Final Patrol

by Don Keith

  Clearly many of the survivors required medical attention. No sub carried a doctor, so the task of caring for the variety of ailments fell to the pharmacist’s mate, Maurice Demers. Others pitched in to help as they could, feeding the men who were too weak to hold a spoon and donating clothing and toilet articles.

  Despite the young PM’s best efforts, one of the POWs, a Brit, died. He was buried at sea in a somber funeral ceremony.

  En route to Saipan, the sub met up with the destroyer USS Case (DD- 370), who sent over a doctor, another pharmacist’s mate to assist Demers, food, and a good stock of medical supplies.

  When they docked in Tanapag Harbor on Saipan on September 20, men bringing fresh fruit and ice cream met them. The process of getting the rescued POWs ashore and to medical facilities began at once.

  Captain Summers was awarded the Navy Cross for his leadership in the attack on the Japanese patrol as well as for the rescue of the prisoners. The crewmen of the Pampanito, who so bravely dove into the water to swim out and assist survivors, received the Navy and Marine Corps Medal. So did Pharmacist’s Mate Demers for his efforts to ease the suffering of the men they plucked from the oily sea.

  After the third war patrol for the Pampanito, Commander Paul Summers was sent home for some well-deserved rest. With his three patrols at the helm of the Pampanito and seven more before that on the USS Stingray, he welcomed the break, but would return to take command of the Pampanito’s fifth and sixth runs.

  So, when the 383 boat pulled away from Pearl Harbor for her fourth war patrol, she was under the command of Captain Frank Wesley “Mike” Fenno, a sub sailor with a unique war record. He had most recently been the skipper of the USS Runner (SS-275), but before that command he was on the bridge of the USS Trout (SS-202), one of the boats on patrol in the Pacific near the Hawaiian Islands on the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

  Shortly thereafter, he and his boat were ordered to deliver a large cache of ammunition to Corregidor, the island that acted as a citadel at the entrance to Manila Harbor in the Philippines. After off-loading the ammo, the Trout picked up maybe the most interesting ballast of the war—over twenty tons of gold and silver.

  It is true that Fenno requested additional ballast to make his submarine more stable on the return run, but, as luck would have it, sandbags were especially hard to come by at that time on the heavily fortified island. The military command suggested he might take on a far more interesting cargo, something that ironically had less value at the moment than the sandbags. By doing so, they could serve two purposes, getting him the ballast he needed and hauling precious cargo back for safekeeping.

  The precious metal was taken from the banks in Manila ahead of the inevitable Japanese invasion and was bound for Hawaii for safekeeping. In all, almost six hundred gold bars and bulging canvas bags holding eighteen tons of silver were carefully loaded into the bilges of the Trout, all under the watchful eye of serious-faced soldiers. Fenno signed a receipt for the treasure but made a note that he could not personally verify the exact count since neither he nor his crew had the time or inclination to do a detailed tally.

  Despite the unusual ballast in her bilges, Fenno and his crew still managed to sink two enemy vessels while making the money run back to Pearl Harbor.

  Captain Fenno eventually left the Trout after four war patrols to assume command of the Runner and, eventually, the Pampanito. His first boat met an untimely end after his departure. On her eleventh patrol, in February 1944, the Trout was lost with all hands in a ferocious depth-charge attack off the Marianas.

  Eighty-one sailors were dispatched on eternal patrol when Mike Fenno’s former boat went down.

  The Pampanito went to the “mothball fleet” at Mare Island, in San Francisco Bay, shortly after the end of the war. Like several other boats, she came out of retirement to serve as a training vessel, in her case as part of Naval Reserve Submarine Division 11-12.

  In 1971, she was stricken from the naval registry and, unfortunately, suffered from some stripping of her equipment to supply parts to other long-in-the-tooth sister boats that were still being used in a reserve capacity. Once all her equipment was gone, a boat was little more than a steel hull, and that meant being cut apart for scrap. Thankfully, the Pampanito had a brighter future once she overcame a few unique hurdles.

  In 1976, the boat was turned over to the Maritime Park Association, a group with designs on placing the historic vessel alongside Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco as a tourist attraction, memorial, and museum vessel.

  The effort came at an unfortunate time in our country’s history, on the heels of the Vietnam War, and there was opposition to the plan from some members of the San Francisco Port Commission. They wanted no part of a warship, a symbol of the military and the horrors of war, being parked anywhere in their city. Several members talked of such a display glorifying the horrors of war at a time when the nation was better off saluting peace and pacifism.

  The Maritime Park Association had no choice. They floated the sub down to a private shipyard in Stockton for storage. There she stayed, out of sight, out of mind, for over six long years, until the mood (as well as the makeup) of the Port Commission changed.

  The Pampanito finally found a berth at the San Francisco Maritime Museum at Pier 45 in the middle of Fisherman’s Wharf, where she immediately became a popular spot for tourists to visit and for sub vets to gather. She now hosts over 100,000 visitors a year as well as more than 15,000 overnight campers annually. This makes her maybe the most visited of all the museum submarines as well as one of the most popular naval exhibits in the country.

