The USS Blenny epitomized the tactics adopted by submarines in the closing months of the war, departing Fremantle on 5 July 1945 to patrol the Java Sea and off the eastern coast of Malaya. The Blenny’s skipper, William Hazzard, graduated from the Naval Academy in 1935 and became one of the last in his class to get a command. Having arrived in the Philippines in February 1940, he made ten war patrols before putting the Blenny in commission in September 1944. Under Hazzard, who characterized himself as full of nervous energy and an “eager beaver,” the Blenny disrupted trade between Singapore and Saigon.1 Crewman Frank Toon described the Blenny’s patrol as “a merry-go-round for the gun crews.”2
During the course of the patrol numerous junks were boarded and inspected, and in most cases subsequently sunk. Some were bound with rice from Singora in Siam (today Thailand) to Terengganu on the east coast of Malaya. Some sailed from Singapore to Bangkok or Singora to collect rice. Others carried cargoes of coffee, sugar, salt, or grain. Junks traveling from Singapore with sugar could exchange their cargoes for rice at Menara in Malaya.
Sometimes the crews from these vessels were temporarily brought on board the Blenny while their junk was destroyed, and then later transferred to another local craft. If no other vessels were in the vicinity, the junk’s crew would be enlisted to throw the cargo into the sea and its craft left intact. Preserving life sometimes required more proactive measures. When the Blenny boarded a sampan bound for Singora with a load of rice, six Chinese men on board hastily took to their boat. Unfortunately for them, the boat swamped; the Blenny crew hauled the men out of the water, and a short time later off-loaded them onto a local sailboat.3
Some small vessels were sunk with a single five-inch shell, or “five-inch bullet,” as Hazzard liked to call them, to the bemusement of his crew.4 Even with such parsimonious use of ammunition, however, the Blenny had to borrow additional shells from other submarines returning to port. On 24 July 1945 the crew transferred by breaches buoy about 250 rounds of five-inch and 40 mm ammunition from the USS Hammerhead, also taking the opportunity to exchange movies. A week later, on 2 August, the Blenny again took on more ammunition and swapped movies, this time with the USS Lizardfish. The next day more ammunition, including a box of shotgun shells, was received from the USS Boarfish.5
On occasion the Blenny’s boarding party used a twelve-gauge shotgun to blast holes in the bottom of junks, which would then be left to sink or set on fire using buckets of fuel oil. In one incident, crewmen from the Blenny boarded a thirty-ton junk already abandoned by its Chinese crew, and blew it up with a half pound of TNT.6 By the end of the patrol the Blenny claimed the sinking of sixtythree craft, including forty-two described as junks and nine motor sampans, along with a miscellany of sea trucks, schooners, tugs, and barges. Arriving at Subic Bay on 14 August, the Blenny ended the war having sunk more small craft on one patrol than any other U.S. submarine.
In 1941 Japan was the world’s third-largest ship-owning nation. By August 1945, including only merchantmen of 500 tons or more, Japan had lost nearly 9 million tons of shipping. Over half of these ships were sunk by submarines, while less than 1 percent were destroyed by surface gunfire.7 In the case of shipping under 500 tons it was a different story, for although there are no official figures, hundreds of smaller vessels fell victims to gun attacks.
By the closing months of the war, guns had displaced torpedoes as the primary weapon for many submarines. Before the cessation of hostilities in mid-August, 91 different American submarines had carried out gun attacks on 641 vessels during 1945. British submarines made 393 gun attacks during the same period, while Dutch submarines carried out 10 attacks. Thus gun attacks by Allied submarines during 1945 totaled over 1,000 (see the appendix).
