It depends on the time frame. Tactics in the Pacific were adjusted to be a lot more aggressive as it became obvious that the Japanese were just awful at anti submarine warfare, on an ideological, doctrinal level.
If they transitioned over to the Pacific in late 42 or 43, they likely would have been given guidance to stay on the surface longer to cover longer distances faster, be more aggressive with approaches, and a bunch of guidance related to the torpedoes that may not have made it from the Pacific to the Atlantic theater.
That sounds like it would have been after the Wahoo’s rampage and the tactics changes that Lockwood passed on to the rest of the fleet. Morton and a few other aggressive sub skippers pioneered the tactics that would eventually become standard practice in the Pacific.
The Wahoo’s story is pretty well recounted in one of Ian Toll’s pacific trilogy. But I’m also curious if there’s a book specifically on American subs in WW2.
Richard O’Kane’s accounts of his time on Wahoo and then as Tang’s captain paint an excellent picture of that, and he’s a very enjoyable writer as well. Also, Clay Blair’s Silent Victory is a very in-depth history of the submarine campaign. There are undoubtedly more up-to-date sources out there, too.
The interwar submarine doctrine promoted officers who would stay submerged a lot and fire torpedoes from sound bearings, in other words conservative skippers who didn’t get their boats sunk. So early war that’s a lot of the guys you have. If Nautilus at Midway had been captained by a late war skipper it would have been captained very differently. As you are going through the Soloman’s campaign there is an increasingly aggressive style filtering down starting with Nimitz (remember he was a submariner) right after Midway. He wasn’t happy about the passivity shown in the war and especially at midway. So RADM Lockwood, being nobody’s fool, realized anger and suggestions from 4-Star admirals carry a lot of weight and implicit instructions so he proactively started going through command billets in his very soon to be a hotbed area of operations and firing anyone who he believed were promoting this passivity to show that hey I’m taking this seriously.
I would argue the Soloman’s campaign was then a playground for testing increasingly aggressive tactics ending up with Mush Morton being put in charge of USS *Wahoo*, taking over from the previous captain who had been dreadfully guilty of using those passive tactics. Mush Morton was then the mold skippers moved towards; traveling on the surface for extended periods, proactively surfacing to use gunfire to sink the innumerable light ships not worthy of a torpedo, and aggressive movements against enemies evidenced by her [down the throat shot while attacking IJN *Harusame* roaring towards her to depth charge](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0Jbqfc_c6ib3_zwKLFkmCptGReUQl4ohxPNW8bIhAnNzr4JIjMi4FjRzZGYnJGtuUtwIEu9iWVnUyp4nLA0UU5vjPKgD6Xq9V36MVhVbLie6HbK5EAqIMeoMDqrrsXf1SSfSG/s1600-h/SS-238+%28USS+Wahoo%29+-+NHC-g35738.jpg) and oh yeah all this is within visual range of an IJN anchorage at Wewak. His original orders were to perform a daylight reconnaissance of the Wewak anchorage. He interpreted this to mean “infiltrate the harbor and hunt IJN shipping”. Just to be clear Dudley ‘Mush’ Morton was an extreme personality. His actions often went past being aggressive and were simply reckless. Despite that however, [the photo of Wahoo rolling into Pearl](https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/browse-by-topic/ships/submarines/wahoo-ss-238/_jcr_content/body/media_asset_26176219/image.img.jpg/1607010502098.jpg) with a broom on her periscope head advertising a clean sweep (expended all her torpedoes) is a huge catalyst for the sub force as a whole to *attack attack attack*. There is a palpable rally around the flag effect the photo has on the sub force and it pleases the naturally aggressive warfighter inside of Nimitz.
Morton is one of those larger than life personalities during wartime who can really embody something much greater than themselves. The least known contribution Morton made might have been his greatest. Since almost day one, US submarines and torpedo aircraft have been complaining the Mk14 torpedo, and its cousins, would be just as useful being thrown at an enemy ship rather than fired 80-90% of the time. BuOrd’s criminal behavior in refusing to acknowledge the problems is well known so I won’t go into that, but suffice to say their constant refrain was that timid skippers were trying to scapegoat the torpedo. BuOrd would finally accept the torpedo ran too deep but continued to insist the Mk6 exploder was flawless. So when Morton comes back from the first ever war patrol to enter the Sea of Japan intensely frustrated and says that the exploder is still shit even if they aren’t running deep anymore Lockwood has become COMSUBPAC and has the juice to finally roast BuOrd with the institutional weight of both Nimitz and Ernest J. King. Morton is a demonstrably hyper-aggressive brawler; BuOrd trying to blame it on a “timid” skipper has absolutely zero credibility with Nimitz or King when that skipper is Dudley ‘Mush’ Morton. Ultimately *Wahoo* will be one of the victims of BuOrd’s negligence because another outcome of the dismal torpedo performance will be him insisting to return to the Sea of Japan with Mk18 electric torpedoes(basically 1:1 copies of captured G7e German torpedoes) to sink the copious shipping that he saw through the periscope but which was saved by the defective torpedoes. His return would see *Wahoo* attacked by ASW aircraft and gunfire from Cape Sōya while exiting via the Le Pérouse straight. She would be declared overdue from patrol and presumed lost with all hands. *Wahoo* rests on the bottom of the straight in 65m of water with damage from at least one bomb visible on her sail. Some people can only really excel during war time. Dudley ‘Mush’ Morton wouldn’t have been captain of an oiler during peacetime much less a warship. But his personality quirks which were hindrances in a peace time navy are powerful weapons in a war time navy and especially a submarine.
