War Career of the USS Seal

[brhugo]

[center]Part XXII: The Ordeal of the Seal II[/center]

The Seal waited until an hour after dark and then surfaced. The boat’s upperworks were a shambles and she was trailing fuel oil from at least two leaks. The periscope could not be raised even after the auxiliarymen worked for hours to free it. The radiomen set up a temporary whip antenna to allow a SITREP to be transmitted and then CDR Hurd reported the Seal’s dire situation to the squadron commander at Soerabaja.

News of the Seal’s predicament was received with dismay by COMSUBPAC. Nimitz had nominated the Seal for a Presidential Unit Citation and word had been received only two days earlier that Kimmel had forwarded it to the CNO with CINCPAC’s positive endorsement. A rescue effort exceeding that provided for any previous warship of comparable displacement was immediately initiated to save the boats crew if not the storied submarine herself.

The SS Golet was only about 140 miles southwest of the Seal at the time of the nearly successful ASW attack and was ordered to rendezvous with the crippled boat and render assistance. Fearing that the Seal might not survive the transit to Soerabaja, squadron ordered her to make for Hollandia instead. Since the port facilities at that advanced base were too primitive to provide much more than a safe berth for the Seal, the submarine tender AS Sperry and repair ship AR Rigel were ordered to Hollandia. But even Hollandia was over 1200 nautical miles away, and the Seal could safely make only 4 knots in her condition.

More trouble began almost immediately. Less than 12 hours after altering course for Hollandia the exhausted crew was startled by the collision alarms siren. A temporary patch to one of the diesel seawater cooling system pipes had failed and water began pouring into the engine room. The crew was successful replacing the patch but within an hour an engine room watchstander noted that the bilge level was rising despite the drain pump running continuously. A desperate investigation in rising oily water finally identified another leak which was isolated by closing the hull penetrations associated with the Seal’s only other diesel. A failure of the remaining diesel would leave the Seal dead in the water. It did not appear that this piping could be returned to service without a weld repair. [49 system, 67 flotation, and 5 engine damage points following two “Temporary flotation repairs failing on Seal” messages.]

The first help to arrive was the Gollet which took off the Seal’s dead and severely injured personnel. Five of the Gollet’s machinists were temporarily added to the Seal’s complement to assist in making temporary repairs. Rather than leave the damaged submarine without an escort capable of rescuing her crew, COMSUBPAC ordered the APS1 Argonaut to abort her resupply mission and relieve the Gollet of this duty.

The Seal’s crew managed to make slow progress against the hull and piping systems damage, but other equipment that had been badly shaken by the depth charges began to malfunction. The only operable diesel began to smoke and run noisily; to stave off potential failure CDR Hurd reluctantly ordered turns reduced to 3 knots with the boat still 960 miles from Hollandia.

The problem with the diesel was traced to a faulty injector; this was replaced while the Seal continued to labor through choppy seas on her battery. On 27Jun44 with 820 miles to go the Seal raised speed to 4 knots. Breakdowns continued to plague the ship. The radio failed and communications had to be maintained with her escort by flashing light. There was another scare when a damaged hull penetration began to leak badly and it required several hours of damage control efforts to slow it to a trickle. But a higher than normal charging rate on the battery was found to be due to saltwater leakage into the battery compartment; only continuous ventilation would be effective in removing the resulting hydrogen and chlorine gas that were being evolved. If the Seal could dive at all it could only be for a few hours at a time; fortunately, the need to do this did not arise during the remainder of the transit.

The arrival of the Argonaut allowed the Gollet to depart the formation for Hollandia with the injured at flank speed. Seas had grown too rough to risk a transfer to a PBY. The Seal’s slow but stead progress brought her within sigh of land on 3Jul44 and she pulled up to the Hollandia pier the next day [system damage had risen to 56 but the crew had reduced flotation damage to 55]. The shore power trunk was damaged beyond use but base personnel worked with the crew to string cables through the after escape trunk and make jury-rigged connections to one of the few undamaged switchboards. Finally the Seal’s ailing diesel could be shut down and the salted battery open circuited.

[A apologize for the glacial pace of these After Action Report installments. My work and family commitments have eased up and I will have more time to play the remainder of the campaign and write the associated report.]

[Bradley7735]

I'm just glad you're still keeping at it, even if you're slow. [;)] Take your time. I'd rather you go slow than quit entirely.

[brhugo]

[center]Part XXIII: Hollandia[/center]

The initial estimate for temporary repair of the Seal was 24 days, although there was hope that this could be shortened substantially when the Sperry and Rigel arrived. Even with the assistance of the tender and repair ship, a drydocking would still be required to undo much of the damage. The crew was thrilled to learn that Brisbane was to be their berth for permanent repairs.

Hollandia had not seen much action in the weeks before the Seal’s arrival, but due to either to bad luck or Japanese detection of the increased activity at the small base, the crew was awakened the first night by the sound of the air raid siren. The airfield was the target rather than the piers and the bombers managed to put two bombs onto the runways. Despite being near exhaustion, most of the crew had trouble returning to sleep in the humid, bug laden air.

Initial repairs focused on improving the Seal’s basic seaworthiness in case she had to be moved due to enemy attack. The ruptured diesel seawater cooling system pipe was flanged off by a diver and a weld repair was completed. The associated diesel was test run without incident; a detailed inspection for hidden damage could wait until the repair ship arrived. Initial radio troubleshooting efforts were ineffective but the problem was finally found after the radiomen resorted to a form of reverse “easter-egging”: every vacuum tube was replaced from Hollandia;s spares and then the original components replaced individually to find the failed components.

The arrival of the submarine tender Sperry allowed additional repairs to be started. Hollandia could provide no help with the Seal’s degraded battery but Sperry contained enough spare cells to replace the entire bank if necessary. As cells were removed for inspection and electrolyte replacement, the full extent of the Seal’s brush with deal became apparent. The case of one cell split circumferentially near the base as it was being manhandled through the cramped battery well toward the access hatch; sulfuric acid electrolyte rushed out. The rubber protective clothing worn by the elctricians prevented chemical burns but one sailor was nearly overcome by fumes despite the ventilation being provided to the well. The spill was quickly neutralized with baking soda maintained nearby in large quantities as required by COMSUBPAC regulations.

Repairs accelerated with the arrival of AR Rigel on 10Jul44. With the crews of two ships assisting the Seal a revised departure date for the drydock at Brisbane of 23Jul44 was forecast. The Rigel had the equipment required to completely overhaul Seal diesels and this around the clock effort started as soon as the repair ship’s master mechanic examined them.

When no further air raids followed the first night’s, the crew’s jangled nerves began to ease and they began to settle into a routine of long days working with the tender and repair ship’s crews preparing the Seal to safely make the transit to Brisbane.

The crew had been expecting the transfer orders that tended to come during the sub’s longer in-port periods, but this time CDR Hurd’s name was on one set. CDR Hurd was already overdue for rotation; only the Seal’s lengthy shipyard period in Perth and COMSUBPAC’s desire to keep effective commanders deployed had delayed the inevitable to this point. He was to be relieved by LCDR John H. Turner who would meet the boat when it arrived in Australia. CDR Hurd’s next duty station was to be Prospective Commanding Officer (PCO) school in New London but he had TEMDU orders to Washington DC to testify before a senate committee looking into the debacle with the early war performance of submarine launched torpedoes.

The Seal’s refurbished port diesel was test run on 22Jul44 with no problems noted; a similar run on the starboard unit three days later identified some rework needs on the diesel fuel oil system. On the 28th the boat backed away from the tender under her own power for a half a day of testing; finishing touches on a few of the repairs followed and she pulled out of Hollandia harbor for the last time on the 30th for an 11 day transit to Brisbane.

