The USS Flier: Death and Survival on a World War II Submarine

18. Fallout

129 18 Fallout While the Flier was heading toward disaster in August 1944, the crew of the Crevalle was heading back to Fremantle for two weeks of rest and recreation. On the last night of their leave, a ship’s party was held at the Cabarita Restaurant, where, for the most part, the crew remained well behaved and sober. The Crevalle’s skipper , Frank Walker, led a sing-along accompanied by the Cabarita band. That evening’s conclusion contrasted sharply with the wild scene at an officers’ party a week earlier. The wardrooms from four submarines, including the Crevalle, had gathered at Molinari ’s Restaurant on the outskirts of Perth. After much drinking, the submariners’ Australian dates were encouraged to play an old game from the Naval Academy: the women had to change sides under the table as quickly as possible, dragging their chairs along with them. Tables were overturned, and a food fight erupted. The restaurant’s owner ordered the submariners out, but many departed only after hoisting their dates above their shoulders to leave lipstick imprints on the restaurant’s white ceiling. The crew of the Crevalle returned to duty on 23 August and received the sobering news of the Flier’s loss. The Crevalle had transited Balabac Strait on its last three war patrols. In fact, on 6 May the submarine had sunk Japan’s largest tanker, the 17,000-ton Nisshin Maru, in the strait. At least one Crevalle officer, William 130 The USS Flier Ruhe, wondered whether their own lack of incident in navigating Balabac Strait had made other submarines less vigilant in avoiding the mines known to lie on either side of the channel.1 On the USS Flasher, which was scheduled to conduct its next patrol through Balabac Strait, the tension was palpable. The Flier and the Flasher had been constructed side by side and then officially commissioned within three weeks of each other. There were many friendships between the two crews. The Flasher’s executive officer, Raymond Francis DuBois, had served with James Liddell earlier in the war on the USS Snapper. It is possible that Liddell contacted DuBois on his return to Fremantle. In any case, DuBois urged the Flasher’s commander, Reuben Whitaker, to get the submarine ’s orders altered so that it did not have to transit Balabac Strait on its next patrol. Whitaker succeeded in doing so , although Admiral Christie probably needed little persuading.2 The loss of the Robalo and the Flier placed Ralph Christie in a delicate position. Operational losses were, of course, inevitable. But for two submarines to be destroyed under similar circumstances in such a short time span raised the possibility of systemic problems in his organization. And the news was about to get even worse. The sinking of the USS Harder after a Japanese depth charge attack on 24 August brought the count to three Fremantle-based submarines lost in less than thirty days. Back in early 1943, when four Brisbane-based submarines (Argonaut , Amberjack, Grampus, and Triton) were lost with all hands, Christie had been the first to call for a formal investigation. James “Jimmy” Fife had assumed command of the Brisbane submarine base in December 1942 while Christie was temporarily assigned to the Torpedo Station at Newport, Rhode Island. Born in Nevada on 22 January 1897, Fife had graduated from Annapolis with the class of 1918. Apart from periods of obligatory service with the battleship Idaho and the Bureau of Navigation, he spent most of his naval career involved with submarines. In July 1940 he was sent to Britain as a submarine observer, and he was stationed in 131 Fallout Manila when the Japanese attacked in 1941. With the evacuation of the Philippines, he traveled on the Seawolf to Darwin, then to Surabaya and Fremantle.3 Soon after Fife assumed command at Brisbane, a string of submarine losses occurred in the Solomon Islands. The Argonaut, the U.S. Navy’s largest submarine, was dispatched from Pearl Harbor to Brisbane to undertake special missions. Fife directed the aging boat to attack shipping near New Britain, where it was sunk by Japanese destroyers on 10 January 1943. A U.S. bomber returning from a mission witnessed the attack, which left the Argonaut’s full complement of 105 men at the bottom of the sea. Having been commissioned less than a year earlier, the Amberjack also became a victim of Japanese antisubmarine...