Skip to playerSkip to main content
ReelMovies
  • 4 months ago
In this documentary we get a glimpse into the world of submarines and have access to rare archive footage. From the first attempts during the American Civil War to WW2 and the nuclear subs of today, the history of the submarine has been fraught with difficulties.
Transcript
00:00:00In the Pacific battles of World War II, much of the publicity went to the aircraft carriers and the naval aviators who flew from their decks.
00:00:12Yet as important as the carriers were, the most significant naval warships in actually prosecuting the war toiled in almost complete obscurity.
00:00:22While battles like Midway, Santa Cruz and Leyte Gulf grabbed the headlines, the Pacific Fleet Submarine Force quietly went about the task of isolating Japan.
00:00:34The submarine was something that not too many people knew about. It was called a silent service, and it was a silent service.
00:00:42Nobody talked about where they went or when they went, so we had the advantage of the other side not knowing when or where we were at.
00:00:52That's the main thing why we were so successful.
00:00:55American submarines crippled Japan's industry and prevented resupply and reinforcement of Japanese island garrisons by destroying most of her merchant fleet.
00:01:06I think it was 1178 merchant ships and 214 naval ships.
00:01:13And we had a total tonnage that was over five and a quarter million tons, which was a tremendous amount when you consider the fact that most of Japan's ships were well under 12,000 tons.
00:01:34But as decisive as the submarine's contribution was, the victory could have been even more complete.
00:01:40Hampered by a flawed pre-war doctrine and serious shortcomings in the Mark 14 torpedo, success during the first two years of war was disappointingly low.
00:01:50It took months for these problems to be resolved, but once they were, the United States Navy's submarine force, at first trained to play a junior role in its own service, revolutionized naval warfare.
00:02:02Today's nuclear-powered submarines are among the most technologically sophisticated machines ever built.
00:02:09Combining advanced computer systems, precision navigation, sensitive sonar equipment, and devastating hitting power into one of the world's most lethal and stealthy weapons.
00:02:16The adaptations and inventions that allowed sailors to not only fight a battle, but also to live for months at a time underwater.
00:02:23Includes some of the most brilliant developments in military history.
00:02:30Submarines have been used for one of the most brilliant developments in military history.
00:02:36Submarines have been used for warfare in one form or another since the American Revolution, but it was not until World War I that the combination of diesel engines, battery power, and self-propelled torpedoes made them a significant threat.
00:02:51All of the world's major navies included submarines and their fleets, but it was the Germans who would first exploit the versatility of the submarine in open ocean warfare.
00:03:16In response to a sea blockade of her ports by Great Britain, Germany implemented a submarine blockade of the British Isles, but was constrained by the international law of the sea, which required blockading ships to board and search ships suspected of carrying forbidden cargo.
00:03:33Crewmen aboard guilty vessels would be allowed to man lifeboats and then the ship would be sunk.
00:03:40In 1916, however, the German Kaiser ordered unrestricted submarine warfare, which allowed submarines to torpedo ships believed to be forcing the blockade without formalities like announcing their presence.
00:03:52British shipping losses went up, and so did those of the United States that were shipping large amounts of food, raw materials and munitions to the British and French.
00:04:02Germany's use of unrestricted submarine warfare was denounced as brutal and uncivilized by the Allies and by the American press.
00:04:10The most notorious attack occurred when a German submarine torpedoed the British ocean liner Lusitania.
00:04:18The huge ship sank in just 18 minutes, killing 1,198 of the nearly 2,000 people aboard, among them 128 Americans.
00:04:29The incident was used to turn American public opinion against Germany and was an important issue that helped push the United States into the war.
00:04:38Though the Germans ultimately lost, they had demonstrated the effectiveness of submarine warfare against merchant shipping.
00:04:46After the war, the U.S. Navy looked to improve the capabilities of its submarine fleet, but existing technology proved a limiting factor.
00:04:54S-class boats, built between 1920 and 1925, were designed primarily for coastal defense purposes, not to cruise vast expanses of ocean.
00:05:05Though significantly larger than their predecessors, stowage space aboard was extremely limited and living quarters cramped beyond comfort.
00:05:13Derisively called pig boats by their crews, S-boats more than lived up to their nickname.
00:05:19While designers worked to improve functional capabilities, strategists sought to address questions of identity and mission.
00:05:27Two competing interpretations of submarine doctrine emerged.
00:05:31One camp foresaw submarines employed in a fleet support role, the other as an economic warfare arm of its own, modeled on the German successes of the First World War.
00:05:41However, American naval thinking was oriented towards fighting other navies, which left commerce raiding with no real place in strategic planning or training.
00:05:51It was determined that U.S. Navy submarines would fight other warships, and under the guidelines imposed by the 1930 London Naval Conference, would not attack merchant ships without first providing warning.
00:06:03Though this attitude negatively impacted tactical training in the years leading up to World War II, long-range strategic planning proved critical to the development of submarine technology.
00:06:15The rise of Imperial Japan had been a cause of increasing concern in the West since the turn of the century.
00:06:21Anticipating an eventual war, the United States developed War Plan Orange, which relied heavily on battleships, but included submarines as scouts for the fleet.
00:06:31They would go out and form a picket line in front of the main fleet.
00:06:35You'd see the enemy fleet showing up. They'd take a couple shots at them as they went by.
00:06:38They would radio back and let the main fleet know they were on their way.
00:06:41Many of the generals after World War I were thinking that it was going to be like Jutland, where you'd have all the huge battleships and battlecruisers firing away at each other for a couple minutes and see who came out the least bruised and everybody would go home.
00:06:52And of course, then the submarine would still be out there in the picket lines, and after they had this big exchange, this decisive battle, they would pick off the stragglers as they went back.
00:07:00So they anticipated that as the role for this submarine. The problem was that was how things happened in 1917 in Jutland. That's not how they were going to happen in 1937 or 40.
00:07:10American submarine designers set out to produce a sub that would combine long-range cruising capabilities and a surface speed in excess of 20 knots with the very latest in technical advances.
00:07:23We had the S-boats originally, and the S-boats were basically like the German submarines. And so we tried to develop what we call fleet submarines, which were designed to operate with the fleet. And so they were longer range and bigger submarines and more capabilities.
00:07:40The Barracuda class, the first of a series of subs originally thought to meet the fleet boat criteria, proved less than ideal. And the Argonaut class, which followed in 1928, possessed the range, but was able only to achieve an unacceptable 15 knots.
00:07:57The Narwhal class, commissioned in 1930, didn't perform much better. Although improvements were seen in the performance of the Dolphin and Cashalot classes, which appeared in 1932 and 1933 respectively, they remained a seemingly insurmountable problem.
00:08:13The diesel engines powering all these craft simply didn't measure up. The solution finally appeared when diesel engines developed for railroad locomotives proved both powerful and reliable enough to meet fleet requirements.
00:08:26Employing diesel electric motors for the first time, the P-class submarines, constructed between 1935 and 1936, marked a tremendous improvement over the previous candidates with a surface speed of 19 knots and a range of 10,000 miles.
00:08:42In a departure from earlier designs, the engines were coupled to a large generator rather than propeller shafts, making it possible to use the full power output to drive the boat, charge the batteries, or for a combination of the two.
00:08:57When the boat was submerged and diesels had to be shut down, the batteries provided all necessary power.
00:09:04All welded construction became standard beginning with the P-class, producing a much stronger hole that allowed the boat to dive to 300 feet.
00:09:13The 1938 Submarine Officers Conference sought to improve on the P-class by refining fleet requirements.
00:09:20In addition to six forward and four stern torpedo tubes and more reload torpedoes, it was recommended that the next class include an improved torpedo data computer, a longer thinner periscope, a five inch deck gun, and the ability to cruise at fleet speed on voyages of 12,000 miles.
00:09:39Habitability was to be improved by the addition of fresh water distillation units and air conditioning.
00:09:45The Navy got all that and more with the Tambor-class, a submarine that at last possessed the speed and firepower necessary for a fleet boat.
00:09:54Capable of 21 knots surfaced and 10 submerged, they could crash dive to periscope depth in under a minute.
00:10:01With good sea keeping, great handling, and excellent habitability, the 300 foot long Tambor-class provided sufficient elbow room for long war patrols.
00:10:11The U.S. Navy's first fleet sub had come of age.
00:10:15The foresight of our building submarines in 1938 that would go across the Pacific Ocean and back, round trip, signified that our leaders knew there was a potential hazard and a potential conflict coming up with Japan.
00:10:32There was no other enemy in that area.
00:10:34The Tambor-class, consisting of the submarines Tambor, Tataug, Thresher, Triton, Trout, and Tuna, would eventually make a combined 70 war patrols and sink 80 enemy ships.
00:10:48The average of 13 ships per submarine was unmatched by any other class of boat.
00:10:54USS Tataug became the fleet's leading ace, with 26 Japanese ships to her credit.
00:11:00In 1940, the follow-on to the Tambor-class appeared.
00:11:05Gato-class submarines were fast, heavily armed subs, well suited for an undersea war against Japan.
00:11:12At 312 feet long, Gatos comfortably accommodated a crew of 80.
00:11:17They could make 20 knots on the surface and nearly 9 submerged, and were equipped for journeys of 10,000 miles or more.
00:11:24Gatos, and their immediate successor, the Balao-class, became the bane of Japanese merchant ships during World War II.
00:11:31They were faster, longer range, and a lot more torpedoes, and a lot thicker hull.
