Hellcats

That’s a good point. I really didn’t understand the author’s point of view (if only in not noting the bloody obvious). Far riskier and deadlier ventures had already been undertaken in the Pacific. Name whatever the latest island was that the Marines took at great cost, for instance. How about the attempt to get (which they did) Yamamoto. Or the riskiest attack of all that started the whole campaign: Doolittle’s Raiders. The author seemed to be going out of his way to be a wet noodle in regards to offering analysis and context.

It seems to me the watchword for the war in the pacific was pressure, pressure, pressure. Here. There. Everywhere. It’s a big ocean. Keep putting pressure on the Japanese. And, as I noted and the book noted, the submarines themselves were enormously successful at taking out the merchant marine as well many Japanese front-line vessels.

There were two choices: Blockade or invasion. And certainly any sort of blockade would aid an invasion by starving the Japanese of supplies. And the possibility existed that the Japanese could unconditionally surrender seeing the writing on the wall. The would be literally surrounded.

It was interesting to read some of Nimitz’s thinking on the subject of the bomb. At first he gave it little regard. It may have been mentioned that he considered the thought, as you did, of whether it would actually go off or not. All kinds of things could have gone wrong (and did regarding the USS Indianapolis, for instance, including other things that could have happened as you mentioned). And the Japanese were extremely stubborn. (And, in fact, the one bomb seemed to have little effect.) But when he was shown the top-secret video of the first successful test, Nimitz truly was in awe and knew this weapon would be decisive. Seeing is believing, for sure.

And there was urgency to gain the upper hand should Russia declare war on Japan. Having a force in the Sea of Japan (possession 9/10ths of the law) had to be on King’s and Nimitz’s minds. And there was some light analysis in the book in this regard. And there would have been more if not for the flood of those letters between Mr. and Mrs. Edge.

As other reviewers noted, didn’t the author care about what any of the other crew members on any of the other subs thought? I’m not sure why the fixation on the Edge's letters. And once you had read one, you had read them all. Again (forgive my misogyny….or just reality) but this seems like another guy writing for the female audience.

Still, I found the book fact-filled and written well. One can always skip the letters. I didn’t. But upon reflection, that would be my advice to anyone reading the book.

The description of the subs getting into the Sea of Japan is a little sketchy. The author doesn’t paint the clearest picture of the operation. But once they do get into the Sea of Japan, you enter the most interesting part of the book and you get much more of a detailed description of what went on. They didn’t know what to expect. They weren’t even sure there would be many targets. In fact, the follow-up operation by another set of boats found almost no targets.

But there were targets galore on this first mission. There were there for the pickin’s although they did have to dodge a few depth charges. But mostly they were pro forma rolled off of various Jap ships ineffectively.

When they began their attacks, they weren’t sure whether there would be a large and coordinated response from anti-submarine forces when word got out that there were American subs operating in the Sea of Japan. They were surprised that there was not. They did run into a few traps set for the subs here and there. But mostly they had the run of the entire sea and could sink whatever they found that was worth a $10,000 torpedo. Many times they would just use their guns to take care of smaller craft.

The scene is bizarre at times. The would often surface and be surround by dozens of small fishing boats who gave them no notice, figuring, I guess, that it was a Japanese sub…if they even saw it at all. And the larger ships were not sitting ducks, per se, because often enough the torpedoes would either not explode or go off course. But they got their share.

It really was a slaughter. Having recently read about the Lusitania, as you had mentioned, the Germans had little over the subs in the Pacific in regards to taking out civilians. I don’t know if it was a description of an attack prior to this mission or during the mission, but at one point a sub torpedoed and sunk a large Japanese ferry or passenger liner.

The Jap merchant marine ships were almost comical in how they went down. They described one ship as receiving a torpedo and not slowing down one bit. It just kept forward at speed and got lower and lower in the water and just disappeared under it. Another ship was cracked in half by a torpedo and both sides just flopped away and immediately sunk.

Many times they counted very few survivors. Some of the boats completely sank within a minute or less. Few of the men had much time to get to lifeboats. It was a slaughter. And yet the author shied away from even commenting on this. I’m not squeamish. They had it coming. But it was a slaughter.

Again, I do recommend this book. But that’s a real reminder of where it fails. The author mentions B-29s mining some of the channels and harbors. The submarines on Operation Barney (the incursion into the Sea of Japan by 9 American submarines) had maps of the areas minded by the B-29s. But there was very little information in the book other than that they had mined. I would have loved to know more about how aerial mining worked, what the mines looked like, if they were free-floating or anchored to the seabed, how long they were good for, what type of mines they were (magnetic?), etc.

But instead we get these endless love letters passed between the Edges.



There’s an account of a dud bouncing off one of the Jap ships they were trying to sink. It was at night. The sailors on the ship heard a “thunk” and thought they had hit something. They Americans on the subs watched them shining spotlights on their own hull to see if they could see anything. Lucky them.

I hadn’t heard of the sinking of the Shinano. That sounds interesting. In this book they had all kinds of interesting (even horrifying) descriptions of the various ways ships went down. Mostly they went down fairly fast.

Here’s Wiki’s entry on the Shinano:



When it rains it pours, I guess. Here’s another interesting fact:



The book mentions that at the end of the war the submariners (pronounced at the time, and I think more logically, “sub-muh-REEN-ers”) got to look at the latest Jap subs. The Japs had completed only three of the I-400-class submarines. The amenities for the sailors were said to be sparse but the boats incredibly capable. They even could launch several aircraft from them, principally the Aichi M6A Seiran.



And in order to do so, the conning tower was off-center to port which meant the helmsman had to steer several degrees to starboard just to go straight. The subs had a tremendous range. They could go anywhere in the world and back on a tank of fuel. Overall, this class of sub was an impressive beast.

Ooops.

The FMS (FM Sonar) that Lockwood was instrumental in shepherding along in its development ended up working rather well. I’m trying to find more info on that. Will report back.

That's a lot of bang-for-the-buck from a torpedo.

I did finally find a short article on FM Sonar. It sounds like I’m running this book down after already having praised it. But this short explanation is far more informative than what is found in the book:



That’s an interesting technology. It did make clear in the book that this kind of sonar had only a couple seconds of lag between 360 degree sweeps rather than the longer lag of whatever sonar they were using at the time. It had other advantages as well, although I don’t recall the specific.

But certainly in the hands of a trained operator it was intuitive and quite nifty:



This article explains the advantages of FM a little more:



Indeed, a nifty technology….and full of vacuum tubes. It was hell’s bells to keep them working and get them tuned. The interior of a submarine is not friendly to electronics.

Hell’s Bells.


So far I have not been able to find a photo of the equipment or the sonar screen in action (or even in inaction).