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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780806133485 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Oklahoma Press |
| Publication date: | 05/15/2001 |
| Edition description: | Reissue |
| Pages: | 464 |
| Sales rank: | 500,787 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.20(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
USS Pampanito
Killer-Angel
By Gregory F. Michno
UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS
Copyright © 2000 University of Oklahoma PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-3348-5
CHAPTER 1
Construction and Launching
The Piscataqua River has its headwaters in the verdant foothills of New Hampshire's White Mountains. It is not a long river, as rivers go. Yet what it lacks in length, it makes up for in obstinacy, especially near its estuary, where it flows into the Atlantic. Along the tortuous lower course its swift and unpredictable currents could run from seven to eight knots on flood tide and ten to twelve knots on the ebb.
On the south bank Portsmouth had grown, a naval port since Revolutionary days. It was there John Paul Jones claimed to be the first captain to hoist our new national emblem over a ship-of-war, and perhaps there he made his famous statement that he relished a fast ship, for he intended to place himself "in harm's way." The area has always been tied to the sea, from colonial commerce to modern war. On the north bank, in Kittery Point, Maine, across the creaky Memorial Drawbridge from Portsmouth, the naval shipyard took root.
The nation's first government-built submarine was launched there in 1917. In the 1930s Portsmouth was the premier submarine yard in the country. Yet Portsmouth, her backup yards at Mare Island, California, and later the Cramp Shipbuilding Company of Philadelphia were hard pressed to meet the submarine construction necessary in a world at war. To stimulate design and construction competition, the government split annual contract awards with private shipyards, primarily the Electric Boat Company of Groton, Connecticut, and its backup yard at Manitowoc, Wisconsin.
The sailors arriving at Portsmouth during the spring of 1943 were treated to the spectacle of a shipyard running at full capacity. Twenty thousand employees worked around the clock on three shifts, seven days a week. The sounds of hammering, clanging steel, and shouting men and the sights of trucks, cranes, smoke, and the nighttime glow of welding torches left an impression that few would forget.
Taking shape in the ways and basins were several submarines in a long line of boats being laid down in near-alphabetical order at shipyards across the land. There were hull numbers 382, 383, and 384: Picuda, Pampanito, and Parche, the first two with their keels laid the same day of 15 March. The Navy Department wanted names of fighting game fish for its new undersea men-of-war, but names were limited, and the Bureau of Fisheries provided scores of names of less belligerent denizens of the deep.
What is a pampanito? Technically it is Tranchinotus rhodopus, belonging to the group Pampanos and the family Carangidae. The word pampanito is Spanish, meaning a small species of pampano. The fish reaches a length of fifteen inches and inhabits the Pacific coast from the Gulf of California to Colombia, South America. It is a rapid swimmer, colored brown or black on top and silver below, with four or five black vertical crossbars. The fins range from bright yellow to maroon. Did it fight? Actually it was rather mild-mannered. Time would tell how its steel namesake would behave.
At the submarine base the sailors became students. A typical day consisted of four hours in the classroom and four hours of instruction on the boats. They spent exhausting days tearing down and putting together almost every piece of equipment on board. They dismantled and rebuilt the diesels, rewound motors and generators, charged and discharged batteries, tore apart torpedoes, studied them, and put them back together. Every Monday, exams were given, and anyone failing two of them was washed out and quietly returned to the surface fleet. The crowning test came when they were required to strap on a Momsen lung and ascend an escape rope to a buoy in a hundred-foot tower filled with 240,000 gallons of water. It was no lark. Two students had been killed there in the early 1930s, and both novice and instructor took the training very seriously. Most succeeded, even though with a fair amount of trepidation and sweat. After twelve weeks the fit, the intelligent, and the perseverant were turned into the men necessary to run the subs.
Some of the men arriving at Portsmouth that summer were not new to the navy. The man selected to be Pampanito's executive officer was Lieutenant Commander Paul E. Summers. He was born in Lexington, Tennessee, on 4 September 1913, the middle child in a family of six boys and one girl. In 1932, Summers was appointed to the U.S. Naval Academy. He thought his small country-school background was a disadvantage in competing with the more cosmopolitan, liberal education of the city boys, and he had to take a correspondence course in math to help him pass the entrance exam.
"I had to work extra hard just to stay even," he said.
Summers played one year of football and four years of baseball, much of it as a starting pitcher, at the academy. He liked math, physics, and engineering but struggled with the subjects. He graduated in 1936, "somewhere below the middle of the class." While at the academy he once received a letter addressed to "Mechanical Pete" Summers. Back in Tennessee, he could always be found working on his old 1917 Ford, and his buddies gave him the nickname. His roommates saw the letter and also began calling him "Pete." Years later he would forever be informally known as "Pete" to his submarine crews.
