo run was longer than Cutter desired. Not wanting to waste torpedoes, he held fire.
All four escorts were actively pinging within a mere 600 yards of Seahorse. Two of them passed ahead, and two passed astern of the submarine as she went deep to let them go by. Cutter planned to come up for another end around when the escorts departed. One wily escort captain, however, put a crimp in Cutter’s plan when, for an unknown reason, he stayed behind, circling the area. The Japanese skipper must have suspected the submarine’s presence, and soon had Seahorse solidly pinpointed in his probing beam of sound. WHAM!—a single depth charge exploded very close to the submarine’s hull. A minute later, WHAM!—another near miss rocked the sub. Four minutes later, a third and forth underwater bomb shook Seahorse. All of these depth charges were extremely close. Five minutes elapsed before the next depth charge fell, and this one was, as Captain Cutter termed it, “a blockbuster!” Glass from broken light bulbs, cork dust, and paint chips flew from bulkheads, and personnel not hanging on tightly to something were knocked from their feet. This patrol boat skipper was very good, and he had definitely found the range.
It appeared that Seahorse was in for a rough time, but, just as suddenly as it had begun, the escort discontinued the attack, and the search, and sailed for the horizon. The crew of Seahorse was left badly shaken but alive. A little more persistence on the part of the escort commander might have proven deadly for Seahorse. A great many American submarines were undoubtedly saved from destruction by the tendency of many Japanese anti-submarine vessels to break off attacks prematurely.
Cutter gave the escort time to clear the area, then brought Seahorse to periscope depth for a look around. He found the seas empty, so he surfaced and renewed pursuit of the fleeing target.
Half an hour passed before the enemy’s smoke was again in sight. Cutter ordered another end around, and by 1944 Seahorse was in position 12,000 yards ahead of the target. The wary maru was making small zigs off her base course of 180 degrees, while the escorts patrolled on station. Just as the submarine settled into another favorable attack position, the maru changed the setup again, this time with a major zig toward Seahorse. The night was pitch black, and the officer of the deck didn’t notice the target’s change of course.
In his patrol report, Cutter praised Lieutenant Bill Budding, his TDC operator:
With target bearing information from the SJ radar the TDC operator detected it [the change of course] at once and in a few seconds had the correct solution. It was Lieutenant Budding’s first attack as TDC operator, and he did an excellent job. The many hours that he spent at the attack teacher between patrols paid big dividends.
Budding had learned the TDC operation from Lieutenant Ralph Pleat-man during the second patrol. Because of Budding’s alertness, Cutter quickly countered the target’s move and settled Seahorse into an even better firing position.
At 2010, as the unsuspecting freighter crept closer to destruction, four torpedoes flashed from the bow tubes (the change in firing setup made use of the electric torpedoes in the stern tubes impossible). Running hot, straight, and normal, the fish took two minutes to reach their points of aim. At the correct time, and because they had been fired simultaneously by accident, torpedoes numbers one and two ripped into the freighter’s engine room just a fraction of a second apart, disemboweling her. Torpedo number three struck with deadly force under the bridge, blowing it completely off the ship. Three minutes after the torpedoes broke the target’s back, Seahorse’s aft battle lookout reported that both halves of the victim had sunk. The 784-ton Nikko Maru was the first success of the third patrol and the seventh so far to succumb to Seahorse’s death-dealing torpedoes. The true nature of the Nikko Maru’s cargo and purpose was never learned. Her secrets and eight of her crew lie at the bottom of the Pacific.
The escorts immediately began their usual tactic of milling around in circles, dropping depth charges. With the aid of the PPI scope, Captain Cutter was able to plot the position of each escort and extract Seahorse from their midst without being noticed. Depth charges rumbled in the distance as Cutter set course for Fais Island.
During an attack, men not assigned to the conning tower or control room rarely knew what was happening. Sheldon Stubbs, an electrician’s mate from Portland, Oregon, was making his first war patrol in Seahorse. He remembers Captain Cutter going through all of the boat’s compartments after each attack telling the crew about the action. This gesture was greatly appreciated by the crew.
