douglas a. Campbell's books: March 2009

SWIMMING IN THE SHADOW
OF DEATH

By

Douglas A. Campbell

Chapter 1
Treacherous Passage

The sea was in a furious mood, its surface piled in great, gray waves, living monsters whose power could humble even the greatest warships. And this was but a submarine, at about three hundred feet one of the smaller vessels in the navy. Even when it was submerged, it pitched and rolled like a slender twig. But inside the U.S. Submarine Flier were no ordinary sailors. These were submariners, men – most of them quite young – who had been selected from the ranks for their virtues of fearlessness and its companion trait, optimism. Their mood was bright. Despite the beastly roar and hiss of the sea above them, none believed that on this day his death was at hand.
That might come later, when their boat reached the actual battle lines in this, the third year of World War II. And probably not then, either, they thought. The momentum of the conflict had turned in their favor. There was a sense, pervasive onboard, that destiny was with the Allies. Everyone expected to be around for the final victory. These were young men led by a handful of sailors creased by the experience of having survived at sea. Death was for someone else, the enemy, even on January 16, 1944, even on the Pacific Ocean, the greatest naval battleground in history, a place where tens of thousands of Americans had already died.
But they could not ignore the thrashing as Flier bucked and twisted. For the one young cowboy aboard, it had to make him think rodeo bull. So the men joked uneasily about the sobriety of the welders who had built the submarine back in Groton, Connecticut.
They had left Long Island Sound on November 23, 1943, in the brand new boat after several successful sea trials there. The smell of fresh paint still competed with the ever-present stink of diesel fuel as they steamed south and then passed through the Panama Canal. The crew enjoyed the stop in Hawaii, basking in the warmth of the island winter days before resuming their westward journey toward the naval hot spots of the Pacific.
Now in these angry seas they approached the atoll known as Midway, one of the navy’s refueling depots. Once beyond Midway, their first wartime patrol aboard Flier would begin, and their record – distinguished or dreadful – would be recorded in tons of enemy shipping sunk. With young hearts and a sense of invincibility, they knew that the slamming of their submarine by the sea was only a tune-up for the coming combat. And they had no fear.
Because it was daytime, Flier was running deep, avoiding the worst that the ocean was offering, drawing electricity from its huge banks of storage batteries to run its motors. The night before, when the storm was no less fierce, they had surfaced to run the diesel engines that charged the batteries. Then, the whole fury of a winter storm with winds topping forty knots was sweeping the sea, plowing up huge, heaving waves in endless ranks across the submarine’s path. Now, even beneath the surface, the 78 sailors aboard Flier could feel the surge from the storm–driven seas that had raced thousands of miles unimpeded by land. But they knew they soon would get a break. The shelter of Midway was only hours away. Midway, where the Allies had won their first decisive battle of the war. Midway, a symbol of Allied destiny.
Just after noon, Commander John Crowley heard his radar operator in the conning tower report contact with land. The blip on the radar screen showed a small speck about fifteen miles away. Through his periscope, the skipper could see that while the seas were still running high, the storm above had eased – winds were force four, about fifteen miles per hour – and occasional rain squalls came from the mostly overcast sky. Once in a while, a hole in the clouds let sunlight through, enough that Flier’s navigator could get a sun sight with his sextant.
Crowley, relying on the radar report of land, gave the order to steer due west, and by 1:15 p.m. he saw through his periscope the low group of islands that are the Midway atoll, about nine miles away. At two o’clock, Flier was two miles south of the entrance to Midway’s channel and was sitting on the surface, with Crowley on the bridge, feeling the breeze on his left cheek. A detail of sailors was stationed on the rear deck, prepared to help in the anchoring of the submarine when it reached the dock. Fifteen minutes later, Flier’s semaphore light flashed a signal to a tower on one of Midway’s islands and got a reply:
“Stand by for pilot.”
With the seas running high, it would be essential for a harbor pilot to steer Flier through the inlet. Even in clam weather a pilot would have been dispatched from the naval base, so hazardous were the coral reefs that surrounded the little port. Crowley, who had been at sea most of the thirteen years since he graduated from the Naval Academy, was no novice sailor. He had served as a junior officer on two submarines and then commanded the submarine S-28 before taking charge of Flier. And he had read the charts and the descriptions of Midway’s channel. But he had never entered this port. Nautical charts are helpful, and a practiced eye can learn a lot from them. They show obstructions, depths, the placement of buoys that can be used to help navigate. But close to land, the seas are tricky. There are crosscurrents and the local effects of wind to be considered, and nothing helps navigate such waters more than local knowledge. So Crowley was relieved when the message came out from the tower on Sand Island, the larger of Midway’s two big islands, that the pilot was on his way.
As Flier lay off the channel, waiting, crewmen who had no job for the moment headed for the crew quarters, where the bunks were stacked six high above the metal plate floor, and they lay down because standing in the rolling submarine was too tiring.
There were more messages, more directions for Crowley.
“Moor port side to Gunnel south side submarine base dock.”
“Pilot is underway now.”
“Moor alongside Herring at south side NOB dock.”
Crowley was standing behind the steel bulwark, looking north toward the channel. He could see a small motor launch coming out from the islands, braving the big rolling seas that were lifting his own boat like a toy, and he noticed that a heavy ground swell was running in the channel, setting the launch steadily to the east, or his right. He told his crew to steam in a little closer to give the pilot’s launch a shorter run. At about the same time, the skipper gave the order to switch to battery power and to stop the diesel engines, closing their air intake valves to avoid flooding by the surf whose crests at times towered above Flier’s low-slung deck. This was a cautious move, a smart decision to avoid potential damage to the submarine’s engines, nothing more.

