Silent Service - US submarines of WWII

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[Music] world war two in the Pacific began and ended with unforgettable images of destruction Pearl Harbor Hiroshima most of the dramatic action captured on film took place in the air or on the beaches aboard battleships and in dense jungles but another kind of war was fought in the Pacific far removed from the glare of publicity a war in the deep often in the dark of night a war against Japanese troop transports and oil tankers American submarines overcame early crippling deficiencies becoming the ultimate strategic weapon an efficient and deadly silent service San Francisco in the shipyard south of the Embarcadero giant cranes tower above the dry docks and dwarf workers who have seen every type of ship but the vessel in dock number one is unique a visitor from the pages of history a world war two submarine USS pampanito Hall number 383 has been 16 days in try dock for general upkeep a lean and muscular form perched high on blocks pampanito represents the definitive expression of u.s. fleet submarine design a sleek no-nonsense killing machine this submarine was just over 300 feet long had 10 torpedo tubes 6 in the bow four in the stern and County reloads had about 2425 torpedoes submarine was a long-range boat for diesel engines which could give it a surface speed of about 20 knots underwater the electric motors powered by batteries give it a speed of about 10 knots the u.s. fleet boats of the gate Oh and then later the belay Oh class were the best submarines in World War two for long-range operations there were none better okay John you can go ahead and flood it [Music] [Music] flooding of the docks begins in Pampa Neto is gently reclaimed by the sea 1,500 tons of steel borne up by the cool Pacific water built at the Portsmouth Navy Yard in New Hampshire Tampa Neto was commissioned in November 1943 a veteran of six war patrols she is credited with 10 Japanese ships destroyed or damaged she survived severe depth charging and near misses by enemy torpedoes [Music] pampanito is birthed at Fisherman's Wharf where she serves as a floating Museum today her a brief voyage will not go in harm's way but the snap of the flag on her conning tower summons a time fifty years ago when a special breed of sailor took these boats into vast and distant oceans wreaking havoc on the enemy and writing an enduring saga in the annals of naval warfare [Music] the development of what would become tun four-ton this nation's most effective weapon system was hampered by years of geopolitical isolation and bureaucratic inertia although the United States had pioneered submarine use as far back as the revolutionary in civil wars it was not regarded seriously by admirals who equated national power and prestige with grand battle fleets it was not until 1900 following the lead of the French that the US Navy acquired its first practical submarine USS Holland designated as submarine hull number one Holland used a gasoline engine on the surface and a battery fed electric motor when submerged Holland provided the foundation for future American designs but the technology was never received with the enthusiasm shown in Europe by the time of the first world war the United States had only 46 submarines in commission and could barely muster a dozen combat worthy boats to aid in the effort against the very successful German u-boats I don't believe there's any conclusive proof that a u.s. submarine ever engaged a German submarine in World War one by the same token they were just so few surface targets that our submarine contribution in World War one was virtually nil the importance of World War one to the u.s. submarine force was after the war getting as part of reparations German submarines and these formed the basis for our immediate post-war submarine design and construction the success of the German u-boats created a new if somewhat grudging respect for submarines in the u.s. Navy many ambitious officers attracted by the possibility of early command asked for submarine duty in a service dominated by a battleship mentality submarine errs gained an elitist reputation volunteers who thrived on the lack of formality associated with the surface fleet [Music] the submarine which until World War one had been fought off primarily in terms of coastal defense was now being advertised for a larger role working with the fleet not only for forward scouting but for attacking large warships the first experiment in fleet support operations was attempted in 1921 with a squadron of new s-class boats [Music] sailing from the east coast of the United States to Manila s-boats simulated long-held plans to engage the Japanese fleet in Philippine waters plan Orange the test was not successful the voyage to scale fleet operations on range submarine one that could maintain average fleet cruising speed dictated by plan orange at 17 knots the so-called B boats based on German Cruiser designs and using all the German diesel technology available he was a great big thing 371 feet long she mounted 216 flat I thought she was just the most beautiful hip in the world when I was assigned to her he did between 1927 and 1930 enormous by standards of the day they were all so slow these boats were just too big and too awkward for the time the technology wasn't ready for large submarines of that size and the several V boats their success was very limited the shortcomings of the V boats were a bitter disappointment to the submariners who worked recognizing that propulsion was their biggest liability visiting 29 followed the name all high-performance diesel engine five companies jumped at the chance Builders well understood that a diesel engine sized to a small submarine hall could also fit in a railroad locomotive the development in the 30s especially was for longer range boats more reliable engines good habitability because these submarines with their 60 70 75 man crews would have to stay out for two three possibly four months at a time