Final Patrol by Don Keith

constant butt of jokes from his captain, but everyone aboard agreed the juxtaposition at the top of their boat’s command structure made them a good team.
    On her first patrol, Burlingame took them almost all the way to the Japanese Home Islands on the surface, cruising along at top speed as if they had cargo overdue in Tokyo, before running into the last blustery remnants of a typhoon. That’s when the lookouts and radar spied a Japanese trawler.
    If the new crew of the Silversides had any doubts about the aggressiveness of their skipper, they immediately faded. With a quick, decisive order to man battle stations, Burlingame launched a surface attack, using their deck guns. A trawler would have been hard to hit with torpedoes while submerged. The surface attack was their best strategy, even if it was daring and even more dangerous than submerging. Still, it was an enemy warship and they had been sent out here to sink anything that carried the rising sun flag.
    And that is precisely what they did. They managed to quickly send the IJN vessel down in smoke and flames for their off-the-showroom-floor vessel’s first confirmed kill. But the win came with a heavy price.
    During the skirmish, a young enlisted man named Michael Harbin, who was manning one of the deck guns, was struck by returned gunfire. The sailor died instantly. He was the first submariner in the war to be killed in submarine gun action.
    Three days later, Burlingame and his lookouts in the shears spotted a Japanese submarine on the surface. In one of the forward torpedo tubes rested a torpedo with the name “Michael Harbin” scribbled in chalk on its side. That’s the fish the skipper ordered launched in the direction of the enemy sub.
    Captain Burlingame reported an explosion and claimed a kill, but postwar records failed to confirm the loss of an enemy submarine. The Japanese documentation had no submarine listed at that place and time, though the captain and his crew clearly saw it and watched it disintegrate.
    Confirmed kill or not, they had exacted a small amount of revenge for Torpedoman Third Class Mike Harbin.
    A few weeks later, the Silversides was patrolling off the coast of Japan when she encountered a small convoy of enemy vessels working their way precariously through a large number of sampans, fishermen laying out nets. That was a typical strategy for the Japanese navy, assuming American warships and aircraft would be hesitant to attack when innocent fishermen might be hurt in the cross fire.
    They underestimated Creed Burlingame.
    He immediately ordered his maneuvering room to proceed at top speed, to do the best they could to miss the small fishing boats, but not to worry if they shoved any of them aside to get to the fat, juicy targets that hid among them. Then, as they lined up for an attack, the skipper took them down so they could draw close enough to get some of the enemy ships within range. The crew prepared to launch torpedoes at one particular freighter the captain decided would be the first to meet its demise.
    As they arrived at about sixty feet deep, Burlingame lowered the periscope from its enclosure, snapped down the handles, turned in the direction of the enemy vessel, and took a long look.
    â€œWhat the . . . ?” he asked no one in particular, the surprise evident in his voice.
    â€œWhat is it, Captain?”
    â€œIt looks like . . . well . . . we have a Japanese flag tied to our periscope!”
    â€œSir?”
    It was true. A small rising sun was somehow tied to their shears, riding along with them as they prepared to attack.
    Only then did Burlingame realize that they had gotten entangled in a fishing net. A small glass ball attached to a bamboo pole had buoyed the net. And atop that pole was a Japanese flag.
    The captain swung the periscope around and it seemed to be moving freely, not bound by the netting. The flag was not blocking his view either. There was no report of any mechanical