[brhugo]

[center]Part XXIV: Changes[/center]

There was little for the crew to do during the Seal’s transit to Australia. Some training was conducted but the nature of the boat’s temporary repairs was such that she was to dive only in an emergency and CDR Hurd did not want to place too much stress on any of her other systems. The crew quickly became bored with the limited fare of fire drills and “dry” crash dive training but the control team was at least able to practice radar navigation for part of the trip as the Seal followed the coast of New Guinea for part of her trip. There wasn’t much left but reading the daily “news, weather, and sports” messages relayed from a radio station in Darwin.

One of the news flashes shocked the crew: President Roosevelt unexpectedly withdrew from his 1944 reelection race “for undisclosed health reasons”. The election had already been considered a close call for incumbent, whose popularity had been slowly declining due to the stalemate in Europe and the high casualties being taken in the Pacific theater as well. Rather than reconvene a second nominating convention, the Democratic party moved senator Truman to the top position after Henry Wallace agreed to take the vice presidential slot. Not until after the war did the truth emerge that the president had suffered a minor stroke; his doctor had warned him that a second stroke would almost certainly prove fatal and was inevitable unless he retired as soon as possible.

CDR Hurd’s concerns proved valid early on 8Aug when a temporary seawater piping repair in the engine room ruptured. The collision alarm woke the sleepers and sent them stumbling for their battle stations. Fortunately the leak was quickly isolated by closing the two hull valves but this required securing the port diesel. With the Seal only 280 miles from Brisbane, CDR Hurd directed that the resulting reduction in speed be accepted rather than push the remaining diesel any harder. No further mishaps occurred and the Seal pulled into Brisbane on 10Aug and began preparations for entering drydock.

The initial shipyard repair estimate was seven days but this got extended by a day when the torpedo loading skid was found to be hopelessly misaligned and had to be ripped out and replaced. COMSUBPAC also used the availability period to make some minor upgrades that had been designated for the Seal and her sisters. Unlike the busy repair period in Hollandia, the shipyard’s staffing allowed the Seal’s crew to get some much needed rest and relaxation; the sole exception was CDR Hurd who had to use the first three days in port to conduct turnover with LCDR Turner.

A three section duty rotation was instituted which allowed nearly all of the men to get at least four full days off in Brisbane. For many, accumulated cash was quickly expended and the last day or two of entertainment became limited to sightseeing and meals with some of Brisbane’s families under an “Adopt a Sailor” program.

The Seal’s change of command ceremony was held at 0800 on 14Aug with CDR Hurd and then LCDR Turner reading their orders. Then came a surprise. VADM Willis Lee, the senior naval officer in Brisbane, awarded the Seal the Presidential Unit Citiation:

The President of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the PRESIDENTIAL UNIT CITATION to the UNITED STATES SHIP SEAL for service as set forth in the following CITATION:
"For extraordinary heroism in action against enemy Japanese combatant units in restricted waters of the Pacific. Relentless in tracking shipping conveying critical war materiel which constituted a threat to our vital operations in the Pacific theater, the U.S.S. SEAL culminated a prolonged approach by torpedoing a large Japanese transport. Subjected to devastating anti-submarine measures, the SEAL skillfully evaded her attackers and reengaged and sank this high value target. Handled with superb seamanship, she responded gallantly to the fighting determination of the officers and men and dealt a heavy blow to the enemy despite the most merciless Japanese opposition and rendered valiant service toward the ultimate destruction of a crafty and fanatic enemy." For the President, /s/ James Forrestal Secretary of the Navy.
This citation was followed by the awarding of the Legion of Merit to CDR Hurd for his leadership during his long tenure as commanding officer of the SS-183.
The Seal departed Brisbane on 18Aug44 for her patrol area in the East China Sea.


[center]Part XXV: The New Boss
[/center]
LCDR Turner had served on the USS Sculpin where he had earned the reputation as an aggressive approach officer. Although every bit as competent as his predecessor; Turner lacked much of the tact and sense of humor that had endeared CDR Hurd to his crew. But wartime adversity has a way of making men into brothers (or at least into a team) and for the Seal’s new crewmates, including her new skipper, this transition would occur soon enough.
The first point of friction occurred when the XO recommended that the Seal use a slower transit speed to her patrol area to conserve fuel and allow the crew time to integrate new crew members through drills and other training. LCDR Turner, concerned that the Pacific war was winding down just as he was getting his own boat overrode this and directed that high speed be used to get the boat back into the action. Although this candid discussion was help behind the closed doors of the CO’s stateroom, a submarine is a small place and word of the debate spread quickly throughout the ship. Given the time to think about it longer, LCDR Turner relented and directed that the Seal’s transit be slowed once she was in Philippine waters (reasoning that this might increase the odds of encountering a target of opportunity during the transit).
The Seal’s topside watch observed Bouganville slip by in the distance as she passed through the Solomons chain on the 23rd; there had been no contacts other than a friendly seaplane patrols. All submarines tended to look the same from the air but the Seal flashed the required recognition codes and avoided becoming the target of friendly fire. The Solomon Sea had become a huge allied lake despite a few starving Japanese garrisons that were not judged worth the effort of invasion, but I-boats were known to patrol those waters so the crew was careful not to drop their guard. It seemed odd not to be conducting crash dive and approach drills. The submarine continued to slice through the calm seas with a full bell on as LCDR Turner anxiously waited for his first chance to engage the enemy as a warship’s commanding officer. On the 24th, the boat slowed to cruise speed.
On the 26th the Seal passed the Carolines although not close enough to see these Japanese held islands. The radar scope remained clear and there was no evidence of any enemy presence. The empty seas continued despite the track taking her deeper and deeper into enemy held territory. She passed Saipan to the south on 8/27 and Kyushu to the southwest on 2Sep.
The Seal’s patrol area was awash in thunderstorms when she finally arrived. Hunting was difficult and even these waters seemed devoid of enemy shipping. The weather improved to overcast conditions over the next several days but there were few radar and no visual contacts. LCDR Turner’s fear that the war was winding down seemed justified.
But elsewhere the allies were clashing with the Japanese. The long stalled Sumatran and Malay campaigns picked up momentum again as fresh troops and supplies arrived. On 7Sep44 the SS Grouper put two torpedoes into the CV Taiho just west of Manila bay and the SS Scabbardfish hit the damaged carrier again later that same day. If the Taiho’s sortie had been part of some larger operation then the Japanese abandoned it following this crippling loss. A US carrier task force blundered into the BB Kongo, the IJN’s last surviving battleship. The carriers took several hits before the escorting destroyers managed to lay down smoke and help break the engagement. The Kongo was hit by dive bombers the next day but managed to escape.
The capture of Singapore had trapped a few Japanese surface combatants in port along the Strait of Malacca. With allied forces advancing daily, the CA Chikuma, CL Oyodo, and two destroyers attempted a bombardment of Singapore. As had been occurring with distressing frequency throughout the Pacific war, allied intelligence was completely ignorant of the presence of these warships. Singapore’s only defense against this night attack was an ASW squadron consisting of three destroyer escorts led by the DD Claxton on patrol off the harbor entrance. In a lopsided night battle, the three DEs were sunk and the Claxton damaged, but the Claxton managed to damage both the DD Mutsuki and DD Hatakaze. Perhaps thinking that these destroyers were only the van of a larger surface action group, the Japanese commander turned away in a futile effort to escape to safety. The Oyodo and Chikuma were hit once and twice respectively by torpedoes from land based Avengers the next morning. The Mutsuki had been left behind in the escape attempt and had been missed initially but was sent to the bottom by land based air two days later. The Chikuma could not be located after the first day’s attacks and was presumed sunk but was in fact still making slow progress through the Straight of Malacca when sunk by three torpedoes from the SS Trident. Only the damaged Hatakaze was left of this doomed task force; she was finally located by a seaplance and then intercepted and sunk by the CA Houston and CL Phoenix.
The only significant reversal for the allies was the torpedoing of the CV Saratoga by an I-boat off Tawi-Tawi but the carrier’s battlecruiser hull saved her and she made it to Soerabaja to be patched up in a floating drydock.
But for the Seal in the East China Sea there was nothing to be found but boredom and frustration. The high speed transit had burned a lot of diesel and she soon grew short of it. LCDR Turner reluctantly radioed the home squadron in Soerabaja that he was retuning to refuel. The Seal arrived in home port on 25Sep. With no ordnance to replenish, at least it was a quick turnaround. The Seal departed the next day for a new patrol area in potentially richer and more dangerous waters – off the pacific coast of Japan.

