Bad torpedoes, heroics and a controversy about human death machines were the main topics that surfaced at a submarine seminar no one is likely to ever see or hear again, according to most observers.

The scene was the Admiral Nimitz Museum; named after the five-star admiral, who was the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet during World War II, the symposium-exhibit was entitled        "Up Periscope!" --- Submarine Operations in the Pacific, 1941-45.

The symposium was attended by more than 400 submariners and historians and was hosted by the Admiral Nimitz Foundation, the U.S. Naval Institute and the Admiral Nimitz Historical Park and sponsored by the Texas Committee for the Humanities and 19 other supporters.

Included among participants in the symposium were the four remaining submarine commanders who were awarded Medals of Honor for outstanding war patrols:

Vice Adm. (Ret.) Lawson R Ramage,
Rear Adm. (Ret.) Richard H. O'Kane,
Rear Adm..(Ret.) Eugene B. Fluckey
Capt. (Ret.) George L. Street.

Rear Adm. (Ret.) Chester W. Nimitz Jr., like his father, a submariner, was the keynote speaker and in his address to the opening session May 20 on "Historical Perspectives," spoke of Pride in the Submarine Force despite torpedo failures well into 1943 that drastically curtailed successful patrols.

He said a false kind of economy had an unscientific reliance on laboratory bench-type tests, (which) unbelievably had the unfortunate result that real exploders in real warheads didn't get tested.

"When we went to war," he said, "neither the magnetic exploder nor the impact exploder were reliable. My guess is that, in the beginning before we cottoned on to the fact that the fish were running up to 20 feet deeper than set, neither device exploded as much as half the time.

"Well, you think of the cost, risk, efforts to train crews, find the targets, get the sub in firing position and then shoot the equivalent of water slugs, you can appreciate the heart-rendering frustration of the early skippers. And who knows what boats may, in fact, have been lost because of this reason.

"I personally, on three successive submarines I served on well up into 1943, observed many positive examples of ghastly torpedo failures."

"Speaking of the need for testing, even today, Nimitz said, "there should be a bumper sticker for modern submariners. This one should say, 'Have you fired a warshot today?'

On the positive side, Nimitz noted that "some 15,000 submariners in the Pacific, with 288 submarines, sank two-thirds of Japan's merchant fleet and one-third of its Navy and they did it with losses of only a fifth of the personnel and a fifth of the submarines (3,505 men and 52 boats)!' He compared the U.S. losses to the "horrendous" loses of the German U-boat command. They lost 28,000 of their men of the 41,000 they sent to sea a 68 percent casualty rate.

"The war with Japan," he said, "was the perfect opportunity for unrestricted submarine warfare. We had an island enemy poor in natural resources, with widely scattered bases and supply sources, not to speak of a vulnerable code. Submarines were not very useful when or where they were denied the element of surprise in the presence of determined enemy forces concentrating on a specific objective such as landings at Blaikpapan or Lingayen Gulf. Submarines simply can't stand and oppose and keep the enemy from achieving his objective. Sink a few ships? Sure. But drive them off? No. Nor could they defend Midway against a carrier strike force attack group. Nor could they force a fanatical enemy to surrender. But I will aver that in the performance of their primary mission - interdiction of supplies to Japan - U.S. submariners, and in particular those of you here today, accomplished their important assignment in a manner that has to be rated outstanding.

"In short, although you didn't win the war single-handedly, you almost certainly eliminated any Japanese chance to win, and contributed greatly to their predisposition to quit.

"Hail to submariners!"

In considering why our submarine forces were so successful, Nimitz said he believes "there were two clear principal reasons: The people and the boats.

"The personnel nucleus, officers and men with which we started the war simply has to have been our greatest single strength and asset. They, their morale and their training were diluted and rediluted and rediluted over and over again as we vastly expanded the submarine force. If the concentrate had not been of the highest quality, solidly trained and highly motivated, the subsequent successful results could not have been achieved!'

Adm. (Ret.) l.J. (Pete) Galantin, another WW II sub skipper, got more specific about the fIeet boat's capabilities. Speaking on "The Effects of Arms Technology Limitations on the U.S. Submarine War," Galantin said, that "what made everything possible, regardless of what fancy weapons we had, periscopes and sonar, was the almost fabulous diesel engines. After many, many years of frustrations, doubts, difficulty, there finally evolved two superb engines, the Winton. . . and the Fairbanks-Morse. Time and again these engines were pushed beyond their design limits, but they were what made it possible to cross that vast Pacific at high-speed chases, to run away in a hurry if you wanted to, to keep your batter sharp. All of that hinged on marvelous engines."

The only controversy of the symposium occurred when Capt. Edward L. (Ned) Beach, submarine skipper and author of "Run Silent, Run Deep," speaking on "Overview of U.S. Submarine Warfare Strategic Doctrine," strayed from his topic to offer the opinion that the U.S. cruiser Indianapolis was sunk by kaitens, suicidal human guided torpedoes.

