Final Harbor (The Silent War Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Author’s Note

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Epilogue

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  FINAL HARBOR

  Copyright © 1980 by Harry Homewood

  Published by agreement with the Harry Homewood literary estate.

  All rights reserved

  Edited by Dan Thompson

  A Thunderchild eBook

  Published by Thunderchild Publishing

  1898 Shellbrook Drive

  Huntsville, AL 35806

  First Edition: April 1980

  First Thunderchild eBook Edition: March 2016

  Author’s Note

  All the characters in this novel are fictional. There was no intent to limn any person, living or dead. Those readers who served in submarines in the Pacific in World War II will notice a certain chronological compression of some events, a device the author felt necessary for the purposes of the story.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to Clay Blair, Jr., whose monumental work on the role of the United States Submarine Navy in World War II entitled Silent Victory (published by J.B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia and New York, 1975) served to refresh my memory.

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated with profound respect to the memory of the 3,508 officers and enlisted men who died in the sinkings of 52 United States Navy submarines in World War II, some of whom I had the pleasure of serving with before their deaths.

  It is dedicated also to those submariners who lived through the bitter and dangerous years of the submarine war against the Empire of Japan — in particular to Lieut. Comdr. Joseph J. Sibley, USNR, who was the personification of the ideal submariner, in war or peace.

  Prologue

  There were no gestures of tenderness, no soft words of love when she was conceived. Those would come later when men lived with her, rode her, cursed her and finally came to love her.

  The conceptual couch was built of drawing boards and the fetus was a thick stack of blueprints labeled “Fleet Submarine Work Order SS/58903-6431-171/39-41.”

  She was midwived by Navy Yard workmen dressed in grimy work clothes as the world convulsed in agony; as Poland reeled under the invasion of Russian and German troops, and England, fearful but unafraid, lashed out with a declaration of war against the invaders.

  As she grew from a long stretch of gaunt circular ribs of steel to the smooth, deadly sleekness of her finished shape, Finland was overrun, Norway fell and the Low Countries drowned in the riptides of war that swept across Europe.

  She had no name. That would come later when a bottle of champagne would be broken over her bulbous nose. Until that day she would bear the generic name given to all submarines — “The Boat.”

  In time the Navy sent a man to command her. Later he was joined by other officers and a cadre of Chief and First-Class Petty officers.

  These men grew with the Boat. They watched the Navy Yard workmen install the intricate systems of oil, water, air and hydraulic lines that were the arteries of the Boat. They traced the myriad webs of electrical circuitry that were the Boat’s nervous system and they watched as the Boat’s propulsion systems were installed, four huge diesel engines for running on the surface, two immense storage batteries for propulsion while submerged. In bow and stern the Boat’s weapons were installed, six bronze torpedo tubes in the bow, four in the stern. With their knowing hands and eyes the men who would be the Boat’s living heart watched her as she was formed and learned all her concealed parts before they were hidden from view.

  The work went on under a blizzard of newspaper headlines that told of the war in Europe. As the men learned the Boat they came to respect the long, sweet reach of this underseas warship that was to be their home in time of peace, the weapon they would wield if the war raging in Europe should come to their shores.

  This is the story of the Boat and the men who took her to war in the far reaches of the Pacific Ocean against the forces of the Empire of Japan, a war which would claim of those who fought in submarines the heaviest casualty rate of all the branches of the United States Armed Forces.

  Chapter 1

  Far back in the mists of time, 320,000,000 years ago on the geologic time chart, huge predator fish and reptiles swam in the warm seas that covered much of the Earth. Of all the toothed horrors that swam in those Devonian Age seas and in all the seas down through the eons of time, only one great predator survived virtually unchanged, except for a reduction in its size to accommodate to its reduced food supply — the shark.

  From the time when man learned to wage war on the seas he yearned for the ability to strike his enemy unseen from the safety of the depths of the sea, yearned for a weapon that would be as deadly as the dreaded shark.

  He invented the submarine.

  The night air was thick and soft, heavy with humidity. Occasionally a land breeze drifted across the sea from the dark bulk of Borneo, the wind bearing on it the faint trace of wet vegetation, the smell of land. In the darkness of early night the U.S.S. Mako, Fleet Submarine, prowled Makassar Strait, her camouflage paint dull and blotched in the starlight.

  Just aft of the submarine’s open bridge Capt. Arthur M. Hinman kept his solitary night watch on the cigaret deck, his short legs braced against the slow roll of his ship. The ship’s Executive Officer, Lieut. Comdr. Mike Brannon, a plump man with a studious manner, stood in the cramped bridge space with the Officer of the Deck and the quartermaster of the watch. Above the four men three night lookouts perched in the steel webbing of the periscope shears, searching the horizon through night binoculars.