(Note: I didn't realize I had finished two parts without posting the first one! Night shift will do that to you...)

[brhugo]

[center]Part XXVI: The Home Front[/center]

By September of 1944 a war weary public was becoming extremely dissatisfied with the Roosevelt administration. Long years of rationing, high taxes, and a sluggish economy had soured Americans to the New Deal and its promises. Additionally, losses in both the European and Pacific theaters were getting increasing amounts of press. Although those who believed that FDR had known about the Pearl Harbor attack in advance were limited to a fringe group of “conspiracy theorists”, a significant number of voters believed that FDR had deliberately provoked Japan into attacking.
As bad as US war losses had been, for Japan they were clearly worse. She had lost access to the oil and other resources that had been the impetus for the attack on the allies and the submarine blockade was threatening the island nation with starvation. The war in China had become a morass; allied advances through Thailand and Burma were only a few months from being able to link up with the Chinese armies and end the stalemate. Once the allies were able to capture airbases on the Chinese coast, supplies would poor in and Japan would likely be subjected to an aerial bombardment similar to what Germany was receiving. And the Japanese did not have Germany’s jet interceptors.
Dewey latched onto the public’s war concerns by claiming that the administration’s insistence on “unconditional surrender” was unnecessarily prolonging the war in the Pacific and thus preventing the US from bringing its full military might against Germany. Whether or not proud Japan would accept a conditional surrender was debatable but the argument rang true with the public. Truman and Wallace did not attempt to distance themselves from Roosevelt’s policies and their poll numbers were slowly dropping as the campaign progressed.
In Europe, the only good news had been the surrender of Italy in late August of 44. The aerial bombing campaign, which had initial success due to the accuracy of daylight bombing, often turned into an aerial slaughter as German jet interceptors, mainly ME 262’s, raked the bomber formations with rockets and cannon fire. Even the famed Mustang escorts were nearly useless against the jets. In desperation the allies shifted most of the bombing missions to nighttime and tried to use surprise and massed flights to force attacks through. The allies were developing their own jet aircraft, but it was not clear how they could be given the necessary range to escort bombers or if they would even be effective against jet interceptors.
German submariners were taking a toll on allied shipping similar to what was being inflicted on Japan by the Seal and her sisters. The addition of a snorkel, which allowed German submarines to run their diesel engines underwater, made evading detection easier and complicated allied ASW efforts immensely.
The secret Manhattan project to develop a nuclear bomb was progressing smoothly at the enrichment plant at Oak Ridge but the earliest estimates for a testable device were late summer of 1945. A parallel program to produce plutonium in reactors at Hanford was just getting started and was not expected to produce enough material for a bomb until 1946. Roosevelt wondered how much the public support would be left by then, but that would be Harry Truman’s (or Dewey’s) problem to solve.

[brhugo]

[center]Part XXVII: Closing in on Victory[/center]

On 10Oct44 the allies captured Sibolga, the last Japanese held position along the rail line from Singapore to Battambang in Indochina. With the Burma and Thailand fronts now combined and supplied by rail from Singapore, the allied advance through Asia began proceeding faster than even the most optimistic war planners had hoped. Troops that had been intended for addition to the Asian forces were instead ordered to plan for an invasion of Borneo (which had been initially bypassed as the Japanese had been cut off from the island’s oil by air and sea patrols). A hastily planned assault on Balikpapan overwhelmed the defenders on 12Oct44 in less than 48 hours; most of the losses occurred when landing craft ran into reefs while the tide was receding in a grim replay of previous amphibious efforts. The last of the Japanese invaders were cleared from the Malay peninsula on 16Oct when the cornered garrison at Victoria Point was overwhelmed.
Allied carrier groups were steaming freely west of the Philippines, opposed only by piecemeal Kamikaze attacks that inflicted no damage.
The Seal arrived in her patrol area off the coast of Japan after another uneventful transit. Radar contacts had finally become plentiful although it proved difficult to prosecute them. The remaining Japanese shipping was heavily escorted, and although lacking in radar, many of the escorts carried radar receivers that alerted them to the presence if not location of American submarines. The Seal would maneuver to intercept a radar contact only to watch the intended targets move to hug the coastline where their radar returns often blended in with those from the hills.
LCDR Turner suspected that the Seal’s radar was being detected since the possibility of the widespread use of the radar receivers had been included in recent pre-patrol intelligence briefs provide by squadron. His crew devised a countermeasure: the Seal would use the radar late in the day at one end of her patrol area, then dash away at high speed overnight with the radar off. For the first few days this tactic produced no results, but on 25Oct the topside watch reported smoke on the horizon and the Seal closed at high speed before diving and beginning her approach. The contact was several ships in a small convoy; the largest of which was the 6,600 ton tanker Tatsuchiyo Maru.
The Seal’s surfaced approach had been undetected and she managed to submerge along the convoy’s track. LCDR Turner let the escort in the lead pass and began obtaining masthead height and angle on the bow observations while the periscope was intermittently raised. At the range identified as optimal in the associated tactical manual, the Seal let loose a salvo of four torpedoes and then dove the 150 feet to avoid counterattack. The crew was rewarded with the sound of a single explosion audible through the intervening water and hull as the tanker’s highly flammable cargo erupted shortly after the Mk-14’s warhead struck.
When no counterattack was apparent, LCDR Turner risked a return to periscope depth. The TK Tatsuchiyo Maru was nearly completely obscured in black smoke. A follow-up attack was not prudent due to the alerted escort craft that was zigzagging near the tanker. LCDR Turner assessed that the tanker would not survive the torpedoing; she in fact sank later that day but this was not confirmed until after the war.
Use of the radar was not necessary at the end of the day because the Seal had left a “flaming datum”. She surfaced and raced through the night only to be caught in a severe storm that prevented hunting the next day.
With clear weather on the 27Oct, the Seal again made visual contact on a small convoy and attempted to repeat her previous success. This convoy appeared to have only one escort, a destroyer that was steaming along the column to the East. LCDR Turner changed tactics and called out the destroyer as the primary target; if the escort could be sunk then the Seal could surface and engage the remaining ships with both torpedoes and guns. The crew waited until the destroyer (the DD Kisargi) had doubled back to remain with her slower charges and then fired a spread when she had about a 40 degree angle on the bow. An alert topside watch on the Japanese warship sighted the wakes in time for the helmsman to turn the ship parallel to the wakes and Mk-14’s churned harmlessly by. Although the Kisargi was unable to make contact with the Seal, a second attack was out of the question and the crew had to be content with avoiding a depth charging.
After the failed attack on the Kisargi, the Seal finished her patrol fruitlessly searching her assigned water for more targets. News of the allied thrust into Indochina tricked in over the radio. The defenders of Bangkok which had been ejected in late June had fought a fighting retreat to the outskirts of Phnom Penh which had fallen on 22Oct. Neither these troops nor those that had been defending the intervening bases and had joined in the retreat them could slow the allied advance. In fact, the major difficulty in the Indochina campaign became cornering and destroying these troops so that they would not present a threat to allied supply lines after the bulk of the troops in the offensive had moved on. Saigon’s defenders held on for a few days but persistent allied assaults drove these troops out of the city on 2Nov44.
Saigon’s shipyard had avoided major damage during the allied bombing and subsequent assault and became an advance base for submarines, replacing the more distant sanctuary at Singapore. It was to Saigon that the Seal was ordered for refueling and reloading when her fuel ran low.

