Sub: An Oral History of US Navy Submarines

Book by Roberts Mark

“SURFACE! SURFACE!”

We blew out the tanks and were able to get part of the way up. The pharmacist’s mate was able to close the lower conning tower hatch, which stopped the water from coming down into the control room. However, before we fully surfaced, we had flooded the pump room, and taken in about a foot and a half of water into the control room.

As a result we lost all hydraulics, radar—we didn’t have any surface coverage. The air search radar was the only electronics we had because it was up in the control tower, above the water.

What was really bad was that we couldn’t make air to breathe, and we had to survive on the air we had in the bottles. Each compartment has a way to open and close the ballast tanks, so we had to do hand dives into the compartments to reach those valves. We were crawling around in dark compartments, wearing Momson Lungs, with watertight battle lanterns, searching for those petcocks.

Everybody was hoping he could hold his breath long enough to find those valves....

—Stanley J. Nicholls, LCDR, USN (Ret.)

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SUB

AN ORAL HISTORY OF
U.S. NAVY SUBMARINES

MARK ROBERTS

BERKLEY CALIBER, NEW YORK

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

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PRINTING HISTORY

Berkley Caliber hardcover editon / April 2007

Berkley Caliber trade paperback editon / April 2008

The Library of Congress has catalogued the Berkley Caliber hardcover editon as follows:

Roberts, Mark K.

Sub : an oral history of U.S. Navy submarines/By Mark K. Roberts.

p.   cm.

ISBN: 978-1-101-66423-0

1. United States. Navy—Submarine forces—History. 2. United States. Navy—Submarine forces—Biography. 3. Oral history. I. Title.

V858.R63 2007

359.9’30973—dc22

INTRODUCTION

Since the first drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, men have dreamed of an underwater vessel suitable for transportation and use as a weapon of war. The first truly effective “submersible” saw service in the American Civil War and managed to sink several surface ships. Yet it remained far distant from the ultimate, which we will examine later in the SSN-class boats. By 1940, the submarine was a far more sophisticated craft than in any of da Vinci’s wildest dreams.

On the eve of WWII, the United States Navy Submarine Service still used boats from the WWI era for training and as some fleet boats. There were some more modern boats available, built in the 1930s, but they also followed the design plans of the boats built between 1918 and 1920. Cramped and crowded, they smelled horribly after even a short cruise. The torpedoes they fired were hit-and-miss at best, totally ineffective at worst.

Within these pages you will read the remarkable stories of some of the men who served with such valor through World War II, Korea, the Cold War, Gulf One, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Life on a submarine is not all adventure and excitement. Frequently it is dull, monotonous routine. There is constant training to keep the edge; there’s always equipment and machinery to repair, spaces to be cleaned, and the daily tasks of living to be attended to. However, a huge difference exists between life on shore or on a large vessel like an aircraft carrier, and life in a submarine.

An artist’s rendition of the USS Grayback releasing UDT-carrying SDVs while still underwater. Courtesy of United States Navy

For example, taking a shower—something most people take for granted—is a major undertaking in a sub. In the early boats, they might be taken once or twice during a patrol. It was impossible to wash clothing, and men continued to sweat and produce odors, hence the derogatory name for the sub, “Pig Boat.” When the nuclear subs came along, the quantity of fresh water produced daily greatly increased. The advent of washing machines also helped to make the atmosphere more pleasant, as did improved air filtration equipment.

Through it all, though, the men and the boats they served in remained tough and resolute. Meet them now.

A sailor eating a sandwich beneath the propellers of a torpedo being loaded aboard a U.S. submarine at New London, Connecticut, August 1943.

Courtesy of United States Navy

Gold dolphins are worn by officers, silver by enlisted ranks.

Courtesy of United States Navy

1

JOSEPH MCGRIEVY

COMMANDER, USN (RET.)

Joe McGrievy went from seaman recruit in 1943 to retirement as full commander in 1989.

His training consisted mostly of On the Job Training (OJT) aboard diesel subs and classroom work in the crew’s quarters. Like his friend Stan Nicholls, by the time Joe McGrievy arrived on station at Midway, very few Japanese cargo and tanker vessels remained to pick on; combat vessels were even harder to find. More adventure awaited McGrievy after the war, when he served in nuclear subs off the coast of Vietnam during that country’s conflict.

One day, when I was a kid, I looked out on the sidewalk in St. Louis and saw a big man coming up the way with a sea bag on his shoulder and a very large, flat hat. That was my cousin Harry. He had just completed a tour of duty on the Asiatic Fleet. He gave me his dress blue jumper. I put that on and my grandmother couldn’t get it off me. Even to take a bath, she couldn’t get it off me. That made a big impression on a kid, because I always wanted to be in the navy. Always.

When I hit eighteen...I was eighteen on June 14, 1936. I joined the navy on August 17, 1936. I went to Great Lakes, Illinois, for my boot training. When I completed my boot training, my first ship was the USS Holland, a submarine tender, AS-3. I got on board the Holland as a seaman second class; I made first class on my second try. There were only 480,000 people in the navy at the time. Whenever I worked overside in my undress blues, I could see these submarines tied up alongside. The crew was sitting up topside in dungarees, having their ten o’clock soup and coffee.

I told myself, “I think I’d like that.”

As time went by, I became involved with signal instruction. I worked with the signalmen and quartermasters who worked as signalmen. We worked with the signal lamps—flashing lights—and with semaphore flags. This close association gave me the chance to stand watch on both the tender and the subs, which offered me an opportunity to learn more about the submarine service.

One day, one of the sub guys came up to me and said, “Hey, Joe, how’d you like to come down for lunch?”

