Hellcats Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  PREFACE

  Introduction

  PART ONE - The Beginning of the End

  CHAPTER ONE - A World Destroyed

  CHAPTER TWO - ComSubPac

  CHAPTER THREE - The Wahoo’s Last Dive

  CHAPTER FOUR - The Commander from Georgia

  CHAPTER FIVE - The “Magic” Behind the Mission

  CHAPTER SIX - Wolf Pack

  CHAPTER SEVEN - The Long Road to Tokyo

  CHAPTER EIGHT - The Magic Loses Its Magic

  PART TWO - The Hellcats

  CHAPTER NINE - An Operation Called “Barney”

  CHAPTER TEN - The Minehunters

  CHAPTER ELEVEN - Probing the Line

  CHAPTER TWELVE - “Hydeman’s Hellcats”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN - Running the Gauntlet

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Threading the Needle

  PART THREE - Operation Barney

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN - The Death of an Empire

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN - A Dark Silence

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - Breakout

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - The Long Search

  CHAPTER NINETEEN - The Hour of Sacrifice

  CHAPTER TWENTY - A Shining Glory

  AFTERWORD

  APPENDIX ONE - Japanese Naval and Merchant Vessels Sunk by the USS Bonefish as ...

  APPENDIX TWO - Japanese Naval and Merchant Vessels Sunk by the Nine Hellcat ...

  APPENDIX THREE - Full Text of the Letter from Sarah Simms Edge to the Families ...

  APPENDIX FOUR - An Edited Address by Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz Delivered ...

  APPENDIX FIVE - Award and Commendation to Commander Lawrence L. Edge by Vice ...

  Acknowledgements

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  OFFICIAL SAILING LISTS OF THE HELLCAT SUBMARINES

  NOTES

  INDEX

  Other Books by Peter Sasgen

  Stalking the Red Bear: The True Story of a U.S. Cold War Submarine’s Covert Operations Against the Soviet Union

  Red Scorpion: The War Patrols of the USS Rasher

  War Plan Red (novel)

  Red Shark (novel)

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  First published by NAL Caliber, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, November 2010

  Copyright © Peter Sasgen, 2010

  Maps by Karen Sasgen

  All rights reserved

  NAL CALIBER and the “C” logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Sasgen, Peter T., 1941-

  Hellcats: the epic story of World War II’s most daring submarine raid/Peter Sasgen.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-47503-4

  1. World war, 1939-1945—Naval operations—Submarine. 2. World War, 1939-1945—Naval operations, American. 3. World War, 1939-1945—Campaigns—Japan, Sea of. 4. Operation Barney, 1945. 5. Lockwood, Charles A., 1890-1967. 6. Sonar—History—20th century. I. Title.

  D783.S37 2010

  940.54’25—dc22

  2010028766

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  To the men and the families

  of the USS Bonefish (SS-223)

  The Americans had not ... made any great sacrifices of blood. They would certainly not withstand a great trial by fire, for their fighting qualities were low. In general, no such thing as an American people existed as a unit; they were nothing but a mass of immigrants from many nations and races.

  —Adolf Hitler, from Inside the Third Reich by Albert Speer

  To our good and loyal subjects ... We declared war on America and Britain out of our sincere desire to ensure Japan’s self-preservation and the stabilization of East Asia, it being far from our thought either to infringe upon the sovereignty of other nations or to embark upon territorial aggrandizement. Despite [this] the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.

  —Excerpt from Emperor Hirohito’s surrender address to the Japanese people, August 15, 1945

  It is to the everlasting honor and glory of our submarine personnel that they never failed us in our days of great peril.

  —Chester W. Nimitz, Fleet Admiral, United States Navy

  PREFACE

  May 27, 1945. Diesel engines rumbling impatiently, a task force of submarines lay moored in Apra Harbor, Guam. Fueled, provisioned, torpedoes loaded, the subs and their crews were ready to sail. As the late-afternoon hour for their departure approached, submarine force commander Vice Admiral Charles A. Lockwood and his staff gathered to see the subs off on their mission.

  With great anticipation and excitement, they watched the subs, their diesels rolling to a deep thrumming pitch, cast off lines and clear their moorings. As the task force formed up and moved slowly toward the open sea, Lockwood returned departing salutes and waved good-bye.