The cool sea breezes and sunny weather in Portsmouth in June of 1943 were a balm to Summers's taut nerves. In 1936 he had been assigned to the cruiser USS Chicago (CA 29), but life on a surface ship soon lost its glamour. Summers thought about going to aviation school, but his mother did not want him to, because she thought it was too dangerous. Instead, in 1939 he attended submarine school, and in 1940 he was assigned to USS Stingray (SS 186) as a lieutenant, junior grade.
The boat was based at Cavite Navy Yard in Manila Bay when the Japanese attacked on 8 December 1941. Stingray avoided the bombs that damaged Seadragon (SS 194) and destroyed Sealion (SS 195). On her first patrol, Stingray luckily swam right into the Japanese invasion force steaming into Lingayen Gulf, Luzon. However, with the boat plagued by leaks that were sending air bubbles to the surface, skipper Raymond S. Lamb would not attack. Summers watched Lamb, waiting for some aggressive maneuvering, but, said Pete, "He sat there and he froze." Stingray headed away from the enemy. The succeeding days were carbon copies, with halfhearted approaches and no attacks. They headed back to Manila.
Once safely in port, Summers and the executive officer, Hank Sturr, went to see Captain John Wilkes and told him they were not going to sea with Lamb anymore. The boat was inspected, but no serious problems were found. Lamb was removed from command, and Raymond J. "Bud" Moore took over.
The change of skippers did not change Stingray's luck a great deal. During the next three patrols she sank only two ships and was almost lost herself during a crash dive. Summers took credit for their salvation. As Stingray plunged below with locked bow planes, he got the crew to blow bow buoyancy and called for all back emergency. "That's the only thing that saved us," he contended.
Stingray's fifth patrol was between Truk and Bougainville. Again, Moore had trouble, making five attacks but damaging only one freighter. Summers manned the periscope. When they finally hit a ship, he wanted to watch it go under, but Moore wouldn't let him, and Summers fumed. He thought he heard the ship breaking up but was not allowed to confirm the sinking. They never got credit for it. Moore, too, was relieved of command, "at my own request," he explained.
Stingray's next skipper was Otis J. Earle, but it was the same story. He told Summers that he was going to do better than Dudley W. "Mush" Morton, the famous skipper of Wahoo (SS 238). But, said Summers in what was becoming a familiar litany, "He got scared." Earle also let Summers handle some attacks. Off the China coast they made a night surface attack. Earle worried that they were getting in too close, but Summers held on, and on 2 May 1943, Stingray finally sank and damaged two more ships. Still, Summers said, Earle was the "scaredest man I've ever seen, except for Ray Lamb." After four patrols, Earle was relieved of command.
Summers had now made seven war patrols. Back in Pearl Harbor he went to see Rear Admiral Charles A. Lockwood, Jr., commander of submarines, Pacific Fleet (ComSubPac), and "Uncle Charlie" gave him a vacation. Summers headed for the States to be the exec for a new submarine then being built, USS Pampanito.
In Portsmouth in June 1943 the cool Atlantic wind was a welcome change from the tropics, the variation of scenery was pleasant, and the routine was a little more relaxing. Circumstances boded well for Summers's future.
Enlisted men as well as officers were assembling in Portsmouth. Born on Armistice Day, 1919, Charles A. McGuire, Jr., enlisted in the navy at age eighteen. The Depression had been life's one all-encompassing reality, and when Charlie finished high school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the twenty-one dollars per month starting pay in the navy was quite a draw. "It was more than I could get stealing or raising on my own," he said.
Over the next few years, Charlie saw more of the world than he could ever have imagined. He served on USS Texas (BB 35) and USS Omaha (CL 4) and was in San Juan, Puerto Rico, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. He wanted to fight, but the submarine service was the only branch seeing action at the time. He thought he could join up. Besides, submariners got a 50 percent pay increase. Although he had it pretty good in Puerto Rico — he was a yeoman and a courier and got to wear sharkskin suits and Panama hats — his commander couldn't talk him out of the transfer. "I wanted to fight them bastard Japs," he said.
After sub school in New London, Charlie was assigned to USS Shad (SS 235). But this did not get him into the Pacific against the Japanese. Shad, part of the six-boat Submarine Squadron 50, spent all of its time in the Atlantic. Back in New London, Charlie requested transfer to a submarine that would be going to the Pacific. He had put his time in, he was now a yeoman first class, and finally, in May 1943, he got assigned to a new boat, Pampanito. Charlie McGuire would finally get to fight the Japanese.
Twenty-three-year-old Frank Ben Michno was from an old Polish neighborhood in Detroit, Michigan. From his family of one sister and four brothers, all of the boys would serve in the armed forces. Fresh out of Wilbur Wright Trade School, Frank joined a Citizen's Military Training Camp. After two years, much of it spent at Michigan's Camp Custer, Frank had made staff sergeant in Company I of the Fifty-Second Infantry Reserves.
