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By Root 847 0

of the eighty-odd sailors in a boat on each mission were newcomers, replacing experienced hands sent on leave, transferred to training duties or assigned to new commissions. Freshmen had to master the delicate art of using submarine toilets inside a pressure hull: “It was hard to flush527 below a hundred feet and keep a clean face,” wrote one. Even submariners sometimes got seasick, as did aviators whom they rescued. Overcrowding was worst in the early days of a patrol, because every square inch of space, including sleeping spaces and shower stalls, was crammed with supplies. Submarine food was famously the best in the navy, and some boats carried a baker as well as a cook. Crews needed every small indulgence that could be provided, to compensate for the discomforts of two months aboard a giant sealed cigar tube packed with machinery, fuel and explosives, dominated by the stench of the “three Fs”—Feet, Farts and Fannies. “We were essentially a steel bubble528, with only one small hole left for the furiously probing fingers of the sea—the conning tower hatch,” in the words of a submarine officer.

Once they reached their appointed operational areas, boats awaited either radio intelligence of an enemy shipping movement, or a chance visual sighting. American submarines in the Pacific not only spent almost every night on the surface, but could also take risks in daylight. The Japanese never matched the Allies’ formidable radar-equipped anti-submarine air forces. “We had almost disdain for the threat529 which aircraft posed for submarines,” wrote an American captain. “This was more a mark of Japan’s inferiority in anti-submarine warfare, of her poor airborne electronics, than a tribute to our boldness.”

Japanese pilot Masashiko Ando agreed. He flew anti-submarine patrols out of Cam Ranh Bay, Indochina. Only once in all their years of patrolling did his crew sight an American submarine. Flying at 6,000 feet off the coast of Indonesia one day in May 1945, they glimpsed a wake far below. As they descended, with intense excitement they identified a submarine proceeding heedless on the surface. They fell steeply from the sky behind it, closing fast until the conning-tower lookouts spotted them, leapt for the hatches, and began a crash dive. At 600 feet, Ando released his depth charge. Triumphantly, he and his crew watched a great spout of water ascend from the explosion point, close to where the submarine had disappeared. They flew home to report that they had achieved a sinking. Only after the war did they learn that the American vessel had suffered merely superficial damage. This was a characteristic experience for Japanese anti-submarine patrols.

On the boats, hour after hour, often day after day, lookouts scanned empty horizons, while in the hull the crew went about their domestic routines. Watchkeepers at the hydroplanes maintained trim, technicians performed maintenance, off-duty men played chess or cribbage, or more often slept. Even when there was no enemy in sight, conning a submarine was a relentlessly demanding activity, especially in shallow waters. Diving officers and planesmen ended their watches exhausted by the strain of maintaining the boat’s delicate balance in swells or stiff currents. In the engine and battery compartments, amazing feats of improvisation were performed by electricians and engineers. When Pampanito sprung a “squeaking leak” in her forward trim tank, two men made a hazardous entry into the tank. A third, an amateur diver, finally repaired the leak underwater using a face mask. Without such ingenuity, on a sixty-day patrol glitches and breakdowns were liable to render a boat toothless, or even doomed.

Informality was the rule in all things save operational disciplines. Men manned their stations in shorts, affected beards if they chose. They ate when they could, or when they felt like it: submarines operated an “open icebox” policy. There was a little authorised drinking. Each boat was issued six bottles of medicinal alcohol, which one unpopular captain reserved for himself. Some crewmen smuggled