Archive for March, 2010

USS Trigger Fades into the sea

Lost Subs | Posted by Rebekah
Mar 30 2010

In 1941, three fearsome sisters were being constructed at Mare Island: The Silversides, the Trigger and the Wahoo.   They were sisters in every respect, they were built in the same yard, they were numbered consecutively (Silversides: SS-236; Trigger: SS-237; Wahoo: SS-238)  They were launched and commissioned within weeks of each other, and they looked like each other, down to the limber holes and lookout rings.

And according to Edward Beach, no three sisters created more havoc for the Japanese.  Between them, they sank 62 Japanese ships totaling 236,670 tons.  At least one CO from each sister is a top-scoring WWII submarine commander.

Wahoo went down in 1943, but the Trigger almost made it.  She made 12 patrols, and sank 18 ships for a total of 86,552 tons.  (This makes her the 11th most successful submarine in terms of ships sunk and 7th most successful in terms of amount of tons sunk.)

USS Trigger rigged out with her bunting just after she was launched at Mare Island.

In March of 1945, the war was drawing to a close.  The Philippines had been retaken.  There was a new submarine base at Guam so the subs didn’t have to travel all the way to Australia to re-fuel (a change not exactly welcomed by the crews: there were not many women on Guam and forget the pubs, bars, and theaters!).  Trigger, under the command of her fourth and brand new CO, David R. Connole, left Guam for her newest patrol area: near and around the Ryukyu Islands of Japan.  Two of the islands in this chain were Iwo  Jima, which was in the midst of the Marine Invasion, and Okinawa, which was next on the list.

She sank two ships, and was closely observing convoys through a particular strait (trying to figure out where the safe passage around the minefields were) when HQ ordered her to join a Wolf Pack (a group of submarines working together) named Earl’s Eliminators.  (The Sea Dog and Threadfin operating under the command of Sea Dog’s CO Earl T. Hydeman).

Later that day, she sent in a weather report, but no acknowledgment that she’d heard her orders.  HQ re-sent the message.  She never responded.  She was ordered to proceed to Midway on April 4, but did not respond.  When she hadn’t been heard from or arrived in Midway (or anywhere) by May 1, she was considered “overdue and presumed lost”.

After the war, a cross reference of Japanese ship records and American submarine records revealed Trigger’s likely fate:    A Japanese plane had spotted a submarine and lead two destroyers to the spot, where they attacked until an oil slick appeared on the surface (usually a sign of a ruptured and sunken sub).  Nearby, the Silversides, Hackleback, Threadfin and Sea Dog all heard the depth charges, but only Threadfin was lightly attacked.  Silversides heard the death of her second sister, without knowing it for nearly another year.

Trigger has never been found.  She does, however, live on in an unusual manner:

One of Trigger’s most famous crewmen was Edward L. Beach.  He was an officer assigned aboard during her commissioning, and was the last of these original officers to leave the Trigger over two years later.  He had served as her Executive Officer for one of those years.

Following the war, Beach, who had transferred to the Tirante before the fateful 12th patrol, continued to command submarines, including becoming the First Commanding Officer of Trigger II in 1952.

But what he’s now known for is his writing.  He wrote “Run Silent, Run Deep”, a novel based on fictional submarines, but the Trigger he immortalized in his second book, SUBMARINE!  Her men will forever live on in these pages.

The Memorial Page for Trigger’s final crew

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Robalo’s new CO

Uncategorized, Where was Flier 66 years ago today? | Posted by Rebekah
Mar 29 2010

How submarine commanders were trained changed radically during WWII.

Following WWI, the surrendered U-Boats the German Navy was forced to hand over to the Allies produced many drastic changes in how submarines were designed the world over.  They became faster, deeper diving, stronger, and had more and better weapons installed.   But as often happens when technology advances, the thinking and planning of the people who now possessed these new weapons,  didn’t.   Not until it was forced.

These new “fleet submarines” (so named because they were to guard the surface fleet, not because they were THAT fast) were warships in their own right, but the navies of the world still concentrated on the old big guns:  Battleships, Destroyers, and Cruisers.  Submarines, in addition to their traditional coastal guarding duties were now assigned to range out ahead of these big guns and report any enemy activity so the surface fleet could take care of it.   Because of this thinking, Submarine Commanding Officers were taught to keep their boats hidden, be cautious at all costs, and not engage the enemy unless absolutely necessary and they were fairly well guaranteed a good enough shot to sink their prey.

