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a clearly marked hospital ship was not something he wanted on his conscience.
    O’Kane had already witnessed the slaughter of helpless men. Indeed, during the Wahoo ’s third patrol, he had seen more than enough “unrestricted submarine warfare.” According to a junior officer on board the Wahoo named George Grider, back then O’Kane had been a very different man than the one who now commanded the Tang . As Mush Morton’s executive officer, he had “talked a great deal—reckless, aggressive talk. . . . During the second patrol Dick had grown harder to live with, friendly one minute and pulling his rank on his junior officers the next. One day he would be a martinet, and the next he would display an over-lenient, what-the-hell attitude that was far from reassuring. With Mush and Dick in the saddle, how would the Wahoo fare?” 15
    It was a good question, and in that January of 1943, the crew of the Wahoo did not have to wait long for an answer.
    The Wahoo had been ordered to reconnoiter Wewak, a Japanese base in New Guinea. Without the aid of a chart, the Wahoo approached the port, Morton handing periscope duties to O’Kane. As George Grider later wrote: “This left the skipper in a better position to interpret all factors involved, do a better conning job, and make decisions more dispassionately. There is no doubt it is an excellent theory, and it worked beautifully for him, but few captains other than Mush ever had such serene faith in a subordinate that they could resist grabbing the scope in moments of crisis.” 16
    Morton’s orders had stated clearly that he was to reconnoiter, but Morton declared, to his crew’s astonishment, that he would do far more—he would enter the harbor and sink any ships there. As far as Grider was concerned, Morton had gone from “mere rashness to outright foolhardiness.” 17
    The Wahoo headed into Wewak, evading several patrol craft with Morton joking throughout, even as he narrowly avoided running aground.
    Inside the port, O’Kane spotted a destroyer, and then suddenly seemed transformed. “I found myself marveling,” recalled Grider, “at the change that had come over Dick O’Kane. It was as if, during all the talkative, boastful months before, he had been lost, seeking his true element, and now it was found. He was calm, terse, and utterly cool. My opinion of him underwent a permanent change. It was not the first time I had observed that the conduct of men under fire cannot be predicted accurately from their everyday actions, but it was the most dramatic example I was ever to see of a man transformed under pressure from what seemed almost adolescent petulance to a prime fighting machine.” 18
    As Morton readied to fire, the destroyer began to get under way. Morton quickly fired three torpedoes. None hit. The Japanese destroyer, with more than a hundred men on her decks, headed for the Wahoo . Morton did not flinch, ordering the periscope to be kept up, and then prepared for a “down the throat shot.” At twelve hundred yards, Morton again fired a torpedo and missed. One of the Wahoo ’s terrified crew recalled having “an uncontrollable urge to urinate.” 19 At eight hundred yards, Morton then fired a sixth torpedo. This time he didn’t miss. The destroyer erupted with a huge explosion.
    The next day, the Wahoo came across a small convoy. Morton fired on three ships, hitting all of them, before going deep to avoid being rammed. It wasn’t long before Morton surfaced and looked around. He had sunk one ship. Another was badly damaged. The third, a large transport, was motionless.
    Wanting to finish off the transport, Morton approached her and fired but the torpedo did not detonate—no doubt stirring bitter memories of many other torpedoes that had failed to detonate during the Wahoo ’s early patrols in 1942. 20 Morton’s second torpedo, however, was no dud—it blew the transport “higher than a kite” in Morton’s words. Some of the 1,126 men aboard,