so all of these designs kept improving the capability of operating farther forward in the air the submarine service delivered a truly capable to the s-boats had set out to follow the big ships to Manila ironically in the years ahead the new submarine would eclipse the very fleet's they had strived so long to be part of [Music] I was on the Noor wall the day that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor there were so many little things I did during that David Times it's got away from me finally I went to the mess hall at the submarine base and I could not understand why so many people were standing around in a chow line when an attack was going on I happened to see a clock on the wall and it was five o'clock the attack had started at about 8:00 and was over by oh by 10:00 at the submarines were not targeted on December 7th illustrates the low regard they were held in strategically speaking by most great navies including Japan's [Music] but when Admiral Chester Nimitz assumed command of the Pacific Fleet on December 31 it was aboard the deck of a submarine Grayling Nimitz was himself an old Submariner but the choice was not a sentimental one submarines were the only warships at Pearl Harbor not resting on the bottom or wrecked beyond recognition [Music] within hours of the attack Washington had instructed Navy commanders in the Pacific to commence unrestricted submarine warfare against Japan but submarine errs had been training for a different type of mission scout out ahead of the u.s. fleet look for the enemy's warships and report back try to sink some of the warships before the major fleet engagement and then after the engagement kill off the cripples the fleet boat was to operate in direct support of that big fleet engagement [Music] the fact that the fleet no longer existed effectively nullified a decade of indoctrination it would take two more frustrating years for the submarine force to create strategy and tactics proportionate to the military reality in the meantime the submarines vitchard out to do what they could within one week of Pearl Harbor USS swordfish sank the first Japanese ship a merchantman or Maru five movies were sunk in December six in January 1942 and four in February the numbers he rose slowly the sinking of the Japanese Navy also came slowly on January 27 1942 the gudgeon sank the first Japanese warship the submarine I won 7-3 returning to Japan from shelling the west coast of the United States fleet submarines arrived in Pacific waters in greater numbers the older boats were grad team 42 Narwhal was undergoing some of the submarine Guiteau the lead boat in her class the four smaller engines as compared to two large ones as many previous boats head she hadn't all welded submarines did not also they had a lot of more modern equipment because they well they were built from 20 years after the narwhal they also had a lot less room than than all hauled it the esprit de corps that had long sustained the submarine survey requirements were rigorous in no way softened by the increased demand for crew members first gen Elijah and that was a toughest part they they were the ones to scream they wanted once you got past the psychiatrist and they the submarines fourth New London was run by an old chief man if he washed you out you was room for everything on a submarine except a mistake and he made sure after we gained enough general knowledge of them they usually old old boats our boats in fact the first dive that I made in Long Island Sound and we went under and the water started to pour in that submarine and I looked at the man that was working there and I said hey light it'll stop them probably the most feared structure in New London was the 138 foot tower used to teach emergency ascent techniques using a rebreathing apparatus called a mumps and Lawson will level the physical laws of pressure and buoyancy that governed their world doctor I'd enlisted crewmen was found wanting in some of their commanders which combined with the lack of effective tactics reduced considerably the effectiveness of u.s. submarines in night there were a marine commanders to go out and push their people push their submarines get into the enemy's one classic case of a submarine skipper asking himself the question can I do it coming up with the answer no and then asking to be relieved of command u.s. submarines could not prevent or even slow the Japanese advance into the Philippines although they did evacuate civilians and key military personnel from Bataan and Corregidor as the Japanese extended their conquests they exposed their fleets more and more to submarine attack but between 40 to only three surface warships were destroyed and 35 merchants the Battle of Midway in June proved even more of a disappointment [Music] put out a Spring Fling to detect the Japanese carriers in our ears in their escorts again going back to the classic role a complete submarine of intercepting the enemy fleet as it approached I believe we had about 17 submarines in the screen around Midway only one submarine made contact with the Japanese force fired one torpedo from the fleet boat in during that year one-third of all u.s. submarine captains were relieved of command in January 1943 Admiral Charles Lockwood assumed command of Pacific submarine forces at Pearl Harbor he had been in submarine since 1914 and understood them better than anyone else in the Navy he had the psychological problems of dealing with submarine errs who were unprepared for unrestricted submarine warfare he had to fight a war that we were just unprepared to fight the submarine war of the Pacific it was a good leader of men he bit the bullet as they say fired submarine commanders and others move people around when he had to and he got the submarine forced to fit into the fleet picture under Admiral Nimitz Lockwood did not try to run his submarine forced separate from the rest of the Navy and it's hard to think of any submarine commander who could have done a better job than Admiral Lockwood did