THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, October 7, 1994 TAG: 9410070632
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PATRICK K. LACKEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 99 lines
Half a century since huddling in a submarine with depth charges exploding all around, George H. Smith, 77, remembers the sound.
To experience it, suggested Smith, of Delaware County, Pa., put your head in a 55-gallon drum and have someone pound it repeatedly with a sledgehammer.
The fear, he said, cannot be described.
Smith is one of more than 3,000 registrants from all 50 states at the 40th National Convention of U.S. Submarine Veterans of World War II, which runs through Saturday at the Norfolk Waterside Marriott Hotel.
More than 1,600 are World War II submariners, the rest mainly spouses. The number is amazing, considering there were only about 16,000 submarine crewmen during the war, and almost one in four - 3,505 altogether - died in battle. Many more have died peacefully since.
At 10 a.m. Saturday at Waterside Amphitheater, a public memorial service will commemorate lost men and subs. For each of the 52 U.S. submarines sunk in World War II, the name will be read, a bell tolled and a flower tossed in the water. Almost a fourth of the 217 American subs were sunk.
Duty hardly got any more dangerous than on a sub making a 60-day patrol of enemy waters, seeking Japanese ships in the South Pacific to sink.
Retired four-star Adm. Bernard ``Chick'' Clarey, 82, of Honolulu, said, ``I have got men who still come to these things that I would have to say to you, I love these men, because we were shipmates during the war under very severe conditions.''
Clarey, who commanded the submarine Pintado when it sank 13 ships in World War II, rose to become the Navy's second-highest officer. He has attended all but two of the national submarine conventions.
He noted that the submariners were volunteers.
One of the volunteers was M.M. ``Turk'' Turner, 76, of Norfolk. He recalled being alone in a room at Pearl Harbor, rewinding an electric motor, when an officer called for a volunteer from the room to serve on submarines. Turner said he kept winding, never looking up, but the officer said, ``You're it, Turner.''
Turner is chairman of the National Committee for the convention here. It was last held in Norfolk in 1978.
Turner noted that most of the submariners had grown up during the Great Depression. They endured incredible danger in the war, then went on to lives that were more prosperous than many had ever imagined.
``One thing that saved our lives,'' Turner said, ``is that we were hardened to the effects of hardship. We were fighters from the word go. That's for sure. Everyone had missed meals.''
On March 2, 1942, Turner was serving aboard the submarine Perch when depth charges literally pounded it into the sea-bottom mud, some 200 feet below the surface.
``The mud saved us,'' he said, ``without a doubt.''
His sub had one of the first all-electrically-welded hulls, not a rivet on it, and it survived hours of depth charges.
But that night, after the three Japanese destroyers that had been pounding it left, the sub was stuck in the mud, which reached more than halfway up its hull.
After an hour of rocking the boat with the main screw and blowing ballast out the bottom, the sub finally shook free.
It surfaced, but was too damaged to dive again. Only one of its four engines was fully operational. It could go no more than 8 knots.
Come morning, it came under fire from three destroyers again. It could not launch torpedoes, and its gun didn't work. Fearing the sub would be captured, the captain ordered the 58-member crew to abandon the 301-foot boat, which then was sunk.
All crew members were rescued from the sea by a Japanese destroyer, though eight died at a brutal prisoner of war camp near Borneo.
``I don't think I ever figured I would die,'' said Turner of his submarine service. ``As long as we were breathing, I figured we would do something.''
Everybody interviewed at the convention spoke of the ``family'' of submariners.
``They are the greatest guys in the world,'' Turner said. ``This is one big family. The whole national bunch is a big family, and each boat is a family.''
Attendance at the conventions actually increases with the years. The last convention in Norfolk was smaller, he said. The submariners are mostly in their 70s and 80s, and they know they have a limited time to be with the only other men who understand their stories and know what they endured. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
The submarine Apogon was rammed by an enemy transport between the
Philippines and Formosa in 1944.
Color photo
L. Todd Spencer
Above, crew members, from left, Harold Mauller, Earl Wood and Ray
McPhearson, with Chief John Withers, recall their service on the
submarine Apogon during the convention in Norfolk on Wednesday.
Photo
Left, the Apogon's crew - including Mauller, Wood, McPhearson and
Withers - in 1945.
by CNB