Surface and Destroy: The Submarine Gun War in the Pacific

9 Mopping Up

9 Mopping Up The USS Blenny epitomized the tactics adopted by submarines in the closing months of the war, departing Fremantle on 5 July 1945 to patrol the Java Sea and off the eastern coast of Malaya. The Blenny’s skipper, William Hazzard, graduated from the Naval Academy in 1935 and became one of the last in his class to get a command. Having arrived in the Philippines in February 1940, he made ten war patrols before putting the Blenny in commission in September 1944. Under Hazzard, who characterized himself as full of nervous energy and an “eager beaver,” the Blenny disrupted trade between Singapore and Saigon.1 Crewman Frank Toon described the Blenny’s patrol as “a merry-go-round for the gun crews.”2 Duringthecourseofthepatrolnumerousjunkswereboardedand inspected, and in most cases subsequently sunk. Some were bound with rice from Singora in Siam (today Thailand) to Terengganu on the east coast of Malaya. Some sailed from Singapore to Bangkok or Singora to collect rice. Others carried cargoes of coffee, sugar, salt, or grain. Junks traveling from Singapore with sugar could exchange their cargoes for rice at Menara in Malaya. Sometimesthecrewsfromthesevesselsweretemporarilybrought on board the Blenny while their junk was destroyed, and then later transferred to another local craft. If no other vessels were in the vicinity , the junk’s crew would be enlisted to throw the cargo into the sea and its craft left intact. Preserving life sometimes required more proactive measures. When the Blenny boarded a sampan bound for Singora with a load of rice, six Chinese men on board hastily took to their boat. Unfortunately for them, the boat swamped; the Blenny 114 Surface and Destroy crew hauled the men out of the water, and a short time later offloaded them onto a local sailboat.3 Some small vessels were sunk with a single five-inch shell, or “five-inch bullet,” as Hazzard liked to call them, to the bemusement of his crew.4 Even with such parsimonious use of ammunition, however, the Blenny had to borrow additional shells from other submarines returning to port. On 24 July 1945 the crew transferred by breaches buoy about 250 rounds of five-inch and 40 mm ammunition from the USS Hammerhead, also taking the opportunity to exchange movies. A week later, on 2 August, the Blenny again took on more ammunition and swapped movies, this time with the USS Lizardfish. The next day more ammunition, including a box of shotgun shells, was received from the USS Boarfish.5 On occasion the Blenny’s boarding party used a twelve-gauge shotgun to blast holes in the bottom of junks, which would then be left to sink or set on fire using buckets of fuel oil. In one incident, crewmen from the Blenny boarded a thirty-ton junk already abandoned by its Chinese crew, and blew it up with a half pound of TNT.6 By the end of the patrol the Blenny claimed the sinking of sixtythree craft, including forty-two described as junks and nine motor sampans, along with a miscellany of sea trucks, schooners, tugs, and barges. Arriving at Subic Bay on 14 August, the Blenny ended the war having sunk more small craft on one patrol than any other U.S. submarine. In 1941 Japan was the world’s third-largest ship-owning nation. By August1945,includingonlymerchantmenof500tonsormore,Japan had lost nearly 9 million tons of shipping. Over half of these ships were sunk by submarines, while less than 1 percent were destroyed by surface gunfire.7 In the case of shipping under 500 tons it was a different story, for although there are no official figures, hundreds of smaller vessels fell victims to gun attacks. By the closing months of the war, guns had displaced torpedoes as the primary weapon for many submarines. Before the cessation of hostilities in mid-August, 91 different American submarines had carried out gun attacks on 641 vessels during 1945. British subma- Mopping Up 115 rines made 393 gun attacks during the same period, while Dutch submarines carried out 10 attacks. Thus gun attacks by Allied submarines during 1945 totaled over 1,000 (see the appendix). More and more submarines carried more and more armament . When the USS Jack underwent refit in early 1945, a five-inch/ 25-caliber gun replaced its old three-inch model. The Jack also got a 40 mm gun installed on the cigarette deck and twin 20...