**

Earlier that day, Crowley had radioed Midway. Flier was supposed to reach the atoll at 6:30, not long after sunrise, but had been delayed by the heavy head seas.
When he got Crowley’s message, the commanding officer at Midway – Captain Joseph A. Connolly, ordered that a watch be kept of the channel. He wanted the pilot dispatched once Flier was spotted. Strong southwest winds blew across Midway all morning, bringing with them blinding rain squalls and buffeting gusts of wind. Connolly knew that the pilot would have difficulty boarding Flier if these conditions persisted. He was more concerned with winds from another direction, though. Northwest winds would set up a surge in the entrance channel, which ran north and south, and could create a troublesome southerly current. In southwest winds and seas like these, which Connolly certainly considered rough, he had already seen submarines make the passage from the outside buoys – named “One” and “Two” – motoring due north through Brooks Channel to Gooney and Spit Islands, which are embraced by Sand Island to the west and Eastern Island, to reach the shelter of the lagoon, where the seas were normally kept calm by the coral reefs that surround Midway.
Another squall passed over Sand Island about 1:30 p.m. while Connolly was inspecting the Midway Rest and Recuperation Center. He had not yet heard of any sightings of the approaching guest, Flier, but when he returned at two o’clock to his office he was informed that Flier was waiting outside the channel entrance and that the pilot was on his way out to greet the sub. A radio squawked in the office, and Connolly heard his operations officer and the islands signal tower discussing Flier’s progress. First it was 200 yards from the channel entrance then, curiously, it was 500 yards.

