by Ryan Jenkins
On January 12th 1942, the Trout left Pearl Harbor with 3” AAA ammunition, 3500 rounds of it, which was to be delivered to the besieged forces on Corregidor. She stopped for fuel at Midway Island on January 16th. She was near the Bonin Islands on January 27th when she spotted a light around 1400 meters away and fired a torpedo. Unfortunately, this torpedo missed. So she closed to 550 meters which was when she found out that her target was a small vessel, a submarine chaser. She had been ordered to avoid small ships so she ignored the submarine chaser and moved onto the Philippines. Trout rendezvoused with PT-34 on February 3rd just off Corregidor and allowed the PT-34 to escort her through the minefields to the South Dock.
Once there, she unloaded her cargo, refueled and loaded two torpedoes. She requested for additional ballast. Since they could not find any concrete or sandbags, the Trout was given 20 tons of silver pesos and gold bars that needed to be evacuated from the Philippines. The gold and silver came from twelve Philippine banks that had emptied their assets and burned the paper money so that it would not fall into the hands of the Japanese. She also took in securities, mail and United States Department of State dispatches. She then submerged just before dawn so that she could wait at the bottom of Manila Bay for darkness to approach. In the evening, she was loaded with more mail before being escorted to open waters. Then the Trout set course for East China Sea. She reached the East China Sea on February 10th.
That very afternoon the Trout launched a torpedo from 1800 meters away at a freighter. Unfortunately, she missed. She moved closer and managed to hit the freighter with both the torpedoes that she launched. It took just 25 minutes for the boilers to burst. The blasts could be heard clearly over the sonar. The freighter then began her descent to the bottom of the sea. In the evening on her way back through the Bonin Islands when she sighted another light. She changed her course and made her way towards the light. She got to 2700 meters of the ship and launched two torpedoes, both of which missed. In the time between the two torpedoes, the enemy ship let out their own torpedo that just missed the Trout’s port side. As the submarine dived down to 120 feet, another torpedo narrowly missed her. The Trout then came up to periscope depth and fired yet another torpedo which met its mark and the ship blew up. Her sonar picked up another ship moving at full speed. However, there was no time or opportunity to attack it. The Trout reached Pearl Harbor on March 3rd 1942 where she transferred her precious ballast to the cruiser, Detroit. She was credited with the sinking of a 200-ton patrol ship.
This patrol earned Trout a Presidential Unit Citation. Her commander, Fenno received both the Army Distinguished Service Cross and the Navy Cross. Her entire crew was awarded the Silver Star by Delos C. Emmons the Hawaiian Department commanding general. These awards were bestowed upon them in a ceremony on March 18th 1942.
The submarine’s third patrol was into the waters of Japan. She was out on this patrol from March 24th 1942 to May 17th 1942. On April 9th, while patrolling the waters between Ichie-Zakia and Shioni-Misaki, Trout spotted two cargo ships. She launched a torpedo at each ship but both missed. The next day she launched a torpedo at a streamer and missed yet again. On April 11th, she spotted and attacked a large freighter. Out of the two torpedoes she used, one found its mark but the freighter still did not sink. After this, for a week between April 16th and April 23rd, the Trout acted as a cover for the Doolittle Raid Task Force. Finally, she got lucky on April 24th when she managed to hit a 10000-ton tanker with two torpedoes. The tanker headed for the beach. The submarine spotted a cargo ship going to the rescue of the tanker and launched another torpedo at the cargo ship. This one missed so she moved closer and fired again. This one found its target and hit the cargo ship with a huge explosion. The cargo was also headed for shallow waters. Four days later she attacked a 1000-ton patrol vessel that sank to the bottom. On April 30th, she attacked two ships but she missed both. On May 2nd she sank the cargo ship Uzan Maru and two days later she attacked the gunboat Kongõsan Maru. As a result of the sinking of Kongõsan Maru, the submarine faced a six-hour depth charge before she could get into safe waters. She received her second Presidential Unit Citation and Fenno his second award of the Navy Cross for this patrol.
