USs Billfish...worst depth charging ?

[SSI01]

Longknife - interesting you mention the differences between accepted norms for fleet boat activities before and then during WWII. As you said this new, much more aggressive attitude on the part of the newer, younger captains grew in favor following early lack of results by the older, pre-war captains operating IAW accepted pre-war doctrine (i.e., night sonar approaches/attacks (?)). It's got to be remembered in the pre-war Navy this was a service where a captain's continued command of a boat could depend on whether he came alongside a dock wall too heavily. Lockwood and the other force commanders eventually allowed much, much more aggressive tactics but it was with the realization, arrived at with eyes wide open, this would inevitably lead to increased losses. The wartime captains were younger men, the most successful with exceptional aggressiveness - Morton, Dealey, O'Kane. Of these three outstanding examples, two ended up dead and the third a POW. This is remarkable because Navy doctrine normally specifies preservation of the ship above all other considerations. I would think SSs and DDs were the two most quickly thought of exceptions to this outlook in WWII.

The most ironic thing about Morton's loss was that Wahoo's PCO was aboard with him for a fam patrol at the time of the ship's demise. One wonders what Lockwood, Nimitz or King would have done with him once relieved.

[TorpX]

I don't think the Navy's problems in this department were limited to subs. In peacetime, officers were judged by the performance of their engineering plants, efficiency reports, exercises, and such. Risk-taking behavior was most likely to be a negative factor. Nor were there many vessels to command. Officers lucky enough to get one, would want to keep it.


Pre-war, USN sub doctrine involved complicated tactics making torpedo attacks by sonar. Exercises with aircraft and task forces indicated periscope attacks were too dangerous, and skippers who did it that way were given bad grades, when they were spotted. What is the Navy's slogan? You fight how you train.

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I haven't read about the Batfish 'mutiny', but certainly there was tension on the Wahoo under Kennedy. O'Kane and Morton didn't mutiny, but they sure tried to prod Kennedy to take more risks.

[SSI01]

I remember that's why they were called "fleet submarines" - their targets, in pre-war thinking, were meant to be enemy surface units and they were supposed to attack these targets IAW overall fleet strategy. In light of how the Kaiser's navy nearly starved Great Britain in WWI using U-boats against merchant shipping, it's hard to see how pre-WWII US naval strategists arrived at the conclusion the big, long-range boats we were developing - ideal commerce raiders - should be used to function as an extension of the battle line rather than operate independently and eliminate an enemy's merchant marine. It could be seen that using this method, there would still be the opportunity for the periodic shot at enemy capital units around naval bases and in rear areas, which would obviously still help America's overall naval strategy.

There are a lot of things hindsight makes 20/20 - one of them was that an earlier emphasis and high priority should have been placed on sinking Japanese tankers. I won't even go into the fiasco about the depth control and exploders on US torpedoes.

[TorpX]

They did give some thought to commerce raiding, but, the U.S. was obligated to abide by signed agreements about unrestricted submarine warfare, and had a lot to loose, if such a war came to pass. The U.S. declared war on Germany in WWI partly about this.

In a way, we were somewhat fortunate to have a fairly capable submarine fleet ready in '41.