**

Crowley stood at the bridge, his feet and knees compensating for the sideways roll or the submarine, his left cheek whipped by increasing winds. The hatch in the bridge floor that led down to the conning tower was open, and the skipper was in constant dialogue with his crew. Beside him, two officers shared the bridge with Crowley and to the rear, the men of the anchoring detail waited for instructions, enjoying the bracing smell of the salt air, a refreshing change from the aroma of perspiration that, after a rough four-day transit from Pearl Harbor, had begun to vie with the paint and diesel smells in the buttoned-up boat.
Up in the channel, the little motor launch turned and hurried back toward the safety of the lagoon. Then Crowley saw a yard tug poke its bow out between Gooney and Spit Islands, and in minutes the tug was tossing in the same surf as Flier and someone on board was attempting to shout instructions through a megaphone. The wind screamed through the bridge and its superstructure, though, and the voices from the tug were swept away. The tug, about one-third the length of the submarine, made no effort to come up beside Flier, as the motor launch could have. The seas were too rough for such large vessels to be rafted together. There was no way for the pilot to get aboard Flier. The tug’s semaphore flashed a signal to Crowley that confirmed this reality:
“Follow me.”
The tug turned toward the open sea, swung completely to the right and headed north between the channel markers. Crowley gave the orders to follow, and like a dutiful guest, Flier fell in behind the tug, about a half-mile from the buoys, which the submarine passed in less than ten minutes. The tugboat and the pilot were about one thousand yards ahead and Crowley called out course adjustments, attempting to steer his boat along the same path followed by the tug. In order to keep a safe distance from the escort, he gave an order for two-thirds speed, or about ten knots. The skipper was unaware of the local custom during rough weather. Captains familiar with this channel knew that in order to maintain steering in these conditions, it was necessary to steam at fifteen knots. Any slower and the surf would actually pass the ship’s rudder, giving it no control over the vessel’s direction. In his ignorance of the local waters, Crowley’s main concern was that Flier not overtake the yard tug in front of him. With surf twenty feet or higher coming from the left, lifting the submarine and then dropping it in the following trough, he could not afford to get too close to another vessel.
And just now, there was another hazard. A severe squall had blown up, and blinding rain was pelting the channel all around the submarine, just as the boat was reaching the first of the heavy ground swells Crowley had seen from offshore. The first of the swells caught Flier as it passed through the entrance buoys, and the boat went involuntarily into a leaning, diving turn to the left. Crowley called down into the conning tower hatch. “Course 355 true!”
The rudder responded, and the submarine began turning to the right. But now the next swell lifted the submarine’s stern and, at the boat’s slow speed, overpowered its rudder. Flier leaned to the left and dove to the right, well past the new compass course Crowley had ordered.
The skipper called out for “left rudder” then “left full rudder!” and slowly, the boat seemed to respond, swinging rapidly to the left once more, well past the course needed to head up the channel’s center.
In all the twisting mayhem brought on by the ground swells, and in the blindness of the passing squall, no one on the bridge seemed to notice how far to the right the submarine had traveled. It mattered little. For all the steering and attention to compass readings, the men aboard Flier had lost control of their boat. It was being steered by the sea, and now it had been driven clear of the channel, off into the reef-strewn surf line to the east.
The men in their bunks in the rear of the submarine, just ahead of the forward engine room, learned of all this at about the same time Commander Crowley recognized his fate. They found themselves sprawled on the floor plates, thrown unceremoniously off their bunks in a heap of arms and legs. Scrambling to their feet on the tilting deck, they ran forward, past the mess hall and the galley, where pots, pans, dishes, coffee and garbage were scattered across their path like debris from a tornado. It must have been a collision, they yelled to each other as they hurried by the cramped little radio room, heading for the control room and hoping for an explanation for the gruesome grinding sound and the sudden stop.
