Robert Hunt was a torpedoman on the USS Tambor. He ran 12 consecutive conflict patrols within the Pacific and by no means totally shook what these missions felt like.
“I used to be simply certain I used to be going to die,” he recalled years later. “So a lot of our subs have been being misplaced and so a lot of my pals have been gone.”
Hunt survived each a kind of patrols. The rationale had much less to do with luck than with a crucial flaw in Japanese anti-submarine ways that American crews had been quietly exploiting because the opening days of the conflict.
A depth cost assault was a selected form of ordeal. The weapon descended to a set depth and exploded, sending a concussive wave via the water. Crews heard a pointy metallic bang towards the hull first because the shock wave hit, adopted by a deep growth from the sound of the explosion itself.
The nearer the detonation, the shorter the hole between these two sounds. Commanders measured distance by counting the interval between them. At 268 toes of water, a depth cost took roughly 30 seconds to sink earlier than going off.
For a big stretch of the Pacific conflict, American submarines survived these 30 seconds as a result of Japan was dropping its expenses within the unsuitable place or setting them to blow up at too shallow a depth. Then in 1943, an American Congressman inadvertently advised the Japanese what they have been doing unsuitable.
A Flaw in Japan’s ASW Ways
The Imperial Japanese Navy constructed its anti-submarine ways across the unsuitable goal. Japanese planners calibrated their depth expenses towards older American S-class submarines, which had a check depth of roughly 200 toes. Their commonplace Sort 95 depth cost had simply two settings, 100 toes and 200 toes.
The Balao-class submarines rolling out of American shipyards throughout the conflict might attain 400 toes. When Japanese escort ships got here looking, American commanders took their boats deep and waited. Japanese expenses detonated nicely above them.
Japanese evaluation practices made the issue worse. Escort commanders routinely claimed kills on the first signal of floating oil or particles, logging confirmed sinkings when their targets had already slipped away intact.
The U.S. Navy understood the key and guarded it. Nothing about precise American submarine depth capabilities appeared in public. No survival charge statistics, no press accounts which may tip off Japanese anti-submarine planners. The second Japan realized the true depth American boats might attain, the benefit was completed.
Vice Adm. Charles A. Lockwood took command of the Pacific submarine fleet in February 1943 after his predecessor, Rear Adm. Robert H. English, died in a California aircraft crash. Lockwood instantly set about changing cautious skippers with extra aggressive officers.
He fought a sustained marketing campaign towards the Navy’s Bureau of Ordnance over faulty torpedoes that have been working too deep or failing to detonate, at one level demanding that if the bureau couldn’t provide working weapons, they need to “design a boathook with which we will rip the plates off the goal’s sides.”
His submariners known as him “Uncle Charlie.” He knew most of his commanders and even the crews by title.
The Congressman’s Tour
Andrew Jackson Might was born June 24, 1875, on Beaver Creek in Floyd County, Kentucky. He spent years as a schoolteacher earlier than graduating from Southern Regular College Regulation Faculty in 1898, opening a apply in Prestonsburg together with his twin brother and later serving as a circuit court docket decide. He ran for Congress in 1928, misplaced, ran once more in 1930 and gained.
By 1939 he was chairman of the Home Army Affairs Committee. He was the chief architect of the Peacetime Selective Service Act in 1940, which supplied the manpower base for the complete American conflict effort. He supported the GI Invoice and labored carefully with the Roosevelt administration on army laws all through the conflict years.
In a 1945 letter, Adm. Richard E. Byrd advised him straight, “Everybody generally appreciates the excellent job you’ve got finished in your nation in reference to Army laws, and Naval officers recognize specifically the cooperation you’ve got given the Navy.”
That file gave Might entry most civilians couldn’t have imagined. In the summertime of 1943, he and different committee members toured American army installations within the Pacific Theater. Naval officers gave the delegation detailed operational and intelligence briefings. Might heard specifics about Pacific submarine efficiency that have been categorized on the highest ranges.
He got here dwelling in June 1943 and held a press convention.
Might was attempting to ease public anxiousness. Households have been frightened for his or her sons within the submarine service. He advised the assembled reporters that American submariners have been surviving at excessive charges. The rationale, he defined, was that the Japanese have been setting their depth expenses too shallow. The enemy’s weapons have been going off nicely above the place the submarines ran.
Press associations moved the story throughout their wires that very same day. Newspapers printed it nationwide. One in all them was a paper in Honolulu, Hawaii, the island chain the place the Pacific submarine fleet was based mostly and the place Japanese intelligence maintained an lively presence.
Since 1942, the Workplace of Battle Info had been distributing “Unfastened Lips Sink Ships” posters via the Battle Promoting Council, plastering them throughout naval bases, shipyards and public areas as a part of a direct nationwide marketing campaign towards careless speak about army operations. Each sailor, dockworker and protection plant worker within the nation had seen them.
Editors at American newspapers apparently concluded {that a} sitting congressman’s public assertion was a unique class of knowledge. Japan obtained the data. Quickly after, American submarine losses would improve.
The ordeal turned often called the Might Incident.
The Lack of American Submarines
A number of the heaviest losses got here within the months instantly after the press convention.
In September 1943, the USS Wahoo departed Halfway for the Sea of Japan underneath strict radio silence. Her skipper was Lt. Cmdr. Dudley W. “Mush” Morton, some of the efficient submarine commanders within the Pacific conflict. Morton had sunk 19 Japanese ships throughout 4 patrols.