Her 4th patrol started on May 21st 1942 as a unit of Task Group 7.1. This group was known as the Midway Island Patrol Group and consisted of 12 submarines. She was stationed to the south of the island because nine of the submarines were position in a fan-like formation in preparation for attacks by the Japanese. On June 4th, the Trout spotted a Japanese fighter plane. She went deep and heard and series of explosions. She returned to Pearl Harbor on June 14th. She then underwent refitting to include search radars and JP sonar to help her during her mission to Australia. She also had two Prisoners of War (POW) from the Japanese cruiser Mikuma.
For her 5th patrol, she changed command. Her new commander Lieutenant Commander Lawson Paterson “Red” Ramage, steered her towards Australia. She started her patrols on September 7th. However, she was detected by three patrol crafts on September 10th. She was forced to go deep for one and a half hours when the crafts started attacking her. She was attacked with 45 depth charges. The very next day she sighted a large transport ship but the escorts with the ship forced the Trout to retreat. On September 21st the submarine fired three torpedoes at Koei Maru, a naval auxiliary. The first torpedo broke the ship in half while the remaining hit the aft section.
A week later, she attacked a group of vessels consisting of two cruisers, an escort carrier and two destroyers. She fired five torpedoes and heard two explosions. The carrier Taiyō was hit and there was smoke pouring out of her near the water line. She heard high-speed screws approaching her and immediately dived to 200 feet just as ten depth charges shook her.
With one week remaining for her patrol to end, Trout entered the southern deep water entrance to Truk Lagoon. Six miles west of South Islands, she came to periscope depth. Just as she lowered her periscope, there was an explosion that shook the ship. The entire crew just stood stunned. She dived 150 feet. As she dived, another bomb exploded but it did not affect her. Since her periscopes were damaged, she returned to Brisbane for repairs. She reached Capricorn Wharf on October 13th 1942. This patrol earned her third Presidential Unit Citation.
Her 6th patrol, which began on October 26th 1942, was to the Solomon Islands. On November 13th when she was patrolling 130 km north of Indispensable Strait she was commanded to intercept the Kongō-class battleship Kirishima. The very next day the Trout located the battleship and its escort in the process of refueling. However, she was unable to maneuver into a position to attack. Trout attacked the battleship in the afternoon and fired five torpedoes. All five torpedoes failed; either because they missed or they did not detonate. She completed her patrol 10 days later and returned to Brisbane. She left Brisbane on November 25th after off-loading her torpedoes. She set course for Fremantle in Western Australia where the rest of her squadron was positioned.
Trout set out to patrol the South China Sea near North Borneo on December 29th 1942. The submarine spotted a large tanker near Miri on January 11th 1943 and from 1800 meters away she launched three torpedoes. The first two managed to hit the target and a few minutes later there was a loud explosion. Since the Japanese records showed no sinking in that area during the time, it is possible that the ship managed to head back to port instead of sinking.
Ten days later just off Indochina, Trout spotted and attacked an unidentified cargo ship. On January 29th she launched three torpedoes at a destroyer that was believed to be the Phra Ruang, which was previously the R-class destroyer HMS Radiant. However, all the torpedoes were duds. On February 7th, she sighted Nisshin Maru No.2 near Lutong, Borneo. She approached the target underwater and launched two torpedoes. There was an explosion and smoke was seen. However, the tanker did not sink. It was known later that the tanker had been towed and scrapped in April. A week later the Trout attacked a tanker with two torpedoes. One was a dud while the other hit the bow of the ship. The Trout then sur
faced to open fire at the ship using her deck guns. However, this turned out to be a bad idea because seven of her men were injured in the machine gun fire from the enemy. The submarine fired another torpedo that hit the Hirotama Maru and watched the ship sink slowly amongst the waves. Her patrol ended on February 25th 1943.
The Trout’s next patrol was to plant naval mines in API Passage. She left for the mission on March 22nd 1943. She planted twenty-three naval mines on April 7th and 8th. She then went on to patrol the Singapore trade route. On April 19th she launched four torpedoes at a freighter but didn’t do any damage. On the same day she fired three torpedoes at a tanker and all of them missed. On April 23rd she spotted two trawlers. She attacked at the surface and soon her deck guns soon sunk one of the trawlers by setting it on fire. Then she managed to set the other one also on fire. With only one torpedo remaining, the submarine headed back to Fremantle.
