Dodging Jap Torpedo Big Thrill
Former School Teacher Here Tells of Harrowing Experience
By Louise Flynn
Although he has been through air attacks and submarine attacks in other theaters, the most exciting time at sea he ever had was while anchored in an Indian Harbor, Lieut. (j.g.) Robert Walton Lundak, former junior school teacher in Sioux City, related in a news release from New Orleans, La.
“A midget Jap submarine or human torpedo had evidently slipped through our submarine net into the harbor,” Lieut. Lundak said, “so the harbor was subjected to the most violet depth bombing I have ever heard—three and a half hours steadily, with virtually every escort ship in the action.
TENSE MOMENTS
“I don’t know why, but that deal bothered me more than anything I saw happen, I guess it was the tenseness of waiting, expecting a torpedo and the constant booming of the depth charges.”
Lieut. Lundak recently returned to his base at the armed guard center at New Orleans after an 11-month trip at sea as commanding officer of a navy gun crew aboard a merchant ship.
The armed guard officer gathered a few more gray hairs, when his ship narrowly missed a floating mine in the Atlantic The mine passed the entire length of the vessel, coming within 10 feet of it at one time.
“We had a brush with a submarine in the Indian Ocean,” the officer stated. “It was early in the morning when our lookout sighted what he first thought to be the wake of a fish. Instead, it was a torpedo fired at extreme range. We outmaneuvered it, and cut some fancy capers with our dodging. No more torpedoes were fired at us, fortunately.
TARGET PRACTICE
“ A short time later we sighted a life raft. Investigation proved it was empty, so we used it for target practice. I had a crack gun crew aboard and it really was a pleasure to watch them work.
“Sometimes I have almost wished for a brush with a submarine to let them try their aim, but that would be inviting fate,” the officer concluded.
Lieut. Lundak has made two trips with the armed guard and has visited ports in England, Egypt, Arabia, India, Ceylon and Central America.
He is a graduate of Wayne State Teacher’s College, Wayne, Nebraska and the University of Minnesota. Before entering naval service, February 11, 1943, he taught science at North Junior School and later at West Junior School.
His wife, Kathryn and their son, Robert, 2, live at 106 Swanson Apartments, Sioux City and his parents, Dr. and Mrs. E. D. Lundak, live at Pierce, Nebraska.
Lieut. Lundak has a brother, Capt. Edward Lundak, serving in the air corps in North Ireland. His father also is in service and his sister, Genevieve, is working in a communications office with her father in San Diego, California.
The lieutenant was in Sioux City recently on leave and at present his wife and son are with him in the south.
Source: The Sioux City Journal-Tribune, August 27, 1944 (photo included)