More and more submarines carried more and more armament. When the USS Jack underwent refit in early 1945, a five-inch/25-caliber gun replaced its old three-inch model. The Jack also got a 40 mm gun installed on the cigarette deck and twin 20 mm guns on the forward bridge platform, leading James Calvert to conclude that the submarine had become “a floating arsenal.”8 By July 1945 the Flying Fish had been declared a “gunboat,” equipped with two five-inch guns that operated with a basic computer-controlled firing system.9 At least some submarines also began sacrificing the number of torpedoes carried in order to take on additional ammunition. Gunnery training continued to be ratcheted up; at Guam submarine crews honed their skills firing at radio-controlled drone airplanes and targets towed by tugs. Before departing Subic Bay for patrol in July 1945, the USS Hawkbill practiced firing all of its guns at a target towed by the Chanticleer-class submarine rescue ship the USS Coucal.10
By 1945 the seas around Japan, as Pete Galantin put it, seemed crowded—not with potential targets but with other submarines.11 When the Pintado patrolled the waters off Singapore in March 1945, Corwin Mendenhall compared the location to Grand Central Station, with so many U.S. submarines in the vicinity but no Japanese ships.12 During 1945 an additional 39 U.S. submarines joined the fleet in the Pacific, bringing the total number of American boats to 252. At the same time the enemy tonnage sunk, After reaching a peak in October 1944, fell off sharply.13 By January 1945, according to Charles Lockwood, most of Japan’s remaining shipping consisted of small craft that skulked near the coasts carrying food and raw materials from Manchuria and Korea.14 On its seventh war patrol in early 1945, Slade Cutter’s former command, the USS Seahorse, made its only attack of the patrol on a fifty-ton fishing junk. The next patrol uncovered nothing even worthy of gunfire.15
One crew member described the USS Puffer’s seventh war patrol, completed in April 1945, as “kind of like going deer hunting on the last day of the season.”16 The same month the USS Tunny found only one vessel to attack, a wooden sampan estimated at 200 tons. On a rough sea, sinking even this meager target seemed hard work. From its rolling deck, the Tunny fired forty-four rounds of five-inch, fortyeight rounds of 40 mm, and fifty-seven rounds from the 20 mm gun. During the half-hour attack the crewmen detected no human activity on the sampan, although they later found a naked dead body floating in the debris.17 Those vessels left afloat sometimes adopted elaborate camouflage in an effort to escape detection. In May 1945 the Blenny encountered a 100-ton lugger in the Java Sea disguised with palm fronds and mounting a machine gun on top of its deckhouse.18
After completing a patrol in June, the USS Icefish reported, “Hunting is very poor when a wolfpack considers a 600 ton, 230 ft. minelayer a large target.”19 Norvell G. Ward, working as assistant operations officer to Dick Voge, recalled, “The last month of the war we practically had nothing to work against. We were trying to make up targets. I think they found very few in the last two or three weeks of the war.”20 The majority of submarines were deployed on lifeguard duty for aircraft strikes. In May 1945 the USS Jack found itself stationed just south of Honshu for such duty, with no contacts worthy of a torpedo and the occasional wooden craft too close to shore to attack with its guns.21
Much of the competition for Japan’s remaining shipping during the final stages of the war came from aircraft. Whereas submarines dominated the destruction of Japanese shipping during 1943 and 1944, aircraft overtook them in January 1945. After the Americans reoccupied the Philippines, aircraft were able to effectively control Japanese convoy routes in the South China Sea. The last imports of iron ore were cut off in March 1945, as were virtually all coal imports. The last shipment of oil to reach Japan from the south was also in March 1945. Without fuel, the remaining Japanese warships were either retired or employed solely as antiaircraft batteries.22
The increasing presence of aircraft also created added danger for submarines. In a scenario that became almost prosaic, a U.S. B-24 strafed and depth charged the Seahorse about 600 miles northeast of Luzon as it made its way to its patrol area. Despite the designation of areas reserved for submarine operations and strict protocols for aircraft, “friendly fire” remained a very serious danger throughout the war.23 Under regulations issued in September 1944, aircraft were to refrain entirely from attacks on submarines in so-called havens and submarine patrol zones, but still submarines were attacked by their own side’s planes.24
American aircraft could access waters too shallow or close to land to be efficiently patrolled by submarines. In the bluntly named Operation Starvation, B-29s operating from Tinian in the Mariana Islands dropped some 900 mines in Japanese harbors and waterways. These would eventually account for about half of Japanese ships sunk After April 1945. During the five stages of Operation Starvation, over 12,000 mines were laid, claiming over a million tons of shipping. Both Japanese civilians in the home islands and troops abroad were figuratively strangled by having their supplies cut off. By June and July 1945, the U.S. Third Fleet combed the Japanese coast looking for any remaining shipping, and Japan had to fall back on its insufficient railways for transport.25