00:11:37Our diving depth, Pollock was a riveted submarine, and the P-class was the last of the riveted submarines because they went to welded hulls after that.
00:11:45And she was a thin hull belt. Our test step was 250 feet. The new boats were 550 up.
00:11:54With six tubes forward and four tubes aft, Gatos-class subs could carry up to 24 torpedoes.
00:12:00Its primary weapon, the Mark 14 torpedo, had an alcohol-powered steam turbine engine that could propel it at 46 knots for up to 4 miles.
00:12:10The beautiful piece of mechanism of those torpedoes, when you consider how they worked with the steam in them,
00:12:19with the burning of the alcohol, with the propulsions that they developed from that pressure,
00:12:24it was just a tremendous piece of equipment.
00:12:27The Mark 14's 668-pound warhead was detonated by the Mark 6 Influence Exploder,
00:12:34a device the Navy believed would revolutionize submarine warfare.
00:12:38The magnetic exporter mechanism, which was a super-secret device that was supposed to detonate the torpedo,
00:12:44it came in proximity with any large mass of steel.
00:12:48Yet in spite of the improvements made to American submarines,
00:12:51the U.S. Navy submarine force was woefully unprepared for the type of warfare they were about to face.
00:12:57On December 7, 1941, there were 50 submarines attached to the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
00:13:13Twenty-one were stationed at Pearl Harbor and twenty-nine at Manila Bay.
00:13:18Of these, a number were the earlier S-Class boats built in the 1920s.
00:13:23Only four were in Pearl Harbor at 7.55 a.m. when the Japanese began their attack.
00:13:28I heard all this explosion like everybody else and I thought, my goodness,
00:13:44didn't they leave us alone on Sunday morning?
00:13:46We thought the Navy was practicing.
00:13:49They told me to get up on my gun, which was right up next deck above me.
00:13:53And I was a gun captain on a 5-inch 25 anti-aircraft battery.
00:13:57And we had 50 rounds of ammunition up.
00:14:01And, uh, we started firing like everybody else.
00:14:05We were firing everything that was flying.
00:14:07We got, uh, we got credit for four.
00:14:10But who knows, the whole world was shooting.
00:14:18In little more than two hours, the Japanese caused personnel losses of more than 2,400 killed and 1,200 wounded,
00:14:25sank four battleships and damaged four more,
00:14:28sank or damaged three cruisers, three destroyers, one mine layer, and destroyed 188 aircraft.
00:14:35In the aftermath of the devastating attack, no surface fleet of any consequence remained in the Pacific.
00:14:43When Pearl Harbor happened, the Japanese didn't bother with the submarines.
00:14:49The submarine base was just a short distance away from Battleship Row.
00:14:53In fact, a couple of the guys on the boat said, yeah, they waved to us.
00:14:56They had their cockpit slid back and they would wave and smile and drop their tarpeeders and go.
00:15:02And then right beyond the submarine base was our main Pacific oil storage tanks.
00:15:08And they didn't hit them either.
00:15:11The loss of the Battleship Fleet greatly reduced the strength of U.S. naval forces in the Pacific
00:15:16and placed Navy planners in a situation they never anticipated.
00:15:20They now had only one weapon system immediately available to take the war to the enemy.
00:15:26There was no other arms to send out to hold the enemy back or get back at the enemy other than the submarines.
00:15:34The submarines carried the fight to the Japs until the surface fleet could repair their ships and get back on duty.
00:15:44Just hours after the Pearl Harbor attack, Admiral Harold Stark, the Chief of Naval Operations, ordered all available boats to immediately put to sea
00:15:53and for those already underway to conduct unrestricted submarine warfare against anything Japanese.
00:16:00Stark's call for unrestricted warfare meant that U.S. submarine commanders could now seek out and attack any ship flying the flag of the rising sun.
00:16:09However, this new strategy presented some serious problems.
00:16:12Prior to the war, tactical planning called for submarines to support the Navy's capital ships.
00:16:18That doctrine was now obsolete.
00:16:20Furthermore, training exercises for submarine warfare had emphasized offensive operations against swifter warships
00:16:27and not against the slower lumbering merchant vessels which they were now permitted to engage.
00:16:32It's not surprising then that the submarine campaign got off to a slow start.
00:16:37The Navy had a plan orange that they had originally set up for the submarines part to work with the battle fleet.
00:16:47And that plan was no good.
00:16:49And it took quite a while for them to realize this.
00:16:52And it was the younger officers that came in there and took command that really showed them where they were wrong.
00:16:59And it was the older officers that had been taught that procedure.
00:17:04And they had a problem breaking away from it.
00:17:08Within days of the Pearl Harbor attack, the boats based in the Philippines had left Cavite on their first war patrols to seek out and destroy the expected Japanese invasion forces.
00:17:19We went out the day the war started, the 8th out there.
00:17:23And we went up off Formosa, off Takao, Formosa.
00:17:28And see, that was a big naval base up there, Takao.
00:17:32And we were supposed to observe ships going in and out of there and surface at night and report, you know, such and such a size ship, you know, going on course so and so and all that.
00:17:45For Sturgeon and the other boats of the Asiatic fleet, several factors combined to neutralize the effectiveness of these first war patrols.
00:17:54Caution first seemed to be the motto for many skippers, career officers who were generally older and more prudent.
00:18:01Few were willing to toss the pre-war rulebook by coming to periscope depth for an attack.
00:18:06Surface attacks were out of the question.
00:18:08Consequently, many of the early offensive maneuvers were made from the safety of deep water using only passive sonar to determine range and bearing.
00:18:18We fired the ships in there, but I mean, we never got a chance to actually come up and see them, you know, whether they sank or not, you know, we never did know.
00:18:3096 Mark 14 torpedoes were fired in 45 separate attacks over the first weeks of combat, but there were only three confirmed sinkings.
00:18:41Patrols originating from Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and the first three months of 1942 were credited with sinking a total of 19 enemy ships, but were hampered by tactical and operational instructions.
00:18:55USS Guggen's first foray into Japanese home waters illustrates the point.
00:19:01Her skipper was advised to remain submerged during daylight hours within 500 miles of her patrol area to avoid detection by aircraft.
00:19:09As a result, Guggen spent 27 days submerged during her 51-day patrol, and of these, only 12 were on station.
00:19:17En route back to Pearl Harbor, however, Guggen sank a Japanese submarine.
00:19:22The first enemy warship sunk by a U.S. Navy submarine in World War II.
00:19:28Although some early patrols mounted from Pearl Harbor targeted Japanese home waters, most were assigned the far less productive Japanese Pacific Islands and the China coast.
00:19:38While the lack of offensive initiative, flawed doctrine, and poor tactical positioning contributed to the slow start, they were only part of the problem.
00:19:47Defective torpedoes severely reduced the submarine fleet's effectiveness.
00:19:53Torpedoes' success was less than 50%. They were very bad. And that wasn't corrected, really corrected fully until late 43.
00:20:01Premature explosions. Sometimes the torpedo would hit the ship and nothing would happen, no explosion. And erratic runs. By erratic runs, I mean they didn't go in the directions they were supposed to.
00:20:15They would run deeper, or they would run shallower. And it was a very difficult time.
00:20:22In the coming months, instances of inexplicable misses and dud hits began to accumulate.
00:20:28However, all attempts to raise the alarm through the chain of command were ridiculed by the Navy Bureau of Ordinance.
00:20:34The powers that be were adamant that there was nothing wrong with the damn torpedo, because when they fired it under ideal conditions, it went off. But under wartime conditions, it did not go off.
00:20:45That was due to just not having enough time to take the ships out before the war and practice with the firing and witness the results of the firings.
00:20:55They simulated a lot on paper, in theory, before we ever get into the war. And it should have been done the other way around.
00:21:04The Mark 14 torpedo and its Mark 6 exploder had defects that tended to mask each other. Faults that weren't revealed due to inadequate peacetime testing.
00:21:15It would be months before the problems were completely solved. In the interim, countless submarine crews put their lives in danger, stalking enemy targets, only to be cheated of their quarry by defective torpedoes.
00:21:28The problems facing the American submarine fleet early in the war were numerous, but such was the case for the allies throughout the Pacific.
00:21:50Beginning with the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan handed the United States and their allies a series of crushing defeats.
00:21:57Simultaneously, with the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese moved against Malaya, Hong Kong, and the Philippines.
00:22:05On December 8th, an air raid on Clark Field in the Philippines destroyed most of the American Air Force stationed there before it ever left the ground.
00:22:13Two days later, Japanese bombers flattened the Cavite Naval Station in Manila Bay, home of the U.S. Asiatic fleet.
00:22:20Nobody ever hears about, you know, the beating they took out there, but they took a beating out there just like Pearl Harbor did, you know.
00:22:30And, you know, we wasn't in there. We was out when she got hit, when Cavite got hit, but they got the sea lion there, and they put some holes in the sea dragon.
00:22:43The sea dragon got out of there, and she had some holes in it, but they patched it up and got her back all right.
00:22:49With this facility ruined and practically no air cover, surface units of the Asiatic fleet withdrew to Australia and the Dutch East Indies, where they would be out of range of Japanese aircraft on Formosa.
00:23:02Before the end of the year, the submarine force followed suit, abandoning the Philippines shortly after the Japanese came ashore at Lingayangol, 300 miles northwest of Manila.
00:23:13They told us to go into Exmouth Gulf, and they looked it up in the Coast Pilot, and in there it said, it didn't show nothing.
