August 1942
After a successful command of the USS Gar I was transferred to bring a new boat up to speed - the USS Triton. My first patrol is up in the north east Pacific with orders to go there and standby for orders. I figure this has something with the Aleutian campaign that recently completed but I am a bit miffed. I had four good patrols, with my last one culminating in stumbling into the IJN Kido Butai on its way into Midway after a emergency resupply at Midway when I thought my patrol was over and I was on my way back to Pearl.
Put back to sea and went directly to the area and received a radio message to engage enemy merchant shipping. I set a course north and began patrolling the southern part of the islands. All the way to Dutch, where I refueled and came back down then patrolled eastern EURASIA and down into Japan, with no contact. Finally arriving outside of the Uraga Channel where I begin patrolling.
Luckily I arrive as a convoy has formed up and is traveling south, just at daybreak. I am in perfect position and set up an attack on a tanker and a mid-sized freighter.
Up to this point I have not had many problems with the Mk 14 and have managed to swing having mostly Mk 10s onboard. Karma caught up with me this trip though. I fired four torpedoes at the tanker and two at the freighter and then punched it up to standard speed and threw in full right rudder to bring the stern tubes to bear to finish off the freighter.
KABOOM! KABOOM! KABOOM! Way to early. Nothing I can do so I save exposing the scope until I am nearly on my new heading and then look. Sure enough, two torpedoes detonated prematurely on the way to the tanker, one went deep under it and another was a dud! One detonated on the freighter and the other blew right out of the tube! I spin the scope and line up the tanker and put four fish out the stern tubes at her (COMSUBPAC has stressed tankers need priority) and order a dive and standard speed for crush depth. As the scope goes under I see the destroyer heading straight in with a doggone for me.
I rig for silent running once I pass the thermal layer and drop down to two knots. I thought she had us with echo ranging but she broke off to our port beam and finally I hear a detonation from the tanker. Just one. Sonar thinks two others were duds and one just dropped off (another deep runner I think).
An hour passes and I hear nothing finally so I creep up to periscope depth. Sure enough, that tanker is still there, creeping along with a small fire on deck. I have reloaded two tubes so I close to within 800 yards and let her have both of those tubes and a third that was reloaded while maneuvering.
One detonated. It was enough.
Returned to Pearl and while I was talking it over with the skipper of another boat one of the "investigators" from BuOrd was there... Good thing I am going back to see tomorrow... I broke the @%$@%'s jaw I think.
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