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Majuro: 12 September 1944 to 28 September 1944
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Majuro Atoll in the Central Pacific consists of fifty-six separate islands, the largest of which is Majuro Island at the southern tip of the atoll. The Navy base on Majuro Island was built principally to support air operations. The submarine base at Majuro, Jake thought, appeared to be an afterthought.
The airfields on the island, a Loran station, and some medical facilities, appeared to be the products of some deliberation and planning. The sub base not so much. The only submarine service facility ashore was an R & R camp for submariners, Camp Myrna, built by men from the submarine tender Sperry. And it was not exactly the Royal Hawaiian.
The minor repairs Orca and the three other subs at Majuro required were being done by Sperry. To replenish stores, Orca had to pull up alongside a supply ship—for fuel, alongside a tanker. Fresh water, at least, was supplied by twenty-one, shore-based distilling units, which cranked out about fifty thousand gallons a day. The boats tied up alongside Sperry were thus able to receive fresh water piped into, and from, the lone pier.
The sub base was more a fleet anchorage than anything else. Most of the men in Orca stayed on board rather than sleep in the tents on Myrna, and, with water piped aboard from the shore, they could even shower daily, and actually get some of their laundry done.
Now, if only their mail would catch up with them.
* * * * *
On September 15, 1944, U.S. and Australian troops invaded Morotai in the NEI, and the U.S First Marine Division and the Army 81st Infantry Division invaded Peleliu, in the Palaus. The noose tightened still more.
Orca had been in port less than a week when the word came down that the boats tied up alongside Sperry had to move out into the anchorage. Riding at anchor meant that the shore-supplied water was no longer available, and movement on and off the boat was strictly by launch. Inconvenient to say the least.
But the reason for the move soon became clear when, on the morning of September 19th, tugs pointed Sperry at the harbor entrance, and the tender took off for Pearl. Later that same day, the submarine tender, Howard W. Gilmore, entered port and tied up alongside Majuro’s only pier, where Sperry had been only hours before. Further orders directed Orca to be the first boat to leave the anchorage and tie up immediately alongside the Gilmore.
Jake was taken completely by surprise when the first person off the gangway from the Gilmore to come aboard Orca was his Squadron Commander, Cpt. Clarence Macdonough.
“Commodore!” was Jake’s surprised greeting to Macdonough when he came aboard.
“Hello, Jake,” was Macdonough’s smiling greeting. “I’m probably the last person you expected to see in this God-forsaken place!”
“To put it mildly, Sir,” Jake said. “What brings you halfway across the Pacific to visit Orca?”
Macdonough chuckled. “Uncle Charlie, mostly. Seems the admiral has a special job for you to do. And he sent me to explain it, and to make sure that you understood that you have the option to turn it down without prejudice. I mean, that you really understood that you had that option.”
“Sounds ominous.”
“It is that. But what it is, mostly, is dangerous. Really dangerous. How about you get Himmelfarb, and we meet aboard the Gilmore, say, in about an hour, and talk about it?”
“Will do, Commodore. Joel and I will see you in an hour.”
As Macdonough departed Orca, a far more popular visitor was boarding the boat: the mailbag.
* * * * *
Jake barely had time to put the letters from Kate in reverse chronological order and open the top two, when it was time for Joel and him to meet with the commodore. Still, he got to read them quickly, and to admire the black-and-white snapshots Kate had sent of Elizabeth and herself. The baby looked pretty much the same as she did when Orca left Pearl in mid-July, not at all surprising since Jake had taken the pictures himself with Kate’s Brownie camera. He planned to give the letters and snapshots much more attention later.
With Joel in tow, Jake explained to the OOD on the Gilmore’s quarterdeck that they had a meeting with Captain Macdonough. After a minute or so on the sound-powered phones, the OOD directed Jake and Joel to the flag quarters on the ship’s 04 level, forward.
When Jake knocked, Macdonough opened the door and said, “Well, I see you found me.” He nodded to Joel, “Good to see you again, Joel. Come in, gentlemen, come in.”
The flag quarters aboard the Gilmore were fairly spacious, and there was even an area off to one corner with a small table and some chairs. It was probably meant for the admiral’s mess, but Macdonough had set it up as a conference area. He directed Jake and Joel to two of the chairs, and took one himself. There was a chart spread out on the table, which Jake recognized as one used frequently aboard S-49. It was a chart of Manila Bay.