I told him yes and went on board the sub, the USS Pickerel. We went down below and he took me in and introduced me to the executive officer.

Then he says, “Mr. Executive Officer, here’s the guy you’ve been looking for. He’s a seaman first class and a signalman striker.” The exec agreed, so I put in my papers for a transfer and joined that sub crew.

We took the Pickerel up to Alaska in 1937 and began sounding the bottom. We didn’t know why we were doing it, then. It was presented as something that needed to be done for safe underwater navigation in the future; those soundings off Alaska and the Aleutian Islands were part of it. I was permanently attached to the Pickerel and served in her on the Asiatic Station until my enlistment ran out. Earlier, when we got the word about new construction, I went to the captain and told him I would extend my enlistment for new construction. I received my term in construction and went back to Portsmouth [NS Portsmouth, Maine] to put the USS Searaven (SS 196) in commission.

USS Pickerel (SS 177) at sea.

Courtesy of United States Navy

USS Searaven (SS 196).

Courtesy of United States Navy

By then, I had been married for a while. Our daughter was born on August 1, 1941, and on August 27 we left port. We arrived in San Diego, where we were supposedly stationed. We stayed a week and shipped out for Pearl Harbor. We stayed there for two weeks, and then we were on our way out to the Asiatic Station. Ironically enough, I tied up right alongside the ship I’d just left: the Pickerel. The guys aboard the Pickerel got a big laugh out of that. Our sub flotilla tied up in the Philippines. In fact, I was in Manila Bay the day the war started. At that time, I was a second class signalman. I qualified in submarines and then along came the war.

We left Manila on December 11 and we went out on our first patrol run. We weren’t sure what the hell would happen. We had never even fought a war. We hadn’t even conditioned ourselves to fight a war. Our skipper would not even let the chow barge come alongside because he was worried that someone might carry a hand grenade or something on board, so we had just what chow we had. We had our torpedoes to put aboard, because we’d just off-loaded [for maintenance] and we were scheduled to relieve the Sealion and the Seadragon at the navy yard at Cavite with the Searaven and the Seawolf. So, anyway, we reloaded our torpedoes and took on some chow from the Kanopus and got underway.

Our first run lasted forty-eight days and it was a pitiful thing. We ran out of coffee; we ran out of cigarettes. It was terrible because our skipper did not know anything about fighting a war. I thought the war would be over in about three weeks, that we would whip the Japs, but it didn’t happen that way. As it was, I ended up making four runs on the Searaven. Our skipper was relieved after the second run, and Hiram Cassidy took over. Cassidy was, at the time, executive officer on the Sailfish, which was the old Whalen. Frank Walker was our exec at the time we made our third patrol run. And that’s when we got some shooting done.

We left Fremantle, Australia, and entered our patrol area off the Philippines. When we were under water most of the day, the crew knew little about what went on. It was one of those things that the ship’s company didn’t know very much about. It was strictly the captain and the exec, although I was in the conning tower on the helm as my battle station. We acquired a target, and judging from the headings I was being given, I was convinced we were lining up a shot. Suddenly, I heard, “Fire torpedoes! Fire torpedoes!” We got one hit on the ship and that was it. Right away, we went deep because, once again, we didn’t know how to fight a war.

USS Sailfish (SS 192) on patrol in 1943.

Courtesy of United States Navy

We went back into Fremantle and were told that on our next patrol we would be going to Corregidor. “You’re going to take fifty tons of three-inch ammunition up there, which they need to fight airplanes,” our exec told us.

So we loaded fifty tons of boxed three-inch fifty-caliber high-explosive shells in the fore and aft torpedo rooms, and off we went. There were no ladders leading up to the wardroom; only the engine room and the after battery had ladders to the topside. We got about one-fourth of the way from Corregidor and we got word that the defenses had surrendered.

At that point, we were told to go out to our usual patrol area. When we reached it and began patrol runs, we were contacted again and told to stop what we were doing and go to the island of Timor to rescue some Australian flyers whose plane had been downed.

Let me give a little background on this patrol assignment:

Somewhere on the island of Timor, a transport had landed and discharged a group of Australian Air Force personnel. These men had been sent to beef up the base maintenance group, which had arrived at Timor earlier in September 1941. They quickly settled into their barracks and enjoyed good solid meals served by Timorese waiters. They were experiencing another culture, drinking in both the island’s beauty and beer.

About this same time, the submarine Searaven (SS 196), with an American crew of about sixty-five men and officers, was operating in and around the seas surrounding the Philippine Islands. Fully aware of the possibility of war, all units of the Asiatic Fleet were on full wartime footing. From the vantage of hindsight, we can look and wonder at the part fate played in the lives of these two groups.

As mentioned above, on December 7, Pearl Harbor Day—actually December 8 in the Western Pacific—Searaven was preparing to enter the Cavite Naval Shipyard for a short upkeep and overhaul period. Suddenly, with little or no warning, bombs rained down on the capital city of Manila and the American ships in Manila Bay, and the war was on.

Over the next year, the superior Japanese forces moved rapidly, extending their will and power throughout the entire Southwestern Pacific region, from the Philippines to the Great Barrier Reef just north of Australia. The Philippines, Borneo, Celebes, New Guinea, Java, and Timor were the constant targets of the Japanese Navy men-o’-war and the swift and deadly Zeros of the carrier forces. An invasion of paratroopers and, finally, a landing of army troops during continual bombing and strafing followed. This was the fate that befell Timor as it became a Japanese stronghold.

Before retreating from the oncoming Japanese forces, the Aussie Air For...