X
Every October, I take a few moments to remember a truly remarkable WWII veteran, Bill Leibold. I was lucky enough to spend time with Commander Leibold at his home near San Diego before he passed away in 2022, aged ninety-nine. Over several hours, he told me one of the most inspiring stories of survival I have ever heard.
Leibold joined the US Navy aged 17 and by October 1944, eighty years ago, he was chief boatswain’s mate aboard the USS Tang, the most lethal American submarine of all time. The strapping, dark-haired Leibold had been involved in some of the more dramatic incidents of undersea combat in the Pacific—from the rescue of 22 downed aviators on the Tang’s second outing, to the third patrol that claimed a record-setting 10 merchant ships. In its first four patrols, the Tang had sunk an unprecedented 17 ships totaling 73,000 tons.
Close to the end of Tang’s fifth patrol, Leibold was stood on the submarine’s bridge beside its captain, Medal of Honor recipient Dick O’Kane.
All but one of the Tang’s twenty-four torpedoes had been fired.
A Japanese transport loomed ahead.
O’Kane called for a time check.
It was 2:30 a.m. on October 25, 1944.
“Set!”
“Fire!” O’Kane ordered.
With a shudder, the last torpedo left the Tang.
Leibold scanned the waters. The last torpedo suddenly broached and leapt clear, trailing phosphorescence, before continuing its run. A few seconds later, it made a sharp left turn and then, unbelievably, turned again.
“There goes that one!” Leibold shouted. “Erratic!”
Something had gone terribly wrong: perhaps the torpedo’s rudder had jammed, or the gyroscope in its steering engine had malfunctioned. The deadly projectile was now heading like a boomerang back at the Tang.
“Emergency speed!” O’Kane cried. “All ahead emergency! Right full rudder!”
A few seconds later, there was a massive explosion.
Leibold saw a cloud of what looked like black smoke—water, in fact, thrown up by the blast. He and other men on the bridge felt the boat being wrenched, as if it were being split in half.
Water started to rise toward the bridge, and soon covered the aft third of the submarine.
“Close the hatch!” O’Kane cried. But there was no time. The Tang began to sink, tons of water pouring into the conning tower. “I went down with the boat,” Leibold told me. “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.”
Leibold kicked hard and soon his head was above water. The night was pitch-black. Then he heard explosions. The Japanese were dropping depth charges nearby. He felt their shock waves, but couldn’t see the attackers. Eventually the Japanese moved on, and there was dead silence.
Leibold had no idea that 180 feet below, around 40 of his 86 shipmates were still alive. Over the next several hours, these men battled to survive as fires raged, oxygen ran out, and smoke and carbon monoxide filled the fatally wounded Tang.
Incredibly, as many as two dozen men summoned the courage to attempt escape. Four at a time, they entered a small escape trunk, tested their Momsen lungs (very basic underwater rebreathers), sealed themselves into the trunk, and allowed seawater to fill the enclosure until it was chest level and the pressure in the trunk equaled that of the sea.
Then the men, ears and noses bleeding from the pressure, opened the door to the outside and released a buoy with an escape line attached.
Next, they needed to summon the iron will to climb the escape line, pausing in the cold black water for a few seconds at knots tied every 10 feet – in order to avoid decompression sickness, known as the bends. Several men lost their nerve and rushed for the surface 180 feet above; the air in their chests expanded so rapidly that their lungs burst.
Just five men made it to the surface in reasonable condition, making history by becoming – to this day - the only Americans to escape from a sunken submarine without assistance from the surface.
Dawn was nigh. Light streaked the sky. Leibold thought he saw land. When he looked again, he realized it was only a cloud.
Later that morning, Japanese from a patrol craft, the P-34, fished Leibold and eight other Tang survivors, including O’Kane, from the ocean.
Horrific treatment ensued. Leibold told me that he and others were beaten and then taken to one of the most brutal of all mainland Japanese POW camps: a naval intelligence interrogation center known as Ofuna, on the southern outskirts of Yokohama. Prisoners called it the Torture Farm.
Leibold and others were tortured and starved, yet did not reveal any useful information, and were then moved to Camp Omori, near Tokyo. There they learned, on August 15, 1945, of Japan’s surrender. Thankfully, the guards were too stunned to punish their prisoners. Two weeks later, US Navy forces arrived.
Leibold enjoyed a distinguished and varied career after the war. He became an expert on diving, specializing in submarine rescue, and, while on assignment to Washington in 1960, played a part in forming the first Navy Seals teams. He eventually captained the USS Volodar, retiring in the 1970s at the rank of commander. Above all, he was proudest of his time aboard the USS Tang, which received two Presidential Unit Citations.
Leibold was a gracious, modest man, like so many of his generation. This 25 October, please join me in sparing a thought for him - and for the some 16,000 of his fellow Americans who belonged to the so-called “Silent Service”: the submarine force. These underseas warriors had more impact per capita than any other branch of the US military in WWII, and also suffered the highest rate of casualties. Indeed, eighty years later, these extraordinary heroes, forever on “eternal patrol”, more than deserve to be honored and remembered.