“How much do you gentlemen know about mine laying?” the commodore asked.
“Just what I’ve read in the manual, Commodore,” Jake replied.
Joel nodded. “Same here, Sir.”
“Okay,” Macdonough explained, “it’s not something a sub is called upon to do very frequently. Practically all mines are laid from the air these days. But sometimes, and this is one of them, a sub is the best and only way to lay ’em. Here’s the deal. No secret that MacArthur is anxious to get back on Philippine soil. The sooner the better, and it may even happen as soon as next month. And Nimitz is sure that when the land invasion is imminent, the Jap Navy is going to throw everything it has left against us.
“Uncle Charlie wants the sub force to do its bit to befuddle the enemy and insure Allied success. So he came up with the idea of maybe mining the channels at Manila Bay.”
“But the bay is too shallow,” Jake objected. “The average depth is less than sixty feet. When I was stationed there in S-49, at Cavite, you had to go in on the surface—and stay on the surface.”
“And there was very good reason for that,” Macdonough agreed. “The bay around Cavite where the sub base was is really shallow—here, see? By Sangley Point? Three-and-a quarter and four-and-a-half meters, that’s just ten-point-seven feet and fourteen-point-eight feet. No way you could transit that area submerged. But remember, I said the admiral just wants to mine the channels. They’re deep enough so that it could be done submerged.”
Joel had been examining the chart. “Barely,” he conceded, “and not very safely. Look at these channel depths at those points. South Channel, twenty-seven meters. That’s just eighty-eight feet. And here, the North Channel, just twenty meters. That’s sixty-five feet. At periscope depth we’d be almost scraping bottom.”
“But it could be done,” Macdonough said. “And we’ll want you to go in on a spring tide. There will be spring tides in mid-October when we do this. Spring tide will give you an additional one-point-two meters—that’s just under four feet—added to these chart readings. Of course, the admiral said he would back off if you still thought it was too risky.”
Jake had been listening, scratching his chin. “Definitely risky,” he said, finally, “but maybe not impossible.”
Joel looked at his boss as if he had just lost his mind. “Good God, Skipper,” he said, “submerged at these depths we’d be visible from overhead. Remember what it was like off New Guinea? We were at periscope depth and those two natives were able to look down into the water and see us, and actually follow the boat? Even if we managed to navigate the bay at periscope depth, all it would take is a plane passing overhead and seeing us, and we’d be dead meat.”
Jake chuckled. “Not highly likely. Manila Bay is so filthy you can’t even see your hand in front of your face, six inches underwater. Besides, if we do this, we’ll do it at night, get in and get out. No, that’s not the deal breaker. Here’s the deal breaker: Say we manage to get in and out without scraping bottom, what ‘s to keep us from straying out of the channels? How do we navigate at night? Look, the channels are about two miles wide, and both sides of the channels are heavily mined. Too many feet one side or the other, and it’s ‘Goodbye, Charlie.’ ”
“You’ve got prominent coastal features all around you,” the commodore said, “and now you’ve got radar when you’re submerged. You can navigate by radar.”
“We might be able to do that,” Jake said.
Joel fell silent. He thought they were both nuts, but would never say it aloud. Instead, he said, “Not so sure the shoreline could be mapped with radar. Don’t know that it’s ever been tried. Radar is used to locate ships and airplanes—ground return is usually regarded as just so much clutter. Anyplace we can practice this?” he asked.
The commodore grinned. “Of course there is. The perfect place to practice is right here in Majuro. And, best of all, I get to ride the boat when you do it! Now let’s talk about mines . . .”
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The commodore took Jake and Joel down into one of the Gilmore’s cargo holds.
“Here we are, gentlemen, the Mark-Twelve, Model Three, submarine-launched magnetic mine.” The neatly stacked mines were shaped like torpedoes, with smooth aluminum outer skins. The diameter looked pretty much the same as that of a Mark-14 torpedo, but the mine appeared to be much shorter. Jake figured maybe eight feet or so long. “Each one carries fifteen hundred and ninety five pounds of Torpex,” Macdonough continued. “You can squeeze eight of these babies in the same space as three Mark-Fourteen torpedoes. The Admiral sent you forty of them, along with eight practice models.”
“Wait a minute,” Joel interjected, “you can only lay mines from the after tubes. Orca carries ten torpedoes aft, so no way could we lay all forty you brought. We could only lay twenty-four, twenty-five, maybe twenty-six, max—assuming we go to sea with no torpedoes aft at all.”