  For as long as man has gone to sea custom had dictated that the man who commands a ship must stand apart from those who serve under him. The custom is well founded; by the law of the sea and nations a ship’s captain has the power of life and death over his crew. He is their judge and jury and, if necessary, their executioner. Command at sea is one of the loneliest of all professions.

  That ancient custom had changed somewhat in the peacetime submarine service of the U.S. Navy. The change had come about gradually as the submarine grew more and more complicated. The demand for intelligent, highly skilled sailors to man the increasingly sophisticated ships had led to a form of special camaraderie among submarine crews and their officers that was based on the respect each man held for the skills of other crew members. But as the submarine captains took their ships to war, inexperienced in the grim game of fool’s dice they must play with the enemy’s warships, untested except in peacetime war games, the ancient wisdom of a Captain’s need for removal from his crew was recognized. The decision to be bold or cautious, to attack against heavy odds or to evade, rested in the mind of only one man, the sub
marine’s Commanding Officer.

  Lieut. Comdr. Arthur M. Hinman, USN, Commanding Officer of the U.S.S. Mako, was ill-fitted by nature for the solitary role of a ship’s captain. Hinman was a gregarious man with a consuming fondness for practical jokes that had been nurtured in the small Iowa town where he grew to manhood. His bubbling sense of humor, his love of an elaborate practical joke, had earned him a demurrer in his official record which read, in part:

  This officer, while highly qualified in all respects, has a weakness that must be considered whenever assignment to a critical job is contemplated. Ensign Hinman often succumbs to an impulse to exercise what he calls a “country boy sense of humor,” often to the detriment of his work. If this habit persists removal from assignment to sea duty or even termination of his service might have to be considered.

  The stigma had followed him throughout his early career, effectively slowing him in his struggle for increasingly responsible assignments until it was announced that he had become engaged to the daughter of a highly regarded Admiral. The Admiral was not noted for his sense of humor or his tolerance of anything that was not strictly Navy regulation. His paternal blessing of the fiancé of his last unmarried daughter was taken as irrefutable evidence that Arthur M. Hinman had at last outgrown his small-town fondness for jokes and games and had become a serious Naval officer.

  The Admiral’s daughter and Arthur Hinman made an odd couple. He was of medium height with the muscular body and feline grace of the middleweight wrestler he had been at the Naval Academy. She was taller than he by several inches and lean, a flat-chested girl-woman with an ungainly stride she never quite learned to adjust to her consort’s shorter legs. Long before Arthur Hinman had appeared on her horizon other young and ambitious officers with an eye to the promotional advantages that would be theirs if they took her as a wife had looked her over and passed her by in favor of a woman more feminine, less sharp of tongue.

  Hinman saw something in Marie the others had missed. He appreciated the steel and flint of her character. He recognized that her caustic tongue was a defense weapon, employed because she lacked the outward attractions of most women. He sensed the deep, throbbing capacity for physical passion that resided within her spare body and he found a joy in the elfin spirit she had kept so well hidden from her father, the Admiral. Their union was consummated in a curiously sensual night a month before they walked from the chapel at the Naval Academy beneath an arch of swords held by Hinman’s fellow officers. The marriage developed into an enduring and passionate love affair that in time became the envy of other Navy officers — and their wives.

  The marriage of the Admiral’s daughter and Lieut. Comdr. Arthur Hinman ended in noise, fire and blood on a sunny Sunday morning when the pilot of a strafing Japanese dive bomber zeroed in on a car he saw approaching the chapel at Hickam Air Field. Marie Hinman and two other Navy wives in the car died on that Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, at Pearl Harbor.

  The news of the Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor reached the U.S.S. Mako at sea, two days outbound from Balboa, enroute to the submarine base at Pearl Harbor.

  The news of his wife’s death and her burial was given to Captain Hinman an hour after Mako had made its way past the wreckage of the Navy’s Pacific Fleet, the ship’s crew standing at shocked attention to honor the memory of the thousands who had died on that flaming Sunday morning.

  The Navy Chaplain who had taken Captain Hinman to one side on the dock had difficulty telling his tragic news. Captain Hinman wasn’t listening to him. He was looking, standing on tiptoe, searching for Marie’s head above the crowd of people on the dock. And then the impact of what the Chaplain was saying had hit home. He rocked back on his heels, his eyes veiled, his face grave. He stared at the Chaplain for a long moment.

  “Please stand by, Padre,” he had said. “I have work to do. My ship, you understand? When I have taken care of my ship’s needs I want you to take me to her.”

  The Chaplain had nodded wordlessly and watched Captain Hinman as he walked over to Adm. Chester Nimitz and saluted and then began to talk, a ship’s Captain engaged in ship’s business with a man who had also been a ship’s Captain and now commanded a fleet. When Captain Hinman had finally saluted the Admiral and come back to him he nodded his thanks at the Chaplain for waiting and got in the Navy car the Chaplain had called for. He said nothing on the ride to the cemetery where the remains of hundreds of the dead had been hastily interred. He stood for a long time at his wife’s grave, marked only by a painted number on a plain white wooden cross. Then he had stepped back, saluted crisply, executed a smart about-face and marched back to the car. He said nothing in the car and when the Chaplain stopped the car on the dock alongside the Mako Captain Hinman got out and then turned and bent down to speak to the Chaplain.