Even before America entered the war, Japan’s food supplies were strained by bad harvests in Korea and the demands of the military. Rice was rationed from 1940, and from October 1942 the Japanese government vested neighborhood associations and community councils with responsibility for the distribution of food and clothing. By 1944 distributions of fish had all but ceased in some areas. In August 1944 one Japanese factory reported that one-third of its workforce suffered from beriberi, the result of a white rice diet with little else of nutritional value.26 By 1945 millions of Japanese suffering from malnutrition faced the prospect of something worse. It is claimed that at least 10 percent of Japan’s population would have starved to death if the war had continued for another year. Allied commanders increasingly believed that the combined effects of blockade and aerial bombing would force Japan to surrender without the necessity of an invasion.27
With a dearth of larger freighters, the Japanese relied increasingly on small wooden vessels, often constructed by forced labor. At Pare Pare on the west coast of Celebes (today Sulawesi), 3,000 laborers turned out a dozen 170-ton ships per month. In the Menado district of northern Celebes the locals were subject to press-gang parties that forced them to leave their homes and work at shipyards, while large swathes of forest were cut down to provide timber.28
At times submarines were able to target vessels still under construction. On 26 July 1945 the USS Barb sighted a sampan-building yard at Shibetoro in the Kurile Islands. The yard had sixteen cradles for construction, and rows of newly built craft sat at the water’s edge not far away. Using its 20 mm and 40 mm guns, the Barb started a fire that consumed much of the area and destroyed thirty-five new sampans.29
The closing months of the war saw an increasing number of bombardments on shore targets. The Japanese had initiated the first submarine-land bombardments, beginning with an attack on the American base at Johnson Island in mid-December 1941. Japanese submarines briefly shelled Midway on 23 January 1942, but were quickly forced to dive by shore batteries. The following month, on 24 February 1942, the I-17 made the first attack on the U.S. mainland, shelling the Richland Oil refineries south of Santa Barbara, California.
At this stage of the war submarine bombardments were mainly intended to terrorize civilian populations rather than cause genuine damage. On 8 June 1942 the Japanese submarines I-24 and I-21 surfaced off Australia’s eastern coast and shelled the suburbs of Sydney and Newcastle, and on 28 January 1943 the I-165 fired about ten shells at the tiny community of Port Gregory on the western coast. Since such actions caused relatively little damage and exposed submarines to considerable danger, they were generally unpopular with Japanese skippers.30
Early in the war the oversized USS Nautilus, armed with six-inch guns, provided supporting fire for commando landings. In August 1942 the Nautilus fired its huge guns at Makin Island in the Gilberts to provide cover for landing Marines. In the course of the action, planned partly as a diversion for the invasion of Guadalcanal, the Nautilus lobbed twenty-four shells at a Japanese post, and then sank a freighter and patrol boat with its guns. In November 1943, during Operation Galvanic in the Gilbert Islands, the Nautilus carried seventy-eight Marines charged with capturing Apamama. Despite friendly fire from an American destroyer and cruiser, the Nautilus landed the Marines and supported the assault with its guns.31
Most American skippers, though, like their Japanese counterparts, at least initially took a cynical attitude toward the bombardment of shore targets. Pete Galantin believed that at best this was an irritant to the enemy. Nevertheless, while commanding the USS Halibut, Galantin fired fifty high-explosive shells into two warehouses on a pier at Kume Shima on Okinawa in 1944.32 By late 1944 some submarines were rehearsing night bombardments. The Piper, Sennet, and Blower held exercises on the night of 24 November 1944, firing at Valladolid Rock in Panama Bay before departing for Pearl Harbor, with the Sennet proving the best shot.33
U.S. submarines in the vicinity of Fais Island near Ulithi Atoll in the Caroline Islands regularly bombarded the phosphate plant at Refinery Point. Given the use of phosphate in the manufacture of ammunition and explosives, this seemed a worthy target. On 24 April 1944 the USS Tang fired thirty-three rounds of four-inch shells at the island, reporting that the “detonations were nicely visible.”34 The Tang found another use for its deck gun six days later, turning it on shore batteries in order to facilitate retrieving downed aviators off Ollan Island.
