Free The Galloping Ghost by Carl P. LaVO Page B

initials), or sonar, came into being. With it, a sound pulse, or “ping,” was transmitted from a surface vessel. When the pulse hit a submerged metallic object, it bounced back as an echo. At the sub school instructors believed that a properly equipped destroyer operating in tandem with other equally equipped vessels could determine the precise location of a sub with sonar and deliver a coup de grace. Still, the young sub officers-in-training shrugged off potential hazards. “That’s the beauty of being young,” said Cutter.
    As graduation neared in the late fall, competition for class rank was intense because of the consequence of finishing last: assignment to the S-boat squadron patrolling the Chinese coast. It was the one place where you couldn’t take your family and most in Fluckey’s class were married. By sheer determination Fluckey avoided China duty. As a member of the 57th Submarine Basic Officer’s Class, he graduated seventh out of thirty officers and received orders to report for duty to the S-42 based in Panama.
    For the United States Navy in the 1920s, the S-class subs represented the highest evolution of a stealthy coastal defense weapon. After Admiral Hart’s ill-fated voyage to Manila proved that the boats were ill equipped to travel with the Fleet, the Navy relegated them to guarding bases on theWest and East Coasts of the United States, the U.S.-owned Canal Zone in Panama, Hawaii, and the Philippines. The S-42, built in 1923 in the Bethlehem shipbuilding yard in Quincy, Massachusetts, was one of six S-boats stationed at the big Navy base in Coco Solo, Panama. The former company town constructed to house workers who built the American-owned canal was now a bustling naval bastion guarding the Caribbean entrance to the waterway.
    It was because of the ambition of the United States to build the canal that Panama earned independence after a long struggle. The tiny country was among the first Spanish-owned colonies in the Americas to assert independence from Spain in 1821 by aligning itself with breakaway Colombia, which decided to absorb Panama rather than let it go. For eighty-two years Panamanians tried to reassert independence through forty administrations, fifty riots, and five attempted secessions. They were finally successful after the United States approached Colombia for permission to build the canal linking the Atlantic with the Pacific over the narrow isthmus of Panama. When Colombia rejected the overture in 1902, Panama again proclaimed independence, this time succeeding with American backing. In exchange for the ten-mile-wide, coast-to-coast canal zone in perpetuity, the United States agreed to pay Panama $10 million immediately and a $250,000 annuity, nearly doubling that amount by 1933.
    Realizing the strategic importance of the waterway to commerce and military security after World War I, the Navy stationed a significant number of submarines and destroyers in Panama to guard the canal. The relatively new S-boats, including S-42 of Submarine Division 11, had been based in Coco Solo since May 1936.
    Fluckey was the junior officer and would remain with the boat for two and a half years. He gained invaluable undersea experience as the boat patrolled the Caribbean as far north as Cuba and Haiti and as far east as the Virgin Islands. The sub played tag with destroyers (which Fluckey termed “greyhounds of the sea”) and often dived and surfaced to avoid detection by planes. The S-boats were prone to breakdowns on extended duty, requiring the USS Holland (AS-1) sub tender to accompany them.
    Lieutenant Fluckey quickly learned that sub duty had built-in hazards not found on surface ships. They were noisy, crowded, hot while submerged, and a plumber’s delight of hand wheels, flapper valves, pressure gauges, pumps, levers, and switches. Occasionally, men were injured unwittingly, including Fluckey. “We had been down for an hour or more, so had started