Cutter attributed the simultaneous firing of the two torpedo tubes to “buck fever.” Seahorse’s firing doctrine called for a torpedoman to stand between the torpedo tubes and fire the torpedoes by hand at the same time they were fired electrically from the conning tower. This practice prevented a misfire in case of electrical failure. Joe McGrievy recalls:
It was young Torpedoman-Striker John Rhode’s first time at this position. He was a real gung-ho kid. He did everything a striker was supposed to with genuine enthusiasm, diving bilges, cleaning tanks and tubes, painting the bilges, and other important, but menial tasks.
As phone talker at battle stations, John was stationed between the torpedo tubes at the breach. His job was to hit the firing key on the tube when the firing circuit was closed in the conning tower.
During the entire time on watch, eight hours each day while en route to the patrol area, John would stand between the tubes, facing forward and practice: “Fire one. Fire two. Fire three.” He repeated this over and over again.
At the first sounding of the battle stations klaxon, John jumped between the torpedo tubes and manned his phone. As the approach on the target continued, no one, especially John, noticed that he was facing aft, and not forward as he had rehearsed. When the firing point was reached, Captain Cutter ordered “Fire one.” In the conning tower I hit the firing button for number one. Doing his job in backing up the firing of the fish, John hit the key for number two, because in his excitement, he was facing the wrong direction. John took a fair amount of good-natured ribbing about this from his shipmates for a time.
When Seahorse surfaced the next afternoon, the after lookout discovered that the submarine was leaving a considerable oil slick in her wake. The damage had probably been done by the previous day’s depth-charge attack. This was a dangerous situation since the trail of oil could lead the enemy right to Seahorse. A wild storm was in progress, and the sea was too rough for anyone to go on deck to inspect for and repair the leak. The slick would have to remain until the weather abated.
The next day, not only was the oil leak still with her, but another major problem developed. The main induction commenced flooding as Seahorse dived. Quickly, the ballast tanks were blown, raising the sub back to the surface. The sea had calmed, so crewmen combed the boat’s superstructure, and soon found the sources of both problems. The main induction gasket was pulled out of the groove in the valve disc in two places, each about eighteen inches long. Temporary repairs to it stopped the flooding. The oil leak was simpler. The cap on the forward fuel filling connection had worked loose. It was simply tightened and that problem was solved.
Per her patrol orders, Seahorse was to reconnoiter Fais Island, which she reached on the nineteenth. Cutter stayed 3,000 to 4,000 yards off the beach while he inspected the island’s rugged coastline through the periscope. Along the north coast of the island he observed what appeared to be the muzzle of a four-to six-inch gun silhouetted against the sky. Cutter moved the submarine to within 1,800 yards of the beach to verify the gun’s emplacement. Through the periscope the gun looked like the real McCoy, so Cutter called for the camera. It was fitted to the periscope and a series of photographs was taken of the gun emplacement and complete panoramic views of the coastline. In his patrol report Cutter noted, “The one gun sighted was remarkably well camouflaged, and because of the terrain, offered excellent cover for other gun emplacements which likely exist.”
A standing order for every submarine assigned to this area was the task of bombarding the phosphate plant at Refinery Point on Fais Island. Cutter took a good look at the phosphate plant through the periscope. Seeing no indications that the plant was in operation, he decided not to attack. He was not keen on the idea of sitting on the surface off the coast of an enemy-held island in daylight exposing his guns’ crews and his submarine to sudden air or artillery attack just to lob a few shells onto a target for harassment purposes. There appeared to be no shipping in the area, so Cutter set course back to Palau.
Designated No. 8 Wewak, a convoy consisting of two transports, Ikoma Maru and Yasukuni Maru, and two subchaser escorts, No. 32 and No. 47, left Palau en route to Hollandia, New Guinea, on June 20, 1944. Both transports carried vital war materials including gasoline, ammunition, provisions, and mail. Ikoma Maru also had human cargo aboard. Carried on the manifest as an “Independent Brigade” were 611 men of the Indian Army. Faced with a choice of being prisoners of war or joining the Japanese against the “Imperialist British,” they chose the latter. The treatment they received from their captors, however, was little better than that received by POWs. Worse was ahead for them.
United States Naval Intelligence’s ability to decrypt the Japanese naval codes enabled it to garner strategic information from Japanese radio traffic. Decoded information having to do with the movements of Japanese naval and merchant ships was sent to American naval vessels in a position to intercept them. This highly secret information was sent to the receiving submarine or surface ship in the form of an “ULTRA” message. ULTRAs were for the commanding officer’s eyes only. In most cases, only the ship’s captain had knowledge of the source of this intelligence info, and ULTRAs were never mentioned in a submarine’s patrol report.
