World Battlefronts: AT SEA: War on U.S. Shipping

The Japanese attempted last week to do what the Germans did in World War I. Then German U-boats slipped boldly into U.S. waters, clipped cables, laid mines, sank an estimated 170,000 tons of shipping. The Japanese hoped by the same means to divert U.S. naval strength, to cripple U.S. merchant shipping, to fan U.S. war jitters with repeated, savage submarine attacks on West Coast merchant vessels. The initial Japanese showing was dismal.

In repeated attempts from Dec. 18 to Dec. 25, submarines off the California coast sank but one U.S. vessel, damaged two, cleanly missed six. The Japanese could blame the poor marksmanship of their crews, the alertness of U.S. bomber patrols and the agility of their prey. U.S. defenses steadily improved. A Christmas Day communique credited a Western Defense Command bomber with two "apparently direct hits" on an enemy submarine, and bombers were said to have been in action on at least two other occasions. But one element of U.S. defense was woefully inadequate: none of the attacked ships was armed.

The Japanese attacks were sufficiently audacious and ruthless. One submarine donned a false superstructure, disguising itself as a fishing vessel. Others surfaced so close to shore that their attacks were clearly visible to watchers on land.

Captain Olaf Eckstrom had been commanding the 8,272-ton, "heavily loaded" tanker Montebello only five hours when a torpedo ripped through the port side, under the bridge. It knocked out the ship's radio and power plant. In pre-dawn darkness the crew struggled with the lifeboats as the submarine opened up with its deck gun, scoring only one hit (in the Montebello's forepart) out of "eight or ten" shots. Despite strafing machine-gun fire, the 36 officers and crew pulled to safety, cursing the attackers. Said Captain Eckstrom:

"The sub was quite close to our boat, and we could see the outline of the superstructure in the water. If we had had a deck gun we could have hit her."