[nicwb]

Its become a bit ofg a roller coaster ride - the tone of this entry is much more upbeat compared to the previous one.

Nice kill by the Seal though - a tanker !

[bk19@mweb.co.za]

Err.....

Has the Seal been sunk? Is it MIA?

Radio silence has been maintained for 18 days!!!

Somebody ping the skipper for a SITREP please.

[brhugo]

[center]Part XXVIII: Peace Feelers[/center]

Although the United States had invested considerable manpower and hardware into breaking the axis radio codes, both the German and Japanese ciphers had proved to be intractable due to their complexity and the enemy’s disciplined approach to minimizing encrypted traffic and rotating the code groups. The Italian codes had been broken briefly in early 1943, but within months Rome discovered the breach and adopted a more complex cipher along the lines of the German version. Nevertheless, in the late fall of 1944, American cryptologists managed to break the Japanese diplomatic code. The results of this new intelligence source were shocking.
The Japanese had been attempting to signal their willingness to negotiate for peace under terms of a conditional surrender using the Soviet Union (with whom they were officially still neutral), but the Soviets had withheld this request from the United States and Great Britain. The Soviets had instead told the Japanese that the allies simply reiterated their demand for unconditional surrender.
A peace movement had been growing in Japan, fueled by the growing recognition that defeat at the hands of the allies was inevitable. Official pronouncements of stunning victories on land and sea could not be reconciled with the growing hardship and food and fuel shortages became more pronounced. The tipping point seemed the be the military’s desperate gamble on turning the allies back using suicide attacks, an effort that was officially restricted to volunteers. But there were a growing number of Japanese citizens who knew someone whose son had been “volunteered” for suicide squadron duty.
On 12Aug44, Prime Minister Hideki Tojo had been killed when his plane crashed into the hills during foggy conditions near Tokyo. Rumors were flying that rescuers had found Tojo’s body in the wreckage with a bullet wound to the head and that some of the plane’s aircrew could not be accounted for. Nevertheless, a national day of mourning was held and Isoroku Yamamoto was drafted to lead the nation in a renewed surge to victory. But even the “Wizard of pearl Harbor” could not turn back millions of tons of American military hardware. Faced with the realization of his own prediction of the ultimate outcome of a war with the United States, Yamamoto was working to nudge the proud government of a proud nation toward the unthinkable – capitulation to the western barbarians.
Only the Roosevelt administration and a few members of congress were informed of the Japanese peace feelers but it was enough to inflame anti-Soviet sentiments. Those who were already hard-line anticommunists assumed the worst – that the USSR hoped to keep the US tied up in the Pacific long enough to allow the Soviets to defeat Germany and dominate post-war Europe. The truth was less sinister. The USSR desired to grab the Kurile islands but was not yet in a position to join the war in the Pacific. Nevertheless, the possibility of facing a hostile Soviet dominated Europe forced the US to consider softening its “unconditional surrender” stance, at least with Japan.


[center]Part XXIX: Saigon[/center]

The Seal arrived in Saigon on 11Nov44. The crew had been anticipating visiting this exotic city for days but were disappointed with the reality of the city’s condition. Years of Japanese occupation had taken a toll: foreign citizens had been moved out and interned in the countryside, and many of the private and public building had been taken over for military use. These locations had become the primary targets during the assaults, but little of the city had avoided at least some damage. Although the population was slowly returning now that the fighting was over, Saigon was still a ghost town.
The crew arrived in port to learn that a new president had been elected. The election had been closer than many had predicted; it appeared initially that Wilson had won the popular vote my a small margin despite losing the electoral college but recounts later showed that Dewey had also won that contest by a slim margin.
The Dewey transition team was notified of the Japanese peace offer shortly after the election results were validated. Dewey insisted that Roosevelt commence negotiations with the Japanese but was rebuffed. It took the intervention of the republican Speaker of the House to convince the president that the incoming administration’s wishes should be considered on this matter and only then after subtle threats of withholding of funding for administration priorities had been made.
While refueling and reprovisioning, LCDR Turner received what he considered very bad news. The Seal was being withdrawn from combat for an undisclosed purpose and was to report to San Diego. The directive had been issued to several other submarines and was thus somewhat generic; the effective date of the change in status was 15Nov44. Commands were instructed to “complete any in-progress patrols” before getting underway for the West coast. LCDR Turner and his wardroom met to discuss what constituted an “in-progress patrol”; LT Wunder suggested that a patrol began when the first warshot had been reloaded, and evolution that had been completed only a few hours before the transfer message was received. Additionally, the Seal had already received patrol orders predating the 15Nov44 message. The XO recommended that a message requesting clarification be sent to squadron but the skipper was satisfied with Wunder’s recommendation and ended the discussion with “It’ll be easier to get forgiveness than permission on this one.”
The Seal fired up her diesels, cast off shore power and mooring lines, and pulled out of Saigon harbor to “continue” her patrol. Squadron had quietly bought into another patrol; their cooperation was required in any case since they “owned” the water the Seal had been assigned off the coast of Japan. Seeing the 15Nov44 transfer date and knowing that the Seal was already preparing for a war patrol, the commodore had directed his staff not to cancel the Seal’s previous patrol orders.
The allied advances continued to gain momentum. Over the next two weeks as the Seal completed her transit and began patrolling, allied troops captured Cam Ranh Bay, Denpassar, Tandjoengpinang, Sabang, Quinhon, Pakse, and Singkep. From reading the papers the American public would have thought that World War II was being fought entirely in the Pacific – there was very little discussion of the disappointing results in Europe where another Soviet advance had been turned back by German armor and aircraft with heavy losses. Even the continuing shipping losses in the Atlantic were being relegated to the back pages of major newspapers.
On 27Nov44, after several days of uneventful patrol duty, the Seal made visual contact on a distant convoy. Radar was still being used only intermittently to avoid alerting potential targets. The Seal closed on the surface and then submerged and identified a column of merchants escorted by at least one destroyer (the Tanikaze). The destroyer appeared to have some topside damage (the huge backlogs at Japanese shipyards were forcing the Japanese navy to redeploy escorts with incomplete repairs) and so LCDR Turner decided to repeat the previously attempted tactic of sinking the escort and then attacking the convoy on the surface. As the distance closed, the Seal prepared to complete the last attack of her long and productive career.

[brhugo]

Yes, I am very slow!

I will finish this after-action report and I do not think you will be disappointed!

Bruce

[nicwb]

Damn yet another cliff-hanger [X(]

And the war has obviously taken a lot of strange turns, Tojo assinated, Yamamoto still alive and FDR out of office......................