Up on the bridge, Crowley had the unwelcome answer. Flier had run aground. The boat was in the midst of its second wild swing to the left when the unmistakable, jarring sensation of its keel striking the hard ocean floor vibrated up through the steel and telegraphed into Crowley’s legs. Just as quickly, the next surge lifted the submarine high off the bottom, only to drop it again on solid ground, bringing the boat to a dead stop.
Stopped but not motionless. Each following swell lifted Flier slightly, giving the skipper hope.
“All ahead full!” he ordered, hoping to bully the submarine forward and off the coral reef that his vessel now straddled.
Flier’s two propellers, each with a diameter several feet taller than a man, dug their huge blades into the green surf. But despite the desperate straining of the motors, the boat would not budge.
“Port stop! Left full rudder!” Crowley called down into the open hatch at his feet. He hoped that by using the power of the surf in combination with the starboard, or right side, motors, he could turn the boat and slip from the reef. His orders were relayed and then accomplished by men bracing themselves against the unnatural heaving of the submarine in breaking surf whose crests toward tall as a house above the troughs.
Now an urgent message came back to Crowley from the control room, two levels below the bridge. The voice of one of two sailors in the maneuvering room – a cubbyhole tucked back between the rear engine room and the after torpedo room where the electric motors were operated – had shouted through the control room intercom.
“Fire!”
In the control room, sailors quickly checked the dozens of brass and glass gauges and dials, looking for trouble. Nothing seemed out of order. The telephone system between cabins was working and the motors were running.
Whatever the problems in the maneuvering room, Crowley had more immediate concerns. Someone else would take charge of the reported fire. The skipper had to wrest his boat from its perilous trap. Caught half way across a reef, the submarine could get slammed broadside by a rogue wave. Even the surf that was now manhandling the boat could, in a wrong moment, roll Flier over. Then the skipper and his 77 crewmen would be trapped, doomed to drown within sight of shore.
Hoping to make the submarine more buoyant, Crowley ordered that water be drained from tanks in the sub’s belly that were flooded to keep the boat floating at a desired level. And he kept trying to steer the seesawing Flier out to sea. The starboard, or right, motors were racing forward while full power to the port, or left, motors was turning that propeller in reverse, the combined effect urging the sub, long as a football field, to swing to the left. Each new swell lifted the sub, giving it a chance to move, and with each following trough Flier shuddered with the impact of the reef, a few feet farther to the east. The skipper knew that to save the submarine, he must either skip free of the coral that was grinding into the hull or turn the boat completely around to face into the mountainous seas. If that turn could be made, even if Flier did not escape the reef, an anchor could be dropped to hold the bow into the waves and the chance of a capsize would be overcome.
Crowley had been maneuvering Flier thus for twenty minutes when a report on the maneuvering room fire reached him on the bridge. A large tool chest, mounted on a wall, had fallen to the deck from the jolt when the submarine grounded, and a screwdriver from it had landed so that it shorted out two electrical terminals. Sparks from that short had ignited some rags, and the two men in the maneuvering room were able to quickly extinguish the blaze.
That was good news for the skipper. And now, some more relief. The sub seemed to be turning in a favorable direction, heading southwest, or into the surf, not quite an about face from its original course but promising, nevertheless.
Crowley decided to settle for what he had. He ordered that an anchor be set to keep Flier from being driven further on the reef. Seamen James Cahl, Clyde Gerber and Kenneth Gwinn were on the anchor detail. They moved forward from the gun deck behind the bridge and began climbing down a steel ladder to the foredeck, along with George Banchero and Waite Daggy, the line handlers. Tagging along was Joseph Lia, a torpedoman who had been allowed on deck just to get some air.