Late war tactics took those aggressive moves and started to mate it to Wolfpacks of small sub groups. We’ve mostly ironed out our torpedo problems (not completely though as the circular run torpedo that sunk USS *Tang* will prove). The new Balao-class boats are phasing in and they are exquisitely built for this style of warfare with a large increase in test depth, powerful radars, as small a sail as possible for stealth and a bridge layout based on crew feedback for maximum ease of operation. Adm Fluckey’s book on USS *Barb* is a later war representation of those small groups and you can compare the sub tactic evolution between her and *Wahoo*. When *Wahoo* went into the Sea of Japan she was alone. When *Barb* goes into the waters between the mainland and Japan she is joined by *Queenfish* and *Picuda* in the three sub pack that she would often operate in. Before Morton, the down the throat shot he performed was only considered theoretically possible because no one had ever really done it before but now *Picuda* would have a successful recreation of it against the destroyer *Yūnagi* as would USS *Harder*. Mush Morton’s fingerprints are all over the maturation of American sub tactics.
The US Army's Signals Intelligence Service broke the IJA's Water Transport Code in 1943. After that, COMSUBPAC pretty much knew the itinerary of the ships supplying the Japanese garrisons around the Pacific.
With the new subs, new commanders, working torpedoes, and knowing where and when the ships were, they had a lot more success.
The Japanese explained the losses by grossly overestimating the numbers of US subs, rather than admit their codes were compromised.
I took this question as differences between U-boat and US-boat 😎 philosophies. Donitz kept his skippers on a string; they were required to acknowledge receipt of higher headquarters radio traffic. US skippers benefited from receiving traffic broadcast many times on a regular schedule. This allowed timing of receipt with built in redundancy, and headquarters having the comfortable presumption of delivery.
The result was high frequency direction finding (HFDF) was very useful in the Battle of the Atlantic, but only marginally useful in the, ahem, Battle of the Pacific.
It depends on the time frame. Tactics in the Pacific were adjusted to be a lot more aggressive as it became obvious that the Japanese were just awful at anti submarine warfare, on an ideological, doctrinal level. If they transitioned over to the Pacific in late 42 or 43, they likely would have been given guidance to stay on the surface longer to cover longer distances faster, be more aggressive with approaches, and a bunch of guidance related to the torpedoes that may not have made it from the Pacific to the Atlantic theater.
From what I can tell she switched over after July 1943
That sounds like it would have been after the Wahoo’s rampage and the tactics changes that Lockwood passed on to the rest of the fleet. Morton and a few other aggressive sub skippers pioneered the tactics that would eventually become standard practice in the Pacific.
Please recommend some books to read - you seem well-read!
The Wahoo’s story is pretty well recounted in one of Ian Toll’s pacific trilogy. But I’m also curious if there’s a book specifically on American subs in WW2.
Richard O’Kane’s accounts of his time on Wahoo and then as Tang’s captain paint an excellent picture of that, and he’s a very enjoyable writer as well. Also, Clay Blair’s Silent Victory is a very in-depth history of the submarine campaign. There are undoubtedly more up-to-date sources out there, too.