Responding to an ULTRA on 21 January, Seahorse patrolled the Palau-Wewak convoy route on the surface. The periscope watch sighted one puff of smoke at 1231, and Cutter turned his submarine in the direction of the contact, No. 8 Wewak convoy. A ship was soon sighted, and Seahorse began the familiar end around procedure. In less than an hour, the masts of two ships were visible through the periscope lens. Tracking the targets, however, was a difficult task. The ships were not making much smoke and were frequently masked by the numerous rain squalls in the area.
The convoy’s escort was sighted at 1411. The patrol boat was 15,000 yards off the convoy’s track and on the same side as Seahorse. This forced Cutter to conduct an end around on the escort also. The great distance she had to stay from the escort to remain unseen caused Seahorse to lose sight of the convoy for the next several hours, during which time she raced ahead on the convoy’s assumed course. Two hours later the enemy ships were back in sight, and the submarine dived to conduct a submerged approach.
As the range decreased, Cutter saw that both targets were heavily laden with crates of cargo piled high on their decks. He preferred to make a simultaneous attack on both ships, but found that their relative positions made that tactic impossible. Attacking on the surface at night was his best chance of getting both mams.
With darkness above, Seahorse slipped silently to the surface and made a radar approach on the convoy. Four pips, two large and two small, dotted the green radar screen. Two escorts had joined the merchantmen. As the range dwindled, the bridge personnel could see the large freighters through their binoculars. About this same time, the SJ radar detected a third escort trailing 1,500 yards astern of the convoy. The other two escorts were stationed 2,500 and 4,000 yards ahead of the two AKs which continually zigzagged independently of each other. This setup complicated Captain Cutter’s attack plan.
The largest ship appeared to be about 5,000 tons. Seahorse positioned herself abeam of the target and started her firing run. When the range closed to 2,900 yards, the big target zigged forty-five degrees toward the submarine. This put Seahorse uncomfortably close to the ship under good visibility conditions. Cutter quickly reversed course and opened the range before renewing his attack. He wanted to shoot both ships at the same time but they were still not properly aligned. Resigned to picking them off one at a time, he centered the target bearing transmitter (TBT) on the largest maru. At 2137, Cutter commanded, “Fire four! Fire five! Fire six!” The three missiles lunged from the bow tubes, and Cutter turned his attention to the second target.
The torpedo run to the first freighter was 2,800 yards. The second ship was in line of bearing just to the left of the first at a range of 3,600 yards. Two minutes after firing, two great explosions thundered as the first two torpedoes ripped open the steel port side of the large Japanese cargo ship. Seahorse was just reaching firing position on the second target when the third torpedo, to everyone’s surprise, slammed into her stern. Cutter noted in his patrol log, “The Japs were no more surprised than we, as we entertained no hopes whatever of hitting the second ship with our first salvo.”
Both enemy ships immediately went dead in the water. Observers on the submarine’s bridge watched as figures on both of the stricken ships ran to man their guns. The Japanese fired wildly in all directions with no clue as to their attacker’s location. The bewildered escorts dropped random depth charges, which killed a lot of fish, but didn’t come close to Seahorse. She sat on the surface a short distance away watching the pyrotechnic display, waiting to see what developed.
It appeared to those on the submarine’s bridge that the second target was sinking. The larger freighter, however, though low in the water, was still on an even keel. Cutter decided to hasten her demise by putting two more fish into her rusty carcass. Sitting dead in the water, the freighter made for an easy, can’t miss shot, but miss they did! The torpedoes from tubes five and six sailed harmlessly past the AK. One of the escorts saw the torpedo wakes but chased them down away from Seahorse. The submarine’s fire-control team huddled in the control room to find the reason for the misses.
The small maru was well down by the stern with only her forward half showing. Her sinking was assured. The large, stubborn maru was another matter. Cutter lined up the TBT on the wounded ship and fired two more torpedoes from a range of 2,600 yards. Once again the sitting duck thumbed her nose at Seahorse as the torpedoes failed to strike home.
Another summit was held by the fire-control brain trust, and this time the problem was identified. The TBT, through which the torpedoes were being aimed, had been knocked out of alignment, probably during the earlier depth charging of Seahorse. The gremlin having been found and adjusted, the business of sinking ships resumed.