The foredeck of the submarine looked, from the base of the conning tower, like a long, large log. One minute it was naked as the bow was lifted by a wave. Seawater that had washed over the deck cascaded down the rounded sides of the rising submarine. Then the bow plunged again, the deck covered in a swirling froth. As a lifeline, the sailors had only a flimsy fence on each side of the deck, comprising a single strand of cable supported by occasional posts. With small walls of green water from the onrushing surf breaking over Flier’s bow, the six men grabbed one or the other cable and started forward. Wading against the current of the surf as it raced around their thighs, they reached the forward gun mount, where the two lifelines joined a single strand leading to the submarine’s bow and the anchor controls.
The process of dropping the 2,200-pound anchor involved men on deck and men inside the submarine. Cahl carried a wrench to do his part of the work. The rest had their hands free to hold onto the cables. There were levers to be moved and gears to be turned once they reached the bow. Then the anchor chain would be allowed to run free, the weight of the anchor pulling the chain from the boat.
Lowering the anchor required precision and clear communications in any situation. In this case, with the howl of the wind and the roar of waves, it demanded unspeakable courage. The men knew when they climbed up the ladder in the conning tower and opened the hatch to the bridge that the risks were grave. As was typical of submariners, they went by habit – most of them – without life preservers. When a submarine traveled on the surface, crewmen on deck had to be able with only a moment’s notice to scamper below and seal the hatch above them should the captain order an emergency dive. A life belt caught on a piece of ship’s hardware could leave a sailor stranded above the closed hatch, doomed. And so they did not use the preservers provided for them.
On this detail, only one man – Banchero – had strapped a life belt around his waist.
For once, the other crewmen had made a grave mistake. Two sailors – Lia and Cahl – had reached the anchor gear just short of the bow, and the others were some place behind them. In the roar of the storm, Lia and Cahl did not hear an officer on the deck call them back. Daggy and the others heard and began a retreat, leaving Lia standing on the starboard side of the lifeline, opposite Cahl, who, poised to begin work, had one hand on the lifeline, the other holding the wrench. It was then that a huge, green wave bore down on Flier’s bow, hitting both men before the others, sweeping their feet out from under them. Lia held tight to the lifeline as the sea washed completely over him. When the water was gone, so was Cahl.
“Man overboard!” Lia yelled, his voice riding the wind back to the bridge.
The wave had swept Gerber overboard as well and had thrown Daggy back to the bridge, where his head was slammed against the welded plate steel of the conning tower. The impact slashed the side of his chest an inch deep, tore a jagged rip in his lower lip, cutting a vein, breaking off three teeth and knocking four others loose. With his jaw probably broken, Daggy climbed to the bridge and down into the conning tower. A torrent of seawater came with him. As he passed them, his mates – Crowley among them – saw that his blue shirt was drenched with salt water and blood.
Lia, having given the man-overboard alarm, held tight to the lifeline and scanned the water for Cahl, whom he spotted in the surf, already many yards from the submarine, being driven away by the currents and waves. He had a hopeless look on his face, and as he treaded water, Cahl’s arms were extended before him, as if in a plea.
Now Lia heard someone on the bridge calling for a volunteer to go into the water, and he headed aft. By the time he reached the bridge, Banchero had already stripped off most of his clothes, was wearing an inflated life belt and was holding a cork life ring. Banchero made his way along the rear of the submarine and then jumped into the sea. He could see Gerber in the water but not Cahl. He swam toward Gerber, who had no life belt.
The thought of three men overboard weighed in Crowley’s thinking, balanced against another seventy-four crewmen still on board the submarine, which now pivoted on the reef, swinging to the southeast and then back fifty compass degrees to the southwest, at the whim of the sea. The captain ordered the diesel engines started, but he could use them only for short periods. The boiling surf had stirred sand from the seabed, and this gritty water quickly fouled the cooling water needed by the engines. Moreover, Crowley could not use one of the four engines at all. Its exhaust valve had to be kept closed against the onslaught of seawater that, if it entered the valve’s port, could flood Flier.
**