  Earlier, Lockwood had thought to say something beyond the rote custom of “good luck” and “good hunting,” something that the submariners could draw strength from in difficult moments. But he had seen the steady burn of self-confidence in the faces of the departing skippers and knew that the time for speeches was over. The mission was in their hands now. And in their hands it would either succeed or fail; there would be no middle ground.

  Lockwood felt an all too familiar pang of apprehension. The
re were so many unknowns. So many factors beyond the submariners’ control. Anything could go wrong. For one, the enemy was unpredictable. For another, the secret sonar device aboard those subs, which had made the mission possible and on which so much was riding for its success, was neither perfect nor foolproof.

  Lockwood had never felt more alone than he did at that moment. Yet, at the same time he felt more connected than ever to the almost eight hundred men departing on what might prove to be a doomed mission. Two years had passed since the loss of the storied submarine Wahoo and her gallant crew, which had inspired the mission. During that time more submarines had been lost and Lockwood feared that the mission on which he was sending the task force would result in further losses. A picture formed in his mind, one that had haunted him day and night since the war began: a submarine, destroyed by depth charges, plunging into a black void.

  Not everyone in the submarine force shared Lockwood’s ironbound confidence in the secret electronic weapon aboard those subs, nor his unshakable belief that the mission, if it succeeded, would help end the war. Officers whose judgment he respected had told him that it was a suicide mission. But there were others, especially the scientists who had worked like demons to perfect the secret weapon, who believed it would work and that the mission would succeed. It was, Lockwood reflected, too late to alter plans or have second thoughts.

  As the submarines slowly threaded their way out of the harbor to disappear from view into the shimmering Pacific Ocean, Lockwood could only wait for the first reports from the sea to the north where those subs and the ones to follow would fight one of the most daring—and dangerous—submarine battles of World War II.

  During the closing days of World War II in the Pacific, nine United States Navy submarines penetrated a curtain of minefields guarding the Sea of Japan to launch a surprise attack on the remnants of the empire’s merchant marine lifeline. Known collectively as the Hellcats, the nine submarines were on a mission to destroy that lifeline and hasten Japan’s collapse and surrender. The Hellcats’ torpedoes sank more than a score of ships and, with them, thousands of tons of the imported food and matériel Japan needed to continue fighting. The Hellcats’ mission, code-named Operation Barney, was the most daring submarine raid of all time. Hellcats tells the story of how they did it, what they accomplished, and the price they paid for their success.

  Operation Barney was fraught with danger. No one, least of all the submariners themselves, knew how it would turn out, given that its success—or failure—would depend in large measure on an unproven secret weapon designed to locate submerged antisubmarine mines. Skeptics thought that Barney, launched just a few weeks before Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945, was nothing more than a technical exercise, if not a stunt to grab headlines for a sub force that, despite its astounding combat record, had operated mostly in the shadows. Among the submariners tapped for the mission were those who believed that their chances of surviving an underwater encounter with a minefield were razor thin. All they knew for certain was that regardless of the outcome it would take extraordinary courage and skill to execute Operation Barney. Indeed, the risks involved were great, so great, in fact, that one of the nine raiding submarines did not return from the mission. Nevertheless, just as the war was ending, a second wave of seven submarines followed the pioneering Hellcats into the Sea of Japan (not to be confused with the Inland Sea) to finish the job the Hellcats had started. The submariners who participated in these missions agreed on one thing: If they could deliver a knockout punch to the Japanese it might bring a quick end to the war without the need for a costly invasion of mainland Japan, thus saving countless American lives, if not their own.

  No one doubted that Operation Barney was a bold and daring enterprise. Brave and dedicated sailors aboard the Hellcat submarines had risked their lives to carry it out. Scores of scientists and naval officers had worked at a feverish pace to develop and perfect the secret mine-detecting sonar equipment that allowed the raiding subs to break into the Sea of Japan. Mission accomplished, Operation Barney was hailed as a great tactical success that had exceeded expectations. Even so, the loss of a Hellcat sub, the USS Bonefish (SS-223) and her crew of eighty-five men was a blow to the submarine force, and, for the families of the men who perished, a crushing tragedy.

