Legendary Duo-Mush Morton and USS Wahoo-Episode 203

 thank you   hello and welcome to episode 203 of the unauthorized history of the Pacific War podcast my name is Seth paradon historian and deputy director of the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum here at Camp Shelby and with me as always as my esteemed co-host retired Navy Captain Bill Toady former Skipper of the fast attack submarine USS Indianapolis Commodore submarine Squadron 3 in Pearl Harbor and many many other postings how are you this afternoon Bill I’m still doing great Seth and you you

doing okay I’m doing just dandy just I never get to ask you that question you always ask me I’m fine fine as wine is it so um so this is our show’s third episode of its second season uh our first episode of season two aired a couple of weeks ago when Bill and I had retired Admiral Thomas Fargo on the show to give an introductory talk on U.

S Pacific submarines Fleet boats Pig boats silent service whatever you want to call them a service that is obviously very near and dear to Bill’s heart now this season will not be all about Subs but there will be several several episodes about submarines uh but we felt it was right to pick up kind of where we left off especially with last week’s talk with Bill doing his uh our submarine 101 episode and we this week we’re going to talk about a legendary boat with its legendary crew led by its legendary skipper it’s a submarine that is named after a

fish like all U.S World War II fleet Boats were uh the submarine and the fish it’s named after are one of the most appropriately matched pairs the fish is a tropical fish that is considered to be a valuable and prized catch by Sportsmen its elongated body is iridescent blue with silvery blue bars along its slender side the fish has razor sharp teeth its growth is rapid and it is among the fastest and most voracious eaters in the ocean it tends to be a loner solitary when hooked it is known to be a fighter a highly prized catch if you can get one

the fish puts up a vicious fight and is known for its speed and strength on its run on the first hook all of these adjectives describe both the boat and its aquatic namesake the fish and the legendary U.S Fleet boat are both called wahoo so bill with that as we go through our summon episodes I’m not sure we want to in every case give an expose on the fish like the USS carp we’ll skip that one okay but but this one in particular is fitting isn’t it it is it really is if if you know anything about World War II submarines in the Pacific this is

probably the one that comes this one in Tang for reasons that we will see uh come to the top of mind and Wahoo was and this is not arguable was the first star of the show uh when it comes to the silent service so it’s more than appropriate that it’s our first Fleet boat that we’ll cover and just to be clear to the listeners as we go through um we’re not going to give a history of every every submarine of the war we’re gonna we’re gonna pick certain ones that are led by certain legendary Skippers okay and Toronto Slade cutter people

like that or certain boats like silversides you know things that did and it won’t all be this season we’ll stretch out in the next couple Seasons too but it’s appropriate that we start with much Morton and USS Wahoo because of the precedent that this boat and the cat who took over as the as her second Skipper set for everybody that followed now and we’ll get into much as personality and we’ll get into what he did and the specific things that he did and you know revolutionize or pioneered whatever you want to say as we go along

but this boat was a magnet for Sailors who wanted to sail aboard her uh after this one particular individual took command and we’re going to get into that and I think by the end of this conversation you’re going to understand why um so Bill Wahoo let’s talk about a little bit about the boat and this she’s a gato class boat and you know the three big classes of submarines in the Pacific and World War II of course gato baleo and I think the other one was with Tambor uh the the the final towards the end yeah yeah but a lot of them are gato

class boats and Wahoo is the most famous and so the statistics we give on this boat it covers all the gato class boats she was built in July 1941 so she was built before World War II um at mayor Island Navy shipyard in in Vallejo California uh and and this is the gato class Boats were eight years huge leap forward when it came to previous classes of boats weren’t they bill I mean we’re talking about gas boats and our boats and all this other stuff right and um you know there was a lot of advances made with this it didn’t have a

snorkel Germans didn’t invent the snorkel until 43 I think the first started deploying them in 44 and we didn’t have any snorkels on our submarines until after World War II but beyond that the standard that the gato class basically stopped stayed the standard for submarines they were improved on in you know not revolutionary but evolutionary ways with baleo and other follow-on classes until USS Nautilus really that was revolutionary unreal evolutionary in 55 but the standard that was set by the gato carried the submarine Force Through

the war and as we said in the episode with Admiral Fargo it was really up to the submarines and carriers after Pearl Harbor when the surface fleet was really decimated to carry the war to the enemy until the surface Fleet could be reconstituted in the gato glass Boats were the Crux of that because they had long range they had high speed they were actually bigger submarines than the gato class um before the gato class was introduced to the fleet but those bigger submarines were slower and ironically many of them

had shorter ranges and weren’t as effective carried fewer torpedo tubes fewer Torpedoes and for those reasons weren’t as effective a war fighting submarine as the gato class and as you’ll see as the listeners and viewers will see the Gatos are to to Bill’s exact point is that these are the the these are the ships that these are the boats that carry the war from 1942 all the way to the end of the war I mean you just gato class boats like the drum which is in nearby Mobile Alabama to me and you build it for that matter uh you

know I mean it was launched in 42 it went all the way through so I mean you know these are boats that see a lot of action these are very uh the taxpayers got their money’s worth out of the Cato class boats you know so like all gato class boats Wahoo was powered by four diesel electric motors she could attain a speed of 21 knots on the surface and nine knots submerged but that’s wide open isn’t it bill that’s sprinting yeah you aren’t going to stay that speed for long because you’ll burn your battery out in one or two hours the other thing

about this particular boat was it had an experimental battery oh no the the blade oh no maybe I’m thinking of the tank here the Wahoo had the standard battery that didn’t give us many fits during the war another class decade another reason the gator class was so such a go-to boat during the war but it wasn’t huge it was only 15 25 tons surfaced um 24 34 ton submerged of course it displaces more water when it’s submerged so that this place meant is different when it’s submerged if you want to get some sense of what that means compared to a Los

Angeles class of 6 900 tons submerged or Virginia class 7 000 tons submerged it’s about a quarter of the size of one of our modern submarines in terms of displacement however it’s gone almost 311 feet unless Los Angeles is 360 feet so it’s not much longer and so that kind of gives you a sense it had a smaller crew of 60 to 80 Sailors depending on you know the the Manning varied with the war compared to 115 or so with a modern submarine um but the range was fantastic for a diesel boat without 11 000 nautical mile

range on the surface at 10 knots that’s running at a very efficient speed for the Diesels and that that could really let these boats that that range in this design can really let these boats really reach out into the Waters of the Empire which is where they really proved their worth as we’re about to see now Wahoo was initially commissioned or she initially commissioned she was commissioned on May 15 1942 and she was initially placed on the command of a gentleman named Marvin Kennedy he had a nickname that is not so flattering it

was pinky uh how he got that name God knows you know but it is what it is we’ve talked about Naval Academy nicknames before and uh and not all of them are flattering um but Kennedy was a Naval Academy class in 1930 he was an old school submarine Skipper and we’re going to talk about this in a second what we mean by old school he was a believer in the quote the book you know he was he was more careful than he was aggressive and we’ll talk more about that here soon as well um now Kennedy and Wahoo or Kennedy specifically he had a fantastic crew

Underneath Him the people that specifically I mean God God bless the the Blue Jackets but specifically the officers that he had with him on these first two and a half patrols uh well first two patrols on Wahoo his crew of officers was they were amazing weren’t they oh they’re fantastic from his EXO the legendary he wasn’t legendary yet he was going to become legendary Richard O’Kane he had um you know it’s it’s really interesting it’s hard to remember how Junior these guys were there was a lieutenant Junior grade that’s like a

first lieutenant in the Marine Corps by the name of Roger Payne he had already served on Pompano and so even as a JG he was this was his second boat he was a gun Roy officer on his Gunnery and torpedo officer on Wahoo and then you had Lieutenant George greiter who was previously served on an old s boat and he was the third officer which is the third most senior officer on the boat which is right behind the EXO so you had Kennedy O’Kane Ryder and Grider was fantastic and he would do very well um he became a skipper himself yeah

right he did yeah yeah and we don’t want to jump too far ahead but um you know these officers don’t serve throughout Wahoo’s tenure during World War II most of the good ones are rotated off after a few patrols and so that’s going to affect the stories that evolves later yeah well you know I mean and that go that that plays exactly into what we talked about in the first season we talked about Naval aviators in the United States Navy you know they were the good ones well I should I mean they’re all good if they got their wings

of gold they’re all pretty damn good but a lot of the combat experience guys were pulled out after Midway pulled out after Guadalcanal what have you and they were sent back home exactly yeah and this is kind of the same thing here is that you get guys like George greider guys like dick o’caine who become CEOs in their own right because of the vast amount of experience they gathered serving on Wahoo and other boats too but but specifically this particular United States Navy submarine now Marvin Kennedy this first Skipper of Wahoo as we stated

previously he was an old school Submariner and we’ve talked about this we’ve kind of bounced around it and barely touched on it here and there in different episodes Bill what are we talking about in Old School submarine or what are we talking about here what do we mean yeah the old guys if they wanted to live they were very conservative because submarine Duty was so dangerous now we talked about this a bit with the Nimitz episode initially submarines had gasoline engines diesel engines hadn’t been invented yet and Nimitz had a hand

in the adoption uh re-engineering of submarines to incorporate diesel engines that made them safer in that the engines wouldn’t explode anymore like they used to but it didn’t make them safer as it pertained to submerged operations you still had problems with valves leaking or catastrophically sometimes or pipes leaking because we were brazing the piping instead of welding the piping because it was cheaper and easier things like that would happen procedures that wouldn’t be executed properly valves wouldn’t be shot when

the ship submerged and caused flooding so the book was developed we we the Dolphin’s chest Insignia um that I worn our last episode in submarine 101 um and kind of emblem of it on my shirt was invented before the wings of gold that Seth loves to talk about it was the first chest insignia you know the submarines has been sitting here before the pilot chest Insignia the other thing that was invented for submarines before they were invented for Pilots was the check list and so submariners developed very rigorous checklists to keep from dying and and

