Submarine! by Edward L. Beach Read Free Book Online Page A

the story of Mush Morton. More than any other man, Morton—and his Wahoo —showed the way to the brethren of the Silent Service. He was positive, intolerant, quick to denounce inefficiency if he thought it existed; but he was precise by nature, absolutely fearless, and possessed of a burning desire to inflict damage upon the Japanese enemy.
    Just why Morton felt that destruction of the Japanese merchant marine was his own private job will probably never be explained, for he and Wahoo sleep forever somewhere in the Sea of Japan. But all that is immortal of both of them is indissolubly paired in the archives of a grateful (but forgetful)nation and in the minds and hearts of a few men who knew them.
    Morton died, perhaps believing that his message had not been received by those for whom it had been intended, perhaps with a bit of bitterness that he could convince no one to follow where he led. But he need not have worried, for after him came a host of names which, by their very fame, proved that his ideas had fallen upon fertile soil. Trigger, Tang, Barb, Tirante, Harder —these were some of his disciples: the school of “outthinking the enemy”; the believers in the coldly logical evaluation of chances, followed by the furious, slashing attack; the devotees of the competition to bring back the most ships.
    Morton believed that there was a certain way in which the job should be done. He would have nothing to do with any other way. There is no question but that his search for perfection in his science brought about his own undoing.
    On the last day of 1942 Lieutenant Commander Dudley W. Morton took command of USS Wahoo at Brisbane, Australia. There was nothing particularly outstanding about the new skipper during the first few weeks of his command, except perhaps an almost fanatical determination to get the items of the refit completed and checked on time, so that there would be no unnecessary delay in starting upon patrol.
    Finally, on January 16, 1943, all repairs had been completed, and Wahoo was ready for sea for her third war patrol—Mush Morton’s first in command. In company with her escorting destroyer—necessary in view of the “shoot on sight” order directed against any submarine in those “friendly” waters—the submarine got underway and headed for the open sea. At nightfall the escort turned back, a dimmed signal light blinking the customary farewell: “Good luck . . . good hunting!” Perhaps the captain of the destroyer wished that he, too, could go forth on his own, like some ancient sea rover, to seek out the enemy. Undeniably there was always a strong element of romance at the sight of a small ship setting out alone for enemy waters, bravely inviting theworst the enemy could offer, confident in her ability to best him in all encounters. Perhaps the destroyer skipper sensed this as he watched his signalman flash out his valedictory; perhaps Morton knew a momentary sense of understanding, also, but his answer was an equally simple: “Thank you!”
    Wahoo was on her own.
    It wasn’t long before the first plan churning around in the restless brain of Wahoo’s new captain became evident to the crew, now that the need for secrecy had passed. Only recently had it become known that the Japanese for some time had been using a harbor known as Wewak as a major staging area. The location of this harbor was loosely determined to be somewhere on the northeast coast of New Guinea, but its position was known to our forces only by whole numbers of latitude and longitude. Morton planned to find Wewak, enter the harbor unsuspected, and raise as much fuss as possible.
    The preparations he and his officers made for this little expedition were thoroughly characteristic of the man. The only available chart showing even in vague degree the location of Wewak was contained in a school atlas. Using a camera lens and the ship’s signal light, a homemade projector