  “Thank you, Padre,” he said quietly, “I know it has been hard for you, too.” Then he had wheeled about and strode over the narrow gangway to his ship’s deck, took the salute of the deck watch and disappeared down the Forward Torpedo Room deck hatch.

  The Executive Officer coughed discreetly and the sound carried back to the cigaret deck.

  “Damn it, Mike,” Captain Hinman said, “if you want to talk to me come back here. Don’t just stand there.”

  “Figured you might be thinking about something, Skipper,” Brannon said. “Ship’s captains are always supposed to be thinking deep thoughts, aren’t they?”

  “You have to stop thinking every once in a while,” Hinman said. “Go crazy if you don’t. What’s on your mind?”

  “Tomorrow morning is on my mind,” Brannon said. “As per your night orders we’ll be in position to dive at zero five hundred. We’ll dive on a course due west into the harbor mouth of Balikpapan. That way the sun should hide the periscope if anyone’s looking for us.

  “Someone will be looking for us,” Hinman said. “That’s the name of the game. We’re going to have to go in as close as we can. The Staff in Pearl wants to know exactly how many oil tankers are loading in that harbor, what other kind of shipping is in there. We might have to go right into the mouth of the harbor from the way that chart looks.”

  “The chart isn’t all that good,” Brannon growled. “It’s old, damned old! The channel is marked for depth but off to the south of the channel it only says possible shoaling. There’s a river comes down about there and I suppose it drops a load of silt. I just don’t know how much room we’ve got once we’re out of the ship channel and to the south of it. If I may suggest, sir, we might lay off a day submerged and watch, see what comes out. That way we might be able to get an idea where the deep water is south of the channel.”

  “No,” Hinman said. “Anything that comes out of the harbor is going to turn north, not south.” He nodded as he saw Brannon jerk his head toward the after end of the small cigaret deck and he walked back to the rail and stood with his back touching the barrels of the twin 20-mm machine gun that was mounted in the center of the cigaret deck. Brannon joined him, his voice a low murmur.

  “Chief of the Boat said to tell you that he and Ginty have finished modifying all the exploders in the torpedo warheads, sir. He says they’ll explode only on contact now, the magnetic circuits have been disconnected. I shouldn’t stick my nose in your business, sir —” his voice trailed off.

  “It’s a good Irish nose,” Hinman said. “We’ve been friends a long time. Stick it in.”

  “Well,” Brannon began. He looked up at the stern lookout who was standing in the periscope shears, his elbows braced on a pipe that ran around his lookout stand, his hands holding his binoculars to his eyes. Brannon’s voice dropped even lower.

  “I’m worried, Skipper. The Bureau of Ordnance says that no one, not a ship’s captain, not even the experts in the torpedo shop on the Base can touch one of those Mark Six exploder mechanisms. The Chief and Ginty have done more than touch them, they’ve taken them apart and modified them!”

  “On my direct orders,” Captain Hinman said.

  �
�I know,” Brannon answered.

  “You know how many torpedo failures we had on our first patrol,” Hinman said. “Nothing but failure! Nine fish that ran hot, straight and normal according to the Sound man and passed under the targets as they were supposed to do and not a one of them exploded. Then eight more that we fired to hit the targets and they ran as they were supposed to run and nothing happened! Then the two we set to run at two-feet depth and they hit the side of the target and just sank! The damned exploders don’t explode.”

  “That doesn’t change what BuOrd says,” Brannon’s voice was stubborn. “You, the Chief and Ginty could all be hauled up in front of a General Court-Martial when we get back to Pearl and they take the fish off and find their damned exploders have been tampered with!”

  “You’re assuming we’ll have torpedoes left aboard to turn in at Pearl,” Captain Hinman’s voice was dry.

  Brannon shrugged his meaty shoulders. “It would seem likely we will. The patrol orders tell us to observe and give a detailed report on the shipping in the harbor at Balikpapan and to report on the size and course of any convoys that leave the harbor.”

  “So other submarines to the north of us can have first crack at the ships!” Hinman growled. “Those damned bureaucrats at Pearl Harbor want their old friends, the Captains with three full stripes, to get the first crack at the ships so they’ll get medals and promotions! I’m the youngest commanding officer in the submarine fleet, did you know that? They want to make sure the older skippers get the targets.

  “I know what the patrol orders say. I’ll obey the orders. I want your plot laid down so I can go right into the mouth of the harbor if I have to. You let me worry about everything else.”