Earlier than his first patrol in command, he advised his crew the Wahoo was expendable, their job was to hunt the enemy, and anybody who wished off the boat had half an hour to say so. Not one man took him up on it.
Lockwood later wrote within the foreword to the e book “Wake of the Wahoo” that Morton was a “pure chief and born daredevil” whose crew “would observe their skipper to the Gates of Hell.”
On Oct. 11, 1943, a Japanese anti-submarine plane noticed a surfaced submarine in La Pérouse Strait, the slender passage between the Japanese island of Hokkaido and the Russian island of Sakhalin. The aircraft attacked with three depth expenses dropped shut aboard. Japanese information recognized the goal because the Wahoo.
No additional contact was ever made with Morton or any of his 79 crewmen. The Navy declared the boat lacking in November 1943. The wreck was not positioned till 2006, mendacity at 213 toes within the strait.
No documented proof establishes a direct connection between Might’s press convention and the lack of the Wahoo. Although, she went down 4 months after Japan allegedly realized that American submarines have been working far under the depth their expenses might attain.
However, the timing of the vessel’s loss in addition to the lack of different submarines in subsequent months stays proof sufficient for most individuals.
The Navy Responds
Lockwood realized what Might had mentioned and instantly wrote to Rear Adm. Richard S. Edwards.
“I hear Congressman Might mentioned the Jap depth expenses are usually not set deep sufficient,” Lockwood wrote. “He can be happy to know that the Japs set them deeper now.”
He estimated that Japanese anti-submarine forces reset their depth expenses to detonate at round 250 toes after Might’s statements circulated via the American press. The adjustment put American submarines in considerably better hazard throughout evasion.
Clay Blair served as a submarine officer throughout WWII earlier than turning into some of the revered army historians of his technology. His 1975 e book “Silent Victory” stays the definitive historical past of the Pacific submarine marketing campaign. Blair documented Lockwood’s full evaluation of what had occurred.
After the conflict, Lockwood acknowledged, “I think about that indiscretion value us ten submarines and 800 officers and males.”
Fifty-two American submarines have been misplaced throughout World Battle II, and greater than 3,500 males went with them. The casualty charge within the submarine service reached almost 22 p.c, the best of any department of the armed forces.
By Lockwood’s rely, Might’s press convention accounted for roughly one in 5 of these deaths.
An Unresolved Query
A post-war evaluation from the Navy’s Pacific Submarine Fleet discovered that Japanese anti-submarine forces by no means truly decided the true most working depth of American submarines at any level throughout the conflict.
The report confirmed that Japanese depth cost settings did deepen after 1943. Although, it made no discovering that Might’s disclosure particularly brought about that adjustment.
Japan was additionally enhancing its personal weapons no matter Might’s assertion. In 1943 the Imperial Japanese Navy fielded the Sort 3 Mannequin 1 depth cost, able to reaching almost 475 toes, roughly 80 toes deeper than the Sort 95, and it sank via water about 50 p.c sooner than earlier fashions. These enhancements would have posed a better risk to American submarines no matter something mentioned at a press convention.
Whether or not Might handed Japan the precise intelligence that drove the change in ways, or whether or not Japanese planners have been already discovering their approach to the identical conclusion, is a query that has not been definitively answered.
Lockwood believed for the remainder of his life that Might was chargeable for the change in Japanese ways. He had spent the remainder of the conflict counting the ships that didn’t come dwelling.
Andrew Might’s Later Life
Might confronted no official penalties for the press convention. The Navy didn’t transfer towards him publicly. He saved his chairmanship and served out his time period. Colleagues who knew his legislative historical past argued that one reckless assertion didn’t erase years of substantive work on behalf of the army. Byrd’s 1945 letter was not an remoted expression of gratitude.
Might’s congressional profession ended via a wholly separate set of choices.
Early within the conflict, he developed a working relationship with Henry and Murray Garsson, two New York businessmen with no background in munitions who wished protection contracts. Might used his place as chairman to push Army ordnance officers and federal procurement figures towards the Garssons.
The brothers secured substantial contracts throughout the conflict. Money funds discovered their approach again to Might. A Senate investigating committee uncovered the association within the years after the conflict.
The investigation discovered the Garssons had made extreme income whereas delivering defective ammunition to the army. Their 4.2-inch mortar shells have been fitted with faulty fuses that brought about untimely detonation within the discipline. These defective rounds killed an estimated 38 American troopers.
Might misplaced his 1946 reelection bid because the scandal turned public. A federal jury convicted him on bribery expenses July 3, 1947, after deliberating lower than two hours. He was 74 years previous when he entered federal jail and served 9 months.
President Harry Truman granted him a full pardon in 1952. He returned to Prestonsburg, practiced regulation and died Sept. 6, 1959. Kentucky later named a lodge at Jenny Wiley State Resort Park in Prestonsburg in his honor.
The Might Incident turned a fixture in operational safety coaching. A careless speech from a politician with extra data of army affairs than he ought to have, led on to one of many worst leaks in American army historical past. Whereas there isn’t a definitive proof between his leak and the lack of a whole bunch of American sailors, the Might Incident exposes how enemy forces might collect intelligence outdoors of army sources.