Then December 7 happened, and the rules changed.

The Submarine Base at Pearl Harbor during the Japanese Attack of Pearl Harbor. Notice that all destruction is confined to across the harbor, there is none nearby. The submarine on the left is the USS Narwhal.

Of the Pacific Fleet, only the submarines and aircraft carriers were left untouched, and of those two, only the submarines were untouched by design.  The Japanese were hoping to sink both the American Aircraft Carriers on active duty in the Pacific, but fate prevented them (The Enterprise was supposed to dock at Pearl the evening of the 6th but was caught in a storm with her fleet, delaying her.  The Lexington had been hustled out of harbor to beef up defenses at Midway which was considered a more likely target of any Japanese attack.  The Saratoga, the third aircraft carrier in the Pacific, was having a scheduled refit at Mare Island.)  The submarines were completely ignored during the attack at Pearl, and all four submarines at Pearl (Tautog, Narwhal, Cachalot and Dolphin) were completely unscathed since the enemy planes never once shot or bombed them, even when the guns of these boats lit up and started taking down enemy planes.  The Tautog is now credited with taking down the first Japanese airplane over Pearl that morning.

Suddenly, the linchpins of the Navy are burning, sunken, and so badly damaged most couldn’t safely put to sea.  The Saratoga was released from her refit, but three aircraft carriers were not enough to cover the entire ocean when it quickly became obvious that the Japanese hit not only Pearl, but Midway, the Philippines, and intended to continue.

Enter the submarines, the last resort and now best hope.  The four in Pearl and those near Pearl and Midway and off the coast of California were quickly mobilized, and sent to sink every ship they could find.

Suddenly, the commanders that had spent all of their time and training being quiet and cautious were caught in a quandary.  Some adjusted, others were quickly removed and sent to other stations while younger, more aggressive officers were just as quickly promoted.  Some of these transformed boats whose records were lackluster into boats who would become icons.  (Read about Dudley “Mush” Morton and the USS Wahoo, and his famous “Wahoo is Expendable” speech  if you don’t believe me).

So sixty-six years ago today, the Robalo was handed over to a new, aggressive skipper after just one patrol.  His name was Manning Kimmel.  He was  30 years old, a graduate of the Naval Academy (class of 1935) he served on battleships and submarines, quickly rising through the ranks of the latter.  In addition to having every mark of a great submarine commander, Kimmel might have had another reason to take the war to the Japanese.

Manning Kimmel, new CO of USS Robalo.

Kimmel’s father was Admiral Husband Kimmel, who was the Naval Commander of the Pacific Fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.  In the wake of the attack, many people and congressmen wanted to know who was to blame for our base being caught so off-guard, and eventually, Kimmel and his Army counterpart, General Walter Short, were officially censured for being unprepared, were reduced in rank (Husband Kimmel’s 4-star rank was reduced to 2-stars) and forced to retire.  There have been many people in the decades following who have supported these punishments and those who say both men were unfairly blamed for the attack.   In fact, Admiral Chester Nimitz later said it was a blessing that the fleet had been in harbor that day, rather than put to sea looking for a possible attack as some congressmen later asserted that Kimmel should have done. (Amazing how congressmen know better than anyone how to do someone else’s job, then and now, isn’t it?)  When they were sunk, the fleet was sunk in 40 feet of water a few hundred yards from dry docks and repair facilities, rather than in irretrievable in deep oceans.

In 1999, Congress passed a non-binding resolution exonerating both men and posthumously re-promoting them, but Presidents Clinton and Bush did not sign it, and there is currently no indications from President Obama whether or not he will.

But in 1944, the Kimmel name was solidly linked to the death and destruction of Pearl Harbor.  Manning Kimmel would indeed prove to be an aggressive skipper, but he might have been motivated to clear or elevate the family name as much as protecting to country.  That question would arise in about six months.

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Welcome USS New Mexico (SSN-779)

And now for something completely different... | Posted by Rebekah
Mar 27 2010

Today is the commissioning of the newest Virginia Class submarine in the United States Navy, USS New Mexico.

A  submarine generally goes through four significant ceremonies in its life:  keel laying, launching, commissioning and decommissioning.   (There are sometimes other ceremonies like a christening or a re-launch after an overhaul, but I digress) Commissioning happens between a year and two years after launching.  Between these ceremonies, the submarine is undergoing its sea trials, a series of tests to make sure that the submarine is up to Navy standards.

