It is the wee hours of July 1, 1942. In the tropical waters off Cape Bojeador in the Philippines, Lieutenant Commander “Bull” Wright, the captain of the American submarine USS Sturgeon, is woken from a half-sleep familiar to all submarine commanders – always half-alert – by a sudden change in the sub’s course, and a surge of her engines, Peter FitzSimmons writes in The Sydney Morning Herald.
There are two likely possibilities. Either the Sturgeon has found a Japanese target, or it is one! After a ringing knock on the metal door a few seconds later, his executive officer tells him – praise the Lord and pass the torpedoes – it is the former. The Sturgeon’s radar has picked up the large pings of a big ship speeding from the Japanese-controlled Philippines north-east, into the South China Sea, and has began the hunt. The operational orders for this American submarine are clear: attack all Japanese targets they come across, the bigger the better.
Unbeknown to Commander Wright, while this target is indeed Japanese, the 7267-ton Montevideo Maru is bearing unusual cargo. Well below decks are 1060 manacled prisoners, most of them survivors of the Japanese invasion of Rabaul. Of these, some 980 are Australians: soldiers, civilians and missionaries. These are the very prisoners whose letters home had been dropped on Seven Mile Airfield, just north of Port Moresby four months earlier by the Japanese, bringing enormous relief in Australia from Palm Beach to Perth, from Darwin to the Derwent River that they were still alive!
There are also thirty-six Norwegian sailors on board, previously rescued from the cargo ship Herstein which the Japanese bombed. Now they all sleep as their prison ship ploughs on through the moonlit sea . . . completely unaware the Sturgeon is beginning to close.
In the submarine, tension is high. There is little noise in the conning tower as officers and men systematically go about the work they have been trained to do. Apart from a few muttered orders, the major sound is the strained hum of the sub’s engines on full power.
Wright and the exec select a salvo of four torpedoes for the attack, two aimed directly at the ship and one on either side, in case the ship sights the inbound torpedoes and alters course. Twenty minutes after spotting the ship the Sturgeon has closed the gap. Now they can fire the spread of torpedoes at the Montevideo Maru and dispatch it to where, in Bull Wright’s view, all Japanese shipping belongs: the bottom of the ocean.
The final settings are applied and Commander Wright gives the order in his authoritative, calm voice: “Fire one”.
The full report is here.