Pilots did as well right that came a bit later not sure not decades later but a bit later but old school submariners like Kennedy lived and died by the procedure by the checklist now when you’re operating nuclear submarines turns out they’re pretty important again but during World War II there was this period of time where if you’re going to go through a 40-step checklist to submerge the boat that may work in peace time but if you don’t have it memorized and you’re not willing to kind of ban a little bit when

that airplane is coming over you to drop the bomb you’re gonna die yeah and so the pendulum swung from more people dying through accidents to more people dying through combat or more people going on patrols and achieving absolutely nothing because the checklist didn’t allow them to you know this is deja vu for me because when I became captain of my submarine there was a strict adherence to checklist because the submarine had been had some problems and I had to think of much Morton what would much do and think about okay we’re

going to start learning how to do things the right way but speed is an attribute we need to be able to understand and value and so we’re going to learn how to do things the right way but a different right way right just like you know Kennedy was doing it by the book and it it kept them alive but not necessarily achieving the objectives that they needed to achieve in Wartime right and it’s not to say that anything that can or that everything that Kennedy did was wrong because it’s done to your point he was doing it by the book and he

was the book was there as you know there’s a movie that comes to mind and I’m going to mention it again here in a minute is the Kane Mutiny and of course that’s a fictional story but captain quigg in that movie says you know there’s four ways of doing things there’s the right way the wrong way the Navy Way in my way and the Navy way did that play when I was at the Academy and I was assistant director and Hermann wolf came to see it so I got to meet him that’s a bigger sign but Marvin Kennedy would be considered

you know the Navy weighs one way but he would also consider things we’re going to do things my way and it’s not necessarily the best way and I say this because he was known as a slave driver and I mean that in all ways possible that he drove his men to the point of absolute specifically Richard O’Kane to the point of absolute exhaustion and just they were done he that’s probably fair to say that okay hated him I think that’s an understatement uh and and we’ll we’ll see that here in a minute and but okay but okay wasn’t the only

one though you know I mean Marvin Kennedy was a bit of a he’s a Pettit you know he talked down the people no matter who it was you know he he was he was a Martin that he was just kind of a he was kind of a tool I thought you know what the word martinet means because I use that with my CEOs once and he thought Martin Marinette were saying the same word and he thought I was talking about operating like a puppet and it wasn’t so Martin has the right word to use for Kennedy good it is it is very very much so and you know I say Kane Mutiny

because I’m thinking of Captain quigg and I’m not making this up I’m reading this in books about about him or where he’s mentioned and and officers like George greiter Roger Payne Richard O’Kane who all served underneath this man he said he had some bizarre behaviors it again doesn’t necessarily it’s not the wrong way but it’s not the most efficient way one of the things that he did it was just weird he changed all of Wahoo’s interior lights to Red Save one and that was it yeah so there’s there’s a reason a method to his Madness

so Rick for red is what we call it and you do that to stop to prevent from ruining your night vision okay and in fact in modern submarines well we changed it to Rick for gray because we our color screens wouldn’t show red when we’re rigged for red but back in the days when we didn’t have color screens when I was a young officer we would always write for red at night in the control room so it made sense to wait for red in the control room at night the problem is if you do it all around the ship you can’t see anything

that’s what you need to be but most the ship needs to be rigged for white the control room can be rigged for red but only at night otherwise you can’t see anything this was you’re right Seth this was crazy it’s kind of bizarre and he did it throughout to your point he did it from standing to start you know so much so that the guys you know their food would look uh natural colors but this is the important thing you need I can eat a you know weird weird colored steak as long as it’s cooked well or not cooked well medium rare is my flavor but

besides the point well one of the errors and this this caused errors because as you know Bill there are valves and wheels and knobs and all kinds of stuff that are inside of a submarine that are painted especially specific color and so red doesn’t mean the fire main so if you don’t know where the fire main valves are the red valves because the rig for red doesn’t you know hides the color of the valve then it it screws up with your ability to operate summary the other thing is there’s certain valve light that indicate the position of the

valve and red is bad means the valve is open right and so you you want you know uh the green lights which means everything is safe and but you can it’s okay if you could see the but what if the red light burns out you don’t know it because you can’t tell what the color is yeah and so this was just not smart enough about the red it opened things up to two mistakes and you know some of the other things that Kennedy did or did not do he didn’t allow his crew to use showers he didn’t allow his crew to wash their clothes keep in mind these are

salt water showers these aren’t he’s not wasting fresh water here these are salt water showers so it’s not a big deal it adds raises the humidity level yeah in the ship and if you don’t have air conditioning that can be a problem you you know the showers could can cause humidity to go up but never allowing cellulose to use that makes I know of no other CEO Who mandated that doesn’t make any sense he he would use uh he he had okay fashion buckets or you know something to collect to condensate from the air conditioners within the

submarine and allowed the sailors to only do sponge baths which is just bizarre I mean submarines are naturally you know smelly places anyway can you imagine an entire crew they were called Pig boats yeah yeah an entire crew of dudes not taking showers under the specific orders of the captain I’m sure that’s not really good that’s right the submarine gets smelly enough as it is and even in my era um with everybody being able to take a you know what called submarine showers submarine showers turn the water on wet

yourself really quick turn the water off lather up throwing the water on rinse real quick turn to this day my wife wonders how I can take a shower in three minutes that’s fine that’s how but you know it’s not like this is using enormous amounts of water no and you know no it’s bizarre and and it’s just and these are just a few of the things but my our whole point in all this is that it’s the guy did some very strange things that were non-beneficial to anybody and including himself by the way aboard Wahoo and to the point where the

crew absolutely detested him and Deco Cain being Numero Uno on that list he worked O’Kane like a plow horse man it’s so much so that okay regularly not all the time but regularly missed his meals because he was doing you know completing the captain’s orders to the point I mean where they just they hated one another when they were on you know on watch together for whatever reason when they were doing things together in the same compartment that was noticeable tension you know and and you do not want that I mean you’re a

skipper bill you do not want that with your Exo no no you need to trust each other you don’t need to like each other to be new to respect each other and you know you need to be able to communicate because the co-xo communication is probably the most important on the ship um there was one other incident I’m trying to remember I had something to do with an American Destroyer yes do you remember what that was yes I do so Wahoo leads San Francisco she’s heading to Pearl Harbor for what will eventually become her first war purchase going to

Pearl she’s going to get her Torpedoes and she’s going to go out and do her thing theoretically as she’s coming into Pearl Harbor and this is a common thing there would all usually be an American Destroyer waiting on the submarines that were coming in to escort them and yeah and the reason for this escort was really mainly so those submarines would not be attacked by patrolling American aircraft because from 10 000 feet all submarines are enemies from you know in terms of a pilot’s view but if they’re escorted by a DD

more than likely that submarine is one of ours no attack all right so anyway as Wahoo is pulling up into near Pearl Harbor O’Kane through the scope spots USS Litchfield which is her Destroyer Escort right on time in the right place exact moment everything is lining up perfectly pinky Kennedy for fear that is going to be displayed many many times throughout his coming patrols assumes that submarine to be Japanese you know rigs the boat for depth charge attack and the whole deal until after much argument from Richard

