No Ordinary Joes (13 page)

It was November 8, 1941, a month before the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Gordy was aboard the USS
Sculpin
as it sailed into Manila Bay. The
Sculpin
, named after a small, grotesque fish with a large shining head and short tapered body, was one of twelve submarines being transferred from the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor to the Asiatic Fleet based in Manila. For Gordy, a guy with no mechanical background or training, the submarine was still one big mechanical puzzle. Because he hadn’t been to Sub School like a lot of guys on the crew, he was scared he wasn’t smart enough to learn what he needed to become qualified or perform under pressure. It helped that he was assigned as a mess cook.

He was happy to be coming to Manila. Anything, he figured, had to be better than Honolulu and the unfriendly locals. From what he’d heard, Manila was a city where the locals treated servicemen well, even if it was only to get them to spend their money. Plus, the Philippine women were supposedly very friendly. And as far as the threat of war, if the top brass were concerned that it was about to start, the news hadn’t drifted down to Gordy.

Admiral Thomas Hart had been put in command of the Asiatic Fleet, and he believed that a major weakness of the war plan was the inadequacy of that fleet. He also believed that a Japanese attack on the Philippines was imminent, so he took over with an iron fist, requesting reinforcements. In response to his plea, top Navy brass sent him the submarine tender
Holland
and an escort of twelve submarines, including the
Sculpin
, swelling the Asiatic submarine force to twenty-nine. Fearing that the surface ships stationed in Manila Bay would be vulnerable to an attack, Hart ordered them withdrawn to the south. All the subs remained in Manila Bay.

Gordy knew nothing of these strategic decisions. He was just eager to get liberty in Manila so he could go ashore and find out if Filipino women were as friendly as advertised. Before heading ashore, however, he and the crew had to listen to a lecture from an officer warning about the danger of venereal diseases. “It’s worse here in the Philippines than anywhere,” the officer said, showing the men photos of genitals grossly deformed by syphilis and gonorrhea. “But I’m sure some of you guys won’t heed the warning. And you’ll be sorry.”

December 8 and dawn was breaking over Manila Bay. Gordy was in his bunk, fighting a hangover. He and his buddy Otis Taylor had gone to a cabaret in Manila, and while a couple of other crewmates danced away the evening with some of the Filipino girls, he and Otis had pounded down a half dozen Canadian Club and 7-Ups. They hadn’t danced because neither knew how. Now his head hurt.

To Gordy, Manila was as seedy as Honolulu, only dirtier. What struck him most were the ramshackle houses and the poverty, orphans wandering the streets, begging for handouts, sleeping in alleys. He had yet to meet any Filipino women.

Stirring in his bunk, Gordy vaguely heard someone ordering him to get up. It seemed too early. As he drifted back to sleep, someone else shook him. “The Japs have bombed Pearl Harbor!” a voice shouted.

Within minutes everybody on board was at his station, getting the
Sculpin
ready to leave the harbor. The skipper, Lucius Henry Chappell, had already received a message from Commander Hart, alerting all submarines and Navy aircraft to immediately begin waging unrestricted warfare. It was assumed that it would be only a matter of hours, maybe minutes, before the Japanese began attacking the Philippines. With all the submarines lined up together, they were sitting ducks.

The Japanese plan was for roughly simultaneous attacks on Malaya, Thailand, American-held Guam and Wake, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, and Pearl Harbor. The raid on Pearl Harbor was meant to destroy
the U.S. Pacific Fleet in its home port. The other attacks were meant to serve as preludes to full-scale invasion and occupation, as well as to secure resources the U.S. embargo was preventing from reaching Japan.

The Philippine Islands, some 7,000 in number, form a natural barrier between Japan and the rich resources of Southeast Asia. Under American control since the Spanish-American War, in 1941 the Philippines formed the westernmost U.S. outpost—5,000 miles from Pearl Harbor and over 8,000 miles from Gordy’s home in Yakima. By contrast, Manila was only 1,800 miles from Tokyo. By 1941, Japan controlled much of the surrounding territory, including Formosa, a strategic air base only 600 miles to the north. Although the United States had maintained military forces in the Philippines, including a substantial number of indigenous units, the islands were largely unprepared for hostilities with Japan. A key to the Japanese strategy was to strike and destroy MacArthur’s air force there. If American airpower were destroyed, Japanese troops would be able to invade and capture the Philippines, then push south to capture Borneo, Sumatra, Java, Timor, and New Guinea. The Japanese fully expected that MacArthur would have the planes ready to fight.

