1
ENSIGN FAGET’S CLOSE CALL
The vessel drifted silently through a limitless realm. Aboard, only row after row of lights and gauges told the crew that, so far, all was well. Out of contact with any other humans on Earth, they felt alone in a way that was primordial. They could have been on their way to another planet. But they knew something was about to happen, and the sweat was already starting to bead on their faces.
Then, click … BANG! The craft shook.
They all knew what it was.
Then another click … BANG! An anxious pause. Click … BANG!
As the junior officer, Ensign Max Faget, age twenty-three, was hyper-alert for any signs of trouble. He was probably too preoccupied to count the explosions. But others kept a tally.
“Three … four. They’re getting closer.”
Click … BANG! The hull groaned.
The click was the sound of an arriving pressure wave, like the lightning flash that precedes thunder. Then came the main blast of detonating high explosives—depth charges being dropped by Japanese warships trying to kill them, for they were aboard an American submarine and this was World War II.
It was February 20, 1945, the last year of the war, but no one knew that yet. As far as the men in the USS Guavina were concerned, it could be their last minute of the war.
Click … BANG!
“That’s six,” someone whispered.
* * *
Like practically every other American at the time, Maxime “Max” Faget (pronounced “fah-ZHAY”) was involved in the war effort. The men of his generation were doing the fighting, but millions of others, men and women, were helping out in factories, offices, and hospitals, on farms, railroads, and docks. Those who weren’t directly involved participated in other ways—by buying war bonds and, if nothing else, by paying high taxes to support the nation in the largest, most devastating, and most expensive conflict in world history.
It had all started across the sea. In 1937, Japan invaded China. Then in 1939, Nazi Germany, led by Adolf Hitler, invaded and quickly overran Poland. Britain and France came to Poland’s defense by declaring war on Germany. Within a year, Germany had defeated France and was poised to invade Britain. Italy joined on Germany’s side. In June 1941, the war took a surprising turn when Germany changed course and attacked the Soviet Union—previously its partner in a nonaggression pact.
Even more surprisingly, Japan attacked the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. President Franklin Roosevelt branded it “a date which will live in infamy” and asked Congress to declare war on Japan, which it immediately did. Soon after, Hitler threw his support behind Japan by declaring war on the United States. A war that had started as a series of regional conflicts in Asia and Europe now encompassed the globe.
Max Faget before the war
What was it all about? Germany wanted control of Europe, and Japan wanted an empire in Asia. American interests in both regions inevitably drew the U.S. into the fighting.
You might think that Germany, Italy, and Japan, known as the Axis powers, would have little chance when most of the rest of the world, known as the Allies, were lined up against them. The Allies included the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and China, plus the occupied countries and a host of smaller nations. But Germany and Japan had been vigorously preparing for war for years, and their overwhelming success at the outset showed it. By early 1942, they were on the verge of achieving their major war aims. All they had to do was hold on to their winnings.
Faget’s small role was to help chip away at those gains.
* * *
And that’s why Guavina was at the bottom of the South China Sea, just off the coast of Vietnam. A short time earlier, the submarine had sunk a Japanese tanker carrying badly needed crude oil from Japanese-occupied Indonesia to Japan’s home islands. Thanks to American submarines, Japan was increasingly starved of resources. Unfortunately, one of those subs, Guavina, was now cornered by enemy ships determined to destroy it.
Max Faget stands at the depth gauge as Guavina dives past 90 feet, 1945.
Click … BANG!
The depth charges continued to fall. Guavina’s captain, Ralph Lockwood, had ordered “silent running,” meaning that all mechanical equipment was turned off—motors, fans, air-conditioning, anything that made noise that could be picked up by the enemy’s sonar and betray their location. Most of the crew had nothing to do and waited silently. With the fans and air-conditioning off, the air became stale and hot, making breathing difficult. A thawing turkey in the galley started to smell. No one moved unless they had to. Eighty-five sailors and officers were as still as death.
During the next seven hours, a total of ninety-eight depth charges rocked Guavina. It was one of the most relentless anti-submarine actions of the war. “We experienced hell,” Captain Lockwood later wrote in his official report.
“Words cannot express the feelings and emotions that surged through my mind while waiting helplessly,” recalled one sailor. He saw that most of the men “had the look of fear on their faces. Everyone reacts differently in times of stress,” he noted. “One man sat down on the floor and started to giggle, but soon brought it under control.” Another, pouring with sweat, began bumping his head against the bulkhead until he was led away.