00:23:22It just showed the entrance, and then the line stopped, and all this was, nobody knew what it was, you know.
00:23:28We're supposed to go in there. And they said that the last time anybody had been in there was in 1800 and something, and at that time the natives were friendly.
00:23:44As the Asiatic fleet struggled to regroup, the Japanese overran Burma, Malaya, and Thailand.
00:23:51Only Java in the Dutch East Indies had yet to be conquered.
00:23:55U.S. submarines attempted to stem the tide by attacking the invasion forces, but to no effect.
00:24:01Java fell in little more than a week.
00:24:03By the end of March 1942, Japan had achieved nearly all of her pre-war objectives.
00:24:10After the loss of the East Indies, U.S. submarines of the Asiatic fleet withdrew to Perth Fremantle on the southwest coast of Australia.
00:24:18Since the outbreak of war, they had managed to sink only ten enemy vessels, eight merchants, a destroyer, and an aircraft ferry.
00:24:26Of the original 29 Manila boats, four had been lost.
00:24:30The U.S. High Command decided to leave the remaining submarines of the Asiatic fleet down under, rather than withdraw them to Pearl Harbor.
00:24:40This was due in part to the decision to divide the Pacific into separate command areas.
00:24:45General Douglas MacArthur assumed command of the southwest Pacific area, which included the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, Borneo, Australia, New Guinea, and the western part of the Solomon Islands.
00:24:57Admiral Chester Nimitz would command the northern, central, and southern Pacific from Oahu.
00:25:03Submarines based in Australia would be well positioned to attack Japanese supply lines between Southeast Asia and the home islands, or support offensive operations in either area.
00:25:15By April 1942, the submarine force in Australia numbered 31 boats, with 20 at Perth Fremantle and 11 at Brisbane.
00:25:24The Fremantle force was meant to deploy against Japanese supply lines in the southwest Pacific, as well as to undertake special missions, ordered by General MacArthur to pick up and deliver personnel and supplies behind enemy lines.
00:25:38We would come in to an island at night, submerged, and then just surface enough to get our conning tower and our decks awash.
00:25:50And then the commandos could get their kayaks out.
00:25:54And then at night they would row into the islands, and believe it or not, they would count the Japanese that were on the island.
00:26:02Intelligence gathering missions, whether visual, photographic, or by landing party, were an essential fleet support role throughout the war.
00:26:10Few marines ever set foot on a shore that hadn't first been reconnoitered by a submarine.
00:26:15In late April, the Japanese mounted a dual seaborne thrust to occupy Tulagi in the Solomon Islands, and to complete their conquest of New Guinea by seizing Port Moresby.
00:26:26Tulagi fell without a fight, but two American carrier task forces intercepted the Port Moresby force.
00:26:33It was the first time in history that aircraft carriers fought each other.
00:26:38During the Battle of the Coral Sea, American air groups from Yorktown and Lexington sank the light Japanese carrier Shoho,
00:26:45and inflicted damage on the large Japanese carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku, but sustained damage to Yorktown and lost Lexington.
00:26:53The Coral Sea was considered a tactical defeat because we did lose one heavy fleet carrier as opposed to the Japanese losing just a small carrier.
00:27:02It did contribute significantly to altering the strategic direction of the war because it turned back the Japanese invasion force,
00:27:08and it so decimated the air groups on board Shokaku and Zuikaku that it really prevented them from participating in the upcoming Japanese operation,
00:27:17which turned out to be the Battle of Midway.
00:27:20During the Battle of the Coral Sea, four submarines stationed in Brisbane were able to attack elements of the Japanese invasion force,
00:27:28but their only confirmed kill was a mine layer.
00:27:31Three weeks after the battle, Rear Admiral Charles Lockwood assumed command of the Fremantle force.
00:27:37His first order of business was to verify growing evidence that the Mark 14 torpedo was malfunctioning,
00:27:43and tests revealed that the Mark 14 ran 10 feet deeper than it was set for.
00:27:49Skippers were advised to adjust running depth accordingly, but the number of sinkings remained disturbingly low.
00:27:55Continuing on the belief that the poor showing was due to ineffective skippers, many were relieved of their commands.
00:28:01At the beginning of the war, there were some that didn't seem aggressive, and they didn't because of the dud torpedoes.
00:28:09After you fired, made your proper runs and so forth, and your calculations and all are right, and you hear the duds go off,
00:28:16you really hesitate to go in there when you know there are heavy escorts and the chances are much slimmer of you getting a hip,
00:28:23and I think that had more to do with it than them being anything but good skippers.
00:28:29Just before the Battle of the Coral Sea, it was agreed to begin exchanging submarines between Australia and Pearl Harbor
00:28:35so that Fremantle's boats could return to the United States for refitting.
00:28:40During the transit to Australia, the Pearl Harbor submarines would undertake war patrols off Japanese-held islands.
00:28:46Under this arrangement, and augmented by newly commissioned boats arriving from the United States,
00:28:52war patrols from Pearl Harbor increased sharply during April and early May 1942.
00:28:58Once we were underway, everybody had a job to do. They had a station to be on.
00:29:03If they were like myself, a mortar machinist, Matt, you were either in the engine room or in the auxiliary room,
00:29:11doing your job what you're supposed to be doing in your line of work.
00:29:15And then you were assigned like four hours on and eight hours off, and it went on just around the clock that way.
00:29:21A lot of people think, 85 men, 60 days at sea. But you only saw a third of them, because we were split up in three sections.
00:29:28And once you got settled down to a severe routine, your section was really the only ones you saw.
00:29:34Section on duty, that's what they were, on duty. And you didn't let anything distract you.
00:29:40Because just a slip, you could put yourself in real trouble.
00:29:43It was totally demanding. It required every ounce of your energy and your strength, mental and physically.
00:29:49And even sometimes you felt inadequate then.
00:29:52Under such extreme conditions, the level of military courtesy and discipline on board was far more relaxed than on a surface ship.
00:30:00We are pretty kind of lax. We wore sandals and we have jeans that we're cut short.
00:30:07And we have guys that wear a beard and earrings.
00:30:12There wasn't any stuffiness, you know. We called them sir or Mr. So-and-so, their name.
00:30:20Or the captain, he was always called the captain, you know. It was such a wonderful association.
00:30:28While a newcomer on board might have had difficulty distinguishing between the captain and his crew,
00:30:34one aspect of the submarine service clearly stood out.
00:30:38They got the best food in the armed services in World War II.
00:30:41They always set out with, you know, frozen cuts of meat and whatnot, which of course were rationed at home.
00:30:46And the guys that were out in the field and, you know, Marines digging in here and guys going through the Battle of the Bulge
00:30:51didn't see sea rations or something like that.
00:30:53We always asked for the best that we could ask for.
00:30:56For example, filet mignon would come in 50-pound boxes. They were all boneless. We didn't have room for bones.
00:31:04So everything was boneless and we'd take them out of the packages and in the wax paper we'd put those in the freezer
00:31:10and that's what we would operate on.
00:31:12When we left port, we ate like a king. And after about 20 days, it was getting kind of bad.
00:31:18And if you couldn't run up to a supply ship, you was eating K rations.
00:31:23As the patrol wore on, the deterioration of the food quality was rivaled by the foulness of the atmosphere.
00:31:30The average age of submariners in World War II was 19. That's the average age, which basically means it's a bunch of high school kids
00:31:38that are operating the most technically advanced, you know, vessel of war that exists in the world.
00:31:44So if you can imagine yourself stuck with 80 guys, all of which are about teenage or high teenage years
00:31:50that are actually doing heavy labor down in the South Pacific, going through drills.
00:31:56Everybody's got smelly feet. The whole deal, they're not really changing their clothes too much.
00:31:59And you only get to shower about every two weeks.
00:32:02Now you can start to imagine what the smell on this thing would have been like
00:32:06when you combine that with hydraulic fluid and diesel fuel and whatnot.
00:32:10Though the increase in patrol frequency during the spring of 1942 improved the chances of success,
00:32:16the numbers returning from the battlefront continued to dismay fleet commanders.
00:32:21The Pearl Harbor boats were credited with sinking only 33 enemy ships between January and May 1942.
00:32:28Tellingly, the greatest success came on patrols to Japanese home waters and the East China Sea.
00:32:34Stakeouts of Japanese bases in the Central Pacific continued to yield meager results.
00:32:40Warships is kind of hard to have. They go too fast for the sub.
00:32:44By the time you see them, they're gone. You have to be lucky to be right in front and to cross your path.
00:32:53In mid-May, Navy code-breaking efforts provided advance warning of a major Japanese offensive aimed at Midway Island,
00:33:01just 700 miles from Pearl Harbor.
00:33:03Admiral Nimitz immediately deployed his three remaining aircraft carriers to intercept,
00:33:08and the result is often described as the turning point of the Pacific War.
00:33:13Though a major success for American surface units, the Battle of Midway was an exercise in frustration for U.S. submariners.
00:33:21Early in the war, we found that we were not as effective as we might be trying to operate with the fleet.
00:33:28At Midway was a good example. We had a huge number of submarines there trying to intercept the Jap fleet,
00:33:34and only one of them even attacked the ship.
00:33:37Nineteen boats had sortied from Pearl Harbor, but confusion, indecision, and poor contact reporting spoiled what might have been a signature battle for U.S. submarines.