Until it is a commissioned submarine, it is NOT an official Naval Vessel (this holds true not only for the US Navy, the many navies of the world.)  This is why, though the submarine Turtle fought in the Revolutionary War, and the submarine Alligator was going to fight in the Civil War, neither are rightfully considered naval vessels because neither one was ever commissioned.   Whether the CSS Hunley could count is an interesting question.  I can’t find any evidence that she was formally commissioned, putting her in the same boat as the other two, but let’s face it, at the time, the Hunley was not part of the United States Navy, (she was part of the other side) and she was sunk by the time the two became one again.

A publicity photo for the USS New Mexico underway at her sea trials.

The USS New Mexico joins her sisters Virginia, Texas, Hawaii, North Carolina and New Hampshire.  These boats are designed not only for war, but a multitude of assignments virtually anywhere in the world.  They carry around 135 men, and a lot of their specifications (speed, test depth, capabilities) are top secret.    Surprisingly enough, they are not much bigger than their WWII sisters, the Gato/Balao/Tench boats,  being only 65 feet longer and 8 feet wider, but they carry three decks instead of two and almost twice the men aboard. Each one is covered in a rubberized paint that helps deflect sound waves from sonar making them harder to find, and has a whole host of variations and possibilities built in.

Two more Virginia Class boats are under construction (the Missouri and California) and the Mississippi,Minnesota, North Dakota, and John Warner have been awarded to their builders and named.  A total of 30 Virginia Class submarines are planned and budgeted for, phasing out the Los Angeles Class boats (which have been in commission starting in 1972) completely.  This will leave the Ohios, Seawolfs and Virginias the American submarines on the high seas, a total of 51 when all is said and done.  (Of course with the addition of the New Mexico, there are approximately 72 submarines in the active Navy right now…)

Fascinating look inside a Virginia Class Submarine (at least what’s declassified)

Photos from today’s commissioning Ceremony

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Lost Tullibee

Lost Subs | Posted by Rebekah
Mar 26 2010

Today marks the 66th anniversary of the loss of the Tulibee, a sinking that would bear some similarities to the Flier’s loss in five months.

Tulibee was a Mare Island Gato-class boat that was commissioned in February 1943 and served four patrols over one year.

Tullibee at her commissioning.

On the night of March 26, 1944, in the middle of  a squall, Tullibee was on the surface, stalking a large convoy. She had to get unusually close to the convoy in order to see her, and several times, passed within a mile of her, but held fire since they could not get a sure enough bearing.  The escorts, probably using either radar or sonar, detected her presence, and started dropping depth charges, but were also unable to see her well.

It was a giant game of chicken.

Finally, the Tullibee was able to get true enough bearings on their target freighter that the fired two bow torpedoes.  One shot off towards her target, straight as an arrow.

Tullibee underway near California.

The other circled around and struck the Tullibee, blowing her up and sinking her in moments.

During the war, this was not known, it was only known that Tullibee stopped responding to radio messages from HQ and about six weeks after she was due back in port, she was declared “overdue and presumed lost”, though her 80-man crew, as per regulations, were listed as MIA.  This was because nothing WAS known about Tulibee’s loss.  It was possible she’d been captured, and the enemy was being quiet about it.  It was possible than one or more, or the entire crew had been captured and were POWs.  HQ and the families of the Tulibee would have to wait.

After the war, a Tullibee crewman, C.W. Kuykendall,  was discovered in a Japanese POW camp.  That night, he was stationed high in the lookout deck of the Tullibee, and blown clear.  In the dark and the storm, he heard other voices around him for about ten minutes, and then he was alone.

He was found and picked up by a Japanese patrol the next morning, interrogated, and handed over to a POW camp.

When he returned to the States, he told the story of the circular run torpedo, and as it turned out, Tullibee wasn’t the only submarine to fall prey to her own torpedo: the Tang would as well (That is another interesting story, but more on that later).  There are many submarines whose fates are completely unknown and may never be, even if their wrecks are found.  There could have been more fates like this.

Incidentally, Japanese records revealed that the other torpedo flew true and destroyed her target, so the two of them lay about a mile from one another.

Tullibee has never been found.

On Eternal Patrol’s page on memorializing the men of the Tullibee

Good Article on the loss of the Tullibee

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RIP USS F-4 and her crew

Lost Subs | Posted by Rebekah
Mar 25 2010

Today marks the 95th anniversary of the very first submarine lost in the modern US Navy’s Submarine Force.

