“Hell, I know torpedoes are in short supply. But if their damned magnetic exploder worked the way it’s supposed to work, sure we could fire one fish at each target. And if the torpedo went off underneath the target, the way the exploder is supposed to work, that’s all you’d need, one torpedo to one target. Pearl Harbor has, finally, recognized that fact, and if you’re operating out of Pearl you get exploders that have been modified to work only on a contact hit. But not in Australia. You’d think we were in a different Navy out here. I was told in Fremantle by a four-stripe Captain I worked for when I was a youngster in submarines that Admiral Christie has openly defied orders to modify the exploder, orders that came right from Admiral Nimitz!
“What’s worse, that General MacArthur, he’s playing off one Admiral against another to get his own way. He’s got submarines running all over the damned ocean doing things he thinks are important, that he wants done. You should hear what some of the other submarine captains have to say about some of the missions they’ve had to carry out for Dugout Doug. The job of a submarine is to get out and sink enemy ships, not go chasing around landing commando troops and giving food to people in the islands. They can do that stuff with aircraft and do it better.”
“You must have a hell of a gripe session when all you skippers meet in Fremantle,” Olsen said. Brannon looked at his Executive Officer and saw the friendly grin.
“Oh, we do,” he answered. “We really let down our hair. Not that it does a damned bit of good. It just lets off a little steam. And I’m pretty sure that what some of the skippers say gets back to the Admirals the next day.” He turned away and stared at the dark bulk of Dinegat Island. A lone sea bird floated by overhead, its mewling cry a lost and lonesome sound. He turned back and faced Olsen.
“Ordering us to stay here on station is punishment for using up six fish on three small targets, for saying, as I did in the contact report, that we fired a spread of two fish at each target. I said that deliberately, and they know when you say that you fired a spread, no matter if it’s two fish or six fish, they know that you’re firing to get contact hits, not using their damned magnetic exploder.”
Olsen raised his head and sniffed appreciatively at the fresh night wind. “I wouldn’t read all of that into this message, sir.” His voice went down a notch and became gentle.
“You may be right, but the thing is — you’ve got those people by the short hair and you’ve got a downhill pull. You sank ships. They can’t ignore that. Two big destroyers ten days or so ago. Three small freighters and two escorts the other night. That’s seven ships down with twelve torpedoes and some ammunition. They can’t say that’s wasting torpedoes or ammo. Hell, if you’d used all twelve torpedoes to sink the two big destroyers I bet Admiral Nimitz would turn hand springs!”
Brannon grinned and shrugged his shoulders. “Okay, John. You’re a good listener, a good friend. I won’t sound off again.”
Eelfish sent its departure-from-station report to Fremantle and Pearl Harbor after receiving orders to return to port and turned toward Australia with twelve torpedoes in her tubes and reload racks. Her course took her southward through the Sea of Mindanao, the Sulu Sea, and the Celebes Sea, down the length of Makassar Strait past the big island of Borneo, across the Java Sea and through the justly feared strait between the islands of Bali and Lombok.
Lombok Strait was narrow, with a strong tidal current. When the Japanese discovered that American submarines were using the Strait as a shortcut, to avoid going to the east and through the Arafuru Sea, they fortified the strait with heavy guns and patrolled it with aircraft.
Running the Strait submerged was considered dangerous because of the strong currents and uncharted rocks. Most submarine captains preferred to time their arrival at the Strait in the dark of night and make the twelve-mile dash at full speed, risking the danger of shellfire and aircraft.
Once Eelfish had cleared Lombok Strait and was well into the Indian Ocean the men in both torpedo rooms began the laborious work of pulling the heavy torpedoes out of the torpedo tubes, rolling them over and removing the exploder mechanisms to restore the exploders to the condition they had been when delivered to the ship.
The principle of the controversial Mark VI exploder mechanism was brilliant. Prior to the development of the Mark VI, or the “magnetic exploder,” as it was called, all torpedoes were fired to hit the target ship’s hull and explode on contact. The mechanism that exploded the warhead on the torpedo upon contact was simple and reliable.
The unalterable laws of physics decree that since water cannot be compressed to a measureable degree, the major part of the explosive power of a torpedo warhead would vent upward along the side of the ship that was hit. Only a small part of the warhead’s explosive force would be directed against the target’s hull.
If a method could be found to explode a torpedo warhead under a ship’s hull the laws of physics would ensure that most of the warhead’s explosive power would go upward into the air-filled ship’s hull, thus breaking the ship’s keel, its backbone, and destroying it.
The United States, Germany, and Britain all developed an exploder that would do this. Much of the work of development was done in the 1920s and early 1930s. The principle used in all three exploders was similar. A metal ship’s hull passing through saltwater creates an electromagnetic field (EMF) around the hull. A simple antenna built into the torpedo warhead could detect that EMF field. A small propeller mounted in the warhead that was used to arm the contact exploder could also be adapted to run a tiny generator that would charge a capacitor tube with electrical energy.
When the torpedo fitted with the magnetic exploder was fired it was set to run five to ten feet beneath the target’s hull. When the torpedo entered the target’s EMF field the antenna in the warhead would detect the field and relay the impulse to the capacitor tube, which, after a slight delay to allow the torpedo to get beneath the target, would release its electrical energy and fire the torpedo warhead. The target would be destroyed.
The British and the Germans both used their own version of the magnetic exploder in the early months of World War II. Both sides found that the magnetic exploder was unreliable. Both sides abandoned the magnetic exploder by 1941 and went back to the more dependable contact exploder.
Despite this evidence, the U.S. Navy continued to use the magnetic Mark VI exploder, its defenders arguing that the exploder was perfect, the people using it imperfect in that they consistently missed their targets. This attitude, bitterly criticized by submarine captains who were certain they were not missing every target, did not change until late in 1943, until the evidence that the Mark VI was unreliable was so overwhelming it could not be ignored. However, the orders from Pearl Harbor that the torpedo exploders be modified to work only on contact were ignored by the Admirals in the Submarine Command in Australia.
Submarine captains leaving Australia on war patrol routinely ordered their torpedomen to modify the magnetic exploders to work on contact only. Routinely, those same officers lied in their patrol and contact reports so that the Admirals in Australia wouldn’t know about it. Returning to Australia with torpedoes aboard meant that the exploder mechanisms had to be removed from the torpedo warheads and put in the condition they had been when received. John Olsen called it a miserable charade. Mike Brannon agreed with him.
Chief Monk Flanagan, his shirt dripping with sweat from his labors in changing the exploders in the After Torpedo Room, stopped at the coffee urn in the Crew’s Mess where Lieutenant Commander John Olsen was drawing a cup of coffee.