“Good point,” Macdonough allowed. “But what if we could rig your boat so you could lay mines from your forward tubes, as well?”
“You can do that?” Joel asked.
“Pretty sure we can.”
“So Admiral Lockwood sends us forty mines,” Jake mused. “Does the admiral expect we’d leave fifteen torpedoes behind to make room for forty mines? That would leave Orca carrying only nine torpedoes.”
“No, explained Macdonough, “the admiral sent forty mines so you wouldn’t leave any more than fifteen torpedoes behind. He’s pretty much left the number of mines you’ll take on this trip up to you. And another thing, each of these mines has been modified with a time-delay device, so it won’t deploy for several minutes—and then, still not go active until ten days after it’s been planted. That way, you can even retrace your steps if you have to, and pass over these mines without the danger of setting them off.”
“But what about the mine mooring cables?” Joel asked. “I’m guessing you’d have to have some sort of deployment delay on the mines, if we were going to sow them from the forward tubes. Otherwise the cables might get snagged on our bow planes. But what if we really do have to retrace our steps, and the mines are already deployed? Maybe they won’t go off, but with the boat submerged, won’t the cables catch on our bow planes? Won’t we end up dragging a mine or two—or a dozen—behind us?”
“Not if the cable-shedding device the boys from the Gilmore are going to install on Orca works as well as we think it will,” the commodore replied.
“Seems like the admiral and you thought of everything,” Joel said, without much conviction.
Back aboard Orca, Jake finally got to reread and enjoy his mail. Almost half of Kate’s letters included snapshots of their daughter, and each one made Jake painfully aware of just how much this war was depriving him. He had a daughter growing up thousands of miles away. He was her father, and he should be there with her. Instead, it fell to his wife to be all things to their child, to hold her when she cried, to play with her, to nurse her when she was sick, to read to her, and to rock her to sleep. She’ll say her first word, and I won’t be there to hear it. And this damn war could go on forever!
The Japs were losing—they would lose—but they wouldn’t give up until every last one of them was beaten. God help both sides when the home islands were at last invaded. Jake could envision the casualties on both sides. They would number in the millions. What a waste.
* * * * *
Lieutenant Joel Himmelfarb, pencil, paper, and weapons manuals in hand, did some calculations. Jake’s guess, it turned out, as to the length of the mines, was pretty close: each Mark-12 mine was actually seven feet, ten-and-a-quarter inches long. Eight of them in line would take up sixty-two feet, ten inches. A Mark-14 torpedo is twenty feet, six inches long. Three of them, laid end-to-end, would occupy sixty-one feet, six inches—a difference of one foot, four inches. The commodore had said eight of the mines would squeeze into the same space as three torpedoes. Well, thought Joel, the commodore did say “squeeze.”
That afternoon, as torpedoes were being offloaded and eight practice mines brought aboard, the “boys from the Gilmore” were installing the cable-shedding device on Orca’s bow. While Bucky was overseeing those activities, the commodore was below briefing the wardroom on the purpose of the following day’s exercise. Jake was amazed that none of his officers appeared to be the least bit nonplussed by the idea of creeping into Manila Bay and mining the shipping channels.
The next morning Orca left the Gilmore’s side with eight practice mines in the forward torpedo room in place of four of her Mark-14 torpedoes. One of the four torpedoes offloaded the day before had been removed from tube one. The other three came off the torpedo racks. The tube would accommodate only two mines, so two torpedoes had to be removed from one rack to “squeeze” four of the mines on that rack, while the other two mines took up the space where the fourth torpedo had been.
The “cable-shedding device” was simply a pair of cables coming out of a mechanism that looked like an oversized arrowhead. The device was attached to the end of a length of steel tubing extending forward off Orca’s bow, and attached to the hull below the bull nose. The arm increased the boat’s length forward by several feet. The after end of each cable was attached to the forward tip of each bow plane, so that when the bow planes were deployed, the two cables formed a steep angle from the bow. A pulley-and-roller-guide mechanism inside the arrowhead and a spring inside the arm worked to keep the cable taut, while still not interfering with the normal functioning of the bow planes. The crewmembers who observed the installation immediately dubbed the device “The Christmas Tree.”
