Harbor raids - A true story?
 

There's a thread below that talks about harbor raids in SH4. In the fall of 1942, a US submarine called at Esquimalt, the Canadian naval base near Victoria and tied up alongside the ship where my father was XO. His ship had been part of the joint US-Canadian task force patrols to Dutch Harbor after the Japanese invaded Attu and Kiska. Canadian ships have a "wet" wardroom and he welcomed the sub captain and officers to Canada. After several rounds, they offered him a tour for me. I was 8 at the time. The crew couldn't have been nicer and gave me a full tour, including a look through the periscope. They invited me for lunch and served ham and pineapple. Meat was rationed during the war and no one saw pineapple. They even gave me seconds so this in itself was a major treat. Over lunch they told me how they had spent the day on the bottom of a Japanese harbor and could see the race course through the periscope, so spent the afternoon betting among themselves on the races. I was sworn to secrecy about this story. By this time my eyes must have been the size of saucers. It is only in later years that I wondered if it was true. I have no recollection as to the name of the submarine but have never seen reference to anything like it in any of the histories of US submarines. Has anyone ever run across a story like this?

Harbor raids in the pacifc, in general, are true. Many reported incidents, (and photo's to back them up). In the altantic, other then scapa flow, harbor raids are little more then fiction.

Hi Odjig were you aboard HMCS Prince david

there is a tale of a us submarine that watched the
racetrack through the periscope.

Part of what they told you is true part is not.

According to Adm Charles Lockwood in his book
"Sink em all" the sub did sit there and see the racetrack
however no races were being run at the time.

Ill try to find the name of the sub.

Yeah i have heard many stories about Harbor Raids. So i know for sure that they happened.

Read up on the USS Wahoo. Going into harbors was not an issue and Mush Morton made many harbor raids.

The story that you heard was a sub legend, documented in Clay Blair's Silent Victory. After what was thought at the time to be a record-setting patrol by Burt Klakring in USS Guardfish, the USN held a press conference, rare for the sub service, to give newspaper reporters some morale building stuff to write about for the folks back home. The reporters were shown a chart, and on the chart was a notation for "race track". A reporter asked about it, and Klakring, having some fun with the press, said that the crew placed bets on the ponies while watching the races. While it's true that Guardfish operated very close to the coast of Honshu, it was just a story, but it made for a great one, and newspapers all over America ran it.

As for harbor raids, there's some sub legend in that too. There were numerous cases of US subs making attacks on Japanese shipping at anchor. Examples of US attacks are Mush at Wewak, Street at Cheju-Do, and the various attacks on Matsuwa in the Kuriles.

But, the places chosen for attacks weren't harbors in the sense that people in the US and Europe think of a harbor as, like New York harbor or San Francisco Bay. Rather, these were anchorages that were open to the sea, where the trick was to avoid uncharted shallows and enemy defenses and deal with in-shore currents to come close enough to achieve a firing position on ships anchored next to shore, then get away alive....but not, like Prien at Scapa Flow, sailing miles up a narrow channel to hit a ship in a harbor.

SH4 gives one the impression that US subs snuck up miles of estuary deep into Japanese harbors to pick off ships at the dock, like in Tokyo Bay or the Inland Sea, and nothing like that ever happened. But, it makes for a great story.

Thanks for the responses!
 

Mush, how the heck did you know it was HMCS Prince David? You know your history. Yes, it was the PD. My father was XO for the Aleutians Campaign and then took over as CO and took it through the D-Day, Southern France and Greece invasions.

I don't think I have read Lockwood's book. I'll get it from the local naval museum library. The fact that the sub saw the racetrack is close enough. They probably enjoyed having a gullible kid as an audience. but it sure made my day. Thanks for the confirmation that the story had some truth.

My world geography's a little rusty, where was this again? Granted its not sinking ships, but the location of this foto is very telling.
http://www.ducimus.net/sh4/release/fuji.jpg


I particuarlly loved this pictures taken by the Seawolf:
http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/0819705.jpg
http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/0819706.jpg

(navsources doesnt like picture linking, so heres the orginal page)
http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/08197.htm
"Seen by Seawolf (SS-197) at Davao Gulf-Sagami Maru in Talomo Bay. Periscope snapshot shows jungly shoreline; camouflaged ship loading hemp. Then she got a load of - fish from "Fearless Freddie" Warder."

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

The Whole history of Submarine and ASW I am into
but the RCN Role in WWII has been part of my obsession
with the Battle of the atlantic as well as my seeming
all consuming obsession with River Class Frigates.

MM

A shot in the Dark I know this isnt right but im out of time.

JACKSON, Thomas James, Paymaster Lieutenant - Mention in Despatches - RCNVR - Awarded as per London Gazette of 1 January 1945 (no Canada Gazette).
Home: Toronto, Ontario.
JACKSON. Thomas James, 0-36050, Paym/Lt(Temp) [1.3.42]
RCNVR A/LCdr(Temp) [1.1.43]
HMCS PRINCE DAVID (F89) amc, (15.8.43-?) MID~[1.1.45]
Paym/LCdr(Temp) [1.1.44]
HMCS PEREGRINE, Accounts, (1.10.44-?)
A/Cdr(S)(Temp) [1.1.45]
HMCS PEREGRINE, Supply Officer, (26.5.45-?)
Cdr(S) [1.1.46] RCN(R)
HMCS DISCOVERY, Vancouver Naval Division, SupO, (25.3.46-?)
Demobilized [8.7.46]
"For gallantry or outstanding service in the face of the enemy or for zeal, patience and cheerfulness in dangerous waters and for setting an example of wholehearted devotion to duty, upholding the high traditions of the Royal Canadian Navy." New Years List (Admiralty) A.F.O. 239/45.

A small world
 

I knew Jackson well. Not only was he paymaster of the PD, but he was Manager of the Badminton & Racquet Club in Toronto for many years after the war where I was a member. He was one of the officers that told me about the PD's two years in Europe. Father never talked about the war.

Are you implying that someone sunk Mount Fuji ? :rock:

I don't know where the sub was when that photo of Mt Fuji was taken, and if you do, please post that info. If that info isn't known, it could very easily have been taken from an area of open ocean, since Mt Fuji can be seen from Suruga Bay and Sagami Bay, which are huge, open areas. US subs definitely did enter Sagami Bay, but it's not a harbor.

The Gulf of Davao is also huge and it's deep too, 33 miles wide at its entrance, and Talomo Bay is 12 miles wide. Again, these are open areas, Warder didn't penetrate up a narrow channel to get there. Sagami Maru wasn't the only ship US subs sank in the Gulf of Davao, either.

But not for a moment, not for a picosecond, am I suggesting that those guys didn't have balls of steel to do what they did. Part of the history is that the successful US sub skippers combined aggressiveness with calculated risktaking, not rashness, and that can be seen in an examination of the places that they chose to make their attacks.

Ducimus, if you are interested in seeing how US subs operated against anchorages, not harbors, open up Google Earth and visit these coordinates.

Wewak 3-33S, 143-38E
Matsuwa 48-2N, 153-19E
Cheju-Do 33-25N, 126-15E
Talomo Bay 7-1N, 125-33E
Sagami Bay 35-8N, 139-23E

Edit: That wasn't the first time Fearless Freddy Warder shot at something next to the shore. On Apr 1 1942 he put the light cruiser Naka out of action for about six months at Christmas Island at 10-25S, 105-39E. That's at Flying Fish Cove, where merchant ships would come to load phosphates. Again, an anchorage, not a harbor.

Mount Fuji is bugged and takes 12 torps to sink....:rotfl: