A Different Kind of Victory. James Leutze
decided that Hart, in part because of his familiarity with torpedoes, was just the man for the assignment. Thus it was that his detailer at the department asked him about taking a job with submarines. “No good,” said Hart, “I’m too old to learn anything about submarines.”24 His superiors thought otherwise and after he realized that, with the Minnesota in reserve status for an indefinite time, the alternative was probably a shore billet, he became most enthusiastic about the prospects. On 1 February 1916 the orders came through designating him as commander of the Third Submarine Division, Pacific Torpedo Flotilla, based at Pearl Harbor. This was a command that counted as sea duty, yet he could take his family along. The only unpleasant note was a hint that he was being sent out to whip the division into shape; in other words, as a “tough guy,” a designation he did not exactly relish.
The leave-taking was sad; the Brownsons had grown used to having the grandchildren and Caroline around, and it was Hart’s guess that his wife’s parents would be happy to “arrange my drowning” for taking them away. He made no comment about whether he thought they would miss him or not. The trip across the country and then across the Pacific was uneventful, and the Harts arrived in Honolulu on 22 February, just twelve days after leaving Washington. After a short but intensive search, the family rented a large rambling house in the Nuana Valley. It was surrounded by seventeen acres of jungle literally alive with flowers and other green growing things; unfortunately, the inside of the house had fallen into disrepair and also had green growing things in it. That problem he left in Caroline’s capable hands, certain that she and the staff she would hire would soon have everything well in hand.
Hart’s interests centered around the newly established base at Pearl Harbor which, even though barely functioning, was home for his submarines. He immediately concluded that the shore facilities offered far too attractive an alternative to sea duty for the health and welfare of his command. He decided, therefore, that the division would spend enough time cruising in local waters to ensure that his men did not become too comfortable. Naturally that included himself, and he went out in a submarine for the first time on 1 March. After a little consideration, he decided that this “first” should be kept a secret as it might detract from his influence were it known that the CO was not an old submariner in terms of experience afloat. Although conditions in the small submarines were crowded, smelly, and far from comfortable, down she went and up she came and Tommy’s rites of passage were performed with no one being the wiser.
The first few weeks were anything but difficult to take, even though it rained hard, the “water coming down without the formality of forming rain-drops,” and often. The family thrived and he was able to spend hours with them on weekends, playing, romping, motoring, and pursuing with particular enthusiasm his self-appointed duty of teaching his children the art of swimming. At first they just tumbled in the warm surf, but with the application of much time and effort he began to see results.
His personnel did leave something to be desired, so the “tough guy” role had to be played. His method was to move swiftly and summarily, thereby sending a clear signal that a new, firm hand was on the controls. One day he summoned several of the senior slackers into his office. He advised them that a transport had arrived in port that morning; it was leaving the next day. They were ordered to pack their gear and be on board. He went into no details, but the message apparently came across clearly because almost before the transport left the dock the word had spread through the command and performance began to improve.
The basic problem, he decided, was the division’s lack of activity or at least its lack of practical experience. The solution was to take the submarines to sea, but the weather and the equipment just would not cooperate. The most difficult thing was to make torpedo runs when the seas were choppy, as they always seemed to be outside the confines of Pearl Harbor itself. Then there were “cranky” submarines; at times there was only one out of four available for service. But after dry-docking the boats, scraping their hulls, making short full-power runs, and giving his officers long pep talks on teamwork, Hart was ready to take the full division to sea for a week-long cruise. As an indication of how overdue this training was, it might be noted that it was the first time in four years that the tender Alert had been out of port overnight. The specific purposes of the cruise were to find a place to establish a torpedo practice range and to give the crews a view of the waters in which they might be operating during wartime. The first mission was accomplished when they found the protected anchorage off Lahaina ideal for measured torpedo runs. This meant the end of estimating distances, the method usually employed by the navy at this time. The other part of the mission was accomplished as well as it could be, given the fact that Hart could get no definitive word on exactly what role U.S. submarines in the Pacific were to play in case of war. Furthermore, the performance of his boats and the morale of his men showed signs of real improvement, so it appeared that his methods for “tautening up” the crews were paying off.
When at the base, Hart occupied himself trying to improve the rather primitive facilities at Pearl Harbor, participating in the requisite number of charitable and social functions, and getting about in Hawaiian society. Because the only facilities for servicing and maintaining the torpedoes were those in the submarines themselves, he devoted considerable energy to establishing a miniature torpedo station. It was Hart’s impression that torpedoes had been accorded a rather low priority, well behind other mechanical devices on board. This was a “rather hopeless proposition,” he thought, since it took more mechanical ability to maintain the torpedoes than anything else in the submarine business. His solution was to put the specialists together in one place and have them do the torpedo maintenance for all the submarines. Even though considerable improvisation was involved, the performance curve began to incline upwards.
Charity balls for such causes as Navy Relief could not be handled so rationally; they simply had to be gotten through. Most private social affairs seemed to fall into the same category. Hart found the island’s society by and large to be provincial and composed of either colonials who had made lots of money by questionable means or missionaries who were far too sanctimonious for his taste. As for service society, that, too, struck him as narrow and inbred, particularly army society. There were exceptions, to be sure, but generally Hart judged his colleagues harshly; he weighed them and found them wanting.
By August he was well settled into life in the islands and into his command. In the competitions held at the end of that month, his boats came in first, third, fifth, and eighth out of the twenty-four competing. That made him mighty proud. Part of the reason for his success was, as he put it, that he had established a pattern of “crowding” his work rather than having “my work crowding me.”25 He also gave high marks to his subordinates because they were reacting positively to his methods.
Even when crowding his work, he found time for reading in preparation for the exams he had to take in connection with his promotion to full commander. The writings of Alfred Thayer Mahan formed a good part of his literary diet. “When a War College student reads such literature,” he wrote in September, “he claims to be working.” Tommy, however, found the first serious studying he had done perhaps since he left the Naval Academy, but certainly in the previous ten years, highly enjoyable. Mahan seemed to him to be preaching the gospel and it made him more eager than ever to work up a practical strategic plan for naval war in the islands. Why not try it, he asked himself. After expending considerable effort working on such a plan, he presented his product to his commanding officer only to find him uninterested. “As I might have expected,” Hart grumbled, “we have very few men of that age who have kept their minds in training to do anything.”26
He had the same gloomy reaction to the political campaign that was raging at home in that fall of 1916 between Woodrow Wilson and Charles Evans Hughes. Wilson won and Hart delivered himself of a blast:
Well, we will have four more years of this same sort of administration—inefficient in its Federal Departments and most provincial. The Republicans have no better morals but they are efficient as far as they go. But the nation’s wants and ideas are fairly well represented by either party—which are of scant patriotism and only sectionalism counts with them. We are not a real Nation—just an enormous and rather unhealthy fungus mass. Mr. Roosevelt is our only leader of broad enough view to steer us in our international relations—and he is not followed.