This was not the first time that Beach had made this assertion. It has appeared numerous times in his writings. But this was the first time that he had the opportunity to confront a Japanese naval officer with his theory.

At Session II - The Participant's Perspective," Beach again broached the subject to panelist Cmdr. Kennosude Torisu, lJN (Ret.), indicating that the skipper of the Indianapolis, when he said three torpedoes, not kaitens (human torpedoes) sank the Indianapolis.

Beach, arising and strolling to the microphone at the question and answer phase of the program, told Torisu and the audience that "I have recently concluded a fairly extensive study of the kamikaze (suicide Japanese fighter plane pilots). I grew to have an immense respect for those young men who willingly gave their lives for their country. They not only did what we did, which was risk their lives; they gave them, willingly, diving their airplanes into enemy ships. They achieved a great deal of damage to our fleet. And, although we were greatly afraid of them and angry at them, we also had to respect them and their Spirits because they're gone. It turns Out that not only were there kamikazes in the air but there were kamikazes at sea. And I feel that it would be almost unfair not to give them credit. That is their due. And I have believed ever since reading Captain Hashimoto's book, "Sunk," on the subject that he must have used kaitens."

Beach said that in the book, Hashimoto said he fired six fish at the Indianapolis at 1,500 yards and should have hit, in Beach's estimate, within one minute (perhaps even 40 seconds.) Hashimoto said that he used two-second intervals (not eight seconds as U.S. subs did) for firing his spread of six torpedoes. 'Every minute seemed an age,' Beach quoted Hashimoto as saying in the book.

It was in December of 1945 when Hashimoto was summoned as a witness at the McVay court-martial . As Beach put it, "The war was over. The United States grabbed him, took him to Washington, and he didn't know English, he didn't know what was going to happen and he decided not to tell exactly what happened."

Beach described an article that Torisu wrote in the Naval Institute Proceedings in 1961 and read a portion of the article, entitled "Japanese Submarine Tactics!'

Beach: "The first paragraph: 'One of the most interesting unanswered questions to do with Japanese submarine operations in World War II concerns the sinking of the cruiser USS Indianapolis by I-58. How did it happen that the submarine found itself in such an advantageous position on 29 July, 1945."

Beach said the article "goes on to describe that there are two types of kaiten operations - 'the first the invasion of harbor, the second on the open seas.'

He said at the end of the article, it said, 'The operational policy of the Sixth Fleet was then switched entirely to raiding operations at sea. As the second attempt, the I-376 made a sortie on its 5 May patrol near Okinawa where she destroyed USS Griggan (?), a destroyer, with two kaiten. In the final attempt, this time with six submarines - I-47, I-53, I-58, I-363, I-366 and I-367 - I-53 was assigned an area between Okinawa and Leyte and I-58 made her first contact on 28 July when she discovered a huge tanker. The tanker was believed to have been sunk by two kaitens. After this attack, I-58 proceeded to the point where she met the Indianapolis.' "The next sentence and the last in the book: 'the contacting and sinking of that vessel, from our viewpoint, was a fortune of war that showed our newly adopted submarine tactics to be correct. The newly adopted submarine tactics were to change from kaitens into harbors to kaitens in the open sea.'

Beach: "I take this article to assert in a public way that kaitens sunk the Indianapolis, and I am asking commander Truisu if it is not about time, 45 years later, should not the credit for this sinking, after all these years, go to the men who really deserve it?"

Turisu: "I swear that kaitens were not used. Given the time of the day and the situation at that time, there is no way that kaitens were used. They had kaitens ready but it was impossible to launch kaitens in the dark. The periscope of kaitens was very small and could not be used at night. It was the policy of the commanding officer not to use kaitens at night because they liked to make sure that, if they used kaitens, that they hit the target."

(Editor's note: The Japanese records show that the night was one of bright moonlight and the visibility was "5-1/2 miles.").

Torisu admitted that kaitens were on board the I-58 and were available for daylight attacks.

Capt. Akihiko Yoshida, the other retired Japanese officer who was a panelist, said the reason the Japanese Navy failed to check U.S. submarine actions in the Pacific were poor anti-submarine warfare tactics, poor radar and its policies.

Torisu said the Japanese failed in their own submarine operations because their General Board consisted of mainly gunnery officers and not a single submariner or submarine - oriented person. He said also that too many models and variations were produced and that Japanese subs were used mainly as transports instead of attack vessels.

Clay Blair, a former submarine quartermaster and author of "Silent Victory," who also was a panelist, urged the creation of a single repository for the records and papers having to do with World War II submarine warfare. He said he was quite willing to turn over his tapes of interviews for the writing of his book, of which there were "hundreds," to such a repository.

