Escape From the Deep (10 page)

BILL LEIBOLD WAS NOT AS LUCKY—unlike Floyd Caverly and his captain, he was unable to step away in time from the bridge and swim clear of the sinking
Tang
. “I went down with the boat,” he recalled. “I don’t know how far but it seemed like it was a fair distance. I wasn’t hanging onto anything. I was just standing there and all of a sudden I was submerged. I remember very clearly there was a distinct bump that made me start to swim back to the surface. It may have been when the stern hit the bottom. Or it could have been some kind of explosion.”
²²

Leibold reached the surface. Regaining his composure, he heard men crying out. He recognized the voices of Chief Quartermaster Sidney Jones, his best friend aboard the
Tang,
and Gunner’s Mate Darrell Rector from Kansas.
²³
They were shouting to one another.

Leibold could feel himself being pulled away by the current. The voices grew fainter.

“Let’s stay together,” Leibold called out.
²⁴

There was no reply. Neither Jones nor Rector would ever be heard from again.

Leibold could not see anybody else in the water. He felt utterly alone. Then he noticed that the bow of the
Tang
was out of the water. As he swam toward it, he felt the sea push him back. It was soon clear that he would not make the bow because the current was too powerful. Then he saw the officer of the deck, Lieutenant John Heubeck, who had won swimming awards that he had pinned up in the
Tang
’s ward room. Heubeck was swimming the crawl expertly, and passed close by, headed for the bow. Then he was gone.

Leibold treaded water and tried to stay afloat, aware that he must conserve his energy. He knew he would have to get rid of anything that could weigh him down. So he threw away his binoculars, then his woolen jacket and shoes.

Leibold decided to keep his pants—they might save his life. He stripped them off, tied the legs, and tried to inflate them to make a life preserver. But no matter how he tied them, he couldn’t manage to fill them with air.

Leibold had used up valuable energy trying to inflate the pants’ legs. In frustration, he discarded them. He was left wearing nonregulation undershorts, with blue-and-white stripes, fastened by old-fashioned “ripper-snappers,” and a thin dungaree shirt.

Leibold heard explosions. The Japanese were dropping depth charges somewhere not too far away. The Type 2 Model Z charges weighed around 350 pounds and had an explosive charge of around 230 pounds.
²⁵
Leibold could feel the shock waves from the blasts. He couldn’t see the boat that was dropping the charges though. It was pitch black. The depth-charging was intermittent: There were two or three explosions and then he would feel a small wave.

The Japanese eventually passed by and, once more, there was what seemed like dead silence.
²⁶

OUT OF LEIBOLD’S SIGHT and hearing, Floyd Caverly still struggled desperately to stay afloat. Suddenly, he spotted Lieutenant John Heubeck, who was still swimming confidently in a steady crawl. Caverly remembered that Heubeck was an award-winning swimmer at the Naval Academy. If any man could swim to safety, it was Heubeck.

“Is that you, Mr. Heubeck?” called Caverly.

Heubeck stopped swimming.

“Yes,” said Heubeck. “Which way is land?”
²⁷

“About 180 feet straight down.”
²⁸

Caverly was not certain in which direction land was. All he knew was that the China coast had been about ten miles to the west when the
Tang
had gone down. Since then he had been swimming in circles, carried by the current. It was dark. He was now completely disoriented.
²⁹

“Who are you?” Heubeck gasped.

“Caverly, sir.”

“Which way is China?”

Caverly said he thought China was about ten miles to the west.

Heubeck set out for China. He was never seen again.

Caverly struggled once more to stay afloat. He had plenty of time for reflection, to think back on his adolescence, to the days before the war when one of his uncles in Minnesota had advised him to join the navy if hostilities broke out. At least in the navy, his uncle said, he would have a good meal every day. He wouldn’t be stuck in a foxhole trying to keep his feet dry, eating C rations. And if he ever ended up in the water, his uncle added, he would only have to look out for himself.
³⁰

Stay afloat as long as you can,
Caverly told himself.

There was no knowing how long he would have to wait until, perhaps, a Japanese boat picked up survivors . . . or until sharks attacked. One thing seemed certain: A long, dark night was ahead.

MEANWHILE, NOT FAR AWAY, O’Kane was also struggling to stay alive, also buoyed by thoughts of his family, and his thirty-two-year-old wife Ernestine. “I swam until I couldn’t swim any more,” recalled O’Kane. “Then I thought of Ernestine and swam some more.”
³¹

O’Kane had to stay focused. He had to concentrate on saving his energy—it was his only chance of one day seeing his strong-spirited Ernestine, whom he affectionately called his “boyhood chum,” and their two small children, seven-year-old Marsha and five-year-old James, all of whom had been present at the launching of the
Tang
.

O’Kane had been a good father. Even as war raged across the Pacific, he had gotten to know his children, unlike many of his peers. He had spent as much time as possible with them. When he wasn’t showing them around Mare Island submarine base, where Marsha got her hair cut by a navy barber, he took them on day trips to local towns and beaches, and to Yosemite National Park. It was on a visit with Marsha to bustling San Francisco that he bought a metronome for the
Tang
in a music store.
³²

O’Kane continued to tread water as he thought of his family. He was slowly losing strength. Then he felt a knock on his head. He turned around to discover a wooden door, debris from one of the ships he had sunk just hours before. The door could not hold all his weight, but it would help him stay afloat.

WHEN THE TORPEDO STRUCK, Larry Savadkin was standing beside the torpedo data computer in the conning tower, close to Radioman Edwin Bergman on the sonar. “The boat seemed to bounce up and down,” he recalled. “I didn’t lose my footing.”
³³

Savadkin heard O’Kane ask if there was any propulsion and then moved away from the computer to check the pit log, which recorded the
Tang
’s speed.

