"Wahoo" headed for the transport and fired a bow tube; the torpedo passed directly under the middle of the ship but failed to explode. The sub then fired another torpedo which headed right for the stack and blew the target apart midships. The submarine then headed for the crippled freighter, which had formed up with a tanker, and both ships were moving away. "Wahoo" decided to let these two ships get over the horizon, while she surfaced to charge her batteries and attack the shipwrecked Japanese now sitting in about twenty lifeboats. Controversy still attaches to this action in that troops in the water may have been deliberately targeted by "Wahoo". Vice Admiral Charles A. Lockwood, then COMSUBPAC, asserts that the survivors were army troops and turned machinegun and rifle fire on "Wahoo" while she maneuvered on the surface, and that such resistance was common in submarine warfare. Richard O'Kane stated that the fire from "Wahoo" was intended to force the troops to abandon their boats and no troops were deliberately targeted. Clay Blair states that Morton opened fire first and the shipwrecked returned fire with handguns.