The unlucky freighter was now lower in the water, but still on an even keel. Cutter felt it was worth spending two Mark 18 electric torpedoes to ensure that this valuable ship couldn’t be salvaged by the Japanese. The escort was not a problem. It had chased down the last pair of torpedo wakes in the wrong direction and was wasting depth charges blasting holes in the water some 6,300 yards away from Seahorse. The other two escorts were nowhere in sight. They had been patrolling so far in front of their charges, it was possible they were not even aware of the attack. Cutter maneuvered Seahorse to get a better angle on the bow, then backed down on the target to reach the desired 2,200 yards firing position. During this positioning, the smaller freighter took her final plunge to the bottom, stern first. Cutter fired stern tubes eight and ten at 2324. As the torpedoes raced to put the finishing touches to the maru, Seahorse went ahead full to exit the scene of her double triumph. At exactly the correct time, the first torpedo struck the target abaft her stack, erupting in brilliant flames. The brightly illuminated vessel then suffered the killing blow of the second torpedo just forward of her bridge. This was too much for the mortally wounded ship. Her burst seams drank in the killing sea water, which filled her compartments and dragged her to the seabed.
Seahorse witnessed a spectacular follow-up show. Oil from the sunken ship’s bunkers blazed on the ocean’s surface. Her deck cargo of gasoline drums, now floating in the fires, exploded one by one, thundering and marking the dead ship’s grave with a mass of burning fuel. As Seahorse retired from the area, Cutter permitted all hands “an opportunity to witness the spectacular show, and enjoy the unique experience of ‘below-decks-men’ actually seeing the results of their hard work.” That work was the destruction of Seahorse’s eighth and ninth victims, the 3,021-ton Army freighter Yasukuni Maru and the 3,156-ton Army transport Ikoma Maru. Forty-nine crew members and 480 passengers also went down with the two enemy vessels. Among them were 418 of the Indian soldiers.
The TBT was inspected the next day and found to be several degrees out of calibration. This accounted for the torpedo hitting the second ship, which hadn’t been fired at, and for missing the sitting duck maru, which had.
A typhoon raged around Palau on 22 January, so Cutter took his boat to the Wewak-Palau and Rabaul-Palau convoy routes, spending an unproductive day in the area. The weather improved late on the twenty-third, so Seahorse returned to patrol off Palau’s Malakal Passage.
The twenty-fifth was a frustrating day. The SJ radar broke down. Technicians littered the deck of the conning tower with disassembled parts and worked feverishly to repair this vital piece of equipment.
In the early morning hours, sound reported pinging in the distance, and Captain Cutter changed course toward the bearing. At 0607, two PC-type escorts were sighted. Seahorse remained at periscope depth and followed the pair. Cutter hoped they were going to rendezvous with an incoming convoy.
Two pesky sampans dogged the submarine all morning, making observation with more than a couple of feet of periscope impossible. At 1019, the smoke of a convoy drifted above the horizon, but Seahorse was too far off the track to reach its position. The convoy had air cover which precluded the submarine from surfacing to pursue.
The next day, Seahorse maintained a surface, high periscope patrol along the shipping lanes southeast of Palau, while the electricans continued their work on the radar. That evening, they had the SJ back on line, and Cutter took his boat back to Malakal Passage.
On the twenty-seventh, Palau was picked up on radar at the extreme range of 60,000 yards. Cutter praised his technicians, noting, “This is by far the best result yet obtained by our equipment.” The radar was fixed just in time; at 1301, the screen showed a ship coining out of the Passage.
Battle stations chimed, and the crew raced to their assignments. Captain Cutter started an approach on the target, but he experienced déjà vu upon identifying the intended target as a properly marked hospital ship. This was Seahorse’s third encounter with one of these untouchables around Palau.
Action loomed again the next afternoon. Three trawler-type patrol boats enthusiastically made a thorough anti-submarine sweep off the entrance to Malakal. Loudly echo-ranging, they came within 1,500 yards of the lurking submersible, but did not make contact. The patrol boats seemed to be clearing a path for an outbound convoy, so Seahorse lay in wait.