  The old boat has even had a part in a major Hollywood movie—she played the part of the beleaguered submarine USS Stingray in Down Periscope, a 1996 comedy starring Kelsey Grammer, Rob Schneider, Rip Torn, William H. Macy, Bruce Dern, and Lauren Holly. During the filming of the feature, the boat was actually moved away from the dock and towed out of the bay, beneath the Golden Gate Bridge and back, making what could be called her final patrol for the benefit of the Hollywood movie cameras. It had been fifty years since her last trip beneath the Golden Gate.

  The Pampanito is still in the process of being restored to how she was in late summer 1945. Because of the items that were stripped from her during her years of being mothballed, it has taken a great deal of effort to acquire the gear needed to reequip her. The Maritime Park Association and volunteer groups have been replacing missing equipment and spare parts that were taken from the boat during the 1970s. Almost all of the missing items have now been replaced, and much of the equipment on board the vessel has been restored to operational condition.

  Quite a bit of the gear actually works, just as it did when Captain Summers steered the boat through the South China Sea. In 1999, she underwent extensive dry-dock repairs and restoration after being towed back across the bay to Alameda.

  Those doing the renovations to the submarine have always tried to make reversible any of the changes necessary to do the job. Much of the work done to make the vessel more accessible to visitors can be easily undone so she can be returned with minimal effort to how she looked during World War II. For example, the torpedo loading hatches that were removed to allow for building stairs into the boat’s interior are now in storage for safekeeping and could be easily returned to their original positions if desired.

  The USS Pampanito has been declared a National Historic Landmark.

  USS RAZORBACK (SS-394)

  Courtesy of the U.S. Navy

  USS RAZORBACK (SS-394)

  Class: Balao

  Launched: January 27, 1944

  Named for: not, as you might imagine, for a hog, but instead for the finback whale, which normally reaches a length of forty-five feet and is most commonly seen off the Pacific coast of the United States

  Where: Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, New Hampshire

  Sponsor: Mrs. H.F.D. Davis, the wife of the manager of the Industrial Department at Portsmouth Navy Yard

  Commissio
ned: April 3, 1944

  Where is she today?

  Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum

  100 Riverfront Road

  North Little Rock, Arkansas 72119

  (501) 371-8320

  www.northlr.org/maritime-museum/default.asp

  Claim to fame: Despite her five World War II patrols, for which she earned five battle stars, her presence in Tokyo Bay for the Japanese surrender ceremony, the four battle stars awarded for her work during the Vietnam War, and her twenty-six years of service in the U.S. Navy, the Razorback’s real claim to fame might well be her amazing voyage home after being retired from the Turkish navy after decades more of faithful duty. She was the last operational World War II submarine and is the longest-serving submarine in naval history.

  The submarines that were being slid down the skids at the various shipyards around the country during World War II were built to last. The same people who made engines for locomotives built their diesel power plants. The hulls and superstructures were of the strongest steel available. All systems were cobbled together to withstand the roughest seas, the deepest possible dives, the nearby vicious explosions of TNT-powered depth charges. Despite how well these boats were constructed, regular and proper upkeep was still paramount to keep them effective. Even at a time when every possible boat was needed to fight the war, they still came off patrol and went directly to a maintenance facility. There they remained idle while anything broken was fixed, regular preservation work was done, and the vessels received the latest and greatest upgraded equipment.

  Still, it is doubtful that any of the men and women who designed, built, and maintained those warships would have ever guessed that one of their creations would still be active almost six decades later. That was the case with the USS Razorback, the longest-serving submarine in history.

  She was launched at Portsmouth Navy Yard in January 1944, just a bit over two years after the “day of infamy” of Pearl Harbor. She would not be retired until the Turkish navy ultimately decommissioned her in 2001.

  But even then, her oceangoing days were not over. Not by a long shot!

  With a commissioning crew of sixty men, the Razorback followed her predecessors down the Atlantic Coast, through the Caribbean Sea, through the locks of the Panama Canal, and on across the Pacific Ocean to Pearl Harbor. Before that, though, she had had something of an inauspicious beginning to her service. While conducting sea trials, her commissioning skipper and his executive officer managed to run her aground at New London. Both officers were promptly relieved of their positions.

  Commander Roy Benson, a former skipper of the USS Trigger (SS- 237), just happened to be in New London at the time serving a tour of duty at the submarine school there. He heard the news about the unfortunate debut of her previous captain, asked for the boat, and got her.

  Such a move was typical of Roy Benson. He had a reputation for being a bold and aggressive captain. As it turned out, though, he did not have much to shoot at when he got his new submarine into the war. Pickings were slim on the Razorback’s first run. Through no fault of Benson’s or his crew’s, they simply had nothing to attack.

  Benson was promoted off the boat after that run and replaced by Lieutenant Commander Charles Brown. With the new skipper, their luck turned better and they were credited with sinking two enemy vessels on the second run. Then, on her third patrol, they got four more enemy ships during some exciting surface gun attacks and collected three Japanese prisoners.