In the Straits of Malacca, British submarines regularly fired their deck guns at shore targets such as trains or fuel dumps.35 Gun attacks on Pratas Island, a small dot in the South China Sea some 180 miles southeast of Hong Kong, became more or less a matter of routine. The island served as a radio and weather base for the Japanese, and After departing Guam, the Puffer, Piranha, and Sea Owl were ordered to attack the island’s radio installation. On the morning of 26 March 1945, forming a column some 1,500 yards from shore, all three submarines trained their five-inch guns on a radio tower and shelled the island as dawn broke. According to the Puffer’s patrol report, it was “probably the first submarine divisional bombardment on record.”36 Eventually the Bluegill, with the aid of two Australian commandos, declared the island abandoned and hoisted an American flag there.37
At times submarines turned their guns on entire towns. Patrolling off the southeast coast of Kyushu in July, the USS Batfish surfaced near the village and barracks of Nagata on the pentagonshaped island of Yaku Shima. From a distance of 3,500 yards the submarine first opened up on the village with its 40 mm gun, firing 128 rounds. The five-inch gun then fired at the barracks and camp, apparently demolishing a frame building, although smoke made it difficult to assess the damage.38 In the Sea of Okhotsk on 2 July 1945 the USS Barb bombarded Kai Hyo To. The submarine claimed the destruction of an observation post and an oil dump with its 40 mm gun, while the Barb’s five-inch gun destroyed a new radar and radio installation.39
The USS Hawkbill, under Francis Scanland Jr., departed Subic Bay for its last patrol of the war on 28 July 1945. With five Australian commandos on board, the submarine combed the islands between Borneo and Singapore. The commandos were landed on Terampah, the capital of the Anambas Islands, where they claimed an abandoned Japanese compound. On 9 August the Hawkbill used its two five-inch guns to demolish a radio tower on Tambelan Island, located about 200 miles south of Great Matoena Island in the South China Sea. The following day it destroyed a radio tower and building on Jemaja Island in the Anambas group.40
On 28 April 1945 Slade Cutter assumed command of the brandnew USS Requin. Judging from the submarine’s armament (two fiveinch guns, two 40 mm guns, eight .50-caliber machine guns, and bow rocket launchers for five-inch shells), clearly things had changed since his days on the Pompano and Seahorse. After completing shakedown cruises and training, the Requin’s crew received orders to bombard a patrol boat base at the island of Hokkaido. To Cutter the mission appeared “stupid,” but it seemed that in the absence of enemy shipping submarines had little left to do.41 The Requin set off on 13 August, but before it could reach its objective the war was over.
In addition to bombardments, 1945 also saw an increasing number of “coordinated” gun attacks with two or more submarines acting in concert. In February the USS Bashaw combined with the Flasher in several gun attacks on sea trucks in the waters off Indochina.42 In his endorsement of the USS Blenny’s third war patrol, James Fife declared that “coordinated gun attacks, under conditions of tactical advantage and After careful planning, are encouraged.”43 On its next patrol the Blenny made an attack with the USS Cod in the early morning of 27 July 1945. Discovering up to twenty small cargo-carrying vessels anchored off the western coast of Pulo Kapas, Terengganu Island, the submarines made a simultaneous attack. After first firing warning shots so that the crews could abandon ship, the submarines claimed the destruction of three vessels each.44
In May the USS Lamprey teamed up with the Blueback to make a surface gun attack on a sub chaser.45 On patrol in the Java Sea the night of 29 June, the USS Baya picked up a small convoy of sea trucks and patrol boats on radar. The Baya waited for the arrival of the USS Capitaine at about 1:30 the following morning before it moved in to attack. Despite return fire, the submarines claimed the sinking of a sub chaser and damage on two of the sea trucks.46
According to naval historian and former submarine commander John Alden, submarines were authorized to go After coastal traffic in shallow waters and narrow straits only in the last few months of the war.47 In the relative absence of Japanese defenses, submarines often operated close to ports and land with impunity. In May 1945 the USS Bergall, along with the Bullhead, Cobia, Hawkbill, and Kraken, explored every inlet of the Gulf of Siam, sinking numerous small craft with their guns. On one night alone, 30 May, the Bergall claimed the destruction of two small tugs and five barges estimated to be about seventy-five feet long each.48