For reasons never fully explained, MacArthur did not have his planes ready and his ground troops were spread too thin, even though the Japanese intent to attack was clear. American radar had picked up enemy aircraft heading toward the Philippines and Clark Field from Formosa the morning of the eighth. They struck at noon, and by the end of the raid forty minutes later, one-half of America’s total airpower in the South Pacific had been destroyed. In all, fifty-five men were killed and over a hundred wounded. The disaster at Clark Field would give air control to the Japanese, and, coupled with inadequate ground forces and a disabled Navy, the fate of the Philippines seemed hopeless.

With the American Navy’s Asiatic surface fleet having been sent to the south, the weight of the naval defense of the Philippines now fell to the submarine force. Sunshine Murray, the designated operations officer for Asiatic submarines, hastily addressed the skippers of the twenty-nine subs moored in Manila Bay: “Don’t try to go out there and win a Congressional
Medal of Honor in one day. The submarines are all we have left. Your crews are more valuable than anything else. Bring them back.”

Nursing his hangover, Gordy joined his crewmates as the
Sculpin
waited its turn with the other submarines to refuel and load stores and torpedoes. With all the subs gathered in the bay like targets on a firing range, there was great urgency to get these ships out to sea before more Japanese planes came swooping down out of the sky.

Late in the afternoon of the eighth, the
Sculpin
sailed out of Manila Harbor, one of five subs assigned to patrol the eastern side of the island. After leaving the other ships, it sailed east through the San Bernardino Strait at the southern tip of Luzon, the biggest Philippine island, then headed north, up the east coast to patrol off Lamon Bay, a possible landing sight for a Japanese invasion from the east. En route, the ship stayed submerged during the day and surfaced only after dark. Each evening, Gordy looked forward to coming up for air.

Shortly after the ship left Manila, its air-conditioning had quit. Efforts by the auxiliary men to fix it failed, and with the engines running hot, the heat was dispersed through the sub. The temperature inside the ship hovered between 100 and 105 degrees. Like the rest of the crew, Gordy stripped down to just his shorts. All the men were sweating profusely, dripping onto the deck, making walking through the boat a slippery proposition. Sleeping was also difficult. With not enough bunks to go around, the men slept in shifts, grabbing any available bunk. The mattresses soon became completely sodden. Gordy tried placing a towel atop the mattress, but it quickly got soaked too, and when he hung it up, the humidity inside the ship prevented it from drying. Adding to the discomfort was the fact that the ship had been in such a rush to leave Manila that there was a shortage of distilled water. Drinking water was rationed. Showers weren’t allowed.

Gordy soon developed a severe rash, particularly bad in his armpits and crotch. At first he worried that it might be a symptom of one of the venereal diseases the crew had been warned about, but he knew he had not had sex in the Philippines. He soon learned it was a heat rash.

The pharmacist’s mate tried several treatments, but none worked. With each day, the conditions on the ship worsened—a dwindling supply of drinking water, no showers, slippery deck, wet mattresses, high temperatures and humidity, and a growing stench. The only relief was at night when the ship surfaced and the men could go topside for air, but outside it was 80 degrees and humid, offering little respite. The meal schedule was changed so that dinner was served while the ship was on the surface in order to keep down the heat from cooking.

This was no way to start a war, thought Gordy.