A member of the audience said the Naval Submarine League is in the process of starting a library... in connection with the Navy Department library in Washington.

During the roundtable discussion by the Medal of Honor winners, each described the patrols that won them their awards.

Ramage, who boldly penetrated the screen of a heavily escorted convoy, Iaunched a perilous surface attack that crippled a freighter, sank the leading tanker and damaged a second one. Defiant of shellfire, he struck again, sinking a transport by two forward reloads. As a fast transport closed in to ram, Ramage sent three "down-the-throat" bow shots to stop the target, then scored a killing hit in 46 minutes of violent action.

Fluckey, who was cited for Barb's 11th patrol along the east coast of China, tracked more than 30 vessels to Mamkwan Harbor, after sinking an ammunition ship and damaging other tonnage during a running two-hour night battle. Riding in only 30 feet of water, he launched Barb's last forward torpedoes at 3,000 yards.

Quickly bringing the sub's stern tubes to bear, he turned loose four more torpedoes, getting eight hits on six of the main targets, including a large ammunition ship.

Clearing the area at high speed, he brought the Barb to safety. Four days later he sank a large Japanese freighter to complete a record of heroic combat achievement.

O'Kane on the Tang operated against two Japanese convoys on her fifth patrol. Boldly maneuvering on the surface into the midst of a heavily escorted convoy, he hit three tankers and swung his ship to fire at a freighter and shot out of the path of an onrushing transport. After clearing the area he made contact with a heavily escorted convoy to support the Leyte campaign with reinforcements and supplies and with crated planes piled high on each unit. In spite of relentless fire, he sent two torpedoes each into the first two transports and a tanker. The escorting destroyer went up with a roar, which rocked the Tang. He expended his last two torpedoes into the remnants of the convoy before his own ship went down. He and eight other survivors spent 10 months as Japanese prisoners.

Street won his award as Tirante commander on her first patrol. He penetrated the mined and shoal obstructed harbor of Quelpart Island off the coast of Korea with his crew at surface battle stations. Despite shore-based radar and patrol vessels, he sent two torpedoes into a large ammunition ship. Instantly spotted in the glare, he left the scene, firing his last two torpedoes to sink the leading frigate and a flanking vessel. He dived deep to escape as a pursuing patrol dropped a pattern of depth charges.

Special exhibits were set up in the museum ballroom honoring the three submarine commanders who went down with their vessels and were honored posthumously with Medals of Honor.

The three were:

Capt. John R. Cromwell of the Sculpin
Cmdr. Samuel D. Dealey of the Harder
Cmdr. Howard W. Gilmore of the Growler.

Among panelists was Dr. Eric Holmes, who recalled the exploits of his father, the late Capt. W.J. "Jasper" Holmes, who translated intelligence information into valuable tools for planning and support of submarine operations.

Others and their topics:

Dr. Carl Boyd, Old Dominion University, "Overview of Japanese Submarine Warfare Strategic Doctrine"

Capt. Roger Pineau, USNR (Ret.), "Communications Intelligence in the Submarine War"

Dr. Roger Beaumont, Texas A. & M. University, "Moral Ethical Aspects of Submarine Warfare from an Historical Perspective

Fluckey, "Wolfpack tactics and Revolutionizing Submarine Warfare"

O'Kane, "U.S. Submarine Tactical Doctrine and how it worked in Battle Conditions"

Clay Blair, author of "Silent Victory," "The Submarine Sailor - A Different Breed of Blue-jacket"

Cmdr. John Alden, USN (Ret.), "Correlating U.S. Submarine Attacks with Japanese Records."

The symposium closed with a panel discussion by Admirals Ramage, Fluckey and Kane, Captain Street, Capt. Slade Cutter, Commander Alden, CPO Jack Thomason, Clay Blair, CWO Del Sprague and Floyd Caverly.

Paul StilIwell, Director of Oral History, U.S. Naval Institute, who described his job as "listening to sea stories for a living," and Captain Pinneau were moderators of sessions.

Following the symposiums, on the evening of May 20, a banquet was held beneath a large tent at the rear of the museum. The event closed the morning of May 21 with the ceremonial tolling of the lost boats and the autographing of books by participating authors.

SIDEBAR

Her name is Lucy Wilson Jopling and she was wearing a Spearfish battle flag on the shoulder of her dress.

"Come on," I said, smiling. "You didn't make a patrol on the Spearfish, did you?

"Well, not exactly," she said, matching my smile. "but I did sail on the Spearfish. For 17 days. You see, I was one of 12 Army nurses rescued off Corregidor by the Spearfish and spent 17 days on the sub while she carried us from Corregidor to Fremantle, Western Australia."

Lucy was typical of the cross-section of America at the symposium - young and old, submariners, historians, history buffs, psychologists and people just curious or interested in an important part of our history.