INTO THE DEPTHS Reflections of a Submarine Skipper
	JUNE 2005

by Eric Swenson, Capt., USN, Ret.
Photos by Russell Byrne

I was born in Oakland, CA. Raised in Albany, served in the submarine service for almost four decades, and retired to Brentwood. During the six years America fought in World War II, 292,131 American soldiers lost their lives in combat. I was one of the hundreds of thousands of others who nearly joined them in their fate. The South Pacific in 1944 was an unhealthy place to be no matter which side you were on. On my first submarine tour we sunk several enemy ships and were nearly sunk, ourselves.

I’ll never forget the nightmarish experience of being the target of depth charges. A destroyer will locate subs principally by sound, which forces the submarine to wait quietly and helplessly in the darkness of the depths while the enemy ships rain depth charges in a malignant drizzle. The experience of being on a submarine during a depth charge attack has the elements of a horror movie. The engines are silenced and all shipboard machinery is turned off. Even the air-circulation fans are quiet. Nobody speaks above a whisper or moves around. Listening Japanese sailors could hear a wrench dropped on the deck.

I can remember the awful ordeal of sitting and sweating in silence with my shipmates while we were waiting to die. There were times when I was sure we were all only moments away from death. Our sonar could hear the depth charges when they hit the surface of the water, but the depth charges were perfectly noiseless themselves as they sank towards our position.

The worst thing that happens during that time is hearing the discharge of the primer on a depth charge, which creates a perfectly audible break in the silence for we who were awaiting death. The suspense was absolutely agonizing, because the primer sounded through the hull with a snap-click and we knew that the monster was really close. We all imagined we were going to die. We all knew exactly what the experience would be like.

Uncertain Beginning to a Military Career
I deserved just what I was getting during those scary moments, I guess, because I have loved submarines for as long as I can remember. I made submarine models while my buddies were making models of ships and planes. I saw my first real submarine, called The Cuttlefish, on display at the 1939 World’s Fair in Treasure Island. Three years later I coincidentally took my first training dive on that same boat in Connecticut.

At the outbreak of the war, I was attending San Francisco Junior College. As I recall, we roughly divided our time between partying and studying. I was only 17 years old and didn’t drink myself, so I became the designated driver before we knew what the term meant. I found it easy to avoid the temptations of alcohol that my friends seemed to find so irresistible. A decision between the temporary pleasure I might derive from liquor when compared to the permanent death I would subsequently experience at the hands of my parents made the choice appear pretty cut and dry.

I decided to enter the military service in October 1942. I told my dad I wanted to go to submarines. He knew a quartermaster whom he had served with in WWI on the gunboat Yorktown. I met the guy, told him I wanted to get into the Navy. He gave me all the prep and filled out my papers, but couldn’t swear me in. I asked him how I could get into submarines. “When you go to the recruiting center, find Lieutenant Jones. Ask him the question. Believe the answer; he knows.”

Sometimes major things happen in a person’s life from just a little event. At the recruiting office an officious petty officer wouldn’t let me see Lieutenant Jones, so I tore up my enlistment papers and left in a huff. On the way home I passed a billboard that said, “Win your Navy wings of gold.” So I went to the Ferry Building, where the recruiting offices were. I took three days of tests and prepared myself to be sworn in.

A strange event occurred with my swearing in ceremony. The commanding officer of the unit asked if I would have lunch with him. I didn’t even know what a captain was but knew better than to pass up free chow so I got in the car and sat up front with the driver. The officer took me to a luncheon with his Rotary Club at the luxurious Palace Hotel. Following the meal, he spoke some words and then had me stand up in front of all those people while he swore me in, himself. I had become part of a photo-op. Next day the newspaper ran a picture of me on the front page.