The evidence proved solid; at 1719, three sources of smoke appeared on the horizon. As the convoy approached Seahorse, a patrol plane darted and weaved over the ships looking for enemy submarines. Forty-five minutes later, Seahorse lookouts counted three freighters and five escorts coming out of Malakal Passage. Soundman Roy Hoffmann reported that three of the escorts were echo-ranging. Cutter initiated an end around to gain position ahead of the convoy by 2110.
Moving at eight knots and zigzagging, the convoy lumbered toward its unseen stalker. The escorts kept close watch on their flock: two patrolling on the port flank, two on the starboard flank, with one astern. Between 2110 that night and 0416 the next morning, Seahorse made six attempts to attack the convoy: one from ahead, one on each bow, one on each quarter, and one from astern. Every attempt Cutter made was foiled by the presence of an escort, which put itself between Seahorse and her target. Cutter found it impossible to get into position for an effective shot.
Cutter was puzzled by the escort’s tactics. He was sure they knew of Seahorse’s location at all times, but, contrary to their normal tactics, did not come after her. The patrol boats seemed perfectly satisfied with passively defending the convoy, interjecting themselves to block the submarine from attacking. Cutter speculated that the convoy commander was afraid that his charges were surrounded by a “wolfpack” of submarines, and having a speed disadvantage, he didn’t want any of his escorts to be drawn out of position. If this was his strategy, it was entirely effective.
Not one to give up easily, Cutter changed his tactics. He worked ahead of the convoy, remained on the surface, and waited for the normal daylight change of base course.
At 0600, the masts of the ships again hove into sight. Little more than an hour later, a Japanese twin-engine bomber escorting the convoy flew at Seahorse and forced her to dive. The submarine remained under until 0915, then returned to the surface. Forty-five minutes later, she was again forced to dive by another bomber.
Slade Cutter was a patient man, but he was beginning to get annoyed. He had never encountered such an efficient air-sea convoy escort team. Using periscope observations and sound bearings on the pinging escorts, Seahorse trailed on the convoy’s beam at six knots. Cutter was tired of this cat-and-mouse game. He decided to follow the convoy until sunset, then surface and drive his submarine in and make a determined effort to erase the enemy ships from the ocean’s surface.
With the sun well below the horizon, the dark-hulled submarine emerged from the depths and advanced toward the convoy. Cloaked in darkness, Seahorse moved into position ahead of the oncoming merchantmen. Conditions were perfect for a night surface attack, and a determined Slade Cutter bored in to strike.
Three times he skillfully placed Seahorse in excellent firing position, and just as skillfully, an escort placed itself between the target and the aggressor, ruining the setup. Perplexed but undaunted, Cutter decided to trail the convoy and wait patiently for a window of opportunity to open.
The exasperated sub skipper got the break he was looking for at 0132 on the thirtieth. The convoy made a sudden zig to the right. Cutter was in the conning tower watching the TDC when he saw in its information the radical zig. He immediately realized that the escorts were thrown out of position by the zig, and that the convoy’s flank was wide open. He jumped up and yelled, “Battle stations, torpedo,” and turned Seahorse to attack. Cutter had his opening. Now it became a race to see if he could reach firing position before the escorts could recover and intervene.
On the surface, Seahorse had a decided speed advantage over the older and slower patrol boats which enabled her to win the race. She reached firing position with little time to spare.
The lead ship passed 2,600 yards in front of the submarine’s bow tubes at 0149, and was greeted with three torpedoes. Two of them arrived at their points of aim. The first fish blasted a hole in the side of the maru and set her on fire. The third torpedo blew the stern from the rest of the hull. Silhouetted by a huge gasoline fire, the mortally wounded freighter took on a large angle down by the stern. Her bow stuck high in the air, paused momentarily, as if to get a last look at the sky, then slid gracefully to oblivion. Victim number ten was the 2,747-ton Army freighter Toko Maru. Her passengers were soldiers of the 31st Infantry Regiment and the 4th Field Hospital being taken to Manus Island. Four hundred and fifty-seven of them were killed in the explosion and fire, or were drowned. Tenacity, patience, and persistence, three trademarks of Slade Cutter and Seahorse, had paid dividends.
In an ironic twist, the escorts, who earlier had been so efficient in knowing the submarine’s location and keeping her from the convoy, now had no clue as to her whereabouts and could not retaliate.