  Brown and the Razorback also had a near-tragic occurrence. Patrolling in the East China Sea, they saw through the periscopes what they believed to be an enemy transport. There was something curious about the ship, though. The vessel was not zigzagging and did not have an escort of any kind anywhere in sight. But Brown and his crew were having problems with the scopes fogging up and visibility was not the best anyway. Still, it appeared to be a worthy target at a time when targets were hard to come by.

  Brown sent the crew to battle stations and ordered five torpedoes fired in a wide spread.

  Only an instant after the last fish was out of its tube, the captain spotted a large red cross on the ship’s hull. It was a hospital ship. Sub commanders were under strict orders to allow such vessels safe passage, no matter what.

  For the first time in his career, the young skipper held his breath and prayed that the torpedoes he had just launched would miss their intended target.

  Somebody must have been listening. His prayers were answered. Somehow, in setting up for the attack, the range had been miscalculated and all five weapons swept harmlessly past the hospital ship.

  Later, a clerk charged with tallying the results of submarine patrols noted, in a great understatement: “It is fortunate the attack was not successful.”

  Brown led the Razorback on a total of four war patrols, but it was her fifth and final one that was easily the most noteworthy. It was not because of any heroic attack she launched or a crucial target destroyed, but for a few simple messages copied and distributed over a period of several days by the radio operator.

  Five weeks into the run, they received word of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The news that the war had ended followed shortly.

  It was an odd time for the crews of Allied submarines and other naval vessels in the war zone. The boats had to stay on alert because there had been more than one incident of Japanese airplanes and warships continuing to attack American ships, even if hostilities were supposed to have ceased. But it was a time of euphoria, too.

  The war was over at last. They would be going home soon.

  When the official word of the war’s end came, many of the submarine captains gave the order to break out the medicinal alcohol they all had aboard. A ration was given to each of the men who was not on watch. It was not much of a party, but it was the best celebration they could manage until they got ashore to do it properly.

  Still, everyone kept an eye on the sky and the radarscopes, just in case.

  Then, at the end of August 1945, the Razorback was ordered to proceed, along with eleven other submarines, into the mouth of Tokyo Bay. She was to stand by there next to the sub tender Proteus (AS-19) while the surrender ceremonies took place aboard the battleship USS Missouri.

  There was some concern about this particular honor. Sailors speculated that the whole thing might be a trap. Once the Missouri, the submarines, and the rest of the contingent were inside Tokyo Bay, the Japanese might spring a surprise attack. They were known to be fanatical. Some had refused to lay down their arms and were fighting still. Deck guns were manned and the torpedo tubes were all loaded as the Razorback steamed into enemy territory.

  Of course, there was no surprise attack, but some of the officers who went ashore reported the ominous sights they had seen. Hundreds of mini-submarines were in various stages of construction, ready to launch in the case of an Allied invasion.

  The crew of the Razorback was berthed too far away to see or hear the actual surrender ceremony when it took place, but they soon read General Douglas MacArthur’s brief message to those assembled on the Missouri ’s main deck.

  Just after the surrender documents were signed, he read the simple dismissing words from a slip of paper:

  “Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world, and that God will preserve it always. These proceedings are closed.”

  As did most of her sister submarines, the Razorback returned to the United States immediately after the war, docking in San Diego. She received five battle stars for her service in the Pacific. For the first time, the crew was able to talk with family and friends about what they had been doing in the Pacific. In the glut of news about the atomic bombs dropped on Japan and the quick end of the war, the submarine service’s contributions were, unfortunately, not fully recounted.

  Once again, the silent service’s stealth, the hidden way the submarines went about their business, were not conducive to newsreels or newspaper front-page photos.

  JANAC (Joint Army-Navy Assessmen
t Committee) also cut into the record of the sub sailors. The submarine command tallied about four enemy vessels sunk for about ten million tons. Relying heavily on Japanese war records, JANAC cut the total to about thirteen hundred ships and five million tons—one-third the claimed vessels and one-half the total tonnage.

  Some figures were indisputable, though. Fifty-two submarines were lost during the war. Over thirty-five hundred submariners died out of the sixteen thousand who served. That was a casualty rate of nearly 22 percent, the greatest for any branch of the service in World War II.

  Even using the conservative JANAC figures, less than 2 percent of the U.S. Navy had accounted for more than 55 percent of Japan’s maritime losses in the war. It is impossible to count the other contributions—the warships lost to service even if they were not destroyed, the oil tankers and freighters loaded with raw materials that never reached the Home Islands with their vital cargo, the time and effort used by the enemy vessels to avoid the submarine fleet, the crucial observations of the sub crews that helped prepare for attack and follow convoy activity, the many downed pilots rescued by subs on lifeguard duty.

  Even if the war was over, the Razorback still had plenty of fight left in her. She went back to Pearl Harbor and operated throughout the Pacific until 1949. Then, in 1952, she received the GUPPY II conversion. Soon, she was back in Pacific waters as part of the Seventh Fleet. She even took part in some of the early nuclear blast tests in the South Pacific. Later, she played a role in the Vietnam War, for which she and her crew received four battle stars and a Vietnam Service Medal. Most of that activity remains classified, even today.

  The end of her service to her native country came in November 1970, and it was not immediately clear where the Razorback would end up.