  The eight surviving Hellcats returned from the Sea of Japan to the heroes’ welcome they deserved. After all the speeches and awarding of medals for valor, the war in the Pacific ended with the dropping of atomic bombs and the Soviet Union’s declaration of war on Japan. In the excitement and celebration of victory, information about the fate of the Bonefish and her crew was virtually nonexistent. Rumors circulating among the families of the missing men said that part of the crew had survived her loss. If that was true, they asked, how many had survived and where were they? For months the families clung to the hope that somehow their loved ones might be found alive in liberated POW camps. While the families waited to learn the fate of the missing Bonefish crew, reports that men held prisoner for years had been freed kept hopes alive among the families that their men would be found too. Sadly, those hopes died when the Navy announced in early 1946 that all of the American prisoners held by the Japanese had been accounted for and that there were no survivors from the Bonefish among them.

  The loss of the Bonefish, coming as it did so late in the war, later fueled the controversies that arose over the execution and timing of Operation Barney itself. Why, some family members asked, did the Navy undertake such a dangerous mission only ten weeks before the war ended? In light of the atomic bomb and its effect on Japan’s surrender, it appeared to some people that Operation Barney hardly seemed worth the risk, for it had had no measurable effect on an already defeated enemy nor influence on Japan’s decision to surrender. Others questioned the use of an unproven sonar system to locate antisubmarine mines, which, given the danger such mines posed, some family members believed had sunk the Bonefish. Still others questioned the true purpose of Barney, saying it was a costly make-work operation designed to keep the sub force occupied.

  Aside from the preceding issues raised by the Bonefish families and by critics within the Navy, there is at the heart of Operation Barney a point of debate that overrides all the other controversies and that poses an important question that needs an answer: Was the need to avenge the loss of a storied U.S. submarine in the Sea of Japan early in the war, a submarine that was skippered by a man considered the greatest submariner of his generation, the driving force behind Operation Barney? Hellcats will attempt to answer that question.

  Even though Operation Barney unfolded more than sixty-five years ago and is now largely forgotten, a careful perusal of declassified documents and correspondence provides a compelling account of how the mission was planned and executed. A close reading of the patrol reports of the Hellcat submarines themselves tells a thrilling story of high adventure. Hellcats, then, is the story of how men facing long odds against their survival overcame fear, gloried in triumph over the enemy, and kept alive their hopes and dreams for the day when the war would end.

  The personal letters of Commander Lawrence Lott Edge, who perished aboard the Bonefish during Operation Barney, are replete with passages that touch on these matters. In particular, his letters to his wife, Sarah, tell a heart-wrenching story of love and loss. They contain revealing insights into his state of mind, personal feelings about the war, command at sea, devotion to duty, and, most poignantly, his yearning to survive the war to return home to Sarah and their daughter. These insights are of a kind not often associated with submariners who enjoy a reputation as iron-willed, remarkably self-contained, enduringly fearless individuals. Add to this the correspondence between the Navy and family members desperately searching for information that would help explain the heartbreaking loss they’d suffered, and a deeply human aspect of wartime submarine service emerges. All of this material, in addition to the writings, papers, biography, and memoirs of the Pacific Submarine Force commander, Vice Admiral Ch
arles A. Lockwood, proved a rich trove from which to assemble the Hellcats narrative.

  I’m especially grateful for the help and encouragement I received from individuals with a personal interest in Operation Barney, in particular those whose fathers either commanded or served in the Hellcat submarines or perished on the mission. These individuals generously provided exceptional material from family archives, large amounts of their time, and, above all, friendship. My own father served in submarines in World War II and I discovered long ago that like our submariner dads, the children of submariners share a special bond. I hasten to add that they are not responsible for any mistakes or errors that appear in Hellcats; they are all my doing.

  Like Nazi Germany, Japan’s world-conquering ambitions ended when that country collapsed. Whether or not Operation Barney contributed to that collapse may never be known for certain. Regardless, nothing can diminish what the Hellcats accomplished during one of the most challenging and dangerous operations of World War II.

  A note on geographic place-names. Where possible I’ve used the names that were commonly in use during World War II and appear in official Navy correspondence and reports, and on maps and nautical charts.

  INTRODUCTION

  Mention World War II and submarines in the same breath and most people think German U-boats and the Battle of the Atlantic. Beginning in late 1939, until their defeat in the spring of 1943, Hitler’s U-boats sank more than 3,500 Allied merchant ships loaded with food, weapons, and raw materials destined for Great Britain and the Soviet Union from ports in North America. This U-boat onslaught came perilously close to defeating Great Britain, already reeling under air attack from Nazi Germany.