Attempts to salvage the Macaw did not go well. Storms continued to rage, at times sweeping the ship with thirty-foot seas. In the early hours of 13 February, the Macaw began to list and slide back into deeper water. With the hull breached, the Macaw sank. Most of the crew managed to survive by clinging to life buoys or to the reef itself, but there were five fatalities. The dead included the Macaw’s skipper, Paul Burton.
The wreck of the Macaw stood as a grim reminder of Midway's hazards. When the USS Tang arrived at the atoll on 3 March 1944, skipper Richard O’Kane steered gingerly past the protruding masts of the sunken ship. In rough weather some submarines elected to bypass Midway altogether rather than risk the Flier’s fate. Eventually the Macaw’s hulk threatened to block the south channel, and salvage divers from the USS Shackle used demolition charges and underwater cutting to break it up. Today the twisted wreckage and the relatively intact bow still lie on the ocean floor.13
6
Board of Investigation
The Flier’s tow back to Pearl Harbor was not without incident. The day after leaving Midway, 23 January 1944, the ships encountered a severe storm in the predawn hours. At 5:42 A.M. the towline to the Florikan separated, leaving the Flier wallowing in the rough seas. The Flier tried to regain some steerage using the starboard screw, but it continued to drift. It took five hours under “the most adverse circumstances” to shackle up a new towline. John Crowley praised the efforts of the Florikan’s commander, George Sharp, as well as the work of several of his own crew, including Ensign Herbert “Teddy” Baehr, chief gunner's mate Charles DeWitt Pope, and coxswain Gale Winstone Hardy. At one point Pope was washed overboard, but he was quickly hauled back aboard by his lifeline.1
Despite such heroics, the Flier’s crew must have felt a profound ambivalence. When they reached the submarine base at Pearl Harbor on the afternoon of 30 January 1944, there was no brass band waiting dockside to greet them. This was an ignominious return from a patrol of self-destruction.
Sharp, at least, would get some recognition for his part in returning the Flier safely: he would be given a second chance at commanding a submarine. Sharp had been summarily relieved of command of the USS Spearfish after a bungled attack on a massive Japanese convoy in June 1943. Bringing the Flier back in one piece had wiped the slate clean, and Sharp replaced William Davis Irvin as skipper of the Nautilus. Soon he would be operating out of Australia on “special missions” to the Philippines.2 Whether Crowley would be given another chance to command was still undecided, pending an investigation.
Charles Lockwood, commander of the Submarine Force Pacific Fleet, instructed Captain John Bailey Longstaff, commander of Submarine Squadron Fourteen, to convene a board of investigation to look into the Flier’s grounding at Midway. Also appointed to the board were Captain Frank Thomas Watkins, Captain William Vincent O’Reagan, and Lieutenant Commander Ralph B. Johnson. Watkins had distinguished himself by becoming the first division commander to skipper a submarine, taking the Flying Fish out on patrol in mid-1943. At the age of forty-five, he was also the oldest American to captain a submarine during the war. He was credited with sinking a ship off Formosa and received a Bronze Star for his trouble.3
The inquiry was held on the tender USS Bushnell (AS-15), which had been launched by the Mare Island Navy Yard in September 1942 and commissioned on 10 April 1943. Displacing almost 10,000 tons, the ship was more than 530 feet long with a 73-foot beam. Eventually the Bushnell would serve as a submarine tender at Majuro, Midway, and Guam. In the meantime, having arrived at Pearl Harbor in July 1943, the Bushnell tended Longstaff's squadron. With the squadron and divisional staff domiciled on the ship, the members of the board could virtually step from their bunks to the inquiry.4
Crowley was officially notified of the proceedings and of his “status of defendant.” By naval tradition, the skipper was ultimately responsible for all decisions, and Crowley was no doubt aware that his career and reputation were at stake. Next to a court-martial, a board of investigation was the most serious proceeding an officer could face. Before the war, any skipper who grounded his ship automatically and immediately lost his command, as well as any chance of future promotion. For instance, after the grounding of the submarine USS Razorback at Fisher's Island off Portsmouth, both the skipper and the executive officer were relieved of command and put on disciplinary leave.5
The Flier was certainly not the first craft—or even the first submarine—to come to grief on a reef at Midway. After a refit at Midway in mid-1943, the USS Scorpion ran aground during training for its third war patrol. It took a tugboat five hours to pull the submarine free of the reef, and then, because of rough weather, the Scorpion had to wait another three days before returning to the Midway base. From there it sailed back to Pearl Harbor for repairs and an immediate board of investigation. The Scorpion’s skipper, William Naylor Wylie, as well as executive officer Harry Clark Maynard, were subsequently relieved of command.6 That was not the outcome Crowley was hoping for.
The board of investigation met for the first time on Tuesday, 1 February. Crowley, who had arrived at Pearl Harbor less than forty-eight hours earlier, was present at 9:00 A.M. He waived his right to counsel and, at his request, was sworn in as a witness. After Crowley read a narrative of the events that he believed led to the Flier’s grounding, the board went to personally inspect the damage to the submarine at the navy yard dry dock. There was major damage to large sections of the outer hull plating; the flat keel, vertical keel, and bilge keels; the rudder, port strut, port propeller shaft, and both propellers; the main ballast tank; and the variable tank flood valves. There was moderate damage to part of the hull frames and tank bulkheads, the stern tubes and reduction gears, the liquidometer, and the Fathometer. In addition, the main engine saltwater cooling system was clogged with coral sand. The navy yard at Pearl Harbor estimated the cost of repairs at a staggering (by 1944 standards) $312,000.7
When the board reconvened at 1:15 in the afternoon, Crowley was questioned at length about the Flier’s grounding. When asked whether he had ever considered delaying the submarine's entry into Midway Channel due to the weather and sea conditions, Crowley replied, it “crossed my mind.”8 But since a pilot had been sent out and the Flier had been assigned a berth in the harbor, he believed that the channel was considered safe. Neither Crowley nor his navigator had been to Midway before, so he had relied on what he assumed to be more competent local knowledge.
The following morning the board interviewed the Flier’s executive officer, Benjamin Ernest Adams Jr. A defiant Adams told the board that he firmly believed the Flier had been in the channel when it grounded. When asked how he could reconcile this belief with the wreck, Adams suggested that the high seas combined with materials from dredging operations at Midway had created an obstruction.9
The board continued to interview other personnel, including officers from the navy yard who reported on the Flier’s damage. On Saturday, the fifth day of the inquiry, Crowley asked to be recalled to testify on his own behalf. He had clearly had time to reflect on the situation and his previous testimony, and he wanted to get his subsequent thoughts on the record. Crowley told the board that although he accepted responsibility for the decision to enter Midway Channel, he wanted to explain the factors that had influenced his decision. He noted again his lack of experience with local conditions and reiterated that if the authorities at Midway expected him to enter the harbor, he had to assume that doing so would be safe. He also assumed, once it became clear that a pilot could not be transferred to the submarine, that following