With the coming of the morning light, Seahorse was forced to open the range to avoid being detected. She continued to maintain radar contact with the convoy. Near sunrise, radar contact was lost. Sound tried to locate the enemy ships by listening for the ping, ping, ping of the escorts’ sonar, but nothing was heard beyond the normal sound of the ocean and its biological inhabitants. It seemed that the convoy was lost. In a short time, however, Seahorse got a break. An escort vessel was sighted running at high speed in Seahorse’s direction. Thinking the escort was headed for the convoy, Cutter turned his boat to follow in its wake. At 0934, Cutter was shocked to find the convoy back in the location of his previous attack on the same group of ships.
Shortly after sighting the convoy, Seahorse was forced to dive by the approach of a Japanese bomber. With aircraft overhead Captain Cutter had to limit his periscope exposures. The escorts’ pinging, however, enabled Seahorse to keep track of the group by sound while she continued her methodical approach to the remaining freighters. The submarine’s slow underwater speed prevented her from closing the track sufficiently to fire, so Cutter settled for trailing the convoy to wait for another window of opportunity to open.
At dusk, the air cover which had persisted all day was gone. Half an hour later, the convoy split up. Seahorse trailed the nearest ship and escort, tracking them with radar. That evening, the radar’s performance became erratic, and at 2100 contact with the ships was lost. The submarine began an immediate search to relocate the enemy, an effort which took fifteen hours. Just after noon on 31 January, contact with the convoy was reestablished, and the game started all over again.
A patrol bomber flew protectively above the enemy freighter, while somewhere in the vicinity of the convoy a series of sixteen depth charges exploded. These charges were probably meant to keep submarines at a distance, but Seahorse wasn’t intimidated, and began another end around.
That evening, the radar began functioning again and quickly had the convoy plotted. It took another four hours, however, before the submarine was in position 16,000 yards ahead of the ships. A bright moon provided more than enough light for the bridge personnel to see the targets, and Cutter decided to hold his position until the moon set. He didn’t want to risk exposure in the brilliant moonlight.
The moon dipped below the horizon at 2300, and Seahorse resumed her approach in total darkness. The SJ radar chose this moment to act up again, showing neither the target nor the escort on its screen. Cutter ordered, “All stop,” and had the sound head lowered to get bearings on the escort’s pinging. Just as the sound operator found the convoy, the SJ blinked back into operation, so Cutter continued his approach. The troublesome radar quit again just as the submarine settled into a suitable firing position, leaving Cutter blind. Exasperated, Cutter had no choice but to wait while the technicians did their best to fix the equipment. The electrician’s mates did a good job in getting the radar working in just eleven minutes. The screen came alive again with blips, and Seahorse charged at the enemy.
Since six torpedoes remained in the after torpedo room, while the forward room had only two, Seahorse maneuvered for a stern tube shot. Nineteen minutes after midnight on the first of February, Cutter launched a four-torpedo assault on the surviving Japanese freighter. The entire crew was exhausted from this long ordeal, and Cutter wanted to end the contest, but it was not to be. After the fish were in the water, the target suddenly zigged away, and the torpedoes missed by a wide margin. All four then exploded at the end of their runs, which alerted the convoy to the submarine’s presence. The only good news was that the enemy couldn’t find Seahorse.
Using the radar and the extreme darkness, Cutter skillfully placed his submarine in a new firing location. By 0200 he was ready to shoot again, this time using the two remaining bow torpedoes. “Fire one! Fire two!” Cutter ordered. All hands prayed that these would be their parting shots, but again the freighter zigged, leaving the torpedoes out in left field, their mission unfulfilled.
Cutter blamed himself for these misses. He logged:
Although we knew the target’s course and speed accurately at the time of firing, we should have held out for a more favorable firing position, knowing as we did that the target was maneuvering radically at frequent intervals. All hands were exhausted after a chase of eighty hours, and we were probably too anxious to get it over with.
Slade Cutter was desperate to end this marathon battle. Functioning on adrenaline mixed with a lot of caffeine and Benzedrine, he knew he couldn’t keep this up much longer. He was afraid that he would become impaired to the point of making an error in judgment, which might cause the loss of his ship and crew.
With only two Mark 18 electrics left in the stern tubes, he decided on another change in tactics. He moved to a position 10,000 yards ahead of the target, dived, and waited for the freighter to come to him. Tracking the enemy ship over these many hours, he had observed that although she zigged frequently, she never got farther than 800 yards from her track. It would be a simple matter of waiting, and accepting whatever track developed, then firing the torpedoes when the range was short enough to prevent a miss.