00:33:48It was late on June 6th, with the battle largely over thanks to devastating air attacks launched from Hornets, Yorktown, and Enterprise,
00:33:56that the USS Nautilus fired four torpedoes at a disabled Japanese carrier.
00:34:02True to form, one failed to run, two ran erratically, and the fourth was a dud.
00:34:08The experience of the submarine force operating at Midway was disheartening, but later, as the number of available submarines swelled
00:34:15and the war moved into more confined waters with distinct shipping routes, the submarine's fleet role would be proven with devastating effect.
00:34:23Hoping to build on the shift in momentum that occurred at Midway, U.S. Marines of the 1st Division invaded Guadalcanal in early August.
00:34:34It was America's first offensive operation of the war.
00:34:38The campaign to secure the island lasted six months, and for much of its course the balance teetered precariously from one side to the other.
00:34:46Consequently, the Southwest Pacific Submarine Force in Australia was regularly assigned interdiction missions in support of the Solomon's effort,
00:34:54seeking to prevent the Japanese from reinforcing their island garrisons by sea.
00:34:59So critical was the Guadalcanal campaign that submarine squadrons 8 and 10 were transferred from Pearl Harbor to Brisbane,
00:35:06which then boasted the largest concentration of U.S. submarines in the Pacific.
00:35:11However, the resulting dilution of effort left only Lockwood's Fremantle boats and roughly half of the Pearl Harbor submarines
00:35:18to actively engage enemy supply lines.
00:35:22As the disappointing 1942 wound to a close, a tally of the campaign to date revealed that U.S. submarines had destroyed a total of 147 Japanese ships,
00:35:33or less than half a ship per patrol.
00:35:36Of these, only two were major warships.
00:35:39Significantly, missions to Japan, which numbered less than one in five, accounted for nearly half of all the ships sunk.
00:35:46After the defeat at Guadalcanal early in 1943, the Japanese shifted their focus to defending what remained of their earlier conquests,
00:36:09while the Allies began developing a plan that would allow them to gain the offensive initiative.
00:36:14With war materiel of all kinds beginning to flow from the United States, the Allies were able to pursue a dual-pronged strategy.
00:36:23Forces under the command of General MacArthur would simultaneously attack the Northern Solomons
00:36:29and leapfrog westerly along the coast of Northern New Guinea, isolating Japanese garrisons stationed there,
00:36:35and ultimately bypassing Rabah.
00:36:38Admiral Nimitz would begin the drive across the Central Pacific with invasions of Tarawa and Macon in the Gilbert Islands,
00:36:44before proceeding further west across the Pacific toward Japan.
00:36:49Such ambitious plans would take some time to put in place, so again it fell to the men of the silent service to keep the pressure on.
00:36:57By mid-spring 1943, the submarine force at Pearl Harbor, now under the command of Rear Admiral Charles Lockwood, had grown to 50 boats.
00:37:06The main submarine-specific headquarters at Pearl Harbor and the advanced base at Midway hummed with activity,
00:37:13as boats returned from patrols for refitting or set sail for the war zone.
00:37:18The base at Midway provided a fueling station 1,100 miles closer to Japan and did much to improve the logistical situation for sub-pack.
00:37:27Between April and August, an average of 18 sub-pack boats left each month for war patrols of 40 to 50 days.
00:37:35Notably, over half were targeted at enemy shipping in Japanese Empire waters and the East China Sea.
00:37:41This shift in deployment marked a significant change from the strategy that had continued to place a high priority on hard-to-target enemy capital ships,
00:37:50in spite of poor results, and was further justified by the 4th War Patrol of the USS Wahoo.
00:37:57When the Gato-class submarine Wahoo arrived at Pearl Harbor in August 1942, she joined a submarine force struggling to find success.
00:38:05Her first two patrols were marked by attack failures, but when charismatic Lieutenant Commander Dudley Mush Morton assumed command at the end of the year,
00:38:14her fortunes and the rest of the submarine fleets began to change.
00:38:18Personable with his crew and aggressive in his leadership, Morton reorganized Wahoo's patrol procedures.
00:38:25Wahoo transited to her 3rd patrol's operating area on the surface in daylight despite the threat of Japanese planes.
00:38:32He trusted his executive officer, Richard O'Kane, to make all periscope observations during attacks,
00:38:38which allowed Morton to better evaluate the entire combat situation.
00:38:42As commanding officer of USS Tang, O'Kane eventually became the submarine force's leading ace of the war, credited with destroying 31 ships.
00:38:52Wahoo's 3rd patrol, and first under Morton, netted 3 ships, but that was only the beginning.
00:38:58On his next patrol, Morton sailed into the shallow confines of the East China and Yellow Seas.
00:39:04In a series of slashing gun and torpedo attacks, Morton sent 9 ships to the bottom.
00:39:10It was by far the most successful patrol of the war to date, and proved to be the turning point of the Pacific Submarine War.
00:39:17Inspired by Morton's tactics and innovation, other commanders began to adapt Wahoo's aggressive style and take the fight to the enemy.
00:39:25These were all younger officers, and I think that they set the whole procedure of submarine warfare, those people did, not the Navy.
00:39:37As far as doctrine that we had been schooled in, as far as the depth that we would travel, when we would put the periscope up and that sort of thing,
00:39:51this was developed in the field by our own skippers, and breaking away from the old conservative, non-aggressive rules that had governed the way we acted.
00:40:08The determination and character exhibited by Morton and the crew of Wahoo was hardly unique to that vessel.
00:40:14Just being accepted for submarine duty was a testament to these sailors' abilities.
00:40:19In order to get into submarines, you had to pass a rigorous set of exams to show that you were very smart,
00:40:23to show that you had psychologically what it take to live with 80 other guys for a little over two months on a war patrol,
00:40:30without ever seeing the sun, in close quarters with very little privacy.
00:40:34So these guys had a lot of camaraderie, they had a lot of respect for each other.
00:40:37The people that were involved in it, they were the cream of America crop.
00:40:42They were the finest physically adapted people, mentally, and they had a tremendous attitude.
00:40:51It was a very elaborate and in-depth screening process, and to give you an example of the number of people who made it,
00:40:58there were 105 that volunteered with me, and there were like six of us passed.
00:41:03So it was an extremely difficult service, and it was all volunteer, 100% volunteer.
00:41:09The elite group of men who formed the submarine force made up only 1.6% of the entire U.S. Navy.
00:41:16Each had received 50% more pay than the rest of their Navy comrades for their willingness to accept the hazards,
00:41:22rigors, and privations of service aboard a World War II-era submarine.
00:41:27I first become aware of submarines when I was 10 years old, and from that day on I wanted to be a submariner.
00:41:32And I like to think most of them did. They went there for the money. It was nice.
00:41:37It was nice to get the extra money. But most of us were there because that's what we wanted.
00:41:42Service aboard a submarine was far different than in any other branch of the military in the Second World War.
00:41:48During a patrol that could last up to 10 weeks, most crewmen only rarely caught a glimpse of sky or the taste of fresh air,
00:41:55let alone actually setting foot on dry land.
00:41:58You didn't know what day it was. You didn't know whether it was day or night.
00:42:02And you really didn't particularly care. You just had a job to do.
00:42:05And, of course, also you had a sanitary problem because you had 80 men on there who hadn't had a bath in however long you were out.
00:42:12Patrols weren't all glorious and a lot of fun.
00:42:15There was a lot of tedium and boredom weeks at a time before you might see a target and break up the monotony.
00:42:23But I think the fact that we all suffered the same suffrages and the same glories and so on is what brought us all together.
00:42:31Along with the monotony, training drills were another fact of life for submariners.
00:42:36In our day, it took five men just to dive it or surface it. And it took about 20 to operate it.
00:42:43And it had to be done in unison and in perfect coordination. And just one mistake could cost the life of every man on the boat.
00:42:52And so you were very acutely aware of your responsibilities.
00:42:56In order to attain the rating of qualified in submarines, each man in the crew of approximately 80 had to know how to perform every single job aboard a U.S. submarine, the most sophisticated and complex man of war at the time.
00:43:11Every single person on this boat had a job to do. And if they didn't do their job, everyone else on the boat could literally die.
00:43:17Anyone from the captain right down to the cook had to know what every single thing did in every compartment.
00:43:21So if you were in that compartment when you underwent some kind of attack or there was some kind of emergency, you would know what to do in order to save the boat.
00:43:27Of course, the very first patrol that you go out on, of course, you're a new man and you've really got to learn things.
00:43:33So it's up to you to find out what it's all about on board. You know, just really investigate and ask questions.
00:43:40And so you'll be able to qualify. So you will know your submarine and know what it's all about.
00:43:46If you had to make drawings of every system throughout the boat, then an officer aboard would take you through the boat and question you on every compartment in the boat.
00:43:56You had to qualify on each submarine that you served on. You had to re-qualify, even though the subs might be from the same shipyard, but you had to re-qualify.
00:44:07But when you got your dolphins, I think you were the proudest man in the Navy.
00:44:12The esprit de corps that developed among submariners was not entirely unique within the military.
00:44:17Elite units like airborne troops and close-knit groups like bomber crews or naval aviators shared a high level of camaraderie.
00:44:25Yet for these and virtually all other servicemen in World War II, the near certainty of death, should disaster strike, did not exist.
00:44:34I think you come close to death so many times with each other that you just develop a brotherhood, I would say.
00:44:42It's hard to describe, but you talk about families. I think we were even closer than families.
