Lost Submarines September

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Lost Submarines September USS Grayling (SS-209) USS GRAYLING (SS-209) stood out from Fremantle, Australia, on her eighth war patrol on 30 July 1943.

1 Lost Submarines September USS Grayling (SS-209) USS GRAYLING (SS-209) stood out from Fremantle, Australia, on her eighth war patrol on 30 July The boat was fresh off a 24-day refit and had a brand-new C.O., Lieutenant Commander Robert M. Brinker. His predecessor, Lieutenant Commander John Elwood Lee, had been recalled to the U.S. to take charge of new construction, USS CROAKER (SS-246). She made a quick stop at the Philippine island of Panay to drop off supplies with local guerrillas, then, on 19 August, reported damaging a freighter off the eastern coast of Borneo. The following day she took out a small tanker; her radioed report was the last transmission received from the boat. The Panay guerrillas reported that GRAYLING delivered more supplies on the 23 rd. On the 27 th several Japanese ships witnessed the torpedoing of her last kill, the passenger/cargo ship Meizan Maru, in the nearby Tablas Strait. A surfaced sub, almost certainly GRAYLING, was observed in the same area the next day. A second sighting occurred on 9 September. She was supposed to report to her chain of command via radio on the twelfth, but the transmission never came and all attempts to raise the sub failed. She was declared overdue and presumed lost on 30 September. The circumstances surrounding her demise remain a mystery. Japanese records examined after the war include the sighting of an American sub in Lingayen Gulf on 9 September, but that was a good deal north of the boat s assigned area, the entrance to Manila Bay, where she was to remain from 2 nd through the 10 th. There is no reason to believe that LCDR Brinker disobeyed his orders, although, to be fair, there is also no evidence he followed them. All we know for certain is that GRAYLING were lost sometime after they sank Meizan Maru.

2 The boat, which took 76 crewmembers to the bottom with her, received six battle stars for her service. Note: In the photo below, Admiral Chester Nimitz (center) presents awards onboard GRAYLING at Pearl Harbor Submarine Base following ceremonies in which he took command of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, 31 December The former fleet commander, Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, is standing to the right, in a white uniform with two-star insignia. USS S-51 (SS-162) On 24 June 1922, USS S-51 (SS-162), a fourth-group S-class submarine, was commissioned. She was homeported in New London, Connecticut, just up the coast from where she was built at the Lake Torpedo Boat Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut. S-51 operated normally and uneventfully until the night of 25 September What follows are excerpts from a history of S-51 written by the Ships Histories Section of the Naval History Division: It was a clear starlit night with bright moonlight. S-51 had exchanged positions and routine information this was the last communication anyone had from S-51. According to the survivors, the routine aboard the boat was normal. On the CITY OF ROME [a merchant steamer], a lookout sighted a clear white light about five miles off the starboard beam at 2203; although he continued to watch this light and noticed that it seemed to be drawing closer, he never again mentioned it to the officer of the watch. About three minutes later, the captain of the CITY OF ROME, John H. Diehl, a veteran of nearly

3 forty years in the merchant marine, came to the bridge; he too saw the light to starboard and remarked upon it, but then moved to the port side of the ship to allow his eyes to adjust to the dark and remained there a crucial seventeen minutes. The light continued to draw nearer. At approximately 2223, Captain Diehl, his eyes now accustomed to the dark, returned to the starboard side of the bridge and looked at the light again; it seemed to be growing brighter, as if it were coming nearer, and he gave the order Better starboard a little to give the other ship more passing room. Then a red light showed next to the white, and Diehl yelled Port, hard aport, the fellow is showing a red light! simultaneously blowing a series of short blasts on the ship s whistle to indicate danger. S-51 had apparently realized that the steamer was not going to yield right of way and had put her rudder hard right to avoid collision. [W]ith a terrible grinding of metal, CITY OF ROME pierced S-51 s hull amidships, leaving a wound seven feet long and five to six feet high through which the sea poured in and began to fill the submarine. There was no panic belowdecks in the dying ship. The three survivors, thrown from their bunks by the force of collision, testified that as they waded through the rapidly deepening water in the compartments, they saw members of the crew helping each other through the hatches and attempting to secure the watertight doors. S-51 went to the bottom less than a minute after the collision; her clocks were stopped at Officers and crew other than the three survivors had apparently managed to get out, for only twenty-three bodies were recovered from the hulk of the ship. [There was a total of 36 men aboard.] The survivors testified that they had seen several others, the exact number impossible to determine, swimming around and calling for help. CITY OF ROME lowered a lifeboat and rescued three survivors, but apparently did not realize that she had sunk a submarine and that there might still be men alive in the sunken boat, trapped in an airtight compartment and waiting for rescue. When the survivors were questioned and Captain Diehl learned it had been a submarine, he didn t think of going back to mark the place as clearly as possible so that rescue efforts could begin immediately. CITY OF ROME notified her owners of the tragedy at 0010 on the morning of 26 September; the sub base in New London had no idea that anything was wrong until a telephone message arrived via Western Union at Ships were immediately dispatched to the scene of the sinking, but the position supplied by the CITY OF ROME was incorrect. S-51 was finally located, by a search plane whose crew noticed an oil slick and bubbles on the water s surface, at Ships converged on this spot, hoping that some of the crew might yet be alive within the hull. They hovered silently over the spot, listening intently, but could not hear any sound. The first divers reached the submarine [which lay in about 130 feet of water] at 1318, almost fifteen hours after the collision, but got no response to their tapping along the hull. The twenty-three men remaining aboard the sunken sub were declared dead. A court of inquiry convened by the Navy in the months after the disaster laid the blame for the sinking squarely on the shoulders of Captain Diehl, but he was later declared not guilty on civil charges of negligence and failure to stand by the sinking submarine when it was revealed that the running lights on the S-class submarines did not conform to the requirements of international law. The Second District Court would later split the responsibility, blaming S-51 s running lights and CITY OF ROME s failure to take proper care to avoid collision for the sub s loss.