O’Kane saying if you look through the scope and you know what you’re looking at you can tell this is an American Destroyer only then does Kennedy say oh yeah yeah no we’re cool all right let’s surface let’s go in the port so it’s it’s some of these little queer behaviors that he has that are just not setting up for a very good working relationship inside this submarine under times of War as we’re going to see yeah honestly all of these personality traits would have been forgiven yeah I’m being truthful here if

he was successful in combat he showed aggressiveness and um it was effective but that’s not what happened is it and it is not so Wahoo leaves Pearl on her first Patrol in August 1942 and she’s deployed to the waters around truck and if you’ve listened to any episodes previous to this one of this podcast you know the truck was a very important place to the Japanese specifically the Imperial Japanese names that’s right the fleet basically you know most Fleet assets were there yeah all the time constantly so running on the surface the entire way

to her patrol area which is not necessarily an uncommon thing that happened as we talked about in the last episode Kennedy ordered Wahoo once she got to the to the patrol area and this is consistent with what you said with old school submariners bill as soon as they got to the patrol area what does he do blam he dunks her down in the water and keeps her there keeps her there all day she needs the bad guys to run over the top of her because you can’t reposition submerged so if nobody runs over the top of her she’s not gonna get anything

he he would order Periscope checks every 30 minutes on the nose every 30 minutes and at dawn and dusk the boat would be a GQ much like a surface vessel would be with Roger Payne uh the torpedo and Gunnery officer on the scope for the entire 30 minutes just basically going around in a circle looking first honestly that’s not a lot of time I spent six hours on scope before so many times it’s a 30 minutes doesn’t break my heart but the whole notion that you’re going to be a GQ um you know for at sunrise and sunset

for no good reason other than a procedure it’s just ludicrous and the fact that you’d stay only raised the scope every 30 minutes because the sonars sucked so that means you’re going to miss 90 of the targets because if they don’t happen to be within your field of view which means inside 30 000 yards when when you raise that scope every 30 minutes then you’re going to miss them because the sonar is not going to pick them up back in those days and even submerged unless that thing runs on top hey you won’t even catch it

um Wahoo’s first Target was a small freighter it was an unescorted Target and Wahoo picked it up at a range of 1400 yards 1400 and 1430 yards to be exact that’s not that far right bill I mean that’s torpedo firing range I mean you’ve already screwed this up because he’s too close you don’t have time to set up your shot um and he missed he fired he fired three Torpedoes and he all of them missed um long after they should have hit and by the way he’s firing from some submerged position he and and with the scope down yep taking fires and then

lowers the scope fires lowers the scope takes her deep he hears distant explosions long after these Torpedoes should have gone off and instead of popping the scope up to see you know what what the heck was it that just went Kaboom he takes a while from even deeper and he turns away and he basically just flees the scene and this is repeating topic here that this is a consistent thing that he does uh a lot of the other targets including her next Target which was eight days later it was another small freighter um Kennedy believed that he had seen an

aircraft approaching which is a legitimate you know concern um and he by thinking he saw that aircraft whether it was there or not it doesn’t matter he was forced to make a submerged approach he botches the approach and by the time he musters the intestinal strength to raise the scope and take a look that Target is as you like like to say over the hill it is gone so there’s no way you’re going to catch up if you’re if you’re deep or it’s emerged at all four thousand yards in opening so this is another opportunity lost

and and it’s it’s a consistent thing you know as I said you know there’s several opportunities opportunities that that he has aboard Wahoo that he either fails to take or screws them up most noticeably and this is heartbreaking again listen to the episodes on guadal Canal you’ll understand how important aircraft carriers specifically animal enemy aircraft carriers were Wahoo spotted an escort carrier a light Japanese aircraft carrier several days it ran like I think about September 23rd I believe Kennedy initially tried a submerged

approach on a warship and this thing’s going to be hustling it’s not going to be going at five knots it’s going to be making at least 15 to 20 knots reluctantly he gave into a surfaced approach only after okay pretty much bothered the living bejesus out of him to the point was like fine I’ll give in I’ll do what you’d ask me to do so he gets up there out of position completely now because he’s made this long submerged approach instead of as you have demonstrated multiple times before instead of intersecting or at least

positioning your boat to the point where you will intersect or the target will intersect you he’s running parallel to this aircraft carrier and he’s botching the approach completely just completely and Wahoo screws the pooch and misses the opportunity to at the very least damage potentially if not sync a light Japanese aircraft carrier which is yeah when you’re given one of these Patrol orders it tells you go to this General vicinity doesn’t tell you specifically Captain has a lot of flexibility within the general area that

you’ve been assigned and you stay out in this day to this day and on this day you should start coming home mostly because um you know you’re going to run out of something the assumption is you’re going to run out of torpedoes you’re going to run out of food and they build a sequence in where a new Fresh submarine could come in and relieve you in that Patrol area what happens here is they run out of time they’re at the point where they’re supposed to come home where he decides I you know I have the opportunity to come home and he says

okay we’re done yep and returns rtb return to base and he’s still got a bunch of torpedoes he’s still got fuel he’s still got full food and you know all it would have taken is a little bit of a quick radio message to say I think stay out here we got opportunities and I don’t think I think he knew that he was never going to get this done so what’s the point of being out here so let’s just go home I I would agree with that you know in in her first Patrol Wahoo does get credit for sinking one one Target on September 20th I neglected to

initially mention that uh Kennedy fires three Torpedoes at this target they all Miss uh he fires one more and it mercifully does hit and winds up you know taking this this vessel down so it’s a one kill Mission and to your point the boat is still she’s still got the stuff she needs to go out there and potentially sink more enemy ships but he says nah I’m good we’re going to bring her home now the the Patrol reports are common knowledge if you Google Wahoo Patrol report they come up you can read them Kennedy’s closing remarks on his first

war Patrol I’m going to read them verbatim here and and they’re very very telling and they go like this he says after citing various small craft and this is directly from the war Patrol report suddenly on the fifth there came a view ryuo heading for the Empire which it was not ready well but that’s besides the point had I but required a more rigorous and alert watch we might have picked her up sooner this is the escort or like Carrie I was talking about had I correctly estimated the situation and made a more aggressive approach we could

have gotten in a shot had I taken up the surface Chase with a lot without allowing over an hour to elapse we might not have lost the target had I continued the search through the rain squalls Until Dark we might have picked her up again none of these happen and the second target proceeded unharmed now this is the man’s own words he is basically crucifying himself he was telling the truth and he is properly blaming himself for these failures and he’s basically saying I’m not up to this yeah and when you read that kind of his vice Commodore and I if

I was his Commodore I was Commodore once but if I was his Commodore and I’m reading write this stuff I’m thinking okay this guy doesn’t even want to be here yeah he doesn’t anymore very clear yeah from these words so it was apparent very apparent to All Hands the crew too the Kennedy a was inept B probably did not have the fortitude to be as aggressive as he needed to be and see to your point Bill didn’t even want to be there after arriving in Pearl Harbor our hero executive officer Richard O’Kane has he has a friend in the

personnel office in Pearl Harbor so the boat ties up the lines are barely out and O’Kane is gone he is out he is heading to that personal office and what does he do and this is almost unheard of at the time it could have gotten O’Kane into some sort of trouble so this is not good he goes up and tells what we would call today the N1 you need to you need to relieve my skipper um if some EXO went to say those words to The Admiral this would have been sub pack at the time they might have done it they would have done an investigation and they might

have done it but they probably also relieved the EXO who made the claim that you need to relieve my Skipper just out of lack of loyalty um because that’s just not done now if I can tell a c story there was one occasion when I was a junior officer and we were on deployment on patrol and we we had a CEO who started going a little bit Bonkers and he would play this game called guess what I’m thinking I’d be I was off to the deck midwatch so say two o’clock in the morning you get the buzz from the captain’s phone you pick up the

phone and the captain says officer the deck guess what I’m thinking and yeah you look of course speed depth targets contacts Captain I I don’t know what you’re thinking and it’s you scream at you find yourself a relief get somebody to relieve you and come here and see me and you get the messenger go wake somebody up have somebody wake up what’s going on I don’t know Captain wants me to go to the stateroom and I get relieved go to the stateroom and wake and I knock on the door open the door he’s sleeping Captain what what happened you told me

to to uh to wake you up and get a relief and come in here no I didn’t yeah he says sir you did you asked me what you were thinking and I didn’t know you told me go get a relief in a submarine when these things happen there’s no place to go right there’s no there’s no way to escape the captain that you think is losing it and so we actually approached the EXO that’s that EXO you need you need to report this you need to get somebody this is a little bit uh like you know um the Kane Mutiny kind of thing right you need to report that this is happening

and get somebody to leave the CEO the EXO wouldn’t do it you would not do it it turns out the CEO ended up having a heart attack underway and apparently he’d been having these medical issues that led to his heart attack just a few weeks later and we had a medevacum and that’s how um we got rid of him so these things do happen and okay across that threshold where he said they did we’re either going to continue to do nothing or we’re all going to die because this guy’s incompetent and neither of those are acceptable I’d rather get fired than

allow either of those two things to happen so he went um he already had a good reputation from his time on Argonaut before he became EXO of Wahoo so he survived the event and the Navy decided that pull this guy out of PCO school and put him on Wahoo to ride to help Kennedy helping air quotes around the word help Kennedy get through this interesting thing by the way about PCO schools they seek a photograph of each class and each class photograph is on the wall and they’re numbered chronology chronologically so I think I was in PCO

class 42. but all the PCO class photographs are on the wall and you can go all the way back to PCO class I’m thinking it was 16 and see mush Morton in that photograph I I may be wrong on the number maybe it was earlier than 16 but mush Morton on that wall that was so cool when I was at PCO school to see all these guys you’d say we say it 100 times standing on the shoulders of giants we were and seeing much on that ball realizing he was going to leave that class go to the Wahoo’s PCO serve with the Kennedy and as I said

