"Take Her Down"

SINK 'EM ALL (416 pp.)--Vice'Admiral Charles A. Lockwood--Dutton ($5).

BATTLE SUBMERGED (244 pp.) -- Rear Admiral Harley Cope & Cap fain Walter Karig--Norton ($3.75).

Before World War II, the biggest noise a U.S. submarine could make was by sinking unintentionally. In the Navy itself, the "Silent Service," never pitted against a maritime power, was a freakish stepchild with neither battle experience nor fighting tradition.* A pampered stepchild, foreign submariners thought: the big air-conditioned subs were "luxury liners"; ice cream and hot showers would turn the crew into "softies." But U.S. subs had been designed for the war they would one day have to fight, and in grueling 60-day patrols into "The Empire," i.e., Japanese waters, the service abundantly proved its worth. U.S. subs were soon chewing up Japanese shipping at the rate of over 200,000 tons a month. The U.S. submariner turned out to be a calm, steady-eyed fighting man with anti-freeze in his veins.

The feats of the submariners are recounted in Battle Submerged, by Rear Admiral Harley Cope and Captain Walter Karig, and Sink 'Em All, by Vice Admiral Charles A. Lockwood. Unfortunately, each book spills some of the drama in the detail, but they make clear that the undersea arm now has handsome traditions of its own. Examples: the stories of the Barb, the Tang and the Growler.

Life Begins at 40. The Barb's skipper, Lieut. Commander Eugene Fluckey, knew that a fat Jap convoy had holed up in Namkwan Harbor on the China coast opposite Formosa. Gene Fluckey and his crew "cased the joint." Going in, the Barb was going to have to take its chances with the enemy minefields; going out, Fluckey figured he would slither through an area marked "rocks" and "unexplored" on his chart. That way, the Barb would be an hour's run from safe diving depth, and it might make deep water if, as Fluckey hoped, the Jap escort craft were afraid to follow directly. Shortly after 3 a.m. the Barb went in. It was a submariner's dream: some 30 ships lined up like pins in an alley. Eight torpedoes hit six of them, including two ammunition ships, and turned the harbor into "a wholesale fireworks display with the aurora borealis and a couple of sunsets to boot." An hour later, Skipper Fluckey noted in his log: "Crossed the 20 fathom curve with a sigh ... However, life begins at 40 fathoms."

The Tang's favorite assignment was also "redirecting" Japanese shipping. But during a two-day air strike, Commander Richard Hetherington O'Kane and his men were given a new job: fishing downed airmen out of Truk's big lagoon. The first day was relatively uneventful: only three saved in the teeth of enemy gunfire. On the second day, soon after dawn, the Tang picked up three airmen off fortified Ollan Island; a little later, three more, seven miles to the east. Then a Navy float plane, out on a similar mission, found the sea too choppy to take off. The plane reached the Tang with eight more flyers, some straddled on the wings. All day the Tang ferried and fished. At dusk the last two dripping aviators were pulled aboard. Of 46 airmen who hit the water during the two days, 28 were rescued, 22 of them by the Tang.

The Growler's story is the story of Commander Howard W. Gilmore. From the bridge one black night, he spotted an enemy gunboat. He swung the Growler away to ready his torpedoes, swung back to attack. In the darkness he did not see that the enemy had reversed course and was bearing down on him. Too close to use torpedoes, and directing from the bridge, he rammed the Growler into the gunboat at 17 knots.

A moment after collision the sub-was raked with machine-gun fire. "Clear the bridge," Gilmore ordered. Four men, two of them hurt, slid down the hatch, but not Gilmore, who was helplessly wounded. His last order, in a crisp voice, was "Take her down." He had to say it once more before his executive officer closed the hatch, took her down, leaving his skipper to drown. The Growler made it home, to fight again.

Nose Toward Mecca. These are only a few of the stories of U.S. subs. Battle Submerged and Sink 'Em All are crammed with more, blending the heroic and the ironic. They tell of how Pharmacist's Mate Wheeler B. Lipes of the Seadragon performed the first submerged appendectomy, a success "with the help of God and a long-handled spoon"; of how the Barb's commandos landed in Japan and blew up a train; of how the Sargo heartbreakingly fired 13 torpedoes at fat targets, only to have all 13 prove duds (flaws in the exploder mechanism plagued U.S. subs for two years); of how the Gato fetched up with an unexploded depth charge on its deck, and gingerly set it adrift in a leaky rubber boat; of how the Angler took aboard a batch of refugees which included a two-year-old, half-Filipino boy who was "smoking (and inhaling) a cigar between gulps of his dinner which he was receiving at his mother's breast"; of how the Tautog, with Mohammedan VIPs aboard, swung its nose toward Mecca at prayer time, three times a day; of how Captain John P. Cromwell, entrusted with top-secret information, went down with the scuttled Sculpin rather than risk capture.

In all, 374 officers and 3.131 enlisted men lost their lives in a service which at peak strength never numbered more than 4,000 officers and 46,000 enlisted men (some 16,000 actually manning subs). In the closing chapters of Sink 'Em All, ViceAdmiral Lockwood speculates on the role of U.S. atomic subs, which should be able to circle the world without surfacing. No speculations are offered or required as to the courage of the men who will man them.

* In World War I, U.S. submarines were mainly engaged in rather uneventful patrol work. Their greatest hazard: dodging attacks by friendly destroyers and aircraft.

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