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1:30 a.m. the Tang was poised to strike. In the conning tower, Executive Officer Frank Springer reported that all forward torpedo tubes were open. O’Kane peered through the periscope. He had a large tanker right where he wanted it.
    O’Kane climbed the ladder from the conning tower to the bridge, where he soon stood beside Bill Leibold, whom he regarded as his “extra pair of eyes.”
    “Constant bearing—mark!” ordered O’Kane.
    “Set,” replied Mel Enos.
    “Fire!”
    There was the familiar shudder as one of the Tang ’s fish headed toward its target. It did not miss. More torpedoes soon followed. Explosions lit the sky as shock waves rocked the Tang .
    “They all hit as we aimed ’em, captain,” said Chief Quartermaster Sidney Jones. 2
    O’Kane was not finished. There were still more ships to sink. He quickly prepared a stern shot on another target.
    Leibold grabbed O’Kane, almost dislocating his shoulder. 3
    “She’s coming in to ram!” shouted Leibold. 4
    Leibold pointed to a Japanese ship that was bearing down on the Tang . 5 O’Kane had not seen it, so focused had he been on the target to the stern. There was no time to dive or fire torpedoes.
    “All ahead emergency! Right full rudder!” ordered O’Kane. 6
    The engines roared. Clouds of diesel smoke belched from her exhausts. The Tang moved to port, cutting across the bow of the approaching ship, the 1,920-ton Wakatake Maru . Japanese sailors on the main deck grabbed rifles and pistols and began to open fire, aiming at the Tang ’s bridge party. It was a close-run thing, with the Tang avoiding the Wakatake Maru with only yards to spare.
    “Clear the bridge!” ordered O’Kane.
    Ooga! Ooga!
    Men scrambled down the hatch. Then, just as O’Kane prepared to follow them, he saw an out-of-control freighter. It was headed toward the Wakatake Maru .
    “Hold her up!” shouted O’Kane. “Hold her up!”
    The Tang ’s decks were partly under water. In seconds, she was again fully surfaced.
    “New set up!”
    “Give me a range and mark,” said Mel Enos.
    “You don’t need one,” replied O’Kane. “Just fire! You can’t put a torpedo out without hitting this bastard.” 7
    Torpedoes emerged from the stern torpedo tubes, aimed at the Wakatake Maru . They hit just as the out-of-control freighter collided with the Wakatake Maru “with a rending, groaning crash of tortured and distorted steel.” 8 Both ships disappeared for a few seconds in a giant ball of fire, smoke, and showering debris.
    It was 1:40 in the morning. On the bridge, O’Kane surveyed the devastation. Two torpedoes had hit Wakatake Maru . One had been beautifully targeted at the rear part of the engine room on the port side to inflict maximum damage. It had clearly done so.
    Suddenly, the sky was also lit with the muzzle flashes of Japanese deck guns. O’Kane watched in delight as the convoy’s escorts began to fire at each other in panicked confusion.
    Wakatake Maru quickly broke in two and, forty seconds later, dropped below the waves. In less than a minute, the Tang had dispatched 128 men belonging to a salvage unit, 30 crewmen, 11 ship’s gunners, and 7 passengers. 9
    The Tang then slipped away into the night. Understandably, her crew buzzed with excitement. They had pulled off a truly spectacular attack, arguably the most devastating of the war. The Tang had hit and then sunk all of the convoy’s cargo-carrying ships. She had also caused severe damage to an escort ship in the convoy, which then burned before beaching on the Pescadores. In all, the battle had lasted less than ten minutes. 10 Once again, Commander Dick O’Kane had proven, in Floyd Caverly’s words, to be “quite the marksman.” 11
     
     
     
    IT WAS LATE ON OCTOBER 24, 1944, when blips again appeared on the Tang ’s surface radar screen. O’Kane ordered the Tang to close on what appeared to be another convoy. Soon, the radar screen showed many more blips, targets galore. The Tang began her