welded to the steel skin of the ship or bolted to the deck. The smooth cork lining the interior of the pressure hull was now pocked with spots where it had to be removed for welding and had been less attractively patched. New instruments had been installed: An automatic plotter, which required two men to keep pointers matched with our course and speed, and forced us to move Jerry Cohen's plotting position down into the control room; a gadget which measured the temperature of the sea at different depths; an improved SJ radar, using much more power, and producing longer detection ranges; and more air-conditioning, required not only for the increased heat out- put of our new gear but also for the increased crew we carried as a partial consequence.
And as we got under way for the coast of Kyushu once more, changes again had been made in our crew. Fifteen men had to be left behind to fill the insatiable demands of new construction, and to provide continuity for the rotation program.
Eighteen new hands all graduates of the submarine school but otherwise entirely new to submarine duty, took their places. The loss which affected the wardroom most was good old steady Tom Schultz, whose orders detaching him and ordering him to the submarine school as instructor had arrived in our first mail. Hugh Adams had moved into his shoes as Engineer, not without. some trepidation, and two new Ensigns had reported aboard.
We held a special wake for Tom in Gooneyville Lodge, and he promised to look up our mothers, wives and relatives back; in the States. Not that any of the rest of us was married except Jim, who shook his head when Tom offered to carry any special trinket or message to Laura for him.
The crew also tried hard to show Tom how well he was liked, presenting him with a gold wrist watch they purchased at the Ship's Service, and Tom, in his turn, insisted upon personally handling all our lines from the dock when we got under way.
The changes left Keith, now a seasoned submariner and a full Lieutenant, the third officer in rank aboard, next after Jim.'
Hugh was fourth, and Dave Freeman, his junior by only a few numbers, fifth, now serving as Keith's understudy as well as Communications Officer. Jerry Cohen, keeping his job as Plotting Officer during battle stations, became Hugh's assistant in the engineering department. Our two new Ensigns, who were named Patrick Donnelly and Cecil Throop, would, like Jerry during the previous patrol, be given general assignments under instruction.
One disadvantage of this new setup, so far as I was concerned, was that I now had to share my room with someone, since Walrus was not fitted with the extra accommodations in the wardroom 'country' that some of the later submarines carried. Throop, who drew the unpopular assignment of sleeping in the bunk newly installed above mine, proved to be a very sound sleeper, and a very loud one. As we made our way west, I began to wonder how long I would be able to stand it when the irregular hours on, station began to take their toll. One thing which it was unnecessary to burden the others with, at the moment at any rate, was the following special entry in the Operation Order pamphlet, which I pulled out before handing the pamphlet over to Jim to read: Particular caution is enjoined with regard to an old destroyer of the Akikaze class operating out of the Bungo Suido. This vessel had been unusually successful in antisubmarine work, and prefers the astern position when escorting. You will under no circumstances seek combat with it except under conditions of special advantage.
I read and reread the words. There must be some important reason behind them-and add to this the remembered conversation with Captain Blunt months before. Of specific information as to Bungo's activities I had heard very little, though there had been stories circulating about Bungo Pete and his abilities as a depth-charge launcher for some time. 'He even seems to know the names of his victims,' I remembered Captain Blunt saying.
The fact that we had been warned against him was under- standable; the restriction not to attack him except under conditions of 'special advantage' could only mean that we were to stay clear of him unless fate practically delivered him into our hands. But what were we to do if a convoy turned up with Bungo Pete as one of the escorts? For that matter, there was more than one Akikaze-class destroyer in the Jap Navy. How, then, to tell them apart? I studied her in the book of recognition photos until I could have recognized her, or one of her many sisters, through the periscope, from the bridge on a dark night, or anywhere else we might be likely to run into her. But if we ran into an Akikaze, it could be any one of fully thirty- four nearly identical tincans.