in an earlier episode normally once if you write about his PCO that’s not the boat you take command of you go take him out of another boat but he did ride for a patrol and we’ll talk about that next so to your point the o’kane’s Buddy which is what it is says all right look fine you know I’ve got he oh Kane starts pouring his heart out to this cat and this guy listens and he’s like all right yeah this guy might be not best for this situation O’Kane did not pick Dudley Morton let’s be abundantly clear that was this guy

who sends Dudley Morton to Wahoo now Morton not going to get totally into his background but he was this was his pretty much his last shot as a CO too he had he’d done some things and said some things and irritated the wrong people to the point where if he doesn’t get a command on this try he’s going to the surface Fleet besides that Dudley Walker Morton legendary person legendary Skipper Hero by all accounts born in Kentucky raised in Miami Florida he was a graduate graduate of the academy like all sub Skippers were class

of 1932. he was a big old dude he was a football player I think he was a wrestler at the Academy too he was a big boy he loved to Rough House with officers and enlisted men aboard his ship yeah this would not passed today yeah it would uh he would grab Sailors and just wrestle him to the ground to the deck and it was just you know this kind of thing guy he was yeah he was he was he had this infectious personality that everybody who ever served with him said you could be talking about the most mundane depressing thing when Morton

entered the room he didn’t even have to say a word when he entered the room the room just illuminated you know people were just like oh hey much what’s going on I mean he just had this personality that was infectious he was he was he left he let the crew call him mush instead of Captain that’s another thing that just isn’t done he was one of the guys yeah he was one of the guys and you know he he was a clown too he demonstrated and this is funny he demonstrated his bar trick of stuffing four golf balls in his mouth and still being able to talk

and that’s you would try to be very serious sincere and give a pep talk to the crew with four golf balls in his mouth he was a goofball yeah but they loved him the the the officers and Men alike worshiped the ground that he walked on they absolutely loved this guy and he wasn’t even yeah you couldn’t find a guy more different from Kennedy than than much Morton there were Polar Opposites and that’s one of the reasons I think the crew liked him oh yeah probably well that yeah you described him the word you would use

as gregarious right he really loves people and people love him back I’ve known some gregarious leaders in my Navy career that whether they were the gregariousness was covering up their lack of actual skill so you know people like them but boy they were yeah you know they didn’t have the talent yeah that they should have had and the gregariousness was was used to hide the lack of talent this was not much Morton he was gregarious and talented absolutely he gets aboard Wahoo for for this is Wahoo’s second patrollers or srpco as you said and he

immediately bonds I mean within hours of bonds with the crew he bonds with the officers especially dick o’caine he and he and O’Kane are like Kindred Spirits they they instantly become best friends and this is dangerous Seth because the her procedure he’s not going to become the Wahoos CEO yeah he’s gonna go to some other boat right and these guys ended up getting so attached to him and they were going to be heartbroken it went and if he was transferred to be captain of another boat and they would get the guy that was best that they were

destined to get right right so when they bonded with him like that they were taking a big risk because you he’s likely to not be there yeah but yeah right they were destined to be together much more than Oahu were destined to be together so they go out on their second patrol Morton is PCO it’s the ship’s yep second patrol War Patrol right with Kennedy still a CEO and Morton is the PCO right absolutely so the second patrol is about as uneventful as the first Patrol uh you know a week after entering her patrol

area Wahoo cited what appeared to be a convoy on a moonless stormy night now bill is a submarine Skipper you know that a moonless stormy night that’s probably the best time to attack on the surface if nothing else they ain’t gonna see you right right O’Kane suggested a night surface attack to Kennedy who immediately said not no but hell no because he that’s just not how it was done that’s just not the procedure it wasn’t in the book you conducted all attacks submerged right Oahu submerges misses the Convoy O’Kane is seething

because he could they could see this Convoy and he’s like we’re going on the surface we can light these guys up he plunks her down in the water they keep on cruising and O’Kane is about to lose his mind you guys are going to get sick of hearing me say this they’re now a smart mind and they are well not even that they’re just there they’re not even going to get anything these ships aren’t going to run over the top of them they’re not going to be able to do anything nope so later Oahu cites another Convoy actually does succeed in Sinking one of

the Freighters an act that inspired the crew if only momentarily Wahoo also takes her first depth charging during this action uh some 78 depth charges are dropped on Wahoo and there’s a lot of Ash cans that are floating over the side of those things um over the next several days Wahoo spots numerous targets all of which were either improperly approached or were refused to attack by Kennedy at all Kennedy you know he would be given the contact by O’Kane or Payne or whoever then like no it’s not important no we’re

not going to attack that one no it’s not a big enough torque yeah you can always come up with a reason not to do it over and over and over again similar to the first Patrol Wahoo’s still flushed with food Fuel and Torpedoes is pulled out of Patrol by Kennedy and now he brings her into Australia and this is important for two reasons one when he pulls into Pearl Harbor on her first Patrol Pearl Harbor area submarines are under the command of Admiral English who was Kennedy’s at the time yeah he was Kennedy’s buddy when you pull the

submarine into Australia you are no longer Under the Umbrella of Admiral English you are under the umbrella of Admiral Charles Lockwood yeah a lot would work for English at the time but but Lockwood is the immediate Commander so right you’re right so Lockwood has operational control and administrative control of the ship and with the administrative control he’s able to believe Kennedy but he’s just learning about this from again dick cocaine yep yep so once in Brisbane they pull up in Brisbane Kennedy is as I said

he’s out from Admiral English is umbrella or what have you and in a post Patrol conversation to your point Bill O’Kane goes up to I don’t I don’t think he goes to Lockwood but he goes to the Commodore and basically starts ranting and raving again about Kennedy and Morton accompanies Kennedy on the post Patrol report because he’s PCO that’s what he’s supposed to do yeah you do a post Patrol brief tell him what what happened right so he goes in there Kennedy’s done he gives his Patrol report the whole you know smoking mirrors and dog and pony show

and all that stuff he walks out of the room Morton stays there the Commodore asked Martin he says what is your opinion of both the patrol now he’s heard clearly The Commodores heard from McCain he’s heard the rumors he asks Martin he says what is your opinion of the patrol and the skipper and and what does mush say nomador he’s a yellow-bellied son of a not to be relieved if you doubt my word call the exec and ask him to which the Commodore calls O’Kane in again and says what’s the poop and and O’Kane just lays it on the line

not surprisingly Kennedy’s relieved yeah the Commodore would go to Admiral Lockwood and tell him look I think I need to relieve the skipper the commodore’s not going to do that without talking to the adder right but and Lockwood yeah let’s you know what are we gonna do though we don’t have any we don’t have the PCO for Wahoo in here in the Commodore would say yeah but we got mush he wrote he wrote the patrol he’s right here he’s available in case of glass you know in case of emergency brake glass kind of guy yep and so

Lockwood approved it and Morton took command yep Morton takes command on New Year’s Eve December 31st 1942. uh Wahoo’s new new captain is now Dudley Walker mush Morton together those two are going to go down in history once Morton takes command he orders that Kennedy’s Japanese and this this is kind of comical Kennedy put Silhouettes silhouette pictures of Japanese vessels all through the boat and so he wanted to ask her in the last right I talked in the last episode about having flash cards for recognition training where you

flash up the silhouette of different classes of ships and you immediately need to recognize what the class was and know what the Matt’s head height was so Kennedy put these silhouette cards all over the boat for recognition training and much that yeah screw those take those things down um I think Betty Grable would look really good there he goes into his sea bag and he pulls a stack of pictures out about an inch and a half thick hands it to one of the crewmen pin up girls and says put these get that crap out of my boat and put

these all over the damn place um that’s going to liven up any 18 year old woman I’m sorry the least it’s a physical manifestation that things are going to be different going forward right immediately once the sun sign that’s it yep immediately rips out all the red lights that aren’t you know battle necessary reinstalls the the proper lighting within the submarine allows the crew to take showers for crying out loud and wash their clothes he tells uh Wahoo’s uh Yeoman a gentleman by the name of Forrest Sterling who wrote a fantastic

book called wake of the Wahoo by the way that is a must read uh he’s tell Sterling he says quote lose the captain’s mask book we won’t be needing it on my boat I mean that’s just that’s without even and he had literally taken command like an hour before and he says I trust everybody here we’re going to do things the right way get rid of that we don’t need that the crew as you said they call him mush he right he strides through the boat in his skivvies or with a robe on doesn’t he is if it’s a little cold he would put

a bathrobe over his case but yeah I mean it’s hot in the tropics on a submarine even with the air conditioning it didn’t work very well and so yeah he walked around in the skivvies you know I had to smoke a cigar and we got that cigar in his mouth all the time walking around with skivvies maybe with a bathrobe flapping behind him he was a unique unique individual that’s a good way to describe him and the crew like I said before they absolutely adored him they absolutely loved him uh Yeoman Sterling said to Morton he says

quote Captain you give the word and I’ll follow you to the Bottom of the Sea sir and Morton apparently replied to him well you might just do that yeah sadly sadly and before they left for Australia this is I referenced this I think in the last episode um when I talked about the casualty fatality rate in the submarine Force Morton did give a crew a pep talk and then you could say one and his pep talk consisted of these words Wahoo is Expendable our mission is to sink enemy shipping we’re gonna we’re gonna go out there and search for Japs

every smoke trace on the horizon every contact on watch will be investigated if it turns out to be the enemy we’re gonna hunt him down and kill him now if anyone doesn’t want to go along under these conditions just see the Yeoman I’m going to give him verbal Authority now to transfer anyone who is not a volunteer nothing will ever be said about you remaining in Brisbane and he gave him 30 minutes to decide whether they’re going to stay on board or ship out yep not not a single man walked off of that submarine after having served under