The USS F-4 was one of 4 sisters of the F Class submarines.  Built in Seattle, she was the first submarine named “Skate”, but her name was officially changed to F-4 before her launch.  She had only two short years of service on the Pacific Coast, before 25 March, 1915.

The USS F-4

The fours sisters were the very first naval vessels home ported at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and were towed there in 1914 by destroyers.  (they were already becoming too large to be ferried aboard Submarine Tenders as seen in the Tender Post.)But because Pearl Harbor was still being made suitable as a naval base, the submarines were moored next to their tender Alert in nearby Honolulu Harbor.

The USS Alert with her nest of submarines, ca. 1914, Long Beach, CA. The outermost submarine is the F-4.

On the morning of March 25, 1915, the F-1, F-2, and F-4 left Pearl Harbor on routine diving exercises.  The hazard pay of “a dollar a dive day” had just been instituted by the Federal Government, giving every man of a submarine crew an extra dollar of pay for every day a submarine dove successfully, up to $15/month (the approximate equivalent of $22/dive or  an extra $330/month,) with an additional$60 $(1320) to their families if they didn’t come back.  Submarine commanders, to keep their crews in practice and happy,  frequently scheduled diving practice!

But that morning, the F-4 didn’t return.

After an hour of no one seeing or hearing from here, a speedboat was sent out to see if she could be spotted on the surface.  A short time later, her sister, the F-3 was sent to cruise submerged in the general area the F-4 was last seen, sounding her bell, and listening for F-4′s reply.  Nothing.  Soon, their tender Alert and several more speedboats where scattering, looking for any trace of the missing sub, and a wire was sent to Pearl informing then that F-4 was overdue.

In the afternoon they found it: an oil slick and air bubbles on the surface of the water.  F-4 was probably sunk and slowly leaking, but was the crew still alive?  Rescue efforts were quickly stalled when she was found in 300 feet of water.  No diver had ever been deeper than 60 feet before.  They tried to drag the F-4 to nearby shallow water, then dredging her, but she was stuck fast and couldn’t be moved.  In 72 hours, rescue attempts were abandoned, but the Navy decided to salvage the F-4 if they could to discover what happened to her, and, since it was peacetime and the sub most likely went down due to mechanical malfunction, how they could prevent it from happening again.

But no ship had ever been salvaged from such a deep depth.  And if the Navy was going to be able to understand what happened, they had to raise her with a minimum of damage.  Lt. Cmdr.  Julius Furer was assigned the task of bringing F-4 up and he quickly searched out the most recent technology he could.

The first thing he heard of was a new kind of dive technique where divers paused at pre-determined points during an ascent and waited, which seemed to prevent the “bends”, a painful side-effect of deep diving that often caused death.  (Today, we know that the bends are caused by gases which naturally occurs in the body and dissolves in the blood.  At high pressures, like the depths of the ocean, more gasses dissolve in the blood and if a person ascends or depressurizes too quickly, the gasses form bubbles that can cause intense pain in the joints through paralysis and death.  Stopping and resting at pre-determined depths allows these gases to dissapate naturally.)  There were a group of experimental divers at the New York Navy Yard that Furer requested to come and help with the salvage.

It took nearly a month to get the first one there, and he dove to the F-4 to find her laying on her side, apparently undamaged.  The F-4 couldn’t be raised all at once, but the plan was for the divers to place tow cables under the bow and stern and lift and move her to shallow enough waters to fully salvage her.

It was nerve wracking work, and when one diver got tangled in the cables on April 17 and another diver, F.W. Crilly had to pull him to surface quickly, earning them a 20-hour trip in a decompression chamber, Crilly received the Medal of Honor, the highest award the US can bestow.

Eventually, Furer invented a new salvage technique:  Pontoons attached to cables were filled with water and sunk to either side of the wreck.  Once they were attached to the wreck with cables slung under the hull, air was pumped into the pontoons, forcing the water out, and the pontoons to the surface cradling the F-4.  This also allowed for more than two supporting cables, more evenly distributing the weight of the submarine and keeping the cables from breaking.  This worked, and on August 30, five months after F-4 went down, she was towed under the pontoons to a dry-dock.

An altered photograph showing how the USS F-4 was eventually raised and taken back to Pearl Harbor. This method of deep sea salvage would be used again in 1939 when the USS Squalus sank.

Only four of the 21 crewmen could be identified, and the other 17, including her CO, were buried in four coffins in a mass grave in Arlington (the story of the grave and her marker is also interesting and will have to wait.)