new tactics and organization would not completely solve the problems faced by the submarine force it remained a fundamental first days of the war problem with torpedoes the submarines that only deployed of good tactics the design of their primary weapon had been compromised by arrogance and negligence during the First World War German u-boats sank ten battleships and 18 cruisers navies began strengthening the sides of their major warships with armor plating and by the 1920s it was unlikely that a torpedo impact on the side of such a vessel would cause much damage you can put three four torpedoes on upside of a battleship and it doesn't affect it but one torpedo which would explode underneath the ship would break the back the United States work began on an advanced torpedo for the new v-class fleet boats [Music] in addition to a conventional contact exploder the new torpedo would feature a magnetic exploder that would theoretically detonate beneath an enemy ship the Navy Bureau of ordnance consistently denied access to old warships on which to test the magnetic exploder budgetary constraints were cited even though surplus battleships were regularly being blasted in aerial bombing tests maybe Department says no we can't spend that much money we'll find another sip well how about an old Cruiser no a destroyer no and finally they got an old derelict submarine that the engine has been taken out of all the equipment had been taken out of and so they fired two torpedoes at it the first one passed underneath the target and failed to explode the second one went to the target and exploded and sunk the ship the the torpedo was never tested again because the torpedo cost ten thousand dollars so we went into the loop with a torpedo that had a 50 percent failure rate for the very secret magnetic exploder it was one of the most intricate weapons of the war ribbon mark 14 had a range of 4,500 the mark 14th rapido was detonated two ways by contact when it hit an enemy ship to an enemy ship and the Magnetic exploder was involved with the ship's magnetic field twenty-one inches in diameter almost 21 feet long a good effective torpedo when it worked the problem is when the war started it didn't work - had used them in combat believed that the mark 14 was running too deep boat you're following correct procedures worked out whether to where to lay the blame bureaucracy and instructed torpedo Minh to disengage the magnetic exploder which was suspected of premature detonation when we took a load of torpedoes that we were forbidden to mess with the explicit but they knew that we were doing it and so they you could use little tricks and one of the things they did when they put in the screws to hold the the explode of mechanism into the the warhead and they would put little dabs of green paint now if you remove that that paint would be disturbed we would go to the torpedo man in the torpedo shop and they said what color paint are you using on their torpedoes where we use them blue that will give us a little can of blue paint because we want to take them apart and make them work and then if we bring them back we'll paint them of blue again the closest thing to a control laboratory test of the mark 14 occurred in July 1943 the submarine 10 osa attacks a large tanker fires 15 torpedoes at 15 most of them hit one detonates damages the tanker finally the Pacific leadership had one of the submarines go out in the Hawaiian Islands find a cliff that went straight down into the water fired a series of torpedoes carefully marking the angles they were firing them at the cliff came back with the report it turns out both exploders the magnetic and contact were failing almost all of the time we also found out later that the torpedoes that we had ran 10 to 11 feet deeper than they were set for it would take until October of 1943 for a Bureau of ordnance to correct deficiencies in the mark 1420 months of frustration of lost opportunity Coral Sea way the Solomons campaign all of these engagements where we were destroying the Japanese fleet were done without submarine participation but beginning in the spring of 43 once we got good torpedoes doctrine was developed proper doctrine was developed and we had aggressive skippers then it was a submariner stream we were killing Japanese the very prodigious rate if US submarine employment in the critical early days of the war was ineffective at least one mitigating factor was the inept way Japan used its own submarines possessed of an early advantage in numbers and technology particularly in their powerful long-range torpedo the Japanese failed to mount an organized campaign against vulnerable allied supply lines Germans repeatedly emphasized the effectiveness of submarines against cargo ships but the Japanese considered merchantman as unworthy - then the only honorable target for a submarine was an enemy warship [Music] it is almost beyond comprehension that amidst the depredations of war an island nation like Japan failed to attack the sea lanes of her enemies or protect her own by the end of 1943 the torpedo problems that had nearly destroyed the submarines operational capability had been corrected reliable weapons been filled a new confidence in crews new spirit combined with an equally effective strategy since the Neuse on japanese resupply efforts us submarines hit their stride in the Pacific a routine of long patrols punctuated by furious combat tiny boats in a vast and hostile sea new aggressive commanders were increasingly successful in their relentless pursuit of Japanese targets we got a new captain captain oakley and captain oakley said from now on we're gonna change things we're gonna dive quicker and that's what happened we went down about ten seconds quicker which was a lot well we had a commander aboard to check out the routine and he was used to slow dives and he proceeded to go down the ladder but his belt caught on the ladder and he wanted to go up to releases his belt but three men were riding his shoulders and I looked at Oakley and