00:44:49Everyone knew that their life depended on the man next to them, and everyone knew that the man next to them's life depended on them doing their job.
00:44:55So there was a huge amount of esprit de corps.
00:44:57The disadvantages of course were, first of all, as a proportion, this was the most risky arm of the armed services to serve in.
00:45:05Your chances of coming back on one of these alive were lower than any other thing you can think of.
00:45:11Daylight bombing raids over Germany, storming Iwo Jima with the Marines.
00:45:16Your chances were better of surviving those activities than it was to be on one of these submarines in World War II.
00:45:21They had a 24% casualty rate. It was very rare for men to actually survive any kind of damage or attack on a submarine.
00:45:27So if something went wrong, 80 guys just went to the bottom.
00:45:30No one was immune to the inherent dangers of the submarine service.
00:45:34In the fall of 1943, Mush Morton and Wahoo returned to the Sea of Japan and went on a rampage, sinking at least four ships over the course of several days.
00:45:44While attempting to exit via La Perouse Strait, Wahoo was detected by Japanese anti-submarine aircraft and a coordinated air and sea attack commenced.
00:45:54Morton and his crew of 79 men were never heard from again.
00:45:59Since he had assumed overall command of the Pacific submarine force early in 1943,
00:46:17much of Rear Admiral Lockwood's attention was consumed by nagging materiel problems.
00:46:22Foremost among these was torpedoes, not only a shortage of supply, but continuing evidence of serious malfunction.
00:46:29Lockwood's tests at Fremantle in mid-1942 established that U.S. torpedoes were running too deep.
00:46:36But after correcting the problem, torpedo performance failed to improve.
00:46:40Premature warhead detonations, believed to be the result of a too-sensitive magnetic influence exploder, continued to bedevil the fleet.
00:46:48Lockwood convinced Admiral Nimitz to rely solely on the Mark 14's contact exploder.
00:46:54But even with the magnetic feature disabled, Pacific fleet submarines continued to experience a significant percentage of duds.
00:47:02I know one particular run we made, we fired 19 torpedoes and we could hear them hitting the hull.
00:47:08And we were being fired on from the direction the torpedoes were coming from.
00:47:13But we never got any damage done.
00:47:16You never saw such a dejected bunch in your life as you did when four torpedoes were fired and the sound man heard two of them hit and none go off.
00:47:27It was frustration of the first order.
00:47:30During a series of experiments conducted in Hawaii in September 1943, it was determined that when a torpedo struck at a 90-degree angle, which was considered ideal, the firing pin would buckle, which in some cases prevented it from contacting the exploder cap.
00:47:47Merely installing a stronger firing pin resolved the issue.
00:47:51With this simple modification, the performance of the Mark 14 torpedo finally reached acceptability, but it had taken half the war to get there.
00:48:00The ongoing shortage of torpedoes, a persistent problem early in the war, was remedied by the gradual introduction of the Mark 18 electric torpedo beginning in mid-1943.
00:48:11Although slower than the Mark 14 and somewhat limited in range, the Mark 18 left no telltale wake that could give away a submarine's position.
00:48:20Almost invariably after you fired torpedoes, the escorts could see the torpedo tracks and they knew where the torpedoes came from.
00:48:29And they'd just run down the torpedo track expecting to find a submarine at the other end, and they usually would.
00:48:34And Japanese anti-submarine efforts were primarily passive or listening sonar, rather than active sonar, where you ping like our ASW efforts were largely.
00:48:45And Pollock wasn't as fast as the new submarines, but also she was very noisy.
00:48:50If they were going to be listening, the submarines that made the most noise were the ones that hear first, and that was us.
00:48:56The primary anti-submarine weapon during World War II was the depth charge, a canister of high explosives set to go off at a predetermined depth.
00:49:06The object being to have the depth charge go under the submarine so that the explosion came up.
00:49:11We used various and sundry methods of evading them if possible, and I'm living proof that we've evaded right many.
00:49:19The first time to go through that is really terrifying.
00:49:23You actually hear two explosions.
00:49:27And of course, when the depth charge explodes, there's a space that's void, that's left.
00:49:35And of course, that comes back in as soon as the explosion's completed.
00:49:40And you just don't know when the next one's coming.
00:49:43During the first part of the war, the Japanese tended to set their depth charges too shallow,
00:49:48unaware that U.S. submarines could dive below 150 feet.
00:49:52Early in the war, there was a fact-finding committee of congressmen sent out to the Pacific.
00:49:57And when they got back, one of them made the remark that our submariners didn't have anything to worry about,
00:50:01the Japanese weren't setting their depth charges deep enough.
00:50:04Well, the Japanese can read too.
00:50:07And I'd say, in the next six months, we lost ten submarines, because they just started setting them deeper.
00:50:13The tenacity of a depth charge attack was another important variable.
00:50:17With a full battery charge, a sub could remain submerged for over 36 hours.
00:50:22But by that point, it would be absolutely essential to surface and recharge.
00:50:27If you were down for a prolonged period, the battery gets very low.
00:50:34You lose the benefit of the oxygen in the ship that you've been breathing up all day.
00:50:40It gets pretty foul below.
00:50:42And sometimes you're held down to practically the full limit of the battery.
00:50:47And possibly even some of our ships were lost because they could never get up in time to charge the battery
00:50:53and didn't have enough power to pull out of it.
00:50:56More submarines were lost to depth charges during the war than any other cause.
00:51:01But the vast majority escaped to fight another day.
00:51:04Although the submarine squadrons at both Fremantle and Brisbane maintained a steady level of activity throughout 1943,
00:51:12Brisbane lost importance as the war moved up the Solomon's Chain and westward into New Guinea.
00:51:18By late in the year, just eight boats were stationed there.
00:51:21But an advanced base established at Milne Bay, New Guinea, put them 1,200 miles closer to their patrol areas.
00:51:28Between June and December, 33 war patrols sent to monitor the supply lines linking Truck, Rabal and Palau resulted in 29 confirmed sinkings.
00:51:39During that same period, the 22 submarines stationed at Fremantle sank nearly 50 enemy ships,
00:51:45a dozen of them oil tankers bound from Borneo and Sumatra.
00:51:50The emphasis was switched pretty much to tankers.
00:51:55And we sank an awful lot of the Japanese merchant marine and tankers.
00:52:00And that's the thing, the argument about, well, we shouldn't have dropped the atom bombs
00:52:06because we'd sunk all the Japanese tankers and they were running out of fuel.
00:52:10Late in 1943, as MacArthur's forces hammered away at Japanese garrisons in New Guinea and the Northern Solomons,
00:52:17and the Marines in the Central Pacific were regrouping after the brutal invasion of Tarawa,
00:52:22Lockwood began deploying small coordinated submarine wolf packs as tactical units.
00:52:29With that kind of an operation, we could cover a larger area of the ocean.
00:52:34With three submarines out there, we could talk to each other on secure radio.
00:52:40And if one of the submarines picked up an enemy convoy, well, they could tell the others.
00:52:48And then the commodore could order the others into a position where he thought they might all have an opportunity
00:52:53to attack some of the ships in the convoy.
00:52:56Communications and coordination among wolf pack members at sea was often difficult.
00:53:01But during the last two years of the war, wolf packing became increasingly common,
00:53:06particularly for commerce raiding north of Luzon, where several Japanese north-south convoy routes
00:53:12from the conquered territories converged.
00:53:15The people in Pearl Harbor had laid out a checkerboard-like arrangement of areas,
00:53:22and we were given a certain sequence of movement where we would move from one area to another area to another area,
00:53:30and if we saw a convoy or some warships going through a part of our area that we didn't have time to get to,
00:53:40we could call Pearl Harbor.
00:53:42They could then notify other submarines in the other squares along which those ships were going to travel
00:53:50so that they could have an opportunity to attack them.
00:53:53Along with tactical innovations that continued to evolve throughout the war,
00:53:58new boats arriving in the fleet added ever greater capabilities.
00:54:02Balau-class submarines, the first of the thick-skinned boats that integrated higher strength steel in the pressure hole,
00:54:09were introduced in 1943.
00:54:11Almost identical in appearance to Gatos, the important difference was in design depth.
00:54:17The Balau-class was rated to 400 feet, a full 100 feet deeper than Gatos could go.
00:54:23Tench-class boats, which began to appear in 1944, could exceed 600 feet.
00:54:29They could go twice as deep as we could, and it took twice as long for the depth charges to get down there,
00:54:35and the depth charges were only half as accurate or less on the new fleet boats as the old ones.
00:54:41Regardless of class, fleet submarines underwent a constant program of modification,
00:54:46much of which was carried out by submarine tenders,
00:54:49auxiliary ships specially equipped to perform maintenance and provide logistics support for submarines.
00:54:55The advantage of putting submarine supplies, spare parts, service facilities, and birthing on a surface ship
00:55:01was that it made them as portable as the submarines themselves.
00:55:05Setting up a new forward submarine base became almost as simple as dropping anchor.
00:55:10When the submarine came alongside, maybe they had some problem with their motors or something,
00:55:15electric motors or something, and the machine shop could take care of those things,
00:55:18and the torpedoes or whatever, and then they also have food that they could take some food for them,
00:55:25and they always have a crate of oranges, a fruit for them right away on the takeout to the submarine.
00:55:31And we also had an ice cream baking machine there on the tender, things like that, so like more supplies
00:55:41and repairs, small repairs, the main function of the tender.
