Thread: Hellships
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Old 08-15-06, 06:05 PM   #9
don1reed
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The USS Squalus sunk in eastcoast waters before the war (freak accident). Her sister boat, USS Sculpin found her and some of her surviving crew were rescued.

Quote:
from Squalus/Sailfish website:

Squalus was raised in the summer of 1939, and after repair was recommissioned as U.S.S. Sailfish, reportedly at the suggestion of President Roosevelt. Sailors generally consider renaming a ship to be bad luck, but Sailfish—sometimes, despite the objections of her subsequent commanding officers, called "Squalfish"—survived the war with a total bag of 40,000 tons, eventually being scrapped in 1948. In an ironic turn of fate, Sailfish sank the Japanese aircraft carrier Chuyo, which had been carrying half of the surviving crew members from Sculpin, which had located Squalus in 1939. Only one of those being transported by Chuyo survived and, along with the other survivors, spent the remainder of the war as slave laborers in Japan.
Note: about that lone Sculpin survivor...he didn't find out that Squalus/Sailfish sunk the Chuyo, on which he was being transported as a prisoner, until years after the war.
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Last edited by don1reed; 08-15-06 at 06:14 PM.
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