S-51 was brought to the surface on 5 June 1926, nearly nine months after her sinking. There had been some hope of refitting her for further service, but the damage proved to be too great.

4 S-51 was brought to the surface on 5 June 1926, nearly nine months after her sinking. There had been some hope of refitting her for further service, but the damage proved to be too great. The remains of the lost Sailors were removed and the hull was stripped. On 4 June 1930, the Borough Metal Company of Brooklyn, New York, purchased the hulk for $3,320. USS Pompano (SS-181) By the summer of 1943, USS POMPANO (SS-181) was already a very accomplished submarine, a veteran of six war patrols. On 20 August, she left Midway with high hopes for further success on her seventh. She had been ordered to patrol off the east coast of Honshu until sunset on 27 September. Then she was to return to Midway and then continue to Pearl Harbor to undergo maintenance. On 3 September, Japanese records indicate, POMPANO sank Akama Maru, a cargo vessel of nearly 6,000 tons. Twenty-two days later she sent another cargo vessel, the 3,000-ton Taiko Maru, to the bottom. When Pearl Harbor failed to make radio contact with the sub, word was sent to Midway to keep an eye out for her. Navy personnel scanned the waters for ten days, from 5-15 October, but POMPANO never arrived. On the fifteenth, she was declared lost.

Japanese records reviewed by the U.S. after the war include no anti-submarine attacks in POMPANO s area during the time she was on patrol, but that does not mean her demise was an accident.

5 Japanese records reviewed by the U.S. after the war include no anti-submarine attacks in POMPANO s area during the time she was on patrol, but that does not mean her demise was an accident. On 6 September, she was sent a dispatch indicating that the area north of the one in which she was currently patrolling was open. Since that stretch of ocean was known to have heavier ship traffic, it is possible that she shifted into it in the hope of sinking more enemy vessels. But unknown to the Navy at the time, that area had been recently mined, and heavily. Given that information, it is very possibly that POMPANO was sent to the bottom after coming into contact with one of those hidden explosives. The date of her loss is usually recorded as 27 September, the day on which she was scheduled to head home, although it could have occurred any time after she sank the second cargo vessel on the 25 th. POMPANO, the seventeenth American submarine loss of World War II, took 77 men down with her. She was awarded seven battle stars for her service, which included the sinking of 21,443 tons of Japanese shipping. USS Cisco (SS-290) On 10 May 1943, the U.S. Navy commissioned USS CISCO (SS-290) at Portsmouth Navy Yard in Kittery, Maine. Soon after, the boat set out for Darwin, Australia, arriving in the middle of September. While there, Chief Radioman Howell B. Rice became sick and was sent to the local Navy hospital. On 18 September, his boat set out on her first war patrol without him. A leak in

6 her hydraulic system forced her to turn back for repairs, but two days later CISCO headed back out. She was never heard from again. CISCO was scheduled to end up in a rectangular area in the South China Sea, between Luzon in the Philippines and French Indo-China. On 28 September, her expected position was in the center of the Sulu Sea, through which she would have had to pass to reach her area. On that date just north and east of that location, Japanese records indicate the discovery of a submarine. Found a sub tailing oil, the records note. Bombing. Ships cooperated with us. The oil continued to gush out even on tenth of October. Because no other American boats were operating in the area at the time, it is presumed that the victim was CISCO. The terrible irony is that she was probably destroyed at least in part by one of her sisters: USS LUZON (PR-7), a U.S. gunboat that had been captured by the Japanese, renamed Karatsu, and deployed to attack American forces. This vessel was aided by purely Japanese forces: Type 97 Kate attack bombers belonging to the 954 Naval Air Squadron. On 4 November and again on the fifth, Headquarters Task Force 71 attempted to raise CISCO on the radio. There was no response. The boat was ultimately declared lost; it is possible that a recurrence of her hydraulic headaches created the oil slick that drew the enemy to her. 76 men went down with CISCO. Rice, who would recover from his illness, was the crew s only survivor.

USS PERCH (SS 176) began her second combat cruise in February Initially patrolling off Celebes, she received damage in an attack on an enemy

1 USS PERCH (SS 176) began her second combat cruise in February 1942. Initially patrolling off Celebes, she received damage in an attack on an enemy ship on the 25th, and was then transferred to the waters