For her 9th patrol, the Trout changed command. She was now commanded by Lieutenant Commander Albert Hobbs Clark who was once her executive officer. From May 27th to July 20th 1943. She performed a special mission during a war patrol in Southern Philippines. On June 9th she failed to sink a transport using three torpedoes. She then proceeded to land a US Army team comprising of 5 men at Labangan. On July 15th, she destroyed Sanraku Maru, the tanker. She also spotted three coastal streamers and managed to send two of them to the seabed with her deck guns. She destroyed Isuzu Maru on July 1st with four torpedoes. Eight days later she picked up five American officers from Pagadian Bay and headed back to Fremantle. Amongst those five officers were Lieutenant Commander Charles Parsons and AAF Lieutenant Colonel William E Dyess.
Trout head out to sea again on August 12th. She was to patrol Surigao Strait and San Bernardino Strait and then head back to Pearl Harbor. On August 25th, she battled a cargo-fisherman boat. She then sent a party onboard the vessel. After they returned to the submarine with papers, charts and other valuable information that would be studied by the officers, the vessel was destroyed. Three out of the five prisoners were sent off in a dinghy near Tifore Island.
On September 9th she fired three torpedoes at a Kaidai class submarine in the Surigao Strait. Half a minute later, the crew heard a loud explosion. Then the crew noticed that there was a torpedo approaching the submarine so she dived down to 100 feet. After she heard a second explosion, she used her periscope but could see no sign of the I-182 submarine that she had sunk. On 23rd September, she sighted two ships and an escort. One was a freighter with planes and the other was a passenger-cargo. The Trout fired a torpedo at each of the ships. She saw two torpedoes hit their target. The freighter sank first. Then followed a five-hour long depth charge. Then Trout surfaced and chased the damaged transport ship before the escort could return. As the transport was being abandoned the Trout passed 12 to 15 lifeboats. That night the submarine set course for Hawaii and reached Pearl Harbor on October 4th 1943.
Trout was then sent back to the United States for a modernization at the Mare Island Navy Yard. She returned to the Submarine Division 162 in January 1944.
In February 1944, the Trout began her 11th, and what would be her final, patrol. She stopped for fuel at Midway Island and on 16th February she headed towards the East China Sea. According to records, the Trout attacked Matsu No.1, a Japanese convoy. The convoy was carrying the 29th Infantry Division of Kwantung Army from Manchuria and Guam. The convoy comprised of four transports escorted by three destroyers. The submarine damaged one passenger-cargo ship and sank a transport ship. One of the other ships detected the Trout and dropped 19 depth charges. Oil and debris floated to the surface so the destroyer dropped another depth charge in the exact spot. The submarine used Mk. XVIII torpedoes, so it was possible that one of the torpedoes made a circular run, which sunk the submarine.
According to the US Navy Muster Reports, the Trout was declared as Missing in Action with all 81 crewmembers on April 7th 1944. On April 8th 1945, she was declared lost with all crew men including her Commander Clark and executive officer, Lieutenant Harry Eades Woodworth.
Chapter 16: The Submarine with the Funny Nose
The HMS Upholder was a Royal Navy U class submarine that was operational from October 31st 1940. Upholder was the most famous and successful of the U-class submarines.
U-class submarines were a class of submarines that were operational just before World War II. These submarines were small and were initially designed to be unarmed submarines for use during anti-submarine training sessions. The first three boats of this class of submarine (HMS Undine, HMS Unity and HMS Ursula) were commissioned in 1936. They were later on equipped to hold two external and four internal torpedo tubes. HMS Ursula and the boats to follow on later were also given a 76mm gun even though they lacked a hatch for a gun crew.
As World War II became inevitable, the second group of U-class submarines comprising of twelve submarines were commissioned. HMS Upholder was one of them. Upholder and three others were the only four submarines amongst the twelve to have the four external tubes. The tubes were removed from the design of the others because they interfered with death keeping at periscope death due to the extended bow wave. It was this extended bow wave that earned the Upholder the name of “the sub with a funny nose”. These submarines were used mainly in the North Sea and Mediterranean.