[brhugo]

[center]Part XXX: Busted Again[/center]

The Seal’s approach on the Tanikaze had been textbook, but the destroyer’s crew now had years of ASW experience and an alert topside watch identified the twin Mk-14 wakes almost as soon as the Seal launched them. The destroyer’s bow lurched to port as the helmsman responded to the OOD’s excited orders and the torpedoes churned by safely to starboard. The Seal had already gone deep but the Tanikaze picked her up with active sonar and began pounding the water around her with depth charges.
LCDR Turner managed to twist and turn the Seal for several passes without more than a few bad shakes, but then the Seal was hammered by a close aboard explosion that knocked out most of her power and sprang dozens of small leaks. One bulkhead was deformed to the point where its watertight hatch could no longer be closed and the crew had to tie the hatch open to prevent it from slamming with each turn of the boat. Hydraulic pressure was lost and not regained for nearly 20 minutes when a failed pressure regulating valve was identified and bypassed.
Several near misses rocked the Seal over the next hour, each opening fresh leaks in piping and fittings. Working in the dark in waist-deep water, MM1 Sanders and several relatively green auxiliarymen labored to apply DC plugs and band-its to stop the sea water bleeding. One new auxiliaryman was on the verge of panicking and asked Sanders if he thought the ship would make it. Sanders, whose trademark was inadvertently butchering clichés and other common expressions (his previous gems included “it was chocolate-blocked full” and “he was sheep in wolves’ clothing!”), replied “Kid, this ain’t the first cowboy I ever rode!”
As the attack wore on and the Seal’s pounding continued, Sanders’ optimism was beginning to seem unfounded. An air line parted and could not be quickly repaired, and the Seal’s ability to blow her aft ballast tank was compromised when the affected section of piping had to be isolated for the time being. Even Sanders had to admit that if they ran out of band-it kits before the Japanese destroyer ran out of depth charges, then the Seal might not make it home.
In the control room the crew was attempting to break contact rather than hope the Japanese would run out of ammunition. The weak layer was preventing concealment from sonar and the experienced Japanese had avoided blinding their own sensors by “muddying the water with too much noise and bubbles from overuse of depth charges. LCDR Turner discussed the contingency of surfacing and fighting it out with the deck guns and torpedoes but he knew well that this tactic was seldom effective against escorts during daylight. The crew jettisoned a few mattresses and trash using one of the few operational torpedo tubes in an effort to play “sunk” but this debris was not even detected by the Japanese.
One of the Seal’s depth and course finally shook the Tanikaze loose, but not before the Seal received several more damaging near-misses. The battered submarine quietly limped off with the sound of the destroyer’s pinging fading in the distance.
The nearest base where repairs could be made was Saigon, but it was a nearly 3000 mile transit. It was not certain that the submarine could make this trip [35 system - 62 flotation damage] and when an eight knot transit speed provided to be too hard on the ship [within one day the damage had increased to 37-63-1] LCDR Turner ordered the ship slowed to four knots. There were a few closer bases where temporary repairs could be made, including one on the Chinese coast that the Japanese had inexplicably abandoned, but they all presented a grave risk of air attack. Saigon seemed like the best bet but the navigator periodically updated tracks to these other refuges as a contingency.
Over the next week the crew managed to make progress on temporary repairs and on 4Dec44 the Seal increased speed to six knots with 2,350 miles to go [damage 40-43-1]. The next day the Seal reported sighting a two ship force that included a heavy cruiser 180 miles east of Daito Shoto.
When the Seal came within seaplane range she was able to transfer off her wounded and receive additional repair parts. The Seal arrived in Saigon on 17Dec44 and was expected to require 14 days in the shipyard to repair the remaining damage [reduced by the crew to 39-36-1 during the three week transit].

[a7v]

It is good to see that this nice little story is still alive[:)]
 
Best regards

Rainer

[nicwb]

Nice to see the Seal back and surviving - although that was another near run. Pity about the missed kill too.

I've not seen much about the efficiency of IJN ASW in the late war. Were they that good ?

[brhugo]

I think that the game models Japanese ASW well.  The US lost 52 submarines during the war; 48 to enemy action in the Pacific.  I think I lost 54 in the game although my war in the Pacific was 8 months shorter than the real thing.  I think that I handed my submarines fairly poorly (the Seal was the main exception - I paid a lot of attention to her!) so a loss rate 34% higher than historical seems realistic.

[brhugo]

[center]Part XXXI: Peace in the Pacific[/center]

Japan’s last hope to turn the tide in the Pacific came when the allied advance entered China itself. Up to this point the advancing troops had been opposed only by scattered garrisons at the end of hazardous logistics trains; but in China they would be facing some of the most seasoned troops in the Japanese army. This hope was dashed quickly as the armored spearhead brushed aside the defenders and drove toward Nanning. The sole Japanese upset came when two destroyers surprised anchored transports and escorts off the recently captured oil terminal at Tarakan and sank an AP and two LCIs; some supplies went down with these ships but the troops had already made it to shore. But an allied air strike torpedoed the withdrawing DD Oshio later that same day.

There were several military advantages to a negotiated surrender with Japan that was short of unconditional. Besides freeing up allied troops and equipment for the war in Europe, the remnants of the Japanese navy could be used for repatriation duty. In the longer term, Japan could serve as a counterweight to Soviet influence in the Western Pacific as it was becoming increasingly clear that the USSR was likely to become a post war menace to the US and Europe.

To contact the Japanese government, the US took the bold step of transmitting a message encrypted in their own diplomatic code. Although senior military leaders objected to giving up this intelligence risk, it represented the best way to give the Japanese government a chance to consider the offer to negotiate without losing face before their citizenry. The gamble paid off – the Japanese entered into negotiations. As expected they immediately changed their codes but continued to use the broken code to communicate with the allies.

The war continued while message traffic flew between Tokyo and Washington. The drive into China continued until the allies drove the Japanese out of Nanning on 30Dec44. At this point negotiations had reached the point where at least a temporary cease fire could be declared. Japan had agreed to withdraw all of its remaining forces from the Asian mainland and all territory captured since December 1941. They also agreed to withdraw from Formosa and turn that territory over to the Chinese. The major sticking point had been whether Japan would be occupied; but the allies finally relented on this point in exchange for Japan allowing a limited number of allied military observers to inspect Japanese military installations for compliance with the remaining terms of the truce until 31Dec1954. Strict limits were placed on Japanese naval forces which were to be of a defensive nature only. In a final gesture of contempt for the Roosevelt administration (which the Japanese felt had backed them into an economic corner from which this disastrous war was the only escape), the Japanese delayed formal surrender until Dewey had been inaugurated.

The Seal completed repairs in the Saigon drydock and got underway for San Diego on 30Dec44. Her transit orders did not preclude her from attacking targets of opportunity and she carried a full load of warshot. This portion of her patrol lasted all of two days; the message to all fleet units directing that combat operations be suspended until further notice effective at 0000 GMT 1Jan45 was received shortly after she got underway. The war in the Pacific was over but the Seal still had an important role to play in defeating the last member of the Axis still standing: Germany!

Still to come:

XXXII: The Black Dolphin

XXXIII: The Ancient Mariner

XXXIV: Epilogue

And background and story notes.