What the investigation revealed is that some of the rivets in the hull had corroded, allowing seawater into the battery compartment, releasing chlorine gas.  Captain Ede tried to blow the ballast tanks and steer F-4 into shallow water, but the engines overheated and quit, and F-4 descended past safe depths.  The intense pressure caused the hull to implode and drown her brave crew.  They were gone before anyone knew to look for them.

Here you can see the implosion of F-4's hull that was discovered once the dry dock was pumped free of water.

The F-4 herself was buried at Pearl Harbor, where she has remained ever since.  Her sisters were towed back to the mainland, and overhauled to fix the rivets, battery compartments, engines, propellors, and  the hundreds of little things that cost 21 men their lives.

All photos on this post are taken from navsource.org.

For the memorial page to F-4′s crew on eternal patrol, click here.

The best article I’ve read about the sinking and salvage of F-4.

The Story of the grave of the unidentified F-4 Sailors

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Fate Sealed in Secret

Where was Flier 66 years ago today? | Posted by Rebekah
Mar 24 2010

Sixty six years ago today the fates of Robalo and Flier were likely sealed.

The Balabac Straits were mined as early as December 1941, but on this day in 1944, a minelayer named Tsugaru Maru was laying more.  The Allies would not be aware of this second mining until after the war.

Early Japanese mines could only be placed in waters a few hundred feet deep, hence the continuous orders to keep to the deep waters when transiting a strait of passage known to be mined.

But in 1944, the Japanese invented and sent out a new kind of mine that could be laid in waters nearly 3,500 feet deep and could be armed in waters up to 230 feet deep.  It was these mines the Tsugaru Maru was carrying and laying in Balabac Strait sixty-six years ago today.

Whether Flier and Robalo hit one of the old mines, or one of these new ones, or one that had come loose from its mooring and was floating free, is still officially unknown.   At first, the Flier survivors themselves didn’t believe it was a mine since no less than 40 submarines had gone through the strait in 1944 with no problems, and the Crevalle, whose track they were given as a guide to get through, had been through the strait three times in a couple of months.

Robalo was living on borrowed time: she had four months left.  Flier was now on borrowed time: five months left.

Strangely enough, Tsugaru herself was on an even shorter time leash: three months.  By the time her mines destroyed Robalo and Flier, she had already been sunk by yet ANOTHER submarine, the Darter, who would, again, strangely enough, end up lost only a few hundred miles away from Balabac Straits herself.

But I’m getting ahead of the story.

For more information about the Tsugaru Maru, click here.

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Changes to Flier’s Crew

Where was Flier 66 years ago today? | Posted by Rebekah
Mar 22 2010

My apologies for not posting yesterday.  We had computer problems, so I wasn’t able to post anything.

Back to the Flier, while she is sill in drydock being fixed, there were changes happening in the crew.

For the past four weeks, a large number of the Flier’s crew were sent, likely in shifts, to their hometowns for some R&R, and most were going to stay with the USS Flier when she re-launched.  Since they had served together for so short a time, the Navy didn’t want to break up the crew just yet.

But in the Officer’s ranks, changes were brewing.  The grounding at Midway exposed problems between Captain Crowley and his Executive Officer, Benjamin Adams.

Often, a submarine’s Executive Officer, in addition to being second-in-command, would, after a period of time and recommendation of his CO, be promoted to command his own submarine.  It was very important for these prospective officers that their submarines perform well with a minimum of disciplinary problems (because the XO was often in charge of crew discipline as well).  Sometimes, like when the Scorpion grounded at Midway, the Exec would share in any discipline that HQ handed out to the captain.  In the case of the  Scorpion, both her captain and her Exec were removed from command and returned to the States.

Having narrowly escaped being removed from the command, perhaps Adams was feeling less than confident in his assigned boat or CO.  Perhaps he started to believe in the new rumors of Flier’s jinx.  Perhaps their personalities would have eventually clashed, and this event just caused it to appear quickly. According to Clay Blair Jr.’s “Silent Victory” and Michael Sturma’s “USS Flier: Death and Survival on a WWII Submarine”, Adams was viewed by some to be a funny ladies man who wasn’t really willing to work.  They finally had an “irreconcilable dispute” in which Adams threatened to leave the Submarine Force for the Surface Fleet if necessary to leave the Flier and Crowley.

