“The polite way to put it, Skipper, is that Captain Marble and Captain Shelton are not quote aggressive unquote submarine Captains. Both the Executive Officers are aggressive. The result is that neither Executive Officer has been recommended for command by their Captain. And that makes living aboard both ships very rough for the two Execs.” His right eye blinked almost imperceptibly and he bent over the chart as Captain Mealey passed by the Wardroom door opening on his way to the Forward Torpedo Room.
The crews of the Hatchet Fish and the Sea Chub greeted the Eelfish with shouts of derision as John Olsen eased his ship delicately into place alongside a fuel barge. Two days of waiting for the Eelfish to arrive, waiting in the hot, arid waste of Exmouth Gulf with only a small supply of warm beer available in a tin hut on the beach, had not been pleasant for the crews of the other two submarines.
The meeting in the Eelfish Wardroom began pleasantly enough. There was the usual heavy-handed badinage from the two senior Captains about Eelfish getting lost on the way north. Pete Mahaffey served a platter of sweet rolls and two carafes of coffee and withdrew. As a Lieutenant Commander, and a junior one at that, Mike Brannon elected to stay silent unless spoken to, to let Captain Mealey do all the talking.
The joviality in the Wardroom faded abruptly when Captain Mealey handed a set of charts to the Captains of the Hatchet Fish and the Sea Chub. Captain Marble of the Hatchet Fish traced the course line to the top of Makassar Strait, where it ended with a small arrow pointing at the Sibutu Passage.
“Not going east across the Celebes and out to the Pacific?” he asked. “Look.” His finger traced a course to the Pacific across the Celebes Sea.
“We could follow this course and have good deep water all the way, sir. No danger of mines, damned little need to even dive during the daylight hours, once we’d cleared the Makassar Strait.” Mealey listened quietly, his right forefinger rising to touch his mustache.
“I could give you the standard Navy answer, Captain Marble,” he said. “I could simply say we are going to follow the course I have laid down because I said we are going to follow that course, and that would be the end of it.
“But since we are going to be working as a team in an operation the people at Pearl Harbor see as a very significant operation, I will explain my reasons.
“The course you indicate is several hundred miles longer than the one I have laid down. That means that we will use more fuel. We may need every drop of fuel we have in our tanks before we get home to Fremantle.
“Now, as to how we will proceed. Eelfish will lead the way. Sea Chub will follow at three thousand yards’ distance. As the senior of the two, Hatchet Fish will follow astern of the Sea Chub at three thousand yards’ distance. Orders to dive and time of surfacing will be issued by me daily. They will be followed to the letter.
“Should we see anything in Makassar Strait that can be attacked I will issue instructions via voice radio, the same as I would do once we are in our assigned patrol area. Once we reach our area of patrol you will be assigned to positions and patrol courses with the area in conformity with information we receive from Ultra in Pearl.”
“I’ve heard reports, Captain Mealey,” Captain Marble said, “reports that there are elements of the Japanese battle fleet in the anchorage at Tawi Tawi. Your course takes us right past that anchorage, to the south. The water is very shallow there for a submarine if we run into some Jap destroyers.”
Mealey’s eyes seemed to protrude slightly, their cold blue gaze fastening on Captain Marble.
“You seem to be very concerned about deep water, sir,” he said in a low voice. “Correct me if I am wrong, but if I recall correctly you have on several occasions decided not to attack enemy shipping because the enemy ships were in water you decided was too shallow for an attack.”
“I think of my ship, sir.” Captain Marble’s voice was harsh. “I think it is madness to attack a target guarded by escort vessels in water that is too shallow to go to deep submergence to evade. Admiral Christie has not seen fit to question my judgment, sir. I see no need to defend my judgment now.”
“There is no need, Captain,” Mealey said softly. He filled his pipe and lit it. “But if we do see elements of the Japanese battle fleet, sir, why then we shall attack. As long as they have sufficient water under their keels to keep them afloat then there is enough water for me to attack!
“We will communicate by voice radio once we leave this port,” he continued in a calm voice. “Radio silence will be preserved unless you sight a target. Radar will not be used unless I so order.
“Our code name for this operation will be Mealey’s Maulers. We will begin using that designator as soon as we leave. Hatchet Fish, as the senior Captain, will be Mauler One. Sea Chub will be Mauler Two.” His cold stare froze the slight smile that started to form around Captain Shelton’s mouth.
“We are a very small wolf pack, only three of us. What we will do, how we will attack, are decisions I will make when we have targets. If possible I intend to attack on the surface at night.” He looked at Captain Marble.
“I recall your rather strenuous objections to that tactic when I mentioned it in Fremantle, sir. I trust you have changed your mind?”
“In all truth, sir, I have not,” Marble said. His heavy face was flushed, his mouth set in stubborn lines.
“We’ve lost too many submarines in this war, far too many. It is my judgment we lose submarines because we take unnecessary chances, reckless chances. Mako, as Captain Brannon here knows very well, the Mako was lost because it attacked a convoy on the surface at night. If I remember Captain Brannon’s patrol report, Mako was raked by heavy gunfire, went down, and was lost. And I point out, sir, with all due respect, that Captain Brannon’s brilliant attack on the two Japanese destroyers that killed Mako was conducted while Eelfish was submerged. At night.”
Captain Shelton saw the gathering storm in Captain Mealey’s face and cleared his throat.
“We will, of course, sir, follow your orders as you give them. To the very best of our ability. Where you lead, sir, we will follow. Never doubt that.”
Captain Mealey looked at the officers around the Wardroom table.
“Let me say this, gentlemen. When Captain John Paul Jones was put in charge of a small battle fleet in our Revolutionary War, he said, if I can recall, quote: I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast, for I intend to go in harm’s way.
“I cannot ask for ships that sail fast because we must conserve our fuel, but, by God, we will go in harm’s way!”
Sitting in the Wardroom after the other Captains and their Executive Officers had left, Captain Mealey turned to Mike Brannon
“We have our work cut out for us, sir. I am going to break one of my own rules. I am going to take you into my confidence. If I had been able to overcome the politics we would have other ships, other Captains with us for this first wolf-pack operation. But I could not.”
“Politics?” Brannon said.
“Politics,” Mealey answered. He drew a small circle on the green-baize table covering with the stem of his pipe.
“Both the Commanding Officers of the other submarines are very close to being promoted to four stripes. Neither has a good war-patrol record. Both have very powerful friends in Washington. That’s the background.