The closest explosions caused havoc on the boat. Lightbulbs shattered in their sockets. Cork insulation fell to the deck, where the pieces bounced with each new blast. A pipe broke, and seawater gushed into the mess hall; sailors immediately found a safety valve and stemmed the flood. No one could think of anything but the coming catastrophic crash that would break the hull apart and engulf them in a fatal blast of water.
But it didn’t come.
Guavina belonged to a new class of submarines built with a strong hull for deep diving. The same high-tensile steel that could resist water pressure at a depth of up to 900 feet also protected the crew from all but the closest hit. During a lull in the action, when the sub chasers returned to a nearby port for more depth charges, Guavina surfaced, turned on its diesel engines, and headed back into the open ocean, taking stock of damage and giving sailors a desperately needed dose of fresh air.
For Ensign Faget, a Louisiana native making his first war patrol, there were many lessons. He was a recent graduate of Louisiana State University, where he had studied mechanical engineering, and he had just seen unforgettable proof of how a properly engineered craft can sustain humans under the most perilous conditions. Hull, radar, sonar, propulsion, control, communications, environmental systems, weaponry—all were perfectly matched to the task of sinking enemy ships and then escaping.
USS Guavina ready for launching, 1943
But an engineer with Faget’s ceaselessly inquiring mind, who was also an avid reader of science fiction, might imagine using the same technology for another type of vessel, one that could sail a far vaster ocean. “A submarine is a very high-tech ship—very compact, and full of machinery,” Faget reminisced much later, adding, “like a spacecraft.”
2
PIRATES OF THE WESTERN PACIFIC
Oddly enough, a submarine during World War II was an ideal place for someone who loved the stars.
In the era before nuclear power allowed submarines to submerge almost indefinitely, a sub could stay underwater for no more than a day or two, powered by a bank of storage batteries. When the batteries ran out, the boat had to surface and switch on air-breathing diesel engines. These recharged the batteries and also provided propulsion, just as a gasoline engine keeps an automobile battery charged while simultaneously turning the wheels.
The usual strategy for a sub was to submerge during the day, when enemy planes and ships could easily spot it. At night, the boat would come up and cruise on diesel power beneath a canopy of stars, searching for prey. This was a good time to make celestial sightings with a sextant to confirm the sub’s position.
When lookouts spotted a hostile ship, the boat would dive, taking less than a minute to get everyone inside, close the hatches and vents, flood the ballast tanks, and switch to electric power. The captain would inspect the target through a periscope, maneuver into range, and then fire a salvo of torpedoes. With luck, the underwater missiles would score another success against the Japanese navy or its merchant fleet, bringing the war a little closer to an end.
A Japanese destroyer sinks, viewed through the periscope of an American submarine, 1942.
* * *
Lieutenant (junior grade) Thomas O. Paine loved this game. The same age as Faget, he had a more swashbuckling attitude, perhaps because his father was a Navy man and young Paine had grown up with sea yarns. “We were the last of the corsairs,” he bragged about the submarine service. “The life of [a] pirate is given to few people. We were part of the tooth-and-claw simplicity of the sea.” For Paine, the unpredictability of war gave the experience a strange clarity. You were always focused on the moment. The past and the future meant nothing, for they could be extinguished—along with your life—in an instant.
Paine had been through his share of close calls. On his fourth war patrol, scheduled to last the usual six to eight weeks, a torpedo aimed at a Japanese cargo ship had malfunctioned and circled back toward his sub, USS Pompon. Only hasty evasive action saved the situation. It was on this voyage that Paine volunteered for a diving emergency. A certified deep-sea diver, he went over the side at night off enemy shores to repair a broken valve in Pompon’s sewage system. He succeeded—to the relief of all—and was rewarded with a stiff drink and ten hours of uninterrupted sleep.
Known as the “silent service” for its tactic of striking without warning, the submarine corps appealed to independent-minded young mariners. What could “a mere ensign do” on the massive ships of the surface navy?—mused an officer on another boat. “But submarines,” he marveled, “that was a different story. Submariners were younger men, and they were right there in the front lines delivering telling blows.”
* * *
During Paine’s fifth war patrol in January 1945, Pompon was diving just before dawn while stalking a convoy. As the last man to clear the deck pulled the hatch shut, it jammed and wouldn’t close. Seawater immediately cascaded into the control room and began filling the vessel. The diving officer shouted, “Surface! Surface!” High-pressure air shot into the ballast tanks, which was the method for increasing the sub’s buoyancy to bring it up. But the flooded compartments pulled the boat down, and only the conning tower and bridge poked above the waves.
Copyright © 2019 by Richard Maurer
