Silent Victory - tactics discussion

[Roger Dodger]

I've just started reading "Silent Victory: The US Submarine War Against Japan" (2 volumes), 1975 by Clay Blair, Jr. The Introduction to the book pointed out that the faulty Mk-14 torpedoes were not the only problem the Navy had to explain the rather poor showing during the first year of the war. With your kind permission, I'll post some of the Introduction, and invite your discussion. Since we're getting a little off-topic with the Mk-28 torpedo, I'll also repost this under a new topic.

During the naval conflict in the Pacific between the United States and Japan, 1941-1945, there was a little-known war-within-a-war: the US submarine offensive against Japanese merchant shipping and naval forces. A mere handful of submariners, taking a small force of boats on 1,600-odd war patrols, sank more than 1,000 Japanese merchant ships and a significant portion of the Japanese navy, including one battleship, eight aircraft carriers, three heavy cruisers, and eight light cruisers.
A strong merchant marine was vital to the economy and war making potential of the island nation of Japan. Its ships imported oil, iron ore, coal, bauxite, rubber, and food stuffs; they exported arms, ammunition, aircraft and soldiers to reinforce captured possessions. When submarines succeeded in stopping this commerce, Japan was doomed.
. . . .
Even so, it was no easy victory. Before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States had sworn in various international treaties never to engage in "unrestricted submarine warfare," that is, submarine surprise attacks against merchant vessels. During peacetime years, U.S. submariners hoped to become part of the US battle fleet mostly concentrated their training on tactics aimed at sinking important enemy men-of-war - carriers, battleships, cruisers - and their boats known as fleet submarines, were designed with this goal in mind. After December 7, 1941, however, the United States abandoned its high-minded moral position and ordered unrestricted submarine warfare against Japan. By an accident of history, the fleet submarine proved to be the ideal weapon for war against the Japanese merchant marine. However, the shift in missions caught the submarine force flat-footed. It required new strategy and tactics. Many months went by before the submarine force got the hang of this new role.

There were other problems. Peacetime exercises, most of them unrealistic and artificial, had let submariners to believe that aircraft, sonar gear, and powerful depth charges made the submarine highly vulnerable to enemy counterattack. This belief in turn had led to extreme caution in the submarine force. The best way to survive, the peacetime submarine commanders believed, was to make an attack from deep submergence, using sonar apparatus. The daylight periscope attack, the night periscope attack, and the night surface attack were considered hazardous, and for a submarine to operate on the surface within 500 miles of an enemy airbase was considered fatal. Too many months went by before submariners discovered these preconceptions to be wide of the mark.

The cautious peacetime training leg to serious personnel problems in wartime. In peacetime bold, reckless, innovative skippers who were "caught" in war game maneuvers were reprimanded, and older, conservative, "by-the-book" officers, who were strict disciplinarians and conscientious with paperwork, rose to command. When war came, too many of these older men failed as skippers. During the first year and a half of the war, dozens had to be relieved for "lack of aggressiveness" (a disaster, both professionally and emotionally, for the men involved) and replaced by brash and devil-may-care younger officers, some of whom would never have attained command in peacetime. This general changeover took months to accomplish, and many valuable opportunities were lost before it became effective.

The failure in leadership extended to the highest levels of the submarine force. When the war began, the forces were commanded by officers who had risen to the top by the safest and most cautious routes, who did not understand the potential of the submarine. They placed a premium on caution; bring the boat back. Yielding to higher authority, they allowed their forces to be fragmented and employed in marginal, fruitless diversions. At least a year and a half went by before these command problems were ironed out and men with a good grasp of how submarines could be most profitably employed took over the top jobs.

. . . . Countless times, US submarine captains were vectored to such (high value military) targets only to find that, because of navigational errors on the part of the Japanese or themselves, these high-speed prizes passed just beyond attack range and could not be overtaken. Months went by before it dawned on the force commanders that a Japanese tanker - easier to find and sink - was as valuable to the overall war effort as a light cruiser.

Last - but not least - the submarine force was hobbled by defective torpedoes. Developed in peacetime but never realistically tested against targets, the US submarine torpedo was believed to be one of the most lethal weapons in the history of naval warfare. it had two exploders, a regular one that detonated it on contact with the side of an enemy ship and a very secret "magnetic exploder" that would detonate it beneath the keel of a ship without contact.