The same month half a dozen U.S. submarines operated in the Yellow Sea, with the USS Ray’s skipper, William T. Kinsella, acting as the group commander. Because of its shallow depths, averaging just 120 feet, the Yellow Sea’s murky waters presented special hazards to submarines and made it a difficult hunting ground. Operations were further inhibited by a lack of accurate charts. This in itself provided an incentive for submarines to operate largely on the surface, destroying craft carrying coal and other cargo.49 The Ray received credit for sinking twenty-one miscellaneous craft in what one patrol endorsement described as “well planned and expertly conducted gun attacks.”50 During the patrol the Ray expended all of its five-inch and 40 mm ammunition. The total tonnage claimed, slightly over 6,000 tons, was the equivalent of one medium-sized freighter.51
The Ray illustrated the desperation for targets on its next patrol in the Gulf of Siam, when in order to sink seven junks found anchored north of Lem Chong Pra, six men from the Ray paddled two raft s to the vessels and blew them up using demolition charges.52 Torpedoes were also occasionally resorted to in destroying small craft. During the Aspro’s sixth war patrol in April 1945, Commander James “Jungle Jim” Ashley unleashed a torpedo on a vessel described as about the size of a seagoing tug. It was customary for the skipper to be presented with a “victory cake” following successful attacks; on this occasion the Aspro’s baker presented Ashley with a cupcake.53
The Sea of Japan—frequently referred to in Allied naval circles as Hirohito’s private bathtub or pond—appeared to be the last haven of Japanese shipping on any scale. Stretching some 900 miles from Tsushima Strait in the southwest to La Perouse Strait in the northeast, the sea is 250 miles at its widest point. With most other routes cut off, the bulk of Japan’s remaining imports crossed the Sea of Japan from Manchuria and Korea. With the entrances to the sea guarded by dense minefields, no submarine had tried to gain entry since the loss of Mush Morton and the Wahoo in October 1943. Tokyo Rose, the Japanese radio propagandist with an American accent, warned Allied submariners that these waters could not be penetrated, and if they were there was no escape.54
Despite these warnings, in June 1945 nine submarines equipped with a new technology for detecting mines made their way into the Sea of Japan through Tsushima Strait. Dubbed Operation Barney, the mission paid tribute to Barney Sieglaff, who had been instrumental in putting it together. Sieglaff, a former skipper of the Tautog and the Tench, joined staff at Guam as an assistant operations officer. The Sea of Japan operation, though, was very much the brainchild of Charles Lockwood. From the outset Lockwood had followed the development of mine-detection equipment, visiting the Naval Research Laboratory at San Diego (part of the University of California’s Division of War Research) in April 1943. He personally checked out the frequency modulated (FM) sonar operators and rode on many submarines when they later made training runs against dummy mines planted off Saipan.55
The USS Spadefish became the first submarine to have FM sonar installed for detecting mines. When William Germershausen relieved Gordon Underwood as commander of the Spadefish, he inquired about the FM sonar gear on board, but was told not to worry about it because he would never need to use it. The next thing he knew, Germershausen was sent to map the minefields at Tsushima Strait, but the FM sonar equipment constantly broke down. The Spadefish was withdrawn, and the mapping assigned to the Seahorse. On his next patrol, though, Germershausen received instructions to penetrate the minefield at Tsushima Strait with eight other submarines.56
Deliberately sailing into a minefield was not high on most submariners’ agenda, and a number of skippers expressed cynicism about the plan. It “wasn’t a very appealing mission,” Alexander Tyree recalled, with some understatement.57 Red Ramage considered that the risks were greater than the chances for real success. He believed the main rationale behind the operation, as envisioned by Admiral Lockwood, was to demonstrate that Japanese ships had no place to hide. “He wanted to prove that we could even penetrate minefields and to do this before the war was over.”58
By Lockwood’s own account, his haste to enter the Sea of Japan was in part politically motivated. With Germany’s surrender, Russia’s active engagement against Japan appeared imminent, and Lockwood felt little enthusiasm about sharing operational areas with the Soviets. At a more personal level, Lockwood saw the operation as a way of avenging the loss of Mush Morton and the Wahoo. He acted against the advice of his own Submarine Operational Research Group (SORG), which warned that the mission was likely to result in heavy losses for relatively little gain.59
The FM sonar installed on the Operation Barney submarines made an eerie screeching noise when in the proximity of mines, instantly putting crews in a state of alarm.60 Not trusting his FM sonar equipment, Germershausen took the Spadefish under the mines rather than around them as instructed. Once inside the Sea of Japan, the USS Crevalle celebrated the second anniversary of its commissioning with a huge cake. It bore the inscription “Was this trip necessary?”61 It was a question many of the submariners no doubt pondered.