My final evaluation was the only one possible. Bungo had an Akikaze, he liked to escort from astern, and he operated in AREA SEVEN. Therefore we would avoid tangling with any destroyer of this type occupying such a position while convoying, at least of our own volition. But if he knew of our presence and general position, he would carry the fight to us anyhow, and in this case we might as well do as well as we could for ourselves if we got the chance.
Another portion of the Operation Order dealt with the possibility of encountering Japanese submarines, and this Jim, Keith, and I discussed at length. There were indications (un- specified) that Jap submersibles were being used for antisubmarine work, perhaps ordered out to wait for U. S. boats going or coming on patrol. We might therefore be apt to encounter one of them almost anywhere.
Daily drills en route to our operation areas had seemed a simple matter of keeping at the peak of training, and they had been an accepted part of our daily routine. Now, with the two special problems Walrus might run into, one of which only I knew about, I directed that the drills be doubled in frequency.
We concentrated on two things: on detection and avoidance of an enemy submarine torpedo, calculating the quickest ways of dodging it in the various possible situations; and on swiftly changing fire-control problems, with emphasis on flexibility in setting the new data into the TDC and the angle solver and getting off an answering shot.
Most important from the self-protection angle, of course were measures to avoid enemy torpedoes. First came the absolute imperativeness of seeing the torpedo as it came at us, or of spotting the enemy sub's periscope. To confound his approach, Jim and Rubinoffski cooked up a special zigzag plan of our own which consisted of steering either-side of the base course line-never on it, and following an indefinite zigzag while so doing. Once taught to our helmsmen, the plan took care of itself. It sent us all over the ocean and we hoped it would force the enemy boat to use his periscope more often, and thus increase our chances for spotting it. The need for alert look- outs we dinned into the ears of our new men, and our old ones too, with never-ceasing emphasis; it was up to them to see the telltale wake or periscope so-on enough to enable something to be done about it. On that simple, requirement our salvation depended., Once sighted, we could turn forward or away, or even line up for a torpedo shot in return. Given enough time, we knew we could get clear.
All the way out to Kyushu we drilled on the possibilities, and when we got there we were as ready for them as we could be. Keith, already an expert on the TDC, became adept at switching his inputs virtually instantaneously at my snapped command. Jim, hovering as backer-up for both of us, found it possible to speed things up by making certain of the settings for him when he had both hands otherwise engaged. And I realized that in Jim one of the sub forces best TDC operators had never been developed, for it seemed to be nearly second nature to him.
We varied the procedure and the personnel too, so that our abilities did not depend on who happened to be on watch when the emergency came. About the time we passed through the Nanpo Shoto our crew was so tuned to the problem that from a standing start, with only the cruising watch at their stations, we could get our torpedoes on their way within thirty seconds. Our battle-stations personnel could shoot a salvo at a destroyer going by at high speed, thirty knots, shift target to a submerged submarine at three knots on a different bearing, make the necessary changes in torpedo gyro angle, depth, setting, firing bearing, and get a second salvo of torpedoes on its way, all within ten seconds by stop watch.
Perhaps our great emphasis on preparation also led me to expect something out of the ordinary as soon as we entered AREA SEVEN, just as we had on our first patrol, so long ago. Sub.' consciously I had nerved myself to having a Jap sub fire at us somewhere during the trip across the Pacific, and to finding Bungo Pete waiting for us at the other end. Neither eventuality came to pass. The patrol began with the most prosaic of beginnings, a week on station, within close sight of land, without any sign whatsoever of enemy activity except for an occasional air- plane, and numbers of small fishing smacks with groups of straw-hatted Japanese out for a day's fishing.
During the early part of our second week a big old-fashioned freighter, heavily laden, crawled up the coast pouring smoke from a large stack nearly as tall as his masts. He wasn't making much speed and disdained to zigzag, probably figuring he wasn't fast enough for it to do any good. There was plenty of time for both Jim and Keith to get a look at him before we sank him; he went down belching smoke and dirt. A great expanse of filthy water, studded with floating junk and debris of all kinds plus a number of round black objects which slowly clustered together, marked his grave.
