Free The Galloping Ghost by Carl P. LaVO Page A

room closes the outboard induction valve by hydraulic power. When the engine room personnel hear the outboard valve close, they close the inboard inductions. The guys in the maneuvering room have to shift to the batteries for propulsion. The fellow in the control room opens the vents, and then he closes the vents after the submarine is submerged. All these things have to happen independently. Nobody is supervising them; nobody can be there. The officers have their own responsibilities. All these things have to be done and you have to count on the people doing them in the proper sequence.
    Rigorous oral and written exams each week continued to narrow down the number of enlisted men who could qualify for submarine duty. As for the officers, Fluckey seemed a perfect fit. Throughout his life, he had been fascinated with how things worked and nothing was more complex than a submarine. He also was a people person, and no crew worked more closely together in tight quarters than submariners. Officers and men viewed themselves much like a family.
    The submarine classes of 1938 were important to the Navy because they would form the command nucleus for the service’s new Fleet submarines, the long-sought answer to how to deal with the growing might of the Japanese military. Admiral Hart, superintendent of the Naval Academy during Fluckey’s years there, proved in 1921 that the Navy’s existing subs were incapable of doing that. He took a flotilla of the latest S-class boats accompanied by a tender, a floating hotel/machine shop that serviced the undersea fleet, on a voyage from New London to Hawaii, then southwest to Manila in the Philippines. The entire journey was beset by breakdowns, forcing overhauls in Hawaii and overtaxing the tender. The flotilla’s ineffectiveness convinced the Navy of the need for a long-range, much larger submarine that would not be tied to a tender and would be capable of patrols that might last three months at a time and span the Pacific.
    The new fleet-type subs were critical to the success of another revision of the Orange War Plan. Instead of the Fleet steaming directly to Manila from its base in Hawaii at the outbreak of war, it would move in stages, first to bases in the Marshall Islands, then to the more westerly Caroline Islands, before moving into Philippine seas. The new tactic required Americanand Philippine troops to stand their ground longer, to retreat if necessary to the rocky fortress of Corregidor at the mouth of Manila Bay until the Fleet arrived. In tandem with this strategy Fleet submarines would interdict troops and supplies sent south from Japan.
    Plans for these amazing submarines had been finalized and the first generation was launched from shipyards in New England and California in the mid-1930s. The contrast to the S-boats was astonishing. The older vessels were 211 feet long; the fleets, 310. The S-boats contained 4 torpedo firing tubes; the fleets, 10. The S-boats could dive to a test depth of 200 feet; the fleets, at least 300. The S-boats had a maximum surface speed of 14 knots; the fleets, 21. The S-boats carried a maximum crew of 42; the fleets, 80. The S-boats had a range without refueling of 5,000 miles; the fleets, 12,000. And enough food and water could be stored aboard a fleet-type sub to facilitate patrols lasting more than two months without resupply or refueling.
    Technically both the S-class and fleet subs weren’t true submarines but rather submersibles capable of diving and staying submerged for periods of time measured in hours. In wartime, survivability was questionable. The discovery and development of sonar as a means of locating and destroying submarines posed a significant threat. During the latter stages of World War I, an Allied group known as the Anti-Submarine Detection Investigation Committee discovered an electronic method of locating German submarines. The resulting echo-ranging system, known as ASDIC (from the committee’s