Captain Hara (Of "Japanese Destroyer Captain" fame) seemed to be rather "iffy" when it came to ASW. When he commanded the Amatsukaze he may have sunk a Dutch boat,(One was lost near the time and place where he attacked it),he also was in one of those 2 DD groups that attacked the Perch,but he just did a few DC runs,lost contact and assumed the sub was sunk.
When he commanded the Shigure,a transport he was escorting was torpedoed and sunk and all he did was make a few DC runs where he "thought" the torps came from,then he went back to the transport to transfer the crew to his ship. He assumed his DC runs would scare off the sub.
Hara was a brilliant DD commander when it came to surface actions,but he was pretty lousy at ASW. It was just pure luck that he sank the Dutch sub. He claims to have personally spotted it on the surface at close range due to a crewman on the bridge of the sub smoking a cigarette. (Hara claims it was the glow from the cigarette that he saw first before actually seeing the sub). When the Amatsukaze turned towards the sub and went to full speed the sub dived,but it was so close that Hara was able to estimate where the sub was and dropped a shallow pattern of DCs that basically nailed the Dutch sub. The Amatsukaze dropped a second pattern of DCs,but by that time there was a large patch of fuel oil rising to the surface.
It does seem that alot of the Japanese ASW kills happened on the first DC run. The Harder being an example.
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