[brhugo]

[center]Part XXXII: The Black Dolphin[/center]

The Seal arrived in San Diego after an uneventful transit across a now peaceful Pacific. Units at sea had been warned to be cautious of Japanese submarines that had not received (or were ignoring) the cease fire orders but there were no known incidents of attacks after the end of 1944. Rumors of the Seal’s future were rampant; theories ranged from a major overhaul to install upgrades to early decommissioning. No one on board had guessed correctly.
With the US Pacific fleet freed from offensive duties against Japan, it could be employed against the Germans in the European theater. The U-boat problem had not been solved, and while the growing US shipbuilding industry was now able to produce Liberty ships faster than the Germans could sink them, the two-way trip across the Atlantic was still resulting in heavy loss of life and supplies despite heavy use of convoys and ASW.
In an attempt to win the "Battle of the Atlantic", ships released from duty in the Pacific theater were being converted to an ASW role to the maximum extent practical. For some ships, there was no credible ASW role; in particular, battleships and most cruisers. These big guns spent most of the rest of the war tied up in British ports, their German counterparts long ago having been sunk. Their final moment in the spotlight came at the second (this time successful) cross-channel invasion at Normandy in May 1945 for which they provided invaluable shore bombardment services.
The fleet carriers were converted into ASW platforms mainly by shifting their air groups to Helldivers and Avengers carrying depth bombs. These aircraft were equipped with Radar as fast as set could be produced for them. The carriers' fighter wings were stripped down to a token force which proved to be nearly useless in the remaining months of fighting.
The most radical conversion attempted was the use of submarines as anti-submarine platforms. Although a few sub vs. sub engagements had occurred over the course of the Pacific war, enemy submarines had been targets of opportunity rather than the main patrol objective. Submarines selected for conversion were equipped with state of the art radio direction finding receivers, active and passive Sonars, rudimentary homing torpedoes, and Mk-14's that had been modified to run circular and zig-zag patterns. The Seal was not selected for this conversion due to her relative obsolescence; this honor was reserved for the Gato and newer classes.
The Seal was instead slated for conversion into an "imitation U-boat" to play the "rabbit" in ASW exercises off the Pacific coast for the newly stood up ASW task forces. She entered the San Diego shipyard within days of completing her Pacific transit; modifications included additional of a "snorkel" mast that would allow her to operate her diesel engines while at periscope depth and modification of her radar transmitters to simulate German models. While the submarine underwent the refit, her approach team attended training given by naval and merchant marine personnel familiar with U-boat tactics in the Atlantic.
Following her modifications, the Seal left port for 48 hours of sea trials but had to surface and return to the yards after only a few hours submerged when the snorkel's head valve flange was found to leak badly. A few lesser material deficiencies were found when she resumed trials but these were either corrected by the crew or could be repaired during a later availability.
The Seal joined the newly formed SUBRON 21, nicknamed the "Black Dolphins" (War plan BLACK was the contingency plan for war with Germany as War plan ORANGE referred to Japan). SUBRON 21 was in turn attached to the training ASW group to which the newly formed ASW task forces were being assigned before deployment to the Atlantic. The Seal's first training exercise was "Black Dolphin 45-7" (BD-4507); the opposing force consisted of a simulated convoy (APs and APAs) with a few escorting destroyers and destroyer escorts and an ASW force centered on the venerable Lexington.
BD-4507 was scheduled for 5 days at sea with a one or two "problems" described in detail in exercise OPORDS. For day one, the Seal was to simulate an attack on the convoy and then attempt to evade detection by the convoys escorts and the Lexington groups ships and aircraft. The Seal dutifully attacked the convoy (by launching green flares from her signal ejector rather than firing exercise torpedoes; even a warheadless torpedo moving at 31 knots would inflict serious damage if its 3300 pound struck a ship) and then cleared datum at 8 knots using her snorkel. Neither the convoy's escorts nor the Lexington's aircraft established contact on the retreating "Black Dolphin". The Seal surfaced a few hours later and transmitted her track information to the Lexington; this would allow the carriers ASW team to do a reconstruction that evening of the attack and their failed efforts to find the black submarine. A more comprehensive critique with the submarine control team participating was to be held at then end of the week after the task force and submarine returned to port.
Since the Seal had not been "killed" the first day, the OPORD specified that the problem was to be repeated to provide the ASW forces an opportunity to implement any lessons learned from their analysis of the previous day's problem. The Seal's crew was already becoming bored. She again attacked the convoy, but instead of retreating after the attack, LCDR Turner conned her into a position astern of the convoy and followed in its wake as the APs fell off in the distance ahead. Turner was rewarded about 40 minutes later when he sighted a destroyer hull-down on the horizon bearing down on the point of the attack. The Seal changed course to follow the destroyer's track in reverse; and as he had expected the characteristic huge stack comprising the bulk of the of the Lexington's superstructure was soon visible.
The approach and attack was textbook with the exception of green flares playing the role of torpedoes. The Seal went deep while the Lexington's escorts hammered fruitlessly away with their active sonars above a strong thermal layer. After about 30 minutes, the Seal came shallow, reacquired the Lexington, and "sank" her again. When the escorts and aircraft again failed to detect their attacker, the Seal surfaced and transmitted a message to the Lexington via the ship to ship radio: "Du bist gesunken!" After less than 30 minutes, a message was received ordering all ships involved in the exercise back to their berths at the San Diego naval base.
The Seal pulled up to her pier to find that the admiral's flag lieutenant was waiting with orders to take LCDR Turner directly to Admiral Scott. After a short, uncomfortably quiet drive from the sub base to group headquarters, LCDR Turner was dropped off to make his way to the admiral's office. Turner walked into Scott's office and stood at attention. Without looking up, the admiral challenged him, "The Lexington said you cheated. Is that true
Turner gave this a few seconds thought. Technically, nothing in the Seal's exercise OPORD prohibited the Seal from attacking the carrier. "Yes sir" he replied.
Scott never looked up. "Good job John. Keep them guessing. Dismissed."
The performance of the ASW task forces improved as they trained with the Seal and the other members of the Black Dolphins, but the Seal managed to "sink" the Lexington again two weeks later, followed by the Hornet (CV12) in BD-4520 and the CVL Cabot in BD-4527. (Ironically, the Cabot was sunk by a U-boat in the Atlantic that summer, the only US carrier lost to a U-boat during the entire war). But the carrier ASW groups became particularly effective when submariners were assigned to the carriers as liaisons, providing direct technical advice to the ASW commanders.
Many of the Seal's crew had been disappointed that their boat would not be earning any more enemy "kills", which had been marked on her sail by carefully painted Japanese flags. But after a few months, as the bulkheads in the wardroom and crew's mess began to fill up with close-up photographs of various US warships taken through the Seal's periscope, this disappointment vanished (one sailor had suggested that the boat's sail be marked to show the US ships "sunk" by her during the ASW exercises; this idea was quickly squelched by the Chief of the Boat) . Although San Diego could hardly be classified as an exotic port-of-call, it did enable the crew to call (or in many cases see) their family members. Additionally, the slow return to production of oil facilities in the DEI along with a greatly reduced need for ship and aircraft fuel had eased fuel rationing substantially an life on the West coast was returning to a semblance of its pre-war normalcy.
The addition of more ASW task forces to the Atlantic theater along with more escorts for the convoys finally turned the tide against the German submarines. The U-boat crews were becoming less and less experienced on average as the losses among the veterans increased, while the allied ASW crews became more proficient. Although the submarines assigned to ASW duty managed to score a few kills, post-war analysis credited the training provided by the "Black Dolphins" of Squadron 21 as having had the far greater impact on the Battle of the Atlantic.

