Surface and Destroy: The Submarine Gun War in the Pacific

Introduction

Introduction For a submarine crew there was no maneuver more exhilarating, or more fear-inducing, than a surface gun action. Relying on surprise and speed, the submarine would suddenly punch through to the surface, while half-drenched sailors scrambled through the hatches to reach their guns and ammunition lockers. A crack team aimed to get off the first shots within twenty seconds of surfacing. Men who were usually kept cramped beneath the sea were at last unleashed to encounter the enemy face-to-face. For Ignatius “Pete” Galantin the human face of the enemy materialized when the USS Sculpin battle surfaced to attack a sampan in 1943. The submarine quickly riddled the small wooden craft with bullets, leaving a heavy tang of gunpowder hanging in the air that enveloped even those below decks. When the Sculpin moved in closer to the sampan the crewmen witnessed the effects of their automatic weapons—they were close enough now to see the purple eruptions of bullets in bodies and the blood-stained water sloshing in the bilges. “How different, how personal was war when the target was flesh and blood instead of steel,” Galantin observed.1 His experience was far from exceptional. George Grider recalled a similar incident when he ordered the USS Flasher to gun attack a sampan. After the craft burst into flames and it appeared that the occupants had jumped overboard, the Flasher pulled alongside to lob in hand grenades. A man who had been hiding behind the gunwales leapedupandwentoverboard,butnotbeforestaringdirectlyatGrider “with an expression of piercing accusation.” At least for that moment, Grider recalled, the war had become “intolerably personal.”2 2 Surface and Destroy Such images contrast with the popular view of the submarine war in the Pacific as a series of stealthy torpedo attacks. The pervasive idea of submarines waging battle from beneath the surface is conjured by book titles such as Silent Victory, Undersea Victory, Battle Below, Battle Submerged, and War beneath the Sea. During the course of the war American submarines fired about 11,000 torpedoes . They sank not only 200 Japanese men-of-war but also more than 1,000 merchant ships.3 These Allied attacks have been well documented and constitute the main criteria for submarine success in the Pacific. It is a view, however, that is incomplete. There was another side of the submarine war most often ignored or dismissed. These were surface gun attacks, often on relatively small craft such as patrol boats, schooners, sampans, fishing trawlers, and junks. The Joint Army-Navy Assessment Committee (JANAC), established to record the losses inflicted on Japanese shipping, deliberately excluded vessels of under 500 tons from its investigations.4 As Japanese merchant ships became scarcer, however, America’s growing flotilla of submarines increasingly turned its attention and firepower on smaller vessels of dubious military value. Calvin Moon, who served on the USS Razorback, recalls that by 1945 “[w]hat was left were small things that we usually polished off with a gun.”5 C. Kenneth Ruiz, who served on the USS Pollack, similarly observes that by late in the war “the Silent Service was reduced to cutting Japan’s sampan fleet to ribbons.”6 Often the stories of these attacks run counter to the “good war” narratives that tend to dominate interpretations of the Allied experience during World War II. As Geoffrey Till reminds us in writing about the battle of the Atlantic, though, historians should never forget that the war at sea was “not some kind of giant board game, but cruel hard war in all its horrors.”7 The brutality of “total war” became starkest on the surface. This is not to question the heroism so evident in the submarine war, but to offer a more nuanced account. While surface actions encapsulate the horror of war, they also reveal a transcendent humanity . If close-up encounters magnified the cruelty of war, they also extended the potential for mercy. Given that submarines typically Introduction 3 operated with a high degree of autonomy, we can find examples at both extremes. As emphasized in the pages that follow, many submariners acted on their conscience rather than following the logic of “unrestricted warfare.” Using submarines as submersible gunboats was nothing new. German U-boats had employed their deck guns extensively against Allied shipping in coastal waters and in the Mediterranean during the First World War. They continued the practice during World War II; during one...