00:55:46Fleet submarines back from the front often required little more than fuel and provisions,
00:55:51but just as often, major repairs were in order.
00:55:54Diesels were repaired or replaced, leaking bulkheads made fast, and electronic gear updated.
00:56:00The conning tower was often replaced during a refit to reduce its silhouettes
00:56:04and make the boat harder to see on the surface, and had the added benefit
00:56:08of decreasing the time it took to submerge.
00:56:11Fifty-five seconds to get the boat submerged, that's what we were always striving for,
00:56:16is to close that hatch and get the conning tower and the periscopes below the surface in 55 seconds.
00:56:24If you're on the surface, well, you're kind of a sitting duck.
00:56:28Since individual commanders were allowed to arm their boats pretty much as they wished,
00:56:33the original three-inch-fifty deck gun was generally replaced with something heavier,
00:56:38at first four-inch-fifties, and later by a five-inch-twenty-five wet mount.
00:56:43Some boats carried a pair of five-inch guns.
00:56:46Twenty-millimeter guns were often replaced with forty-millimeter bofers,
00:56:50mounted either fore or aft of the tower, and in some cases, both.
00:56:54By war's end, few fleet boats were equipped exactly alike.
00:56:59With the refit complete, provisions and supplies were brought aboard and packed into any available space.
00:57:05Loading torpedoes was one of the most difficult parts of this process.
00:57:09We would lift them from the dock or the ship or wherever it was supplying us
00:57:15and put them on the skids of the torpedo room.
00:57:19And they were put down with chain falls, cables put on them to ease them down the skids.
00:57:28And many, many times, the torpedo took a route of its own and continued down the skids, went into the tubes,
00:57:38went into the bilges and all different directions, even though they were under some pretty tight control.
00:57:45And it was a very laborious operation, and it was a damn back-breaking operation was what it was.
00:57:57With the boat reprovisioned, the submarine once again set sail for the war zone.
00:58:01Days later, after performing an endless series of drills that shaved precious seconds when submerging or surfacing,
00:58:08standing watch, manning battle stations, and performing their normal duties,
00:58:13the boat finally arrived at the patrol area.
00:58:15Early in the war, this would have meant long days spent underwater,
00:58:19hoping for enemy contact while waiting for nightfall to resurface and charge batteries.
00:58:24But ongoing improvements to the submarine's detection gear made that procedure a thing of the past.
00:58:29Though the electronic suite provided many benefits,
00:58:32the single greatest advantage American fleet submarines possessed over the Japanese
00:58:37was radio detection and ranging, or radar.
00:58:41From the very first days of the war, most American subs were equipped with a rather primitive setup called SD,
00:58:47which was non-directional and had a limited range of between 6 and 10 miles.
00:58:52SD was an air search system useful only in detecting enemy aircraft,
00:58:57but it did allow boats to operate on the surface, even in daylight.
00:59:02The biggest scare had to be airplanes.
00:59:04Because them suckers, they'd be real high and then they would come down,
00:59:08and you look out, you're watching the horizon.
00:59:10You're not looking straight up.
00:59:12A new system, type SJ, first appeared in mid-1942 and was installed aboard all U.S. submarines by early 1943.
00:59:22Unlike SD, SJ radar was directional and provided the exact range and bearing of surface targets.
00:59:29Its reach was limited by the height of the retractable mast,
00:59:32but even so, targets could be electronically detected long before they were visually sighted.
00:59:38Ships that may otherwise have passed unnoticed were now exposed to submarine attack.
00:59:43It's a great advantage, a very great advantage, because they were quite, at the beginning of the war,
00:59:50they didn't know that we had radar, so we had a big advantage over them,
00:59:54and we could operate at night time and during storms and all that,
00:59:59and they did not have the advantage of knowing that we were there.
01:00:03While the Japanese had superior night optics and excellent sound detection gear,
01:00:08only their carriers and battleships possessed radar,
01:00:11a fact that shifted the odds decisively in the direction of the Americans.
01:00:15Consequently, with the new SJ sets aboard,
01:00:18the submarine fleet developed a new method of attack known as the End Around.
01:00:23We would pick up a Jap ship, and we could plop their course,
01:00:28and then go flank speed ahead and get ahead of them,
01:00:32and if we had to submerge in the daytime,
01:00:35why we would submerge and wait for them to come by and knock them off.
01:00:41If it was at night, well, we'd stay on the surface and fire from the surface at night.
01:00:45If we saw an airplane or heard an airplane, we would submerge,
01:00:51but we would stay on the surface as much as we possibly can,
01:00:54because we could maneuver better.
01:00:56We had more speed to do what we needed to do to get around and take position
01:01:00to be able to fire torpedoes at the enemy ships.
01:01:06Fire control, the process of tracking targets and aiming torpedoes,
01:01:10required far more than simply looking through the periscope.
01:01:13The immediate problem was determining the target's course and speed,
01:01:17a painstaking procedure made vastly easier by the Torpedo Data Computer,
01:01:22a system that simultaneously tracked a target and adjusted the aim of the torpedoes.
01:01:28A series of periscope observations of the target's position, course and speed were made,
01:01:33and as the fire control problem developed,
01:01:35the TDC provided increasingly accurate directional instructions to the torpedoes.
01:01:40A proper solution was usually obtained after three or four observations.
01:01:45Regardless of whether the torpedoes found their target,
01:01:55nearly every time a ship was attacked,
01:01:57Japanese escorts responded with depth charges.
01:02:00For the submarine, the best response was to immediately dive and commend silent running,
01:02:05a tactic that reduced the chances of detection by enemy sound listening gear
01:02:09by operating in a state of complete quiet.
01:02:12Our operating depth then for depth charge attack was, depending on the water underneath,
01:02:18it was about 300 feet, and also depending on the cold stratas.
01:02:22If you were aware of a cold strata, you'd get below that at 100 feet.
01:02:26Their sonar wasn't any good. It wouldn't pick you up.
01:02:29It deflected the signal before it could get to you.
01:02:32But if you weren't aware of that, you just went to your test depth and stayed there.
01:02:36Sound men played a leading role in evading depth charges
01:02:39by determining the range and direction of pings sent by Japanese sonar emitters.
01:02:45The submarine would maneuver to put the attackers astern,
01:02:48then slowly withdraw from the area.
01:02:51We evaded a lot of them, and I'm sure that later on,
01:02:55right many of the boats that got sunk were because they either didn't use that method of escape,
01:03:01or they just weren't lucky enough to use it. I think that we were lucky.
01:03:07Technical and tactical innovations combined to make 1943 a significantly better year for submariners.
01:03:14The fleet was credited with sinking 335 Japanese ships,
01:03:18or roughly twice the corresponding figure for 1942.
01:03:22More importantly, post-war analysis revealed that Japan's merchant fleet declined by 16%,
01:03:28despite a vigorous shipbuilding program,
01:03:31and importation of bulk commodities diminished to 81% of the pre-war level.
01:03:36The loss of raw materials and petroleum,
01:03:39and the inability to transport men and materiel to the front lines,
01:03:43significantly reduced Japan's ability to maintain effective military strength.
01:03:47For Imperial Japan, World War II had become a battle of attrition,
01:03:52and the worst was yet to come.
01:04:06In 1944, the silent service finally hit its stride,
01:04:10as the operational deployment of the submarine fleet was coordinated
01:04:13to match the strategic requirements of the war.
01:04:16When combined with improved torpedoes, better radar, new tactics,
01:04:21and an ever-increasing number of newly commissioned boats,
01:04:24it spelled doom for the Japanese merchant fleet.
01:04:27By the time Admiral Nimitz's cross-Pacific thrust reached the Marshall Islands in January 1944,
01:04:34the Pacific submarine fleet numbered nearly 100 boats,
01:04:37with 60 submarines assigned to Pearl Harbor and 36 to Australia.
01:04:42Boats of the Pacific and Southwest Pacific fleet were kept busy supporting both the Marshalls campaign
01:04:48and U.S. carrier strikes against Truck,
01:04:51the most formidable enemy stronghold in the Pacific,
01:04:54and forward anchorage for the Japanese Imperial fleet.
01:04:57We knew it was a strong, fortified situation,
01:05:02and a lot of us that had just heard about it, studied it a little bit.
01:05:08I'll have to admit, I was a little apprehensive about Truck,
01:05:13not having any idea what we were going to run into.
01:05:16We just knew there was a lot of stuff there.
01:05:19Though concern regarding a strike on Truck was certainly justified,
01:05:23the operation turned into a rout.
01:05:25In two days and one night of attacks,
01:05:27the air groups of Task Force 58 sunk or incapacitated most of the ships and aircraft they found there.
01:05:34Though capital ships were absent, thousands of tons of vital merchant shipping succumbed to the torrent of bombs and torpedoes.
01:05:41When the raids were over, Truck lay in ruins, never again to pose a significant threat to the Allies.
01:05:51In the aftermath of the all-out assault on Truck in mid-February, the Imperial Navy fell back on the Palaus.
01:05:58By April, under growing pressure from naval and land-based air attacks,
01:06:02the fleet had dispersed to Davao and Tawitawi in the southern Philippines, Surabaya on Java, and Singapore in Malaysia.
01:06:10With Navy codebreakers providing advance warning, numerous attempts were organized to intercept these Japanese withdrawals.
01:06:17Although a number of Japanese freighters and auxiliaries were sunk,
01:06:21the only major warships destroyed during these patrols were three light cruisers.
