by Don Keith
Like several of her sister boats, the Clamagore had high hopes during her construction and shakedown. She and her crew felt the urgency, even if the tide of the war had already turned. They knew the dangers of facing a caged, desperate enemy and were ready to go do their part to contribute to victory against Japan.
They simply arrived at the war too late to do any good.
Commissioned in June 1945, just a bit over a month before the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, she was on her way to do her duty when word of peace was radioed to all the submarines at sea. The Clamagore had made her way as far as Panama and was conducting get-ready exercises there when the order to cease hostilities went out to all units. No one aboard the new vessel was disappointed.
She headed back to Key West, which became an important submarine base in the early days of the Cold War. The deep, clear waters of the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico were perfect for the kinds of exercises necessary to prepare for the next kind of naval warfare we would most likely face.
The Clamagore was designated flagship of Submarine Squadron Four based at the far southern tip of the United States. She carried the flag for fourteen years.
Then word came that there was a need for a new type of submarine to assist in other types of training and operations. The navy already had a number of nuclear-powered submarines in its fleet by the end of the 1950s. Still, we needed some of the old diesel boats—after modification—for specialized duty, much of which was highly classified. The Clamagore was chosen to be one of nine boats to have the most radical of the new cosmetic surgery.
First she went up the East Coast to the Philadelphia Navy Yard for conversion to GUPPY. Her modification was designated GUPPY II, similar to that described in the chapter on the USS Becuna. After that modification, she became flagship for the commander of the Task Fleet and the commander of Submarine Force, Atlantic. All the time, she was out of port, making trips all over the Caribbean, as well as longer voyages to England, Argentina, Newfoundland, and other exotic locales.
In 1960, she served as part of the U.S. Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean and participated in Operation Springboard in the Caribbean with a number of vessels from South American navies. During that little adventure, the Clamagore steamed around Cape Horn, the southern tip of South America.
Then in May 1962, the Clamagore checked into the Charleston Naval Shipyard for her second major makeover. This one was a doozy! As part of becoming a GUPPY III conversion, the submarine was literally sawed in half, received a transplant, and was welded back together again.
One of the problems with using the 312-foot-long World War II diesel boats was the limited amount of space available for sophisticated new electronic equipment that was coming online in the late ’50s and early ’60s. They were well equipped in so many other ways, but they simply did not have the room for all they needed to carry.
The navy took a long, hard look at the boats that had already undergone the GUPPY II conversion. In the process, they considered the general condition of the vessel and then selected a few they figured could survive the next major modification the maritime engineers had in mind for them.
The Clamagore was one of the boats chosen.
The first job was to literally cut the submarine in half in the general area forward of the control room. A new fifteen-foot section of hull, weighing fifty-five tons, was added at that spot to make room for more sonar equipment, berthing space, and storerooms. Next the conning tower was modified, adding five feet of tower to accommodate the new fire-control system (“fire control” pertains to firing torpedoes, not controlling a fire aboard the boat) and other gear. The sail itself was changed to what was termed the “northern sail,” putting the bridge much higher above the water, allowing it to be manned in rough weather.
The changes erased once and for all the distinctive sail of the older diesel boats. The Clamagore now resembled the new nuclear submarines far more than her World War II sisters. Of the nine boats so modified, the Clamagore is the only one that is on public display today.
On July 2, 1962, the newly rebuilt submarine had her second christening. The navy decided to do an entire ceremony, carrying out the rebirth theme of the GUPPY III conversion boats. This time a sixteen-year-old named Ann Beshany broke the champagne bottle against her bow and sent her on her way. The young lady was the daughter of Captain P. A. Beshany, Commander, Submarine Squadron Four.
As planned, the changes to the old boat extended her term of duty considerably. At a time when many of her contemporaries were being struck from the register of active vessels and sent off to the scrap heap, the Clamagore was playing a vital role in naval exercises around the world. She and her former World War II GUPPY mates made up much of the navy’s submarine force through the mid-1960s, when the newly built nuclear boats assumed, once and for all, most of the responsibility for submerged patrols of the world’s oceans.
And that is when the Clamagore’s usefulness finally ended. She may not have had the chance to strike a blow against the Japanese in World War II, but for three decades she did all she was asked to do in defense of her country.
After thirty years of service, the Clamagore was retired in June 1975. Her fate was not in doubt for long. She was acquired by Patriots Point Maritime Museum in Charleston, South Carolina, not far from where she underwent her radical redesign, and went on display there shortly afterward.
Other vessels in the park include the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown (CV-10), known as “the Fighting Lady” and one of the best-known ships of World War II; the destroyer USS Laffey (DD-724); and the Coast Guard cutter Ingham (WHEC-35). The park also features a Congressional Medal of Honor museum and a relatively new memorial to Cold War submarines. That memorial is dedicated to submariners, their families, and the men and women—both civilian and military—who supported the sub force during that period of America’s history. Many of those people were based at Charleston.