the water is beginning to come up on the bridge and he said and I jumped on him on their shoulders and the weight of us broke his belt and that man went down to the conning tower and everyone piled on top of him we closed the hatch with water coming in but he never said a word but he never went up on the bridge anymore either [Music] in 1944 u.s. submarines sank more than 600 Japanese ships almost three million tons more than in 1941 through 1943 combined the increased success was due in no small measure for the submarine secret weapon cryptographic intelligence an effort that had been ongoing since 1921 during the naval arms limitation conference in Washington DC the Office of Naval Intelligence and FBI secretly photographed Japanese Navy code books [Music] through continuous effort the Navy was able to break all succeeding codes to the point in 1943 where most Japanese naval and merchant marine messages were being read at Pearl Harbor this intelligence was called ultra it was like being able to read the enemy's schedule we could then vector direct our submarines to areas where we knew there would be a Japanese convoy or a japanese naval force passing this was a tremendous advantage for us ultra was so sensitive that only the senior officers had access to the ciphers used for decoding transmissions everything came over in what most people call Morse code de da da da da da that sort of stuff and if we came across one that had our call sign on it we would immediately call the coding officer who would take that message and decipher it and present it to the skipper I personally didn't know anything about it because I wasn't involved in encrypting in any way or deciphering all I knew was the messages would come in I would copy them and pass them along to the officer for decrypting nobody really knew where they got the information from just we would think that they got it from another submarine I didn't know anything about an ultra until after the war I never heard of it even with good intelligence the vast expanse of ocean required submarines to go thousands of miles from their bases in Hawaii in Australia for months at a time they had to be self-sufficient there were set watches but at any time they could be forced to go to General Quarters it was watch on watch off the submarine never dropped anchor in a forward area never slowed down it was always on patrol on alert for the 30 or 60 days so it was away from port radio men like everybody else had to qualify we had to know pretty much how to fire torpedoes how to handle the diving stations in the control room and this of course is in addition to the battle stations in the event of the confrontation with an enemy you might drop your regular job and become a gun pointer a gun trainer an ammunition pastor or something like that sustaining 80 men for months at a time was serious business just getting enough food on board was a challenge the submarines were never designed for that much food that length of time and I was stored in every nook and cranny possible and the old joke was that there was a fire the torpedo should get to the food they were heavy starchy meals twist steak and big ham turkey fried chicken stews was a pretty heavy fare and they still lost weight sometimes you went weeks and weeks and weeks without seeing a thing or you might hit a heavy weather you don't see a thing you just you're just surviving the air that you breathe has been breathed before by somebody else so headaches are bound water is scarce so bathing is not too common you can use salt water which tends to break your skin out and all this time you're passing through you're going through enemy territories the pre-war tactics of attacking from 100 foot depths using sonar had given way to periscope depth and even night surface attacked with new SJ search radar that pierced the darkness it's much easier to attack on the surface because our fleet boats could do 20 knots on the surface only 10 not submerged and that tend not submerged by the way was for about one hour or less after that you had a slow to a crawl two or three knots so the tactical advantages of being able to operate on the surface up to 20 knots maneuver much more radically this gave us a tremendous advantage in night operations against the Japanese if you spotted a ship you couldn't just move in on it you might have a be at a disadvantage and you would probably be seen by the escorts so what you had to do was the parallel that course so you worked just over the horizon and you kept the radar contact on then when you got there course plotted you knew exactly where they would be in 30 minutes or an hour or by in ten o'clock at night and there you were waiting it's hard to describe the feeling that you get when you do sing something because all that tension leaves your buddy you'll feel good that you accomplished something that you didn't waste all those weeks and weeks and weeks of inactivity after each patrol the submarine would undergo a refit typically two weeks during which the entire crew would go on R&R depending on the location rest facilities ranged from acquaint the best beachfront property on Waikiki the Royal Hawaiian hotel the Navy took it over made it the home for submarine errs when they were off their boats and for the couple of weeks they were on the beach while their submarine was being maintained and replenished they live like kings then it was as the rest enlisted and it was out for 60 days and most of it in enemy waters but they were select crew well-fed the Navy thought highly of them the leadership took care of them each time a boat left on patrol 25% of its crew would be rotated out replaced by new volunteers green and untested this was command policy the combat effectiveness of the submarine service required the survival of at least some experienced men Nicolle calculus of war submarines were expendable by mid 1944 the Navy and Marine Corps island-hopping thrust across the Central Pacific and General Douglas MacArthur's advance into the