After the war began, submariners discovered the hard way that the torpedo did not run steadily at the depth set into its controls and often went much deeper than designed, too deep for the magnetic exploder to work. When this was corrected, they discovered that the magnetic exploder itself was defective under certain circumstances, often detonating before the torpedo reached the target. And when the magnetic exploder was deactivated, the contact exploder was found to be faulty. Each of these flaws tended to conceal the others, and it was not until September 1943, twenty-one months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, that all the torpedo defects were corrected.

Had it not been for these command weaknesses, misconceptions, and technical defects, the naval war in the Pacific might have taken a far different course. Intelligently employed, with a workable torpedo, submarines might have entirely prevented the Japanese invasion of the Philippines and the Netherland East Indies. Skippers emboldened by swift and certain torpedo success, instead of puzzled and dismayed by obvious torpedo failure, might have inflicted crippling damage on the Japanese navy much earlier. The war in the Pacific might have been shortened by many, many months.

Clay Blair, Jr. (May 1, 1925 - December 16, 1998) was an American historian, best known for his books on military history. He served on the fleet submarine Guardfish (SS-217) in World War II.

[Bilge_Rat]

yes, great book, I just started re-reading it now. The introduction is a bit excessive compared to the book itself.

The U.S. sub service did start the war saddled with unworkable tactics, but that was sorted out pretty quickly as skippers came back from patrol and shared what worked.

It was the same issue with the Mk XIV. Officially, the magnetic exploder was in use until summer 43. Unofficially and reading between the lines, you see that skippers were sharing a lot of info "off the record". Many skippers were setting their torps shallower/turning off the magnetic exploder and not recording it in their patrol log.

The skipper problem was a issue, since it generally took a few patrols until you could figure out if there was a problem, but the sub service was always careful in the choice of their skippers. Mush Morton and Dick O'Kane were exceptions.

[TorpX]

I'll try not to drag the thread to far from submarine tactics, but I think it's worth remembering, that the outbreak of war in the Pacific was, for the Allies, a harsh, brutal, and ugly introduction to modern maritime warfare. In the avalance of defeats that followed, most of the Allied plans, tactics, and weapon systems were found to be less than adequate. If USN torpedos and tactics had fallen short in '45, this would have been much less a problem. These failures, occuring in '41-'42, when the Allies were desperately scrambling to stitch together some sort of defense, were an unmitigated disaster. Very few popular books or movies, drive home the scope of the catastrophe.

[Roger Dodger]

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

yes, great book, I just started re-reading it now. The introduction is a bit excessive compared to the book itself.

The U.S. sub service did start the war saddled with unworkable tactics, but that was sorted out pretty quickly as skippers came back from patrol and shared what worked.

It was the same issue with the Mk XIV. Officially, the magnetic exploder was in use until summer 43. Unofficially and reading between the lines, you see that skippers were sharing a lot of info "off the record". Many skippers were setting their torps shallower/turning off the magnetic exploder and not recording it in their patrol log.

The skipper problem was a issue, since it generally took a few patrols until you could figure out if there was a problem, but the sub service was always careful in the choice of their skippers. Mush Morton and Dick O'Kane were exceptions.

The 'unworkable tactics' combined with the 'skipper problem' probably caused the poor showing in unsuccessful patrols more than the faulty Mk-14 torpedoes. Early skippers were chosen for being careful more than ones that were more aggressive. Safety of boat and crew counted higher than tonnage sunk. Also, the mission of the subs changed so fast that the 'big wigs' couldn't comprehend what was really needed to accomplish the mission. For safety, skippers were ordered NOT to sail on the surface during daylight hours when in enemy waters. Since the entire Pacific Ocean west of Hawaii was considered 'enemy waters', that would really slow the boat down just getting 'on station' for a patrol.

Unfortunatly for the skippers, if they followed orders and had a nice 'safe' patrol, they would be transferred to a desk or destroyer as 'not being aggressive' enough. "Catch-22"

[Platapus]

It is also important to keep in mind that at the start of the war, all the submarine captains were peace time captains.

How does a peace time captain keep his job or get promoted?

1. Not making mistakes
2. Making sure the boat passes all the inspections
3. Making sure that the crew does getin to trouble
4. Score high on exercises meaning do exactly what the exercise designers think you should do -- predictability.
5. Don't make organizational waves or take political chances.
6. Maintain your boat within the budget allotted to you

You can't blame the peace time captains from acting like peace time captains. That was how the Navy rewarded them. Those captains that did not act like peace time captains either never got promoted to captain or they were removed.

In peace time there are no ships to sink, no chances of heroism except for instances of accidents and then the captain would probably be fired anyway. Little chances to shine other than better inspection and exercise scores.

