[Munchausen]

Originally Posted by rrmelend

I'd like to see your sources for this info. You are right abou the Barb but most of the skippers running on the top for extended periods of daylight hours came during the last year of the war when radar had advanced enough and the threat of detection was less than before.

Many (mostly older) skippers ran submerged so as to comply with the Navy's policy for daylight operations ... but there were other skippers (mostly younger) who ran submerged only out of necessity. For the latter, you can read from any one (or more) of the following autobiographical accounts:

• Wahoo, R. H. O'Kane
• Clear the Bridge, R. H. O'Kane
• Take Her Deep!, I. Galantin
• Batfish, H. Lowder
• Submarine Diary, Mendenhall

And from the one book I still haven't returned to the library I quote:

"Silent Running" by James F. Calvert

pp. 114-115

About a week later, the SD earned its salt. It was a heavily overcast day with many low-lying clouds. We were passing Marcus island, a known base for Japanese patrol planes. We had an SD contact at four miles and did not wait to try to see him. As we passed about sixty feet, WHAM!

The SD had seen something, all right, and the patrol plane must have seen us diving. We leveled off at 150 feet.

WHAM!...WHAM! Two more bombs, much closer.

"Let's hope that three is all he carries," said Dykers, who by now had come to the conning tower. Apparently it was, for we heard no more. About a half hour later, we surfaced.

... All that day, February 5, we were plagued with aircraft from Marcus obviously looking for the submarine that had been bombed. They combed the area pretty thoroughly. We had to dive four times. Each time the airplane was detected by the SD.

pp. 131-132

We set our course for the Mindoro Strait to pass from the South China Sea into the Sulu Sea.

... There were lots of planes out looking for us this time. We dove again and again but tried to come up each time so that we could make some time. In the afternoon one spotted us for sure and, as we passed one hundred feet on the way down, BANG!...BANG!

Two bombs--not too close, but they sure got our attention.

A half hour later, just as we were getting ready to come to periscope depth, BANG!

"Well," said Dykers, "I think we'll stay down a little longer."

We surfaced at dark and proceeded to pass through the Mindoro Strait.

... Soon we passed through the Sibutu Passage, near the northeastern tip of Borneo, and entered the Celebes Sea. Each day brought more patrol planes and more emergency dives, but we had to stay up as much as we could during the day if we wanted to get to Australia within a month.

Note that, in the passage on page 114, Calvert talks about the SD radar. Not the SJ. And it all happened on the Jack's third patrol, February to March 1944.