Philippines had contracted the Japanese defense perimeter [Music] Japan's Navy and Merchant Marine were sustaining heavy losses and us submarines penetrants over half of all submarine losses have heard in the last 18 months of the war while fewer maruzen tankers were to be found at sea long-range b-29 bombers operating initially from China and India were striking at Japan's heartland in 1945 b-29s began flying from the islands of Tinian and Saipan in the Central Pacific submarines were increasingly used to support the b-29s in an effort known as the lifeguard league for each mission against Japan at least three submarines were positioned along the route of flight to pick up aviators forced to ditch on May 25 1945 lieutenant john mr. lee a lead navigator and Tinian based b-29s embarked on another combat mission it would end two months later completing a bombing run over Tokyo mr. Lee's planes sustained heavy damage from flak and Japanese fighters the crew knew they would not make it back to base or to a waiting lifeguard our ditching point was approximately 100 miles south of the bay of Tokyo and there was a lot of enemy activity a lot of other ships and everything while retrieving survival equipment from inside the airplane mr. Lee's crew already in life rats drifted away he was alone in enemy waters [Music] my first thought was not to be captured by the Japanese I knew what the treatment might be during the daylight hours your hope was magnified in the nighttime hours your you'd go down to the bottom the depths of your despair and at on occasions that see airplanes flying over notably b-29s going on targets and I kept the hope alive that they must know where I am and finally on my eighth day I was fishing them all of a sudden the most god-awful noise occurred there was a tremendous hissing and roaring sound that the great huge massive metal surface behind me knocked me on my boat scaring the half to death and at that point in time I said just somebody take me now well luckily it was an American submarine when they did pick me up brought me aboard my legs were pretty rubbery I hadn't been standing obviously and I was being helped and the skipper called out from the bridge and called me by name rescue notwithstanding once the submarine was on station it was still a war patrol I became a part of that crew in short order I started immediately after they they got me back on my feet to start conditioning me to learn the different portions and of the submarine and how they interacted with each other and within a period of about two two and a half weeks I was put to work and I was actually standing watch it with my own crew and I was after a short period the considered as one of the crew and all the little jokes and and fun was over and I was thought of as just another JG on a submarine and I kind of felt that way I wore their clothing and started thinking like I was a navy officer within the depths of the sea the conduct of war was more selective more discriminating that at 20,000 feet and had a terror all its own you didn't want to think a destroyer when you get hit a cruiser and that was what we were after and and we eventually did sink that ship but we weren't there to watch it either we were running for our lives and we were attacked by the destroyers the concussion from these depth charges is unless you felt it or heard it it's hard to describe it it's frightening a lot more frightening to me than I was being shot at from the ground in the air both night rolled 3040 degrees terrorize you just you don't know whether you're gonna live or die until it's all over death could come in many ways to a submarine but perhaps none so cruelly ironic as befell tang on her fifth war patrol she had already sunk 12 ships most successful patrol of any u.s. submarine when she attacked a transport with her last two torpedoes we felt the quiver of the boat which meant that one of the torpedoes had been fired and shortly after that by a second quiver and a second torpedo had been fired and we knew right then and there well that was the end of our torpedoes and we were gonna be four and less and circle all of a sudden we felt this horrific explosion and the boat started settling down on the stern which meant that we've been hit somewhere back aft struck in the stern by her own torpedo and flooding severely tang settled on the bottom Jessie de Silva was one of approximately thirty men who made it into the forward torpedo room from the escape chamber located there 13 men attempted an ascent to the surface using the Mommsen lungs they had been trained with at New London five survived DeSilva was the last one the conditions were bad it was bad lighting there was smoke and a lot of people were choking gagging and either they had a battery explosion or something but we'll never know exactly how or why no one else escaped at its peak the silent service comprise just 2% of Navy personnel yet it accounted for over half of all sinkings it cut off the supply of Japanese oil and saved over 500 Airmen success exact at a heavy toll the highest fatality rate in the military 3,500 officers and men 52 submarines overed you know that they're there the submarine offensive against Japan was primarily a war against Commerce not for command or control of the sea but its impact on the Japanese war machine was decisive the qualities that made the submarine effective in 1944 are even more compelling today in a global industrial economy spanning over 139 million square miles of ocean 71% of the earth's surface is home to these silent predators of the deep [Music]

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Channel: War Documentaries

Views: 103,258

Rating: 4.4716158 out of 5

Keywords: war documentaries, Silent Service - US submarines of WWII, Silent Service, US submarines of WWII

Id: BcGD1acLY50

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Length: 39min 49sec (2389 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 27 2018

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