[brhugo]

[center]Part XXXIII: The Ancient Mariner[/center]

By August of 1945, the allied drive from Normandy through France had driven German forces back to defensive positions along the Rhine. In the East, Soviet forces had similarly pushed back the Germans; most of Poland had been "liberated" although in time the Poles and other eastern Europeans would discover that they had simply traded one oppressor for another. Short-ranged German jet interceptors still controlled the airspace over most of Germany. Although ultimate victory over the last Axis member was no longer in question, the most optimistic timetable projected German surrender in mid to late 1946.

The extensive and expensive Manhattan project had finally borne fruit. Enough uranium had been enriched at the top-secret Oak Ridge facility to assemble one "Nuclear Bomb". Despite the continued expansion and improvement of the facility's gaseous diffusion production lines, enough material for a second bomb would not be available until December. Since material for a second bomb design using plutonium being produced at the Hanford Engineering Works in Washington was not expected in sufficient quantity until March 1946, Oak Ridge's Nuclear Bomb would have to be tested in Germany rather than the New Mexico desert as originally planned.

The Nuclear Bomb weighed 9,000 lbs. Larger bombs were already in service (the 12,000 lb RAF "Tallboy" bombs had been used to sink the German battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz in French ports in 1944 and had been used against heavily reinforced underground jet hangers with some success) so the main problem in delivering this new weapon was getting past the German air defenses. To that end, the allies prepared the largest air raid of the war: Operation "Windmill".

The task to deliver the Nuclear Bomb was assigned to a B-29 that had been transferred from the Pacific. Named the "Ancient Mariner" by her crew during her deployment at Batavia; the bomber had been used mostly against Japanese airfields in Thailand. During their training for the mission, the crew practiced dropping 9,000 lb bombs that they had been told were modified versions of the Tallboy bomb and that their target would be underground jet assembly facilities on the outskirts of Berlin.

Operation Windmill consisted of three main waves of bombers. The first wave, strikes against jet aircraft factories, was a feint intended to draw out the jet interceptors. The second wave targeted the air bases where the jets would be expected to refuel after their air battles with the first wave. The third and largest wave was concentrated against Berlin and the airfields surrounding the city; the Ancient Mariner was to be part of this final strike. In the event the jet numbers were not adequately reduced by the earlier raids, the hope was that the Ancient Mariner survive due to the distraction provided by all of the other bombers flying with her.
Operation Windmill was launched on 6Aug45 and would have been judged a success even in the absence of the new weapon. Although there were unusually heavy losses among the allied bombers in the first wave, so many of the German jets were damaged or destroyed (or their runways disabled) in the second strike that the Ancient Mariner and the other bombers faced little opposition other than the extensive AA fire. At the altitude the B-29's were flying, few losses were taken from ground fire.

The Ancient Mariner's crew was not told of the actual purpose of their mission until a Los Alamos technician boarded the aircraft with the bomb's fusing mechanism during pre-flight checks. The navigator and bombardier were given the actual target - the center of Berlin. The nuclear bomb performed exactly as expected and much of Berlin was destroyed when the device exploded 2000 feet above the ground.

Hitler and most of his general staff were in Berlin at the time of the attack, although the allies had not been sure this would be the case when the strike date was selected. Command of the German government and military fell to Admiral Raeder as the ranking officer. The decapitating strike against the German military leadership did not pay off immediately as there was confusion in Germany as to the actual status of Hitler. The German military continued to fight for several weeks since Raeder was unwilling to negotiate with the allies until the status of Hitler and possible surviving senior officers was settled.

When negotiations finally began, the allies declared that another German city would be destroyed by a nuclear bomb unless Germany surrendered unconditionally, and that this would be repeated approximately every three weeks for as long as the war continued. This was an audacious bluff, but the US gave it credibility by leaking information that indicated that a plane carrying a second nuclear bomb had gone down in the English Channel during operation Windmill. German spies duly passed the false intelligence to Raeder and the German government surrendered on 5Sep45.

The Seal and her crew received the news of the German surrender in the middle of a Black Dolphin exercise that was promptly terminated. The war career of the Seal was finally over.


[center]Part XXXIV: Epilogue[/center]

Hopes for world peace were dashed when Soviet forces refused to withdraw from territory liberated from the Germans and World War II was quickly replaced by the Cold War. But there was no Cold War mission for the Seal, and she was ordered inactivated and disposed of. In early November, she proceeded to Boston, Massachusetts, where she was decommissioned on 15 November, and after a change in her orders, was retained in the Reserve Fleet. On 19 June 1947, she was placed in service and assigned to Boston as a Naval Reserve training ship, and in March 1949, she was transferred to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where she continued to serve the Naval Reserve until placed out of service and struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 1 May 1956.

The Seal was to be sold for scrap, but a fundraising and public relations effort to save her was successfully conducted by (now retired) Rear Admiral Hurd and many members of her former crew. She remained in Portsmouth as a museum ship until late 1974, when she was moved to Pearl Harbor to her current location as part of the 30 year celebration of the end of World War II (an effort spearheaded by President Nixon in an attempt to deflect growing public dissatisfaction with the long running war against communist insurgents in the Philippines). While preparing her for the move to Oahu, one of the Portsmouth naval reserve units spent several of their drill weekends removing her snorkel mast to return her to her December 1944 configuration.

Although most of her former crew members returned quickly to civilian life following the post war demobilization, several remained on active duty and completed careers in the Navy. George Wunder was the commanding officer of the USS Grayback (SSG-574) in 1958 when she ended Chinese intervention in the Korean War by launching a nuclear tipped Regulus missile at an airbase in Manchuria. CDR Wunder's crew was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation, delivered by President MacArthur himself, after the end of the war.
Final war tally for the Seal:
Ships sunk:

Type Name Date sunk Tonnage VPs
xAKL Hokuyo Maru 5/7/42 830 1
xAK Taian Maru 9/28/42 4875 10
xAK Yahiko Maru 4/11/43 3675 7
xAK Eizan Maru 4/11/43 4875 10
xAKL Yamamizu Maru 5/7/43 1650 2
xAK Noto Maru 5/15/43 6400 13
xAK Muroran Maru 6/21/43 4875 10
xAK Fushimi Maru 6/24/43 4675 9
xAK Keisyo Maru 7/30/43 6400 13
xAK Atlas Maru 8/30/43 6475 13
xAK Kureha Maru #3 1/31/44 3425 7
AO Kokuyo Maru 2/25/44 10000 28
TK Kikusui Maru 3/20/44 6400 18
TK Tempi Maru 3/30/44 9910 27
TK Kyokuyo Maru 4/11/44 13340 34
xAK Ryochi Maru 6/17/44 6600 13
xAKL Toten Maru 6/23/44 1900 3
TK Tatsuchiyo Mary 10/25/44 6600 16
Totals 102905 234


Ships Damaged:
Type Name Date damaged Mk-14 hits 3” hits
xAKL Korei Maru 12/16/41 - 11
xAKL Nichiro Maru 5/6/42 - 1
xAK Uyo Maru 4/9/43 - 2
TK Manei Maru 6/27/43 - 7
xAKL Mitsuri Maru 9/1/43 - 3
xAKL Liverpool Maru 9/4/43 1 -
TK Ryoei Maru 9/5/43 1 -
xAKL Fukuyo Maru 12/31/43 - 4
xAK Eiji Maru 2/6/44 - 13
TK Eiwa Maru 3/12/44 1 -


Story Notes

The Seal's history from her laying down until the beginning of the Pacific War was taken from Wikipedia and was intended to be factual. Other than the names of her wartime skippers, all other details of the crew members are fictional. The real Seal had one other wartime skipper, Harry E. Dodge, but by the time I discovered this it was almost time to relieve him with John H. Turner so I left Kenneth Charles Hurd in command.