All was going well, and Michno might have decided to choose a career in the Regular Army if he hadn't met up with an old high school chum who bet him he couldn't make it in the navy. They both went to the recruiting office. His buddy washed out, but Michno enlisted for a six-year hitch in the navy.
After the 1941 course at the Naval Training Station in Great Lakes, Illinois, a large number of graduates were gathered in a hall to take a "test." They were told to hold their breath. Those who lasted more than one minute were selected. "Congratulations," an officer said. "You are now all submariners."
Michno served on submarines S-11 and S-14, out of Panama. Guarding the Panama Canal, patrolling the Caribbean, tropical heat, and the poor physical plants of the S-boats made almost every "pigboater" dream of a transfer to a modern fleet submarine.
Liberty in Coco Solo could be dangerous. Michno drank in a tavern where two tough-looking locals were speaking in Spanish. He never understood the language very well, but he easily heard the phrase that ended with, "Goddamn American submariners." Not about to suffer such an affront, Frank stood up and snarled, "What the hell's wrong with an American submariner?" The next thing he remembered was waking up in the alley with a headache and some serious facial cuts and bruises. Although still thankful he had his life, he knew he had to get out of Panama.
Michno had two chances to go to new construction, but other shipmates had the same wish. Both times he drew straws and lost. The war was passing him by. Finally, in the spring of 1943 his orders came to report to Portsmouth. Michno would finally get off those damned old S-boats.
The Depression years were also hard on the Weaver family, then making a go of it along the Clear Fork of the Brazos near Nugent, Texas. Woodrow Wilson Weaver, one of twelve children, was born in 1918. Somehow, amidst farm chores and almost constant uprooting for greener fields, Woodrow managed to finish high school. He wanted to go to college, but the family had no money. On the radio he heard ominous tidings about a German named Hitler who was marching his troops across Europe. There were rumors of war and talk of passing a draft law. To beat the draft, Woodrow went to Houston and in August 1940 enlisted in the navy.
After training in San Diego, California, he was shipped to Pearl Harbor aboard the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga (CV 3) — an anonymous individual among thousands. When given his choice of service on battleships or destroyers, he chose destroyers, and for the next three years Weaver made his home aboard USS Anderson (DD 411), training as a torpedoman.
In Pearl Harbor, Woodrow was shocked to see the damage done by the Japanese. USS Nevada (BB 36) was aground near the harbor entrance, the bottom of the capsized USS Oklahoma (BB 37) poked the water surface like an iron turtle, the superstructure of USS Arizona (BB 39) pointed like a skeleton toward the sky, and USS West Virginia (BB 48) and USS California (BB 44) sat unmoving on the harbor bottom. Debris and oil floated depressingly on the placid water.
Anderson was busy from that day on, participating in the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Battle of Midway, and the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. Weaver witnessed the sinking of three carriers, USS Lexington (CV 2), USS Yorktown (CV 5), and USS Hornet (CV 8). In March 1943, Anderson returned to the States, and Weaver went to Newport, Rhode Island, for a refresher course in torpedo school. There he learned that the submarine force needed men. He volunteered. "I wasn't trying to be a hero," he explained. "It was the pay factor which appealed to me."
Weaver took an advancement exam, passed, made torpedoman first class, finished sub school, and was assigned to Pampanito. He reported to Portsmouth with a chance to soon start earning that 50 percent hazardous duty pay.
All spring and summer of 1943 the crew assembled in Portsmouth. Hubert N. Brown, born in 1922 in Bluefield, West Virginia, finished Great Lakes Naval Training Center and then attended torpedo school. With this specialty he could have chosen destroyers, aircraft, or submarines. Brown passed the aptitude tests with flying colors and chose submarines. After three months at the sub school in New London, Seaman First Class Brown was assigned to new construction. He arrived at Kittery Point in September.
Twenty-two-year-old Pennsylvanian Earl Watkins worked for a company with a defense contract, so he was draft-deferred until 1942. When his deferment was up, Watkins joined the Naval Reserve. He didn't want to go into the army and take a chance on losing an arm or a leg. When the opportunity came to get into the submarine service, he took it. "I'm either going to come back in one piece, or I'm not going to come back," he reasoned. Watkins went to machinist's school and diesel school, spending one year learning the mysteries of internal combustion engines. He figured he might have a future in the automotive field after the war. From machinist's school, Earl, then a motor machinist's mate second class, went on to sub school, then to Pampanito.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from USS Pampanito by Gregory F. Michno. Copyright © 2000 University of Oklahoma Press. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS.
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Table of Contents
Contents
List of Illustrations,Preface,
Acknowledgments,
1. Construction and Launching,
2. Commissioning,
3. To the Carolines,
4. To the Empire,
5. First Course in Convoy College,
6. POWs, Convoy HI 72, and Ultra,
7. Rescue,
8. To the South China Sea and Australia,
9. To Indo-China and the Philippines,
10. To the Gulf of Siam and Back to the States,
11. Exeunt Omnes,
Appendixes,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,