01:06:26Increased pressure on the Empire, East China Sea, and Kuriel Island supply routes paid bigger dividends.
01:06:33Operating from advanced submarine bases in New Guinea and on Majuro in the Marshalls,
01:06:38submarines of the Pacific and Southwest Pacific Fleet sank 183 ships,
01:06:43or nearly three-quarters of a million tons of shipping, in the first four months of 1944.
01:06:50With Truck eliminated and the Marshall Islands secure,
01:06:53Allied forces in the Central Pacific set their sights on the Marianas Islands of Saipan, Guam, and Tinian.
01:07:00From air bases on these islands, long-range B-29 bombers could reach Japan.
01:07:09Beginning on June 11, carrier-based air groups mounted a series of powerful strikes on Saipan as a prelude to invasion.
01:07:16Submarines were deployed to interdict any Japanese attempts to reinforce the island
01:07:21and to provide lifeguard services for downed airmen, a procedure introduced for all large-scale fleet offensives,
01:07:28beginning with the invasion of the Gilbert Islands in 1943.
01:07:33There was hardly an air strike that was made that didn't have submarines' standing lifeguard duty then.
01:07:39We ended up, we retrieved six pilots at all.
01:07:44Anticipating an eventual move on the Marianas, the Japanese had prepared a plan that would exploit the longer range of their aircraft.
01:07:52Pilots would shuttle between carriers at sea and air bases on Guam and Saipan,
01:07:57hitting the Americans coming and going, while allowing their carriers to operate beyond the range of an American counter-strike.
01:08:03In mid-June, as the Marines fought their way ashore on Saipan, the remaining elements of the Imperial fleet began to converge in the Philippine Sea
01:08:13for the decisive battle the Japanese had long sought.
01:08:16But they were not alone.
01:08:18American submarines detected and trailed the enemy forces, all the while relaying critical information to the American fleet off Saipan.
01:08:26When the Japanese launched their aircraft early on the morning of June 19th, they were flying into a trap.
01:08:33Few of their pilots survived to even attempt an attack on the American task forces covering the landing.
01:08:39By this point in the war, American air superiority made any engagement with the U.S. Navy nearly suicidal.
01:08:46All of a sudden, my eyes practically bugged out.
01:08:49I saw a group of about 50, 60 enemy planes, all motley group, no formation type thing at all.
01:08:57Well, I started on down, wagging my wings, and I started going down.
01:09:01All of a sudden, my eyes apparently were so big from seeing this grand opportunity that I saw another plane,
01:09:08another of our planes, had designs on that same plane that I was going for.
01:09:13And I'm sure we'd have collided if I hadn't aborted that particular pass.
01:09:18But anyway, I pulled back up again, and then I started.
01:09:22And you hear these stories of what the guys were doing.
01:09:25Go for the lead man, dive at the lead, and then break them all up.
01:09:28Well, there were just too many of them.
01:09:30We had to work fast because we weren't far from our fleet.
01:09:33And to me, you pick them off the edges.
01:09:36And pick them off he did.
01:09:38During the Battle of the Philippine Sea,
01:09:40subsequently dubbed the Great Mariana's Turkey Shoot,
01:09:43Alex Varasu knocked down six Japanese dive bombers in a span of eight minutes
01:09:48on his way to becoming one of America's leading aces.
01:09:51All told, the Japanese lost nearly 350 aircraft and three aircraft carriers,
01:09:57including two, Taiho and Shokaku, which were sunk by U.S. submarines.
01:10:02Though a great success for naval aviation,
01:10:04the battle marked a high point for the submarine force working in concert with the fleet.
01:10:09Effective scouting, efficient communications, and intelligent handling,
01:10:14not to mention several smashing torpedo attacks,
01:10:16combined to give the submarine force a leading role in a victory
01:10:20that permanently crippled Japanese naval aviation.
01:10:24After the Battle of the Philippine Sea,
01:10:26American submarines refocused their efforts on enemy supply lines
01:10:30with renewed intensity and devastating effect.
01:10:33By late August, wolf packs appeared in Luzon Straits
01:10:36and the East China Sea from New Pacific Fleet submarine bases at Saipan and Guam.
01:10:41By the end of the year, they'd sent nearly 150 ships to the bottom.
01:10:46Meanwhile, boats of the Southwest Pacific Fleet patrolled the Japanese oil pipeline
01:10:51from Sumatra and Borneo from advance bases at Manus in the Admiralty Islands
01:10:56and at Mioswendi, just east of Biak.
01:10:59In July through October alone,
01:11:01boats of the Southwest Pacific Fleet sank almost 100 enemy ships.
01:11:06When combined with the growing toll from air attacks,
01:11:09the effect on the Japanese war effort was catastrophic.
01:11:12Occasionally, the survivors of a submarine attack were taken prisoner,
01:11:20but these instances were relatively rare.
01:11:23Like their counterparts on land,
01:11:25most Japanese were reluctant to surrender.
01:11:28In one case, we picked up a survivor and brought him aboard,
01:11:32and then they would set this enemy down at the table with maps
01:11:39and then start talking with these guys.
01:11:42And at night, having the watch in the galley,
01:11:46I was able to watch all of this stuff.
01:11:49In mid-September 1944, the business of rescue took a grim turn
01:11:54for the crew of the USS Pomponido.
01:11:57Shortly after surfacing late on the 15th,
01:12:00the boat encountered a debris field,
01:12:02the result of an attack made three days earlier by Sea Lion.
01:12:06Clinging to the wreckage was a large number of men
01:12:09covered with oil and filth.
01:12:11They got out on the deck with machine guns and whatnot
01:12:13to see if they couldn't take a prisoner or get some intelligence.
01:12:16And as they got very close to one of these rafts of men,
01:12:19they heard one of the men yell out,
01:12:21great, first you bloody yank sink us,
01:12:23and now you're going to bloody shoot us.
01:12:25And at that point, they realized,
01:12:26obviously they were speaking English, they must be friends of ours.
01:12:29And the story is that if you've ever heard of or seen the movie
01:12:33or the book Bridge Over the River Kwai,
01:12:35it talks about how the Japanese, after capturing Singapore,
01:12:38had taken those men in the army and actually used them
01:12:41as slave labor to build the Burma Railroad.
01:12:43Well, these men had actually been used for two and a half years
01:12:46as slaves to build the Burma Railroad down in Southeast Asia.
01:12:50And the Japanese were actually transporting about 1,400 or 1,500 of them
01:12:53back to the mainland Japan to use as slave labor in those factories.
01:12:56They put them, crammed them into one of the holds on one of the ships
01:13:00and one of the holds on a second ship.
01:13:02We did not know they were in there.
01:13:04And so, of course, encountering the convoy, we went and sank the ships.
01:13:07Well, that first ship that was sunk actually had about 1,450 men on it,
01:13:13allies, prisoners of war.
01:13:15And the Japanese, after it was sunk, picked up all their seamen,
01:13:20their naval officers and whatnot, and they left,
01:13:22and they left these men to die.
01:13:23As the Pomponido came through, they realized that these were our allies
01:13:26and immediately got on the radio signaling any other submarine in the area
01:13:29to come by and help them rescue.
01:13:31Before they left, the Pomponido picked up 73 men,
01:13:34both Australian and British prisoners of war,
01:13:36and 72 of them survived the trip back to Saipan,
01:13:39and they were all repatriated.
01:13:41Joined later by Sea Lion, Queenfish, and Barb,
01:13:44the four submarines eventually rescued 159 survivors.
01:13:49More than 1,000 men were lost, swelling the rain,
01:13:52swelling the ranks of other allied POWs who suffered a similar fate.
01:13:58In late October 1944, as U.S. Marines struggled to gain the upper hand
01:14:03on Peleliu and Angaur and the Palau Group,
01:14:06General MacArthur's troops stormed ashore on Leyte in the central Philippines.
01:14:11Supporting the landing was the U.S. 3rd and 7th Fleets,
01:14:14which in turn were screened by submarines deployed to interdict a Japanese counterattack.
01:14:19Naval planners believed a move against the Philippines would force the remnants of the Imperial fleet into battle,
01:14:25and they were not disappointed.
01:14:27Within hours of the American landing,
01:14:29the Japanese combined fleet launched a complex three-pronged attack
01:14:33that would sacrifice what remained of their carrier force in order to annihilate the American landing at Leyte.
01:14:39But it was American submarines that drew first blood.
01:14:43Patrolling west of Palawan Island near midnight on October 22nd,
01:14:47the SJ radar sets aboard American submarines Darter and Dace
01:14:52detected the Japanese center force bound for San Bernardino Strait at a range of 30,000 yards.
01:14:58Darter and Dace pursued on the surface at full power with the intention of making a submerged attack at first light.
01:15:05Darter struck first, sinking the heavy cruiser Otago and damaging her sister ship Takao.
01:15:11Minutes later, Dace followed with a spread that sank Maya.
01:15:15In a separate attack west of Luzon, Bream disabled another Japanese cruiser, the Ayoba.
01:15:20It would get little better for the Japanese.
01:15:31On the 24th, U.S. carrier aircraft badly mauled elements of the combined fleet in the Subwayan Sea,
01:15:37while a U.S. force that included five salvaged battleships that had begun the war in the mud at Pearl Harbor
01:15:43annihilated the southern wing of the Japanese effort in Surigao Straits.
