VADM Duke Bayne received his commission in 1942 and made three war patrols in the Pacific on USS BECUNA (SS 319). He served on six submarines, commanding USS PIPER (SS 409) and USS TRIGGER (SS 564). He served as Commander Submarine Division SIXTY TWO; Aide to Secretary of the Navy; Commander Submarine Flotilla EIGHT; Commander Middle East Force; and Commandant of the National War College. He retired from the Navy in 1977. VADM Bayne died January 27, 2005.
Extract from VADM Marmaduke G. Bayne, USN, Oral Histo- ry, Naval Historical Foundation, 1998.
In 1947, I was the Executive Officer of the TORO under Captain Raymond W. Alexander, who was an absolute prince. He was the most natural navigator, I think, I have ever known.
His instincts regarding position, relative motion and relative speeds were uncanny at times. I was the ship’s navigator, and when I realized what an unusual person he was, it was like having a skipper who loved being the engineering officer. Yet, he never put me in the position of second guessing me.
He just instinctively always seemed to know where the subma- rine was, his mind tracked whatever we were doing. I had to use a chart and plot to see where we were and where we were going. I had to see it on paper, but he seemed to know without that. 1947 was close enough to the end of the war to allow ships considerably more freedom in their operations than subsequently developed. You weren’t worried too much about fuel usage, running engines at high speeds; we were still in a war mentality where whatever you needed was available. There were limitless exercise torpedoes. Frankly there was such a supply of torpedoes that once you took the warheads off and made them exercise capable, they were magnificent for training. So, you fired actual torpedoes in exercises, you did not have to pretend to shoot them. On one fleet exercise, we went to Guantanamo, Cuba after a spell at Key West as a submarine target for the sonar school there. We cruised to Guantanamo and met USS PIPER, which I later commanded. We were to return to New London in company. As PIPER cleared the harbor, she sent a message to us by flashing light from the bridge, “We will furnish you line handlers in New London”.
That message developed into a remarkable game on the twelve or thirteen hundred-mile trip up the coast. We had to send noon position reports to New London each day, but were otherwise on our own. We gradually began to send these reports at different times, using different frequencies, so we could keep the other from knowing our speed of advance. In the beginning we made trim dives each day, and conducted some emergency drills and did the usual training things inherent in at sea activity, but these became shorter and shorter as we increased speed until finally when we were about north of Norfolk and out of sight of each other TORO was just frankly racing PIPER to New London. We were scanning frequencies to pick up the other’s position report each day. We had blown ballast tanks dry to lighten ship as much as possible, and were running all four engines at full speed. These things would never be allowed today. We sighted Montauk Point, the entry into Long Island Sound near daybreak, and realized there was a radar contact east of us traveling at about our speed, slightly over twenty knots, headed for Montauk also. Obviously, it was PIPER. She rounded Montauk a few hundred yards ahead of us. Captain Alexander elected to cut inside the sea buoy off Montauk, and we roared down Long Island Sound a couple hundred yards ahead of PIPER.
I was in the conning tower, keeping track of our course: trying to see with radar any small fishing boats that might be out in the Sound that early in the morning. We maintained these positions around Race Rock, which establishes the entrance to the Thames River and New London. It was obvious someone would have to reduce speed before entering the River for it is narrow, with traffic, and maintaining twenty knots would hardly be prudent. At this stage it became a game of chicken. No one was asleep on either submarine, for over the days running up the coast a record of probable PIPER position had been posted, and both crews wanted desperately to win.
This gets back to Captain Alexander’s ability as navigator. He knew Long Island Sound so well that he knew he could cut inside the entrance buoy, and run the sound staying close to the various navigational markings. Finally the PIPER bridge signal light flashed, “Please furnish line handlers.” The message was repeated on the ship’s announcing system, and you could clearly hear the yell inside the ship from the bridge. Both submarines cut speed and went on in the channel safely and normally.
That night on Captain Alexander’s front porch a case of Scotch mysteriously appeared. It was from the crew. There was also, the next morning, a meeting with the Division Commander in which both Commanding Officers were chastised for wasting fuel and acting like speed boats. Shortly after that, restrictions on transit speeds were set at a maximum of 15 knots. Obviously this was before the days of nuclear submarines.
TORO became the favored submarine in New London. There were requests for transfer to her. To be a member of TORO’s crew was golden. It was a grand and happy tour of duty.