Snagging a mine cable on the stern planes was never mentioned, because it was never an issue. The stern planes were fixed in place by design, and were already equipped with an elaborate guard of steel tubing built to protect them, the rudder, and the boat’s propellers from dock pilings. This same guard would perform double duty as a fairwater that would shed any mine cables aft.
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“We would have foreseen the problem, if only we’d thought about it,” Jake said to Harry Hastings, his Weapons Officer. The day’s practice run had gone poorly, and the boat was headed back into port. In the wardroom, Orca’s officers were holding a post mortem, led by Commodore Macdonough, on the day’s activities.
“Everything would have been fine, if we planned to fire two mines at once from all the tubes, one tube at a time,” the commodore explained. “But we really only want to sow one mine at a time, and use just one tube to sow all the mines. So, this morning, your torpedo men had to remove a mine from number one tube before we could deploy the one left in the tube, deploy that mine, drain the tube, then reload and fire the second mine. Then they had to drain the tube again, load and fire the next mine, and so on, deploying the rest of the mines one at a time. I don’t fault your men. They were moving as fast as they could. But the whole operation was just too slow. We have to do something different.”
“Why is that, Sir?” Hastings asked. “We deployed the rest of them pretty quickly. Considering all the manhandling involved, twenty minutes, eighteen seconds, per mine isn’t all that bad. The only glitch was with the first ones that were loaded in the tubes. But we can surely figure out a way around that. Besides, we’ll be deploying them both fore and aft. If we alternate, that’s just over ten minutes per mine.
“Let’s see,” the commodore said. “To minimize your exposure in the shipping channels, the boat will need to go as fast as possible, which, submerged, is a sustainable five knots. The North Channel is the most heavily traveled, so we’ll want to plant the mines closer together there. Every twelve hundred yards or so. The North Channel is eight-point-three miles long, so that’s fourteen mines. At five knots, you cover about a hundred and seventy yards per minute, so that’s seven minutes you’ll get to load and shoot each mine. But your best time this morning, shooting the mines that were loaded into the tubes directly from the racks, was ten minutes, six seconds, or ten-point-one minutes per mine—three minutes too long. You’ll have a bit more time to deploy each mine on the South Channel. It’s eighteen miles long, and, if the spacing there is opened up to fourteen hundred yards, you’ll have just over eight minutes to load and shoot each mine. But that’s still two minutes less than ten-point-one minutes.
“The South Channel’s eighteen miles long, thirty-six thousand yards,” Jake acknowledged. “So, at fourteen-hundred-yard intervals, that’s twenty-six mines. Fourteen on the North Channel, twenty-six on the South—forty mines total. Strange how that works out to exactly the number of mines the admiral sent,” Jake noted.
“Isn’t it,” Macdonough said, smiling.
A half-minute of pensive silence passed before Billy Kinkaid spoke up. “I’m sure we can deploy each mine faster if we just organize the work better,” he said. “This morning, we worked the two mines in the tubes first—and there’s no avoiding that—then the four of the mines on the port side first, then, finally, the two on the starboard. Each mine had to have the chain hoist attached in turn, lift collar secured to the mine first, in order to lift it off the rack. What if we get another collar, and install it on the next mine to be loaded in advance? We do the mines in the tubes first. Like I said, no way to avoid that.
“To do that, we have to use one collar to handle the mine we pull from the tube. But while we’re doing that, we install the second collar on one in the rack—and so on—installing the spare collar on the next mine in turn, while the mine in front of it is being deployed. And we alternate the side of the boat we’re loading from each time, giving us some room to install the spare collar on the next mine. That way we save the time it takes to install the collar. Besides, with some practice, we’ll improve on the timing anyway. Heck, we’re almost there.”
“That’s an excellent observation, Lieutenant, and I’m sure we could scare up a couple extra lift collars,” the commodore said, pensively.
Kinkaid looked confused, afraid he might have embarrassed the commodore. His look quickly disappeared, however, when Macdonough beamed at him. Jake was smiling too. “Good thinking, Billy,” he said.
Another pregnant silence followed.
“Now about the radar,” Joel volunteered. “Bill, how’d that work out?” he asked Salton.
“Not great. But that may be the fault of the particular terrain around this atoll. No mountains. But at Manila Bay the Bataan Peninsula is one big mountain to the northwest. And Corregidor is five hundred and ninety feet high, and should be easy to pick out. Then there’s Fort Drum on the east. They’re all pretty decent landmarks that should show up well on radar. Of course, another option is that we might get lucky, find a ship to follow in.”
