About the time I-21 disappeared below the surface, another American tanker, the Union Oil Company’s Montebello, was pulling away from the company wharf some 20 miles away at Avila, on its way north with a cargo of oil and gasoline. An hour and a half later she found herself in a life-or-death race with a frustrated Japanese submarine commander with vengeance on his mind.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in World War II magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

At 5:30 a.m. William Srez, on watch aboard Montebello, alerted Captain Olaf Eckstrom that they were being stalked by what looked like a sub. Five-and-a-half hours earlier, Eckstrom had been the ship’s first mate. At midnight, her captain had abruptly resigned, giving the command to Eckstrom.

‘I saw a dark outline on the water, close astern of us,’ said the new captain later. ‘Srez was right. It was the silhouette of a Jap submarine, a big fellow, possibly 300 feet long. I ordered the quartermaster at the wheel, John McIsaac, to zigzag. For 10 minutes we tried desperately to cheat the sub, but it was no use. She was too close…[and] let a torpedo go when we were broadside to her.’

‘The torpedo smashed us square amidships,’ said Srez, ‘and there was a big blast and the ship shuddered and trembled and we knew she was done for.’

Fortunately for Montebello, the torpedo hit the only compartment not loaded with gasoline. ‘The men wouldn’t have had a chance if any other hold was hit,’ said Eckstrom. But it did knock out the radio.

‘The skipper was as cool as a snowdrift,’ remembered Srez. ‘He yelled an order to stand by the lifeboats and then an order to abandon ship, and there was something in the way he gave those orders that made us proud to be serving under him.’

As the crew responded by lowering the lifeboats, the Japanese opened fire with their deck gun at nearly point-blank range. ‘The sub began shelling us,’ continued Captain Eckstrom. ‘There was from eight to 10 flashes. One hit the foremast, snapping it. Another whistled by my head so close I could have reached out and touched it. But there was no panic, no hysteria. We got all four lifeboats into the water. Splinters from one of the shells struck some of the boats, but by some kind of miracle, none of us was wounded.’

Despite the torpedoing, Eckstrom was not sure Montebello was going to sink, and he ordered his lifeboats ‘to lie a short distance from the ship. But 45 minutes later, just as dawn was breaking, she went down.’

As the 36 men in four lifeboats began rowing for shore, I-21 opened fire with machine guns on the helpless American sailors until poor visibility forced the Japanese to retire. Although no one was wounded, the boat carrying Eckstrom, Srez and four other crewmen was hit.

‘Machine-gun bullets hit our boat,’ said Srez, ‘and she began leaking like a sieve. We began rowing shoreward, with some of us leaning on the oars for all we were worth and the others bailing.’

Fighting fatigue, rough water and a leaking boat, it was not until noon–some six hours after the sinking–that the six men literally hit the beach below the town of Cambria. ‘We were caught in the surf,’ Srez recalled, ‘and the lifeboat capsized….Some of the boys were scratched up, and the captain nearly drowned.’

As the lumber schooner Barbara Olson was quietly steaming toward San Diego on the morning of December 24, she was rocked by a violent blast 100 feet off its seaward side. Although no one on board saw what caused it, the explosion was from a torpedo fired by I-19, which had gone under Olson and blown up on the other side.

About four miles away, aboard the Navy subchaser USS Amethyst, on patrol off the Los Angeles Harbor entrance, lookouts were attracted by the blast, and the captain sounded general quarters one minute later. The note in the ship’s log read: ‘At 0625 sighted an explosion that threw smoke and spray approximately 300 feet into the air. At 0626 sounded general quarters. At 0730 secured from general quarters and set condition Baker.’

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to