Working in groups of three, the submarines were scheduled to begin their attacks at sunset on 9 June, with orders to sink anything and everything Japanese. Lockwood hoped the attacks would strike a fatal blow to Japanese morale and undermine any remaining confidence in the country’s leaders.62 Almost inevitably, the mission proved an anticlimax, since even in the Sea of Japan the amount of shipping proved disappointing. The USS Bowfin, patrolling the Korean side of the sea, found few targets and sank only two small ships. As the Bowfin’s skipper, Alexander K. Tyree, put it, “The Japanese just did not have that many anymore.”63 At one stage, when the submarine’s crew was inspecting a small craft outside Joshin Harbor, some smiling Koreans handed over a mess of freshly caught fish.64
Also designated an area off Korea, the Flying Fish had instructions to patrol the northern coast between the ports of Seishin (now Chongjin) and Rashin (now Najin). As the submarine headed toward Seishin in fog, its radar picked up a number of small targets. The crewmen sighted three sailing vessels, and when they approached the lead boat the Flying Fish’s commander used an American-Japanese translation book to call on the crews to abandon their craft. After receiving no response, they fired .50-caliber bullets into the hull, followed by some 40 mm rounds into the bow. Finally persuaded to abandon ship, the crew pushed off in a small boat. The Flying Fish finished off the vessel, loaded with lumber, with its five-inch gun.65
After firing on the other two sailing vessels, the Flying Fish spotted a tug with two barges as the fog lifted. The barges, loaded with bricks, were close enough for pieces of shattered brick to reach the submarine’s deck when the crew opened fire with the 40 mm gun. Dale Russell, a gunner on the submarine, recalls the action as “unpleasant.” One of the men on the tug managed to scramble over the bow, but another fell to the deck. According to Russell, “None of us took pride in the miniscule dent we may have put in Japan’s war supplies,” and he felt sympathy for the “poor bastards” killed.66
When the Flying Fish encountered a fishing fleet, it sank ten to fifteen of the craft with its deck guns. The executive officer, Julian T. Burke Jr., later described the attacks as “terrible.” Although he did not protest the skipper’s decision at the time, he concluded that such attacks were “not good psychology with the crew and the officers.”67
The USS Tunny, along with the Skate and the Bonefish, prowled the southwestern sector along the coast of Honshu. The Tunny’s skipper, George E. Pierce, was highly motivated, having lost his older brother on the USS Argonaut. The Tunny made two torpedo attacks, neither successful. The submarine returned empty-handed apart from two prisoners, apparently survivors of a ship sunk by the Bonefish.68
The Spadefish worked its way north to La Perouse Strait, but found the ships off Hokkaido disappointingly small, with its first three victims about 1,000 tons each. On 12 June at 3:30 a.m., the Spadefish made its first gun attack After spotting a motor sampan with sails rigged, quickly setting the sampan on fire. One of the Spadefish crew jumped overboard to capture a souvenir, a glass fishing ball from the vessel. The Spadefish destroyed another fishing vessel by gunfire later the same morning. Although the vessel appeared to have a machine gun on its bow, this proved to be only a wooden mock-up. Later in the day two more vessels were sunk by gunfire. Following one of the attacks torpedoman Lundquist, manning a machine gun, confided to his journal: “Got myself a Jap with .30 caliber.”69
More attacks on freighters followed, but the Spadefish’s largest kill proved a case of mistaken identity. In the Soya Strait between Hokkaido and Karafuto, the Spadefish torpedoed a 10,000-ton freighter. Germershausen, who had already been called on the carpet for mistakenly firing on a Russian ship in the Sea of Okhotsk during a previous patrol, hesitated to attack, but was egged on by his junior officers. The ship indeed later proved to be Russian—the Transbalt sailing out of Vladivostok. Having expended all of the Spadefish’s torpedoes, Germershausen sought to make more gun attacks on small craft, but was denied permission by the pack commander.70
After sixteen days in the Sea of Japan, the submarines were to rendezvous at midnight on 24 June. When they assembled at the designated point just inside the bleak waters of La Perouse Strait, one of the submarines was missing. The USS Bonefish, last spotted on 18 June, had disappeared with all hands. The submarines had sunk a total of twenty-eight ships and another sixteen small craft on the mission.71
The destruction of junks and coastal traffic continued in other parts of the Pacific. Patrolling the Gulf of Siam, Tonkin Gulf, and the South China Sea, the USS Hawkbill found two junks at anchor only 1,000 yards off shore in the vicinity of Pulo Tenggol on the evening of 20 July 1945. Despite the proximity of land, crewmen from the Hawkbill boarded the larger of the two junks, finding it loaded to the gunwales with about 25,000 pounds of rice for Singapore. After putting the junk’s crew in their lifeboat, they set the junk on fire. It burned slowly until raked with a pan of incendiary 20 mm shells, which set some fuel drums alight. The patrol report noted approvingly that After this the junk burned “very nicely.”72 More junks were boarded and burned using similar procedures.