Kennedy and his less than Brave approaches to submarine warfare he got this fire eater standing on your deck saying we’re going to go out there and we’re going we’re going the taxpayers are going to get their money’s worth out of this submarine and if you want to stay yeah going to see in a submarine is inherently Dangerous by itself right when you go do that and you realize we’re never going to sink anything why am I risking my life going to see in a submarine when there will be no payoff for it that that’s demoralizing and then

a guy comes along and says we’re going to go kill the enemy now people say okay now that’s worth risking my life over yep so it becomes an easier decision because they know they’re going to get some payback and you know it’s going to help the war effort that’s why they’re there you know it’s why they volunteer for the sub service in the first thing place not just for the extra pay it was because this is what they wanted to do so Morton as you said he gives him 30 minutes he goes back to the Yeoman Sterling and he

says any takers and Sterling replied in the negative and Morton says quote that’s the stuff I like in a crew we’re gonna sink some jab ships on this trip and boy do they Innovative in his style and you talked about this the last episode bill Morton just instinctively a loved O’Kane I don’t want to say liked he loved okay they were thicker than thieves they were best buddies but he trusted O’Kane and he trusted O’Kane because O’Kane he Morton had a very good judge of character he had a very good judge of people

very good judge of skill set he could recognize that O’Kane was going to be even though okay had not been well he had not been on a scope Under Fire he’d been under Fire but he’d not been in a scope Under Fire he could see that O’Kane was going to be a cool customer and okay we talked about this before too he had this trigonometric mind that could figure out all these Sines and cosines and all the stuff that you were talking about in his head in seconds and just how his brain worked was frankly to my brain mind-boggling he

knows this go ahead that’s not optional right you’ve got to be able to do that um there are two things if you stop doing it you’re going to get worse at it one is weapons accuracy you know smiling firing small arms and things like that when you stop practicing the accuracy or firing gets degrades over time the second thing you’ve got to do is you’ve got to practice this we call Mental Math you’ve got to practice doing these calculations in your head with these memorized cosine tables and things like that and if you

start out not good at it you’re you’re gonna degrade from that low level of performance and you’re going to continue to be not good at it so you know cocaine had this wonderful mind like you said okay you could do it Martin realized that wasn’t a strength so he put cocaine on the scope during approaches made him we call today the assistant Opera approach officer back then O’Kane called it himself in his book the co-approach officer I think that’s a little Grand but that that was essentially his role working for Morton which is which is

revolutionary because as you said bill that was not done that might have been done once or twice to say hey exec you know look up in the scope take a picture you know but that was not done under wartime certainly never would have been done under Kennedy’s command on January 16th just 16 days after receiving command of Wahoo while who departs uh Brisbane for her third Patrol destination and orders or to Recon wee whack Harbor near New Guinea middle of nowhere Harbor in New Guinea they didn’t have a dang map of the place

one of uh I can’t that Dalton Keeter I believe one of Wahoo’s Sailors happened to buy a children’s Atlas for his children when he got back to the States and lower when they were in Australia and lo and behold there’s a map of the coast of New Guinea with wewack Harbor that’s how they found the place small indication of where we whack Harbor might be this was not a harbor chart this was this is like a DOT on the map saying we whack so this was like and it so to understand this Recon which was their mission had done it a dozen times

you’re just kind of looking at the beach and taking photos in case there’s amphibious Landing later and that’s what the whole point trying to find Breakers what might represent a reef things like that right and if there were the indentations in the shoreline right are there built up facilities that’s what the word Recon means when you’re a Submariner but that’s not how important interpreted the word Recon nope what did he do stuff much more than interpreted interpreted the word Recon to sync anything that floated

because I mean to his point that’s what they’re out there you’re right but he took it to me and is penetrate the harbor that’s different good Recon so entering the harbor isn’t reconing the beach or reconing the harbor it’s penetrating the harbor and going looking for ships to sink and so it’s a very liberal interpretation and if they would have screwed this up he would have been fired for cost yeah but and let me put this into perspective here this isn’t like you know Boston Harbor 15 minutes yeah it’s not where you pull up and you can you can

you know drive yourself yeah it ain’t like that it’s a nine mile drag into wewack Harbor from the coast of New Guinea nine miles I mean so that’s running submerged running submerged in the daylight in a shallow draft Harbor he he pulls this thing he pulls Wahoo into the friggin Harbor pops up scope cocaine’s on the scope what does he see a Japanese Destroyer later later identified as the harassame I think he saw several ships it means they’re they’re moored to each other right turning the scope he he actually I was

wrong Morton actually pops the scope looks through sees the targets and goes here we go he gives the scope to O’Kane from 3 000 yards away the Destroyer the Haru harasame was actually she was preparing to get underway anyway um she starts moving she’s coming out of the harbor and from 3 000 yards the Destroyer begins getting underway happens to be heading in Wahoo’s Direction O’Kane cited in on the target called out bearings and Morton said Cooley anytime dick anytime dick anytime dick anytime dick we know it’s a destroyer we know it’s

coming at us and dick’s getting those bearings exactly right range exactly right he wants to make this good of course the Destroyer doesn’t know they’re there yet yeah Danny timed it he fires three Torpedoes you take it from here he fires three Torpedoes the Destroyer immediately sees these Torpedoes come because they’re close and ziggs Away boom can you imagine what that Destroyer Skippers think he’s like what in the hell you know because all of a sort of an American submarine yeah that’s just coming from yeah

speeds increase on the Destroyer to 18 knots and O’Kane looked at Morton for orders Morton casually said quote leave your scope up and we’ll shoot that son of a down the throat unquote yeah yeah the instant is going to be to drop the scope try to reposition a little bit before you raise it again hope that he runs past you or something like that but leave it up that’s that’s a gutsy move not much more than them at at a range of 1250 yards and closing Morton again said anytime anytime dick why who fired her last loaded torpedo

about torpedo at a range of 750 yards so this thing is moving quick this store is moving fast at this then Morton says all right take her down she plunges for the bottom when throughout the subject say again they’re in a harbor the bottom is not deep no Harbor no as she knows it’s down they hear a tremendous explosion very evidently the torpedo hit uh pandemonium they might have they might have thought at first oh we’re getting death charged I don’t know that they knew immediately that the the torpedo had hit it’s it’s

regardless of what it is okay or not okay Morton orders I’m going to get the names confused because of their close relationship the way they think of course throughout this but Morton orders bring her back up pop up the Periscope let’s see what see what that was which is something that Kennedy did not do Morton brings her up pops the scope one of the more famous pictures of World War II is taken by Waters Periscope it’s Harrison it’s not easy to take these photos you’ve got to take the eyepiece off the scope mount a

camera on it so it’s not like you press a button and it takes a picture so it’s pretty involved and you’ve got to leave the scope up too long because you can only do that with the scope up so that famous photo of the osame sinking I think it’s bow is already submerged yeah the photo’s been taken yeah you’re probably going to show it absolutely sure it’s uh it Wahoo gets credit for the sinking although I guess technically it does sink because they Beach it up on the shore however somebody does later see action she does not go down never

because yeah she does get reflected regardless of this it’s a down the throat torpedo shot that for that time not kills that distress a thousand yards yep crazy first time in the Pacific War that that happened first time that a submarine United States submarine penetrated an enemy Harbor and this ain’t the last of the first that Wahoo will will do here on January 26 just I believe it was four or five days later uh Wahoo cited the masts of what appears to be a convoy uh as the Convoy approaches Wahoo she swung her Stern

tubes at the two visible ships and fired hitting the fuke Maru with two fish in the Pacific meru with one fish so Wahoo is for the first time really attacking a significantly sized Japanese Convoy um a prematurely fired torpedo caused the booyo Maru which is another ship I’m sorry I’m getting ahead of myself here uh as Morton swings the boat around to finish off the two cripples with his Stern tubes um O’Kane sees another ship coming over the horizon this is the booyo Maru b-u-y-o maroon uh Morton given to any merchant ship by the way so

these these are all you know merchants of some form um things like that a prematurely fired torpedo and this is basically it was an accidental discharge he accidentally hit the the fire button and torpedo goes out uh caused the blue meru to swing over she sees a torpedo coming she presents her broadside to Wahoo two Torpedoes fired by who stops booyo maroon her tracks it previously hit Pacific meru was charging one so Wahoo hits one of these submarine or one of these ships and damages it but doesn’t sink it uh this

