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approach, possibly her last given that only a half dozen or so torpedoes were left.
    O’Kane turned to Frank Springer: “Do you think we’ll have time before daylight to fire from the surface?”
    “Yes,” replied Springer. “By the time we get into position it’s going to be just about two o’clock or two ten. We’ll have to fire then or we won’t be able to make it. We’ll be exposed to the surface.” 12
    The Tang maneuvered into position.
    “Fire!” ordered O’Kane.
    Mark 18 electric torpedoes shot from the Tang, aimed to hit beneath the masts of two freighters and under the main stack of a tanker. O’Kane was at the top of his game. Explosions soon followed, their shock waves spreading across the sea and rocking the Tang slightly.
    The Tang continued on the surface. More enemy ships were soon within striking distance. O’Kane ordered his men to set up for stern shots at a tanker and a transport. Torpedoes were fired at both. Before long, there was an ear-splitting explosion; the tanker erupted into a massive fireball. Clearly, she had been loaded to the brim with fuel. 13
    The tanker blazed so brightly that the Tang suddenly seemed to have emerged into daylight. O’Kane and his bridge party looked around. At least one torpedo had hit the transport, which was still afloat, dead in the water. Suddenly, Japanese escorts began to concentrate their fire on the Tang . Volleys of machine gun bullets splattered in the sea. It was time to disappear.
    Below the bridge, in the conning tower, Frank Springer pleaded with Chief Electrician James Culp for more power. 14
    Culp said he was worried that any further increase in power might overload the generators. The noise from the engines was already almost deafening, their pistons hammering away as engine-men, wearing earplugs, made hand signals and a red warning light blinked steadily.
    “To hell with the overload,” Frank Springer ordered. “Pour on the coal.”
    Culp instructed his men to do so. The pistons began to pump more furiously as the Tang ’s four Fairbanks Morse diesel engines thundered, powering the Tang ’s generators, pushing five million watts through the submarine’s four main motors. The Tang was soon moving away at full speed, around twenty-three knots, partially hidden by a cloud of exhaust fumes.
    Other captains might now have plotted a new course and not looked back. Not Dick O’Kane. At ten thousand yards from the convoy, he slowed the Tang . He was going back for more—to finish off the transport he’d seen dead in the water.
    O’Kane ordered his torpedo mechanics to pull the last two torpedoes from their tubes and examine them. With so few left, he wanted to make sure there would be no mistakes. Pete Narowanski, Hayes Trukke, and the other torpedo mechanics carefully checked the Tang ’s last two fish. They then loaded them into forward tubes numbered five and six.
    Thirty minutes later, the Tang was ready to deliver the coup de grâce to the stricken transport. All twenty-two torpedoes that had been fired so far had worked perfectly. “This promised to be a typical Tang patrol,” Vice Admiral Lockwood would later write. “Three or four weeks packed with thrills and action and then,
    ‘Course 090’ [the compass course back to Pearl] with empty torpedo tubes and a full bag.” 15
    The Tang moved forward at six knots, her bow pointing at the transport. No escorts were in sight.
    Floyd Caverly looked at the screen of his SJ radar in the conning tower.
    “Range: fifteen hundred yards,” said Caverly. 16
    The submarine crept slowly closer.
    Nine hundred yards from the target, O’Kane was ready with his remaining two torpedoes—for all he knew, they were the last he might fire in combat during the war.
    “Stand by below,” O’Kane ordered.
    “Ready below, captain,” replied Springer.
    “Fire!”
    A small jolt was felt throughout the boat as the next-to-last torpedo was fired.
    On the bridge, Bill Leibold stood beside