Whatever the reasons or the cause, in the end, Adams found a CO who was willing to take him on, and the Navy, more interested in having harmony on submarine crews than forcing people to work together who were unsuited, allowed Adams to transfer to the Albacore, a submarine undergoing routine overhaul in Mare Island at the same time.  Albacore’s recent XO, William Ralph DeLoach,  had been detached from Albacore and was likely to be given a new construction in the States.  (as an aside, though DeLoach served in the Navy until 1969, I cannot discover what submarine he was transferred to, though by 1953 he was apparently the commander of Submarine Squadron 10.)

The USS Albacore after her refit at Mare Island, May 1944

Adams and Albacore’s CO, Jim Blanchard, got on well together and Adams served on the Albacore for at least two patrols (the 9th and 10th).  During this time, the Albacore sank the Japanese Aircraft Carrier Taiho, a huge blow to the Japanese fleet.  Both Adams and Blanchard would have detached from Albacore before her fateful 11th patrol.  Adams would later command USS Rasher for her sixth patrol.

The Japanese Carrier Taiho, the first Japanese carrier to feature an armored deck and hurricane bow. The Albacore fired six torpedos at her, only one hitting her in the bow. While this did not sink her, it did cause the forward aricraft elevator to fill with a mix of seawater and diesel. Albacore left the area, thinking they had barely scratched the Taiho. Seven hours later, diesel fumes had filled the entire ship despite every effort to dissapate it, and she exploded. No one, not even the Japanese knew what happened until a POW revealed her fate to the Americans. By that time, the Albacore had already been lost.

With the Executive Officer’s position now open on the Flier, the search was on for a new Exec, and one was found inside the family.  James Liddell, Flier’s Engineering Officer during the Midway patrol, was now promoted to the Executive Officer’s position.  Liddell and Crowley ended up being well suited as Command Officers, and they would end up paired together not once, but twice, something that was nearly unheard of.

With the promotion, there was one officer’s position open on the Flier, and that would be filled on April 15.

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RIP USS Kete

Lost Subs, Where was Flier 66 years ago today? | Posted by Rebekah
Mar 20 2010

Tomorrow I’ll post about the changes in USS Flier’s crew while they were waiting for her to finish her repairs, but today, I thought I’d take the time to remember another lost submarine.

Sixty-six years ago today, the USS Kete was in Manitowoc Wisconsin on blocks, finishing her construction.  A year later, she’d be lost at sea, her grave unknown.

The USS Kete during her trials on Lake Michigan. Photo from navsource.org

Kete was a new Balao-class boat, unlike the Flier, Redfin and Robalo, which were all Gato-class.  From the outside, they looked almost identical.  The main difference was a thicker skin that allowed the Balao-class to safely dive to 400 feet, rather than the 300 foot depth of a Gato.  There were numerous small differences inside in the engines, electrical systems, ect. that made them a more sophisticated boat, and of course, the newer the boat, the more advanced the technology was installed from the beginning.

Like Robalo and Redfin, Kete was a Manitowoc boat, was tossed sideways into the water on April 9, tested herself in Lake Michigan, was commissioned on July 31,  and rode a barge down the Mississippi to New Orleans.  (In case anyone was wondering, the reason the submarines rode a barge down the Miss to the sea was because there are several places in the Miss that are shallower than a submarine’s 16 ft. draft (the portion of a water vessel that is beneath the waterline).).

The USS Raton, a Manitowoc boat, going down the Mississippi riding in a floating drydock. The Redfin, Robalo and Kete would all have traveled this way to the ocean. These photographs were highly classified during WWII. Photo from navsource.org

She traveled through the Panama Canal, to Pearl Harbor, and went on her first war patrol on the East China Sea in the company of USS Sealion II.  They were near the southern tip of Japan when Kete started having engine trouble, then, during a dive, her bow planes froze in the dive position, forcing the submarine deeper than the crew wanted her to go. They managed to get her under control, but if she couldn’t be fixed, Kete might not be able to surface, or would dive so deeply the pressure of the water would crush her like an empty soda can.

Headquarters ordered Kete to leave Sealion and be escorted to Saipan where the Submarine Tender Fulton repaired her planes and overhauled her engines for a month.  She resumed her first patrol assigned to patrol around Yuro Island, a small Japanese Island north of Okinawa for life guarding.

During a lifeguarding patrol, a submarine was to stand by and rescue any Allied pilots that had to ditch into the ocean.  They were often ordered to NOT attack anyone on a lifeguarding duty, lest they were detected and couldn’t protect anyone.  During the end of the war, this type of duty was more common, since seagoing targets were becoming scarce and air raids on the Japanese Islands were happening more frequently.

