Word: archerfish
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Between hurricane warnings the morning was glassy calm and only faintly overcast as the submarine U.S.S. Archerfish hove to, 15 miles southwest of Key West, over Vestal Shoal. Flooding her tanks, Archerfish submerged and settled gently on the coral-sand bottom at 322 ft. On the surface, the submarine rescue ship Penguin maneuvered from a special mooring until she was directly over the sub, double-checking her position by UQC (underwater sound communication). Then Penguin lowered a diving bell. Of the four men who rode it down to 300 ft., only one was inside; three were skindivers with backpacks...
...forward torpedo room of Archerfish were Commander (Medical Corps) George Bond, 43, and Chief Engineman Cyril Tuckfield, 38. Dr. Bond wore nothing but swimming trunks, face mask, a Mae West life vest and a pressure gauge on his wrist. Tuckfield carried a small additional item: a nose clip of rubber-padded steel. They clambered into Archerfish's tiny forward escape hatch and dogged down the door, cutting themselves off from the rest of the submarine. Over UQC came the word: all set. Penguin's skipper, Lieut. Commander George Enright, began a six-minute countdown...
...under way on her trial run. Instead of her regular crew, she had aboard hundreds of dockyard men and technicians. Some 180 miles south of Nagoya, the U.S. submarine Archerfish sighted her, dark and enormous among a shoal of destroyers...
...Archerfish's skipper, Commander Joseph F. Enright, let go with a spread of torpedoes, and then "took her down." He heard one torpedo explode. Not until after the war did the U.S. know what had happened after that. The Japanese civilian workers had lost their heads. No one thought to shut the water-tight doors. Slowly, water welled into the Shinano. Six hours later, her Japanese skipper tucked a portrait of Emperor Hirohito under his arm, scrambled over the side and left the biggest carrier ever built to sink ignominiously, the victim of one torpedo...
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