Fly-boy for a While
I was ordered to report to the Oakland Train Station and ended up at Beckwourth Airport in the middle of Nowhere, California. Next morning the instructors gave all of us rides in two seat Aeronca Champion airplanes. Before we could get our next flight, the airfield became socked in with a big snowstorm. This was no problem for our little planes; we simply had our first lesson in replacing the wheels on an airplane with skis.

I learned to fly over the next couple of months and then was ordered to St. Mary’s pre-flight school in Moraga to become part of the 23rd Pre-flight Platoon, which was commanded by Henry Lusetti — a bona fide member of the Basketball Hall of Fame.

My career in aviation ended abruptly at the US Navel Air Station in Olathe, Kansas. One of my instructors yelled at me for taxiing our plane in too cautious a manner. “Give me the controls. I’ll show you how to taxi.” He ran our Stearman trainer through a mud puddle and put a stick through the wing.

We were both lucky to survive the experience because we didn’t realize anything had happened until we landed. After we landed I was called on the carpet. “Were you flying 472? You didn’t report damage.” I should have lied, I guess, but I told them who had been commander of the plane. They subsequently chewed out the instructor who, in a fit of pique, washed me out of the program.

At that point I could have quit my military career forever. They told me in the headquarters that I could quit or do anything I wanted. “What would make you happy?” they asked. Of course, I knew the answer. “Submarines!” “You’ve got it.”

I rode to New London, Connecticut on a steam train. I’ll never forget that trip because the car I was riding on was heated by a poorly ventilated wood-burning stove. When I arrived in New London my stripes were the same color as my uniform. Same color as my face, probably. I was, at last, a submariner, however. All those daydreams I’d had as a kid with those wooden models were finally coming true.

Life and Death Under the Sea
After completing my training I went to Pearl Harbor to become a member of a relief crew responsible for cleaning up and manning submarines for refit. I was finally assigned to the Snapper and went on patrol in the South Pacific.

The South Sea theater in 1944 was no turkey shoot. We sank four enemy ships and were almost sunk ourselves on more than one occasion. I saw men bleeding from their ears by the concussions that almost, but never quite, brought disaster to us all. Most lost submarines died anonymous deaths; they just never came back from their cruise. Sometimes the fate of one of the boats might be discovered later through enemy records, but lots of times nobody ever learned what happened. They were just gone.

After the war ended I became an ensign in the submarine reserve and a few years later found myself in the middle of a different war. I was on a sub named Blackfin that entered Soviet territory and, even though it was supposed to be a cold war, we received some hot incoming fire from a Soviet Sub. He shot two torpedoes at us, which passed on either side of us. If that guy could have shot three torpedoes, one in the center of the other two, that would have been the end both of the Blackfin and of Ensign Swenson. We weren’t allowed to return fire so we submerged just in time to avoid destruction.

We nearly perished a third time during that perilous escapade because we escaped being destroyed only by passing at flank speed directly through a minefield. Running blind through a minefield might have seemed risky or even stupid. However, when a train is about to run over you, I guess you just jump off the trestle into the river without thinking whether or not the water is deep enough to survive.

Those Russians knew just what they were doing. If they had sunk us they would have claimed we hit a mine. Nobody in the West ever would have known that they had been shooting torpedoes at us.

Natural Terrors
You can surely die in the ocean without anyone shooting you. I will never forget the December 1944 typhoon that blew so hard it curled up the flight deck on an aircraft carrier like it was a sardine can and tore off the bow of a heavy cruiser back to the second gun turret. The storm sank three destroyers. It almost sank my submarine, as well.

The Officer of the Deck and I were trying to ride that thing out on top of the conning tower. We were tied down to our stations so we wouldn’t be swept overboard by the waves that kept pouring tons of water over us. Those waves were so immense and the distance between wave top and trough was so long that we had to ride over them. The boat was 310 feet in length and it was still riding those monsters like a surfboard.

From the top of one of those colossal mountains of water it seemed we could see forever. A few moments later we were sliding back into the trough, however, entering the confines of a watery canyon with walls that were rapidly closing in on us, drenching us with enormous volumes of water until our sluggish craft could once again haul itself up to the distant peak of the next wave top.