“No, thank you,” Joel replied. “I want as little channel traffic around as possible. Preferably none. Get in and get out unnoticed.”
“My sentiments exactly,” Jake agreed.
“And we do have a good chart,” Salton continued, unfazed, “and a fathometer to check our depth. We could use soundings to help us navigate as well.”
“I’ve got copies of shore spotter reports for the last couple months for the bay, so you’ll at least know what kind of ship traffic to expect,” the commodore said, “just in case you change your mind about following a ship in.”
“That’s good information, Commodore,” Jake said. “And we’ll take it with us. But I still don’t think that following a ship in is wise. No place to go except through a minefield if they spot us.”
“Okay, gentlemen,” the commodore said. “That’s your call. Now what say we do it all over again tomorrow. We’ll use Mister Kinkaid’s plan, and see if we can’t get the timing down a little better.”
“I hope we don’t have to do this too many more times, Skipper,” Joel confided to Jake after the meeting. “Retrieving those practice mines is a bitch.”
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A week later, and Orca’s fore and aft torpedo crews had mine laying technique down to a science, including the “two-in-the-tube shuffle,” as her torpedomen dubbed that beginning portion of the exercise.
“I believe you’re about ready,” Macdonough told Jake. It was Wednesday morning, September 27th. “And I really like young Kinkaid’s attitude. He’s the admiral’s kid, right?”
“Yes, Sir. He is, and I’m observing that he’s also a bright young man in his own right, and a welcome addition to Orca’s wardroom.”
“I suspect you’re right about that,” Macdonough agreed. “But back to the matter at hand. It looks like you and your men might just pull this Manila Bay thing off.”
“I’m not so sure,” Jake replied. “We still haven’t resolved the radar navigation question. What if we travel three thousand miles to Manila Bay, and discover there’s really no way to safely navigate the channels?”
“I think you’re selling your man Salton short, Jake. If it can be done, he’ll be able to do it.”
“I agree that Bill’s good, Commodore, but can he make the equipment do what it wasn’t designed for?”
“Look, Jake. I know that part of it is a bit iffy. But I have a fall-back position for you to use if you absolutely have to.”
“And what’s that, Commodore?”
“If you get there, and you find that there’s no way you can get up those channels and into the Bay safely, then sow as many of those mines as possible as close to the sea-side channel entrances as possible. I mean, get in as close as you can without entering those Jap minefields. Okay?”
“Okay, Commodore. I’ll keep that in mind.”
“One more thing.”
“Commodore?”
“I just found out I need you to plant those mines as close as possible to October Tenth. And that’s not just so you can catch the spring tide. I can’t really tell you why exactly, although you probably can guess.”
Jake could indeed. Once sown, the mines had a ten-day delay built-in before they self-activated. Big doings were obviously planned for the Philippines on or around October 20th.
“So what are our orders, Commodore?”
“Depends. The admiral made it very clear from the beginning, Jake, this evolution was entirely voluntary. Are you up for it?”
Jake chuckled. “If I wasn’t, I think I’d have mutiny on my hands. Yes, Sir, we’re up for it.”
“Outstanding! Okay, then . . . next question . . . how many mines are you taking with you?”
“In for a penny, in for a pound. We’ll take all forty with us, Commodore.”
“You just cost me a case of Scotch. Take a tip from me, Jake, never bet against the admiral.”
“I’ll remember that, Sir.” Jake wondered that he was so predictable.
“Okay,” Macdonough said, ”I’ll cut your orders while you get Orca ready for sea. Let’s plan to get you underway tomorrow afternoon, the latest . . . and Jake?”
“Yes, Sir?”
“I sure as blazes wish I were going with you.”
“I know that, Commodore. I know that.”
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Orca got underway from Majuro en route to Manila Bay at 1400 on Thursday, September 28, 1944. The boat departed for her ninth war patrol carrying forty Mark-12, Mod 3, magnetic mines and nine Mark-14 torpedoes. It really was a “squeeze,” but twenty mines were carried forward, and twenty aft. Two mines each were in torpedo tubes one forward and eight aft. The remaining tubes were loaded with torpedoes. One more torpedo was on a rack forward, and one mine forward and one mine aft were lashed to the deck. Jake was unhappy about the last bit, but there was no way he wasn’t going to sow all forty of the mines the Admiral had sent.