HMS Upholder carried eight torpedoes. These torpedoes ran at forty-five knots without any kind of homing capability. They were primitive when compared to the weapons we have today. In order to aim the torpedo, the entire boat had to be pointed in the direction of the target while calculating the target’s speed and the angle. The skipper used a machine known as the ISWAS or “the fruit machine” which allowed him to calculate the lead angle. The time it took for the torpedo to hit a target 1000 yards away was around 40 seconds. So the crew would know if they hit or missed within 40 seconds and could then prepare the next shot accordingly. If they missed they would immediately have the next set of torpedoes ready to shoot.
Life on board a submarine is grueling to say the least. Duty on a submarine was the most dangerous of them all. While the loss of lives and submarines in the Royal Navy wasn’t as bad as the German Kriegsmarine, more than 70 Royal Navy boats were lost during the War. Most of these losses occurred in the Mediterranean.
The Axis convoys in the Mediterranean were usually heavily escorted and any opposition submarine could be expected to extend its depth charging. The torpedoes used by the British submarines would leave a track on the water surface that would make it easy for the Axis convoys to target them. HMS Upholder, even though being tiny, was still one of the best war submarines to ever serve for the Royal Navy.
The HMS Upholder was commanded by Lieutenant-Commander Malcolm David Wanklyn for her entire life. He came from the Royal Navy College at Dartmouth. He was said to be a reserved man, who kept to himself most of the time. He was a great naturalist and a superb horseman. A fellow officer of his described him as “a very strict disciplinarian” who was straight with the Company, which is why they loved him. He never tried to be popular among the crew but he was one of those captains for whom the sailors would do anything. Prior to commanding HMS Upholder, Wanklyn also commanded HMS Oberon, two H-class submarines and two S-class submarines.
By the time Wanklyn took over command of Upholder, he had already spent time doing war patrol and was instrumental in the sinking of a German anti submarine vessel off the Dutch coast. As soon as he was assigned to HMS Upholder, the submarine was ordered to go the most dangerous submarine port of Malta. Upholder reached Malta in January 1941 where it was assigned to the 10th Submarine Flotilla. When the Upholder reached Malta, the submarines at the base were not in a good position. Nine boats had been lost and nearly 400 crewmembers lost their lives. Most of these boats were the older vessels, which is why they could not hold their own against the swarm of Italian boats and German submarines. The minefields just served to make it all the more difficult for them.
The Mediterranean is a relatively shallow
sea where the most dangerous of submarine warfare’s took place. If the British could defend Malta, then they could control the southern coast of the Mediterranean. This was crucial in the War against the Axis powers because it prevented the Axis from capturing Egypt. If Egypt fell into the hands of the Axis powers, then they would have complete control over the Suez Canal and the oil fields of the Near East. That would have possibly tipped the war in their favor which is why the British gave it their fullest to protect Malta at the sacrifice of a number of the RAF, Royal Navy and mostly the unfortunate citizens of Malta who never asked for it.
At one point of time, the food was in short supply with the Navy having a ration of just one slice of bread every meal. Even beer, which was considered a staple of the British sailors, was nonexistent.
Upholder played a major role in the Allies keeping control of Malta and driving away the Axis. However, this was no easy job and the Upholder began its journey the hard way. A few days after the submarine arrived at Malta, the Germans decided to launch their second siege of the port. They bombarded the ships in the harbor and those at sea with dive-bombers.
The Germans and the Italians also attacked the island from air. At this time, Upholder was positioned next to HMS Illustrious. The British forces gave back as much as they got. Upholder turned her Lewis guns on the Germans. The submarine was mostly hidden behind huge columns of spray or water as the Germans attacked her all sides. The upholder was struck by one bomb but was lucky enough to escape unscathed. The crew of the submarine escaped with no casualties or major injuries. They were very lucky to escape unhurt from the siege. The upholder was next to the merchantman Essex. Essex was carrying four thousand tons of ammunition and torpedoes. The Essex was struck by a bomb directly in the engine room and suffered 38 casualties. The only reason the explosion didn’t spread was because the ship’s bulkheads contained the explosion within the ship. If the explosion had reached the cargo of the Essex, then the Upholder and other ships around the Essex would have been wiped out as a result of the blast that would have occurred.