The China Sea becomes the setting for the USS Caine’s first actual minesweeping operation, bringing the ship’s long-delayed wartime duty into contact with the mines its crew had nearly stopped believing they would encounter. The operation is brief: after sweeping several mines, the USS Caine loses the speed and maneuverability needed to remain safely in the minefield and is ordered back to Okinawa.

Minesweeping in the China Sea

Seventeen days before the end of World War II, the USS Caine joined a double line of minesweepers stretching five miles across the China Sea. The sweep began at sunrise, with the ships advancing cautiously over shallow water into the minefield. A mine surfaced in the USS Caine’s wake, a rusty, horned ball; Tom Keefer ordered a dye marker dropped, signalmen raised the warning flag, and a sub chaser opened fire. The explosion sent a tower of pink-and-white spray high above the water, while mines began appearing across the formation and yellow-green markers dotted the sea. Soon another mine lay directly ahead of the USS Caine. Keefer circled the bridge, shouting contradictory maneuvering orders as the ship and its guns closed in; the mine vanished in a violent blast, and further mines appeared as the bridge descended into several minutes of confusion.

From Peril to Routine—and Back Again

After seven mines had been swept and half a dozen exploded, the work lost its first shock of novelty. Even Captain Queeg, initially nervous, grew debonair at the conn; his increasingly close approaches to mines, made so the guns could fire, frightened Willie Keith. For Willie, the morning had also overturned a private expectation. He had come to think it was the USS Caine’s fate never to sweep a mine, and had treated the gear on the fantail and the minesweeping manual as nearly useless. Now the paravanes, cutting cables, and mines proved real and functional, forcing him to recognize, with some unease, that the Navy more or less knew what it was doing.

The USS Caine’s minesweeping career ended almost as soon as Willie began to enjoy its dangerous routine. Just before noon, the number-one boiler’s fuel pumps collapsed, slowing the ship to twelve knots. At that speed its maneuverability fell below the safe limit for an area of drifting mines, so the officer in tactical command ordered it out of line and back to Okinawa. An auxiliary minesweeper moved up to close the gap. From the bridge of the USS Moulton, the next ship in line, Keggs waved goodbye to Willie and blinkered, “Lucky. Maybe I’ll try throwing a wrench in my pumps, too. See you later.”

On the return, the USS Caine encountered one more mine, floating miles behind the sweepers. Willie spotted it and watched it resist the machine-gun fire, feeling a proprietary affection for the grim brown ball. It disappeared in an explosion that raised a column of boiling pink water. The crew did not know it, but that was the USS Caine’s last action of World War II. The ship limped into Buckner Bay, and Tom Keefer requested time alongside the tender Pluto. The next day, the tender replied that its urgent workload meant the USS Caine could not come alongside until late August; Keefer was instructed to make every effort to repair the ship itself, using material the tender would supply.

The Sea as an Operational Space

The China Sea is presented not as a distant backdrop but as a working environment that governs what the ships can safely do. The shallow water exposes the minesweepers to a field of hazards, while the broad formation and colored markers make danger visible across the surface without making it controllable. The mine that appears miles behind the sweepers extends that uncertainty beyond the line itself: even as the crew learns to treat minesweeping as routine, the sea keeps the threat in motion and outside the limits of their immediate plan.

Operational Knowledge and Its Limits

The China Sea episode gives the Caine’s technical equipment a practical vindication, but not a guarantee of mastery. Its paravanes and cutting cables work as designed, and the crew learns to detect and destroy mines; nevertheless, the operation is cut short by failing fuel pumps rather than by any failure to understand the minefield. The setting thus tests naval competence on two fronts at once: knowledge can make a dangerous environment legible, while the condition of the ship still determines whether it can safely remain there.