President George H.W. Bush was a 19-year old fighter pilot when he was shot down and rescued by a sister submarine  USS Finback, and the USS Tang once rescued 22 pilots in one day, a record that still stands.

Though she did not rescue any pilots or sink any targets, Kete was awarded a battle star for a sucessful patrol.  She was ordered to Guam where she was outfitted for her second patrol.

She patrolled in the same general area, again on a lifeguarding duty during raids,  and transmitting weather reports so the local airstrips and aircraft carriers to coordinate attacks.  But this time she was permitted to hunt freighters between raids.  She sank three medium freighters on March 9, and fired more torpedoes at a cable laying vessel on March 14 (unfortunately she missed).

With only three torpedoes left, the Kete was ordered home to Pearl for an overhaul, and she left the area on March 20, giving a special weather report as she left.  It was the last time anyone ever heard from her.

After the war, Japanese records showed that three Japanese submarines were sunk around this date in that general area, any of which might have been prey of the Kete, but no anti-submarine activity was noted.  There were no minefields nearby.  The two most common theories of the fate of the Kete are 1.) mutual destruction between her and a Japanese submarine, or 2.) Mechanical malfunction forced her down.

She has not been found, and took her 87 crewmen with her.  Her memorial page on On Eternal Patrol is here.

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Redfin on Patrol

Where was Flier 66 years ago today? | Posted by Rebekah
Mar 19 2010

Sixty six years ago today, the USS Redfin departed Fremantle for her second patrol.  Only CO Austin would know where they were supposed to go, and who they were supposed to hunt.  While all submarines were given the standard order to sink any and all enemy ships they came across, especially the freighters, some submarines were given additional orders to seek out specific convoys or submarines or to do something in preparation for a future Naval attack.

A photo alledgedly taken aboard the USS Redfin,of the crew retrieving a torpedo while training. Torpedos were too expensive to waste on training, so they would retrieve any they fired in training to bring back. From http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/ships/img/SS/SS-272_Redfin-Torprecovery.gif

The submarines had a unique position in the Navy.  While the surface fleet concentrated on taking down the Imperial Navy’s ships in massive battles on the open sea, the submarine fleet was slowly choking Japan’s economy and military from the factory floor.

Japan did not have enough natural materials to maintain or expand her military on her home islands.  This was part of the reason why they conquered parts of China, the Philippines, Indonesia, the Indo-China Peninsula, Malaysia and sought to keep expanding.  By holding these territories, they had access to the oil, rubber, steel, copper, coal, and any other raw materials needed to keep building and launching ships, submarines, airplanes, and repair the ones damaged in battle.

So the submarine force had an overarching command:  SINK THE FREIGHTERS.  Every freighter bound for Japan held the means to make more war machines and repair the ones coming back to dock.  Every ship of steel sent to the bottom, one less aircraft carrier or battleship.  A tanker of oil gone:  fewer ships, subs or airplanes could fuel up and go out on patrol.  By 1944, Japan’s war factories were having trouble getting materials needed on schedule, and sometimes, they had to make do with less repairs or fewer new items being completed.

These freighters started to become so important, they traveled only in convoys heavily guarded by armed escorts.  That didn’t matter at times, the submarines still attacked, and their mandates were so strong they were ordered to shoot the freighters rather than the escorts if able to do so.  It was better to have several escorts bringing a few or no freighters to Japan than take out the escorts and hope that someone else found the unguarded convoy and took out the freighters.

It was dangerous.  Each escort was armed with depth charges and deck guns.  If a submarine was suspected or detected, the escorts did not hesitate to drop dozens of depth charges in an area to get a submarine.  And in 1944, the depth charges were more effective than they had ever been, thanks to a congressman named Andrew May.

Congressman Andrew May, who, in effort to comfort and reassure the American people, put the submarine force in grave danger. From his wikipeida page.

Andrew May (D-Ky) was the chair for the House Military Affairs Committee.  During a press conference in May 1943, May revealed that the Japanese had been setting their depth charges too shallowly, so submarines were simply diving to their greatest depths and rode out the attacks in safety.  The press published this fact, and soon, the Japanese quickly adjusted their aim.  By some accounts, the Navy believed that nearly 10 submarines and 800 additional men may have been lost due to this blunder.

As usual, the men didn’t dwell on this fact.  It was their job to go out there and sweep the seas clean and come home with more brag rags to fly.  Like the Musketeers, it was all for one and one for all, whatever they were asked to do.