This was the first time I had played a War in the Pacific, Admiral's Edition campaign scenario. I had played Pacific War for years after having found it in a collection (along with War in Russia and Clash of Steel) in the bargain bin in a mall electronics store in the early '90s. I actually found WitPAE while searching the internet for a faithful computerization of Avalon Hill's Flattop (as far as I know one does not exist) similar to what was done for Third Reich (a game I own but have never played although I DID read a favorable review of it!) I had worked out most of the learning curve with WitPAE by playing the Guadalcanal and Coral Sea Scenarios but was still totally unprepared for the full court press complexity of the campaign scenario. Other than giving the submarines initial war patrol orders as recommended by a spreadsheet I downloaded from the Matrix Games site, I ignored them (left them in automatic) until the fateful day the Seal hit the mine in Pusan harbor.

I accompanied the Seal's narrative with updates on the broader campaign with varying degrees of detail that probably seem as random as they were; it was a function both of how interesting I thought the other events were and how much time I could spend to fleshing them out. I avoided copying combat reports into the narrative because I found myself skipping over these when reading others' AARs, but included some game mechanic details such as damage levels that I thought were meaningful.

Because there was no reason not to, I wove an alternate history through the story that was sometimes plausible and often whimsical. Ironically, the most improbable element was the early surrender of Japan, yet this was driven by the game rules (by December 1944 I was so bored with the one-sided war that had evolved that I did not even consider the option the game gave me to continue the war). I chose much of the alternate history to make the early surrender more plausible:

1. Having previously declared that the US would only accept unconditional surrender from the Axis countries, it seemed impossible that Roosevelt would have softened his stance. To counter his historical high popularity, I reduced the public's tolerance for war losses below what I think it was and delayed the economic recovery that occurred as the US mobilized for war.

2. To give Roosevelt's successors a motivation to negotiate with Japan, I altered the history of the European war. The German's were more cautious in their invasion of Russia, avoiding overextending during the Russian winters and being content with territorial gains they could better hold. There was no Battle of Britain, instead the Germans abandoned any plans for a cross-channel invasion and preserved their air forces to hold territory captured in Western Europe. Instead of V-1 and V-2 rockets, the German's placed more of their research and development efforts on jet aircraft. German submarines never adopted the "Wolfpack" tactics and instead operated much as the US submarines did in the Pacific, minimizing detection by allied radio direction finding with the attendant ASW vectoring and rerouting of threatened convoys.

3. The US never broke the Japanese military codes and did not break their diplomatic code until near the end of the Pacific War. This was a realistic interpretation of my behavior during the game - I reviewed the SIGINT reports occasionally early in the war but couldn't figure out how to use the results and soon ignored this resource completely.

4. The allied invasion of France in 1944 was a failure. This was a reflection of my inability to master the intricate details of amphibious warfare in WitPAE. It is significant that in reviewing the forums, I usually couldn't understand the questions being asked let alone the answers.

5. A peace movement in Japan provided the Japanese government with the ability to respond to the US overtures for a negotiated end to the Pacific War.

Much of the information on the poor early-war performance of the Mk-14 was based on my memory of a paper I had written for a military history class I took in college. The story's "unauthorized" experiments conducted by submariners to prove the unreliability of the Mk-14 had actually been performed as part of the eventual investigation of submariners' complaints about the weapon.

In writing "The Ordeal of the Seal" I was unable to recreate the nail-biting tension of each turn as the heavily damaged submarine attempted to make the long transit to safety. Every few turns I would be treated to something similar to "Temporary flotation repairs failing on SS Seal" and would anxiously wait until the pre-turn autosave was complete to be able to see what had actually happened. System damage built up slowly over the long weeks even though the crew seemed to get ahead of the problem on the flooding. Then the intended sanctuary of Darwin got bombed into rubble followed by the next closest refuge at Broome. It was after the Seal finally made it to unmolested Perth that I decided to write the AAR. I had to recreate the Seal's actions up to the mine explosion using the saved combat and operations reports and the damage and port call data saved WitP Tracker.

When the Seal returned to service I employed her very timidly; this resulted in very poor results as described in Part V "Poor Hunting". I kept the submarine within a close range of ports where she could be repaired, but these areas were being avoided by the computer's Japanese forces. I quickly discovered that the story was going to be very dull unless I put her "in harm's way". Seaman Kinney's error during drills was taken from an actual event on U-505 (see the book by the same name) while that German submarine was attempting to crash dive after being sighted by an allied ASW aircraft.

The Seal's collision with a Japanese freighter is historical; although in the story the ship survived, the Boston Maru was reported sunk in real life (I did not want to exaggerate the Seal's game record with an "actual kill"!)

"Terror at Four Hundred Feet" was adapted from what is known about the Thresher disaster except that the Seal survives this fictional incident. The Seal's system damage had jumped from a few percent to 13% in one turn without any enemy action.

The efforts described in "The Ordeal of the Seal II" understate what I actually did to minimize the chance that the Seal's narrative was going to end in June 1944 with the loss of the boat and her entire crew. Hollandia had no large airfield and the closest source of air cover for the base during the Seal's stay there was Rabaul. So I mobilized an entire carrier task group and parked it off Hollandia to prevent the computer from sinking the support ships I was moving there to support the badly damaged submarine. A good player would probably have developed Hollandia as an advanced base soon after it was captured...

"Busted Again" was perhaps the inevitable result of my efforts to generate action for the Seal despite a Japanese merchant fleet that was getting harder and harder to find. I selected her patrol area based on other submarines having found targets there, but the new skipper had a higher aggressiveness score that the old one and the submarine was usually attacking the escorts rather than the merchants. For the third time in the game, I was worried that the Seal might not survive to reach a friendly port.

"Peace In The Pacific" could have been the final chapter of the story, but I felt the need to continue until long after the actual story ended [similar to the movie "Return of the King" (although the movie's drawn out ending is rather short compared with that of the book!)] With the Battle of the Atlantic still undecided, it seemed plausible that the naval forces freed up from the Pacific theater would be used in some way to turn the tide and that a training squadron to provide an opposing submarines for exercises was plausible.

In "The Ancient Mariner" (which was the actual wartime name of a B-29) I indirectly provided my opinion on whether the atomic bomb would have been used against Europeans. Although some have claimed that only racism allowed this weapon to be used on Japan, my evidence to the contrary is the merciless conventional bombing raids carried out against German population centers during the war.

"Epilogue" provides some guesses on how later events might have been shaped by the course of my game war including it's altered history. With Indochina liberated by the allies, the conditions for the Vietnam War are not established but this Cold War conflict merely moves to the bypassed Philippines. The Korea war breaks out just as happened historically, but now the president is the war hero MacArthur who does not hesitate to use nuclear weapons against the Red Chinese. It is unlikely that a submarine would have been used to conduct one of these nuclear attacks but the Grayback did have this capability and it was a chance for LT Wunder to make a final appearance in the story.

Charles Hurd did actually retire as a rear admiral.

The Seal's final duty station is at Pearl Harbor in place of the Bowfin memorial; the Bowfin was one of the submarines lost in my Pacific War.

I will send a copy (in Microsoft Word) of this story to anyone who wants it. My email address is brhugo@frontier.com.

[Dadekster]

Just bought this game yesterday and I look forward to learning how to play it. To that end between reading the manual I also came looking for some AAR's to learn more about how to play the game. Just intended to read the first post on this one but this excellent AAR had me hooked. Very well done and a great read. This rates with some very well done sci-fi ones I've read.

Thanks for taking the time to do it. [:)]