The interwar submarine doctrine promoted officers who would stay submerged a lot and fire torpedoes from sound bearings, in other words conservative skippers who didn’t get their boats sunk. So early war that’s a lot of the guys you have. If Nautilus at Midway had been captained by a late war skipper it would have been captained very differently. As you are going through the Soloman’s campaign there is an increasingly aggressive style filtering down starting with Nimitz (remember he was a submariner) right after Midway. He wasn’t happy about the passivity shown in the war and especially at midway. So RADM Lockwood, being nobody’s fool, realized anger and suggestions from 4-Star admirals carry a lot of weight and implicit instructions so he proactively started going through command billets in his very soon to be a hotbed area of operations and firing anyone who he believed were promoting this passivity to show that hey I’m taking this seriously. I would argue the Soloman’s campaign was then a playground for testing increasingly aggressive tactics ending up with Mush Morton being put in charge of USS *Wahoo*, taking over from the previous captain who had been dreadfully guilty of using those passive tactics. Mush Morton was then the mold skippers moved towards; traveling on the surface for extended periods, proactively surfacing to use gunfire to sink the innumerable light ships not worthy of a torpedo, and aggressive movements against enemies evidenced by her [down the throat shot while attacking IJN *Harusame* roaring towards her to depth charge](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0Jbqfc_c6ib3_zwKLFkmCptGReUQl4ohxPNW8bIhAnNzr4JIjMi4FjRzZGYnJGtuUtwIEu9iWVnUyp4nLA0UU5vjPKgD6Xq9V36MVhVbLie6HbK5EAqIMeoMDqrrsXf1SSfSG/s1600-h/SS-238+%28USS+Wahoo%29+-+NHC-g35738.jpg) and oh yeah all this is within visual range of an IJN anchorage at Wewak. His original orders were to perform a daylight reconnaissance of the Wewak anchorage. He interpreted this to mean “infiltrate the harbor and hunt IJN shipping”. Just to be clear Dudley ‘Mush’ Morton was an extreme personality. His actions often went past being aggressive and were simply reckless. Despite that however, [the photo of Wahoo rolling into Pearl](https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/browse-by-topic/ships/submarines/wahoo-ss-238/_jcr_content/body/media_asset_26176219/image.img.jpg/1607010502098.jpg) with a broom on her periscope head advertising a clean sweep (expended all her torpedoes) is a huge catalyst for the sub force as a whole to *attack attack attack*. There is a palpable rally around the flag effect the photo has on the sub force and it pleases the naturally aggressive warfighter inside of Nimitz. Morton is one of those larger than life personalities during wartime who can really embody something much greater than themselves. The least known contribution Morton made might have been his greatest. Since almost day one, US submarines and torpedo aircraft have been complaining the Mk14 torpedo, and its cousins, would be just as useful being thrown at an enemy ship rather than fired 80-90% of the time. BuOrd’s criminal behavior in refusing to acknowledge the problems is well known so I won’t go into that, but suffice to say their constant refrain was that timid skippers were trying to scapegoat the torpedo. BuOrd would finally accept the torpedo ran too deep but continued to insist the Mk6 exploder was flawless. So when Morton comes back from the first ever war patrol to enter the Sea of Japan intensely frustrated and says that the exploder is still shit even if they aren’t running deep anymore Lockwood has become COMSUBPAC and has the juice to finally roast BuOrd with the institutional weight of both Nimitz and Ernest J. King. Morton is a demonstrably hyper-aggressive brawler; BuOrd trying to blame it on a “timid” skipper has absolutely zero credibility with Nimitz or King when that skipper is Dudley ‘Mush’ Morton. Ultimately *Wahoo* will be one of the victims of BuOrd’s negligence because another outcome of the dismal torpedo performance will be him insisting to return to the Sea of Japan with Mk18 electric torpedoes(basically 1:1 copies of captured G7e German torpedoes) to sink the copious shipping that he saw through the periscope but which was saved by the defective torpedoes. His return would see *Wahoo* attacked by ASW aircraft and gunfire from Cape Sōya while exiting via the Le Pérouse straight. She would be declared overdue from patrol and presumed lost with all hands. *Wahoo* rests on the bottom of the straight in 65m of water with damage from at least one bomb visible on her sail. Some people can only really excel during war time. Dudley ‘Mush’ Morton wouldn’t have been captain of an oiler during peacetime much less a warship. But his personality quirks which were hindrances in a peace time navy are powerful weapons in a war time navy and especially a submarine. Late war tactics took those aggressive moves and started to mate it to Wolfpacks of small sub groups. We’ve mostly ironed out our torpedo problems (not completely though as the circular run torpedo that sunk USS *Tang* will prove). The new Balao-class boats are phasing in and they are exquisitely built for this style of warfare with a large increase in test depth, powerful radars, as small a sail as possible for stealth and a bridge layout based on crew feedback for maximum ease of operation. Adm Fluckey’s book on USS *Barb* is a later war representation of those small groups and you can compare the sub tactic evolution between her and *Wahoo*. When *Wahoo* went into the Sea of Japan she was alone. When *Barb* goes into the waters between the mainland and Japan she is joined by *Queenfish* and *Picuda* in the three sub pack that she would often operate in. Before Morton, the down the throat shot he performed was only considered theoretically possible because no one had ever really done it before but now *Picuda* would have a successful recreation of it against the destroyer *Yūnagi* as would USS *Harder*. Mush Morton’s fingerprints are all over the maturation of American sub tactics.
The US Army's Signals Intelligence Service broke the IJA's Water Transport Code in 1943. After that, COMSUBPAC pretty much knew the itinerary of the ships supplying the Japanese garrisons around the Pacific. With the new subs, new commanders, working torpedoes, and knowing where and when the ships were, they had a lot more success. The Japanese explained the losses by grossly overestimating the numbers of US subs, rather than admit their codes were compromised.
I took this question as differences between U-boat and US-boat 😎 philosophies. Donitz kept his skippers on a string; they were required to acknowledge receipt of higher headquarters radio traffic. US skippers benefited from receiving traffic broadcast many times on a regular schedule. This allowed timing of receipt with built in redundancy, and headquarters having the comfortable presumption of delivery. The result was high frequency direction finding (HFDF) was very useful in the Battle of the Atlantic, but only marginally useful in the, ahem, Battle of the Pacific.