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Sub School

Where was Flier 66 years ago today? | Posted by Rebekah
Mar 18 2010

Sixty-Six years ago today, the Flier is still up on blocks, the Redfin is about to leave, and the Robalo is getting repaired and a good deep cleaning while her crew is on R&R somewhere all over Australia.

I want to return to Al Jacobson, where he is currently (sixty-six years ago that is) located in New London’s Submarine school, in the final stages of his training and getting ready for his first assignment.

Al Jacobson at 22 years old and entering the Navy as an Ensign.

The American Submarine Force only takes volunteers, and maintained that policy even in the depths of WWII.  Submarine duty is hazardous.  During WWII, nearly 20% of the submariners went down with their ship, and many others died in various incidents that did not cause the loss of their boat.

It was hot, cramped, uncomfortable, and often submarines operated alone miles away from the nearest Naval ship.  The Calvary could not often be called in.  Under such circumstances, the Navy believed that volunteers would be the least likely to crack under the pressure.

However, volunteering only got you so far.  Once in Submarine School, the Navy did the best they could to make you crack, to get rid of those who might not be able to handle the physical, mental and emotionally rigorous life of the submarine sailor.

There was the Pressure Chamber, where potential submarine candidates were locked in with a doctor, while the chamber pressurized to the equivalent depth a submarine could reach underwater.  Usually a volleyball or some air filled object joined them.  By the time the chamber was fully pressurized, the volleyball resembled a bowl, and the candidates would have to equalize the pressure in their ears several times.  (Think about the pressure you feel in your head as a plane takes off or lands.  It’s apparently similar).  The chamber would also feel very warm.  Anyone who couldn’t equalize the pressure in their ears or showed signs of distress would be safely removed from the test and rejected as unfit for submarine duty.  Those whose eardrums burst because they could not equalize also were rejected.

Then there was the escape tower, where candidates learned to escape a sunken submarine using the Momsen Lungs or Steinke Hoods (nicknamed “Stinky Hoods”)  that would be stored aboard.  (Despite the fact that less than 1% of the ocean is at a “rescuable” depth).  Starting from a pressurized chamber beneath the 300 foot tower, a candidate would learn to ascend to the top without bursting or damaging their lungs.  Anyone who didn’t want to would be released to the surface navy.  (According to one source I found, completing this test earned you the name “bubblehead”)

The Submarine Escape Training Tower still stands in New London's Submarine School. There was a second one built in Pearl Harbor Hawaii, but it has since been drained. It apparently still stands as a landmark.

The School itself was tough:  generally there were classes in the morning, and afternoon exercises in either simulation chambers or training patrols on the old R and S class boats.  Officers and Enlisted both attended, but would also have specialized classes pertaining to their specific jobs.

Once graduated from Submarine School, a man was considered a “non-qual”, whether he was an officer or enlisted man.  The last stage of his training took place on board a working submarine, where he had a year to learn every pipe, valve, cog, and dial onboard.   When he felt he had learned enough, he would be given a written and oral test by that submarine’s officers.  Upon passing, he would be awarded his dolphins, the official insignia of the Submariner.  Those who couldn’t pass in a year were reassigned to the Surface Fleet.  Many submariners in WWII completed their qualifications in one patrol.  (They were not permitted much leisure time until they were fully qualified.  So every waking moment most non-quals were either working on duty or studying for their qualifications).

Today, submarine school apparently still bears a strong resemblance to the WWII version Al would have undergone.  Classes in  the morning, exercises in the afternoon, studying in the evening, and every man (and perhaps soon women) a volunteer.  Most of what they learned is strictly classified, so after volunteering for Submarine Duty a potential candidate is also background checked for security classification.
Al was approaching the end of his training, and likely spending his days on an old S-boat doing short patrols learning the rhythm of a working boat and wondering where he was going to go.  Would he be asssigned to a new construction which meant it might be another year before he went to sea?  Would he be assigned to one of the stars of the Submarine Service like the Trigger, the Tang or the Harder, or a boat just beginning to earn her stripes.

One thing he wasn’t thinking about was the danger.  They all knew the odds, and while no submariner ignored them as such, they didn’t dwell on them.   You’d go crazy otherwise and break down.  One thing Al did say later was the Submarine Service was an all-or-nothing proposition.  There was little risk you’d come back missing an eye or a limb.  You either came back whole, or you didn’t come back at all.

For more information: US Navy Submarine School

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