Pacific Maru decides it sees Wahoo it sees the Periscope and it’s going to charge and try and RAM and kill this American Submarine that’s just knocked out too and damaged my ship um the Maru is charging Wahoo to Ram when okay fires two more fish one is a dud one is a premature explosion and this is something you’ll hear over and over and over and over again diving Wahoo escaped Harlem and fired two more fish at the booyo Maru one was a dud and the other one finally blew a huge hole in her side the Pacific meru that was attempting to

Ram while who passes over top of her and keeps on chugging away at a speed of about 10 knots when Morton true to his word of sinking Japanese ships decides to surface and run this sucker down yeah he had a saying um dicks stay with the bastards until they’re on the bottom and you would say this repeatedly and he he was very adamant about that and very true to his word as he surfaces Wahoo everybody all you know the officers get up on the bridge okay and Morton are on the bridge uh the outside on the surface boat O’Kane sees

the mass of another Japanese ship on the horizon Morton decides you know what we can chase these suckers down because they’re only doing about 10 knots or so let’s take a break let’s eat lunch sweaters his crew to have Chow again I mean just as cool of a customer as you could possibly get as he and Morton as he and O’Kane are eating lunch they plot a course to intercept the two retreating targets that are now going over the horizon uh at this time Morton could not help but notice there are about 20 odd lifeboats in the water around the booyo

Maru and this is very important here because there’s there’s some controversy about much Morton for this coming procedure here that goes through and we can talk about that and we will Wahoo goes to battle station’s surface Morton stated quote I’ll put a single four inch round through the largest boat machine guns it’ll be your job to chase them out of the boats Chief Carr you smash up the boats no end quote nowhere does he say I’m going to kill every single guy in these boats yeah and he never says that and there are certain

accounts that say he did say that but these are three accounts that are pretty much verbatim that says he never said that it this is this is what he’s going to do he’s trying to chase these people out of the boats leaving them to the mercy of the sea yeah I think he did say there were thousands of men in the water or at these boats um so he knew the magnitude this wasn’t just a few and he also knew he also believed they were soldiers who would end up fighting us if they didn’t right if we didn’t do something so I’ll leave

them to the mercy of the sea as I said exactly he assumed that every single person aboard this Japanese ship was a Japanese soldier they’re in the vicinity of New Guinea that these guys are going to go to New Guinea and they’re going to fight our boys are at the very or the Australians or something Americans they’re Australians right yeah so he wants to get rid of them unfortunately about 300 or so of these people in the water were actually Indian prisoners of War they were not all Japanese as Wahoo draws near to the floating

boats she receives fire from the Japanese who were in some of these lifeboats some of the bigger lifeboats at that Morton pistol fire it’s interesting to me that their pistols actually worked while they were and some of them were in boats right so they were drive but still I mean you gotta have a you gotta have a set of cajones to take a shot at the submarine with a pistol or or or even if you got a machine gun even if you got a nambu which some some officers online said that they got machine gun fire whether they did or

they didn’t who knows it’s it’s irrelevant frankly but they shot at them and by doing that that’s only excuse Morton needed so you want some of this fine and he orders that four inch Gunners and he’s going to lay it into him which is what he does um he orders a four inch gun to open fire on the largest boat punches a hole right through it drives the Japanese who and these were Japanese out of the boat into the water shortly after that theoretically a burst of Japanese fire beat machine gun fire pistol fire would have you doesn’t

matter uh strikes Wahoo basically it ricochets off the bridge a little too close for comfort for the officers up there on the bridge and at that Morton says Nope this ain’t happening and he orders this machine guns and a 20 millimeters to open fire on the boats themselves um O’Kane said that the machine gun fire was methodical quote sweeping through the Japanese like a hose spraying a street end quote they’re close I don’t know how close I don’t think there’s any record Bill maybe you know I I don’t I think they

drove through the this through the middle of them while they were shooting at him they didn’t stand off they’re actually these survivors were in the water in between Where What Where Wahoo was and where they wanted to go yeah so and they ended up kind of driving through and shooting at them as they drove through yeah so Morton and O’Kane that’s that’s too damn close by the way but but Morton and Oak Lane later claimed that thousands of Japanese were in the water to your point Bill post four records state that there

were 1126 men aboard bouyo Maru and some 491 Indian prisoners of War 195 Indians and 87 Japanese were killed now before anybody has a coronary there’s no record that says that any of these people and we we’re going to assume that a lot of them were killed by Machine Gun fire but there’s no we don’t know how many were killed by Machine Gun fire we don’t know how many were wounded when the ship got sunk we don’t know how many were killed by the Japanese while they were and I’m talking about the Indians now trying to get aboard boats

because there were statements later by the Indian prisoners of War who did survive that any Indian who tried to get aboard one of the pieces of wreckage that was floating were either beaten to death Club to death stabbed or shot by the Japanese when the Japanese came to that they were in worse physical condition to begin with because the way just street uws so they were gonna there was going to be a higher death rate among the Indian pows than the Japanese regardless if nobody fired a shot absolutely absolutely and

needless to say the Japanese did not go out of their way to rescue as many Indian prisoners of War as they did their own countrymen I understand absolutely it’s a war you know I’m not making excuses for Morton or the Japanese it is what it is not finished Morton orders Wahoo to take after the two Japanese ships on the horizon so he’s just laid waste to a couple of ships damaged a couple of more shot up these boats and now he’s now going after the two Japanese ships that are trying to get away what does he do Bill he winds up

catching him yeah he does you know and he ends up sinking I think what he called a run and gun battle in fact he sent a message to subpac saying senka destroyer and we whack Sunday and in a 14-hour running and gunning battle torpedo battle today senke Convoy of one tanker two Freighters and one transfer transport destroying their boats Torpedoes expending proceeding Pearl Harbor that is exactly the message that pops up back wanted to hear because to this point there had never been a submarine Patrol like this from the United States

specific Fleet boat nothing like and it turns out even though he was running to Pearl Harbor he wasn’t finished he had no more torpedoes but he finds another Japanese Convoy yep and says okay I’m going after them with a deck gun Yep this is crazy the issue is yes you want my might expect it didn’t go the Japanese ships had bigger guns than he did so the Japanese escorts chased Oahu off with several close calls and Morton sends another message remember he said Torpedoes expend you know in a run and gun battle this time he says another

running gun battle today Wahoo running destroy a gun which is absolutely hilarious yeah so he sent humorous messages out about near-death experiences that the ship had yeah yeah so when he get comes back to Pearl he I think it was February 7th um he comes into a hero’s welcome now keep in mind Seth properly characterized the submarine Force as the silent service and part of that was they didn’t talk about their victories they didn’t talk about their people they didn’t talk about anything it was like Admiral King

wrote the doctrine for submarines which is don’t talk to the Press just when you tell them when the war’s over tell them who won right that’s what the submarine Force had been doing to this point but suddenly you have one guy who succeeds where so many others have not done so well either failed or come nowhere near the number of ships they sunk in Morton’s first war Patrol so he comes in he says this guy’s a hero so back I think it’s still Admiral English at this point this guy’s a hero um and of course when the ship pulls in

they’ve got the broom tied to the Periscope which signifies Clean Sweep which means every one of your Torpedoes expended and effectively doesn’t mean everyone hit but expend it effectively and the a long pennant emblazoned with one of Morton’s many um phrases shoot the sons of and so the sub pack decides this guy’s a hero we’ve had Heroes we’ve already talked about from Guadalcanal who were paraded around the country for war bond efforts and things like that that would happen throughout the war even from Iwo Jima but holy cow our

first true legend is being born before our very eyes we ought to make this public yep and for the first time the submarine force was willing to talk about one of their successful CEOs and he became a legend he was on newspaper you know front pages of papers and things like that go ahead so to to your point it was also the first time that the United States Navy had a successful submarine Skipper I don’t want to say completely but of to this degree at this point on one Patrol now and granted yeah she sent two other

ships previously but on this one Patrol Wahoo immediately becomes the highest scoring submarine in the U.S specifically under the command of deadly Walker Morton and a guy who happens to be boyish in a goofball and gregarious and willing to smile at the camera man he was he was a PA public affairs Wonder oh yeah and and and and let’s be clear here he was he did not do this kind of thing on purpose he wasn’t a publicity Hound he was not the kind of guys like look at me he didn’t do that that’s just how he was like he was just

generally dude yeah he was just a good dude and he had that Magnetic Personality that you just you loved him when you met him and he wasn’t putting on a show you know as MacArthur or Halsey or other people Pappy Bowington would do this was his real personality he was there this is him this what you see is what you get it his his natural charm endeared him not only to his crew and to the officers above him Admiral you know eventually obviously Admiral Lockwood came to absolutely adore Morton but he you know eventually he goes back home and we’ll

talk about this in a minute and you know he’s he wrote of the press they sent him to Hollywood which he actually already had connections in Hollywood but he goes to Hollywood one of my favorite movies destination Tokyo submarine movie it is Morton is credit he’s uncredited but he was a technical advisor on that movie to carry Grant there’s pictures of Morgan and Cary Grant standing there on this set of destination Tokyo so I mean this dude was made out to be a big hero and much like all true American Heroes

