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Originally Posted by Ducimus
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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.
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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. |
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.
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Originally Posted by Ducimus
"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."
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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.