The conning tower was plunged into utter darkness. Savadkin could sense the ocean gushing through the open hatch leading to the bridge. It had not been closed in time. He felt the
Tang
start to sink by the stern.

Water flooded the conning tower, threatening to drown him, Executive Officer Frank Springer, and six others who had been in the conning tower when the torpedo struck. Savadkin clung to the No. 2 periscope shaft.

Objects and drowning men swirled around him in a chaos of surging water.

What a hell of a way to die!
thought Savadkin.
³⁴

But not just yet . . . twenty-four-year-old Savadkin had steady nerves and was supremely fit, having won awards as a middle-distance runner and never having smoked. O’Kane had noticed his cool head the first time Savadkin had taken the
Tang
down on her first dive on her third patrol.

A skinny, dark-haired, highly gifted engineer who grew up in Easton, Pennsylvania, and New York City, Savadkin had already distinguished himself in combat, having shown exceptional courage and sangfroid. Like Pete Narowanski, he served in the Mediterranean before attending submarine school. During the invasion of Sicily, he was wounded when German planes bombed his ship, the USS
Mayrant,
close to Palermo.

A bomb landed only a yard or two off the
Mayrant
’s port bow, rupturing her side and flooding her engineering room, where Savadkin had been working as the boat’s engineering officer. Five men were killed and eighteen wounded in the attack, but the casualties would have been even greater had Savadkin and others not acted to save the
Mayrant
from sinking.

Savadkin was badly wounded in the head and traumatized as he watched men around him die. After recovering from his head wound at home in New York, he told his parents and teenage sister, Barbara, that he would rather go quickly next time, either in a plane or a submarine.
³⁵
Because he couldn’t fly, he opted for submarine duty. He was awarded the Silver Star for his prompt actions on July 26, 1943, as was his shipmate and friend, Lieutenant Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., son of the president of the United States.

Savadkin now needed all the courage he could muster. Somehow, he found it, spurred by a fierce determination to again see his wife, whom he had known only briefly before leaving on the
Tang.
He also thought of his parents and sister. His mother, Esther, and father, Saul, had taught him, according to his sister Barbara, how to “roll with the punches, to accept that life is not a bed of roses, and to be practical and levelheaded under pressure.”
³⁶

But nothing in his background could have prepared Savadkin for the nightmare he was now experiencing. The water had risen fast. In a matter of seconds, it was above his head.

Savadkin began to climb up the periscope. To his immense relief, he found an air bubble. He could fit his nose and mouth into it. It had formed in a small space where the periscope exited the hull, like some bead in an upturned carpenter’s measure. He filled his lungs, his nose pressed against the
Tang
’s cork insulation.

There was utter silence. Savadkin had no idea where he was. He had completely lost his bearings.
Had the
Tang
flipped upside down? Which way should he go to try to escape?

Savadkin filled his lungs again from the air bubble around the periscope. Treading water, he felt around in the blackness. Incredibly, his head popped into a larger air bubble. Then he touched something familiar—the engine room telegraph handle. He groped around some more. There was no doubting it—he could feel the ladder leading from the conning tower to the bridge.
Maybe, just maybe, there would be another air bubble above.
It was possible because the hatch to the bridge opened beneath cowling that might have trapped some air.

Filling his lungs again, Savadkin swam upward, out of the conning tower. It was pitch black. But luck was on his side—his hunch had been right—he found another air bubble below the cowling. Then, to his further amazement, Savadkin heard a voice. It belonged to Edwin Bergman. It sounded normal, not panicked.

Bergman had also groped his way out of the conning tower.
³⁷

“Who is it?” Bergman asked.

“Mr. Savadkin. Who are you?”

“Bergman. Do you know where we are?”

“I think we’re under the bridge cowling.”

“What are you going to do?”

Savadkin said he was going to try to swim to the surface.

“Can I come with you?”

“Sure.”

“How?”

“Hold on to my legs.”
³⁸

Bergman did so.

Savadkin filled his lungs with enough air, he hoped, to last a minute or so, and then struck out for the surface, “using both hands,” as hard as he could.

Maybe Bergman was too afraid to make the terrifying ascent through the cold darkness. Or maybe he wanted to stay where he could at least breathe. In any case, he let go as Savadkin pushed upward. Like so many of the estimated forty men still alive in the
Tang
, he would never be seen again.

Savadkin figured he was at least fifty feet below the surface. The sea pressure was enormous but he was too focused on getting “air and lots of it” to notice.
³⁹
He made sure he exhaled slowly so he didn’t burst a lung. He was soon desperate for breath, on the verge of drowning, nearing the “break point”: the moment at which chemical sensors in his brain would force him to take a breath, whether he wanted to or not.
⁴⁰
Just as he thought he would have to “swallow some saltwater,” he broke the surface and gasped the fresh air. He had done it. He was the first American to survive an ascent without breathing apparatus from a submarine.
⁴¹

Savadkin looked around and saw the
Tang
’s anchor windlass. That meant the escape trunk in the forward torpedo room was submerged. If any men were still alive, there would be no easy way out.

Savadkin began to swim toward the
Tang’
s exposed bow. But he was in shock and exhausted from his ordeal in the conning tower. He needed to find something to hold him up—some piece of wreckage perhaps. But he could find nothing. Then he remembered his survival training at submarine school in San Diego, and how he had practiced using his pants to make a life preserver. It was fortunate that he was wearing long pants, unlike the other officers on the
Tang
who had preferred shorts while on duty in the tropics. He realized that he had lost his watch. His sandals had fallen off as he swam to the surface.