Everything had happened quickly aboard the Flier. Ashore, it was only 2:30 p.m. – fifteen minutes after Flier’s first contact with the pilot boat – when Captain Connolly was told the Flier was aground. He ordered his operations officer to have all the available tugs and the submarine rescue ship Macaw dispatched to help the submarine. Joined by another officer, Connolly then went to the small boat basin and boarded Macaw to participate in the salvage operation.
Shortly after three o’clock, under a darkening sky, Macaw headed out Brooks Channel. Connolly saw that Flier was about four hundred feet east of the channel, headed south. Macaw’s skipper, Lt. Commander P.W. Burton, took Macaw to the end of the channel and then dropped anchor. The boat swung into the wind, and Connolly stood at the bridge beside Burton, looking aft across Macaw’s stern and the water between the ship and the submarine. Each time Flier’s bow rose from the sea, another huge green wall of surf slammed it down, one pounding leading only to another. Connolly recalled the last time a sub had grounded at Midway. Scorpion had hit the reef on the opposite side of the channel five months earlier, just before the most severe waves of a storm lashed Midway. By getting a line to Scorpion, Connolly had been able to pull the sub to freedom. Just two weeks ago, Scorpion had returned to Midway, topping off her fuel tanks before beginning her fourth war patrol, proof that a grounding on these reefs need not be fatal.
But Flier faced a far more grave situation, Connolly believed. If he didn’t’ get a wire to Crowley soon, the surf might push Flier sideways to the reef and roll the boat over. Certainly, the entire Flier crew would then be die.
Normally, Connolly could send a small boat from Macaw to Flier with a cable that would be used to haul a heavier cable and then an even heavier one until the rescue ship and the submarine were connected by a wire strong enough to haul the Flier to safety. But the roughness of the seas this time made the use of small boats too treacherous. Connolly saw the truth of this judgment just before four o’clock, with daylight running short, when a line-throwing gun shot a wire from Macaw to a fifty-foot motor launch. The crewmen began hauling the line aboard, but the strength of the seas prevented the launch from making any headway, and at one point the boat nearly capsized. The men lost the wire and it drifted away.
Connolly, standing on the rear deck now, noticed then that the tugs he had dispatched were having trouble with the seas, as well. When he sent a message to one tug to take a line from Macaw, Connolly saw the tug being tossed violently, unable to make headway toward him. If the tugs could not operate, then he could expect disaster with the small launches. Just then, he noticed that the Macaw’s engines were revving. He went to the bridge, where the skipper informed him that it was impossible to hold his position in these seas. The idea had been to anchor so that Macaw’s stern swung east, toward Flier, and then use the ship’s propellers to move the stern left and right, guiding the line that would be floated to the submarine. But that was not working.
Connally had another plan. He suggested that the skipper take the Macaw halfway up the channel where it could be turned around and then head back to sea, floating a line as it moved so that the line would drift eastward to Flier. Commander Burton told Connolly that it would take only ten minutes longer to go all the way back in.
“All right, let’s go all the way in, then,” Connolly said. Then Connolly went aft again to inspect the preparation of the floating line. He was standing beside the towing engine, which was used to run a huge winch that hauled a thick towing cable, and he was keeping his footing with the rolling of the deck while he watched the crew attach yellow cork buoys to the line.
Things started going wrong aboard the Macaw now. As the crew began to haul in the starboard anchor, the surf lifted the ship’s bow, drawing the anchor chain tight and snapping it in two places. Burton gave the order to turn the ship around the “Two” buoy at the channel’s entrance and head back to the lagoon.
In the wheelhouse, the helmsman was having trouble keeping Macaw on course. Herman Ehlers, a quartermaster second class, had been steering Macaw for the last six months, but this was only his second round trip in Brooks Channel, and the 251-foot-long ship was swinging wildly from side to side. His skipper stood outside the wheelhouse on the flying bridge and called course changes to him through an open window. Ehlers repeated each order, but the helmsman had little idea of where he was. He was too busy spinning the wheel and watching the gyro compass. All things considered, he believed he was steering an accurate course, though.
Burton, however, had made an error in judgment. He told Ehlers to turn sharply around the buoy, when he should have told him to head for the center of the channel before turning in toward the lagoon. This left Macaw very close to the buoys on the eastern side of Brooks Channel, the same side from which Flier had been washed onto the reef only two hours before. The surging sea and its accompanying current were pushing the ship toward the same rocks, despite Ehler’s attempts to steer straight up the channel. In one dizzying moment, the ship was lifted atop a mount of water, shoved to the right and came crashing down on the reef, bouncing three distinct times.
On the after deck, Captain Connolly found himself in a heap of men, thrown savagely against the towing engine. When he got to the wheelhouse, he found Burton, who had already tried blasting Macaw forward and to the left, giving orders to reverse the engines.
Below the main deck, sailors were beginning to see water flooding various compartments, and within minutes, the water had shorted out the main engines. As night settled on Midway, all the lights inside Macaw went out. Seventy-five yards to the east, the submarine that the men on the Macaw had set out to rescue sawed violently across the reef in the same surf.