The same month, July, After a fruitless search in the East Java Sea, the USS Puffer made a surface sweep along the northern coast of Bali, determined to see some action before heading back to base at Fremantle. When the submarine arrived at Chelukan Banang in the early hours of 5 July, the crew was surprised to find another submarine, the USS Lizardfish, already shelling the bay with its deck gun. The Lizardfish had left a couple of boathouses and a wooden lugger on fire on the beach. It had missed, however, five well-camouflaged barges, and the Puffer opened up on these with its five-inch gun from 1,400 yards. When hit the barges, apparently loaded with aviation fuel, sent flames 300 feet into the air. The Puffer’s skipper, Carl R. Dwyer, described it as “the most amazing sight I have seen in four years of submarine warfare.”73
The Puffer continued its sweep along Bali’s northern coast looking for more targets, and at Buleleng found a bay full of small craft. From 1,100 yards it opened up with the five-inch gun on a wooden sea truck anchored near the waterfront. After the submarine scored three quick hits in the middle of the vessel it broke in two, and with continued fire it disappeared entirely. Dwyer noted, “At this close range it was a revelation to see the power and destruction of this 5 inch High Capacity ammunition.”74
The Puffer crew next shelled a freshly painted landing barge beached at the water’s edge, and then trained the guns on a steel sea truck and motor sampan camouflaged with foliage. Finally a shore battery opened fire on the submarine, putting a round fifteen feet off the starboard side. The Puffer crew cleared the decks and submerged the boat, but hung around long enough to fire two torpedoes. One of the torpedoes hit the sea truck, while the other ran up the river to explode near a hub of activity at a bridge.
With the Puffer claiming damage on harbor installations as well as the sinking of two sea trucks and six landing craft, the patrol was judged “successful” on the basis of this one day’s work. The gun actions, however, had been made at enormous risk. According to some of the crew, at least forty men were topside when the Japanese returned fire. Just clearing the deck before the submarine dived presented a major hazard that could have gone horribly wrong.75
The USS Barb similarly took enormous risks in pursuing shipping during its Twelfth war patrol. In order to raise his crew’s morale, Commander Gene Fluckey declared that they would sink fifteen vessels “of some kind” during the patrol. Hugging the east coast of Karafuto, near the town of Sakayehama, the Barb pursued a lugger into waters too shallow to dive. Although the Barb managed to sink the lugger, it was lucky to avoid counterattack by an aircraft and coastal defense cannons.76
The final U.S. submarine gun attacks of the war were made by the Balao as it patrolled east of Honshu. On the Afternoon of 14 August the submarine spotted two luggers or picket boats hugging the coast, estimated to be a little over 100 tons each. After the Balao opened fire, one of the vessels beached itself. Although the submarine’s fiveinch shells appeared to fall short of the other vessel, they may have inflicted underwater damage since it began to sink. Both craft were believed armed, but the Balao received no return fire. Most of the Balao’s efforts on the patrol, though, were devoted to lifeguarding for downed aircraft crews, and the submarine returned to Pearl Harbor two days After the gun attacks.77