01:15:48It had been a routs, but as the Japanese hoped, Admiral Halsey then steamed off in pursuit of the carriers of the northern force,
01:15:55leaving San Bernardino Strait completely unguarded.
01:15:59So it was that early on the morning of October 25th, the Japanese center force emerged from the strait
01:16:05and steamed southward along the coast of Sumar toward the transport fleet at Leyte,
01:16:10opposed only by 16 slow and lightly armored escort carriers and their screen of destroyers and destroyer escorts.
01:16:17The Americans took a terrible beating, as Japanese battleships sank two escort carriers, two destroyers and a destroyer escort.
01:16:29But such was the ferocity of the defense that the Japanese believed they were engaging major fleet units.
01:16:35As the battle raged, the Japanese attack hampered by a combination of poor communications, lack of coordination,
01:16:42and above all the lack of air strength, wavered and then stalled.
01:16:46Although there was precious little to prevent it from blasting through to Leyte Gulf,
01:16:50the center force turned and headed back where it came from.
01:17:07Far to the north, Halsey found the Japanese carriers and sank all four of them,
01:17:11leaving what remained of the northern force to run a gauntlet back to Japan through several scouting lines of submarines,
01:17:18which succeeded in picking off a light cruiser and a destroyer.
01:17:23The battle for Leyte Gulf was the greatest naval fight in history, and when it was over,
01:17:28the Imperial Japanese Navy had ceased to exist as a fighting unit.
01:17:32More than 30 boats from the Pacific and Southwest Pacific fleets participated,
01:17:37proving the viability of submarines operating with the fleet by not only providing crucial sighting reports,
01:17:43but by sinking or heavily damaging six enemy combatants.
01:17:47During 1944, more than 600 Japanese ships were credited to American submarines,
01:17:54and for the first time since the war had begun, the total included a significant number of enemy combatants.
01:18:00The United States and her allies had gained undisputed control of the Pacific Ocean,
01:18:05and the submarine force played a key role in the victory.
01:18:171944's anti-shipping campaign was so successful that by the beginning of 1945,
01:18:27few enemy targets of any consequence remained.
01:18:30Unable to replace losses to its merchant fleet with new production,
01:18:34Japan was forced to employ small wooden fishing boats called Sampans.
01:18:39Consequently, submarine skippers began thinning out the Sampan fleet.
01:18:44Toward the end of the war, you know, there were not as many steel ships out there,
01:18:50but more or less wooden,
01:18:52and sometimes we would take deck guns to those after we got the crew was off,
01:18:57and we'd sink them with deck guns.
01:19:00During the closing stages of the war,
01:19:03submarines acted increasingly as submersible gunboats,
01:19:06pursuing the remaining quarry up and down the Japanese coast.
01:19:10Lifeguard duty became more commonplace as well,
01:19:13as air attacks on mainland targets grew in intensity.
01:19:17The Navy had submarines spaced every 100, 200 miles above Iwo Jima,
01:19:23and then below Iwo Jima then there'd be surface vessels,
01:19:26and they were all plotted and you knew exactly where they were,
01:19:29and you had flimsies that tell you their coordinates,
01:19:32so if you had a problem, the idea was to ditch near them so you'd get picked up.
01:19:37Otherwise, it might be curtains.
01:19:40Of all the people that ditched in B-29s, I was lucky enough to be one of those.
01:19:45U.S. submarines rescued more than 500 downed airmen during the war,
01:19:50including a young TBM pilot who would later become the 41st President of the United States.
01:19:56And while rescue missions were often routine, they were not without risk.
01:20:01The threat of air attack, whether by enemy or friendly forces, was a constant concern.
01:20:07When these pilots ditched why their buddies were making runs on us too.
01:20:13I mean, they see us up and they were kind of careless,
01:20:17and they didn't make a distinction of who it was,
01:20:19and though we threatened those guys and say,
01:20:21hey, if you guys keep on doing this, we're going to leave your buddies in the water.
01:20:26Although commerce rating was the most obvious contribution
01:20:29submarines made in the defeat of Japan,
01:20:31secondary roles like lifeguard duty, photo reconnaissance,
01:20:35and mine clearing contributed greatly to the war effort.
01:20:40By April 1945, 120 U.S. submarines were operating in the Pacific.
01:20:46The Southwest Pacific Submarine Force had established a new advance base at Subic Bay, west of Manila,
01:20:52and the headquarters of the Pacific Submarine Force had moved from Pearl Harbor to Guam.
01:20:57With Iwo Jima in possession of the Americans and the campaign to secure Okinawa just beginning,
01:21:03the outcome was no longer in doubt.
01:21:05Japan was finished.
01:21:07Her war-making ability all but eliminated by the predations of American submarines on her merchant fleet,
01:21:13and an endless stream of air raids on the home islands that crippled the civil and industrial infrastructure.
01:21:19The effectiveness of strategic bombing has to be laid against the fact that most of those factories
01:21:24were not operating anywhere near their capacity because the supplies of raw materials coming in
01:21:30had been choked off, and also the ability of the Japanese to move completed goods,
01:21:36aircraft tanks, to their overseas possessions was severely curtailed by the fact that the merchant fleet had virtually evaporated by that stage.
01:21:46After three and a half years, Japan, which had begun the war with six million tons of merchant shipping,
01:21:53could scrape together just one million two hundred thousand tons.
01:21:57The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August marked the end of World War II.
01:22:04The formal surrender instrument was signed on the deck of USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2.
01:22:10Appropriately, Vice Admiral Lockwood participated in the ceremony with a dozen submarines and their tender anchored nearby.
01:22:18The success of the submarines in World War II, I think, speaks for itself.
01:22:26No military service can compare with what was accomplished.
01:22:31With less than two percent of the Navy's personnel, they sunk 65 percent of all the Japanese ships sunk.
01:22:37That was the entire Japanese maritime fleet, plus one-third of its men of war, including the largest ship ever built.
01:22:44We thought we got our revenge with the number of ships that we sunk.
01:22:50Like I say, the American submariners, they carried a fight to Japan.
01:22:54The nature of the ship itself being a stealth ship to handle easy to get out of a port and submerge and travel from one spot to another.
01:23:04They could penetrate further, probably not faster than the surface craft would,
01:23:09but surface craft didn't have the privilege of diving when an airplane would come along on a bombing run or anything like that.
01:23:17And therefore, I think, with the few submarines that we had, we could manage to get further at sea, near their ports,
01:23:26and hit their shipping, whether it be merchant ship or military, and slowly cut them off from the things that were required.
01:23:35The American submarine campaign during the Second World War was the most decisive victory of that war.
01:23:43In spite of a flawed pre-war doctrine and serious torpedo defects that severely limited effectiveness well into 1943,
01:23:51the United States Navy's submarine force nevertheless wrecked Japan's merchant fleet and sank a sizable chunk of the Imperial Navy.
01:24:00The Pacific submarine fleet revolutionized naval warfare and strangled Japan's home economy with a blockade that established a new adage,
01:24:09an island is a body of land surrounded by submarines.
01:24:14And็…งใ‚Š
01:24:36Transcription by CastingWords
01:25:06CastingWords
01:25:36CastingWords
Be the first to comment
Add your comment

Recommended

World War II - Expedition Bismarck
Dghtrd Derd2016
10 years ago
The Silent Service Submarine War Story - World War II Submariners
ReelMovies
4 months ago
The Cold War Submarines
ReelMovies
1 year ago
World War II Submarine Warfare - rare footage
ReelMovies
1 year ago
ููŠู„ู… Warlord 2025 ู…ุชุฑุฌู…
Movies4 watch
6 months ago
VE-Day in Colour Britain's Biggest Party Documentary
Documentary World
2 weeks ago
Sea Without Exit (2006) Watch HD - Part 01
Halil5644hazel2384comm
3 years ago
Submarine Warfare in the Pacific in World War 2
ReelMovies
4 months ago
SOLDIER VS UNOWN ENEMY'S 2023] ACTION| WAR| HISTORY| HORROR
King.flixtv
3 years ago
Kursk submarine documentary NEW conspiracy
Sedrf Cfsds2015
10 years ago
Silent Service S01 E28 The Gar Story
ReelMovies
4 months ago
Sinking The WW2 Greatest Supership Yamato | Greatest Naval Disaster | Military Documentary
Documentary Channel
10 years ago
Submarines of World War I
Engineering Tube
5 years ago
Christmas In Big Sky Country 2023 - New Hallmark Movies 2023 - Best Hallmark Christmas Movies 2023
Economics Explained
2 years ago
Blind Mans Bluff_History Channel Documentary
ReelMovies
10 months ago
History Rediscovered Submarines at War_
ReelMovies
1 year ago
Submarine Warfare
ReelMovies
11 months ago
Have Gun Will Travel - S2xE20 - Juliet
ReelMovies
7 hours ago
Herman's Head - S2xE15 - Open All Night
ReelMovies
7 hours ago
Herman's Head - S2xE13 - A Charlie Brown Fitzer
ReelMovies
7 hours ago
Herman's Head - S2xE12 - Feardom of Speech
ReelMovies
8 hours ago
Herman's Head - S2xE10 - Subterranean Homesick Blues
ReelMovies
8 hours ago
Herman's Head - S2xE09 - Friends and Lovers
ReelMovies
13 hours ago
Herman's Head - S2xE08 - The 'C' Word
ReelMovies
14 hours ago
Have Gun Will Travel - S2xE19 - Treasure on the Trail
ReelMovies
14 hours ago