| Submarine Joe |
| Joe's most frightening experiences during the war took place during depth charging. "When the Japanese were dropping depth charges on us you can't describe the noise and the tension it produced. These six hundred pound devices were similar to a gasoline drum and one of these could destroy a sub. The idea was to try to evade. We knew which way the patrol craft was coming and where he would probably drop these charges. We could eighter go right or left or go to a certain depth, figuring that he don't have them set at that depth. It was a game of cat-and-mouse It was particularly frightening because of the pressure that you know he's up there dropping these things and you can't do nothin' about it. "Towards the end of the war they came out with a small torpedo called a "cutie" that we could use to defend ourselves against these attacks. You could go down to four hundred feet, shut all your machinery down and fire the "cutie" which would go after the other ship's propeller screws. When it hit and knocked his screws out, he was dead in the water. Then we could come up and "pickle" him." Joe and his shipmates found a practical use for the alcohol that was used to make the torpedoes run. This was fed in with compressed air and the continuous burning of the alcohol under pressure would run the propellers of the torpedoes. It was like a small turbine. "When it came time for our two weeks R & R we'd take the leftover 190 proof alcohol to a hotel with us. That would be our cocktails for the next two weeks. You came back to the ship to get well!" "Once in Freemantle, we were staying at the Ocean Beach Hotel and I remember going down the menu of the mixed drinks one, two, three, four, trying different ones. I got to the twenty-second one and they tell me I walked off the second floor balcony okay and down to the beach. They found me two days later, sick as a dog. You did crazy things like that. What was left? After two weeks you were going back out there and who knows if you ever came back. Most of the men had that fatalistic attitude." Joe recounts an embarrassing, yet humorous inciddent that took place at the end of the war. "We were bringing the sub back to New London and stopped over in New York as part of President Truman's review of the fleet. We were anchored above the George Washington Bridge and as he cam by we were supposed to give him a 21-gun salute. We started to fire. I got the second round off and then the gun jammed. So here's the skipper on the bridge as the President's destroyer was going around us and I couldn't salute him because my gun wouldn't work. It wasn't my screw-up. They had given us the wrong ammunition and it wasn't strong enough to make our guns go back in the position to shoot another round. Boy, did that skipper corral me. 'Whats going on!' There were seven submarines and none of us got more than two rounds off so that exonerated me." A highlight of Joe's military career was serving with future president Jimmy Carter. "Carter was a lieutenant and our engineer on the USS K-1 from 1950 to 1951. This was a special submarine. There were only three of them built and they were called submarine killers. We had special sonar gear on them where we could go out and listen and pick up contacts. This was during the Cold War and it was self-protection, finding the other guy before he found you." Joe describes Jimmy Carter as a great guy. "He was a very humble and easy-going man, never got excited. After he got elected he invited a bunch of us to the White House." |