I recently had the pleasure of meeting LT (SS) Charles S. “Tim” McCoy in order to interview him for the Submarine League. Tim (whose nickname derives from a western movie star named Tim Mc- Coy) was born on 12 October 1924 in San Angelo, Texas. He grew up in San Angelo, Dalhart and Lubbock, Texas and graduated from high school in Dallas in 1941. In those days, there were only 11 available years of elementary and secondary education; the twelfth year was added after the war. Tim joined the Navy in November 1941. He was just 17 years old. I asked him why he joined and he replied that “Jobs were hard to get and the Navy was the place to go. You got three meals a day and clean sheets.” He decided on submarines immediately upon enlisting. Following boot camp at San Diego, he arrived in Pearl Harbor one week after the December 7, 1941 attack. Submarine School was in New Lon- don then, but Tim was sent directly to the submarine tender USS Pelias (AS-14), and after a few weeks on the tender he volunteered to join the crew of the new submarine USS Trout (SS 202). He came aboard as a
torpedoman striker. CDR Frank W. “Mike” Fenno commanded Trout.1 Trout was at sea on December 7, 1941 making the voyage that be-
came its first war patrol. During its next patrol, Trout was ordered to Corregidor to deliver antiaircraft shells. After offloading the shells, Trout needed ballast. Twenty tons of gold and bags of silver pesos, according to Tim McCoy, plus considerable paper money from the Philippine na- tional treasury, were loaded onto the submarine. Trout then completed its war patrol with one verified sinking before returning to Pearl Har- bor. CDR Fenno received the first of his two Navy Cross awards for this patrol and Tim McCoy and the crew were each awarded the Silver Star. The ship was also awarded the Army Distinguished Unit award and a Presidential Unit Citation. Tim stayed on Trout for its next very successful war patrol, which included a six-hour depth charge attack. During my interview, Tim talked about being depth charged. “You’re on silent running and you’re just sitting there and everybody is just like this, throughout the entire submarine on battle stations submerged. And you’re saying to yourself, is the next one going to get us?”
After the second Trout war patrol, Tim was transferred to Perth, Australia where he joined the crew of the USS Grenadier (SS-210).2 During Tim’s third Grenadier patrol (and the ship’s sixth), Grenadier was surprised on the surface by Japanese aircraft near Phuket, Thailand and heavily damaged. Losing all power and lighting, the submarine sank in 270 feet of water and settled on the bottom for nearly 24 hours. Against all odds, the crew effected repairs and raised Grenadier to the surface just as night was falling. Propulsion was disabled and the ship was unable to dive. The next morning, the crew tried to erect a sail to move Grenadier closer to the Malay coast. That effort failed and a Jap- anese warship detected them. The order was given to scuttle the ship and the crew was ordered to abandon Grenadier. On April 22, 1943, their Japanese captors pulled 18-year-old Tim McCoy and 75 shipmates from the water. Initially they were all taken to the Light Street convent, a former exclusive Catholic girls school now transformed to a place of relentless beatings and torture. The Grenadier’s commanding officer, LCDR John Fitzgerald, was especially severely treated and he was later separated from the crew. After about five months at the converted con- vent, Tim and most of his enlisted shipmates were sent to the notorious Changi3 POW camp in Singapore for four months and then transferred to Japan where they were kept in Third Branch POW Camp Fukuoka.4 Tim reports that they worked as slave laborers in the Yahata Steel Mills near Sasebo, Japan until the end of the war. Remarkably only four Grenadier crewmen died during this ordeal. LCDR Fitzgerald, who Tim described as enduring his harsh treatment very bravely, was awarded the Navy Cross. Tim received the Purple Heart.
Tim had been promoted to Chief Torpedoman by the end of the
war. He thinks that he was the youngest TMC in the fleet. I asked what torpedoes he had fired and he recalled the MK 14 and later the “electric” torpedo.5 He could not estimate how many torpedoes he had helped launch. After the war ended, the liberated sailors were granted 90 days POW leave. Tim also had an additional 90 days leave saved during the war. Shortly after returning to San Diego he met and married his wife, Jean, also a Texan from Fort Worth. They have been married for 70 years. Tim reports, “Jean was a marvelous homemaker, wife, mother and stood by her man.”
After the war, Tim had tours in both San Diego and Pearl Harbor. He served for a time on shore patrol in San Diego and then on USS Blueback (SS-326) until it was transferred to Turkey in 1948. He then reported to USS Blower (SS-325), which was also transferred to Turkey in 1950. Tim’s last submarine was USS Pomodon (SS-486) where he was the Chief of the Boat. Pomodon was the first submarine converted under the Greater Underwater Propulsion Power Program (GUPPY), which in- cluded installation of the snorkel. Tim was commissioned an Ensign in 1958 and served on the USS Sperry (AS-12), worked as the Pearl Har- bor base security officer, became a deep-sea diver on USS Chanticleer (ASR-7) and worked on setting up an early school to instruct Navy per- sonnel about the new nuclear powered submarines that most submariners rightly perceived as the future of the force.
I asked Tim about any particularly memorable people or events in his career. He immediately spoke of the time in July 1954 when Capt. (later RADM) Richard H. O’Kane was relieved as Commanding Officer of the Sperry by Capt. (later RADM) Eugene B. Fluckey. It was the only time in Navy history that the author is aware of where a Medal of Honor Winner relieved another Medal of Honor winner.
Tim McCoy retired from the Navy in 1965 and stayed in the reserves to complete his 30 years. He worked in insurance in Austin, Texas and eventually established his own very successful agency. He is still the Chairman of this agency. At the end of my interview, I asked Tim if there was anything he wanted to add. He said, “If I had to go back in the Navy today, I’d go right aboard submarines. Do you know why?”
“Because of the camaraderie, that’s why.”
“The camaraderie aboard a submarine is just unbelievable. … Back then, we had 72 men on submarines…. some of them had to hot bunk.” I replied that today the number on board is closer to 130, but the sense of camaraderie, of knowing everyone on board, has not changed.
Meeting and interviewing Tim has been a great honor and pleasure.
Age has slowed a once formidable physical man (he was a torpedoman after all), but it has not diminished his memory or wit. He lived through two plus years of POW camp and emerged to complete his remarkable 30-year Navy career. It was Tim and men like him who won the war in the Pacific.
ENDNOTES
1. Trout’s wartime exploits are thoroughly covered in Silent Victory, by Clay Blair, p206ff, J. B. Lippincott co., Philadelphia, PA, 1975. CDR Fenno’s son, Ted Fenno, was a Naval Academy classmate of the author, class of 1961.
2. Silent Victory, p396ff.
3. Changi is now the site of Singapore’s International Airport.
4. There are several website devoted to reporting on this camp. The most com- plete appears to be www.mansell.com/pow_resources/camplists/fukuoka/…/ fuk_18_sasebo_main.ht
5. The first electric torpedoes got to the fleet in 1943 and had various MK num-
bers, MK 18, 26, 27 and 28.