**

Aboard Flier, the crewmen had been updated about the progress of Macaw, so they could have been forgiven if, at twenty minutes after five that afternoon, their spirits dropped. Until then, they had been focused not only on the efforts of their rescuers but on keeping Flier afloat. At four o’clock, the propeller shafts began to leak badly where they passed through the thick steel hull. Crowley ordered that some of the boat’s ballast tanks be flooded and others emptied so that the sub would tilt, allowing drain pumps to work. And he set a bucket brigade to work, moving water from the flooded areas to the pumps so that the packing around the propeller shafts could be tightened.
Once the leaking stopped and the pumping succeeded in moving the seawater back outside Flier, the skipper could see that he would be unable to power the sub off the reef. At just about the time Macaw was grinding onto the reef to the west, Crowley again was ordering that the anchor be dropped. This time, the job was completed. More than 200 feet of chain went overboard, but the anchor detail returned intact this time, each man wearing a life belt, all chastened perhaps by the loss of three shipmates.
To stop the lifting and pounding that surf was dealing to Flier, Crowley ordered that the sub’s tanks be reflooded to settle the boat against the coral.
At four o’clock the next morning, Monday in Midway, Lieutenant James Liddell, Crowley’s engineering officer, sat down with the boat’s deck log and entered Flier’s position. “28-12-31.8 N long. 177-21-09 W headed 203* (T) with heavy seas from 200* (T) pounding ship against bottom,” he wrote, his tall, athlete’s frame rocking with the movements of the submarine. A career Navy man, Liddell’s level of frustration at being so unceremoniously removed from the war effort was unapparent in his report, as was any hint of fear. “35 fathoms of chain out to anchor. Pressure hull tight. U.S.S. MACAW (ASR11) grounded on opposite heading about 75 yards to starboard.” He signed the log “J.W. Liddell,” as he would for each of several more days that Flier remained on the reef.
On the next watch, Lieutenant James Casey, known as Ed to his crewmates, had little to tell the deck log. “Aground as Before. No change in condition of ship,” he wrote.
Outside, the surf was unceasing, the waves still monstrous. But with the anchor out, the men on board could feel confident that their boat would not capsize.
By the time of Casey’s report, daylight had come to Midway, and the gale that had blown across Midway the day before had fallen to a gentle breeze of less than ten knots. The surf continued to rock Flier and Macaw, however. But soon the rescue attempt resumed. At 10:45 a.m., the crew aboard the Macaw began trying to float a line to Flier, and at eleven o’clock, they succeeded. A rope “messenger” drifted across Flier’s deck and was grabbed by crewmen
. Even if the Macaw couldn’t move, it could transfer its end of the line to another vessel in Brooks Channel. Shortly after noon, the first heavy steel cable, seven-eighths of an inch thick, was hauled aboard Flier at the end of the messenger and, as in threading a needle, was passed through the “bullnose” – a huge single nostril and the sub’s bow. The cable was then secured to a cleat on the submarine’s deck. By late afternoon, another line had been established between a tripod of steel tubing rising from the rear deck of Macaw and the main periscope sheer – the tube above the bridge through which the periscope rises – the highest point on Flier. This cable could be used to rig a breeches buoy – a sort of chairlift to haul men from the submarine to the rescue ship. The chair, made of canvas and shaped like large trousers hanging from a buoy, would dangle from a pulley that would ride on the line and could be pulled one way or the other by separate ropes. That would have to wait for now, however, as night settled over Midway and the seas began to increase.
As the submarine sawed back and forth on the reef, the ocean floor was not far below. The boat’s tail floated over an average of fifteen feet of water, while its bow was in seventeen feet. With an overall length of almost three hundred and twelve feet, Flier could, with high enough seas, begin slamming its stern or even its bow on the hard packed sandy bottom. Time was essential if the boat was to be salvaged.
Saving the men of the Flier began at eight o’clock on Tuesday morning. Crewmen whom Crowley deemed “excess” on the submarine began to line up for a ride in the breeches buoy. A half-dozen men had taken the ride by ten o’clock, when the crew’s attention was shifted to bringing aboard a heavier tow wire from Macaw. All the men aboard Flier needed now was a tow boat that was free from the coral reef.
During the afternoon, another seventeen men were prepared to ride the breeches buoy. Earl Baumgart, a twenty-year-old sailor from Milwaukee who had been a machinist in the few months between his high school graduation in 1941 and his enlistment in the Navy in 1942, was in the middle of the group. Raised near the shore of Lake Michigan, he knew what furious winds could do to water, but this ride to Midway had been even more excitement than he expected. Now the spray drenched him as he waited on deck to put his feet through the openings in the breeches buoy. He looked off to the west, toward the Macaw, and saw that the crests of the surf passed just below the cable on which the chair would ride. He said a silent prayer, grabbed the chair’s harness in his big hands, his long legs swinging free below the seat, and felt the line begin to draw him away from Flier’s deck. Unlike a chairlift, drawn between fixed towers bolted to concrete anchors set in granite, the breeches buoy was connected to two ships, each precariously balanced on the same reef, each moved in its own time by the separate ocean swells that broke over them. The chair was moving quickly and was part way across the seventy-five yard gap to Macaw when the ship’s tripod and Flier’s periscope sheer leaned toward each other, dropping Baumgart into the surf. There was nothing the men hauling the line aboard Macaw could do but pull furiously. Baumgart, who was wearing an inflatable life preserver, pulled the ripcord that shot carbon dioxide into the vest. When he was dragged up on Macaw’s deck, Baumgart’s face was framed with the big bosoms of his preserver, but he was alive.