At 0347, the freighter changed course to the left, giving Cutter a beautiful shooting setup. With one of the escorts only 800 yards away, Seahorse presented her stern to the target. The time to fire was now, but Cutter was having considerable trouble seeing the target well enough through the periscope to get a point of aim. As became his habit in these situations, Cutter summoned Joe McGrievy. He explains why:
Chief Quartermaster Joseph L. McGrievy was the ultimate in a chief of the boat. The top enlisted man aboard any submarine and right behind the exec in value to a skipper. McGrievy was tough as nails, but fair. He brought things to me on a man-to-man basis, yet was respectful. He was truly a Naval professional petty officer and a top submariner.
McGrievy had the best night vision of anyone on the boat. He was like a cat. I made several night submerged attacks during the war so we could get in closer and I didn’t have to worry about the escorts. I put McGrievy on the periscope. I couldn’t see anything, but he could see those black hulks through the scope. The way he did it was to move the scope from a black blurb until he could see a star, which meant he was ahead of it. Then he would move it back to the hulk and say “fire!” He then swung the periscope in the other direction until he saw a star and moved it back and said “fire!” He was inside the bow and inside the stern and then he would fire one where he judged the middle of the target to be. That’s when he was an enlisted man and that’s why I made him an officer.
He was also my officer of the deck at night during battle stations, when we made night surface attacks. Mind you, this was as a petty officer! I would be in the conning tower where I had the TDC. He was feeding data to me such as the bearing and the disposition of the target ships. He was invaluable and absolutely fearless. Nothing bothered McGrievy.
At a range of 1,050 yards, McGrievy fired the first torpedo inside the bow; twenty-four seconds later he fired number two inside the stern.
All torpedoes were expended and Cutter had to think about getting the hell out of there. The escort was dangerously close on Seahorse’s starboard beam. He ordered, “Left full rudder, standard speed, take her deep.” Seahorse started down to the security of deep water. She hadn’t gotten far when two tremendous explosions rattled her and sent water rushing through the superstructure. All hands thought that depth charges had detonated close aboard, but soon realized that it was the sweet sound of their torpedoes hitting home, putting an end to this Japanese merchantman’s career.
The depth charges came eight minutes after the torpedoes hit, but their noise didn’t compare to what was occurring in the devastated freighter. Two thunderous blasts ripped the victim apart, followed by literally hundreds of light explosions which sounded like strings of firecrackers going off. These secondary explosions were ammunition and gasoline drums cooking off. A short time later, two much heavier explosions occurred in the dying ship.
Depth charges were also thundering, but none of them anywhere close to the submarine, so Captain Cutter brought his boat back to the surface to witness the aftermath of the crew’s long, grueling labors. The hatches were cracked, and when the personnel came out onto the bridge, they witnessed an inferno raging on the ocean’s surface around the freighter. Floating gasoline drums exploded continuously. This funeral pyre marked the grave of the 4,004-ton Navy-controlled transport Toei Maru. Silhouetted against the flames on the water, the escorts scurried from place to place trying to pick up survivors before they toasted.
Now barren of her primary means to wage war, Seahorse put this hellish scene astern and set course for Pearl Harbor.
Commencing with the sighting of the convoy on 28 January 1944 and ending with the sinking of the last freighter on 2 February, this epic struggle lasted eighty-four hours. It was one of the longest sustained convoy battles by one submarine in World War II.
Slade Cutter fought the entire battle attired in his pajamas. The crew was mentally and physically drained. Captain Cutter ordered Seahorse down to 200 feet, where she would remain until the crew could rest and recuperate. Only a skeleton crew was kept on duty to keep the boat functioning.