he’s like I don’t want it as garbage I want to go back out to sea with my people and that’s exactly what he does on the fourth Patrol the fourth Patrol is almost as important as an impressive as the third Patrol the third Patrol is impressive because it’s Morton’s first one the fourth Patrol was actually even more successful wow he thinks nine ships in this one right yeah yeah nine ships in his fourth in his in his second patrol is Skipper Wahoo’s fourth Patrol they go out to the Yellow Sea which is way out there I mean

bill that’s not it’s very shallow too and the problem with that is you can’t go deep to run away from those depth charges or those airplanes that might cite you because you gotta run no deeper than 150 feet so you know that’s incredible it was a good place for hunting because the Japanese thought they were kind of vulnerable the LLC um that’s west of Korea obviously and of course Korea was a Japanese um you know so they would go in there and and he he had a field day in the loc which again hasn’t if and when we do a

later episode on uh flucky we could talk about the LLC again but just uh it’s just some really remarkable things but he was faced on this Patrol I think more than his first one with a bunch of Misses because of defective Torpedoes um so he twice he surfaced after his Torpedoes didn’t work and engaged Japanese ship with his death guns he’s just so frustrated and unlike more politically Savvy CEOs who had a little bit of delicacy as they communicated you know failings to their superiors that their superiors might be responsible for he

was Furious and he Unleashed at this time Lockwood I think was was in Pearl Harbor Admiral English had died by this point and Lockwood became subpac and he would just unload on Admiral Lockwood about the torpedo fans that’s failures and since Lockwood had become such a big fan of Morton and they’d made him Morton fairly famous the last thing they wanted was Morton going out there and talking to the Press about how our Torpedoes sucked so Lockwood really turned up the heat on trying to get these things fixed

which eventually they do but to the point where to your point you know Wahoo under Morton Morton was so driven and this is something we need to talk about too you know and this goes back to the shooting of the of the people in the water and and I think we need to touch on this because if we don’t we’ll be crucified for it that he was so driven to do his job that he would do whatever needed to be done to the point of putting himself and his boat In Harm’s Way probably unnecessarily several times to get that job done he

was so driven to sink Japanese ships whatever they were to eliminate and kill as many as many of the enemy as humanly possible by his hands to in his mind which is true shorten the war the more people he kills the more ships he sinks the faster this war is going to be over these people attack my country and they are going to pay that is how the man thought that’s how he rationalized every single thing he did and he was so bent on getting that job done that he started to drive himself to the point of absolute physical and mental exhaustion

after the fourth War Patrol uh to your point Morton was flown so Wahoo pulls into Midway after her fourth War Patrol which is by the way was the most successful Patrol of an American submarine for over a year until it was broken by whom is XO dick okay that’s right who became CEO of Tang yep yep so that the relationship continued for a long long time he is flown from Midway to Pearl Harbor to personally deep Reef Admiral Lockwood and to your point again bill this is where he just blows up and he says you know if you’re ordering me if you people

are ordering me and my crew out to the farthest reaches of the Empire you need to give us weapons that friggin work work he’s right any yeah I mean I mean you can’t blame the man I mean he’s putting his life and his Cruise life at risk and they’re using crappy tools man and and that’s just it’s it’s unfair it is not fair and to the point that you were talking about he was so irritated and so driven by that fact of sinking enemy ships that he would routinely surface Wahoo and gun down the Japanese ships and sand pans that he was unable

to sink because of his crappy torpedoes um fifth Patrol fifth Patrol Wahoo goes out and this is I believe yeah I’m sorry I’m gonna back up a little bit Wahoo’s fifth Patrol she goes out this is the last one where he has Richard O’Kane as his executive officer and this is very very important here it’s less successful he sinks three submar try again three sinks three ships but that’s not to Morton’s standards that’s not that’s like way below his standards that’s successful for other people that’s a failure for much Morton

if it’s an it’s an a for everybody else that’s an F for me and it it it drives him to the point where he’s he’s pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing Wahoo now goes home she goes to the United States this is where he gets into the movie The Destination Tokyo and all that yeah and and cocaine leaves the boat to take commands about to be commissioned and that’s a beleo summary not a I think and not a yeah no you’re right you’re 100 right the fact that O’Kane leaves you know of course she could sit here

and pontificate for hours but it it had to have done something important this is his best buddy I mean this isn’t just some you know exit it’s not enough success yeah shared all the successes they talked about things together all the time their families knew one another everybody they had a procedure they had a process that worked they were able to communication it was all going well now they now if they if you kept George greiter and Roger Payne aboard the in the wardrobe you know maybe you fill in one hole and to start developing that

relationship but all the other elements still were so that’s what you’re hoping happens right is that what happened that’s not that is not so they leave the United States they leave San Francisco and they go to Pearl Harbor and before when they’re in Pearl Harbor at this point George greiter who’s been with Wahoo since they’re commissioning been with mush on all this broke patrols grider’s pulled out and he’s given command of his own submarine Roger Payne he was going to make Roger Payne his co-approach officer he was going to do

the same because Payne had been abort he knew the procedure he was part of the original team Payne gets sick and I can’t remember if it’s it well I can’t honestly I don’t remember if it’s him or if it’s wife but somebody gets sick and pain is pulled off the boat and so now musha’s team is wrong it’s gone all of the people that he’s starting from scratch yeah okay greater pain the three people that he relied on most are gone and he fills those roles or he doesn’t fill but they those roles are filled and they’re not necessarily

filled by people that he initially or at all trusted um the the procedure that he had worked up with O’Kane and Grider and pain he tried to implement it again and it just did not work as well Wahoo’s sixth Patrol Nets much more chemistry’s gone yeah it is and I can imagine I’m going to Lockwood before they leave on the sixth Patrol and saying you’re sending the sea with crappy torpedoes and then and a and you’ve reset rebooted we use that word today but you’ve cleared out my wardrobe I got no weapons and no people yeah okay

what do you expect me to do I’m you know not a one-man band here you’re gonna you can imagine that conversation taking place and Lockwood really worrying Lockwood would really worry this guy’s falling apart in front of me yeah I mean this is not the same human being that came that I I saw you know early in his tenure no and I mean and you got to understand to The Listener you know this this isn’t an overnight process I mean everybody gets tired and the thought is is it and and let me clarify real quick here because we’re going to hardly talk

about six patrols six Patrol Nets at goose egg from Rushmore and they don’t think anything and and the reason yeah and the reason for that he sinks a couple of sand pans he surfaces and shoots him with his dick in because he’s pissed off but the Torpedoes don’t work none of them do not a one he is so furious at this that you know the stress of being a skipper being a submarine Skipper not just a skipper but a submarine Skipper and taking you know these frankly a lot of times unnecessary risks they’re starting

to weigh on him as you said his team has been replaced he’s not the same dude that he was in this on December 31st 1942. he is this is now you know late August 1943 almost a year since you know he’s taking command it’s wearing on him it’s wearing on it I I think I’ve thought about this a lot Seth and I really believe number one he suffered from PTSD of course the days it would have gone unrecognized but number two he acted as if he believed he was on this trajectory he was going for this ride he was just going along for the ride the

defeats were going to determine how this evolved how this worked out over time that he was an instrument in this larger Opera that um and that he was going to ride this as long as he was required to and I I do believe that he was a stoic resigned I don’t know what the right word is with a bad weapons that a crew he didn’t wardrobe he didn’t trust anymore um but he was going to put his head down and just drive forward even if he was driving his head into a brick wall so he Rants and Raves you know and and at this

point this is where Lockwood starts to think you know what I think I need to get this dude some rest and not to say that Morton’s going crazy none of that no he was just tired he was just tired and Lockwood realizes this and he realizes at this point he probably should order Morton off if for no other reason to give him a break which he had not had a break I mean they come in the port and they’re in there for like two weeks and he’s out Pam I mean as soon as that submarine’s ready to go he’s gone there is no way it’s

pretty standard that would stay at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel the big pink hotel in Waikiki Beach is where the crews was were sent while the boat was being refitted by the refit crew and then the boat crew would come when the boat was ready crew would come out of the Royal Hawaiian you know and go back on the ship and get underway for the next War Patrol yeah and he just he was he was spooked man he was he was worn out and Lockwood frankly at that point in my opinion should have pulled him you know if he had any doubts and course Lockwood

says his post-war but if he had any doubts at all as to whether or not Morton was not got capable but just worn out he should have pulled him because as we all know Wahoo’s seventh Patrol is her final Patrol Wahoo leaves Pearl Harbor on September 5th 1943 oh and this is important too this is very very important on her sixth Patrol Wahoo was assigned to the Sea of Japan no United States submarine had penetrated the Sea of Japan to make any attacks the first time at all it was the first time he goes out there he Nets a

goose egg he’s so incensed at this he begs Lockwood to send him the targets are there the weapons aren’t working it’s a target-rich environment right so they said okay we’re going to give you another chance at it yep you’re going to go back sends him back to the same hunting grounds again probably a mistake there too he’s chomping at the Bic to get back to the area that he had failed only a few weeks before he also Morton was also not stupid he realized that his time as a skipper was coming to an end he knew

that this was more than likely his last Patrol unfortunately it was his last Patrol ever but he figured that this is probably the last time I’m going to ride Wahoo out to see out the war so we’re gonna make it I wanted to be memorable exactly over the next 30 days Wahoo sinks four Japanese ships including the passenger liner conran Maru when the Conrad Maru sinks she takes four 544 people with her this is a passenger line and not as not to say that it’s all Japanese civilians it was a liner that was filled with people