**

Captain Connolly was impressed when a boatswain, handling a forty-foot motor launch, brought the little craft along the side of Macaw. Connolly and thirty-nine other men climbed down from the ship to the launch, and the boatswain gunned his engine and veered for the channel, riding the surf up the inlet toward the lagoon. Once on land, Connolly talked with a private dredging contractor about the two stranded vessels. Together, they came up with separate formal plans for salvaging the ship and the submarine. Although Macaw was the larger of the two stricken vessels and carried a larger crew, Connolly felt that saving Flier had to be his priority. The bad weather and lack of equipment precluded rescuing both at once, and returning Flier to the battle lines was more important to the war effort, he believed.
When the time came to salvage Flier, a two-inch wire bridle would be placed around the sub’s gun mount and run through the bullnose. A dredging contractor’s barge, Gaylord, would be anchored off the inlet and another submarine rescue ship, Florikan, would be anchored to the east of the barge. By passing a series of ropes and wires to both Macaw and Flier from the barge and Florikan, the submarine would be poised to lighten its ballast tanks and be yanked from the reef.
A Navy salvage expert, Commander Lebbeus Curtis, who had been dispatched to Midway to help recover Flier, arrived in mid afternoon on Tuesday and agreed with Connolly’s plan. That had to be reassuring, because Curtis had thirty years experience salvaging ships on the Atlantic and Pacific, from the Aleutian Islands off Alaska to the Philippines and Australia.
Everyone agreed that afternoon to wait for better conditions. The surf and winds were too much, and they would remain that way for three more days. It was Saturday before a break appeared in the weather. By then, another fifteen men had been taken to shore. At 7:30 a.m., the heavy wire bridle was sent to Flier on the same rigging that had brought Earl Baumgart and his companions off submarine. At noon, the barge was on its way out Brooks Channel. The salvage was underway.
Only forty-five minutes later, a Navy meteorologist stationed on Midway reported that a sudden shift in weather was coming. Wind, which had been blowing from the northeast, would swing to the west, accompanied by winds over thirty-five miles per hour. The storm would hit in one hour, the weatherman warned.
It was too late to stop. With more black clouds closing in from the west, Crowley ordered the anchor raised on the submarine. Gaylord strained on the cable and Flier’s skeleton crew felt the mangled bottom of their boat bump off the reef for the first time in six days. The submarine floated, but it was crippled. Not until hundreds of thousands of dollars of repairs were made could the boat again try to wage war.
Several days before, Flier’s crew had learned of the human cost of the grounding. Gerber and Banchero, having been driven ashore by the same mountains of seawater that had wracked Flier and Macaw, had survived by clinging to each other and to the life preserver and ring buoy Banchero had heroically taken with him when he leaped from the submarine’s after deck. But the limp corpse of James Cahl had washed up on Midway’s beach.
Flier hadn’t even encountered the enemy, but already it had killed one of its own.

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