In peace time all you have is peace time bureaucracy. That was the "enemy" that our captains had to "fight". And our peace time captains did rather well operating in the hostile bureaucratic theater of operations.

7 Dec 41, a day which completely changed everything. Suddenly we needed a different kind of captain. Literally over night.

One who recognizes appropriate risks, ones who are aggressive. Perhaps even a little nuts helps. Probably not a captain that would have had a stellar peace time career.

It is only with a little hyperbole that I say that, in the context of 1940, a good war time sub captain is the exact opposite of a good peace time sub captain. But unfortunately, all we had were good peace time sub captains... who did the best they could.

Blair wrote of several good peace time captains who were so dedicated to their country that they voluntarily resigned their commend because they recognized that while they were good peace time captains they sucked at war time. That is a pretty heroic thing to do in my book.

[Torplexed]

In retrospect it's hardly surprising that things worked out as they did. Peacetime service requirements emphasizing drill and discipline did not necessarily select leaders best suited for the exacting conditions of real submarine warfare when lone COs could rationalize the need to withdraw, unhindered by the presence of higher brass who had their own periscope view of the situation. Not only did USN submariner training exaggerate caution, it also failed to instil the tenacity required simply to patrol for any length of time under war conditions. One CO returning from his failed attempt to penetrate the Gulf of Lingayen reported that his crew had been aboard under trying conditions since December 8th, "and an opportunity to rest and relax in the sunshine is rapidly becoming imperative for the maintenance of good health, morale and efficiency." His was a boat with air-conditioning, refrigerated food, separate messrooms and washing facilities and two bunk cabins called staterooms for officers and petty officers. Imagine him in command of a U-Boat!

Only actual combat can weed the passive commanders out, and in all navies the aces were a select group. It does appear however that US training and promotion methods, together with lack of previous submarine battle experience, and perhaps the American outlook on life, combined at the start of the war to cause a higher proportion of unsatisfactory submarine COs than were found in other major navies. But torpedo failure can't be omitted from the equation. Repeated misses and misfires were bound to lower morale, as they had among Donitz's U-boat COs in 1940.

[CapnScurvy]

At the start of the war, this "older service personnel" issue wasn't only confined to the USN.

At age 19, my dad enlisted into the Army Armor Division in 1940 (along with a brother and several cousins) at Fort Knox. From where they were from (SouthEast Kentucky), their only alternative for a future was farming or coal mining. Dad, and a cousin were AWOL after 3 months, heading back to their mountain homes. Both realizing the Army was made up of older WWI veterans that enjoyed the bottle too much. The veterans ran roughshod over them, having the boys do anything they didn't want to do. The new recruits where the first young enlisted men the veterans had seen in years.

After arriving home, they were taken back to the base voluntarily by family. After meeting the base commander their punishment was a little KP duty, but placed back with the same old farts that drove them away the first time. By the spring of '41, dad and his cousin both received deferments to leave service, helping on their family farms.

Both reenlisted early 1942, after the break of war. Dad spent two tours of duty in the South Pacific as a Tank Commander, Platoon Sergeant. Just under three years overseas. Recieving a Purple Heart and Bronze Star Medal along the way. His cousin was declared MIA in the beach head invasion of North Africa. They both made up for their youthful enlistment trouble, brought on by veteran service personnel that used the service as an "old age home" for WWI veterans.

[donna52522]

I have read that book several times, and I am always sad/pissed off, that so many skippers were relieved of command for "lack of aggressiveness" when it was truly the fault of the torpedoes.

Sure misses happen, due to miscalculations...and even near the end of the war when the torpedoes were supposedly fixed there were still misses, and even malfunctions.

What did come from that is truly a US navy that listens to it's front line officers. Now if there is a weapons or any other problem, no bureau can or should just brush it aside.

[Frank the tank]

I have Clay Blair's books on the u-boat war The Hunters & the Hunted. I forget the exact title, although I could get off my back side and dig them out. They are magnificent accounts of the U-boat campaign from start to finish. Very well researched and written. I imagine the books on the U.S subs are the same quality.

I'll go looking for them on line, sound like a great read.

[Mush Martin]

This book and Silent Service for 8 bit nintendo were what started
it all for me.

[ReallyDedPoet]

Originally Posted by Mush Martin

This book and Silent Service for 8 bit nintendo were what started
it all for me.

Nice to see you back in these parts M

[DrBeast]

Originally Posted by reallydedpoet

Nice to see you back in these parts M

I second that!