Japanese military and civilians um the sinking was reported on Japanese national news uh intercepts of this news report by Pearl Harbor let Lockwood know that Wahoo had been busy and he knew there was only one submarine in the Sea of Japan he knew exactly who it was he knew exactly what was going on he’s like my boy’s getting it done at 08 30 hours on October 11 1943 the six inch Shore batteries of soya misaki Promontory cited a surfaced American submarine making a dash through the 20 mile wide Cape soya straight near the LA

perouse Straits and immediately suspected from Japan between Japan and cycling Island which was I can’t remember the Russians owned it or Japan owned it at this point but it’s far north yeah yeah that surface submarine is obviously USS Wahoo the Airfield at wakani was notified in a total of four Japanese airplanes arrived on the scene we talked about in our previous episode about aircraft attacking a submarine it was their biggest fear well Here Comes Your Biggest Fear submarine immediately submerges she was initially betrayed by a trail of oil

visible from the air now let me pause here in the story two things one the words I am reading verbatim are not my own so I want to be abundantly clear my friend Paul Crozier who was a historic who is a historian on the USS who these are his words I want to give credit where credit is due right now two it is thought that at some point in the day or days previous to this Wahoo hit a mine that’s the theory anyway is that she hit not not you know Boom full connection but something happened an explosion triggered something busted something

loose and Wahoo’s trailing oil one of the reasons they think that Morton was on the surface as they were attempting to make repairs in the middle of daylight in Japan he’s trying to get things fixed so he can get the hell out of there and get his people back home so it’s there’s a there’s you know you will never know but that’s what we assume and they would need to get through this straight to get home anyway so he’s trying to do both right trying to say we gotta this we may not be able to fix this let’s get on the other side of the

LA Peru straight so we can submar submerge and get home or well fix it while we’re doing this let me tell you that there is no way he should have been on the surface within sight of this Shore Station no so something bad had happened exactly it caused you to be running on the surface at this point exactly as as Cavalier and as Devil May care as much Morton was he would he wasn’t stupid he wasn’t an idiot he would not have done this unless he absolutely had to there was to your point Bill there was a reason that he was on the surface you

know why we’ll never know but clearly he wasn’t doing it just as a finger in the eye to the Japanese he was they were doing something they were doing that for a reason regardless of this the submarine that was initially cited submerges she tries to go down this is Wahoo of course the pilots then reported seeing a black conning Tower and a hull again remember what we were talking about just because they’re under the water doesn’t mean that you can’t see him they could see her um this they used as a point of aim

dropping bombs over the next five hours with the entire Coast now alerted to the enemy submarines presence two submarine Chasers number 15 and number 23 join the battle they made contact with the submarine and began to drop depth charges at 1207 hours following a depth charge run by submarine Chaser number 15 upright metallic object assumed to be a severed propeller blade was glimpsed on the in the ensuing explosions this is bad news man it takes a lot to break a propeller blade off of the screw so they’re dead at this point yeah this is

bad news oil continued to rise to the surface auxiliary number 18 joined the submarine Chasers and aircraft and there are photographs of this by the way which I’ll show several more bombs and depth charges were dropped however no further contact with the submarine was reported at approximately 1400 hours a very large volume of oil and this is important too reach the surface over the course of the afternoon the ensuing slick stretched 50 meters wide and 2000 meters long a sample taken revealed it to be diesel fuel

the aircraft will recall the ships returned home and an American submarine was reported sunk that submarine is undoubtedly USS Wahoo now to my point about the large belch of oil there’s another theory and of course we’ll never know this there was another theory that Wahoo when that propeller Blair theoretically propeller blade popped up that she went she went kaplunk she went down Morton in his attempt to do anything he could to get that boat to the surface it is thought that he pumped everything that Wahoo had

out to try and make her buoyant to try and Rise her that is the thought do we know no all we know is that Wahoo never does reach the surface again much more than All Souls aboard never come home she was discovered in 2006 so we have photographs that show the large whole penetration on the upper surface of the of the boat which makes it look like it was sunk by a bomb dropped from an airplane rather than a um an explosion of a depth charge alongside right but you know the the hole is not in very good shape it’s uh

heavily encrusted and hard to do any forensic analysis with either way I I think to your point bill I mean when they’re when you’re dropping over 40 bombs on an aircraft on a submarine one of them’s probably gonna hit you know and and I know what you’re talking about that picture and I don’t know if we can show that because as I’m pretty sure we can’t because we don’t own those photographs the other ones are public domain but look it up and there is Bam right through the deck a bomb I mean it was a perfect shot you

know and whether that killed Morton on with that detonation or not you know we’ll never know all we know is that she doesn’t come home uh Wahoo Arena Admiral Lockwood you know gives an inordinate amount of time for Wahoo to come home they send out searches thinking that maybe she’s damaged and she’s limping home when two weeks pass it’s abundantly clear she’s not coming home the loss of why you absolutely oh yeah yeah yeah yeah he um you know I don’t doubt that he cried every time we lost a submarine but this one was in particular very

you know devastating because of you know he’d grown very close to Mush yeah and so and held him up as the ideal to every submarine CEO out there and now the ideal submarine Co doesn’t come home what does that say to all the other submarine CEOs right oh we’re expected to die doing this um you’ve got to be careful about those messages and so um dick cocaine got it and you know there’s a great loss for dick cocaine and I you know I looked for evidence that after his friend mush his former boss Skipper died that he let up and

eased off thinking well geez I don’t want to suffer the same fate but he did not quite the answer yeah quite the opposite quite the opposite O’Kane once he reaches once Ward reaches him that that Wahoo’s gone and then his best friend is going with it he basically makes an oath to himself that says I am there gonna pay I I’m gonna kill every one of those sobs that I can get my hands on which to his point he does and we’ll talk about Tang in another episode for the final Patrol Morton is awarded his fourth Navy cross

albeit posthumous Wahoo’s final tally is 20 ships sunk for over 65 000 tons of Japanese shipping I don’t remember off the top of my head where she ranks I want to say it’s certainly in the top 10 of American submarines number three is it and number three and number six it’s number of ships and tons I think it’s number three and number six um I bet I could be I could be wrong I think you’re right no I think you’re right on the number of ships I think she is number three in the number of ships because Tang wants a shooting 36 I think

which is a Godly amount but uh but yeah yeah Wahoo’s place and Naval lore and Legend is cemented forevermore not just because of a wartime tally but because of her Skipper Dudley Walker Morton he is a legend in the submarine community of which I’m not even a member but I you know he’s a legend in the submarine Community I know you consider him the same same thing with Wahoo Bill isn’t there another there was a wahoo later another Wahoo but isn’t there a third coming yeah so my friend um the former Secretary of the Navy Ken

Braithwaite has declared that a new virginia-class submarine would be named USS Wahoo 780 I think it is all right no no it’s not starting with 800s that’s way wrong and so he’s deviating from the practice of naming Virginia class submarines after States and he’s declared that a new USS Wahoo will be commissioned now I don’t know what the commissioning date is yet but it’s going to be great to see another Wahoo in the water very fitting to the legacy of the crew and her legendary skipper um we’ve we’ve gone on a long time about

Wahoo but she’s an important topic and almost two hours I can’t believe we talked that long on about one ship yeah I didn’t think we would frankly but no but she’s she’s important and she sets the precedent for all who follow and not just all who follow but all who served at the same time because there were guys that were contemporaries and Mortons like Slade cutter who who were and I’m in okay you could consider him a contemporary even though he takes it takes command after a while but regardless of this you know they

followed in the footsteps of mush Morton and he was a Trailblazer for the U.S Pacific Fleet submarine Force Bill do you have anything else you want to add to this legendary story no um there’s no way that you can Describe the impact of mosh and the guys like him who followed on the Legacy of the American submarine force it still influences I say us even though I’m 20 years of driving the submarines it still influences us today and I can only hope that we still have men and women because there are women on submarines now who can do in some future

War what mush did in 1943. absolute Legend absolute hero controversy aside the man was a Trailblazer and a legend and he’ll be remembered like that forevermore at least by you and I I know and I’m pretty sure our viewers as well so on that somber note we want to thank you for listening in on our conversation please subscribe to the unauthorized history of the Pacific War podcast wherever you receive your podcast give us a rating and review we do appreciate it also if you want to see the video version of this and any of our other

episodes subscribe to our YouTube channel called the unauthorized history of the Pacific War podcast and please do subscribe as it does help people find our show if you have a question comment or suggestion send us an email at unauthorized specificpodcast gmail.com and once again my name is Seth paradon I want to say thank you Bill and I’m Bill Toady we’ll see you next time adios