Surface and Destroy: The Submarine Gun War in the Pacific

Conclusion

Conclusion Writing of Allied bomber attacks on Hamburg, Keith Lowe suggests that the Second World War might in some senses be framed as a battle between the urge to total destruction and the attempt to keep such extreme instincts in check.1 The submarine gun war exemplifies a similar battle between competing impulses. Contrary to the often clinical representations of the submarine war in the Pacific, submariners prosecuted the war with an often callous indifference to human life. In a postwar interview, Charles Loughlin, skipper of the USS Queenfish, conceded that “some of our submarines did some pretty bad things during World War II.”2 But, to borrow John Dower’s phrase, it was not entirely a war without mercy. Many submariners felt the elation of combat even as they experienced fear of death, not infrequently describing attacks in aesthetic terms.3 When the USS Seahorse attacked a small schooner with its five-inch and 40 mm guns in April 1945, the patrol report noted, “Our tracers made a beautiful sight ricocheting into the dark sky after sunset.”4 Similarly, when the USS Blenny sank a junk with one five-inch shell, the patrol report described the hit as making “a beautiful explosion of illuminated grain about 200 feet in air.”5 After the USS Puffer set off a series of explosions by firing its five-inch gun at barges loaded with aviation gasoline off the coast of Bali in July 1945, Commander Carl R. Dwyer described the scene as “magnificent.” Dwyer enthused that it was the “most amazing sight” he witnessed during the war.6 In part, submariners were enthralled by their weapons’ firepower . When the USS Segundo made contact with a four-masted sailing Conclusion 171 vessel off the coast of Korea, the crew initially tried to sink it with a torpedo. After the torpedo missed, the Segundo crew opened up with the 40 mm guns from only about 300 yards, quickly leaving the vessel a sinking wreck. Clearly pleased by their deadly accuracy, the writer of the patrol report exclaimed, “These guns are superb and wicked.”7 When the Segundo got into a gunfight with two patrol vessels a week later, the guns were again praised as doing “a beautiful job.”8 The “beauty” of attacks referred not only to the sheer visual spectacle but, at least implicitly, to the destruction of the enemy. Roy Davenport, commander of the USS Haddock, recalled a coordinated attack made on a convoy with the USS Segundo and USS Razorback on 6–7 December 1944: “It was a truly beautiful three hours of action with ships blowing up simultaneously all around the horizon. To have had the pleasure of seeing this entire convoy destroyed was something we’d always hoped to see.”9 Some submariners expressed regret at the loss of life when they torpedoed a ship, but most often it became a matter for celebration. As explained by Dale Russell, a torpedoman on the USS Flying Fish, “[T]here was little or no thought of the people who had been on the vessel.”10 Contrary to the reckoning of battles between land forces, which emphasized body counts, naval accounting focused on ships destroyed rather than loss of life.11 Landon L. Davis Jr. of the USS Pampanito noted: “It is quite seldom in the submarine navy that we come in contact with the actual so-called horrors and disagreeable side of war. We go merrily along and sink a ship and then go under the waves and never see the result of the thing.”12 The soundmen might hear the gruesome noises of a ship breaking up and occasionally even the screams of its crew, but most submariners kept the reality of death at a distance. Lewis Parks, recalling his time on the Parche as a wolf pack commander, noted the macabre incongruity: a series of devastating attacks killing thousands of enemy sailors was followed by the crew eating celebratory cream puffs.13 Attitudes could change, however, when crews came into close contact with the survivors. After the USS Balao sank a trawler with gunfire on the morning of 18 March 1945, nine men were spotted 172 Surface and Destroy in the water with the capsized vessel. The patrol report confessed, “There is little joy in seeing one’s enemies freezing to death.”14 Dale Russell of the Flying Fish recalled that after sinking a ship in fog...