The captain became alarmed by the terrible conditions and ordered us to dive. That turned into the most exciting dive of my career since we rode the downside of a wave like a ski slope and when we hit the trough just kept going. At 100 feet below the surface dishes were still falling off the table. We dove to 125 feet and were still rocking from the effects of the monstrous swells passing above us.

After the war we made a transit of the Panama Canal. I was quartermaster while we were anchored in Gatun Lake in the middle of the Canal waiting for traffic to clear before we continued our transit to the Caribbean. “Can we go swimming?” I asked. “Are these waters dangerous?” “Not really,” was the answer “Those bumps over there on that shore are crocodiles, but they probably won’t be a problem.”

We stayed on the boat.

A Submariner’s Life is the Life for me
I always felt at home in the submarine duty. For one thing, submarine crews are a group of intelligent people. They are all volunteers. Nobody ever shipped out on a submarine who didn’t want to be there. Life on submarines always suited me. Submariners sometimes don’t see the sunshine for two months, but that was all right with me because it helped me sleep well. Never in my life could I take a good nap while the sun was up. Submariners work shifts around the clock and the sun was never up on a sub, of course. I could sleep anytime no matter what watch I was standing.

Submarines are less susceptible to rough sea conditions than are surface ships. A submarine is remarkably stable because so much of it is beneath water. It tends to ride right through waves instead of up and over them, much like an iceberg. When the weather gets really nasty, as in the case of the typhoon I described earlier, the sub can always dive to the calm waters of the depths.

Submarine duty provides an unsatisfying sightseeing experience. Except while in transit of the Panama Canal, we hardly ever saw anything. There are no windows on a submarine and even when running on the surface nobody is typically allowed on deck except for the deck watch. As quartermaster, I sometimes was at the con of the boat and saw more sunshine than the rest of the crewmembers, but even I never saw a Caribbean Island all the time we were in the area.

I eventually ended up at Camp Shoemaker in Dublin. So many officers were bailing out after the war that we lacked personnel to man the submarines. I became the Communications Officer on the Squadron Staff, promoted to Lieutenant jg, and subsequently ordered as Weapons Officer on the Sterlet.

I could do no wrong on the Sterlet. I felt that I had found my place in the world. I developed a real feel for that boat. I could sense a change somewhere before it showed up on one of the gauges. I could tell the helmsman that the boat was going to veer from course before it actually did so.

The Rest of the Story
I did a lot of training duties, belonged to a lot of boards, and finally went to the Destroyer Division Commander School where I became a PCO (Prospective Commanding Officer) of a Destroyer. I eventually became commander of a large naval reserve surface division and ended my career with the Navel Reserve Group Command holding the rank of Captain. I spent a total of 33 years in and out of active duty, much of the time spent in the naval reserves. I eventually retired to Summerset Orchards in Brentwood. We like it here because it is so quiet. Like living in a ghost town. The only people we see usually moving around are the gardeners.

Military service was good for me, since it never ended up actually killing me during any of the harrowing experiences that I went through. I tried to tell my 20-year-old granddaughter. “It’s a good thing to get away from home and into the service. You have time to do some thinking. Meet people you never would have met. Some have never taken a shower, used a flush toilet, or worn shoes. You don’t have to decide what you want to wear or where you want to go. That’s all taken care of for you.” She didn’t even answer me. I supposed that my recommendation went right over her head. My 12-year old grandson might pay attention someday.

War is hell! I can tell you first-hand how true that is. However, my experience in the U.S. Navy gave me a sense of self-confidence. It felt good to be part of something that big and to do something that really did contribute to keeping our nation free.

I am glad and proud for the opportunity I had to serve my nation as a military officer!

You can buy Eric’s novel Top Secret about submarine action in WWII at Amazon.com, and other online bookstores.