The city’s connection with submarine history is not limited to the Clamagore and Patriots Point. The historic Confederate submarine CSS Hunley, the first sub to sink an enemy vessel, is also located in Charleston. The submarine was recovered from the nearby Atlantic Ocean in August 2000 through the efforts and fund-raising of several groups along with best-selling author Clive Cussler. Archaeologists are currently examining the vessel in an attempt to learn more about her design, her eight-man crew, and exactly what caused her to sink just a short time after her successful attack on a Union ship in Charleston Harbor in February 1864.
Weekend tours of the recovery lab, including views of the Hunley, are offered at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center at 1250 Supply Street at the former Charleston Naval Base.
USS PAMPANITO (SS-383)
Courtesy of Rob Mackie and www.steelnavy.com
USS PAMPANITO (SS-383)
Class: Balao
Launched: July 12, 1943
Named for: one of the family of butterfishes found in the Gulf of California and Mexican coastal waters
Where: Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, New Hampshire
Sponsor: Mrs. James Wolfender
Commissioned: November 6, 1943
Where is she today?
USS Pampanito Maritime Park Association
Pier 45 at Fisherman’s Wharf
San Francisco, California 94147-0310
(415) 561-7006
www.maritime.org/pamphome.htm
Claim to fame: She helped rescue six dozen British and Australian prisoners of war after the submarine unknowingly stalked the Japanese troop carrier on which they were being transported and sank another vessel loaded with POWs. She has also had an interesting—and controversial—history since coming to San Francisco, including a starring role in a major motion picture.
As you tour the USS Pampanito at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, do not be surprised if you hear the distant, ghostly whistling of “The Colonel Bogey March,” the oddly happy theme from the heartrending war movie The Bridge on the River Kwai. The submar
ine and her World War II crew are forever and tragically linked with the men who lived the events that are so graphically depicted in that motion picture.
The Pampanito’s route from birth to her first war patrol was a relatively quick one. Exactly one year to the day after her keel was laid down at the new building basin at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in New Hampshire, she departed Pearl Harbor on her first of six World War II patrols.
On the first run, skipper Paul Summers and his crew had to deal with mechanical problems and almost lost the boat in a four-day stalking of an enemy convoy. During that engagement, they were certain they had dealt a mortal blow to a huge tanker but ultimately did not receive credit for the sinking.
What they did get for their trouble was a series of massive depth chargings that almost sent them to the bottom before they had even gotten started in this war. The first thunderous attacks, which came even before the Pampanito had fired her first torpedo, did moderate damage to the new boat. Summers and his crew managed to get their boat to the surface as soon as their attackers gave up, did some temporary repairs, and then went to flank speed in order to resume the chase.
On April 10, 1944, just after launching the two torpedoes that hit the tanker, one of the enemy escort vessels chased the Pampanito deep with another vicious series of depth charges. This sort of thing was getting old quick!
Later, Captain Summers wrote in his deck log a rather blasé account of what had to have been high drama beneath the surface of the sea:2201: Pattern of 3 depth charges, fairly close. At about 300 feet, commenced taking in water through the main air induction piping. #9 torpedo tube indicating sea pressure. Evidently outer door is leaking from last depth charging.
2202: Pattern of 3 depth charges, fairly close.
2205: Had to close the hull induction drains in engine rooms and maneuvering room as water is coming in too fast. Boat is getting very heavy. One of the poppet valves in the forward torpedo tubes stuck open on firing causing flooding of the forward torpedo room bilges.
2207: Intermittent depth charges. None very close. A total of about 25 were dropped. Am having to use between 90 and 100 shaft turns with a 12-15 degree rise bubble to keep the boat from going any deeper . . .
2315: Both sound head training motors grounded out due to bilge water running over the forward torpedo room deck with a 15 degree rise bubble. Tried using a bubble in safety tank twice to hold my depth, and each time it brought the DD’s over again. Excessive noise being caused by the pressure forcing water into main induction piping. . . .
The roar of water rushing into the Pampanito’s superstructure was drawing the Japanese destroyers like honey draws flies. Though the boat was still nominally under control, they were in real danger of sinking if they could not get the flooding under control. If the destroyer escorts stayed above them, dropping TNT on their heads, and if they were not able to check the inrushing water, they would have only two choices, neither of which was a good one.
They could surface in the middle of the enemy warships and likely be blown out of the water.
Or they could remain submerged and keep trying to control the wounded boat, running the risk of being crushed to death if they failed and the Pampanito plunged to the distant sea bottom.
A half hour after the captain’s last notation, Sound reported that the destroyer screws appeared to be growing more distant. It had been almost fifteen minutes since the last nerve-shattering explosion of a nearby depth charge.
Finally, another tense half hour after the report that the enemy was leaving, Summers swallowed hard and gave the order to come to periscope depth. The dive officer brought the boat up high enough that the tip of the scope poked into dry air. The skipper took a look around, saw nobody, and came to the surface to inspect the damage. He also ordered his radio operator to get on the air and see if anyone else in the area could resume the chase of the convoy they had missed.