After a few days, a treatment was discovered to combat the rash—torpedo fuel. It was not the fuel’s only alternative use. On most World War II subs, the pure grain alcohol used for the fuel in torpedo motors was also used to produce a short, powerful high with little in the way of a hangover, which was ideal for men in a stressful environment who wanted a bit of relief but didn’t want to be fuzzy on duty. Conventional alcohol was prohibited on board; the Navy believed that life at sea was uncompromising enough, especially during wartime, and any abuse of alcohol would be totally unacceptable. But that didn’t stop the
Sculpin’s
crew from hiding a mini-still in the machinist’s room. The torpedo-fuel cocktails they concocted were known as “Pink Ladies,” so named because the Navy added a pink coloring to the torpedo fuel to indicate it was not meant for drinking. The crew sneaked slices of bread out of the kitchen that they used to filter the fuel. Usually, they mixed the fuel with coffee. Gordy had tried a sip from a coffee cup only once but hated it, figuring it must be an acquired taste. Instead, he spent most of his spare time studying. From his perspective, the information about the operation of the submarine he was trying to digest was hard enough to grasp while sober, so why make it even harder by ingesting 180-proof Pink Lady? He did, however, apply the torpedo fuel to his rash. It stung like hell, but it did diminish his rash and cool him down.

Gordy retrieved the Pall Mall tucked behind his ear, then struck a match. It didn’t light. He tried again, but still no luck. The humidity inside the ship
made it tough to light a match. He tucked the cigarette back behind his ear and continued to read his manual on the ship’s hydraulics.

Gordy had taken up smoking shortly after coming aboard the
Sculpin
. Everybody, it seemed, smoked: FDR, Clark Gable, Joe DiMaggio. By Gordy’s count, there were only a couple of guys on the ship who didn’t. Cigarette smoke permeated the ship, adding more carbon monoxide to the air, and another smell to deal with. For Gordy, smoking had become a way to deal with the tension. There was now a heightened sense of urgency and alarm to everything happening on board. They were in enemy waters, and their base back in Manila Bay had been destroyed.

Moving north, the
Sculpin
found itself running right into the throat of a fierce December storm that relentlessly pounded the ship, making the search for the enemy even more difficult. The constant bobbing up and down and pitching to and fro was unnerving. At times it felt as if the ship was totally helpless against the raging sea and squalling sheets of rain. The bouncing was also making Gordy seasick.

Despite its being a goal of every new submariner to become qualified, Gordy didn’t feel driven to pass the test. He studied because he’d been told to. But down deep he had doubts that he’d ever be able to qualify. Sometimes he would read the same sentence in his manual over and over and still not understand it. But he persisted, spending his spare time studying rather than joining crewmates for poker or acey-deucey at the mess tables.

Gordy donned his rain gear and climbed the ladder to take his position as the port-side lookout. They were on the surface to recharge the batteries. Standing on the platform, he leaned against the waist-high ring; there was no hook or chain to secure him. Swells crashed over the bow and against the superstructure, banging him around in his little cage. No stars. No lights. Just darkness and the storm.

This was the third day of the storm. Standing lookout, he was soaked to the bone, cold, wet, and miserable. Raindrops coated the lens of his binoculars. The visibility was abysmal. The ship rode a swell, then dove down the other side, driving the bow straight into the next swell, kicking the screws out of the water as she went over the top and down again—
movements endlessly repeated, hour after hour, pounding the ship’s machinery and wearing on Gordy’s nerves. He threw up again and again.

After several days of their being buffeted by the storm, a shipmate on lookout spotted two Japanese battleships in the distance. Getting a bearing was difficult. The vessels could be seen only when the
Sculpin
crested atop a swell. At first Captain Chappell, a soft-spoken, easygoing southerner, chose not to fire on the two ships. Part of the cautious breed of captains in charge at the start of the war, he was respected and well liked by his crew. But despite Chappell’s caution and the difficulty in getting an accurate reading, he couldn’t resist the temptation to fire his first shots of the war. He launched two torpedoes. They both exploded halfway to the target.

The Asiatic sub force was off to a miserable start. None of the twenty-nine subs assigned to protect the Philippines had sunk an enemy ship. Several had had close-range opportunities, but their torpedoes had malfunctioned. Facilitated by the pitiful failure of the U.S. Navy’s submarine force and its flawed torpedoes, the Japanese had successfully invaded the Philippines.