Most of the sailors were asleep before their heads hit the pillow, but some, including the captain, couldn’t sleep. Even though he was thoroughly exhausted and already in his pajamas, sleep refused to come to Slade Cutter. He left his cabin and went to the wardroom where he began a game of aceydeucy with Frank Fisher, but he felt terrible and couldn’t concentrate. In search of relief, he called the pharmacist’s mate to the wardroom. After hearing the skipper’s problem, the pharmacist’s mate left, but soon returned with a bottle of Old Crow whiskey, which was kept locked up for medicinal purposes. He gave the bottle to Cutter, who quickly ingested all of its contents, but it had no effect on him. Summoned once again, the pharmacist’s mate gave Cutter some sleeping pills. Since the beginning of the convoy pursuit, Cutter had been living on coffee and Benzedrine, and the sleeping pills were not potent enough to counter their effects on him. Although little more than a zombie, Cutter remained wide awake. The pharmacist’s mate again responded to his captain’s call; this time, however, he refused to give him anything except advice, which was to return to his cabin and lie in his bunk until he went to sleep.
Cutter followed his doctor’s order and in a short time fell into slumber. Less than two hours later, he was awakened by the worst headache he had ever experienced. He suffered in this manner for several days before his body returned to some semblance of normalcy.
The journey home was interrupted by a message from CornSubPac, ordering Seahorse to Wake Island. She was to perform lifeguard services during air strikes by B-24 Liberators from Midway. She remained on station off Wake for four days, but received no calls to rescue downed airmen. She was then released by ComSubPac to return home.
Captain Cutter was always devising ways to keep the crew’s morale up. On the journey home, he had each man write an essay on why he enlisted in the Navy. With Cutter as judge, the most interesting essay won a pint of rye whiskey, to be awarded to the winner upon his going on leave in Pearl. This was a prize any sailor going on leave would covet. The winning entry was submitted by Electrician’s Mate Gerhard Nelson of Tucson, Arizona, who wrote:
Upon graduation from high school in 1942, a friend of mine and I went to work for a construction company building an ordnance plant in Wisconsin. Our first job was working on the cafeteria area.
Our supervisors—all women school teachers on summer break—took great pleasure in bossing my friend and me around. After a month of this dictatorial treatment, we got to wondering if this is what it would be like if the Japs won the war. Our minds were soon made up. I enlisted in the Navy and my friend signed up with the Army.
Not all of the problems which faced the commanding officer of a fighting submarine in war time were life and death matters. Incoming vessels to Midway had a sunset deadline for entering the harbor. If a ship arrived after sunset, she was required to remain outside until sunrise. Seahorse would probably make the deadline if she continued at four-engine speed; however, there was a question as to whether or not sufficient fuel remained to maintain that speed long enough to arrive on time.
Early on the crucial day, Lieutenant Lindon provided Cutter with the distance to Midway and their projected time of arrival at various engine speeds. This information suggested that if speed were reduced to avoid running out of fuel, as was recommended by Chief Engineer “Les” Lessard, Seahorse might miss the sunset deadline and have to suffer the humiliation of waiting until morning to enter the harbor. Cutter initially decided to accept Lessard’s recommendation. Later, however, Cutter changed his mind when a mid-morning navigational check showed a real need for a boost in speed to make the sunset ETA, which had already been radioed to the harbor master at Midway. Cutter opted to return to four-engine speed. Lessard protested to his captain, pointing out the real chance they were taking of running out of fuel and suffering the embarrassment of having to be towed into port. Cutter, with Solomon-like wisdom, calmed Lessard’s fears by pointing out that in addition to the fuel remaining in the tanks, Seahorse had a “full can” (a fully charged battery). That evening, just before sunset, Seahorse sailed into the harbor at Midway. When she tied up to her berth, her normal fuel tanks were bone dry; the clean fuel oil tanks had only the barest amount remaining.
After refueling and making minor repairs, Seahorse left Midway for Pearl Harbor, where she arrived on 16 February 1944. Triumphantly, a proud but weary crew was home. It had been a relatively short patrol, but officers and enlisted men alike were drained. They looked forward to a much needed period of rest and recreation. The eighty-four-hour convoy battle had taken its toll, but a happier bunch of submariners couldn’t be found anywhere. They had one of the most successful boats in the fleet and were high on their accomplishments. Two consecutive outstanding patrols proved that Seahorse, under Slade Cutter, was no flash-in-the-pan. They were “hot.”
Admiral Lockwood’s endorsement to this patrol reads:
The third war patrol of the Seahorse was conducted in the Palau area. For the second time in succession, the Seahorse carried out an aggressive and successful patrol. All approaches were made after careful study of the situation and were followed by determined, extremely well planned and executed attacks. The percentage of torpedo hits, 54½, is highly commendable. This patrol is designated as successful for Combat Insignia Award.