Even then, damaged from the depth-charge attack, the Pampanito did not break off the patrol. Staying on the surface as much as they dared, the crew pumped out the flooded induction piping and drained the seawater out of number-nine torpedo tube and made repairs that allowed them to continue the rest of the run with only a slight limp.
There were more close calls on the Pampanito’s second war patrol. After days of bad weather, they finally surfaced near Bungo Suido for a look-see. It was a clear night, several hours before dawn, and the crew was pleased to find calm seas. As the officer of the deck and navigator stood on the bridge, enjoying the clean sea air, one of them suddenly shouted, “Torpedo wake! Dead ahead!”
Sure enough, there was the unmistakable trail of gas from a steam-turbine-driven torpedo, like the ones the Japanese submariners favored. It was headed directly for where they would be in a few seconds.
“Left full rudder! Flank speed!” the OOD shouted into the intercom microphone. The boat heeled over immediately, the engines and rudder responding to his order and the actions of the men in the control and maneuvering rooms. They had dodged the first one and were going to do all they could to dodge any other fish that might be headed their way.
Sure enough, another trail marked the progress of a second torpedo, running right up the starboard side of the Pampanito, shadowing them for a moment. Had they not spotted the first one and made the evasive maneuver, this torpedo would likely have struck them broadside. Neither man on the bridge wanted to think what the result of that explosion would have been.
No one on the bridge saw a submarine on the surface in any direction, so whoever was shooting at them had to be submerged. They quickly cleared the shears and bridge and went down to periscope depth. From the relative safety there, they tried to detect the sound of an enemy sub’s screws or any other noise that might indicate where the attacker was lurking.
Nothing. Except for the chirping of shrimp, the night sea was quiet. There was only the sound of a half dozen men’s breathing in the conning tower.
Three weeks later, an eerily similar incident gave the crew pause once again. Early in the morning of July 16, a couple of hours prior to sunrise, lookouts spied a torpedo wake moving directly toward their boat’s port beam. The submarine immediately made a sharp move to parallel the path of the approaching torpedo, giving it their smallest profile, and it missed her by less than five yards, according to the men who were on the bridge that night.
Later, Admiral Charles Lockwood, commander of the Submarine Force, Pacific Fleet, guessed that the two torpedo attacks on the Pampanito came from IJN mini-subs. That was the reason Summers and his crew detected none of the distinctive sounds of a full-sized submarine after the incidents. During the patrol, the Pampanito had also reported detecting enemy onshore radar, with a strength that was more than enough to give the enemy a radar-blip picture of any vessel that might be on the surface in the area. That was valuable information, as well as an explanation for how the enemy may have known of the Pampanito’s presence in their coastal waters on those dark, predawn nights.
War patrol number three took Summers, his crew, and the Pampanito to an area north of the Philippines that had been dubbed “Convoy College” because of the large amount of Japanese shipping that converged in the waters there, making their way to the Home Islands. The sub was operating in a wolf pack with the USS Growler (SS-215) and the USS Sealion (SS-315), a group dubbed “Ben’s Busters” after Ben Oakley, the skipper of the Growler. American submarines had begun operating more and more in wolf packs for two reasons: the enemy convoys were becoming better organized and usually featured a number of destructive escort vessels, and it made it easier to avoid accidentally shooting at each other if they were working together. The skippers congregating in a pack could rendezvous, exchange notes, use lights or megaphones to communicate, and do it all without using the radio. If need be, they could also use the new VHF radio systems, too, with their limited range and less likelihood of detection.
It should be noted that there was one other advantage to being a part of a wolf pack. The
boats used those get-togethers on the high seas as an opportunity to swap movies for the crews. That was about the only entertainment they had during the long patrols and it was always a good thing to get some new titles to screen in the crew’s mess.
Of course, many of the American sub skippers detested the name “wolf pack.” It was the semantics of the thing. Since World War I, the German U-boat captains had operated in predatory groups they called wolf packs.
Even if they had adopted the methods of the Germans, they still saw no need to take their name for them, too.
Captain Paul Summers turned thirty-one while at sea, on September 6, 1944. That same day, a Japanese convoy sailed out of Singapore, loaded with rubber, oil, and other natural resources desperately needed for the war effort. Also in that same convoy were ships that carried an unusual and interesting cargo: more than two thousand British and Australian prisoners of war.
Those POWs had already been through hell. They were survivors of the infamous “Railway of Death,” the railroad built by captured soldiers and Asian civilians who were brutally used as slave labor. It is estimated that well over 100,000 people died during the construction of the railroad, mostly from starvation, dysentery, tropical diseases, abuse, overwork, and just plain cruelty.
The Japanese recognized the strategic need for the project. The railway was needed to link existing Thai and Burmese rail lines so they would create a route from Bangkok, Thailand, to Rangoon, Burma. Such a railroad was needed in order to support the Japanese occupation of the region. One of the key segments of the route involved building a bridge over the Kwae River in Thailand. The construction of that bridge and its ultimate demolition was fictionally depicted in a novel (and its name misspelled) by Pierre Boulle. In 1957, it became an Academy Award-winning motion picture starring William Holden and Alec Guinness.